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JOHN HKATTIK OKOZIKK,

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u Vmlmttmt anti Progrm* “ ifkimy «/ InielkrUmi Dmthfmmt*
“ The Wheel af Wmlih^ #y.

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LONGMANS, GttlEN AND (JO.,
!», FAYBRNOSTKR ROW, LONDONj
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND OALOUTI’A,

PRINTERS:

ARMY A\l> NAVY CO-OPERATIVE MiCIETV, LIMITED,
1H5, VICTORIA STREET, LONDON, B.M-.

M Y FRIEND AND FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN,

SIR GILBERT PARKER,

Canada's jtrenvier Novelist, and one of the

most prominent exponents of her interests
in flic Imperial Parliament,

I DEDICATE

This Volume.

PREFACE.

T N my first volume. Civilization and Progress , 1 endeavoured
to lay down the First Principles of Sociology with their
laws and dependencies, in so far, that is to say, as these could
be extracted from a general survey of the evolution of Societies
and Nations as a whole. In the third volume of my History of
Intellectual Development I went a step farther, and endeavoured
to exhibit the practical use to which such First Principles
might be put, if they were applied to the Politics of different
nations, over periods of time sufficiently long to allow tempor¬
ary disturbances calculated to deflect them from their normal
course of evolution to work themselves out. For this purpose,
I selected as object-lessons for my forecast the Political and
Social Evolution of England, France, and America, respec¬
tively, for the Twentieth Century, as foreshadowed from their
evolution in the Past; my idea being to see to what extent
Sociology could supply Politics with an instrument, or set of
principles, which, like a ship’s compass and chart, would enable
practical Statesmen to embark with more confidence and on
longer voyages over the open political sea of the Future, than
would be possible at present, where from the absence of such
compass and chart they are obliged, like ancient mariners, to
hug the shore, and living from hand to mouth, to wait patiently on
Providence for wind and tide. Now, should Sociology be able
to furnish us with such general guidance, it would at least help
to keep the evolution of nations up to the highest possibilities
marked out for them by their special natural powers and advan¬
tages ; as well as keep that evolution in as straight a path as
possible, and so avoid those to-and-fro tackings and zig-zags of
political reaction, which obscure a nation’s political bearings,
confuse its judgments, and waste its force.

But in the present volume I am prepared to go still farther,
and have endeavoured to show that if Sociology is to fully
justify itself as a science whose principles cannot be neglected
with impunity by practical Statesmen, it ought to be able
to render some assistance in the solution of the political, social,

vm.

PREFACE.

and economic problems of the passing day as well; and it is to
just these problems that I propose to apply, in the present
volume, such of the First Principles of Sociology as seem to
me to be at once relevant and indispensable.

And accordingly, when questions like those of Socialism.
Tariff Reform, Imperial Preference, the Mixing of Races, Race
Degeneration, etc., chanced to come to the front, I seized the
opportunity to get a hearing, in one or other of our Reviews,
for the treatment of them from the side of Sociology; and it is
of these articles that the present volume forms a collection.

Each section of the book has, I may mention, a unity of its
own running through its chapters; so much so, indeed, that
they may be said to form rather a number of small books, than
a bundle of heterogeneous magazine articles merely. In most
of these divisions, small as they are, I have practically said,
without padding, all that 1 had to say on the subjects discussed.

As regards my method of treatment of these various subjects,
it has in all cases been the same; and consists simply in
driving back the logical arguments of my opponents to their
First Principles, that is to say, to those presuppositions of a
sociological nature (often held by them quite unconsciously) of
which I propose to exhibit the fallacy,—presuppositions on
which their whole logical train of argumentation proceeds. I
then try to plant my own Hag of First Principles or Pre¬
suppositions in their place on the mast-head; deducing all such
sequences and connexions as occur to mo from my own special
principles, and—after comparing them with those of my oppo¬
nents—leaving the issue to the reader.

The articles on Mr. Kidd and Mr. Wells, and the note on
Herr Houston Chamberlain, have been embodied in this volume,
with the object of showing what kind of Sociology it is from
whose First Principles no help need be looked for by Practical
Politicians; and what kind, on the other hand, is likely to be
useful; as well as of exhibiting by these means the diagnostic
symptoms which will enable the reader to judge in each case

PREFACE.

IX.

for himself. In the chapter on Taxation Schemes, I have made
special reference to the schemes of Mr. Bernard Shaw and
Mr. Sidney Webb, inasmuch as in these schemes, the way by
which they came to their Socialism, and especially to their
Fabian variety of it, as well as the carefully hidden devices
by which they covered up their tracks, is clearly seen.

A word or two, perhaps, may here be said in reference to the
articles on Free Trade and Protection. As the title of the first
of them indicates-— A Plea for Reconsideration ,—they were
the first attempt made in England to re-open, from the
speculative side, the then long-closed Tariff Controversy, by
the presentation of a fresh set of arguments in favour of
Protection, Like all the younger men of a generation ago, I
had been brought up in the simple unquestioning belief in Free
Trade; and it was not until l began to concentrate my
attention on the materials which I had for years been collect¬
ing for my volume on Political Economy, The Wheel of
Wealth , that I became aware, to my surprise, that the entire
drift and trend of ray deductions from these materials ran
steadily and uniformly in the direction of Protection—and not
of Free Trade. As these fresh considerations emerged one
after another in my mind, they became the occasion for a
series of articles in the Fortnightly Review, With the
exception of one or two sentences here and there added or
subtracted, I have left them as they appeared, with the many
personal and political associations and allusions of the time still
clinging to them; in the hope that this local colouring may in
the future prove a useful historical document bearing on the
attitude of the public and the Press to Protection in the year
or two immediately preceding the taking up of the question
by Mr. Chamberlain. But the main reason for my publishing
the articles as they were written is, that they represent
successively higher stages of the argument in favour of Pro¬
tection ; beginning with the most general considerations, and
ascending to more and more definite positions; until in the

X.

PREFACE.

article on Professor Marshall’s Memorandum, more recently
written, the argument reached not only the highest point of
condensation of which I was capable, but put into a single
proposition the essence and upshot of all the preceding
argumentation; so much so, indeed, that were it alone fairly
and squarely refuted, I personally should be prepared frankly
to throw Protection overboard altogether. I trust, therefore,
that I have made the argument in that particular section so
clear and free from ambiguity, that ray opponents may join
issue with me on its few main points alone, if on no others.

I regret that when the articles are read consecutively, the
repetition of certain doctrines may be felt by some readers to
have been carried to excess. My apology must be, firstly, that
they are the few central doctrines for the sake of which all the
rest of the book has been written; secondly, that all along the
years during which the articles were appearing, these doctrines
were not recognised by any of the political parties in the
State; thirdly, that fresh situations and complications were
constantly arising to enforce anew the necessity of their
reiteration and application; and lastly, that even to-day they
have scarcely yet got beyond the threshold of our political
consciousness, let alone come into their full heritage.
Especially is this the case with three of the more important of
these political principles drawn from Sociology; first, the atrocity
of mixing antagonistic races, colours, and creeds on the same
areas of political soil; second, the fallacy of applying the purely
abstract ideal of Justice to any political situation whatever —
instead of that relatively concrete justice (made up of many
co-operating elements) which orderly evolution demands;
thirdly, the thick and thin devotion to that mischievous
doctrine of Laissez-faire (now at last in its dotage, thank
Heaven!) which has allowed the concentrated dust heaps and
slumdom of degenerate humanity to accumulate unchecked,
until they have reached that point of despair which we see to¬
day ; and fourthly, that it is impossible, except by constant

PREFACE.

XI.

repetition, for any mere writer to get a serious hearing for
any political doctrine whatever, until or unless lie can manage
to get it proclaimed by responsible Statesmen from within the
four walls of Parliament.

As for the Young Turks and their Constitution, I am afraid
that my over-confident and perhaps gratuitous prophecy cannot
be said to have as yet been justified by the event; still, I think
it right to let it remain as written, on the ground that ofttimes
in a reasoned and connected argument, as much of value comes
out of an author’s misses and mistakes as out of his more

palpable or fortunate hits.

The articles on Banking are illustrations rather of the appli¬
cation of Political Economy to the subject, than of Sociology ;
but I have introduced them here, not only with the view of
giving the unfamiliar reader, through the medium of a pictorial
presentation, some idea of the mechanism of a great Banking
System in operation, but of making him realize how all- import¬
ant is the question of Credit for a nation, as for an individual.
The contrast between English and American Banking was
introduced to bring out the profound effect which the stage of
Industry reached in a country may have on the stability of its
Credit System. As regards the forecast itself, which I have
ventured to make, of the future of Banking in England and
America respectively, it makes no pretension to any authori¬
tative or dogmatic value—that is a question for the experts to
decide—but it may serve as a kind of hypothetical object-lesson
for the purpose of exhibiting how great a part is played both
by the Sociological and Political conditions of the environment,
even on so apparently self-enclosed and independent a depart¬
ment of business as that of Banking.

I have to thank the Editors of the Fortnightly Review and of
the Daily M<iil for their kind permission to re-publish the
articles which originally appeared in their respective columns.

J.B. C.

Athenaeum Clot,

Pall Mall, S.W.

July, 1911 .

BOOK 1

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

Chap. 1.—The Street-Corner Men
„ II.—On Social Justice

III.—The Fabians and Parliamentarians
IV—A Dialogue with Marx

3-20

21-39

40-57

58-76

BOOK II.

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

Chap. I.—Mr. Kidd’s “Principles of Western

Civilisation ”.

„ II.—Mr. Wells as a Sociologist .

„ HI.—A Sociological Symposium .

„ IV.—Pace, Colour, and Creed

y .—a Note on Pace Degeneration .

79-97

98-112

113-119

120-131

132-136

BOOK III.

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Chap. I.— Free Trade or Protection for England 139-148

„ II.—How to Ruin a Free Trade Nation . 149-174

„ III. —The Condition of England Question . 175-199

,, IV.— Free Trade, Protection, and Prefer¬
ence ....... 200-221

„ V. —Suggestions for a New Political Party 222-244

„ VI. —Taxation Schemes and tiieir Values . 245-265

„ VII.— Professor Marshall’s “ Memorandum

on Fiscal Policy ” . . . . 266-286

„ VIII. —The English Banking System in

Operation. 287-306

„ IX. —English and American Banking

Contrasted. 307-316

BOOK I.

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

A

CHAPTER I.

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.*

T PROPOSE in this article to touch only on those under-
lying doctrines of Socialism on which all the “ street-
corner ” orators of the party are practically agreed, as it is on
the opinions of these men, owing to the mass of votes they
control, that Socialism as a working scheme for the organic
reconstruction of society, if it ever come at all, will have to be
built. As for the 64 intellectuals ” of the party in Parliament
and in the Fabian Society, on the other hand—men like Mr.
Ramsay McDonald, Mr. Snowden, Mr. Wells, and Mr. Bernard
Shaw—I have myself so much in common with them, that my
criticism of them will be confined to a much narrower belt of
doctrine, though one even more important, namely, their
scheme of Social Reorganisation itself.

In Mr. Robert Blatchford, however, who, as the leader of
the street-corner men, has been hailed by one writer as the
46 Rousseau of Socialism,” and by another as 44 the most
influential force in socialistic literature,” I am glad to recognise
an opponent of the highest honour and sincerity, and one, too,
whose views and expositions have commended themselves to
the great masses of the party, more, perhaps, than those of any
other single writer. If, then, in this friendly passage of arms 1
am obliged, in order to bring out my points more clearly, to

* Fortnightly Review , January, 1908

4

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

represent my opponent’s positions as moves in a somewhat
slippery game, it is on the distinct understanding that no
unworthy moral implication is anywhere involved,—any more,
indeed, than in all sincere party controversy, where the rival
leaders, if they have managed to deceive their followers, have
only done so after first having deceived themselves.

Without farther preliminary, then, I shall plunge at once
into the heart of my subject, and let my story tell itself as it
goes along; the upshot of my demonstration being to prove
that, until the intellectual world has entirely lost its centre of
gravity, Socialism, except by a physical-force revolution,
cannot, and will not, come.

Now, the proposals of the Socialists are so well known that
they need only detain us for a moment. They may be formu¬
lated as follows :—Firstly, the taking over by the State of the
whole of the instruments of Production, of Distribution, and
of Exchange, to be worked in the interests of the great mass
of the people; secondly, the contention that in the normal
course of Social Evolution the time is now ripe for this to be
inaugurated, and for the process of social reconstruction
founded on it to begin; and, lastly, that this reorganisation is
not only to be sanctioned, but to be initiated, directed, and
controlled, by the Working Classes or by those of their leaders
in whom they may choose to repose confidence.

On these positions there is a practical unanimity of opinion
among all classes of Socialists; but as to the amount of
compensation to be paid to the owners for their expropriation
by the State, this will differ according to the wing of the
Socialist camp to which they happen to belong. The street-
corner men, with their vast army of followers, would give the
owners but a short shrift, with scant compensation or none;
the Parliamentary cohort would be somewhat more liberal,
perhaps even indulgent; while the Intellectuals of the Fabian
right wing would make their terms with the dispossessed
landlords and capitalists so easy, and their absorption by the

THE STREET-CORNER MEN. 5

State so gradual, that in a cause at once so noble, patriotic,
and honourable, noblesse oblige itself would almost suffice to
secure their acquiescence, and make them doff their hats to it
all, in token of their courtesy and goodwill! But however
much the different wings of the party may differ on this
matter of compensation, whether on the ground of principle, of
expediency, or of common social decency, all are agreed in the
three points I have mentioned above. But these are so
complete a turning upside down of all the recognised processes
of human evolution up to the present hour (except as episodes
in times of revolution), are so clearly a case of the tail wagging
the dog instead of the dog its tail, that what I have to do heie
is to show where these curious conceptions came from, what
the intellectual illusions are which have given colour to them,
and made them seem plausible, and what the reasons are which
have made it appear that the time is ripe for their inauguration
and advent.

For all practical purposes, then, we may say that these
fundamental conceptions of Socialism arose and gained cunency
through the peculiar Political Economy of Karl Marx. He
had observed that Modern Machine Production, unlike the
hand production of the preceding centuries, yielded a large
surplus over and above what was necessary for a decent sub¬
sistence ; and that this surplus, ever mounting up higher and
higher, was being drained off and diverted into the pockets of
a small body of men—the Capitalists—who had had the good
fortune, while playing the game of wealth according to the
constitution and laws of the country, to get hold of these
machines. And as the question with Marx was one, not so
much of ordinary legal justice as of strict economic justice in
the division of the surplus—whereby each man should get the
fruits of his labour, neither more nor less—it became necessary
as a preliminary for him to enquire as to precisely what men
or body of men it was to whom this surplus was due, and
without whose special exertions it could not have come into

6

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

being at all. Now, Marx himself quite recognised that the
Working Men without machines or rude implements of some
kind, must, metaphorically speaking, u eat their heads off”
from day to clay, with as little hope or chance of accumulating
any surplus for themselves as the swarming millions of Hindoo
peasants. He saw, in fact, that it was to the machines, and to
them alone, that the surplus was due; or, in other words, to
those Powers of Nature which were embodied in the machines,
and which, when yoked to human labour, added, after all
deductions for their upkeep, a hundredfold power at every
moment of time to that labour. And he saw further that
these machines, without which the powers of Nature could not
be enchained, were the result of the toils of a small class of
men whose united brains had produced them—namely, the
Scientists of various orders engaged in discovering the laws of
Nature which regulated the operations of the steam power, the
electricity, the chemical or other processes involved in the
machines; the Inventors, who devised the mechanical con¬
structions necessary to bring them into concerted action and
use; the men of organising capacity who brought the machines
together into factories and workshops, in combinations involving
the greatest output with a minimum of waste; and the men
of financial or business ability whose schemes brought the
product to market in the cheapest and most effective way. if,
therefore, his cue was to insist on strict ideal economic justice,
instead of the ordinary maimed and imperfect justice of the
existing laws of the State, it was to these men that the surplus
really belonged, as being directly the result of their labour, and
not to the ordinary working men at all. As for the division
of this surplus, again, among the various orders of this small
body of men of brains, we have it on the published authority
of Mr. Carnegie that in his judgment (and it was right honest
of him to admit as much) the lion’s share ought to go, on lines
of strict economic justice, to the Scientists, Inventors, and
Discoverers of the first rank engaged 5 and only a much lesser

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.

7

amount to the great Organisers and Capitalists like himself, or
to the great Financiers; inasmuch as without the Scientist,
the Inventor, and the Discoverer of new processes, the labours
of the Organisers, Capitalists, and Financiers, would be as
barren of surplus as those of the whole united body of ordinary
Working Men. But Marx saw as well that by the existing
laws of the State, on which the game of wealth was being
played, the money capitalists (Mr. Carnegie’s lower grade men)
who had managed to get hold of the machines, held the whip-
hand not only over the Working Men, but over the Scientists,
Inventors, and the non-capitalist section of the Organisers as
well, and that, from their coign of vantage, they could, under
the aegis of certain injustices in the existing laws, squeeze, and
in the end (as we see in America on the large scale) skin them
all alike; even Edison admitting that had he not started
capitalist on his own account, his inventions would have left
him as poor as before. Now, it was this yawning gap between
the ordinary code of social justice as embodied in the existing
laws, and the strict ideal economic code which Marx professed
—whereby each man was to be fully compensated for his
labour, neither more nor less—that gave this astute Economist
his opening; and, like a skilled attorney, he seized on it at
once as just what he wanted in order to play his cards in the
interests of his clients, the great body of Working Men. And
the series of intellectual manoeuvres and illusions by which he
sought to accomplish his end were, it must be confessed, as
bold and ingenious as they were successful. Observing, on
the one hand, that by the existing laws of property the small
company of really great men who in their various ways were
the originators, and, in the true sense, masters of the surplus,
had been despoiled of their birthright; and, on the other, that
this fraud and injustice, having come down to them from long
past ages, had become so consecrated by tradition and custom
as a thing of course, that it was scarcely even felt by its
victims to be an injustice at all; and further, being alert

8

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

enough to see that it was neither to the interest of the Capitalist
masters, nor of the miscellaneous millions of their workers, to
raise the point, but rather to keep it dark; finding, I say, that
this conspiracy of silence, like a guilty secret, was covered by
a seal which neither the Capitalists nor the Workmen dare
break, on pain of cutting off their own claim to the inheritance ;
and knowing, besides, that he could prove that the surplus, to
whomsoever it was due, was not due to the mere Capitalists,
as such, who had managed to get hold of it as their private
property:—seeing all this, Marx boldly stepped forward and
with every appearance of sincerity announced that it was to
the Workers alone that the whole of this surplus was due!
The whole of the surplus—and to the workers alone! Well,
here was indeed curious doctrine for the world to hear for the
first time; but nothing daunted, he proceeded to make it good,
by playing off' on his followers a series of intellectual illusions,
all of which he advanced with an ingenuity and dexterity
which proved that if he was not a really great thinker, he was
at least an exceedingly wide-awake and shifty one.

The first of these illusions Marx took from the existing
Political Economy of his time—that old Economy of Adam
Smith, Eicardo, and Mill, which was then accepted by all as
the true gospel, but which we have now the high authority of
Professor Ashley (in his inaugural address as President of the
Economic Section of the British Association) for saying is
regarded by all competent specialists of the science as at last
quite “dead.” In this old Economy, it was written down
by Adam Smith that Labour was the source of all value,
and of all surplus. This dictum Marx snatched at, and
urged it on his followers as authority for his contention
that to them, in strict economic justice, the whole surplus
belonged—and to them alone. Eicardo, again, had shown that,
owing to the pressure of population on the means of subsistence,
the wages of the workmen could, by what he called an “ iron
law,” never rise above the level of a bare subsistence. Putting

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.

9

these two doctrines of what is now an old and dead system of
Political Economy together—ridiculous fallacies both, as the
logic of events has since demonstrated—Marx had no difficulty
in persuading his followers that, although they were the real
authors of all the wealth of the world, they were condemned
by an u iron law,” from which there was no escape, to for ever
exist on the hungry margin of a bare subsistence; while their
masters, the Capitalists, who reaped where they had not sown,
appropriated the surplus, and on it lived their lives of luxury
and self-indulgence. He carefully abstained from telling them
that it was the surplus product of the machines which the
Capitalists had expropriated—which would have been true—
but told them instead that the surplus was their product, which
was false. But lest there should remain any lingering doubts
in their minds that they, the Working Men (incredible as it
might appear) were really the authors of all the wealth of the
world, and that they therefore should possess it all, Marx
undertook to demonstrate it to them independently on his own
account, in his celebrated work on “ Capital.” He proposed,
in a word, to show them in this book the trick by which those
who had “made” all the wealth of the world, the Working
Men, had been and were being kept out of it by the Capitalists;
and, further, to prove that this could only be done by certain
deep economic laws of Political Economy, of which he alone
held the key. Now, I wish to protest here that there is no
economic law involved in the matter at all. It is purely a
question of the possession of economic poivcr , and the playing
of it, like a hand of cards, according to the rules of the game
of wealth, as embodied in the ordinary laws of the State.
There is no mystery in it; no obscure and recondite economic
laws known only to the initiates and experts ; it is the merest
platitude and truism ; so much so, indeed, that I will venture
to say that if the Trades Unionists could only gather in all
the workmen within a single fold to-morrow, and get them to
hold solidly together, they could, in their turn, unless the rules

10 A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

of the game were altered, squeeze the Capitalists until they
were bled white, so far as any economic law, other than that of
simple legal power, was concerned. The Capitalists own the
machines—which, as we have seen, really do the work and are
the causes of the surplus—precisely as the landowners own the
land, whose natural fertility again is the cause of the surplus
from which they derive their rents. They have either pur¬
chased these machines or invented them themselves, just as the
landlords have either purchased their lands or inherited them
from those who won them by conquest. The landlords, as is
still common in many parts of Europe, clear the land, drain it,
and build the necessary barns and outhouses; precisely as the
Capitalists pay for the making of the machines, the keeping of
them in repair, and the building of the necessary workshops.
If the peasants work all day long, and the land is so fertile that,
by delving and weeding it for, say, six hours, the peasant
produces his own subsistence, the landlord can make his rent
out of the other six, and so goes on with cultivation; if it is so
poor that by working all day long the peasants can only earn
the barest living for themselves, with nothing over for the
landlord’s rent, he abandons it, or keeps it on, out of motives
of philanthropy, for their sake. So, too, if the Capitalist has
got hold of machines so efficient that he can see his way at
existing market prices to put their product on the market with
a profit (owing to the fact that in the twelve hours’ attendance
on the machines, for which he pays wages, the product of six
hours, say, covers all expenses, and the surplus he gets for
himself), he goes on with the business; but if the whole twelve
hours’ attendance will only pay his expenses and leave nothing
for himself, he closes his works—that is all. There is, I repeat,
no mystery in it; for where did Marx really imagine the;
Capitalist could get his profits from, if not out of the men ?
The machines do the work, it is true, but they are not made of
gold, bits of which he can scrape off for his living, as men in
the old days did by “ sweatingsovereigns. They must be set

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.

11

going and otherwise attended to, and their products taken'"from
them as they emerge ; but as men only can do this, and not
horses, or dogs, or apes, how, I ask, can the Capitalist make his
living, if he is to continue in business, unless he gets it out of
the men ? And that means, not that the men do the work, while
the Capitalists dock them of part of their pay, but that the
machines do the work, and that both Capitalists and men are
partners who must settle between them their respective divisions
of the spoil. If they quarrel over the division—having as a
preliminary paid the inventor first for that amount of the
produce which they have made out of his machine over and
above what they could together have produced without it—
they can settle the question of which of them exploits the
other, by considering how they would respectively fare if
obliged to work without the help of the machines. The
inventor, unless, like Edison, he does the work himself, requires
the aid of the organiser, who in consequence can, by reason of
his brains, command, like a barrister or physician, his own
terms; but where would the poor artisans be in their millions
if, deprived of the invention, they had to do their work on
their old hand-looms, or with their old gin-horses or windmills ?
Why, instead of arguing with their employers on the hardships
of their lot in having to work a few hours extra in order that
he too should, like themselves, make his living, half of the
present existing population would have to work the whole
twenty-four hours round for the privilege of existing at all;
and the rest would die of starvation. That, to put it bluntly,
is what the whole thing would amount to, if you will insist, as
Marx does, on a strict economic justice. It is a simple state¬
ment of fact. The whole matter is one of brute economic power
of one man over other's or another, such as is seen every day
and in every walk of life; and there is no economic law, properly
so-called, in it at all. But Marx does not put it so; and what
I charge him with is that he misrepresented the plain facts
(sincerely, no doubt), as I have given them, in the interests of

12

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

his clients. What he did in his work on Capital was this, and
it may be put in a nutshell; indeed, the reader will already

liave anticipated it for himself without any prompting. He
cunningly substituted everywhere the work of the artisans a/nd
labourers attending on the machines for the work of the machines
themselves, as if the two were identical; on the ground, I
presume, that as the machines are but dead wood and iron,
and cannot themselves be paid in any way for what they do,
and the inventor is not found standing beside them all day
long, drafting off his share into his own private warehouse, the
workmen who attend them can step into his place and claim
the united product as their owm—as if, like Ooriolanus, they
“ alone did it.” And to cover up this subtle perversion, and
divert the eyes of his followers from it, he everywhere through¬
out the book speaks of the mere building of the machines by
the artisan as if it were the same thing as the inventing of the
machine itself by the inventor; and so leads them to believe
that the mechanical product of the artisan, namely, the machine,
was the same thing as the product of the machine itself! It
was as absurd as if the peasants should argue that the cause of
the crop lay in the mere mechanical work of ditching and
delving, rather than in the fertility of the soil; or as if the
materialists should insist that the actual food which had kept
Shakespeare alive, was the cause of the plays ; or the printer
who set them up, of their value. And with this hocus-pocus
by which he had deceived himself, played off on his followers
all through the book—which he everywhere lays out in chapters
having every appearance of logical continuity and scientific*
form, and expressed, too, in the most solemn economic
phraseology—it is no wonder, I say, that he deceived his
millions of economists from the workshop and the mine in
Germany, England, and France who still wear the old cast-off
clothes of Adam Smith, Mill, and Ricardo (which even an
academic like Professor Ashley admits must now be thrown
into the dustbin), into sincerely believing that they, the Workers,

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.

13

are the real makers and authors both of the machines them¬
selves, and of their surplus products of which the Capitalists
have robbed them. But it is strange that this pure perversion
of the actual facts, based simply on the existing distribution
of industrial power and not on economic laic at all, should have
gone so far as to throw one of the leaders of the Socialist
movement in England into such a state of ecstasy and
admiration, as to make him exultingly declare in the columns of
his paper, that Marx was the “ Aristotle of Political Economy.”

Now, all this was from the purely economic side; but I have
a more serious indictment to make against Marx from the
moral side, in that, by the intellectual sleight-of-hand which I
have endeavoured to expose, he has perverted the highly moral,
and indeed ideal, economic code which he and his followers
profess, and substituted for it one of the worst injustices of
the moral code of his opponents. This was done by the trick
of what I shall call for the nonce “ the dead invention,”—and
a single illustration will be ample to make clear my meaning.
A scientific man, or inventor, alone or in co-operation, has
produced, let us say, a successful invention or new process, like
the steam engine, the power loom, or a chemical dye, and after
enjoying a royalty on it for some fourteen years or so, it
reverts by decree of existing law to the public, and he, the
inventor or discoverer, becomes thereafter economically dead;
so much so indeed, that any machinist or workman who
can pay for the material s of which the engine or loom is
composed, may make one and set it up in his back garden or
shod, and as he contemplates with pride the excess of its
products in a week over what he himself could ever have
produced without it in a lifetime, can complacently look the
world in the face and say: “ See what I by my own industry
and unaided exertions have done ”; and really imagines, poor
soul, that because he has no longer to pay the inventor a royalty
for its use, he is in strict justice as much entitled to the whole
produce of his machine or process as if he had invented or

14

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

discovered it himself! And yet had this apostle of pure
economic justice, Marx, who was going to have no economic
injustice in his Commonwealth, paused for a moment before he
attempted to pass this spurious coin off on his followers as
genuine, and told them that as the question was one of strict
economic justice (and not of the ordinary so-called justice of
the existing laws, which according to him were a rank injustice),
the Scientist, Inventor, and Discoverer had as much right to
the surplus of product which came from their brains, and for
as long a time, i.e., in perpetuity, as the landlords had to their
lands, or the workmen to their tools,—had he told them this,
and then turned round on the engine or loom maker, and asked
him what part of that produce (over and above what he could
have himself made without it) he should now expect to get
from it, he would have opened the eyes of his deluded followers
to the fact that but for the absence of the royalty which had
been stolen in its perpetuity from the inventor by the power ,
rather than by the economic justice , of the State, he (the work¬
man) who had just been boasting of the wealth which he had
made, would find himself in his old kennel again, “ eating his
head off,” and feasting, not on the sirloin, but on the scrag-end
of the bone, as before! It was a rare piece of hocus-pocus,
this of Marx, and has completely “ taken in ” his followers—
the orators of the street-corner—who, themselves deceived by
it, score most of their debating points over the audiences
whom they address, by confounding together and playing off
against each other, as suits their argument or purpose, these
two kinds of justice on whose distinction and difference they
themselves lay so much stress—namely, the ordinary justice as
embodied in the accepted rules of the industrial game and the
existing laws of the State (which are founded on Political
Power, and against which they protest), and the strict laws of
ideal economic justice on which, should the heavens fall, they
profess that Socialism must and shall be made to stand.

The Socialists have, therefore, if they would release them-

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.

15

selves from this disingenuous position, to choose on which of
these horns they prefer to be impaled. If they choose the
former, namely, the ordinary justice of the constitution and
laws of the State, they will, of course, do as all other political
parties when they had the power have done before them: they
will use the political power which their numbers and their
votes have given them, to turn upside down the existing
Constitution, and install in its place, for the first time in
history, a Government not only framed in the interests, but
“ run ” and administered by the great masses of working men:
their banners inscribed with the war-cry of the orators of the
street-corner : u We, the working men, who do all the work,
and alone produce the surplus of wealth of which our Capitalist
masters and employers have robbed us, having now come into
our own, hereby declare,” &c. Now, were I a party politician,
I confess I should not blame them, for this is precisely the
type of Social Justice—the Justice of Power, we may call it—
with which their existing political masters have always indoc¬
trinated them. When the landowners were in power, they so
arranged it that they should skim off the cream of surplus, and
give their herd of retainers, petty tradesmen, and artisans, the
leavings; when the turn of the manufacturers came, they did
the same with their workers; and when the age of machine
industry at last set in with the great inventions, these same
manufacturers, now grown to mighty capitalists, with the aid
of their collaterals—the financial potentates on the one hand,
and the Tory, Whig, Liberal, and even Radical politicians
(with their doctrine of laissez-faire) on the other—were enabled
to squeeze the poor Working Man more than ever; and not
the Working Man only, but the Scientists, Inventors, and
Discoverers, who, as we have seen, were the real authors of
the accumulating surplus wealth of the world as well But
with this difference : that while the old political parties—-Tory,
Whig, Liberal, &c.—would, and indeed did, grant those who
figure in the industrial annals of a country as its “ great men ”

16

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

some small honorarium for their services, either in the form of
a few years’ royalty, or a belated knighthood, or perhaps a
book or newspaper eulogium after their death, the Socialists
would skin them all alike, and give them, on their basis of
“ average labour time,” only the wages of the navvies, the
coalheavers, the wool-pickers, the railway porters, or the
miners. Indeed, on this basis, there is no reason why they
should not at a pinch vote them even less than their horses,
who do so much more work—and especially those of them who,
like Mr. Blatchford, are Darwinians—now that the old wall
has been broken down which was formerly believed to separate
man from the brutes!

Now, to this complexion must the Socialists logically come,
if, when caught shuffling the moral bases of their doctrine,
they elect to follow the one given them by the existing political
parties, and stand by the ordinary enonomic justice of the laws,
based on Class Power, and worked in its interests. If, on the
other hand, the Socialists elect to stake their cause on the pure
ideal economic justice which they profess, and are prepared to
stand or fall by it—whereby each man gets economically
precisely that share of the surplus of wealth which he has
produced, neither more nor less—then they will have to follow
Mr. Carnegie in the apportioning of what this ideal justice
demands; and the division will have to go in a descending
ratio:—the lion’s share falling to the Scientists and Inventors,
•who have discovered the laws of Nature and devised the
machines; a less amount to the Organising Capitalists; still
less to the collaterals, the organising Financiers; and so on
with the rest, in descending degree. But where, then, would
their clients be—the great masses of the Working Population ?
With a little more comfort, perhaps, but, on the whole, much
where they are to-day! Now, in putting the matter thus
brutally, it is to be, of course, understood that I am doing so
to clear the minds of the Socialists of cant, and to let them see
what their theory and plan of campaign will come to, if they

THE STBEET-COENEB MEN.

17

take the purely economic view of justice as the basis of Social

volution. Personally, I take my stand on quite another kind
ot justice—Evolutionary Justice, if I may call it so—which
differs to to ccelo from this pure Economic Justice, as we shall
see in the next chapter. But if the Socialists will insist on
their Economic Justice as the be-all and end-all, I shall
continue to hold a brief for the really “great men J ’ of the
Economic world-the Scientists, Discoverers, and Inventors-
as being the real dispossessed, disinherited, and exploited;
and not for the vast miscellaneous multitudes of ordinary
woiking men. And I will go farther, and venture to say that,
unless the old political parties put their shoulders to the wheel
to remedy this existing economic injustice, the Socialist orators
of the street-corner will continue to play off on the public their
tncks of the “dead invention,” and the rest, with ever-
increasing success.

I am, of course, quite aware of the considerations which are

advanced by the Socialists, as well as by the older political
parties for that matter, to minimise the economic position
which I have given to the Scientists, Inventors, and Dis¬
coverers: of how, for example, hundreds or thousands of
minor workers have been engaged in building up the successive
steps to every great scientific discovery and invention, before
the single discoverer with whose name the great invention is
identified has planted his flagstaff on the summit; of how,
again, many, if not most of them, have been foremen or ordinary
working men, so lending colour to the claim that “ we, the
working men, have done it all,” & c . Well, I am quite
prepared to welcome all these in their degree to my fold, and
to claim them as my clients; and yet I still insist that if you
take, say, the great inventions and discoveries of a single
generation, and compute the wealth that has been added to the
nation or the world by them within that period, you could pack
the really great men concerned in an ordinary sailing-boat ;
the miscellaneous multitude of unknown foremen and workmen

E

18

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

who have made the smaller improvements, and so led up to the
greater inventions, in an ordinary merchantman; and all the
rest in one or two big men of war. And if in each generation
these should sail away in disgust from their own inhospitable
shores, taking, if it were possible, their discoveries and inven¬
tions with them, and leaving behind the miscellaneous millions,
these latter left to themselves would have to scratch the
ground with their wooden ploughs, or live on potatoes and
herbs as of yore—unless, indeed, as a makeshift, they fell back
on the antiquated machinery of the “ dead inventions” of
former generations, of which the disinherited families and
heirs have been defrauded. The simple truth is, that all the
really great things that make the civilisation of the world in
every department of life are the outcome and results oi the
brains of a small number of “ great men,” who in each genera¬
tion can (when an inventory is taken in the retrospect) be
counted almost on one’s fingers; and for the great masses of
men of whatever station to deny it, minimise it, or pretend not
to see it, is an organised hypocrisy. In the sports and games
which these masses most affect, this is freely admitted—
whether it be in reference to chess, or billiards, or cricket, or
tennis, or what-not—for here their pretensions can be promptly
brought to the test; and, indeed, they have the good sense
not to try it, but to" confine themselves rather to looking on,
seeing fair play done, and applauding and rewarding the
victors. But in intellectual matters of all kinds, this is not
the case; and in spite of the fact that the names of the great
men in all these departments, on whom not only the civilisation
but the wealth of the world depends—whether in Religion,
Philosophy, Science, or Mechanical Invention—can from the
beginning of recorded history be compressed within the index
of an ordinary encyclopedia, so tardy has been their recog¬
nition and so infamous their treatment and pay, that many, if
not most of them, have had to go to their graves leaving their
wives and families in poverty. And as the question at this

THE STREET-CORNER MEN.

19

point in my challenge to the Socialists is one of Economic
Justice,. I must repeat that until this scarlet injustice, this
ignominious public theft (for it is no less) is remedied by the
existing political parties of the State, of whatever shade, the
Socialists with it in their rear need have no fear of putting on
full steam ahead, and as soon as they have gained the power
by their numbers and their votes, proceeding to squeeze the
“classes as they themselves have already been squeezed by
them; and no one will logically, from a party point of view,
have the effrontery to say them nay. But were this existing
legal injustice once remedied, there would, on the Socialists’
own professed lines of a strictly Economic Evolution, no
longer exist any raison d’etre for their proposed revolutionary
upheaval or reconstruction of society at all; for, with their
numbers and their votes, all existing injustices between them¬
selves and their capitalist employers could easily be adjusted
by ordinary changes in the constitution of the country and its
laws; while with capitalists like Edison or Westinghouse as
their masters, their envy would be turned into an admiration
as great, and their hatred into a loyalty as devoted and pure,
as that which they now so willingly and spontaneously give to
their heroes of the cricket and the football field.

Here ends, then, my indictment of Socialism on its purely
Economic and Moral side—on those aspects of it, in a word, on
which the orators of the street-corner (whom, as followers of
Marx, I have proposed to myself as my special opponents in
this paper) profess to rest their whole case as basis and
preliminary to their reconstruction both of Industry and of
Society-much in the same way as the French Revolutionaries
based their schemes for the reconstruction of France, on the
Liberty, f rateinity, and Equality of the teachings of Rousseau.

In my next chapter, I hope to show what those First
Principles of Sociology are which have compelled me to take
my stand, neither on the existing Laws of the State, on the
one hand, nor yet on the ideal Economic Justice demanded

20

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

(but perverted, as we have seen, by the Socialists, on the other;
but rather on what I have called Evolutionary Justice, which
demands the consideration, as we shall see, of a much larger
number of factors than the purely Economic or Industrial one.

CHAPTER II.

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.*

TN this, my second chapter, I shall endeavour to carry out the
-*• promise I made in my first article, and to show that the
Socialists have flanked and buttressed both the economic and
the moral basis of their scheme by a theory of Human Evolution ,
which I will venture to assert is at the present time of day one
of the most curious exhibitions of simplicity the intellectual
world has yet seen. In general terms, it consists in no less an
absurdity than this—that the infinitely complex evolution of
Human Society and Civilisation, involving as it does the subtle
co-operation of the most various factors—War, Religion,
Government, Law, Education, Political Institutions, and the
whole domain of Science—can be narrowed down to a single
thread of this complex web, namely, its purely Economic or
Industrial Evolution; and that this again can be so cut down
as to coincide with the industrial evolution of the great mass
of the manual labourers and artisans—the working population
of the world. Now, the merest outline sketch of the way in
which Human Evolution really goes, and has always gone,
when compared with this poor, naked, skin-dried residue which
the Socialist would substitute for it, will expose its nullity
better than volumes of merely abstract argument. But before
entering on my detailed proof of this, I shall assume to start
* Fortnightly Review, March, 1908.

22

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

with that both sides to the controversy will agree with me that
if any essential factor of the problem, or any ineradicable
element of Human Nature involved, is either ignored or
suppressed by the Socialists, their whole doctrine, together
with the scheme of reconstruction which i® founded on it, must
fall into bankruptcy. If this be granted, let us now see what
these ultimate essentials and ineradicable elements of Human
Society and Human Nature are which are involved in the
problem of Human Evolution. I shall emphasise by italics a
few of the more important points as I go along.

They are, in brief, those of a creature called Man, who goes
in families and herds known as tribes or nations, and, like
other animals of a like kind, always under the direction of
leaders ; but a creature withal with this peculiar differentiating
characteristic, that he has within him a spark of the Divine, or
if anyone prefers it (to keep the facts free from religious
implications) the merely human impulse towards the Ideal ,
which keeps ever impelling him onwards and upwards along
the winding path of Progress and Civilisation.

Now, this creature as it moves in its myriads across the cen¬
turies, in search, like the Israelites, of the Promised Land of the
Ideal, makes for itself as it goes along, all the moral, social, and
intellectual baggage which it carries with it—its customs,
habits, traditions, its stock of knowledge and culture, and its
moral and social ideals—and all these in their interlacing
complexity form for each nation as it moves down the ages, a
single , continuous web , without rent or seam; the Present every¬
where being indissolubly united with the Past and with the Future .
feo that what is called Human Evolution consists precisely in
this, that these tribes and nations are obliged, under the
direction of their leaders, continually to mould and modify the
outward form and vesture of one and all of their modes of life
and ideals under pressure of the environment ; whether these?
changes be caused by physical and material difficulties outside
themselves, in the matter, say, of food and shelter; by the

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.

23

aeeressions on, or the defences against, neighbouring tribes or

nations ; or, lastly, by changes in their own internal structure,
necessitating a different arrangement of the social classes and
functions of which they are composed. But to come to the
point which will most engage our attention in this article, we
must go a step farther, and lay down the doctrine that the
Social Justice on which the Socialists lay so much stress, and
which each tribe and nation makes for itself, as I have said, as it
goes along, consists simply in the gradual adjusting of the relations
between these classes and the functions they perform . If this,
then, be Social Justice ; and if to a being like Man, constituted
as we have seen him to be, Social or Human involution can,
especially in these civilised days and among civilised nations,
consist only in the progressive improvement and amelioration of
the laws , in the upward look and., trend, towards the I deaf it will
behove us to examine as closely and scientifically as possible
the texture and composition of’ this Social Justice, and the
way in which it gets itself embodied in the fibie of Human
Evolution, before we can effectively contrast it with the
mummified substitute and simulacrum of it which the Socialists
seek to palm off on the world—a substitute which, violating as
it does every one of the root principles of Human Natuie
which 1 have just emphasised, must end in mere utopian
dreams. Now that 1 am not leading the reader into a mere
side-track in asking him for a moment to concentrate his
attention on this matter of Social Justice and the place it
occupies in Human Evolution, may be seen m this, that
there is nothing on which the Socialists lay more stress as a
foundation for their scheme for the reconstruction of Human
Society ; and further, that it is to their own peculiar reading
of Human Evolution, with the particular type of Social Justice
which they found on it, that appeal is made by thein in every
argument. To the steady, continuous operation of this Evolu¬
tion in the future as in the past, they profess to look forward ;
and on it, as on a Bible, they take their stand to extinguish all

24

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

doubt and controversy as to the necessity for its inauguration,
when they are warned by their opponents that, even if their
system may ultimately be adapted to some millennial age, its
present advent would end in a general overturn.

How, then, we ask, does Social .Justice arise, and of what,
does it consist if we make a section of it, as it were, at any
given point in the progressive Evolution of Mankind 1

The first consideration I would emphasise is, that as it is
made by Man himself as he goes along, it must grow out of the
entire complex of the relations in which men stand to each other
and to the functions tdiey perform —in War, Religion, Orovctn-
ment, Law, Science, &c—and cannot be merely stamped on
them from the outside , as it were, in its ideal and perfect
completeness, like an imperial figure-head on a coin, at any
and all times; it is, in a word, a gradual precipitate thrown
down by all these complex activities and relationships of men,
and, like a nutritious food, is never at any given time more in
amount than they can digest and assimilate—a fact to which
the most determined attempts of the most powerful religions
of all ages bear witness in their efforts to raise the general level
2 of human life. Like the gradual deposition of the geological
strata, to which the sun, the winds and rain, the sea and the
mountain peaks are all alike contributory, it slowly arises from
hebw in a series of terraces, on each of which, as it arises, the
lowest of mankind can henceforth walk with an ampler air,
with less impediment, and with a more independent mien. In
other words, Social Justice is not the full-blown flower of the
Ideal, ready to be let down from Heaven as it were, at any
time, and which, like a coating of white paint, can be plastered
over all alike; or a snowdrift which would smother mankind
under an undistinguishing canopy of equality; but is a complex
graduated thing, made up of many different measures and
degrees, both in its penalties and rewards. If the reader has
his doubts, and is not inclined to follow ine here, let him reflect
for a moment that in the early Middle Ages, when the Christian

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION,

25

Church, was supreme over the minds of men, and existed for
the very purpose of clapping this absolute equality on the
bodies, souls, and possessions of all alike (because they were
equally the sons of Adam and created by God), it never could
compass more with all its efforts than this graduated justice.
In the punishments of the early Middle Ages, so much was
paid for the taking of the life of a bishop; so much less for
that of a nobleman; and less again, down even to an irreducible
minimum, for that of a serf; while as for the rewards of men,
even at the present hour, not only kings and other great
personages, but the whole tribe of Leaders of every kind—
Salvation Army leaders. Parliamentary leaders, and even
Socialist leaders—have honours, services, and emoluments of
all kinds thrust upon them as freewill offerings by their herds
of followers, and in such extremes of profusion and degree, as
no mere white-painted postage-stamp doctrine of human
equality could ever pretend to justify. And as for the
relations of conquered peoples to their conquerors, when once
soundly thrashed and admittedly beaten, you can depend on
their feeling honoured to kiss the feet of their masters for (in
some instances) a good thousand of years. And if they do
not do so, it is because they have had to earn and win their
liberties and exemptions, either by their power in its many
various and different kinds (as the Greeks and Barbarians in
their respective ways did from their Roman masters), or as is
more usual in recent civilised times, by their masters them¬
selves following the gleam of the Ideal existing in all men,
and conferring these liberties and exemptions piecemeal on
them; but rarely or never by the acquisitions, intellectual,
moral, or physical, of the herd itself—except, perhaps, by a
sudden eruption of brute force in times of revolutionary
violence. Now this, thus brutally put for the purposes of my
argument, is precisely the Social Justice of Human Evolution,
neither more nor less; and must be so for a creature like Man,
still three-fourths animal, that goes in families and herds under

26

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

the direction of leaders; and led on by an Ideal which is but
the feeblest of sparks, and can only be kept alive by the select
spirits of each age, and the good and great of all ages,
sitting around it like the Vestal Virgins, and blowing
assiduously, desperately, and continually on it, to keep it aglow
at all. But to define it more closely, and sum it up before we
leave it, we may say that the Social Justice of Evolution is
found always to be (when a section is made through it) a
complex, not a simple, homogeneous thing; and is made up of
Power, Authority, Custom, and Prestige on the one hand, and
of the Ideal of Right scattered thinly through its continuous
web in golden seams, on the other. It consists not in Might
alone, nor yet in the abstract ideal of Right alone, but in the
happy, artistic commingling of both; and has, besides, this
peculiarity, that at any one time it always contains more of the
Ideal than the strict balance of powers and functions in
Society would justify; and further, that this surplus of the
Ideal to the good, as it were, continually increases, in pro¬
portion as Mankind itself advances. It is a slowly and steadily
accumulating deposit, as I have said, won by Civilisation on
the credit side of the Ideal; and not an unlimited bank account
on which Humanity can draw, in current moral coin, at any or
at all times. This, at any rate, was Shakspeare’s conception
of Social Justice, as I have elsewhere had occasion to insist,
and is distinctly enunciated by him in Troilus and Cressida in
the passage beginning with “ Take but degree away, and hark,
what discord follows,” &c., and summed up in his memorable
aphorism that “ it is between the endless jar of Right and
Wrong (or, in other words, of Might and the abstract ideal of
Right), that Justice resides.”

Now, this is my own conception of Social Justice; and one,
too, which all my studies of History* and Civilisation confirm.
I lay stress on it here on account of its immense importance to
my argument; for if true, it must modify the entire complexion

*Eor the details see my volume on Civilisation and Progress.

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 27

of Modem Politics, which since the time of Rousseau and the
French Revolution have been over-tempted by the forbidden
apple of abstract Liberty and Equality which he flung into the

arena, and have drawn on this fetish more than the laws of
Evolution, whether of Nature or of Human Nature, can justify
or redeem. Until, then, the Socialists can overturn this, as I
believe, true conception of Social Justice, their schemes must
be but so much wind and foam; and the world may, except by
some subterranean Revolution, repose peacefully on its old
foundations.

And now let us see in detail the series of dodges, subterfuges,
and false trails by which the Socialists have sought to under¬
mine and dismantle this stronghold of Human Evolution, and
the Social Justice that is founded on it; as well as the essential
elements both of Nature and of Human Nature which they
have been obliged to cut bodily out of the problem in the
process.

Their first movement is one of general strategy, as I inti¬
mated at the outset, and consists in their attempt to cut out
at a stroke all the great efficient factors of Civilisation—War,
Religion, Law, Government, Political Institutions, and
Scientific Knowledge in general—as if they were but appen¬
dages or surplusage ; and to substitute for the complex result
of all these, a single, simple figure, namely, that of a pure
Economic or Industrial Evolution which they have cunningly
slipped into its place; the object of the move being, to identify
this purely economic evolution with general Human Evolution,
and particularly with the evolution of the industrial conditions
of the great masses of Working Men; as if these latter had
been all along the efficient, active factors in Human Evolution,
instead of its auxiliary and dependent ally and supplement.
Now, although no one believes more firmly than myself that
the expansion and elevation of the great masses of men is the
end mid aim of all human evolution (without which, indeed, it
would be a ghastly farce and failure), or has worked more

28

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

strenuously (in my books) to get this recognised, the idea that
either manual labour in itself, or the efforts of the labouiei©,
has been the dominant active factor in human progress, is as
absurd as if one should draw out the stomach and entrails of a
man, and because these are essential factors in working up the
fuel for his mere animal existence, declare them to he the
most important and immediate factors in his mental progress
and development as well; as if, in short, Man, like the worm,
were but an elongated gut, and his evolution and development
ran on the same or parallel lines as the worm’s.

But the Socialists have a second and more important object
in selecting this mere economic or industrial evolution ot the
Working Classes as the active germ in human evolution. It
is to make it appear plausible that the manual workers of the
world, being the great masses of tire world as well as its
immediate feeders, ought by some kind of inherent or abstract
justice to be its governors, directors, and administrators also;
and should seize the reins from the hands of the great States¬
men, Inventors, Scientists, and Captains of Industry who have
hitherto, as their leaders, selected and assigned them their
tasks,—and as soon as opportunity offers, drive the coach
themselves.

Now, if the Socialists could only feel sure that they could
succeed in establishing the two above propositions-—firstly,
that Human Evolution was practically the same thing as the
Industrial or Economic Evolution of the Working Men; and
secondly, that in this Industrial Evolution, u we, the workers,
who are the authors of all the surplus wealth of the world,° &c.,
have in consequence the right to organise, direct, and guide
its general Human Evolution and development also; all else,
they feel convinced, would be plain sailing, and the future ot
Socialism would be assured. They have, accordingly, spared
no pains to fortify and entrench these two positions as strongly
as possible; and if I have to press them somewhat severely
and even harshly here, it is from no want of sympathy either

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.

29

with the working men themselves or with their cause (indeed
I go a long way with them myself), but only with the means
they propose to employ to compass it.

Now that I am not .wrong in saying that the Socialists of
the street corner, i.e., of the school of Marx, wish to identify
their single wire-drawn thread of Economic or Industrial
Evolution, with the rich and varied complexity of the web of
Human Evolution in general, is seen in the fact that the
earliest and strongest of their leaders in this country, Mr.
Hyndman, has been careful to pave the way for it by a book
on Industrial Evolution written on these lines; and that others
among the later leaders have followed him up in this, by
writing books to justify the various special revolutions and
uprisings of the Working Classes all along down the course of
History. As for Mr. Hyndman:—after wiping out all the
other elements of the problem, and concentrating on its purely
industrial aspects; and after dwelling lightly on the passage
of the masses of mankind from Slavery in the Ancient World
to Serfdom in the Feudal Mediaeval World, and from this
again to Labour under Capitalism in the Modern World ; and
after showing further that Capitalism, by its exploitation of
** t he workers who do all the work and make all the surplus,”
has now, from its gross injustice, become a bye-word and a
hissing ; he winds up this detruncated exposition of what for
him stands for the very essence of Human Evolution, by
turning round on his simple-minded followers and asking them,
how much longer they propose to stand this sort of thing, and
whether the time is not ripe for the next and most immediately
pressing stage in the evolution of mankind to begin here and
now ; the stage, namely, in which they, the workers, shall take
over all the instruments of Production, Distribution, and
Exchange, and share and share alike the products among them,
with little or no compensation to the existing owners. Now,
it was a fine piece of intellectual foppery on the part of
Mr. Hyndman to assume that because the evolution of the

30

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

masses from Slavery to Serfdom, and from that on to Free
Labour under Capitalism accompanied the elevation oi the
Working Population in the scale of living, that therefore they
had in each instance won and earned these expanding 1 ranch isos
for themselves, instead of having them largely conferred on
them. The real truth is, that the peasants, labourers, and
working classes generally, were lifted on to a higher plane at,
each remove, not so much by improvements in their own
manual labour, or by their own initiative and exertions, as by the
sympathetic aid of the great men, their loadcis, who followed
the gleam of the Ideal-.—-the leaders of the great Catholic
Church in its early purity and noble devotion to Humanity;
the great Emperors and Kings who (with more personal and
selfish motives, it is true) succeeded them and took over 1 nun
them their work when they had fallen into luxury and deca¬
dence ; the great Philosophers, Poets, and Scientists who
(going to their graves for the most part in poverty) aided and
encouraged these again in their work; and the great Inventon-,
and Organisers who were necessary to bring all this work to
its successful fruition. These were they who by their brain
power, moral power, and other aspects of their genius in tlmii-
various walks (always a mere handful of men at most I, seized
the forelock of opportunity when the Material and Foant < <>n-
ditions of the world were ripe and favourable, to make their
Ideal a reality for the Working Classes of mankind; and not
(except in periods of quite righteous unrest and uprising) the
miscellaneous multitudes tit all.

And this leads me to say a word on the next, oi the great
stumbling blocks with which the Socialists are confronted,
namely, the Institution of the Family, which is the main in.-tru-
ment through and by which the Present is everywhere indis¬
solubly interwoven with the whole Past, and with the whole
Future, in a single, continuous and unbroken web or chain of
Human Evolution.

Now, the reason this institution of the Family is the source

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION. 31

of so much difficulty, and even woe, to the Socialists is, that it
is owing to it mainly or alone that Social Evolution cannot
overleap the element of Time , and realise itself now and here, as
if it were some old building which could be torn down to-morrow
and another erected in its place at a moment’s notice; but, on
the contrary, has to creep on its petty pace from age to age,
while not individuals alone, but whole generations of human
souls, seeking to grasp at the Ideal, have to go to their graves
with their dreams and hopes and schemes unfulfilled. The
Socialists are right, therefore, in making much of the grip
which this institution of the Family has on human life; and
accordingly have set all their engines and magazines of de¬
struction to work, with the view of cutting it out altogether
from the complex problem of Human Evolution. To effect
this, their strategy has so far consisted in two principal direct
operations, with some subsidiary Hank movements, each of
which need detain us but for a moment. For when once well
ventilated, they carry their own refutation with them, and can
never again be played off with the old authority which the
teachings of Marx and the early Socialists lent to them.

The first of the direct attacks in this series of manoeuvres
was to cut out the ordinary conception of the Family, which,
as we have said, binds together by its multiplex ramifying
tendrils all the generations of mankind in a single, continuous,
evolving unity; and to replace it by a succession of isolated
Fathers or Heads of families only; precisely as if they were
the separate and independent segments of a tape-worm, each
like every other in nature and function, and all alike capable
of independently feeding themselves; and where the families
are tucked away and hidden under the paternal overcloak, like
those male frogs which carry their family eggs under their
bellies or on their backs, in order that the head of the family
should be all in all,—a separate, detachable, isolated, independent,
individual unit,—a kind of social eunuch in short, torn at once
from his fellows and his family, and from the unbroken web of

32

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

human evolution of which he is an integral part, and having
only one single recognisable function—the purely industrial,
economic one. Now, the object of this manoeuvre of chopping
mankind up into separate isolated bits, called heads of families,
is to furnish the Socialists with an object on which they can
clap their favourite principle of Social Justice, namely, one
man, one economic value ” or rate of pay; in the hope that
having reduced man or men to such a skeleton object, they can
then stamp this shibboleth on every rank, class, condition, and
occupation of mankind. This position was one which they
saw could be easily occupied, and, moreover, without any danger
of its being seriously challenged; for had not their opponents
of all the old political parties alike—primarily those of the
Whig, Liberal, and Radical camps, and later those of the Tory
and Conservative camp as well (who, under Beaconsfield,
“ caught the Whigs bathing and stole their clothes ”) taught
them that “ one man, one vote ” was the soundest and most
orthodox of universally admitted political principles 1 And if
“ one man, one vote,” thrust on all men alike whether they will
or no, and without their making even a pretence of earning it,
can whip the money out of my purse by legislation as easily
(and almost without my knowing it) as if the owners of the
votes were the most deft of professional pickpockets, why should
not the Socialists with equal assurance openly announce (what
can only amount to the same thing) that their motto is u one
man, one economic value,”—and so get credit for their greater
honesty, straightforwardness, and sincerity as wellWhy not?
we can only repeat after them. The Socialists themselves,
however, did not stop there, but feeling apparently that the
ground in all this political region where men had votes thrust on
them without earning them, sounded (from their standpoint of
Social Justice) rather hollow, they pressed rapidly onwards
and over it to entrench themselves in what they imagined to be
a more secure, because a more sacredly-guarded position ; and
one, too, which would give them a much higher authority and

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.

33

excuse for nailing a universal equality, both political and
economic, on the backs of all mankind, and securely fixing it
there.

Now, this new position was stolen from Christianity; not
because the earliest Christians held all things in common, but
because for the first time in the history of the world, among
Western nations at least, a doctrine of ideal Human Equality—

political, economic, and social—had been let down from above
in its full completeness and purity, and had been clapped on
the backs of all mankind alike ; thus guaranteeing, in principle
at least, an absolute equality of goods, privileges, rights,
authorities, and powers to each individual, in virtue of their
being all alike and equally, in the sight of God, the sons of
Adam. This the Socialists snatched at, while ignoring the
other express injunction of the Founder of Christianity, to
u give unto Caesar the things that arc Caesar’s, and unto God
the things that are God’s,” as being unsuited to their purposes;
and then coolly and quietly proceeded to entrench themselves
on those other clauses of the sacred text hearing on general
human equality; holding them out meanwhile, like a white
flag of truce, to deceive their sympathisers in the opposite
camp, who comprised not only the specially Christian contingent,
but the whole race of party parliamentary politicians of every
shade, who (now that each man had his vote) were obliged to
play to the same miscellaneous multitude whom the Socialists
were trying to attract. This white flag gave the Socialists
time to mature their plans for those further operations on the
enemy which we shall presently see; but in the meantime I
may, perhaps, be permitted without wearying the reader to
make a general observation or two on the points I have just
raised.

The first is, that this postage-stamp conception of Social
Justice, this universal equality of right# of every kind—political,
economic, and social—to be stuck on the backs of each unit of
a creature like Man, has all along had to be safeguarded and

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

modified HOE only by the Chore!, itself, but by the eommon
, e «e of mankind in general. This has been done ... Ghr.st.a,
e„„.„,unities at least, by a division between the lemporal and
Spiritual Powers i the purity of the abstract .deal of e<|iudity
being in the keeping of the Church, while *> *»»•««. °
men and of the functions they perform m the rough but
necessary work of the world, were relegated to the Temporal
Power; the only dispute being as to which of these powers
should be supreme over the other, the Church or the ^tate;
the Church, in the Middle Ages especially, when the dispute
had reached white heat, claiming that she was the Sun, and
the State only the Moon-a position, however, winch the
modem world has almost entirely reversed in favour of the
State. But when the State at last took over from the Church
this abstract ideal of Human Equality, which since the time ot
Rousseau and the French Revolution it has finally decided to
do it little realised what the consequences would be. For
although an excellent principle for the start, by giving all men
alike Tn equal chance and opportunity; and although entirely
appropriate, no doubt, for the final goal of Humanity when men
and women shall be as the angels in Heaven; it is at once im¬
potent and impossible for the running—for the race of life itselL
Now this, which ought to be the veriest political platitude,
although I shall be condemned as a heretic for saying it, is
ignored more or less by all the existing political parties, as well
a°s entirely by the Socialists; so that I must emphasise the fact
that at any period short of the millennium, Human Life is and
must be essentially a race between the individuals of each
tribe and nation of which it is composed, and one, too, m which,
however equal the start, there must be at least some inequality
at the finish—else what motive can there be, but bare animal
existence, for playing the game of life at all (

Besides, if we consider it, all the passions and active powers
of Man can live and breathe only in an atmosphere of potential
\ inequality; the hope and prospect of it is their very life; and

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.

85

until men are mentally emasculated, it must continue to be so.
But this doctrine of Social Justice of the Socialists, whereby
an absolute equality not only of political rights but of economic
rights as well (as seen in equal rates of pay), should be
practically guaranteed them from the start to the finish of
their career, would be as absurd as an absolute, instead of the
ordinary graduated, handicap in a race, and would bring them
all in at the winning post at once; so that not even a shilling
bet would be given or taken on the event! And for a being
like Man, whose life everywhere and everywhen (until death
reduces all alike to a common equality of dust) is a struggle as
much for inequality in wealth, position, power, glory, or good
name, for those who are already on an equality, as it is for
equality in those who are down in the ranks, and have their
spurs still to win ; this doctrine would, I repeat, if forced on
the world by Socialism, whether by revolution or by mere
brute numbers of votes, not only drive him into imbecility or
suicide, but would quench that very Ideal which it is the
professed object of the Socialists to keep aglow. Appropriate
for the lotus-eaters in the Isles of the Blest, or for the gods
who sit sipping their nectar on Olympus, and for whom sleep,
rest, and the indulgence of the passions are, when all material
wants are provided for, the natural end and aim of existence,
it would drug to death a being like Man, who has to make his
way through life by the sweat of his brain or brow. Besides,
what does Social Justice by its very nature involve but the
existence of unequal individuals and conditions of life between
whom it has to adjudicate, and between whom it can alone find
its sphere of exercise; so that to cut out of the problem of
human life practically all inequalities of fortune, merit, or
desert, as expressed in the simple and universally recognised
scale of rank, honour, or money, would be tantamount to
cutting out Justice itself.

Now, this doctrine of abstract Economic and Social Equality,
with all it involves, was, as we have seen, filched and appro-

36

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

priated by the Socialists from that very Christianity ever}- one
of whose central doctrines they repudiate; their leaders, and
the street-corner men, from Marx down to the present time,
openly avowing their disbelief in Christianity and in all its
•ways and works; most of them being Agnostics, if not avowed
Atheists. The consequence is, that being themselves aware
of this discrepancy between their beliefs and the arguments
drawn from Christianity with which they support their
doctrines, they are obliged for very decency to look elsewhere
for their proofs; and to underprop this, to them, rotten piece
of masonry by a more ingenious and, as they believe, a really
strictly scientific economic doctrine, pure and simple, namely
that of “average labour time,” of which, from its great import¬
ance in their scheme, I am now obliged to say a word.

This curious doctrine, then, of average labour time,
elaborated by Marx, proceeds on the assumption that the
labours of the Scientists, the Inventors, and the Organisers of
all the great industries of the world (whom he carefully keeps
out of sight all through his work on “ Capital”), are to be
paid on a level of practical if not absolute equality with those
of the navvies, the coal-heavers, the miners, the stokers, the
engine-drivers, the pickers up of broken threads in cotton or
woollen mills, the drivers of vans and milk carts, and the
multitudinous swarms of skilled and unskilled labourers every¬
where—provided always that the latter do each his work
honestly and in a fair u average time,” without loitering by
the way, or making things that nobody wants; precisely as if
all men w T ere as equal in power and ability as the homogeneous
sections of a worm. Now, this doctrine, like the “ ca’ canny ”
principle of some modern Trade-Unionists, is a premium put
not on those who shall get at the production of the greatest
amount of wealth by the shortest way, through invention and
discovery, but on those who get at it by the longest way,
through ordinary manual labour, and in the longest time.
Now I protest that when a doctrine comes to this pass (and

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.

87

cry one

ts. and

^ time,

i all its

avowed
- aware

Diluents
0 their

w where
mi piece
a really
namely

im pori¬
n' time,
hat the
nisers of
!y keeps
’O to I Hi
! li t llOH*
Ivors, the

■of ion or

ami the
v e\erv-
e work
* ri by
oh a* if
mmieous
eanny M
him put
yreateO,
fion and
*> r way*
4 time,
am (iml

with economic justice^ too, of all tilings, as its professed guiding
principle) that it would recompense the average dullard, not
only on the same scale as the alert and skilful in the same line
of work, but as the u great men ” in every line of work; and
when this rotten prop is used for the express purpose of
buttressing* up the central principle in their scheme for the
reorganisation of society, namely, the taking over by the Work¬
ing Men of all the instruments of Production, Distribution,
and Exchange, the products of which are to be ladled out from
common storehouses, on the principle of share and share alike,
to all persons whatever who are doing an average amount of
work of any kind at all; 1 protest, that so monstrous an
inversion of all human reason, of all Evolution and History;
so deliberate a dagger stab into the very heart of Progress and
Civilisation itself, must, until men have lost their reason, put
it out of court everywhere, covered with ridicule and contempt.
For if just and true now, it ought to have been true from the
beginnings of recorded history; for the hewers of wood and
drawers of water have always been with us. And that this is
precisely what the Socialists do think, is seen in this-that
there is scarcely a rebellion of the Working Men, scarcely a
rising of slaves in antiquity, of peasants and serfs in the
Middle Ages in Europe or England, or of the negroes and
inferior or more backward races everywhere, of which the
Socialist leaders have not been the apologists; or of which
one or other of them has not written a pamphlet or a book in
its express justification. Not that they are not right in their
justification of these uprisings and rebellions as specific acts
ad hoc; personally I think they are; for human decency and
the ideal alike demanded them, when necessary evolutionary
reforms were being too long delayed. That is not my point;
but it is this, that the peculiar grievance of the Socialists with
the world is, that it did not allow these rebels to be permanently
successful in overturning society in the interests of the pro¬
letariat, even when, as in the case of the French Revolution,

38

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

the whole country and even the “rump” of the old Convention,
as well as the members of the Directory themselves, were
secretly relieved when Napoleon with his iron hand swept away
the anarchy, corruption, and confusion which the Constitution
of the Revolution had inflicted on France. For had these
revolutions and uprisings proved successful, the Social Evolu¬
tion of mankind would have proceeded, like the politics of the
South American Republics, on the principle of Revolution
erected permanently into a first principle of Government, and
not by normal evolution at all. And with what further result 1
This, namely, and it were well for the Socialists to consider it,
as it follows by a logical necessity out of their own doctrine:
that whenever the lowermost stratum of ditcher? and delvers
feel that the time is ripe for them (on the principle that “ we,
the workers, do it all,” &c.) to put all those who have raised
themselves to employments not requiring actual manual labour
into their proper places again (i.e., on a dead level of economic
and social equality with themselves), they have as strong
authority for their action as that conferred by any of the
ordinary laws of the State. Even Robespierre and his
associates restricted their “ Liberty and Equality ’ to men s
purely political rights, and left their economic inequalities, 01
opportunities for inequality, as before,—except in the case of
the expropriated Landlords and the Church. But the
Socialists who, like the “sea-green incorruptible” himself,
affect to regard their own love for the abstract Ideal as
conferring on them some more vague elevated distinction than
that to which more practical idealists, who have had to pitch
their keynote and attune their actions to a much lower strain,
can lay claim, would clap their red cap of equality on men’s
economic goods as well, but without the excuse which
Robespierre had in the glorious vision which for the first time
in history the teachings of Rousseau seemed to have brought
within the possibility of actual realisation. But that a century
afterwards, another generation of Utopians should arise, and,

ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AND ITS EVOLUTION.

39

with this century of experience at their back, would seek to
top this red cap of political equality by the added one of
enforced economic equality also, and by such a tissue of
intellectual absurdities, too, as we have seen; this is, indeed,
one of the strangest and wildest of dreams. And yet 1 am
bound to admit that the deplorable condition of so many able
and willing working men, with no work to do, in nearly every
country of the world, will justify almost any attempt, however
chimerical and desperate, to alter it. But here, again, I would
point out (and on this I lay much stress) that this condition of
things has arisen and grown to its present height, not from
Capitalism as such, as the Socialists imagine, much as it has to
answer for, but from that most deadly, hopeless, and even
damnable doctrine of “laissez-faire,” which all political parties
alike, hypnotised into it by the teachings of Rousseau and
Adam Smith, have openly nursed and encouraged.

In my next chapter I shall deal with the Fabian recon¬
struction of society.

CHAPTER III.

THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.*

TN the present chapter I propose to concentrate more
especially on the Fabians’ reconstruction of Society and
Government on the basis of Socialism, while protesting at the
outset that, strictly speaking, as I shall now attempt to show,
they are not justified in calling themselves Socialists at all.
They are no more Socialists in the ordinary acceptation of the
term than I am a Socialist, although I go with that party a
good three-fourths of the way in their special proposals taken
separately and ad hoc , as it were; or than I am a Tory, although
I still stand firm on some of the ancient ways which the party
have long since abandoned; or yet a Protectionist, although at
the present critical point in social and economic evolution I
would cany out most of the Protectionist principles, with a
rigour unknown outside of Japan; or, yet again, a Liberal,
because, although disagreeing as to means, I am entirely at one
with them in their ideal ends and aims. And the reason for
my protest is mainly this :—that no merely ultimate or abstract
ideal like that of the taking over of all the instruments of
Production by the State can legitimately, and without con¬
fusing all political categories, be made the basis of a political
party programme, unless there is a reasonable chance, whether
by revolution or conversion of the electorate, of its being
placed on the Statute Book within a generation or two at most
*Fortnightly Review, May, 1903.

THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.

41

from, the time of its inception. And as for tiie Fabians, of
all people, who fay tlieir methods, as we shall see, would
protract the separate stages of their process, like the succession
of Macbeth’s ghosts, “to the crack of doom” before they
expect them to be realised-—why, not only the most hardened
ami fossilised of Tory landlords, but even those old “ harlots ”
of the Socialist imagination, the Whigs and Liberals, as well
as all the Churches of Christendom— not even excepting the
Catholic (as things are now going)—and even the very “ man
in the street ” himself, will have arrived at the Fabian’s own
Kingdom of Heaven before him !—and that, too, fay the ordinal*}"
normal course of orderly human evolution. It is not the
function of practical statesmen, but of Utopian political
philosophers, to project these millennial programmes on the
horizon of men’s dreams ; and this, indeed, is the very reason
why the world in genera!, and statesmen in particular, have
always utterly ignored the opinions of doctrinaire philosophers,
as such, on current political problems; as feeling (and in my
judgment justly) that these ultimate abstract ideals, however
worthy of respect as inspiration, comfort and solace for the
private heart, and however important for the future ages, are
like the Christian principle of turning the other cheek also,
frankly unrealisablc now and here, or in any reasonably near
future of the existing political world. Had Rousseau himself
been resurrected from his grave in the early days of the French
Revolution, and seen and heard the leaders at the street-corners,
in the Jacobin clubs, and in the Assembly, quoting from his
Social Contract as from a political Bible, with the view to its
immediate application to the politics of despotic France of all
places, he would have stood aghast at the apparition. His
only possible hope, indeed, could have been, that a revolution
(which was in fact precipitated by purely political conditions
outside of his own making) should proceed until it had cleared
the ground of all the standing institutions of centuries, and so
leave a free, unimpeded field for the entrance of his own

42

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

political designs. And as in the event this was precisely what
did happen, there was, of course, no reason why his^ own
Utopia, or that of another, should not enter in and dictate
and fashion, as indeed his did, almost every change in the
constitution of Revolutionary France from start to finish ; until
Buonaparte, striding in like another Cromwell, turned the
Revolutionary Government out of doors, and with it Rousseau
and all his Utopian dreams and schemes as well If, then, the
Fabian philosophers, with their Utopian projects and ideals,
will insist on turning themselves into practical politicians, they
must do one of two things: either, like the Marxians, plum])
for Revolution and the capture of the Central Power, whether
by physical force or by the Press and street-corner conversion
of the working-class electorate; or else fling away one and all
of their ultimate remote ideals in favour of immediately
practical and concrete ones. They must be prepared to change
their present intellectual garments as completely and rapidly
as the “quick change” artists of the music-hall; and shift
their centre of gravity as entirely as do the divers in the deep
sea, loading their feet with lead rather than their heads with
dreams, if they are to keep themselves erect at all in the
existing political environment. They will, in a word, have to
follow the example of the wise Goethe, who declared that as
a man of science he was obliged to turn himself Into an
Agnostic; as a poet of Nature, into a polytheist; as a con¬
templative religious spirit, into a Theist; and as a World-
philosopher, take his stand “ in the middle,” as he called it, as
the right position for the equal and level survey and co-ordination
of them all Otherwise the Utopian political philosopher turned
practical politician is apt to become as ridiculous a figure as a
stage buffoon, as futile as one of those modern epigrammatists
who, knowing that plain, straightforward thought is a boredom
to the “average sensual man,” strive, like Oscar Wilde, to
hold their audience by intellectual antics, and the turning of
cheap social and moral platitudes inside out to give them a

THE FABIANS AND PAULI AM ENT ASIANS.

43

what

n '* W own

r :n :in *I dictate
■ v *n the

n f * * iiin-h; until

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i t>d t»<I'liHiiye
r ‘ 1 *!’’ o;i>l rapidly
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»J • "d ;rt 1 1 i iiat as
hdj-d* into an
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;i • W' i ndt'd it, as
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{ L-iii Wild**, to

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show of cleverness and originality ; or like Mr. Chesterton anti
Mr. Shaw, who, taking the whole world of men and things as
their province, look at all alike from between their legs, as one
might look at the houses along a street, for the fun of seeing
what amusing or fantastic combinations can, by the application
of a strict formal logic, he made of them! And hence, 1
repeat, that unless the Fabians and the “ Intellectuals ’’ of the
Socialist party are bent on confusing and confounding all
possible categories and issues, they have no right to lend the
weight of their prestige, their intellectual status, or their
authority among the cultivated, to the name of Socialism as a
separate political party in the State; and on so slender and
shadowy a practical basis as this, viz., that they are prepared, at
some indefinite time or other, when the nation is ripe for it., for the
taking over of all the instruments of Production, Distribution,
and Exchange by the State. They might as well make it a
reason for a new political party, that they are in favour of so
ultimate and abstract an ideal as that, when the time is ripe
for it, thev will welcome a concordat of the nations on the basis
of a Universal Peace. And for this simple reason, which it
would be invidious to deny, namely, that abstract ideals like
this are the prerogative of no one party or person, but are
ultimately as much the desire of the most fire-eating militai y
Tory, as of the most meek and submissive of Quakers. Besides,
there is no point in it all; for the existing political parties,
pricked into quickening their pace by the Marxian main body
on their flanks, are already taking over such of the instruments
of Production and Distribution as are palpably ripe and ex¬
pedient for the operation, in the normal jog-trot of ordinary
political evolution. If the Fabians should reply that although
the time for the inauguration of the full Socialist regime be
remote, their immediate aims, at any rate, are very concrete
and practical, it will be my point to demonstrate in this article
that by their whole policy and method of approach this is as
good as impossible. And for the following general reasons

44

A CHALLENGE TO SOOfALfSM.

1. That they propose to base their scheme for the recon¬
struction of Society on a false foundation; as if the material
with which they have to deal were dead wood and stone instead
of living human beings. They propose, that is to say, to
found it from below on the individual opinions of the great
masses of men, instead of from above on the leaders of political
opinion in the State.

2. They propose to reach it by an approach from the 'wrong
end, namely, from the extremities and circumference of political
life, the tail, rather than from the Central Power, the head.

To plunge, then, into the centre of the matter without
further preliminary, I propose to lay clown for the reader’s
consideration a political maxim which, as it took me some
thirty years of diligent search, doubtless owing to my own
stupidity, to get my eye on it, I naturally regard as of capital
political importance. Like the old Roman maxim of divide et
impera , it is a principle which, although unconsciously acted
on by practical statesmen since the world began, has not even
dawned on the Utopian political philosophers either of ancient
or modern times ; and especially on that whole long tribe of
them, including the Socialists, who since the beginning of the
nineteenth century have taken their political keynote, as well
as the master presuppositions of all their arguments, from the
abstract doctrinaire ideals of the school of Rousseau and of the
French Revolution. This principle may be put into a phrase,
and inscribed as a motto on one’s crest or finger-ring, and it is
this:—that they who nominate, govern; to which I may add, that
these nominators must always be feiv in number, and that, how¬
ever often the individuals who compose them may be changed
and replaced by others, still as a body, they, the few, must
continue to govern. It is a simple and harmless enough looking
principle, I confess, but its consequences, as we shall see, for
the future of all practical politics are immense. For it rests on
the immediate fact that the vast miscellaneous multitude of

voices are but echoes, who have a veto , it is true, over all things

7 ©

THE FABIANS AND PA ELI AM ENT A El ANS. 45

that come before their judgments for discussion, but neither

the initiative nor the organising, shaping, and directing power
for particular purposes or which must always remain in
the hands of the few, better or worse, for good or for evil.
And this again rests on the still more ultimate facts: — that
Man is a creature that goes in families and herds under the
direction of /cadres; that the only available cohesive force
anywhere to be found to keep the separate human beings of
the herd together is the will of some other human beings like
themselves; and that the whole constitution of the human
mind is as accurately framed and adjusted to this double necessity
by which the many shall have the veto, but the few, the
direction, or government, as the human foot is for walking on
the ground, or the monkey’s for its life among the trees.
Napoleon, with his usual penetration, in his scheme for the
reconstruction of France after the Revolution, grasped this
principle— that they who nominate, govern—completely, and
utilised it to the full. Hamilton also, in his reconstruction
of the Constitution of the United States, after a similar
revolution, saw it clearly, but not having the same free hand
as Napoleon, he had to drop a good half of it in practice, owing
to circumstances over which he had no control—but mainly to
the circumstance that the doctrines of Rousseau on the “Rights
of Man ” had arrived in America, and had got hold of the
opposition leaders before his time, and so were too strong for
him ; and with results on the political condition of America
to-day which are an object-lesson to all the world. For the
principle is a veritable death-trap to all those Utopian politicians
and statesmen who ignore it; and if 1 now venture to apply it
rigorously to the scheme of the Fabian Society, it is not that I
think that all the leading members of that Society have
stumbled over it and fallen into the pit ; on the contrary, Mr.
Shaw and Mr. Webb, as we shall presently see, have more than
scented it—if their persistent application of it in a hole-and-
corner way be a criterion of their position in regard to it. It

46

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

Is not In this that, in my judgment, these gentlemen have
erred, but rather in the point of the social organism at which
they have tried to apply It—namely, the tail-end of Bumbledom !
Mr. Wells, alone of the Fabian leaders, has entirely missed the
principle, and in consequence has, as we shall see, wrecked his
scheme by its neglect.

Let us begin, then, with Mr. Wells. In his IS’ew Worlds
for Old , the reader will have observed that when he comes to
a hitch in the arrangement of his Socialist Utopia, whether
local or general, he glides over the difficulty as easily and
naively as the famous Captain Bobadil in Ben Jonson’s play
did in his method of defeating an army. And just as the
latter worthy, when the enemy began to advance, at once set
on his own men to shoot them down; and when they were
reinforced by other auxiliaries, set on fresh detachments to do
the same; and the same, again and again, until the last man of
the enemy lay stretched on the field; so Mr. Wells always has
in reserve an army called “ the People,” who can be brought
together at any moment by his magic wand—in town halls,
market squares, or what not—to propose resolutions, take
shows of hands on them, appoint officials to carry them out,
&c.; when, hey presto! the thing will have been done, and the
whole difficulty have vanished. But this easy Bobadil method
of capturing the electorate involves one or two oversights
which do not appear on the surface. The first is, that when
any number of men animated by a common sentiment arc called
together In a public meeting for any object whatever, those who
call the meeting, by that very act, separate themselves off* from
the people called, and become what we may call the “ platform ”
men, as distinct from the “ body-of-the-hall ” men. The one set
become the organisers, a more or less close and compact body
who take the initiative, frame the resolutions, nominate the
officials, and in general direct the business of the meeting as
its leaders; the other set become, for the time being, a mere
tail of separate individual units, who, if the business in hand is

THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.

47

organised for a permanent end (and not merely a temporary
occasion), have only a veto —a choice, that is to say, of different
alternatives imposed on them; and the longer the organisation
continues, and the more firmly it gets set, as it were, the
narrower does this choice become. In the old Roman Com¬
monwealth before the Cassars, it will be remembered that the
Senate, by an informal consensus among Its members, nominated
the officers of State, and dictated all the legislative measures;
flinging only the offal of government, the veto, to et the People ”
and to the tribunes who represented them in the Senate, as an
illusory sop—a choice of alternatives merely, any one of which
was acceptable to the governing body who already held all the
trumps. It was In essence as real a despotism as that of the
Czars, only more veiled, and with less directness and rigidity;
and the Senate, as we know, governed the Roman world for
four hundred years; the nominations, in such slight shades of
party division as existed, being distributed and arranged on
the accepted informal basis of u turn and turn about.” And it
was not until these party divisions in matters of legislation •
became so accentuated that no appeal but to the sword was
possible, that the power of nomination passed, with the power
of legislation, into the single hands of the Crnsars; and so the
popular veto, poor outside sham as it always was, ended at last
in a mere “ Hobson’s choice,” without any alternatives at all.
It was the same, too, in the Venetian and other Italian
Republics of the Middle Ages —with their “ Councils of Ten,”
or what not, who were always to be found hidden somewhere
behind the arras, or under the coverlids of the beds, when the
decorative upholsteries of these window-dressed Constitutions
were removed. In the reconstruction of France by Napoleon,
too, after the Revolution, as was well seen in his Concordat
with the Pope, there was nothing which he held with a firmer
grip, and parted with more unwillingly, than this same power
of nomination. He haggled about it to the minutest detail,
and with as much pertinacity, as if he were an old fish-

48

4 CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

saleswoman of the rue St. Antoine haggling with a a tight-
fisted ” customer on a Saturday night. He knew instinctively

that they who nominate govern, and, therefore, that if in this
division of the power of nomination between himself and the
Church he should capitulate on any cardinal point, all would
be lost—even although his Imperial power rested on the free
and independent votes of thirty millions of Frenchmen. And
further, that unless he could keep his sovereign control over
nominations intact, most of those millions, if left to their free
and so-called independent votes, would in ten years have run
back to their old Sansculottism again. It is the same, too,
with the British Cabinet, where the very representatives of u the
People ” are but mere voting tail, with only the merest scrag-
end of a veto thrown to them; while as for “ the People ” in
their millions of isolated units, each with his free and independent
vote, they are for ever condemned to the barest choice of
alternatives,—“ rabbits hot, or rabbits cold,” Conservative or
Whig, Radical or Socialist—even with the powerful Press
organised on party lines at their back. And so it must be
everywhere and every when; and were each particular voter a
Solon, and each member of Parliament a Demosthenes, wagged
as a tail the mass of them must continue to be, so long as Man
remains a creature that is compelled by his constitution to go
in herds under the direction of leaders. Why, not even a
society of extremest Anarchists, each one of whom is prepared,
for the sake of his ideal of freedom from leadership, to go to
his grave as to a bed, could exist together for a week in close
contact without falling under the domination and authority of
leaders better or worse, however nominated.

But let us take another even more pregnant illustration of
our principle—that they who nominate, govern—from a more
mundane, bread-and-butter sphere, and one, too, where each
separate individual in the mass has a more direct and immediate
personal interest (if money be a motive at all) than that to
which any political party or cause can afford a parallel—I

THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS.

49

mean the ordinary Joint Stock Company. And who, I ask,
has ever imagined that the great body of dispersed, and to
each other mostly unknown individuals who compose it, ever
hope to be other than a mere ineffectual tail at the mercy of
the directorate? Veto the directors they can, and change
them every week if they choose, but in doing so they only
change their masters, not free themselves from their yoke; and
shout or wriggle as they may, on their back, like the old man
of the sea, the directorate will sit, and continue to sit. But
who is it that nominates the new directors, the reader will ask?
The whole body of the shareholders, of course! Not at all;
on the contrary, the nomination will be left to the few
individuals among the shareholders in the body of the hall,
who are already known to have either a greater pecuniary stake
in the concern, a greater business ability and experience, or a
greater reputation for honesty, than the rest of their body,
mostly unknown to each other, can possibly claim for them¬
selves, even were each of them in actual fact the possessor of
all the virtues. It is these few nominators who play the part
of the intermediate gods, when one directorate falls and
another has to take its place; it is they who now in their turn
push their own particular puppets on the stage, or enter in
themselves. And so the game goes on; while the body of the
shareholders, in spite of their veto, their separate or equal vote,
their individual independent judgments, remain the same old
4 6 rump ” or tail as before—isolated, unknown figures wandering
distractedly along the corridors, who have to receive orders
and not give them; and who if the ship founder have to go
down with it, whatever their real power or penetration as
separate individuals may be. They have of necessity, not of
choice, by the very act of coming together to form an
organised company for a definite end or purpose , become a mere
series of divided , isolated units or points, in spite of the
common unity of aim in money-getting that brings them all
alike together ; and it is the divided who are governed. They

D

50

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

have, too, of necessity, not of choice, lost the power of nomina¬
tion, while retaining the mere husk of the veto ; and again,
as we have said, it is they who nominate that govern. In
most countries the King himself does little else than this work
of nomination, his counsellors doing the rest ; and that is why
it is he alone who governs. In other countries, as in England
after the Revolution which put William and Mary on the
throne, the Aristocracy captured this power of nomination,
and governed accordingly until within living memory. In
America, on the other hand, a conclave of saloon-keepers,
bosses, Tammany Hall rings, and. industrial magnates —a hand¬
ful of men at most—who stand, it will be observed, outside
the vast millions of voters, have succeeded slowly but
effectively in capturing the power of nomination to most of the
important offices in the government of the separate States;
and accordingly It is they who govern—and not the .Federal
Congress, or even the President himself. Rut as one and all
of these nominators are, like the gods, all-potent but rarely
seen, seated as they are high above the clouds, or standing like
conspirators in the background or wings, and known only
through the acts of their puppets whom they direct and push
on the public stage, it may truly be said that the true aim of
practical politics is a proper machinery for the nelecAion and
control of these unseen, all-powerful nominators, wire-pullers,
or caucus-managers of every grade and sphere, so as to ensure
the identity of their interests at every point and at all times
with the public good. This I commend to that most genial-
smiling, smooth-sailing, sentimental-persuasive Rohadil of the
Fabian Society, Mr. Wells, who imagines that by merely
calling a meeting of “ the People,” with their individual votes,
and by u leaning on the Labour Party,”’ he is going to pilot his
Fabian Utopia into port, without having first got safely under
hatches those invisible gods who do the wire-pulling from
behind the scenes. For in that case the human animal would
have had to be organised like the hawk, which does its foraging

THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 51

alone, and not like the creature Man is, who goes in herds, as
Nature intended him, and for whicli she has mentally as well
as bodily equipped him. The point only requires to be
definitely stated, and pressed home firmly enough, to be seen
on a moment’s reflection : and, if true, the consequences of its
lecognition, X repeat, for the future of all politics, will be as
great for the next century as were the teachings of Rousseau
for the last; for instead of keeping its eye on numbers of votes
and ballot-boxes, the world wdl keep its eye on the invisible
nominators who appoint the leaders, who in turn rule the ballot-
boxes and votes of these vast miscellaneous herds. So that in
accusing the Fabians in general of beginning their recon¬
struction of Society from below, from the tail, rather than
from above, 1 am accusing them of what, from the nature of
things and of the creature on whom they propose to operate,
is a flat ineptitude.

But now, leaving Mr. Wells for the moment, we have next
to consider Mr. Shaw, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. Ramsay
Macdonald, all of whom also propose to begin their operations
from below instead of from above, from the tail-end or circum¬
ference of society instead of from the centre; and that, too,
before they have captured either the physical arm, or the
active, sympathetic co-operation of the Central Power. Their
schemes, in consequence, are as chimerical as that of Mr.
Wells; and the millennium would indeed be here before, by
their respective methods of approach, they would have arrived
in sight of their goal. A contrast of these methods will of
itself let us into the inner workings of the whole Fabian scheme,
better, perhaps, and more quickly than any amount of separate
detailed delineation.

The plan of Mr. Webb and Mr. Shaw, then, is to get then-
trusted nominees elected to borough councils, vestries, school-
boards, boards of guardians, &c., in town and country, there to
sow among their confreres on these bodies the seeds of their
policy of the final taking over of the instruments of Production

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

anti Distribution by the State. This process of secret and
gradual insinuation was, in effect, a real conspiracy, as Mr.
Shaw with his usual frankness and humour admits; ami so
successfully was it carried out for a number of years by
Mr. Webb, the arch-conspirator in it all—at whose audacity
in this thimble-rigging of Bumbledom even Mr. Shaw stands
amazed !— that it was believed by them that the Fabian dream
was actually about to be realised. When consummated in
these little hole-and-corner groups of the political world, and
when the Fabian leaven had had time to work its way freely
among them, the plan of the chief conspirators was to expropriate
only just as much of the Land and other instruments of Pro¬
duction and Distribution within the area, or the immediate
vicinity, of these parishes and boroughs, as would furnish tin*
capital necessary for the next wider circumference of advance;
arranging for the compensation which was to be paid to the dis¬
inherited owners, to come out of the pockets of those other land¬
lords and capitalists in the neighbourhood for whom the guillo¬
tine was not yet ready ; much in the same way as it is proposed
to compensate the licensees of superseded public-houses out of
the enforced contributions of their brethren still left in the trade.
In this way it was hoped that by beginning thus stealthily and
noiselessly from the circumference, the propaganda would enlarge?
itself in ever-widening circl.es from stage to stage, paying its
way as it went, until the whole country would have been
silently converted to Socialism almost without knowing it ;
and that, too, while the Central Government, unaware of its
existence and lapped in security, had fallen asleep, it was a
Utopian, Bobadil scheme, no doubt, without the collusion of
the Central I ower to back it, and was sure to have been found
out at last; though it had its u points,” nevertheless, as we
shall presently see. But the West Ham Workhouse scandals
gave it the coup de grace, and ruined all ; and since then Mr.
Shaw and Mr. Webb, retiring discomfited to their tents, have
now to sit in 44 cold obstruction ” and consider themselves,

THE 'FA IB I A. NS AND P A ti 1L l AM E NT ART AN S .

53

before plotting' out some new and more deeply-laid design!
The central fallacy in it ail lay in their imagining that any
log-rolling scheme to be engineered from the tail-end and
extremities of Society, without the connivance and support of
the Government* could avail them within any period which the
naoht time-piercing telescope could bring within the range of
sioht As well imagine that any number of votes of the petty
tradesmen and artisans around the village greens, or any
number of armed insurrections of John Balls or Jack Cades,
could dispossess the great landlords by ttny disposition of their
forces whatever, without the latter being first coerced to it by
the Central Power. They would be defeated in detail as they
arose. And when, as in the scheme of Mr. Webb and Mr.
Shaw, the landlords and capitalists, instead of being benefited,
like the publicans, by the expropriation of their neighbours and
comrades, stand on every count to lose by it, and ultimately
will have to feel the full weight of the axe on their own necks ;
to imagine, 1 say, that they, too, will put then bands in thcii
pockets at the word of command of isolated cliques of Bumbles
on the outskirts of society, is a downright absurdity. Instead
of standing around the bodies of their dead conn ades, like
sheep waiting themselves to be bled, they would fly from the
scene like hunted foxes, and with their fire-branded tails set
the country around them in a blaze of insurrection and terror
as they went; and all because the conspirators had not first
secured both the sympathy and the sword of the Central Power.
Mr. Wells himself, who appears anxious in his book to con¬
stitute himself the sole High Pontiff of Fabian Socialism, and
who tries to extrude the older policy which Mr. Shaw and
Mr. Webb had so carefully laid in the Fabian nest, in order to
deposit his own single cuckoo egg there, talks of tins policy
and method of approach of theirs as if it were a piece of parish-
pump politics, worthy only of the ’eighties when it was first
framedand projected by these gentlemen,—as a kind of back-stair
approach, in fact, which could only win over at best the chief

54

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

butler and his staff of consequential underlings of the servants
hall! But their scheme has its “ points/’ as I have said, and
indeed is in every way superior, as we shall now see, to the
scheme by which Mr. Wells proposes to supplant it. For they
saw vaguely and, like Buonaparte, felt instinctively, what Mi*.
Wells has not yet even caught a glimpse of, namely, that, they
who nominate, govern; and they have in consequence taken
the best possible means open to them by which to compass
their ends—in the absence, that is to say, of all co-operation
from the Central Power. They rightly saw that, by making
the unit of their area of operation the smallest possible, the
parish Bumbles (before whom, like a couple of British envoys
to a native Oriental Court, they contemptuously bent and
salaamed, the better to win them over to their designs!) were
the only men who had any initiative or political influence over
the petty tradesmen, artisans, and peasants of these boroughs
and parishes, each man of whom would be personally in touch
with them.

But what does Mr. Wells propose in place of this ? Firstly,
to enlarge the unit of area over which the Fabian propaganda
is to operate, to the size, as he says, of a mediaeval principality,
that is to say, to a circumferential range so wide that men can
know as little of each other as they do of those invisible gods—
the few wire-pullers who must everywhere exist in the back¬
ground of every large body of men thus isolated and dispersed
—who, we may be sure, are not going to be pushed from
their stools by any number of mere Fabian “ carpet-baggers ”
sent down among them, who as 44 Intellectuals ” would be
44 suspect” from the start! And when, as in his second
proposal, he declares that he is prepared to u lean on the
Labour party ” in these enlarged constituencies entirely for
his support; that he further counsels this Party to beware of
any devotion to 44 leaders/’ all of whom he would wipe out and
replace by what he calls 4< the continuity of the collective
mind,” that is to say, the tail itself, it looks as if their only

the FABIANS AND P UiLI AMENTA RIANS.

authority and guide was intended to be no other than Mr.

Wells himself—or his hook! It is evident, therefore, that
this scheme of his for capturing the (Government by the
isolated votes of sheep without bell-wethers, and that, too,
without any aid from the Central (Government, is more Utopian,
and, with all its pretensions, in every way inferior to that of
Mr. Shaw and Mr. Webb. It has thrown away all the good
points of their parish Bumbledom scheme, and without any
countervailing advantages of its own.

But behind these three gentlemen who stand in the limelight
in the foreground of the Fabian stage, there is Mr. Ramsay
Macdonald and his Parliamentary Labour cohort, of later and
fresher blood, in the wings. What shall we say, then, of him
and them '( Mr. Macdonald himself, in his book on Socialism,”
has grounded himself on a theory of Evolution in my judgment
sis superior to that of the Fsibians 1 have mentioned as theirs
is to the crude economic theory fit* Marx out of which it aiose ;
and of which both it and Mr. Macdonald’s still retain some of
the early tang. Otherwise Mr. Macdonald’s theory proceeds,
as it winds itself along, with so much really fine discrimination
and penetration, and harmonises so well in its outline with my
own views, that it was not until (assuming the role of
philosopher turned practical political!) he suddenly cried halt
at a particular point, that I felt obliged to protest. This point
was reached when, after insisting, like the Socialists in general
and the rest of the Fabians in particular, on our cropping the
heads of the great Leaders and Organisers of the world in their
various departments (the race of merely hereditary do-nothing
capitalists and interest-receivers he would shave down to the
scalp itself!), he proposes to allow the vast miscellaneous tail
of the casual, unskilled incapables and slum-dwelling wreckage
to breed freely, multiply, and stagnate in their millions un¬
checked—with their complement of alien paupers added—
until, like the tail of a comet, they fill the whole belt of heaven,
and sprawling out to infinity threaten to blot out the very

56 4 CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

stars; while starving, in the mean time, the rank and file of the
genuine army of efficient working-men,—and all for what'?
To give to this herd of camp-followers a first lien for
subsistence, as with the old Roman populace, on all the
resources of the State! The thing is monstrous. Indeed, to
carry this portentous ever-expanding tail, and expect to make
of it on any scheme of human evolution whatever, a compact,
coherent, social organism, would be an impossibility for gods
or men. But a bargain is a bargain ; and if Mr. Macdonald
and the Fabians will consent to cut down this overgrown tail
to reasonable proportions, there is nothing in my theory of
evolution at least which would prevent my seeing with
equanimity the heads of the overgrown millionaires or other
overblown parasites of the world cropped to the same reason¬
able proportions; but not until then. But will they, dare
they, agree to this? Logically they should, for, firstly, as they
intend to begin their operations, as we have seen, from the tail,
the pruning of it of its redundant elements ought to be their
first concern. Secondly, because having thrown in their lot
with the party of Peace, almost at any price; and realising,
doubtless, that the internal reorganisation of society is itself a
sufficiently big problem for any nation to handle, without,
having, like the defenders of Jerusalem, to build with the
trowel in one hand and the sword in the other; they may well
feel that it is no longer necessary tc> keep vast herds of possible
shilling-a-day conscripts always on hand and available as food
for powder! And thirdly, because it is neither decent nor
fair to put coercion and restraint on any one section of society
without applying an equal pressure to every other. To cut an
organism like human society into two sections, to one of winch
the most drastic, despotic central control is to be applied, while
the other section is to have unlimited Laissez-faire to welter,
sprawl, and gender in as it pleases, is not only a moral injustice,
but an intellectual insanity. And when it is done under a
theory of evolution as generally sane as that of Mr. Ramsay

THE FABIANS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS. 57

Macdonald, one must press him hard to tell us precisely what
tie proposes to do with this ineffectual expanding tail. Does
he agree, for example, with Carlyle, who in disgust with the
hopelessness of laissez-faire methods, humorously but grimly
proposed in Sartor Mesartus to shoot them outright, like Spartan
helots, as good rifle-practice for the more ingenuous youths!
Or would he rather, as an alternative, emigrate them wholesale
to other lands? Or would he, on the other hand, prefer to
stop their breeding by penalties, or by artificial methods like
those proposed by Bradlaugh and John Stuart Mill { Or,
perhaps, he would break up their warrens in the slums, and
(as ought to have been done any time for the last fifty years)
spread them evenly over the whole country as fertilising
compost, instead of allowing them to concentrate and stagnate
like poisonous sewage. Or, lastly, in despair of any or all of
these solutions, would he leave them, with their free laissez-
faire tickets on their backs, to hang for ever on the necks of
mankind, as the negroes are doing to-day, and will continue to
do, on those of the Americans—or what ? And when he and
his fellow Fabians of the House of Commons have selected
their method, I shall then challenge them openly to announce
this method to their constituents—that very tail on whose
votes they (with their intellectual ideals) illegitimately draw,
and on whom they depend for the installation of their regime
in power. But will they ? I trow not.

CHAP T E R IY.

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX/

TN this my final chapter 1 have been deflected unintentionally
from my normal course by an irruption of the followers of
Marx and the Social Democratic Federation, who have given
me roundly to understand that no triumph of mine or another’s
over the sentimental “ Olarionettes,” of whom Mr. Blatchford
is the leader, or over the Parliamentary contingent, as repre¬
sented by Mr. Snowden and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, and,
above all, over those half-hearted Laodiceans and waiters-on -
Providence of the Fabian Society—Mr. Wells, Mr. Webb, and
Mr. Bernard Shaw—-will avail me a jot unless I can get out
of the way, first of all, Karl Marx’s great book on Capital —
the basis, as they declare, of the only Socialism worthy of the
name, and on which, or on nothing, their Utopia, should it
ever arrive, must rest. And as the main body of the Socialist,
Press keeps on reiterating this opinion of my ardent and
stalwart young friends of the street-corner, whose sincerity
and unselfish devotion to their cause cannot for a moment be
doubted, I feel X have no alternative but to accept their
challenge in the friendly spirit in which it is offered; the more
so as I am pricked to it as a point of honour by one of their
number, who tells me plainly that the depths of Marx a,re
u beyond the reach of my comprehension.” 1 had, indeed,
* Fortnightly Review , Only, 3908.

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.

59

imagined that 1 had already said quite enough in my previous
articles to have got Marx out of the way altogether as a serious
Political Economist; and 1 had hoped that with Marx and his
irreconcilables well under hatches, there might at least he a
chance of this discussion ending in some kind of scheme which
would draw all reasonable English Socialists nearer into line
with the other political parties in the State. Mr. Blatchford
had already, as we have seen, made me quite spontaneously
some important admissions and concessions; Mr. Snowden has
added more, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald yet others; and later
on I was prepared on my own part to round off the accentuated
edge which I had put on portions of my argument, for the
purpose of cutting out more clearly those anomalies and
absurdities which lie concealed under every form of Socialism
as a practical working scheme for the present age of the world,
but which it is not the cue of any one of its representatives to
allow too openly to appear. I was also prepared to make a
number of concessions on my own account to what i believe to
be both good and true in Socialism; but in imagining that 1
had made even the slightest impression on the Social Democratic
Party and the other adherents of the School of Marx, it appears
that 1 was entirely mistaken. Mr. Hyndman, in refusing to
take up my challenge in this article to discuss with him the
Political Economy of Marx’s book on Capital , tells me quite
frankly that nothing which has appeared in my former articles
leads him to think that 1 “understand Marx at all.” Mr.
Belfort. Bax, however, who, with Mr. Hyndman, is one of the
two accredited exponents of the Marxian Political Economy in
England, has gallantly stepped into the breach, and has willingly
consented to reply to anything that I might here have to say.

Now, the chief deterrent for English readers in Marx’s book
on Capital f, is not so much its profundity; on the contrary, as
we shall see, it is a most simple and childlike piece of work;
but is rather the difficulty of grasping it, owing to the peculiar
phraseology in which he has chosen to express himself. I have

60

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

just re-read the book for the purposes of this article; and to
show that I am doing no injustice to his style, which is obscure
and involved to a degree, and besides is so vague by reason of
its endless circumlocutions and want of directness that it can
only be grasped with an effort, I shall inflict on the reader only
a single quotation, as a fair sample of the whole book. Let us
take the following mystic utterance :— 4 * The value of a machine
is determined not by the labour process into which it enters as
a means of production, but by that out of which it has issued
as a product.” Now this looks very profound, does it not?
And yet it only means this:—That the value of a machine Is
determined not by the amount of wealth which, it can produce,
even were it to rain down sufficient manna from heaven con¬
tinuously to feed all mankind, but by what it will cost an
ordinary workman to buy its materials, fit the pieces together,
and feed, stoke, or otherwise attend the machine as it runs ; or,
in other words, its value is not as an invention , that is to say,
as a mental product, but as a mere piece of manual labour ,
whether skilled or unskilled. But it would not have done for
Marx to say so straightforwardly ; for not only did he himself
know quite well that it was the machine as an invention, and
therefore the inventor, who at bottom was both primarily and
ultimately the author of most of the added wealth which his
mere machine as a piece of wood and iron was giving to the
world; but he knew as well that even the most stupid of the
workmen who either made or attended the machine instinctively
knew it also. And as his object was to get the Inventor of
the machine huddled away and hidden out of sight in the
background or wings of the stage; and the Capitalist, who had
bought the machine with Ills own money, put under lock and
key as a criminal exploiter and thief, in order to concentrate his
limelight solely on the Workmen and their machines in the
centre and foreground of the stage; he was obliged to cover up
his footsteps as he went along, and, like the wily old fox he was,
try rather to elude the vigilance of his followers than honestly

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.

61

to assist them on the trail. Hence the series of sentences, like
the one i have just quoted, which attend him with ever-
increasing vagueness, reiteration, and obscurity throughout the
whole course of his book.

If Mr. Bax should reply that it is the mere 44 exchange 51 or
market value of the machine which Marx is dealing with here,
then I must press him for an explanation of why Marx, when
he is dealing with the wages of the workmen, should shift his
position from the mere 44 exchange” value to the 44 real” value
of their labour For he cannot have it both ways. If he
decide on the 44 exchange ” or market value as his criterion of
value, everybody already gets his due—inventors, capitalists,
workmen, and all—by competition and the supply and demand
of the market;'* if he decide on 44 real” value as his criterion of
value (as, indeed, he must do in a Socialist State where the
competition of the market is abolished), then the giving of the
navvy or workman the same pay as the inventor of the machine
is a convicted piece of imposture and absurdity. But all this
1 have already said in effect in my previous articles. I must
therefore beg of Mr. Bax that he will be good enough in his
reply to me to take into his purview, as part of my impeachment
of Marx’s book as a whole, those portions of my previous
articles in this challenge which bear on these particular aspects
of his doctrine, but which I have not the space to repeat again
here. By so doing he will enable me to concentrate on the
only part of the book bearing on the relation between the

* Headers who may be interested m seeing what a flood of light may be
thrown on practical economic problems by reducing all their factors into
terms of real cost (as distinct from the “exchange” and “utility” value
with which alone the ordinary text-books deaR can be recommended to read
Mr. Ewart S. Grogan’s book, “ The Economic Calculus,” as well as its popular
sequel, “Tariff: the Workmen’s Charter.” In the ordinary text-books, so
indefinite and variable a quantity or thing as “ Labour ” is made the standard
in relation to which all other things exchange with each other ; but in Mr.
Grogan’s book, Food standardized according to the amount of nutritive
material it contains, is made the measure of real cost, into terms of which all
“value,” “labour,” “capital,” “machinery,” “production,” “consumption,”
“profit,” “ interest,” &c., maybe reduced as into their common denominator.
This once done, all economic calculations henceforth become simple matters
of addition or subtraction.

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM'.

62

Political Economy of Marx and his Socialism, oil which f have
not yet touched. In the present article, therefore, I propose
to put this part of Marx’s hook into as plain English as I can
command; and should I then still be charged either with
misrepresentation or omission, shall throw on Mr. Bax the
burden of transcribing the passages from Marx which go to
prove the charge.

The general problem, then, which Marx proposed to himself
was:—How by putting into his logic mill, a heterogeneous
multitude of Inventors, Men of Science, Capitalists, Organisers,
Financiers, and skilled and unskilled Workmen of every shade
and degree, to bring them out at the other end, all on a footing
of perfect economic equality ? Now, one would have said, not
only on grounds of economic justice, but of ordinary human
reason, that an equality of pay among them all would have been
regarded both as a theoretical and a practical impossibility.
Not so, thought Marx; and it was to show his army of
working-men followers not only that in strict justice they ought,
morally speaking, to get an equality of pay with their capitalist
masters, but that if they would only follow his prescription in
seeing that this justice was rigorously enforced, they must,
.and would, get it on true economic principles as well, that he
wrote his book on CapitaL This, however, was perhaps the
least perplexing part of his problem, for it was comparatively
easy to persuade the workers of the truth of doctrines which
were so obviously framed in their own immediate interest.
The real difficulty arose when he had to show this motley crew
of workers, skilled and unskilled, how they themselves, too,
like a Barnum’s “ happy family,” could by the magic of Isis
scheme be all induced to lie down peacefully together on an
equal rate of pay—a difficulty all the greater, inasmuch as the
small number of intelligent and highly skilled mechanics in
their pride of rank and superiority, showed up against the loose
Falstaffian regiment of nondescript unskilled casuals, like a
thin sprinkling of gold-epauletted officers against the rank and

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.

file. But Marx, undaunted by all difficulties, entered on Ms
task with a light heart, and started out gaily with his first
purely economic proposition, which was :—That in the present
stage of the world and of competitive industry, salaries, wages,
and pecuniary remunerations of all kinds, except those which
are regulated by custom or law (and so do not belong to
Political Economy as such), are not paid according to ability ,
but entirely according to supply arid demand , or, in other
words, according to the relative scarcity or abundance of the
competitors who enter the field at any given point; as you
would soon discover, he assumes, if the Kelvins, the Edisons,
the Bonapartes, the Turners, or the Pattis of the world lay as
thick on the ground, and were to be picked up as easily for
the stooping, as either your ordinary working-men or even
your skilled workmen. We could breed at a pinch, he thinks,
as many u great men 11 as we require for every emergency of
life, just when, where, and as we want them, precisely as we
would mushrooms or cabbages! u Pray pardon my interrupting
you at so early a stage of your argument,” I interpose, “ for I
have noticed that all the men of your school, as we shall see
presently, cany this huge imaginary presupposition with them
into every argument, as if, indeed, it were an elementary axiom ;
in the hope, apparently, that it may escape detection among
the number of considerations which at the first blush would
seem to countenance it. Now, although this presupposition
of yours may be true in ultimate Nature, or, if you like, in the
decrees of Providence or Fate—as, indeed, the fact that
successive generations of mankind in their passing away and
giving place to each other, always leave somewhere on the earth
great men enough in every department of life to carry on the
evolution of the world as a tohole to higher and higher issues,
would seem to indicate—it is not true that the breeding of
them can be done as yet by any means known to Science; nor
is it likely to he practically applicable for generations yet to
come. Nor is it possible for any particular nation to premise

64

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

that the great men necessary for its particular development
shall arise within its own howlers ; and, above all, it is not true,
should any particular State, by its own man-made laws—like
that decree of Herod for the ‘ Massacre of the Innocents,’ de¬
signed to catch Jesus in its net—exterminate these great men
outright as they arise: nor, again, if priding itself (as you
Socialists do) on its facility in reproducing them as they are
wanted, should drive them away by poverty, tyranny, or
disgust to other lands, where their particular genius will find
a welcome, and where, with adequate liberty and remuneration,
they are encouraged to expand and put forth all their fruit.
If Corsica, for example, had been still united to Italy instead
of to France during the early manhood of Bonaparte, how
different indeed would it and must it have been for the future
of France and the world! Your presupposition is only true
provided that all the world has embraced a Socialist regime
organised on your particular pattern; but that, again, is for
the millennial time, when all the other factors making foi
absolute equality in the conditions of life shall have been
levelled up to it, but not for any age of the world yet visible
through the most powerful of time-piercing telescopes. How¬
ever, apologising for my interruption, and admitting your
assumption for the moment—what is the next step in your argu¬
ment ? ” “ Why this,” continues Marx—“ if men are paid not

according to their ability or the quality of their work, but only
according to the numbers of them in the field of competition,
it follows, does it not, that if there be any necessary difference
in their salaries, wages, or incomes, it can only come, under
fair and equal conditions, from the length of time they work, as
tliere is no other alternative. And from this it follows again,
that if we could get all men to work the same number of hours
a day, and in each of their hours do an average stroke of work,
without either loitering or hurrying (average “ labour time ”);
and if each class of these workers would only make just as
much of its own particular product as was necessary to meet

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.

65

the demand, neither more nor less (“ socially necessary human
labour”)—just the right number of shirts or clothes, or house¬
hold utensils, or cutlery, or what-not—would not this make
the wages of all men equal who were doing honest work to the
best of their ability ? ” u For, look you,” he goes on, 4< if the
supply of the same commodity is always kept equal to its
demand, its price, or value, must remain the same; if different
commodities take the same average time to make, their prices
too must remain the same (or vary only in proportion to the
length of that time); and if all men work the same number of
hours a day, and at the same pace—whether engaged in mental
or bodily labour matters not—then would not the wages, salaries,
or incomes of all men be the same ; and so at last the economic
status and earnings of our colossal magnates on the one hand,
and of their sweated, exploited, poverty-stricken and over¬
toiled workers on the other, be reduced to equality? ” 44 Yes,”

I assent, “ but that is because things that are equal to the
same thing must be equal to one another; and I should as soon
think of denying the truth of these elementary propositions of
yours as I should of denying the axioms of Euclid; or of
denying the proposition that if you divide up a ten-acre field
into closed compartments, each of the same size and with the
same quantity of grass and water in each, and into each of these
put a single colt, the present and future economic condition of
these colts in food and drink must be equal, however much
they might have differed had the colts been allowed freely to
overleap their fences, or get at each other’s provender by
kicking these fences down! No, it is not your economic
propositions which I intend to dispute; it is the 4t ifs ” and
4f ands,” the “provisos” and 44 conditions” with which you
have hedged them round, that give me pause. For should
any of these, like Shylock’s exact pound of flesh, miscarry in
the event, all the old inequalities of wages and incomes under
the rigime of Capitalism would flow in again from all sides:—
as, for example, if little groups of workmen in certain trades

61)

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

should make little “ comers ” among themselves by working
longer hours; or, as in piecework, should push their work
through more expeditiously in a given time; or, like miners,
should restrict their output to keep up prices ; or, like retailers,
should continue their customary tricks of sale, or what not;
and in the end these increments and differences between one
class and another, or one set of workmen and another, would
gradually roll themselves up like snowballs, and at last destroy
that very equality of incomes which you consider ought, to be
the prerogative of all human beings, and which you say must
sooner or later be realised at all costs.” “ How then,” I repeat,
st arc you going to handle these 4 ifs and ands and con¬
ditions ’ so as to compel all wages and incomes to work out on
a level equality ? ” “ Nothing could be simpler,” replies Marx,

“ for if you will only let me take over all the instruments of
Production, Distribution, and Exchange, and will supply me
with a complete register of the state of demand and supply of
every commodity, whether of brain or hand (a thing which the
State could easily do), and will undertake as well to see that
no more commodities of each kind are at any time made, or
kept on supply, than will just meet the demand, I will under¬
take to guarantee in turn that men shall have equal incomes—
or, rather, not I, but these laws of Political Economy which 1
have just laid down, will do it for us of themselves, whether I
Guarantee it or not—Voilii! ” And then, turning round to his
followers, lie asks: “How does this strike you, my comrades'?
Cannot you, with your numbers, your votes, and, if necessary,
your physical force, see to it that these 4 conditions ? of mine
are fulfilled?” Whereupon the millions of working-class
Socialists in Germany, France, and England, like the simple-
minded Othello when he heard of the discovery of the handker¬
chief, jumped up and with one accord exclaimed, 44 Now do we
see ’tis true ”; and, as if their imaginary swords were already
leaping from their scabbards, declared that if this were all, he
might rely on them to see that it was done. 44 But softly for

A DIALOGUE WITH MAIiX.

t$7

a moment,” interposes Marx, waving over them like another
General Booth his deprecating hand, te you cannot be expected
to do this thing as individuals and by yourselves, you know;
the State must do it for you collectively, as it were; only you
must give the State your individual allegiance,' authority, and
support. ’ 66 Done ! ” said the men; and with this the shade
of Marx vanished, and Socialism as a living force was ushered
into the open arena of the world.

Now, the above, stripped of the obscurities of style and pre¬
sentation by which Marx lias enshrouded it, and by which he
has sought to give it a show of profundity, is the real inner
logical core of the doctrines embodied in his book on Capital.
But I would respectfully point out to his followers of the Social
Democratic Federation that these simple truisms are not, as
they fondly imagine, sufficient to justify them in regarding his
book as a new departure in Political Economy. Like the
mathematical axiom that things that are equal to the same
thing are equal to one another—to which, as we have seen,
they are an exact parallel—propositions like these of Marx are
involved at every stage of every argument of every system of
Political Economy that ever was written, whether those
systems are true or false. They are, in fact, mere identical
propositions, from which no practical conclusion whatever,
having any scientific validity, can ever be drawn ; and remind
one of nothing so much as of those mediaeval biologists, who
imagined they were telling of something important when they
announced with all gravity that the “ vital principle was the
cause of life ” ; or of that modern barber who once told me
that he had explained to one of his clients who was exercised
in his mind as to the cause of his baldness, that it was due—to
the loss of his hair ! Besides, the logic of the whole scheme is
as useless and inept for all practical purposes as that of the
Quakers and other Utopians, who solemnly assert that if all
the world would only keep the peace, there would be no war ;
and if no war, then how much more happy and blessed we all

68

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

should be! It is not, therefore, the Political Economy of
Marx that need give us the least concern, except, perhaps, his
doctrine of a surplus value,” which I have already exposed in
my former articles,—but which, I may remark in passing, my
opponents, so far, have either agreed with me in repudiating,
or have passed by in severe silence on the other side. It is, I
again repeat, these “ ifs ” and “ provisos ” and “conditions” in
which Marx has enveloped his simple economic platitudes that
are alone important for us either to dispute or to consider;
and to these I must, in the remainder of this article, transfer
the entire burden of my argument.

We will begin, then, by asking :—What living human reason
there is for believing that if the mass of working-men who
have the votes, and could to-morrow, by simply walking to the
nearest ballot-box, realise those blessings of a Universal Peace
on earth, to which they pay so devout a lip-homage,—and that,
too, without a tax either on their principles, their liberties, or
their pockets—and yet in spite of the prayers of Quakers or
Saints will not do so, but, on the contrary, will continue, like
mediaeval theologians, to find grounds of quarrel in the most
trumpery pin-points of distinction of race, colour, or creed ;
what living reason, I ask, is there for believing (unless, indeed,
in some fit of temporary political insanity, or hypnotised into
it by abstract clap-trap phrases) that these men, or any or all
men, who are still, as I have so often to repeat, three-fourths
animal, will consent to annihilate at a stroke their liberty, their
self-interest, their vanity, and, above all, their devouring love
of social inequality, for so entire an overturn of all their habits,
their customs, their traditions, their modes of life, and their
very human nature itself, as the taking over of all the instru¬
ments of Production, Distribution, and Exchange, by some
empty abstraction called the State, would involve? None
whatever.

Where, then, lies the fallacy, the reader will ask ? It lies
in their neglect of the great general fact, that a healthy man is

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX. 69

a creature who everywhere and always lives in the future —-in
the look-out ahead from the prow, and not in the retrospect
from the stem—and that the taking of chances in consequence
is the very life-breath of his existence. It is only the insane,
the idiotic, the old, the intellectually, morally, or spiritually
dead, who live in the past or the present; and, if so, what sort
of an outlook into the future do the Socialists propose to offer
to the millions of men, each of whom, in order to carry out
their scheme, will have to be imprisoned like our young colts,
from youth to age, in separate compartments, with every
“ condition ” of their lives reduced to an enforced equality;
and how do they propose to prevent them from overleaping
the fences in which they are confined ? My answer is, that it
can only be done by a restriction on their liberty as complete,
an espionage of each by the rest as jealous, vigilant, and un-
relaxing, and a despotism and discipline as all-pervading and
crushing, as ever prison walls inflicted on their usually
sufficiently fed but always unhappy inmates. Let us consider,
then, how it will work out in detail; and take first the
Scientists, Inventors, and Discoverers, whom Marx has ruled
entirely out of his economic scheme, but whom Mr. Blatchford,
throwing over his Marxian street-corner followers bodily,
agrees with me in regarding as the real authors of the a surplus
wealth” of the world, on whom not only all other brain¬
workers, but a good half at least of the present population of
the world depend for their very existence. How, then, will it
fare with these men of genius under a Socialist regime , with
the ropes around their necks, and with the pay of the coal-
heavers as their reward ? Manual workers of all kinds, whose
work is seen , and can be appraised from hour to hour, may, it
is true, as the history of the world shows, be kept up to then-
work, even if by the lash; but how about the brain-workers
whose methods and processes are unseen ? “ Oh! give them

their reward for the time being,” say the Fabians; “ for if we
don’t, they can bolt elsewhere, and leave us in the lurch; but

70

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

see that this reward is cut down to a minimum, as a set-oft
against the fact that they need us as much as we need them."
u No,” says Mr. Blatchford and the Clarionites, “let them take
their reward out in honour instead; wealth would only corrupt
them ; and besides, we can do without them altogether for that
matter, and live on what they have already given us when their
existing patents run out. If they don t like it, well then, let
them go, and we will breed as many more of them for ourselves
as we want, and just when we want them, as we breed
vegetables or chickens.” “ No, not at all, say the Marxian
main body of street-corner stalwarts, c< not a penny more than
a navvy shall any one of them have; for if he does, it will
bring back all the old inequalities of fortune, and all the old
exploitations again ; and after all our labours we might just as
well remain where we are, in the old sty as before. But if they
try to escape and leave the country, arrest them at the ports of
embarkation and bring them back again ” !

But, leaving the brain-workers, and allowing them to shift
for themselves, and to escape from the tyranny as best they
can, what are we to say of the rest of the world, penned up in
their millions, each in his separate box, each working the same
number of hours, at the same average pace, and each with the
jealous eyes of his comrades upon him to see that he neither
exceeds nor falls short of his stint of work; and yet each, like
our young colts, longing to “ kick over the traces ” and get
for himself, in pastures new, a breath of liberty ? What of
these Why, they would die of boredom and disgust. And
if to these chains are added those of a broken-up family life,
with husbands separated from wives, and both from children
(for this is the prescription of the most rigid sect of Socialist
Pharisees), no government once inaugurated and set to work
on these lines could endure for an hour. The world of men
would die rather than submit to it; for it is one thing to whip
oneself up into raptures over State Socialism while you are still
free, as over war while you are still enjoying the blessings of

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.

71

peace; each may be good as a diversion or sport, or as casual
relief from monotony or tyranny; but to contemplate a
continuance of either for an indefinite time, and especially for
the 44 dim common population ” whose main occupation in life
Ls 9 and must be, in their humble way and with the general
approbation of their fellows, to raise their heads before they
die, be it ever so little, above those of the same rank, class,
occupation, or condition as that in which they were born or
brought up ; this forced economic equality , fastened on them
like an iron waistcoat, would, I repeat, be at once their social
and moral death. But in this opinion it would appear that I
have reckoned without my host; for the Socialists, not
apparently having ever suspected this forward chance-taking
outlook oE all healthy human creatures from the prow of the
boat, but having been taught by existing political philosophy to
regard only the debris , the backwash, the social wreckage, and
the excreta left by latssez-fanre to accumulate in its wake, and
to generalise from that alone as if it were human life; the
Marxians, I say, think they have a device by which they can
turn the flank of objections such as those I have just raised,
and by means of which the mixed millions of brain-workers,
the skilled and unskilled manual workers, the hopeless incapables
of the slums and all, can be kept each in the little separate,
equal-sized, equal-conditioned pens in which, with their equal
supply of money or food, they have been imprisoned by Marx—
and all so quietly, peaceably, and contentedly, that not a kick
of revolt or even a sigh for the good old times of liberty is left
in any one of them I Now, this strange imagination takes its
rise from that most curious and Utopian, perhaps, of all the
Socialist’s dreams, namely, that mankind in general, when once
their pecuniary anxieties are relieved by the economic equality
which the Socialists would practically confer on all alike, would
immediately apply themselves as an outlet from their restraints
to the higher things of the mind as their rightful birthright
(after being so long defrauded of them); and would be found,

72

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

after tlieir short and leisurely hours of labour, sitting in crowds
in the galleries of vast amphitheatres during the rest of the
day, listening to the discourses of modern Platos on the
Immortality of the Soul; to ethical lectures on the u Perfect
Life” or the Higher Criticism; to artistic and literary
dilettanti on the higher beauties of Michael Angelo, Wacmer,
Browning, or Meredith; to lectures on Philosophy by the
Herbert Spencers of the time; or to religious hymns, like the
“Red Flag,'’ in praise of Socialism itself! Now, as I would
treat this method of preventing the young colts “ kicking over
their traces ” by making them stand on their heads—with the
State alternately hypnotising and whipping them up to keep
them there—with the serious consideration which the Socialists
themselves have given to it, the first remark I would make is,
that just as the number of really “ great men ” in the world in
any and every walk of life at any one time in its history is a
mere handful, so the numbers of those who really appreciate
and enjoy the higher things of the mind for their own sake is
the merest fraction of a fraction of every community; and that
by no process yet known can either the State or Religion,
either gods or men, by merely bringing them to the bread and
waters of life make them either eat or drink freely. Did the
Roman populace rise to this ideal height, even when they were
supported by the State, and when the corn ships from
Alexandria, Sicily, and North Africa, which fed them, arrived
at the mouth of the Tiber with the regularity of the tides?
Did the highly-cultivated Greeks, after their conversion to
Christianity, and at a time when each man of them really
believed that he would have to answer for himself before the
Judgment Seat—did they spend the rest of the week in
meditating on the words of the “ golden-mouthed ” Chrysostom
after listeniug to his Sunday discourses? Not they; on the
contrary, they rushed instead to the doors of the Circus, and
when they got inside fought over the colours of tlieir favourite
charioteers of the “ blue ” or the “green ” factions, with the

A DIALOGUE WITH MARX.

78

mingled desperation and revenge of a crowd of lynchers in the
Southern States. And so, too, the men of the Middle Ages,
who also walked through life on pain of eternal perdition at
every turn, crowded the bear-gardens rather than the churches,
ant! listened more eagerly to stories of illicit love than to
discourses on morality—except, perhaps, when the Puritans,
frightened out of their wits by midnight visions of hell, put an
embargo for a season on all mundane joys alike. And why, i
ask, should it be different to-day? Whence, then, did this
idea of the Socialists of founding their Commonwealth on the
virtues and on the higher life of the soul arise? And how did
it get its foothold of feasibility?

The truth, I believe, lies in that old fallacious assumption
that “ the love of money is the root of all evil,” which the
Socialists have stolen without acknowledgment from a Christi¬
anity in which they do not believe, and which is the source
of all their Utopian dreams. Now, although good as a
doctrine for a Kingdom not of this world, or for a millennium
on earth believed to be close at hand, as in the early days of
Christianity; when preached to a human animal who can
reach his heaven on earth only by the slow process of evolution,
who is still knee-deep in the primeval slime from which he is
only just painfully emerging, and especially to men who have
been led by some abstract hocus-pocus of a theory, like that of
Rousseau or Marx, really to believe that by a dead heave and
a general overturn it might be realised to-morrow, it is a most
pernicious and even poisonous doctrine. For while 1 am only
too willing to insist that dire and widespread poverty below
the human decency line is a curse to the State as great as its
opposite, the accumulation of colossal fortunes in the hands of
a few who have both the power and the eagerness to exploit
this poverty, I will still venture to contend that the pursuit
ami even the struggle for wealth, if its maximum amount in
the case of each individual is rigorously restrained by law,
taxation, or public opinion within a sufficiently elastic and yet

74

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

comparatively narrow belt, would be the salvation of the world
in its present stage of evolution—and not, as priests and
Socialists imagine, its bane. For it provides that scope for
human inequality which is as absolutely demanded by a creature
like Man, when you try to force on him an absolute equality
with Ms fellows, as is its opposite, the love of equality, when
he is down in the ranks, or is what Mr. Blatchford calls 46 the
bottom dog”—if, that is to say, there is to be any game of
life properly so-called at all. And it has besides this unique
merit that, when the game is played under stringent rules,
sternly enforced, and leaving no loopholes for evasive scoon-
drelism, it is a training in that inoral self-restraint and con¬
sideration for others out of which all the higher social virtues
of every kind can grow. Compared, indeed, with this efficacy
of money-making as a school for human virtue for the masses of
mankind, when thus conditioned and restrained, and as a
means of satisfaction for their love of inequality, the boasted
efficacy of manly, healthy field sports, much as 1 believe in
their value for the few who can actively participate in them,
shows up in perspective like the merest shadow of a shade.
But that the Socialists should seek to build up the world anew
by an industrial overturn, with the express object of reducing
all mankind alike to a dead-level of economic equality, and by
the doctrine of 44 average labour time ” keep them there at
each and every stage of their passage through life, so that
there would really be no game of life to play, or race of life to
ran at all; this, I repeat, far from throwing them on their
higher nature for relief, as a resource against the boredom and
troubles of life, would throw them back on their primal
instincts and passions rather, and in the end would plunge them
into barbarism again. For rather than sit there in this beggarly
enforced equality, scraping together the few odd shillings
which under any circumstances would, relatively speaking, be
the utmost which the doctrine of “ average labour time ”
could or would permit any one individual to acquire over

A DIALOGUE WITH. MARX.

75

smother by his most careful saving; rather than come to this,
the world of active men, who live in the future, as we have
seen, rather than in the present or past, with their economic
future once secured to them whatever befalls, would from sheer
desperation and ennui beguile their time by a universal
gamble; would exchange their wives like flies; or, like boys,
take to personal combats in the streets for the purpose of
getting some kind of personal inequality at least recognised
among them ; and, like the old Roman populace whose bread
was secure, would in the end turn the cities of the world into
vast amphitheatres for the exhibition of their personal prowess.
Or, if not that, then, like French peasants, they would make
the saving of these shillings their religion; and would thereby
destroy, as ruthlessly as if they were Red Indians, all the
richer amenities of the higher civilised life, living by the
chase or on roots and herbs, or like wandering Arabs, beyond
the reach either of the riches or the poverty of Civilisation.
Mankind, in a word, would run to seed, and revert to its
original wild stock again, as surely as do the highly-cultivated
plants and flowers of the conservatory when left to propagate
themselves promiscuously in an open field. And in the absence
of all that hope of promotion which the existence of gradations
of wealth alone can hold out, to the undistinguished millions of
mankind, men would be left without, resources at forty, when
their physical powers or personal attractions were being super¬
seded by those of younger men; and at fifty would have to be
chloroformed outright to get, them out of the way ! Speaking
broadly, this is no exaggerated fancy picture; for unless human
nature itself is going to change in the meantime by the mere
advent of a Socialistic regime and by a universal equality of
material fortunes, all the analogies of experience confirm it,
and all the deeper analogies of History give it proof. So
important, is it, for States to have at hand some simple common
measure of universal desire, like money, as a basis of inequality
on which the qualities and achievements of their citizens can

76

A CHALLENGE TO SOCIALISM.

range themselves as on a scale in the pursuit of what is called
u success in life.” And as all the basal instincts of men look
to the future . as I have already said, and have the hope of
inequality both as their stimulus and their goal, there can, I
am convinced, be no question that the pursuit of wealth, when
severely restricted in amount, both in its upper and its lower
registers, is by its double action in at once restraining the
unsocial passions and stimulating the active powers of man,
the best soil yet known out of which the higher interests of
the Family and the State can grow. Absolute political equality
may be good, bad, or indifferent for mankind at the present
stage of his evolution; but as for the Socialists, not content
with this merely political equality, but going on the principle
apparently that if a single full dose of arsenic is good, a double
dose must be better, they would, with a want of penetration
which is as infantile as if the world were born but yesterday
and History had nothing to teach them, stick an extra plaster
of economic equality as well on the top of the political one;
and so would poison their patient in the innocence of their
hearts whilst really believing they were giving him an added
strength; forgetting that in thus cutting off such reasonable
inequalities as are necessary to keep the activities of the most
energetic spirits aglow, and, above all, those inequalities of
money incomes by which alone the great masses of mankind
can be roused to exertion, they have cut away the roots of the
tree from which alone the blossom and the fruit—namely, the
Ideal—can spring and grow.

Such would be the effects if the Socialism of Marx and of the
street-corner orators and their followers should succeed in
the vain imagination of trying to make mankind stand ou its
head rather than on its feet; and if the leaders of the Marxian
main body should succeed in imposing what they call Marx’s
“ new system ” of Political Economy on the world.

BOOK II.

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

CHAPTER I.

MR. BENJAMIN KIDD’S PRINCIPLES OF
WESTERN CIVILISATION: 5 *

I PROPOSE in this paper to make a few observations
on Mr. Kidd’s new book. Principles of Western Civilisa¬
tion , with the view of helping those readers who have not made
a special study of the subject to some knowledge of what the
problem of Civilisation as it stands at the present time really
involves, and under what category Mr. Kidd’s book is to be
placed in regard to it.

And perhaps I may as well say frankly at the outset that the
farther I proceeded in the volume the more disappointed I
became with it; and when I found one by one the definite
results so hardly won for historical science by generations of
students and specialists of the different periods, all washed out
by a mop, as it were, in the interests of a particular hypothesis
which the farther I went seemed to me to be ever the more
confused, cloudy, and unreal, my disappointment was complete.
For Mr. Kidd, instead of taking up the problem where his
predecessors had left it, modifying their results while em¬
bracing and embodying all that was of value in them, as is the
recognised mode of all scientific observers, has chosen to stalk
ruthlessly over them all, as if unaware of their existence. No
mention, for example, is anywhere made of the systems of
* Fortnightly Review, April, 190*2.

80

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

Comte, of Hegel, of Buckle, of Guizot, to say no tiling of
lesser lights, and even Mr. Herbert Spencer himself, whose
work, however one-sided it may appear to many, has neverthe¬
less, on that one side at least, proceeded on the strictest lines
of scientific evolution, is only mentioned to be patronised and
dismissed as if he were a mere tyro. And all, as I have said,
in the interests of a hypothesis more cloudy, empty, and unreal
than any l have yet known. For in this work, as I hope to
demonstrate presently, Mr. Kidd, has retrograded to a stand¬
point vaguer, more crude, and, scientifically speaking, less
advanced than any occupied by those earlier philosophers
whose works he so lightly brushes aside.

Comte, it will be remembered, divided the whole course of
Civilisation into three stages, namely, that in which Aggressive
Warfare prevailed, that in which Defensive Warfare prevailed,
and lastly, our present stage of Industry; and these divisions
not only were firm and well defined, but had tangible realities
at the back of each of them. Buckle, on the other hand, split
it up into two divisions, one in which Superstition mainly
prevailed, and the other in which Physical Science played its
part; and this division, too, although ignoring many other
equally important factors,nevertheless rested on tangible realities
whose effects are easily recognised through the course of history,
and on which you can place your hand to-day. But Mr. Kidd
breaks the back of Civilisation quite in two, at the time of the
birth of Christ; not to place the two divisions under the
influence of principles which have a real operative efficiency in
themselves, but under a couple of abstractions which, even if
true, could have no more operative power than if they had
been a triangle and a circle respectively. But they have not
even the definiteness and distinctness of outline of these
geometrical abstractions; on the contrary, they are so vague
and shadowy that they not only give the reader considerable
difficulty at the outset in definitively fixing them, but their
outlines are so changeable, shifting, dark, and uncertain, that

mr. kidd’s “principles of western civilisation.” 81

urnler them the operator, like a magician, can work any hocus-
pocus he pleases. These two vague and shadowy coverlets
Mr. Ividd figures as the spirit of the Present, and the spirit of
huture respectively; or, to put it more precisely, as that some¬
thing which in the one division of Civilisation is represented
as centring men s lives on the aims and interests of the present
houi alone, and that something which in the other is re¬
presented as centring them on an indefinite and shifting future
somewhere or somewlien, now in heaven, now on the earth, and
now in both, as the exigencies of his argument require.

This division of Civilisation into two parts is made by Mr.
Kidd coincident with the dawn of Christianity, all mankind
before that point being represented by him as lying, like the
brutes, under the shadow of the Present, without hope or ideal
in the f uture either for themselves, or for their tribe, their
nation, or their State; all after that point as projecting their
centre of action into an Ideal World yet to be realised. In
other words, all peoples living before that epoch, being born
without the sense of the Ideal or Infinite to cast its rainbow
colours into the Future, lived, like the brutes, only for the
interests of the day that was passing over them; all after it,
possessed of a sense of this Infinite and Ideal, lived and worked
for a something in the Future better than they had in the
Present, but which they individually might not live to see.
Having thus cramped and squeezed the history of mankind so
as to fit it into these two divisions prepared for it—under the
shadow of these two cloud-capped abstractions, these two huge,
immeasurable Brobdignagian hats—and having duly labelled
them respectively the Present and the Future, or that which
has its centre of efficiency in the Present and that which has
its centre in the Future, “projected efficiency,” as it is called,
Mr. Kidd then stands back from the picture as a whole, and
contemplates this wondrous explanation of the evolution of
Civilisation with awe ; and as each feature of it appears to him
more wonderfid than the last, triumphantly exclaims, with

p

82

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

Dominic Sampson, a Prodigious,” kk reinarkal>Ie spectacle,” u the
overshadowing significance of which has never dawned on the

world before” ; while, when he thinks of his poor predecessors,
or of contemporary thought in generai, he talks of ‘“its

intellectual basis being completely struck away/* and as being
k *dwarfed into comparative insignificance * 5 by his new' discover).
Not only so, but nearly every paragraph is heralded with the
remark that it is “ one of the most interesting facts,” or is u one
of the most surprising spectacles*’ that history offers, and the
like, quite in the manner of the medicine-vendors who stand
at the corners of the off-streets of our main thoroughfares
and, pointing with their sticks to the maps of the organs of the
body before them, tell their gaping audiences that this is the
heart, “the most wonderful organ of the body'”; that; the
stomach, u second only in importance to the heart,” while the
listeners, like hoys who are told that certain specimens in a
museum are “ fish ” and others “ reptiles ” or u mammals,” arc?
expected to exclaim “ how wonderful ”; or like children are
expected to be satisfied when told that the cause of baldness
is the loss of hair! For, as we shall sec presently, the two
principles of Civilisation, which appear to Mr. Kidd so wonder¬
ful that their significance has never dawned on the world
before, are really only other names for the phenomena to be
explained, and not real explanations at all. And hence it is
that when these unreal pseudo-causes, the spirit of the Present
and the spirit of the Future, which, like the wand of the
magician, are supposed to work such wonders, although they
are really nothing but the things themselves over which they
are flourished ; when once these have been stripped off, it will
be seen that Mr. lvidd\s hook is not a philosophy of the
evolution of Civilisation, as its title would seem to imply, but
is really only a record of certain stages and phases in that
evolution, in which there is nothing original or that lias not
been published in scores of volumes.

And further, instead of working out the course of historical

MR,. KIDD’S u PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION.” 88

evolution from point to point along its own line, as a biologist
does with animals, and letting it tell its own tale simply and
independently, he projects his two vague and abstract
hypotheses into each division of Civilisation, and picks out, as
we shall see, only those haphazard historical facts which seem
to support his classification, but which, even when they fall
under it, receive no illumination or explanation from it. And
in order to do this he is obliged, as we shall presently see, to
pervert the course of History and to confuse all recognised
landmarks and categories both of language and of thought.
And besides, with the back of Civilisation thus broken in two
in its very centre, as it were, he can furnish us with no single,
continuous, unbroken line of development such as evolution
demands, which shall either illuminate the Past or help us to
steer our course in the Future. For what we want to know is.
not that there are creatures that can be labelled as fish, reptile,
monkey, or man, however interesting this may be, but how the
fish passed into reptiles, how the monkeys became men ; not
that certain nations at certain periods centred their interests
on their own nation in the Present, while others included the
Future in their purview as well, but (inasmuch as Man has to
forge for himself the ideals he uses to advance himself from
stage to stage, as a blacksmith his tools) how at each stage he
made for himself the bridge that carried him across to the
next. This is the great problem of Civilisation, as it is the
problem of Biology ; not the mere breaking up of the process
into divisions, and after labelling these divisions, invoking as
Cannes those labels which are only general names for the
separate tilings which have to be explained.

And why, again, one naturally asks, this surprise of Mr.
Kidd's, expressed in such phrases as “tremendous importance,”
“ extraordinary reach,” “remarkable spectacle,” “ overshadow¬
ing significance,' 1 “ never before has a principle of such reach,”
etc. (and this, too, from a professed evolutionist to whom
gradation and continuity everywhere, without cataclysms,

84

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

should he an axiom of thought): why this surprise that at one
period of Civilisation men found their interest and pride in the
glorification of their particular tribe, or nation, or State alone,
and at another and later period found it in working for the
good of other nations as well—and since the French Revolution,
even for the negroes, the yellow races, and humanity generally—
why this surprise, we ask? Why not as much surprise that
there should ever have been a time when there were savages
and barbarians who did not even know the value of shirt collars,
or that there ever was a time when there were not only no
savages but no apes, no lower mammalia, no birds, no reptiles,
no fish, but only molluscs, worms, sponges, and the like. Why
any surprise at all? They were all stages in the one unbroken
process of evolution.

But now to come more to detail. And first I have to show
that Mr. Kidd’s separation of mankind before and after the
advent of Christianity into two divisions, namely, of those living
in the present hour without ideal of any kind stretching beyond
the Present, either in this world or the next, and those who
had an ideal in the Future which made them dissatisfied with
the present, would be to divide mankind not into men and men,
but into men and brutes, to wipe out, as with a sponge, the
one thing that distinguishes men of every age and time from
the brutes, namely, the sense of the Ideal, and so to pervert
and vitiate the entire course of human history. For consider
it. For forty centuries or more before the birth of Christ the
innumerable myriads of the Egyptian people had, in their
prayers to Osiris, recounted their charities, their deeds of
mercy, the uprightness of their dealings with their neighbours,
and their gifts to the holy priests, the temples, and the gods,
and had given orders for their bodies to be embalmed, all in
the hope of a more glorious future somewhere than they had
known in this world. For seven or eight centuries before
Christianity, not only was the life of every Roman bound up
with the prosperity of his city in the present, but ever as it

ME. KIDD’S '*'* PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION/’ 85

extended he identified himself more and more with its fortunes,
until in the end its continued existence into future ages became
synonymous with. Civilisation itself. So long, indeed, had it
been a kind of universal postulate that when Rome fell the
world should fall, that in the general consternation that ensued
on her capture by Alaric, St. Augustine had to reassure the
Pagan world., whom Mr. Kidd represents as living only for the
clay that was passing over them, by conjuring up before them a
“City of God” within the Empire, which should continue its
glories long after its colossal framework had been broken and
its merely political unity had for ever passed away. For ten
centuries or snore the Jews had believed themselves to be the
people chosen by Jehovah Himself, not only as His own peculiar
people in the present, but as heirs of His future Kingdom; and
had lived in that sweet dream during all their wanderings, their
persecutions, and their exiles, until at last not only the nation
as a whole, but each individual in it, longed and hoped and
prayed for the Coming Messiah, and for that day when all
nations should come up, even from the ends of the earth, to
worship on the Holy hill of Zion. But more than all, the
Hindoos, for centuries before the Israelites appear on the scene,
had looked to the time when, by their asceticism and mortifi¬
cations, their penances, fastings, and prayers, they should be
deemed worthy to unite with that Universal Spirit or Brahrn
which to them was alone real; while Buddha, still before the
time of Christ, had taught his followers how to realise their
dream of escaping from the miseries and sorrows of this life, as
well as from the weary rounds of reincarnation yet to be
traversed, in a Nirvana of everlasting extinction or rest.

Now, each and all of these nations, having souls in them as
well as bodies, lived in some ideal of the future, which they
hoped to realise either in this world or in another; and for Mr.
Kidd to break the Evolution of Civilisation into two antithetical
halves in order to prove the opposite, simply because it was not
specially a Christian Heaven they were looking forward to, is

86

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

to obliterate the very first category on which Evolution
proceeds, namely, that of continuity of essence with infinite
variation and difference in detail; and so to put himself as a
scientific historian quite beyond the pale of serious discussion.
Does he imagine that because the Egyptians looked only to a
future in the under-world or elsewhere, the Romans to the
future of their City or Empire, even when they had to give
their lives for it, the Jews to the future of their race long after
they wore individually forgotten, the Hindoos to a union in the
future with the Divine Spirit, and the Buddhists to a future
of everlasting rest—does he imagine that because Christianity
gave promise of a different future, and carried in its core a
principle of wider expansion than the others (as I have myself
elsewhere abundantly shown), that, therefore, he is justified in
cutting Civilization into two, because he failed to find the
bridge which by natural evolutiom took men across ? To do
this is to revert to the position of those who, before the advent
of scientific biology, imagined that a whale must be a fish because
it swam in the sea, and did not, like other mammals, walk on
all fours and on dry land! For, just as a shark, swimming
along in the natural way, has to turn on its side or back the
more easily to catch its prey, so Civilisation has at times to
turn bottom upwards, as it were, the better to effect its ends;
as when the colossal despotism of Rome, entrenched in Physical
Force and backed by the great and powerful of the world, had
reduced the greater part of mankind to slavery and ignominy,
Christianity had to come in to give the underside of Humanity
the poor, the down-trodden, the oppressed—that chance of
liberty and expansion which was for ever denied them in the
existing world. But all this topsy-turvydom, which to the
superficial eye looks like a cataclysm of Nature, is only one
other of the means by which Civilisation reaches its ends; and
to imagine that it was not the same evolution that effected the
transformation, although by a difference of means, is to imagine
that it was not the same shark that turned over to catch its

MR. KIDD’S u PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION.” 87

prey, but some other fish! Mr. Kidd might as well ask us to
regard it as a breach in evolution because at certain points of
time, for the greater material comfort and convenience of men,
railways replaced coaches, steam-power horse-power, electricity
gas; and to exclaim in wondering surprise, u marvellous
spectacle/ 5 “ profound significance/ 5 “ a principle never seen in
the world before ! 55 He must choose between Evolution and
Cataclysm, each of them in its own way a potent instrument to
conjure with still, but he must not attempt to combine both.

But not only does Mr. Kidd pass his mop over Civilisation
in general, obliterating all its recognised lineaments and land¬
marks, but he does so, too, over nearly every special period on
which he touches. An instance or two may be picked out here
and there as samples of what I mean. Take, for example, his
account of the Gnostic and other heresies of the Early Church.
He represents these heresies as having been extruded from the
Church because they were relapses into that life in the present
which he made distinctive of Paganism, and so would have
closed again that ideal in the future which Christianity had
opened up to men. Now, if there is one thing more than
another which will show you at a glance whether an individual
is living in the present hour and in the satisfaction of his own
natural virtues, or in a future not yet realised, it is the practice
of Asceticism. Wherever that practice prevails, whether
among the Hindoos or Egyptians of ancient times, or the
Gnostics and Monastics of Christian times, you may know
beforehand that men are attempting by it to realise in them¬
selves virtues lying beyond the range of the Present and of
their own natural inclinations ; you may know, in a word, that
in whatever age of the world this practice is to be found, an
ideal of the future, unrealised as yet now and here, has been
opened up to the minds of men—an ideal which Mr. Kidd
confines to the ages of Christianity alone. Indeed, if there
were nothing more than this, it would be sufficient to show the
havoc made in history by the attempt to cramp Civilisation

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

8cS

under two separate antithetical hats, and would stamp Mr. Kidd
as unfitted by his want of penetration to be an historian of
Civilisation. As for the Gnostics, Arians, and other sects,
they were expelled from the Church, not because they were
wrapping themselves up in present indulgences—on the
contrary, with the exception of the Carpocratians, none fell
more deeply the need for redemption or subjected themselves
to more self-denying mortifications to attain it. Or does lie
imagine that men like lertulliaxi and Origen, who did more,
perhaps, than all others beside to make the future of earlv
Christianity, but who were afterwards extruded as heretics
when the full-blown doctrine of the Trinity had been readied,
like fathers devoured by their own children—does lie imagine
that men like these, who died in the very odour of sanctity
looking forward to a blessed resurrection, were living a life in
the present hour, or depending on their own merits and not on
those of Christ for salvation? The thing is too ridiculous for
discussion. And as for the Pelagian heresy, again, had it been
accepted by the Church, it would no more have caused the
members to relapse into the Pagan life of the present, because
it made salvation depend on man s free will rather than on the
giace of God, than it does to-day among Calvinists and
Arminians respecti vely.

But dip into Mr. Kidd’s volume where you will, and you
will find that bis history has been muddled and perverted by
these empty chimeras called Principles, projected retrospectively
into it, and which, as we shall now see, are as practically useless
as they are unreal. But what can you expect; from a writer
who, professing to be an exponent of Evolution, begins by
digging two great pits of the Present and the Future 'respec-
tively, which he figures as antithetical, as light and darkness,
into one or other of which all the facts of history are to S>r*
tin own for interpretation. As weft throw them into their
graves as far as any further use they can be for a Theory of
Ci\ ilisation is concerned. Indeed, were this practice of writing

Mit. KIDD'S “PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION.” 89

histories of Civilisation on a basis of single antithetical
elements to prevail, we might have as many theories of
Civilisation as there are antitheses in Society—theories splitting
Civilisation into periods, in one of which War mainly prevailed.
In the other Peace ; one in which Force, the other Eight; one
Superstition, the other Science; one political and social
Antagonism, the other political and social Co-operation; one
Inequality, the other Equality ; one Despotism and Slavery,
the other Freedom and Industry; mid so on.

And now 1 have to remark that the worst of all these
attempts to split Civilisation into two antithetical halves Is,
that they are of no practical value whatever. For when their
authors have brought their histories down to our own times,
and a,re then asked, u Well, what do you propose we should
now specially dot" what can they answer but to say, we have
a little too much War, let us have a little more Peace; too
much h orce, a little more Eight; too much Hunger, a little
more Bread ; too much Credulity, a little more Knowledge;
t0 ° 31sllc!l Beality, a little more of the Ideal; and the

like--all ot which could with justice have been said at any and
cvesy stage oi Civilisation, and can he heard every day from a.
thousand-tongued Pulpit and, Press, as well as from the man
in the street. But we expect more from a philosopher of
Civilisation. We expect him to tell us how these various and
complex factors of Civilisation are related to each other, and
how they can be combined at any particular point of time so
as to get. what we want, and so to advance Civilisation another
stage. But all that Mr. Kidd can do is, like the rest, to cry
out, Let. us have a little more free play of thought and Indi¬
viduality, a little more Industrial Liberty, and a little more
Religion ; but of how to set about getting it, which would have
been a real test of his insight into Civilisation, not a word.

How, then, the reader may ask. do I suggest Mr. Kidd ought
to have proceeded, in order to have made his work both, a true
am! a useful philosophy of the evolution of Civilisation. He

90

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

should, I submit, have done something like the following : —
He should have represented the whole movement as a single,
continuous, uninterrupted process from beginning to end, and
not broken in two in the centre. He should have made it set
out like a boat from the shore of pure Brute Force and
primitive savagery, and gradually cross the stream, getting
ever nearer the'opposite or Ideal Shore though never reaching
it, or never, indeed, until the Millennium comes. He should
have shown that each point in its course represents the actual
net result of Liberty, Morality, and Social Expansion solidly
realised and won from the primitive barbarism and night,. And

he should have shown that at each point this result was not,
the result of any mere general abstraction like his spirit of
efficiency working in the Present, or “ projected efficiency
with its centre in the Future, but was the net resultant, at,

once of the co-operation and of the opposition, of all the
factors engaged—Religion, Government, Philosophy, Science,
and Material and Social Conditions generally—and instead of
dipping into the current here and there, should have worked
the whole process out continuously from stage to stage. It
would then be seen that just as all the artillery of thunder and

lightning and storm clouds in the heavens are but meant< for
watering the earth and making it fruitful, so all the icligious,
governments, sciences, wars, institutions, and ideals of men
are but means for the gradual increase of individual and ol
social Morality, and for the greater and greater expansion of
the human spirit. This alone is the core of Civilisation, all
else but husk; and the direction taken by this lino in the past,
and the combination of means by which at each point it was
effected, not only will give us the direction in which we must
steer in the future, but will yield us principles and precedents

innumerable on which to draw for hints as to how we are to
combine existing forces to reach the next stage. This would
be a real Philosophy of Civilisation, fruitful in speculation and
useful in practice. But Mr. Kidd’s theory can give us nothing

mr, kidd’s principles of western civilisation.” \)]

of ali tins. It is what an American friend of mine calls a
“one-horse theory ” of Civilisation—that is to say, a theory
where the presence or absence of a single general element is
made to explain each and every stage of progress, namely, the
principle of Projected Efficiency. Now yon can no more get
the explanation of a particular stage of evolution from a single
abstract element, or from that element and its polar opposite,
than you can get an explanation of a particular temperature
from heat or cold in the abstract, or of a progressive increase
of light from light or darkness in general. To get these you
must, have at least some third element to fix and definitisc
them. And so with Civilisation. But Mr. Kidd’s flag of
u Projected Efficiency ” floats gaily alone over the entire period
of Modern Civilisation, ignoring not only Government,
Philosophy, and Material and Social Conditions generally, but
most extraordinary of all, perhaps, the immense influence
(exercised on every aspect of thought and life by the (Jopernican
Astronomy and by Modern Physical Science.

But is there no truth at all in Mr. Kidd’s account of
Civilisation i the reader will ask. Now, to answer this, and to
be quite fair to Mr. Kidd, I will assume for the nonce that his
doctrines arc all quite true, and shall now ask the reader to
consider with me what that truth really amounts to. And
siothiiig, perhaps, will better help to make my meaning clear
than an analogy from Biology. But to definitely fix Mr.
Kidd’s position, let us take the summary of his two principles
of Civilisation. He contends that the principle that presides
over the first division of the break he has made in Civilisation
is one in which the ruling end is being obtained by the sub¬
ordination of the individual to existing society; the principle
that presides over the second is one in which existing society is
subordinated to the society of the future . Now, without
waiting to do more than merely allude to the confusion of
categories by which the individual in the first is contrasted,
not with the individual in the second, but with society —a

92

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

cardinal error in logic—it will be apparent to the reader that
this division corresponds precisely* to the earliest, simplest,
vaguest, and least scientific stage of Biology, namely, that in
which living things were divided into the Vegetable and
Animal Kingdoms respectively ; the vegetables corresponding
to Mr. Kidd's civilisations that lived only in the Present, being-
rooted to their place and unable to move ; the animals, corre¬
sponding to Mr. Kidd’s civilisations that lived in a, wider
Future, being, whether as individuals or as herds, free to roam
over areas distant from those in which they were born, if
this be a true analogy, I submit that just as a more scientific
stage in Biology was reached when the Vegetable Kingdom in
general was divided into the Flowering and the Flowerless
Plants respectively, and the Animal Kingdom into Molluscs,
Fish, Reptiles, Birds, the lower Mammals, and Men, so it
would be an advance on Mr. Kidd when some one of his own
school should subdivide again his first division, namely, of men
living in the Present, into men living for their own Family
alone in the Present; men living for their Tribe alone ; men
living for their State alone ; and, finally, men living for their
Empire alone; and his second division into men living for a
future life in Heaven alone, as among the Early Christians and
the Church and monks of the Middle Ages; men living as
individuals for Heaven alone, but, finding that the earth was
not coming to an end so quickly as they expected, trying to
distil some of the dews of Heaven on to Society below, as up
to the Reformation period; then men living still for a future
in Heaven as individuals, but determined that the will of God
should be done on earth as in Heaven, as in the Reformation
period; then since the French Revolution, men inspired with
a vision of a more glorious future for society on earth, when
freed from the feudal and priestly chains which prevented its
expansion; and, lastly, this idea still further intensified, but
inspired by a different view of how the Infinite works, and
what it requires of us in this world. Now this, it is evident,

MR. KIDD’S 44 PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN CIVILISATION;’ 98

would be a more scientific classification than that of Mr. Kidd,
which jumbles them all together under the two vague divisions,
of those who live for the Present, and those who live for the
Future. But even had he advanced to this classification,
what would it have amounted to? It would only have been
a, record of stages, not a scientific account of their evolution.
For just as Darwin did not begin his account of the evolution
of species until the vegetable and animal world had already
been distributed into their various classes and divisions, so a
true scientific account of the evolution of Civilisation could
not properly begin until long after the stage reached by Mr.
Kidd; not, indeed, until after some future Mr. Kidd had still
further subdivided his two divisions in the way 1 have
indicated above. For just as the biological problem of
evolution is not so much to relegate any special animal to its
class or species, as to find how species pass into eacli other and
by what connecting links, so the problem of Civilisation is not
to point out that this or that people is living in this or that
stage, but how Society got across from one stage to another,
and by what methods it forged the instruments which it used
for the purpose. It would have to show how Gmeco-Roman
Paganism, for example, got across to Christianity by way of
Judaism; how Judaism forged the conception of'Cod which
was used for the purpose ; what changes in its environment
necessitated the change of the Early Church into Catholicism;
Catholicism into Protestantism; and .Protestantism into the
Liberty and Equality of Rousseau. And not only so, but it
would have to show how the strange metaphysical bedfellows
who forged the necessary doctrines for these transitions, and
whom (although they mutually anathematised and made
heretics of each other) Mr. Kidd manages to get to lie down
quietly together under the same coverlet, namely, the doctors
of Early Christianity, Ante-Niccne Christianity, Catholic
Christianity, Reformation Christianity, pout Reformation
Christianity* and so on; how these passed into each other by

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

M

natural evolution,—all this Is the problem of the Involution of
Civilisation for any writer who would be up to date. But no¬
where does Mr. Kidd make any attempt to show how any one
of these things was brought about: he merely records the fact
that so it was, in the same way as if one should record the fact
that in the course of evolution the molluscs gave place to fish,
fish to reptiles, reptiles to birds, birds to mammals, and
mammals to men.

To sum up, then, we may say : (I) That Mr. Kidds book is
not a scientific evolution of Civilisation or of any part of it,
but a mere historical record. (2) That it is not a closely-
written history but a series of generalised sketches picked, out
at certain points. (3) That its explanations are mere labels
attached to its divisions, and these divisions, again, are of the
most primitive scientific character, like the division of Life
into the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms. (4) That to cramp
his facts under these two immeasurable hats of the Present
and the Future he has to pervert history, confound all human
categories, and lump together things most opposite in essential
nature. (5) That he nowhere even starts on the real problem
of Civilisation, namely, of showing koto one stage passed into
the other, and by what means, and out of what materials, Society
forged the tools necessary for these transformations, or how the
great factors of Religion, Government, Philosophy, Science,
and Material and Social Conditions co-operated at each point
to produce them. (6) That he cannot, in consequence, get
any fixed, continous, and definite line of direction of Civilisation,
and so has no line—as that of a mariner’s chart—by which to
steer the course of evolution, either in the present or in the
future. (7) And lastly, that, incredible as it may seem, lu*
nowhere assigns any part in the development of Modem
Civilisation to the results of Astronomical and Physical Science.

And now a word or two as to the general style, tone, and
manner of the book. And here, again, we may say that It
possesses all the characteristics which one would expect in a

mr. kidd’s “principles of western civilisation.” 95

work in which facts and principles have to be clipped, tortured
and coerced, in order to get them to lie down peacefully
together under the two vague and all-embracing abstractions
with which Mr. Kidd seeks to cover them. Tom-toms are
beaten, cannon salvoes are kept booming all along the route, to
lieiald the approach of the new revelation, while he, panting
and breathless in the midst of it all, and in a white intensity
of earnestness, first hypnotises himself with the importance of
lus message and then hypnotises his readers by wrapping it up
m a cloud of words and phrases, windy, confused, and without
real definiteness or point; while in the one particular of sheer
repetition, the world of literature, I will venture to say, has not
its paiallcl, .Like that tailor whom I once saw sitting cross-
le »ged in the grounds of a Canadian asylum, fiddling without
intermission all day long as if engaged in some life-and-death
struggle with his instrument, and who, I was told, began the
morning with the continuous repetition of a single tune, but as
the day wore on added another and yet another to his repertoire,
repeating each of them from the beginning with quickened
intensity of pace until, by nightfall, be had fallen over exhausted,
Mr. Kidd starts out modestly enough with the repetition of
some single phrase, but, keeps adding others and yet others to
it, boarding them all the while and counting them over and
over lest, any coin of them should lie lost, until, when the
middle of the work is reached, the list becomes so long, and the
repetition so tedious, that not only is the narrative blocked at
every turn, but it is with the greatest difficulty that you can
keep your attention until it begins again. One can stand the
house that, .lack built, and the malt that lay in the house that
.lack built, and even the rat that ate the malt that lay in the
house that Jack built, hut when it gets to the cow with the
crumpled horn, tlm maiden all forlorn, the man all tattered and
torn, and the rest, and when you can see it all coming before it
arrives, nothing but the sheer sense of duty to your author can
avail to keep you awake through it all. The very drumming

' " <o

96

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

of the sound and the regular repetition and fall of the same

phrases, and especially of that terrible one “ within the limits
of political consciousness,” drug and hypnotise the senses and
the mind.

The style, again, is that of bald prose, varied and interspersed
with eruptions of hyperbole all along the course of the work to
keep up the reader’s attention ; one or other of such phrases
as “ extraordinary character,” “ deep significance,” “ gigantic
problem,” “ over-mastering conviction,” “ one of the most
remarkable spectacles,” etc., meeting you on nearly every page.
Hut in justice to Mir. Ividd it must be said that, amid all tills,
one comes occasionally on islets of real narrative, scattered like
oases here and there in this desert of verbosity, and especially
in some parts of the sections on the Middle Ages and after.
You catch a hint of their coming from the flourishes with
which they are heralded, and you prick up your ears to listen,
but as a rule your interest will not be at once gratified, for the
chances are that just as you think you have come up to them
you will he whisked on to the house that ,Tack built, again, and
so you must bide your time. But when he has run through all
the variations on this theme, and, forgetting himself for the
moment, gets to his real subject, you have some really excellent
pieces of description, clear, straightforward, and illuminating ;
\ m t these, alas! become fewer and fewer as we proceed, until
towards the end all is lost in the general haze again. The
quality of intellect displayed, if one may venture to judge it
by the way in which the subject is handled in this volume, is
that of a vague discursiveness founded, it is true, on a wide
range of reading, but without real penetration into concrete
things and into the complex combinations of political and social
forces; and so is unavailing for the wants of the present time,
which demand from the philosopher practical constructive
power and grasp; the only effect being to give to those who
have lost all regard for Philosophy another occasion to
blaspheme. Here, for example, is a passage in which Mr.

MR. KTDO’S 64 PRINCIPLES OF WESTERN' CIVILISATION.” 97

Kidd sums up in italics the principle which, among the most
advanced peoples, is to come into operation in the future, and
from it as a specimen it will he apparent how greatly the
patience an<l intelligence of the reader are sometimes tried.

It is only within the great spaces cleared in the world-process around
ideals which are in the last resort the impression of the ethical principles
here enunciated, and which are held open and free in the present by an
irresistible will operating in obedience to a sense of responsibility to a
principle of tolerance transcending the claims of all existing interests,
that the controlling meaning of the economic process can ever be
permanently projected out of the present on the world-stage!

And with this I shall end. I have been severe on Mr. Kidd,
I am aware, and regret sincerely the necessity for it, but at a
time when so many of our best workers cannot even get a
hearing, the over-puffing of laborious mediocrity which has
brought a work like this to the very crest of the wave, is a
scandal which ought to be abated.

CHAPTER II-

MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.*

1 PROPOSE in this paper to make a short commentary and
criticism on Mr. Wells’s A Modern Utopia, that, pleasing
imaginative excursion into the future of politics and society,
presented by him in recent numbers of this luiviKW, and now
re-published in more permanent form as a book. 1 But as my
space is limited I shall be obliged to confine myself' almost
entirely to the claim which he himself makes on its behalf as
a serious contribution to the science of Sociology, both in its
methods and in its subject-matter. Now, although 1 have read
the book with genuine pleasure as an imaginative construction
of the kind with which his other works have familiarised us, I
confess I was somewhat surprised when I gathered from an
article by Mr. Wells that he had intended his work to be taken
much more seriously 5 and especially when 1 ascertained that
its design was not so much to supplement as to actually
supplant, both in its method and its results, the works not
only of the founders of Sociology, but of the entire line of
their legitimate successors down to the present time. The
method of Comte and Herbert Spencer of founding conclusions
as to the future of Society mainly on generalisations of the
ways and means by which it has advanced in the past, he
characterises as a delusion, and declares that the proper and
* Fortnightly Review, Sept. 1905.

(1) A Modern Utopia, by H. G. Wells. (Chapman and Hall, 1905).

Mli, WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

99

distinctive method of Sociology, on the contrary, u its very
backbone,” in short, “Is the creation of Utopias and their
oxi aim istive criticism ” ; and further, that the existing political
and social world is to he measured by the standard" of these
Utopian ideals, and not vice versa. And accordingly we find
that this is precisely what Mi*. Wells has done in his A Modern
ifkrpia. He has given us his personal version of the social
sdeals ol the future, has elaborated his picture, after the
manner of the novelist, witli profuse descriptive details, con¬
versations, didactic dissertations, and the like, all rich and
seemingly life-like in their imaginative setting; and has held
up the whole before us as a model or standard to which not
only existing society hut .Sociology itself, and the past and
present generations of its exponents, are to be brought for
judgment. What, then, we ask, are the particulars of this
Utopia t Roughly, they are the following*:—The whole world
is to be a single htate, with all national boundaries obliterated
or abolished, a synthesis of all the races, tribes, and nations
existing on the earth, all speaking the same language, all like
friends and brothers, at peace with each other—European,
Negro, Mongolian, Semite—and all freely marrying and inter¬
marrying as they choose. He tells us, further, that the political
power of this vast confederacy is to centre in an order of men
called the Samurai, who are to be the only administrators,
■officials, and voters in his World-State, an order closed to mere
wealth, but freely open to all who by their intellect, virtue,
heroism, and self-restraint, are deemed worthy of it. He
full her explains that this World-State is to be the sole land-
owner, as well as the owner of all natural sources of supply
whatever—food, fuel, electricity, wood, water, and the like,—
except what it, delegates to local governments and municipali¬
ties, who hold of it us of a feudal superior, and who let these
•out in turn to individuals to carry out what experiments or
industrial plans they please, in perfect freedom; the State
meanwhile, in the persons of the Samurai, looking on and

100

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

making a ring, as it were, for the best players in this game of
industry and of life, to fight it out in; the winners being
rewarded, not witli wealth mainly (for most of that reverts to
the State), but with positions of dignity and honour. He goes
on to tell us, too, that in his World-State units of physical
energy will be the medium of exchange instead of coin, units
of electrical energy chiefly, in which all accounts will be kept;
and that as employment will naturally flow from place to place
according to where the supply of energy is the cheapest, the
price of this energy will tend to be always uniform, and not to
vary in value as gold and silver do when they are either too
plentiful or too scarce. Again, disputes between employer and
employed are to be referred to conferences between the repre¬
sentatives of each, at which a minimum wage will be fixed,
although individuals will be allowed to make special bargains
for themselves above that rate ; while the State will make
itself the reserve employer, and will undertake to transport the
workmen from one part of the world to another as they are
wanted. As for the criminals, habitual drunkards, and ne’er-
do-weels, they are to be segregated and shipped as exiles to
islands in the outer seas, the State taking the necessary means
to prevent either them or the incompetent and useless citizens
from having children bom to them. On the other hand, as the
bearing of healthy children is a real service to the community,
all married women having children will he kept by the Stale ;
the danger of an excess of population being carefully watched
and guarded against by marriage laws ; while marriage itself
may be terminated by the infidelity of the wife, by drunken¬
ness, crime, desertion, violence, or the failure of children after
three or four years of married life.

Such in rough brief outline is an abstract of the ideas to
which Mr. Wells has given an imaginative setting in his
A Modem Utopia , and which with a wealth of detail, in itself
quite admirable, he has painted in large letters on the walls of
the world, not only for the contemplation of the merely curious,

MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

101

but lor the instruction of statesmen, publicists, and sociologists.
Shoiiid others send in pictures differing from this of Mr. Wells
in this or that particular, whether of form or essence, lie will
nut object; for it is Ms special point that it is in the com¬
parison of these personal Utopias with one another, and of
existing institutions in turn with them, that the true method
of Sociology consists. You choose from the collection the
Utopia you most fancy, as you would a picture from the walls
of the Academy ; and when by a consensus of opinion Society
has agreed on the most excellent, there is nothing to do but to
set to work to realise it in the actual workaday world. But
how, it will be asked! Now, it is in the answer to this
question that the weak, indeed the fatal spot, in Mr. Wells's
Sociology will be found. For it is distinctive of his doctrine
that lie will have nothing to do with the ordinary methods, the
ordinary ways and means of either existing Statesmen or
existing Sociologists. He expressly asserts that all inquiries
concerning the expedients whereby to meet the failings and
imperfections of existing institutions, although of importance
to the politicians, have nothing to do with Sociology. And the
reason lie thinks the consideration of these ways and means is
of little or no value is, that they depend on past experience,
whereas the action of human beings cannot be depended on to
follow any generalisations ol* laws of human nature founded on
the past in the same way in which masses of matter may be
depended on to follow the law of gravitation, or its particles
the laws of chemical affinity. For to do this all men, he
contends, would have to be as alike as two beans or grains of
sand, whereas they are not so. Even two sheep are not exactly
alike, nor, if it comes to that, even two atoms! And as for
human beings, each man or woman is so individual, so unique a
creature, that he or she cannot, he thinks, be generalised,
lumped, or classified under any laws whatever drawn from the
actions of human beings in the past. You never can predict
what the next new man or woman you meet will do; and indeed

102

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

it has been often said that a whole three-volume novel might be
written and yet not exhaust the uniqueness, the individuality,
or the peculiarities of any living child of Adam; Mi. Wells
admits, it is true, that if you could take men “ by the thousand
billion,” you could generalise about than as you do about
atoms; but because the human race is neither as small as a
country parish, nor as innumerable as the sands of the sea, he
does not see how its actions can be generalised! Now, if this
were true, it is evident that the past of human history and
civilisation could be of little use for our guidance in the future.
But one naturally asks, would nothing less than the “ thousand
billion” for which Mr. Wells stipulates he sufficient for a
generalisation on human beings and their actions ? Would not
the mankind of the present day, with its diversity of races and
types, be sufficient, especially when taken with the very exten¬
sive knowledge we already have of the life and times of the
past? Mr. Wells thinks that men are very much like sheep
and other living things in having this individuality and unique¬
ness-only more so. It is true that no two sheep are quite
alike when narrowly inspected, any more than any two men ;
but would not a single Hock of sheep, or, at any rate, the
relation between a few sample flocks, be sufficient to determine
the laws that will regulate the actions of sheep in the future as
in the past? Or would nothing less than a whole world lull
of sheep be sufficient for Mr. Wells? Be this as it may, how¬
ever, it is certain that generalisation from human life ami
experience in the past is not the true method of Sociology with
Mr. Wells. To give his assent to any such doctrine would
have been to bring his Utopia for judgment to the bar ot
History, of Civilisation, of Experience; whereas what he
insists on is, that generalisations from history, civilisation, or
experience arc to be brought for judgment before the bar ot bis
or another’s Utopia. And even if his Utopia were to prove as
glorious and as perfect a creation as the millennial reign of the
saints, how are you going to get men to unite to bring it to

ME. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

108

pass, if each man is so unique a being that you can no more
rely on Ms agreeing with his neighbour in his beliefs and ideals,
than in Ms taste in wines or the pattern of his clothes t But
soft you ! for Mr. Wells has another method still in reserve, a
method that will require no scheme of principles, no generalisa¬
tions drawn from the Past, no constructive scheme of ways and
means founded on evolution, to bridge the transition to Ms
Utopian dream and gradually bring it to pass. It is a method
much more simple, the method namely of the conjurer, the
faith healer, the Hindoo mahatma and fakir. All you have to
do is to hoist your Utopia on high, like the serpent in the
wilderness, and get men to gaze at it until they become
thoroughly hypnotised and possessed by it. This once done,
the rest follows naturally and without any scheme of construc¬
tive policy, or other scientific body of ways and means for
"bridging the intervening stages that have to he travelled before
it is reached. All you have to do is to give the ordex, and the
old world will dislimn, and the fairy Utopia will take form and
substance in its place, arising like a dream out of the mist, or
the love goddess from the foam of the sea.

Now, I grant you that had Mr. Wells formed Ms Utopia, like
Mahomet his Koran, on a special revelation from Heaven; or
had he, like Rousseau, been fortunate enough to catch the ears
of the leaders of public opinion in a time of revolution, as in
France ; or had he been merely the ordinary benevolent despot
with a sword in his hand, there might have been some hope for
Mm and his Utopia; but to protest on the one hand that he is
only a simple, uninspired individual repudiating the help alike
of supernatural agency and the sword, and only appealing to
science and reason, and yet, on the other hand, to repudiate the
methods of science and reason whose very essence is to con¬
struct your future by the light of the Past, even when some¬
thing new is always being added to it—this is to cut away his
own standing ground. Even Rousseau could not get his
Utopia except by the return to a fictitious Past, and by a vast

104

SCO I O LOGY AND POL If TICS.

array (4* ways and means, which only failed because they were
Uwed on a false Sociology. The truth is, the construction of
these model Utopias is as simple and cheap as the construction
of air castles or millenniums, for they consist, precisely of those
combinations of things about which all people are so agreed
that it is not thought necessary to men Hon them. Vde should
all like, for example, to see a reign of peace on earth, with the
sword beaten into a ploughshare, and all men alike, Hindoo and
Hottentot. Chinaman and European, living in amity as friends
and brothers, all speaking the same language, and all obeying
a single code of the purest and highest laws ; we should all
like to see the governing classes of the 'world men of the
highest honour, intelligence, and integrity, like the Samurai
men of plain living and high thinking; we should all like to
see poverty abolished crime banished, happy homes, healthy
offspring, beautiful public architecture, and the triumph every¬
where of artistic mechanical inventions for the comfort and
conveniences of life. But all this needs no preaching and
enforcing. What is wanted is the combinations of ways and
means by which the world is to be conducted to these ideal
.goals of the future—gradually and from stage to stage—coni-
binations of Religion, of Science, of Government, of Material
and Social Conditions, and the like. You may preach peace,
for example, till doomsday, but with no result ; but if you can
only contrive to make the material powers of rival nations so
nearly equal that the results of fighting are too uncertain to be
risked, you will have struck on one of the most powerful per¬
suaders to peace—as even old Thucydides saw. But Mr.
Wells, who begins by ignoring all the ordinary "ways and
means derived from Science, from Evolution, and from the
History of Civilisation, puts himself in the position of the dog-
fancier who aims at a particular shape of head or jaw in his
breed of dogs, while ignoring the scientific laws of breeding by
which it is to be effected; or of the engineer who would
like to span the ocean by a bridge, but ignores the difficulties

MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

105

which attend It; or of the doctor who loves to contemplate the
image of perfect health, but ignores the laws of the organaand
functions by which It is to be reached ; or of the theologian
* who would fix your gaze on Paradise, but without a scheme of
salvation by which it is to be attained. Now, it is the aim of
Sociology to help forward the realisation of Utopias like this
^ of Mr. Wells from stage to stage, by penetration into the
i present world, and the working of Its organised machinery—of
^ religion, government, science, material and social conditions,

O " O 7

and the like—combined with generalisations founded on the
^ ways and means by which mankind has advanced In the Past.
But because, when minutely scrutinised, no two men, as no two
sheep, are exactly alike, but each Is individual and unique,
Mr. Wells has no faith in any such ways and means, and will

(0

have nothing to do with them.

And this brings us flush on the central fallacy In Mr. Wells’s
whole conception, and it is this, that he thinks the uniqueness
and unlikeness of individuals on which he lays so much stress

•*A»

y

[y O

Q

y

0

o

if

Is a problem for the Sociologist, whereas it is really the problem
of the novelist or dramatist. The problem of Sociology deals
entirely with the laws of men in the mass , who can be predicted
not to fly off at a tangent from each other, but to follow their
chosen leaders as surely, if not quite as regularly, as sheep,
whether it be in matters of taste, of fashion, of art, of politics,
or of religion. But are not these leaders themselves to be
regarded as uniques of whose future nothing can be known,
the reader may ask 1 ? As individuals, yes, but as leaders or
representatives of groups or classes, no: otherwise they would
not have been chosen as leaders. For the office of a leader,
that, Indeed, for which he is chosen, is not so much to propose
some new end, ideal, or Utopia (for usually that has already
been agreed upon) as to suggest the best ways and means of
reaching it. So long as he stands alone in the uniqueness or in-
dividuality of his genius, character, or ideals, he is not yet a real,
but only a potential leader. And it is because individual great

1Q6 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

. , .. „ leaders, follow as well as shape the

TstinTtslnd traditions of the masses whom they are privileged
to °mide- and because the instincts and traditions of the
to * ’ follow the o-eneval laws of evolution proper to

TZZZw that a science of Sociology, basing itself on

l™ from the evolution oi n.ank.nfl toe

P ButoftaMv' Wells’s contention tlmt the pr«.c»t eciencoof
Sociology anil its exponents ate to he In-ought before the » r
ef Utoti like hi, own, or those of Konsscu on, the re.t, tor
consideration or approval, instead of his and their Utop.as
beino- brought before the bar of Sociology—'the timg is
absurd as if he were to ask the present exponents of the sconce
of Biology to stand cap-in-hand before the ancient creators of
the mermaids, centaurs, and other fabulous creatures of the

imagination, and do homage to them.

But it is only when we trace the component, parts of hm
Utopian World-State to their origin, that the mimeasura.» e
complacency involved in this claim of his to bring all existing
Sociology and Sociologists before it tor judgment becomes
apparent. For it will be found that all those pays o »s
scheme which arc not merely modified versions o current
social aspirations and dreams, have been culled from the works
of those very Economists and Sociology whom he affect,, ..
ignore; while at the same time he is careful to kick away the
ladder by whose aid he reached his. conclusions. His su.gle
World-State, for example, with its reign of univeisa peace an*
human brotherhood, is a part of the current social ..leal;
although his mixing up of all races and flours m a
promiscuity of marriage is decidedly new. lhat lus . or -
State, again, should be the sole owner of the laud and .instru¬
ments of production is a commonplace of modern bocialism;
and is defended by Socialists, be it remembered, not as the
Utopia of some individual genius, thrown off at a happy
venture, bat as the next stage in the normal evolution of

MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

107

Industry, founded on its evolution in the past . That the World-
State exists for the free play, elevation, and expansion of
individual minds, and should form a ring around them for that
purpose; and that the causal and initiating factor in all progress
(if not the controlling factor) is to be found in the new ideals
of Truth , Beauty , and Right , inaugurated by great men like the
elect of Mr. Wells’s Samurai, is to be found in my Civilisation
and Progress , published twenty years ago. That the general
wealth, expressed by units of recognisable value, should take
the place of coin as a measure of value, has often been
broached, and was propounded to me in detailed form more
than a decade ago by Mr. Perdicaris, the late captive of Raisidi
the bandit of Morocco; and a similar idea, placed on a mathe¬
matical basis of ideal units, is to be found in Mr. Kitson’s book
on the Money Problem , dating from Mr. Bryan’s candidature
for the American Presidency. As for Mr. Wells's miscel¬
laneous proposals, as, for example, the restraints on population
by marriage laws; the dissolution of marriage itself for
drunkenness, crime, violence, or the failure to have children ;
the establishment of State bureaus for the employment of out-
of-works, and for distributing and transporting labour from the
points where it is congested to those where it is wanted ;
disputes between employers and employed referred to con¬
ferences between the representatives of each; the restriction of
voting power to those who can show they have earned the
privilege by character and ability ; the segregation of criminals,
and the like—all these have been so worked into the very
texture of current sociological literature in books, magazine
articles, and contributions to the Press, that it would be
invidious to attempt to assign them to any particular authors.

And this brings us to Mr. Wells’s most important claim on
behalf of his Utopia, which is that whereas all former Utopias,
like those of Plato, More, Harrington, Rousseau, and the rest,
were fixed and rigid arrangements cut out of the moving-
progressive world, and protected by walls, or by the seclusion

108

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

of mountain glens and the like, complete in themselves, and
exempt from all progress, change, or decay, liis Utopia, on the
contrary, is a progressive one, changing and evolving with the
vears, and with the changing material and scientific conditions
of the world; that, in short, it is a dynamical self-evolving
construction lie has o-iven us, and not a stereotyped, immobile,
and statical one.

Now, if this were tine, it is evident that Mr. Wells would
have given ns the body of principles on which this evolution
would proceed, as Comte, for example, did when he based his
conception of the future of Western Europe (which Mr. Wells,
be it remembered, thinks is Comte's great contribution to
Sociology) on generalisations drawn from the evolution of
Society in the past, but adapted to new conditions. But this,
as we have seen, is precisely what Mr. Wells has refused to do,
on the ground that it is not the proper method of Sociology,
for the reasons we have seen.

The truth is, this Utopia of Mr. Wells is a purely personal
imagination of its author, founded, like any other millennial
dream, on what he personally would like to see realised; its
details culled, like an artistic bouquet, from existing sociology,
political economy, and politics, but with no scheme of operative
causes by which it is to be realised, except that new men in the
future will have new ideas as they have always had in the
past; and that these new ideas will fight each other until the
strongest prevail, the Samurai guarding the ring, and seeing
fair play done ; a proposition as true but as barren as that so
long as human beings are born alive they will be found
kicking, and that so long as they continue to live they will
continue to do or to think of something new! As for his
Utopia being one with a principle of evolution in it, and not
rigid and fixed like those of his predecessors,—had he em¬
bodied Ms ideas in an abstract discourse, they would have
been seen to be as immovable and fixed as the statues of the
gods around the walls of a pantheon, but by draping his figures,

MR, WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

109

after the manner of the novelist, in appropriate costume, he
would lead us to believe, skilful conjurer that he is, that his
Utopia is realty alive and moving, with all the possibilities of
evolution and progress in it. We see the intellectual, high-
minded, and grave Samurai moving calmly about in their
white cloaks with purple borders, like old Roman senators;
the women dressed after the manner of a the Italian ladies of
the fifteenth century,’ 1 in soft coloured stuffs, their hair plaited
or coiled, but without hats or bonnets, and without changes of
fashion. We see the men, too, talking and acting as in life in
their hours of relaxation, drinking (but in strict temperance)
the soft and kindly Burgundy with their lunch, or “ the
tawny port three or four times, or it may be five, a year when
the walnuts come round, 51 not without good mellow whiskey in
moderation, “ nor upon occasion the engaging various liqueur” ;
the line, however, being stringently drawn at ginger-ale and
lemonade, and those terrible mineral waters which only fill a
man with wind and self-righteousness ” ! But we are not to
be deceived by this show of life and colour, for having
discarded all the methods, laws, and principles of evolution, we
know beforehand that when once his puppets are placed in
position they will be as much fixed and rooted there in their
ultimate destiny as are the draped waxwork figures in the
showrooms of Madame Tussaud ; the only principle of move¬
ment or change in all the scheme being this :—that new men
will have new ideas, and do new things, and so the world will
wag as of yore.

One might pursue the matter further from other points of
view, but the above, perhaps, will be sufficient for the purpose.
I cannot, however, close this paper without entering a protest,
in the interests of Sociology, at the tone which Mr. Wells has
chosen to adopt towards the work of the Sociological Society in
general, and of the past and present exponents of Sociology in
particular. One would have thought that common decency
and modesty would have restrained him from speaking of the

no

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

work of Comte and Herbert Spencer as that of a couple of
- pseudo-scientific interlopers”; of characterising Spencer’s
work as “an accumulation of desiccated anthropological
anecdotes that still figures importantly in current sociological
work” : and of Comte’s great law of the Three Stages as “ a
smart saying passing muster when men talked mctapyhaics
and history and nonsense after dinner.” After these amenities
one can have little doubt as to the kind of treatment that will
be meted out to the more recent exponents of science. And
accordingly we find Mr. Francis Gabon’s careful and im¬
portant contributions to Sociology dismissed with a sneer;
those of Dr. VVestermarck as “entertaining anthropological
o-osaip,” while Dr. Steinmetz finds himself “ in the position ot
Mr. Karl Baedeker scheming a tour through chaos. Mr. Kidd,
too, comes iu for his share of reprobation, and coupled with
his* name is my own, to which, however, 1 should not have
referred were it not that I am prepared to offer Mr. Wells a
challenge. After a passing contemptuous reference in general
terms to our works, Mr. Kidd and I are definitely told that
n0 one will ever build on these writers,” that “ new men
must begin again on the vacant site,’ and that “ the search for
an arrangement or method continues as though they were not.”
Now, Mr. Kidd may well be left to speak for himself, and the
followers of both Comte and Spencer are sufficiently able and
numerous to defend themselves or their masters from these
aspersions; what I have now to say concerns my own position
only. The reader may remember that in an appendix to his
Modem Utopia Mr. Wells has added a chapter entitled the
“ Scepticism of the Instrument, a paper read originally before
the Oxford Philosophical Society, and that in this paper he
claims to have discovered a new way of focussing the intel¬
lectual instrument for the purposes of knowledge. I have not
space to go into the matter here, but if priority of publication
in matters intellectual gives a claim to precedence in the rights
of property in ideas, I may be permitted to remind him that

MR. WELLS AS A SOCIOLOGIST.

Ill

the substance of the positions he has taken up is to be found
in my first essay, a God or Force ? ” written more than a
quarter of a century ago, and in iny essay on u Herbert
Spencer 55 a year or two later, and both republished in my
Religion of the Future . But the challenge I wish to make
Mr. Wells is in reference to his A Modern Utopia , and it is
this:—Barring the drapery that is proper to the novelist, let
him put his finger on any single sociological idea or principle
of the first rank in its range and scope in his book, or synthesis
of ideas or principles, whether in reference to the Samurai, to
the economics of Utopia, the relation of the sexes in Utopia,
the treatment of the vicious and of the failures, the restraint
on population, or, indeed, on any other division of the great
sociological problem (with the exception, perhaps, of the
mixture of races in unfettered marriage promiscuity) that is
not to be found in the works of one or other of the acknow¬
ledged Sociologists and Economists, and published years in
advance of his own book, and 1, for one, will willingly concede
his claim to have advanced by his work, A Modern Utopia , the
science of Sociology, but not till then. If he shall succeed in
doing this, we can then return afresh to the discussion of his
main contention, which is, that the proper and distinctive
method of Sociology, and, indeed, its very backbone, is “ the
creation of Utopias and their exhaustive criticism. 55

Since the above article was written, a work of great scope and compass
on the subject of Civilisation and Sociology has appeared from the pen of
Herr Houston Chamberlain, entitled, “The Foundations of the XXXth
Century.” It has only recently been translated into English, but I have
thought it right to mention it here, for the purpose merely of emphasizing
the fact that, whatever its other merits may be, and to me they are great and
various, it still remains largely academical in character; and however true,
both in detail and in the large, its doctrines may be, there is little or nothing
in them that can be utilized for purposes of Practical Politics;—and this for
the simple reason that, like the pious aspirations of Mr. Kidd, or the
gorgeous Utopia of Mr. Wells, they tell us only of what Civilization has to
aim at, but not of how we are to realize that aim, The book, in short, is a
brilliant and laboured demonstration of the obvious fact that the best races
of mankind, like the best breeds of animals, will win in the struggle for
existence ; and that it is to the best and purest of these races that the future

112

SOCIOLOGT AND POLITICS.

* ^ , n nfided But the question ot how you are to breed
o£ Civilization must oe ^°™ttea. • £ • Herr Chamberlain no answer;

these races, or others better sUU . should kee p the best of the existing

and all he has to suggest is tha heir e3cistil £ standard of purity ; and

races free from admixture>, and^1 the £old M alien and mongrel

after weeding out and at * re Providence, or Fate. He gives us, it

elements, leave the^ result ; * ^ ins and summa ries of the merits and
is true, excellent ?“ al y tl< ' a irf Tews Chinese, Hindoos, Germans, Anglo-
defects of the existingA ^ints <mt clearly the mental and moral elements
Saxons, and the rest ’XppHvX stron« or weak, whether as regards their
in which they are_respec,tiv“y r* Cu lture ; but he seems to have forgotten
Science, their Civilizatioii, 01 th . ^ and one ap pii oa ble to Practical

that Sociology, if it is to be a U n ° e ntory and catalogue of the mental
Politics, must be more * h ™ V-ison £ the relative values of these races;
attributes of races. ^ °w as in the breeding of animals, out of a mongrel
and must teaoh us, say, ^’fon -as the Romans out of a small tribe made
race we can make a great nat . • otserved , is a question rather of how

a great Empire And tins, it .a to be obserm , 1 through their system

we are to handle th ®X'c" mberla“n^would have it, of operating directly on
of beliefs , than, as Hen Chamber Human nature being in essence

the race itself by exclusions “ “f^frXessi" therefore, a problem not of
identical everywhere, Crul° but of the system of belief*-- religions,

the race to which an mdividu.il ^ indoc trinated, as is seen in

scientific, and political, “Pjananese to Western ideas;—and this requires
the recent conversion of Uie Jagantbe ^vernment, and Material and Social

a knowledge ot bow Hehgio , \ otber definite laws ; so that when

Conditions generally are rel Civilization becomes a stumbling block

any one or more of these factois ot O ™ points to plant

to farther advance we ifc Is a quest! m

our leverage, the bettei to iea - individuals through their knowledge

ultimately of standardizm & - tand ^ r ai/ing their bodies merely, through

»•»■*•,»*• - • *—*»

of the laws of Sociology, not of ^f ce h ^ 0 S h as a wllole ail d in detail, has

X venture to sav without stimulus, instruction, and profit.

CHAPTER III.

A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM.*

"HROADLY speaking, Sociology may he defined as the
Science of General Civilisation, or of civilisation in general,
and before it can have a definite status of its own, and the
specialisms that fall under it can be worked with advantage, its
function in relation to these specialisms must be clearly deter¬
mined. In my judgment, Sociology performs a double function
in reference to these specialisms, at once a controlling and a
receptive function—a controlling function, inasmuch as it is to
it that we must look for the general laws and principles which
are to guide the specialisms in arranging and distributing the
material with which they severally deal; a receptive function,
inasmuch as it must be continually perfecting these laws in
their application to detail by the reports of fresh facts that
are being constantly sent up to it by these specialisms. Its
function may be compared to that of the brain, which, while
controlling and co-ordinating the action of the different organs
of the body, is in turn affected by them; or to the central
government of a country, which, while guiding and controlling
the action of the various provinces and municipalities, is in
turn modified in its action by them. In other words, while
Sociology is distinct from the specialisms, it is not separable
from them, while in and among them, as it were, it is not of
* Sociological Papers, 1904.

H

SOCIfOLOGY AND POLITICS.

114

them. For its laws, although mingling in all the work of
these specialisms, are not drawn from the specialisms, hut, on.
the contrary, have to be introduced into them as a seminal
principle before they can become fruitful and effective. And
it is here that 1 differ from Professor Durkheim, who appears
to think that the laws of Sociology are to he got only by
generalisations from the specialisms, for whose reports in con¬
sequence they have to wait, as we have to wait for the milk
before we can skim off the cream. 1. contend, on the contrary,
that just as the laws of Psychology, although bound up with
physiological processes, and in their action affected by them,
require a separate method for their discovery, viz., that of
introspection; so Sociology, although not to he separated from
the specialisms dealing with human evolution, draws its laws
from other quarters, viz., from psychological, penetration, from
insight into the world of to-day, and the relation of its institutions
to the human mind. For example, the effect of Slaveiy on the
mind and character of both master and slave is to he determined
by direct penetration and insight into the condition of slavery
as it exists around us. Once discovered, it can be reduced to
a, definite law which will hold good for any time or place in
the world’s history, and so belongs to Sociology as a science ;
hut whether, and to what extent, at any given time or place
slavery would work beneficially or the reverse in comparison
with alternative organisations of society is a question of the
collateral conditions, and must wait for its solution until the
reports of the specialisms dealing with the details of the
country or period in question are sent in. While, therefore,
I a«ree with Professor Durkheim that Sociology must keep in

O'"

touch with all the facts disinterred by the historical special¬
isms—Ethics, Psychology, Politics, Political Economy, Anthro¬
pology, Folklore, Social Statistics, etc.; while I also agree that
these specialisms have now found the right road on their own
account— viz., the method of history, comparative study, and
evolution, as distinct from the old theological or metaphysical

A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM.

115

methods, I disagree with him in Ms belief that Sociology has to
wait for the specialisms to come up, and then to extract its
laws from them by skimming them oft’ as generalisations. On
the contrary, 1 hold that the laws of Sociology have to be
determined in the first instance quite apart from tile historical
specialisms, viz., by general insight and penetration into social
life around us— by philosophical speculation, in a word,—and
then projected into the specialisms; the entire process being
first the discovery of the laws in a crude general way, then
these laws to be carried with us as a lamp wherewith to ran¬
sack and illuminate the garret of the specialisms; the new
facts discovered forming an ever increasing aureole of lesser
laws surrounding the major ones, and giving a more delicate,
scientific shading to their original bareness and crudity,—and
so on.

And this leads us to ask, What are the elements which
these Laws of Sociology when discovered are supposed to
connect and weave into a unity i The answer is, certain
great general factors which are common to every age and
condition of the world, and which, like the x, y, and z's of
algebra, resume them and sum them up—such as Religion,
Government, Philosophy, Science, Physical Conditions, Ma¬
terial and Social Conditions, and the like. And the first
problem of Sociology is to determine what these are, both in
number and character—neither lumping together those that
have a separate sphere of operation nor separating those that
can be handled as one. (I may say in passing that I have
myself been in the habit of using all of those just mentioned.)
When these factors are determined, we then have to find the
laws of their connexion and how they act and interact on each
other; and this, as I have said, cannot be got arithmetically,
as it were, by generalisations from the concrete facts supplied
by the specialisms, but only by direct penetration arid psycho¬
logical insight —as in a calculus, where certain abstract factors
have to be determined as functions of others, varying directly

lit)

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

or indirectly with them, and united with them by certain laws.
11 then, we ask how Sociology stands at the present time in
reference to all this, we may say that there are some half-a-
dozen competing systems in the field which differ from each
other either in the number of factors with which they operate,
the way in which these factors are connected, or in both ; but
as to which, if any, of these is the true system has scarcely
yet been debated much less settled. Buckle, for example,
operates with two factors, viz., Physical Science and Physical
Geography, or practically with one only, Physical Science;
making* the progress not only of knowledge but of Civilisation
in general depend entirely on this, and wiping out at a stroke
Religion, Government, Philosophy and Literature, as mere
obstructions; lumping them all together in a kind of outer
darkness, as in a picture by Rembrandt, with no determined
relations at all beyond the merely negative one of doing more
harm than good! Carlyle, too, selects a single factor as all-
important, viz., the - moral force of individuals , of heroes and
great men , degrading all the other factors of Philosophy, of
Science, and the organised machinery of Religion and Govern¬
ment. as well as the Material and Social Conditions of men
and nations, into better or worse appendages merely; and
leaving their positive functions a mere blank, without attempt
at scientific determination or co-ordination. Hegel, again, in
his u Philosophy of History,” also settles on one factor as all-
important, in his case that of philosophical concepts or categories;
figuring all the other factors as being dragged along in the
train of these by a chain of logical necessity, as if they were a
kind of baggage; as if men could act in this world from no
motives but philosophical conceptions alone. These three
sociologists may be called the specialists of principles , in the
same way that the ordinary specialists are specialists of facts;
and fall, therefore, under Professor Durkheim’s censure of those
who would interpret all social phenomena in terms of one
specialism; as of Political Economy, or of the religious'

A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM.

117

interpretation of history, or what not. Comte, on the other
hand, deals with nearly all the factors 1 have mentioned, but
while he draws, in my judgment, the true law of relationship
between Religion and Physical Science, he fails, I think ~
owing to his confusing ot concomitants with causes, and putting
causes for effects—to give proper weight to the Material and
Social Conditions of men and nations, or else he leaves their
lelationships confused. But this is, of course, only an opinion
of my own, on which I have no right to dogmatise, and is a
pioper subject for the discussion of a sociological society.
And now for Herbert Spencer—what shall we say of his work?
His position is somewhat peculiar; and here I am obliged
again to differ from Professor Durkheim, who seems to think
that Spencer by positing the differentiation of social types
helped to rectify the general conceptions of the Corntist soci¬
ology. In my judgment, on the contrary, Spencer has done
nothing whatever towards establishing a science of Sociology
in the true sense of the term, as we have above defined it.
t or if we consider it, the single law of Sociology under which
lie worked was that of Evolution in general; and as that is
common alike to the organisation of the planets and stars and
the growth from the egg* of the chick, it is too general for
human purposes. The fact that societies in their progress
through the ages, like everything else, split and differentiate,
passing from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous condition, and
integrating while they differentiate, is rather a statement of
facts, and a careful sorting of them under the general law of
evolution, than a compend of laws connecting the definite
social factors of religion, government, science, material and
social conditions, etc. However true, therefore, it may be, it
cannot fulfil the function of a Science of Sociology, whereby
one or more elements or factors of a society being* given, others
may be in a measure anticipated or predicted—the only true
test of a science. What Spencer really accomplished was
rather excellent pieces of special work, such as, for example,

118

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

Ids tracing of the different stages passed through in the
evolution of the conception of (xod, or the gods, and of
morality, among savage and civilised races; but all this,
original and suggestive as it was, like everything else of his,
formed rather the material on which a science of Sociology
could operate, than any part of the science itself.

The above were among the main attempts that had been
made to establish a science of Sociology when 1 first entered
on the study of it, some quarter of a century ago. Of my
own small contribution to the subject it would be unbecoming
in me to say anything, but I may, perhaps, be permitted to
express my entire agreement with Mir. Branford in what he
states to be the task imposed on the sociologist at the outset.
He lays it down that the sociologist must (1) construct a
reasoned account of the existing phase of that interaction of
the sciences and of the arts which we call contemporary
civilisation, (2) that he must reconstruct the corresponding
phases which historically have preceded and developed the
contemporary phase, and (3) that he must work out ideals of
more ordered development for the future. Now, these, if I
may venture to say so, are precisely the problems which 1 have
myself attempted to work out—the first in my u Civilisation
and Progress,” the second in the first volume of my u History
of Intellectual Development,” to be continued in the second
volume, and the third in the third volume of that work.

And if, in conclusion, I may be permitted to say a word in
reference to the tasks that lie before a young Sociological
Society, it would be this : that just as when 'Darwin announced
his law of Evolution, botanists, geologists, paleontologists, and
zoologists with one accord laid down for awhile their hammers
and scalpels, their microscopes and lenses, to take part in the
fray, until it was once for all settled whether the law of
Natural Selection and its corollaries was the law under which
they were in future to work; so before the specialisms
connected with the Evolution of Man and Isis Civilisation can

A SOCIOLOGICAL SYMPOSIUM.

119

become fruitful and effective, they must pause for a time and
give themselves up to determining under what system of Soci¬
ology they are to work—whether under one or another of those
1 have mentioned, or under none of them, but under some
other more true and complete which has yet to see the light.
Until this is done, the specialisms of History, Psychology,
Ethics, Religion, Political Economy, etc., must one and all
continue to wander in the dark, wasting much of their time,
and laboriously losing their way.

I

CHAPTER IV.

RAGE, COLOUR, AND CEEEDA

A PREDICTION.

IN tiiis article I desire to raise for the consideration of the
reader a single political issue, but one which I believe to
be of the very greatest political importance at the present time,
in view of possible forthcoming contingencies, inasmuch as the
opposition of principles involved in it has barely as yet
reached the threshold of serious political discussion.

It bears on tilings so apparently wide apart as the new
Constitution for Turkey on the one hand, and the nc^ro riots
iii America on the other, but may be summed up in the one
general question, viz., as to the amount of weight to be attached
to all attempts (for whatever reason) to mix antagonistic races ,
colours , creeds, and codes of social morality on the same area of
political soil.

The general opinion of the world, as we know, is that these
mixtures may be safely permitted, provided always that the
Government in power will see to it that strict justice is done
alike to all the races and creeds concerned, without fear or
favour. This was the general opinion in America before the
war, when she freed the slaves and gave them all the le<ral
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RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED.

121

rights and privileges of citizens; but the experiment, it is now
generally admitted, has, with the best intentions, been a failure.

President .Roosevelt, it is true, still clings to the belief with
a noble and disinterested tenacity, and when he entered on the
Presidency was determined that it should have yet another
trial, but he got no further, it will be remembered, than the
tentative experiment of inviting the high-minded and intelli¬
gent negro, Mr. Booker Washington, to his dinner table.
Even this harmless courtesy raised such a din and outcry both
in the North and South as almost to drown the voice of Justice
herself; and I doubt not that had he proceeded further in the
way of definite political action on behalf of the negroes, the
lynchings would have gone on in even greater numbers than
before. And yet his is still the opinion of most of the high-
minded people in the world to-day—with the exception, perhaps,
of our Colonists, by whom the question is debated largely on
grounds special and peculiar to themselves.

Now, what I venture to affirm on the contrary is, that of all
the political curses which can befall a nation, this mixing of
inherently antagonistic races, colours, creeds, and codes of
morality, is the one which, when once it has been allowed (it
matters not for what reason), is of all political complications
the most irremediable by any and every known instrument for
the uplifting of mankind—whether by the exhortations of the
Pulpit or Press, by Legislation, by the Good Will of all con¬
cerned, or even (if the races are any way evenly matched) by
Physical Force itself, short of a war of extermination—as,
Indeed, the negro problem in America, the Jewish problem on
the Continent, the mixture of races and creeds in Austria-
Hungary, in the Balkans, in Ireland, and in India, bear only too
eloquent and despairing witness.

And the reason is as simple as it is deep and universal, and
may be put in a nutshell—namely, that the pure white of
Justice, which is believed to be the remedy for all political evils,
will be stained and degraded by the impure colours of the mix-

m

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

tures into which it has to plunge and dye its hand, long before
these mixtures will admit of justice being applied to them; and,
further, that the higher moral code of nations, instead of being
raised by the attempt to apply it, will, during the progress of
the experiment, become more and more degraded, until it
descends, with its lynchings and homicides in its train, to the
level of barbarism again. My contention, in other words, is
that the application of pure justice to these mixtures can never
set a foothold at all, but will be blocked at every turn from the
start; and that to imagine or expect otherwise is of all delusions
and utopias the most hopeless—besides being fraught with the
most terrible consequences to the posterity of any and every
nation that embarks on it.

And now for the application of this principle to the new
Constitution for Turkey. The world in general, as was natural,

was lost in amazement when it learnt that the Turk, of all
persons, had suddenly taken to embracing and falling, weeping
for joy, on the necks of the Christians at the prospect of the
new era of liberty, fraternity, and equality that was opened up
before them—and no wonder. But the curious fact is that the
world is waiting in an attitude of hope and expectancy, and
with quite an open mind, in regard to it; as if, perchance, it
were an even balance of probabilities whether the experiment
might not be a success and work out all right after all.

Now, I confess I have personally no hesitation whatever in
predicting the result, and it is precisely because the matter is
in this embryonic weeping and embracing stage that I am
venturing to record my opinion, with the view of testing the
principle before time and the event shall have decided the
matter for us. What I propose, then, is personally to take all
chances and odds on the issue, without any reservations what¬
ever—whether the Constitution proves to be a good or a bad
one, whether it gets fair play or not, whether the Sultan proves
recreant or not, or whether justice is done to all the races and
creeds concerned or not—and to predict unhesitatingly that,

RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED.

123

when once the Constitution is fully framed, it will not have
settled down to practical political business for a year before
either the mixed races or the mixed creeds, or both together,
will be at each other’s throats again, literally or metaphorically,
as before, indeed, I should as soon think of standing; waiting;
and wondering and hesitating as to whether oil and water
would really amalgamate if 1 shook them up until they formed
for the moment a homogeneous mixture, as I should in the case
of this new Constitution for Turkey.

Now, should I prove wrong in this forecast, 1 will gladly
admit that my studies of Civilisation will have proved them¬
selves false and useless, and will all have to be thrown into the
melting-pot again. Should I prove right, on the contrary, it
may be permitted to indulge the hope that, as the past admix¬
tures of races cannot now be reversed, the nations (with an
object-lesson like this experiment of Turkey before them) will
never again hear the very mention of any suggestion for the
mixing of antagonistic races, colours, or creeds, on their own
soils, without a shudder; as knowing well that until the
Millennium comes, there is no political complication which will
more surely act as a direct incentive to murder, anarchy, and
every form of moral degradation, than these unblest and thrice-
accursed unions. The whole scheme of Nature goes dead
against them, and all history is strewn with the ruins of the
nations that have either knowingly encouraged, or unwillingly
have been forced to submit to them.

It may be interesting, therefore, to indicate briefly what I
believe to be the fallacies, both in the minds of Statesmen and
of the public in general, which cause them to attach so little
importance (say 10 per cent.) to the mixing of the races> and so
much (say 90 per cent.) to the economic advantages of the
importation of their cheap labour; as distinct from the 90 per
cent, which I venture to think should be attached to the
dangers of the importation, and only 10 per cent, to all other
considerations whatever, economic, political, or philanthropic.

124

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

The first lies in the fact that the attempt to do it runs

athwart the entire genius and scheme of Nature, whose aim
everywhere is to keep the different varieties of the same species
of animals apart 3 and not to run them together. It is true that
animals of every kind—mammals, birds, reptiles, insects, etc.—
can co-exist on the same area of soil, and find their living and
well-being there, with just so much balance kept between their
numbers as the f wild justice 5 of Nature permits. But this, it
is to be observed, never holds between varieties of the same
species of animals, of which the different races of mankind are
only another example; for then there is nothing for it but a
f fight to the finish,’ until one or other of these varieties is
exterminated or driven from the field. A Government might
just as well say, “ Go to ! we must try and rectify the injustice
and inequality of Nature whereby a single bull in a herd of a
particular breed is permitted to drive out all its poorer and
weaker rivals of other breeds equally good, by allowing to each
and all of them indifferently within the same enclosed field an
equal number of cows,” as to attempt to realize a civic and
social justice and equality among a motley admixture of human
races of different colours, traditions, and codes of morality, on
the same area of soil. It can only be done by keeping these
races apart in their respective countries; precisely as justice, or
equality, to all the bulls can only be done by keeping them with
their equal contingent of cows in separate fields. Otherwise,
what will be the result ? Why this (and it is the pathos of
the whole situation), that the very end for which all good men
are striving, namely, to do justice and mercy to all poor human
souls of whatever race, or colour, or creed, will be damned by
the very means which are being taken to effect it. For, as the
mixture of negroes and whites in America bears witness, instead
of getting that high ideal of justice which is the flower of
civilization, you will get—what? Lynching, or a return to
that lowest form of justice which is proper to barbarism; and
so the work of the ages will all have to be done over again from

I* ACE, COLOOK, AND CREED.

125

the bottom upwards. 'The mere presence of alien races and
colours in sufficient numbers on tlic same area is enough to
work its damning effects even without intermarriage, the
vote, or social promiscuity. For just as the pigeon,-fanciers
tell us that you can spoil a particular strain by keeping* other
breeds alongside of it, even when there is no inter mixture in
the mating; so all we should have to do in England, for
example, would be, as I said in another article, to admit a
sufficient number of Kaffirs into the country to do menial or
unskilled labour, and a sufficient number of Chinese or Japa¬
nese to do the more refined and skilled forms, when it could
safely be predicted that, within a generation, hardly a self-
respecting* Englishman, short of starvation, would be found to
do a stroke of menial labour for love oi* money—as was seen in
the Southern States of America before the war, and as we see,
in a way, in the South Africa of to-day. And if respect for
honest labour is recognised by all as an indispensable prelim¬
inary to social justice and equality, and to the best well-being
of States, would not this be a fine stultification of our end by
the very means with which we are seeking to effect it?

The root-fallacy of it all lies, as I have had so often to
repeat, in not perceiving that Justice is not an unlimited bank
credit which can be brought down from Heaven and drawn on
like divine grace to its full amount at any time, but is in each
and every age of the world, and as a matter of actual concrete
fact, strictly limited by the material and social conditions of
the time; as on a chess-board, where the prospects of the game
are determined at each point by the relative positions of
the pieces on the board, and not by the mere goodwill of
the players; so that if you have whites, negroes, Chinese,
Malioiximedans, and Hindoos confronting one another in the
street, and spitting in each other’s faces as they pass, the
amount of social justice that either gods or men can get out of
such a relationship will quickly be discovered to differ toto
<mlo from what can be got without effort or strife from the

126

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

simple relations of fellow-citizens of the same blood, colour,
religion, and code of social morality on the same area of
political soil And just as the properties of a chemical com¬
pound, whether of prussic acid or our ordinary food, will
depend on how you arrange, by bringing together or keeping
apart, the same chemical elements common to both; so the
character and quality of the justice and the social morality you
can get out of men will depend on whether you mix the
different races, or keep them apart, on the same areas of soil.

And after all, with the history of the world behind us, what
is the point of this determined, and in the end accursed
attempt at mixing these different races on the same areas ?
The age of colossal mushroom empires made up of every
variety of admixture of races and colours went out with the
Roman rule; and from that time to this, the evolution of
Civilization has made steadily in the direction of separating out
men of the same race, colour, social and moral codes, and in
consolidating them and keeping them apart as separate
nationalities. Why, then, this anxiety to introduce the old
complications again? We are not now living in the time
when it was necessary to import Flemish weavers and
Huguenot artisans to teach us new arts and crafts; all this
can now be done by the simple process of sending our own
men abroad to learn them; and as to the importation of
sweated alien tailors and the refuse of continental Europe into
the very capital of our empire—the thing is monstrous. I
scarcely ever take up my morning paper without expecting to
hear of the beginnings of an outbreak between the inhabi¬
tants of the East End of London and the aliens who are being
permitted to swarm in and drive them from their homes. If,
then, statesmanship consists not so much in knowing that each
separate factor of a political complication has this or that
tendency, good or bad (for this all men know in a way), but
in knowing on which of the complex factors at any given time
the weight and emphasis are be laid; then, if, as l contend,

RACE, COLOUR, AND CREED.

127

90 per cent, of weight is to be attached to the necessity of
preventing the admixture of races on the same areas, and only
10 per cent, to all other benefits whatsoever—political, philan¬
thropic, economic,—the attempt to reverse this order of im¬
portance, as is done practically by Statesmen everywhere at the
present time (there is a rumour that even Grermauv is thinking

*' O

of importing Asiatics), will be, in my judgment, to try and
.make the pyramids of the nations stand and march on their

apices, and with nothing but disaster and ruin in the wind_

either the danger of colossal wars at any moment, or the
degradation of the morals of men to those of barbarism—and
however great and creditable this may be to the heart of the
world, it would be a disgrace to its intelligence; the moral of
it all being, for Statesmen especially, to beware of abstract
political pre-supposition# and formula *, unless they are rooted
and grounded in History and in the Evolution of Civilization.

II.

In returning to this important question of the mixing of
antagonistic races, colours, and creeds on the same area of
political soil, I am glad to take this opportunity of replying to
one or two of the many correspondents who have been good
enough to favour me with their criticisms.

^ W. M. ” in The Daily Mail did not definitely deny my
position, but, flinging Herbert Spencer at my head, asked me
to beware lest I should have omitted some factor which will
make all the difference in the result, and so quite falsify my
prediction in reference to Turkey.

in reply I would beg to remind him that Spencer, whose life
was spent, among other things, in preaching the doctrine that
so long as you let each and every species of animal mixture—
fish, flesh, fowl, or man—hang like the proverbial herring
resolutely “by its own head ” and carve out its own destiny for
itself without fear or favour, you will find that you will have
eternal justice on your side at last; even Spencer, I say, when

128

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

asked semi-officially by the Japanese whether in Inis opinion it

was wise for them to allow foreigners to come into their conn-
try to mix freely as citizens with themselves, was obliged to
answer: “By all the gods, no, if you wish to meet with the
least resistance, not the greatest, in following out your own
appointed destiny.”

Indeed, in all these instances Nature herself givers us tne
cue; for not only do different species when crossed lead to
sterility, but different oarieties of the same species when
sufficiently divergent are prevented from interbreeding by a
sexual or physiological selection which bars their inclination to
unite; and to this the natural aversion from intermarriage of
races so distinct as Negroes, Mongols, lied Indians, and Euro¬
peans is a sufficient parallel

And this leads me to the objection of my next critic, who
asks me triumphantly whether the admixture of our own ances¬
tors — Romans, Saxons, 'Danes, Normans, and (Jells— has not
been a success! Of course; but then these peoples all belong
to the same Indo-European stock, and, as we see, freely inter¬
marry when not barred by the definite injunctions and penalties
of antagonistic religious creeds. The admixture was a pure
good for the race, especially the admixture of Celt and Saxon
—than which nothing could have been more felicitous. Nature
herself has sanctioned and blessed them; just as she has done
concerning that custom in savage tribes descended from the
same original stock, whereby marriage outside the bounds of
their own particular tribe, is not only encouraged but enforced.

But, if my critic asks me, even here, whether our admixture
of Celts and Saxons and Danes made for human happiness
while it was “ shaking down ” and being consolidated, I would
point him to the massacres, the burnings, and the extermina¬
tions of race by race at the time of the Heptarchy and after
the Norman Conquest, as well as to the centuries of bloody
wars needed to bring Scotland, and even gallant little Wales,
into the peaceful political union of the present day. Besides,

KACE, COLOUR, AND CREED.

129

these were the ages of warfare, as necessary in their time for
evolution and the progress of civilisation as our present age of
relative peace—as the consolidations of the Babylonian,
Assyrian, Grteco-Macedonian and Roman Empires have given
proof.. And it must be remembered that these consolidations
were imposed on the conglomerate of races by pure physical
force, and not, as in the proposed Constitution of Turkey, by

sentiment, goodwill, and, of all things, representative institu-

tions!

.The truth is, we have now entered on a new era in World
History, and one essentially of peace, but still with certain out¬
standing possibilities of war at disputed points studded round
its circumference—possibilities the results of difficulties at
once so trivial, imaginary, and unreal, that if men were only
decently reasonable creatures, they could be solved by a Hague
Conference to-morrow. And yet, when we remember that men
are still three-fourths animal, these difficulties are at the same
time so real to this brute creature, Man, that no mere soft-soap
lathei of humanitarian sentimentalism whitewashed over them

as * n t ^ ie case °f the Turks weeping on the necks of
Christians—will avail to touch them one jot.

But it is precisely this belief in a new era of peace and good
will for the world which has made all these separate races and
colours and creeds of mankind long each for a political home
of its own wherein to set up for itself, as private households do.
And, indeed, were these nations pure and unmixed, I believe
that it might be done to-morrow, but where they are inextric¬
ably mixed and confounded, and in antagonisms as deep as
those of Turkey, they will, I fear, have to sit by the waters of
Babylon and weep and long for many a weary day before their
ideals are realised. Even for a tolerable existence together, as
in the case of ill-assorted marriage unions under the existing
laws, there are in my judgment only four alternatives open to
them, and these all bad, or difficult, or obnoxious.

In the first place, they must either be kept down by physical

I

130

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

force exerted over them by one or other of the races that have
succeeded in gaining the mastery over the rest; or by pressure
exerted over them from the outside , as in the various proposed
conferences of European Powers.

The second alternative is that wholesale religious conversion
should take place on a great scale, as in the Roman Empire,
where Greeks, Orientals, and Western Barbarians—Pagans,
Druids, Sun - worshippers, Serpent - worshippers, Nature-
worshippers, etc.—were all alike swept into the Christian net;
and especially where whole tribes and nations of them were
converted in batches in a day by a nod from their respective
chieftains or kings, as in England, France, and Germany; but
all alike, while the process of conversion was going on, held
together in an enforced peace by the physical force of the
dominant power as before.

But the third and most important point of all is, whether
these races, when they have once been given their freedom
under a constitutional Government, will intermarry or not. If
they will, then there are abundant reasons for hoping that they
will peacefully amalgamate. If they will not, there is not
merely no hope for them, but the mere fact that they have now
got a constitutional Government where each race can make
such political and social arrangements for itself as seem good
to it, will inflame their innate antagonisms and animosities ten¬
fold more than when they were kept clown. And with what
result ? This, that they will again begin fighting until one or
other of the races obtains the mastery, and holds the rest down
by force; and then again we shall see the same old weary round
of despotism, persecution, and massacre, as before.

But this matter of the willingness or not of antagonistic
races to intermarry, when not prevented by religion or the laws
of the state is, besides, in cases of difficulty, one of the best
touchstones as to whether fhe particular races are essentially
too w T ide apart for Nature to sanction them or not. If the
repulsion is too great, as between whites and negroes and

SAGE, COLOUR, AND CREED.

131

Mongols, it is a sign, like the aversion of the very young from
marriage with the old, that the deep instincts of Nature are of
greater validity than the mere temporary expediences of limited
human reason, and cannot be neglected with impunity.

The fourth and Lust condition which may at least help in the
direction of amalgamating mixed races on the same political
soil is, that each should be kept as far as possible separate and
to itself on its own particular area—as the Catholic French
Canadians are in Canada, the Saxon Protestants and Catholic
Celts in Ireland, and, to a certain extent, the Germans, the
Magyars, and Slavs in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and so
on. But even in these instances the great difficulty in keep-
nig the peace between them is so well known as to need no
comment of mine. And now that in this age of peaceful
constitutional Governments each people, like the violet in the
clefts of Alpine snows striving to raise its tender petals to the
light, is seeking to become free, the difficulty of keeping even
closely allied races together in a political union can nowhere be
better seen than in the recent instance of Norway and Sweden.
Here are a couple of peoples as alike in race, colour, creed,
and codes of morality as Siamese twins, and yet from some
shadow of imagined slight of one by the other—the one being
democratic in sentiment, the other aristocratic—they have
agreed to separate, and to set up private political establishments
of their own!

If this can be done in the green tree what can we expect
in the dry, where, as in the Turkey of to-day, the antagonisms
of race, colour, and creed are at once so colossal, so deep-rooted,
so all-pervading, and so inflamed by centuries of despotism
and persecution ?

CHAPTER Y.

A NOTE ON RACE DEGENERATION."

A S regards the problem of Race Degeneration, I may admit
at once that in Great Britain the race, if not essentially
degenerating, is at least not as sound as it ought to be with
the knowledge at our disposal—and that owing to our neglect
to apply the known laws of disease, and especially those aspects
of it which are concerned with heredity. And by this I would
imply that disease and racial degeneration are primarily not
biological in character, but sociological ; arc not inherent in the
race as such, but have been bred in it ad hoc , as it were, from
day to day by this neglect to apply the most admittedly elemen¬
tary knowledge of disease. Indeed, had race degeneration been
mainly biological, that is to say, due to Nature herself (instead
of to sociological causes—the work of Man), she would have
made short work of these degenerates as they arose—(he
idiotic, the insane, the paralytic, the syphilitic, the rickety,
and the rest—and would not now have had to confront this
knee-deep accumulation, but, as in the case of other animals,
would have wiped them off as they arose by the mere struggle
for existence. But from the time that Man took the reins
into his own hands, one might have known beforehand that
these heaps would gradually accumulate as residual deposits
at each stage of the world’s progress, from the natural
operation of two principal causes—one the imperfect, and to

*The. New Aye, 1011

A NOTE ON RACE DEGENERATION.

133

that extent false, science of the past in physiology and biology,
as regards the human body ; the other, the bad Sociology of
the present, especially in its larger principles and their bearings
on religion, morals, social duty, government, etc. But as I
have already said that the biology and medical science of the
present clay, as distinguished from that of former generations,
is quite sufficient to deal with race degeneration if it were only
applied, it follows that the fault must be laid at the door of
the existing sociology; the different impasses it has created
for itself being found at certain well-defined points. The
more important of these, in my judgment, arc as follows :

The first is, that the conflicting Principles, Presuppositions,
and Doctrines, of the reigning schools, creeds, and parties,
whether in religion, morals, or government, so block each other
through their antagonisms, that they leave the Practical States¬
men no common ground of generally accepted principle on
which they can take action.

The second difficulty is, that even if the leaders of these
various sides of sociological opinion were sufficiently agreed,
still they must wait until the great gregarious human herd,
who are always a generation or two behind the most advanced
of their leaders, have come up into line. And the reason they
cannot line up sooner in readiness for action (either by them¬
selves or by the statesmen on their behalf) is that it is the
function of the herd themselves to work each new advance in
religion, morals, and government, made by their leaders, into
the very warp and woof of the entire social organism, before
they can go on to the next advance ; and all this has to wait
“ on dilatory time.” This difficulty we may call almost a
necessity of Nature, but it is not so with our third, which
might be removed to-morrow.

This is the absence everywhere—whether in primary,
secondary, or university Schools—of the kind of Education for
the young that would help to break up this stagnation of the
general herd, and keep it more closely lined up and in touch

134

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

with its leaders—instead of lagging a generation or two behind.
To do this, the Sociological Specialisms themselves must not
remain broken, divided, and conflicting, as at present, owing to
each taking its own special and narrow point of view as the basis
for its conclusions, but must themselves line up under some
single, large, and all-embracing generalisation, precisely as all
the divisions of the biological sciences are now doing under the
general Law of Evolution. But where are such central principles
to be found in Sociology, the reader may ask 1 In the First
Principles of the evolution of Civilisation itself as a whole.
This ought to be the Bible of the Nations; and to its principles
and precepts all the lesser specialisms which work under it
ought to keep time, measure, and proportion; each checking
itself by the first principles of the others, and all by the first
principles and laws of civilisation itself.

Instead of this, each of its component parts has started up
in turn, and tried to jump into the chair of authority, with the
view of making its own special principle supreme. There is,
for example, the specially Religious and Humanitarian point of
view, which, if you would allow it, would mix your antagonistic
races, creeds, and colours, on the same area of soil, with as
much unconcern as if they were ingredients in a pudding; in
the fond imagination that by sprinkling the phrase “ religious
equality ” over them, as if it were a species of holy water, all
these antagonistic elements would vanish, or lie down peace¬
fully together! Then, again, there is the purely Ethical point of
view of civilisation, which would deny the teachings of history,
or shut them out altogether, rather than admit that abstract
millennial justice cannot be brought down from the clouds and
applied now and here to every circumstance and condition of
life; and this owing to the curious illusion that Justice, because
it is an ideal, must also be something that can be stuck in its
entirety, like a stamp, one and indivisible, on every situation
of life as it arises, and between every class and condition of
men, instead of growing out of the existing relations of men ,

A NOTE ON RACE DEGENERATION.

135

so that only so much ideal justice can be absorbed and realised
as the existing conditions and environment will permit.

But to return to our problem of Bace Degeneration and its
causes, we must now ask whether there is not, as there ought
to be, some single prevalent sociological or political doctrine
into which all these various rills of error and false sociology
have run and culminated %

There is, and it will be found to be that most baneful of all
the products of a false Sociology, viz., the doctrine of laissez-
faire —a doctrine which since the inauguration of the industrial
revolution in England by machinery and steam power, and the
French Revolution by the doctrinaire sociology of Rousseau,
has been erected into the first principle of practical sociology,
and applied successively to each and every department of
political and social life. It was a negative principle from, the
beginning, and could in itself, if continued long enough, lead
to nothing but anarchy everywhere; but fortunately England,
who for at least two generations was infected by it, is at last
beginning: to discover that she must now shake herself free
from it on pain of social, political, and economic death. For
this doctrine of go-as-you-please without central control from
either gods or men (beyond that of each man’s immediate
neighbours, or the parish constable) has no justification or
backing in the wide range of Nature, or in the government of
men up to this hour; each race of animals being controlled and
kept up to the mark either by the strongest leaders inside the
race, or by the hostile races that prey on it from without.
Now, it is to this false and negative doctrine of laissez-faire ,
which has usurped the place that should have been occupied
by some great positive Central and Controlling Principle of
Sociology, that is due the race degeneracy of the present day—
that dense and compacted heap which has accumulated from
decade to decade, and against which as remedy all private and
philanthropic spadework is but a scratching of the surface
merely. I have already said that it is not the scientific know-

136

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICS.

ledge of disease, or of the causes and treatment of degeneracy,
which has been wanting in all this, but the recognition of the
duty of the State to apply that knowledge. And yet, if we
consider it well, it would be at once apparent that if each
Parish or Municipality throughout the kingdom had been armed
with central authority to keep its own border clean (as each
householder used to do, in the case of the snow in front of his
house), the present accumulation of race degenerates would
have been prevented, or reduced to manageable proportions, as
they arose. Not that the State should undertake the entire
control of the will of individuals, but only that it should lay
down those great general principles of social control within
which, as in a game of cards, the free initiative of individuals
must confine itself. This is not State Socialism, but State
Regulation— quite a different thing.

Our remedies, then, must be :—(l) A Sociological Bible which
will supply the first principles under which the several depart¬
ments and specialisms in the body politic must work. (2) A
system of Education under which the rank and file will be kept
close in line with their leaders and officers in these specialisms.
(3) A Central Executive Authority working under these, as the
barbarian kings did under the mediaeval Church, who will see
to it that no laissez-faire in connection with race degeneration,
or anything else, shall be permitted to exist in any department
of the State or of social life.

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

CHAPTER L

FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND ?

A Plea for Reconsideration.*

J AM glad to embrace the opportunity of offering a few
remarks in favour of a reversal, or, at any rate, a sus¬
pension of judgment on the great question now beginning to
raise its head again among us, and causing uneasiness in many
minds, namely, that of Free Trade or Protection for England
in a possibly near future. I do not mean by this that I am
preparing an attack on the old arguments in favour of Free
Trade ; on the contrary, I hold those arguments, when regard is
had to the historical conditions out of which they arose, as final
and unanswerable. What I propose rather is to go a step
farther than has yet been attempted by economists, and to map
out in sharp and definite outlines the general conditions which
determine whether any given country is better suited to a
policy of Free Trade or Protection ; to remove the tangle of
illusion by which these determining conditions have been over¬
laid and obscured; and to restate the problem in its bearings
on England when once all the new factors have been taken into
consideration.

And here, at the outset, I may perhaps be permitted to say,
that in pleading for a reconsideration of the question, I do so,

* Fortnightly Review , March, 1902.—The article reopening, as it did, what
was supposed to be a closed controversy, was, with the succeeding articles,
the first attempt made to place the old and at that time exploded doctrine of
Protection on a fresh theoretical basis, prior to Mr. Chamberlain’s taking of
the matter up in the Autumn of 1901

140

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

not so much In the Interests of abstract political science as of
what is of much more importance at the present time, namely,
of immediate and urgent national necessity. In this I am not
expressing merely my own changed opinion, drawn from my
studies of historical evolution, but the feeling as well of some
of the more clear-sighted of the younger economists, of many
public men of both parties in politics, as well as of a large
number of thoughtful and penetrating minds of all shades of
opinion who have not yet found for their thought adequate
public expression.

But before proceeding to my main argument, the first illusion
I would point out is that the expediency and validity of the
policy of Free Trade never really rested, as is imagined,
on the abstract economic arguments by which it was supported,
either by the Economists or the Practical Politicians who
carried it, but rather on certain industrial conditions which did
not appear in the argument, and which, although unavowed,
lent to that argument all that it had of weight and cogency;
and, further, that it is only so long as these Industrial con¬
ditions last that the arguments can retain their validity.

What then, in a word, are the industrial conditions which
can be used as a rule or principle in determining whether a
given country is better adapted to a Free Trade rather than a
Protectionist policy, and vice-versa? Leaving mixed and
intermediate conditions out of account, for the sake of clearness
and simplicity, we may say, speaking broadly, that there are
two that favour Free Trade, and two that favour Protection;
and if our reasoning should prove sound, it is evident that
when the statist!cans shall have told us to which of these
England belongs, or is likely soon to belong, the question will
have been solved for us.

Now, the first condition of a Free Trade policy is that the
country in question should possess some single natural advan¬
tage or combination of advantages natural or acquired , which
shall give that nation an industrial advantage over the rest of

FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND? 141

the world in the production of important articles of world¬
wide demand—whether it be silver or gold mines ; exceptional
commercial situations, as the position of Corinth on the
Isthmus in the ancient world, or of Florence, Venice, and
Genoa in the Italy of the Middle Ages, and before better
trade routes were discovered ; the shipping and carrying trade
of Holland before the Navigation Acts of England killed it;
the cotton-growing soil of the Southern States of America ; the
sugar-growing climate and soil of the West Indies before the
manufacture of sugar from beetroot; the corn-growing facilities
of Russia; or the coal and iron mines close together of
England; and the like. Such conditions of industrial pre¬
eminence, when present in any nation where the extent of the
industiy is capable of employing a large part of the population,
and where the demand of the outside world for the produce is
effective and enduring, make a Free Trade policy for that
nation scientifically demonstrable : and there all the old arsu-
meats for Free Trade retain their validity unimpaired.

The second condition which makes a policy of Free Trade
expedient is just the opposite, namely, where a country is so
poor in natural resources that it has and can have no industrial
pre-eminence in anything; and so, not being in the running at
all, a policy of Protection to enable it to produce what it wants
for itself would only be a waste of time and human labour.
All this, perhaps, needs only to be stated to be admitted; it is
when we come to the conditions justifying a policy of Protec¬
tion that disputes are likely to arise, and we shall have to pro¬
ceed more cautiously. What, then, in my opinion, are these
conditions ? They also are two, speaking broadly.

The first industrial condition justifying Protection is where
countries of great natural advantages and of a high intellectual
and political outlook, come late into the field of industry, so
that, like some infant Zeus or Hercules, they have to be guarded
and protected with sedulous care until they arrive at indus¬
trial manhood. Under the name of a infant industries,” such

142

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

countries have always been admitted, although grudgingly,
by men like Stuart Mill and the more open-minded of the old
Economists and Free Traders, to be justified in adopting some
form or measure of Protection, as in the case of America and
the colonies. At that time England, it is to be observed, with
her great firms freely competing against each other, was
believed to have attained the acme of industrial development;
but -what we have now to point out is that until these industries
have been brought to that high stage of concentration and unity
which is seen in the mammoth Trusts of America, they cannot
be said to have reached their full development in utilising our
natural advantages in the cheapening of production, and so
quite logically and truly cannot be said to be yet full-grown;
and so, by the admission of Mill and the old Economists, if they
are to attain to that point, must still fall, in a way, under that
category of infant industry which may under certain circum¬
stances favour some form or degree of Protection. But this,
too, will probably be admitted without further dispute; and
we may now pass to the second set of industrial conditions
which, as I am now to show, appear to me to demand a most
rigid system of Protection. Unfortunately, it is just one of
these conditions with which England is threatened in the near
future; and it is in order that we may be prepared, that this
discussion, in my judgment, claims precedence over all others
at the present time, so numerous are the pitfalls and illusions
with which it is strewn.

The condition I refer to is that of a country once industrially
supreme , and still as rich as ever in natural resources, but
which has been effectually beaten in the race by an enterprising
rival, by however small a margin , provided that margin is likely
to be enduring; and this it is admitted is the condition with
which we are threatened by our trade rivals, America and
Germany. Now, it is assumed by the Free Traders that even
in the event of the loss of our supremacy in those industries
which have made the country great, still the nations are all

1.48

DREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND?

such common sharers in the industrial wealth of the world that
oui" loss would only be in j>eoport ion to the largeness of our
stake; just as In business, losses or gains are divided in pro-
portion to the shares in the partnership of the persons
concerned. This is the first illusion. The second is that even
if we were beaten in the industrial race, it would still be as
sn rich better for ns to keep our ports freely open for the
entrance of foreign goods as it would be for a rower (even if
he had lost some of his original power) to still feather his oar.

Now, all this is most plausible, but, as we shall now see, most
false; and if acted on would mean ruin, speedy and complete.
Where, then, are the fallacies? They lie in imagining that
what is rigl.it, natural and expedient to do before an industrial
defeat, must be so after it; whereas it is precisely the opposite.
Instead of our losses being, as among partners, only in
proportion to our stake, the true analogy Is that of a fight
between rival bulls or stags In a herd, with the rest looking on,
■where the victor takes not his proportion according* to his
strength, but the entire herd ; or like the race for the Derby,
where the horse that is only half-a-neck ahead takes the -whole
stake ; or better still, perhaps (to bring out the difference
between before and after an Industrial defeat), like the
provinces of the Koman world after Pharsalia. Before the
battle, Pornpey and Caesar divided almost equally these
provinces between them, but after it, although it was won only
by a happy thought, Pornpey lost all and was ruined, while
Cffisar, gathering up the entire spoil, stalked off with, it, and
put the imperial diadem of the world in his pocket.

Now, how does this specially operate in the case of an
Industrial defeat such as we have in view? It does so by a
double action, as it were. In the first place, to a nation once
thoroughly and decisively beaten by however small a margin
In a commercial sense, no one will come to buy ; not its success-
ful rival, because it can buy cheaper at home ; not the outlying
nations, because they can buy cheaper from the conqueror;

144

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

not even the defeated nation itself, because its people, too, can
buy cheaper from their successful competitor than at home.
The consequence is, that except to bring in such trifles as
fruits, spices, tobaccos, cheap wines, knick-knacks, and other
such things, foreign to the great main industrial issue, the
ships of the nations will no longer crowd and jostle each other
in the ports of the defeated nation as before, but will sail past
her to swell the triumph of her conqueror. On the other hand,
and by the wind of the same stroke, no one within the nation
will continue any longer to manufacture those products which
gave it its former supremacy, simply because, with no guarantee
against the return of the conqueror, no one will consent to
produce. Mills and workshops will stand stock-still or fall to
ruin, not by a slow and lingering decline, but as if a bolt had
struck them. As well expect a Turkish or Moorish peasant to
do more than scratch his fertile soil with a stick, when some
Pasha can swoop down on him as he passes along and
commandeer the fruits of his industry with impunity.

It is not that the mills cannot go on, but that they will not;
and the reason is, that in the present stage of industrial
development there is for the individual producer no national or
collective guarantee, as there is for the protection of property,
but each producer has to take his own risks. And the effect
of this is the same as if the Bank of England were suddenly
to suspend payment ivithout the Government at its back.
Possessed of that guarantee, the commercial world, with here
and there a failure, would go on much as before; but without
it, not a market or an industry would stir, although all the
world should raise its eyebrows in mild surprise, and ask what
has the Bank of England to do with the running or not of the
mills of Lancashire. For industry at the present day is so
bound up with a subtle, all-pervasive, and interconnected system
of credit, that, when that is widely and rudely shaken, each
man is as suspicious of his neighbour’s solvency as a number of
people at a masked ball are of each other’s personality. Now,

.FREE TRADE OR PROTECT EON FOR ENGLAND? 14 ;")

precisely the same effect would be produced on our industries
if we were suddenly struck by a successful rival in our markets
at home and abroad—and that, as I have said, because industry
in its present stage lias no collective or national guarantee.
And if no single individual will produce without guarantee,
then the nation which is made up of these individuals will not
do so either j and if not, with mills standing idle, England
would fall as far in a single decade as Florence, Venice, and
Genoa of the Middle Ages did in a century. For it is to be
observed that it is not now as it was in the days when these
States lost their Eastern trade through the opening of better
trade routes, or Holland her shipping through the English
Navigation Acts, where, in the difficulty of starting new
industries outside the beaten track of custom and routine,
intending rivals had to have a very great natural advantage
over the nations formerly enjoying the supremacy, and required
a long time before they could reduce them to ruin. On the
contrary when, as at the present time, whole industrial armies
can be transported, fed, and planted down with all the
machinery and appliances of production to their hand, at any
point in the wide world in a night, as it were; and when the
smallest margin of differential advantage in production of one
nation over another can be seen in the morning papers, or read
off the tape from hour to hour in the great central exchanges
of the world—in such a state of the industrial world, a nation,
if beaten, might easily lapse into a third-rate power in a single
generation.

In what, then, do I expect a strict Protection to help us, it
will be asked'? Simply by giving that national guarantee of
which I spoke, and which would ensure that what is produced
by us, if sold at all, would be sold at a remunerative price.
But if the foreigner will not buy from us because lie can buy
cheaper elsewhere, will not our trade be greatly contracted ?
Certainly, our foreign trade, for you cannot both lose your
industrial supremacy and keep it. It is not a choice between

146

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

first and second best—that will have been settled by our defeat.
It is rather a choice between a good second-best with
Protection, or ruination, speedy and complete, with a continu¬
ance of Free Trade. But although we should lose our foreign
markets, we should still have a population of between thirty
and forty millions, with capital abundant, and machinery and
workmen equipped and at hand; and more than all, with a
fertile soil that, as Krapotkin has conclusively shown (it came
as a revelation to me), could if necessary be made to support
many times the population we have now; and with all these
advantages there would be the same difference between
stagnation and ruin with Free Trade on the one hand, and a
good, if second-class, industrial status with Protection on the
other, as there would be between a field which, although of
excellent quality of soil in itself, is altogether abandoned
because a better can be found for our purposes, and the same
field which, if it had to support a family, could be made to
yield, by a little more labour it is true, an abundance of fruit.

But why not participate in the prosperity of the conqueror,
throwing aside our private griefs and losses, and let the country
lie idle, with its mills closed down, its workmen out of work,
farmers throwing up their farms, the country districts deserted,
in the knowledge that the outlying world is benefited by our
defeat ? asks the cosmopolitan Free Trader; even if, like Irish
peasants, there is nothing for us to do but to squat on our little
potato patches, and plant and hoe enough of them to keep
each his own family. For, consider it well, that is what we
should come to if we were soundly beaten by America or
Germany in our manufacturing industries; and if Russia could
su Pply us with com, and other countries with cattle, cheaper
than we could produce them here. We should be reduced, it
is evident, to the status quo ante —to the condition, that is to
say, of England before the factory system of the last century
gave us our manufacturing supremacy—in the same way as
Holland has been reduced to what she was before her mercantile

FREE TRADE OR PROTECTION FOR ENGLAND?

147

supremacy began ; and Spain before her time of prosperity
troiii her mines. For our supremacy never at any time
depended on Greek art, nor yet on 44 the fantastic carving of
cherubs’ heads on cherry-stones ”— not on the ingenuity and
inventiveness of the Americans, the science of the Germans as
applied to Industry, nor the encouragement given to intellect
either in general or particular, as in other countries; but on
simple gross masses, which happen to lie close together, of
coal and iron; and when we have been beaten in these, we
have been beaten in all; and shall have naught left with which
to face the future save pluck and grit, energy and honesty
alone—great and important as these are.

Why not emigrate 1 , then, with these to our conquerors ?
We slmli do so when the time comes that country is nothing,
patriotism nothing, a common home nothing, pride of race and
ancient prestige nothing, family ties nothing; and when it is
indidemit whether we are ruled by an American or German
sitting in London, or by one of ourselves—but not till then.
And certainly not for an economic fetish, which, although a
beneficent deity to nations living under industrial conditions
to which it is suited, as it has so long been to us, would prove
a demon and a curse when these conditions have passed away.

In the above argument I have assumed, for the nonce, that
we are likely to become a defeated industrial nation in the near
future ; and have laid on the colours rather strongly for the
purpose of bringing out more sharply the principles that in my
judgment ought to guide us in the solution of this great question
of Free Trade or Protection, And with this my part in the
discussion ceases; and the problem must now be handed over
to the specialists and experts in the various branches of industry,
to tell us to what extent the statistics of probability will
justify us or not in our fears.

But while this is pending, and in order that we may be pre¬
pared for the worst, l shall, in my next article, still assume, for
the purposes of argument, that we are a beaten nation, and taking

148

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

advantage of the revelations of Krapotkin as to possibilities of
land culture, and of the new economic truths on the relation
between Production and Consumption established by Hobson
and others of the new school of Economists, as well as of the
facts so carefully collected and collated by Macrosty on the
subject of Industrial Trusts, shall indicate a few of the means
by which, without recourse to Protection, we could raise our
industrial efficiency to the highest point compatible with our
natural advantages. But still assuming that, in the judgment
of the statisticians of industry, these, too, will prove inadequate
for the maintenance of our industrial supremacy, I shall go
farther, and proceed to outline as a basis of discussion a sketch
of the Protection policy which I believe to be necessary to
meet the new conditions, as well as of the general policy
required to bring the different parts of our industrial system,
manufacturing and agricultural, into harmony with it.

I ties of
'elation
iolison
of the
on the
means
iso our
ith our
lament
hqujite
hall go
sketch
my to
policy
system,

CHAPTER II.

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION.*

"1 PROPOSE In the present paper, with the reader’s

Indulgence, to extend somewhat farther the series of
considerations with which I opened my plea for a re-hearing
of the imminent and now all-important question of Free Trade
or Protection for England. In the former article I dealt with
the matter in a discursive and formal manner, confining myself
to pointing out in a general way those conditions of industry
which in any given country favour a Free Trade policy, and
those which favour its opposite. I pointed out that the former
were those of what may be called industrial peace, the latter
those of industrial war . By industrial peace I meant, first,
where a nation was either so strong in some large department
of industry that it could practically undersell the world in that
department, and where, in consequence, having no effective
rivals, it could open its ports freely to all the world, using their
produce as but cheaper material or fuel with which to feed and
enhance its own supremacy; or, secondly, where a nation, on
the other hand, was so weak in natural advantages that it could
never hope to be a serious rival to any, and where, in
consequence, like a simple medieval peasant, intended only to
cultivate his paternal fields, the protective chain armour of the
mail-clad knight would be an encumbrance rather than a help.
And lastly, by industrial peace I meant that far-off millenial
* Fortnightly Review, July, 1902 .

150

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

time when all nations having become but one nation, and their
peoples all alike friends and brothers, it would matter little
whether it was a peasant in Lithuania or in Kent that was
beinsr well or ill fed; a manufacturer in Lancashire or in .Russia

that was reaping the world’s profits ; or whether the decrees for
the extension, shifting, or suppression of the world’s industries
should go forth from London or Paris, Berlin or New York.
Under these three conditions, wherever they have appeared in
history, or whenever they shall appear, Free Trade offers the
best facilities for the production and exchange of wealth.

But in conditions of industrial war it is different. The first
of these is where a young nation, like an infant Jupiter, has
natural advantages so great that it gives promise when it
reaches maturity of successfully entering the arena and disputing
the palm with the older nations, then industrially supreme ;
and where, in consequence, during its period of infancy and
growth, a systematic, close, and rigid policy of protection is
indispensable if it is not to be strangled at its birth. Tlic
second condition is where a nation, once industrially supreme in
its own line, is threatened on all hands by younger rivals, and is
at last beaten, by however small a margin , in that which gave it
supremacy, and where, in consequence, some form of Protection
is the simplest, swiftest, and most efficacious way of averting
disaster, until such time, if ever, as by internal reorganization of
its forces, it is able to claim the supremacy again.

Now, imagining that these positions framed thus generally
had only to be stated to be accepted as axiomatic (and, indeed,
they have not yet been gainsaid), I then appealed to the
statisticians and specialists to let us know how near we were
getting to this danger-point of being beaten in our staple English
industries, and there left the matter for the moment. But,
curiously enough, at this very time, one or another of the most
eminent Economists, Financiers, Statisticians, and practical
Business Men, were engaged, each from his own special point
of view, and without previous concert or collusion, in illustrating

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION.

151

the very positions I had raised for consideration. Mr. Hobson,
in my judgment one of the most subtle, clear-sighted, and
penetrating of living economists, wrote an article in the same
number of this Review as that in which my article appeared,
in which he demonstrated the necessity of reconsidering Free
Trade at once from the political and from the economic side.
In the same and a preceding number of the National Review ,
Sir Vincent Caillard, an international financier of acknowledged
repute, sought to establish the same positions in one of the
most careful, elaborate, and well-sifted collections of trade
statistics which has yet appeared; while Mr. Holt Schooling,
also an ackowledged authority, had in an earlier number of the
Monthly Review shown, in an admirably clear and condensed
form, that the heyday of our supremacy was already past, and
that all along the line we were slowly but definitely on the
decline. And last and not least, in a book on Protection,
written some time before by Mr. Byng, a manufacturer in a
large way of business—a book, I may remark in passing, which
exhibits not only an insight into every department of practical
business, but a directness of penetration into the general play
of economic forces such as I had not yet found in the political
economy of the schools,—in this work, the positions I had
laid down were anticipated and demonstrated from practical
experience with as close a fidelity almost as if the author had
had them in his mind while writing.*

Now, the above, I submit, was a combination of expert
opinion so simultaneous, independent, and unforced, and all
converging to a common centre and conclusion, that it ought
not in decency to have been ignored. But the Press, imagining
that the advance and encroachments of rival foreign industries
were to be calculated by an arithmetical progression, so many
stadia a decade, as it were, and not, as we shall presently see, by

a geometrical one, in which whole provinces may be detached

•Notably was this the case in the philosophy of “ dumping,” which we
had reached independently, and were the first to announce—he from the
practical, I from the theoretical side.

152

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

in a night; the Press, I say, taking a passing glance at the
figures, and finding that, although the foreigner was gaining
ground on us, he had still so much to cover that we might
continue to indulge our Rip Van Winkle sleep for a long time
yet, and still wake up to find ourselves far and away ahead,
after a passing call to the manufacturers to wake up and improve
their machinery and methods if they would out-distance their
competitors as of yore, turned over on its side and went to
sleep ! The vast miscellaneous multitude, therefore, who have
the votes and whose ear hangs on the voice of the Press as that
of the Greeks did on their oracle, were not even informed that
there was such a thing as another important side to the Free-
Trade question; and so the facts and statistics compiled with
so much care, as well as the arguments drawn from history and
civilization, were left orphaned on the rocks by the seashore,
within ear-shot of the public, it is true, but without reaching it
(for to consign an argument to magazines or books is, so far as
the great Public is concerned, to consign it to the tomb), and
were washed away by the next incoming tide, and by this time
are forgotten. But in the short interval since then, events
have moved so fast, and industrial enterprises so gigantic in
scope and design, so multiform, and vaguely menacing in their
character, have appeared on the horizon, that both the public
and the Press have been staggered and bewildered by it; and
so my orphaned friends of the magazine and myself have
another chance given us of trying to catch the public ear on
this momentous question ; and this time, I trust, we may meet
with a more cordial and attentive reception.

At any rate, I propose to open the campaign again on the
same issue as before, but this time to take the offensive, and if
I may venture on so bold an undertaking, to carry the war into
the very heart of the enemy’s camp, investing the Free-Trade
position more closely, and laying siege to it both in flank and
in front; and by drawing on those elements bearing on the
problem which have not yet entered into the purview of the

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TR4DE NATION. 153

Old Political Economy on which the gospel of Free Trade
hangs, shall hope to drive the enemy from the trenches in
which he has long lain so securely, and from behind those
paper barricades by which his essential weakness is obscured.
In this way, although we may fail in reducing him or in
silencing his guns, we shall at least have brought to the public
notice the new artillery which the New Political Economy, the
new methods of industrial warfare, as well as the latest
generalizations drawn from history and civilization, have
brought into the field ; so that when the logic of events, if not
of argument, forces the question, as it will most assuredly do
presently, to the forefront of practical politics, no factor of
importance which either economics, history, or political experi¬
ence can supply shall, if possible, be omitted from our purview,
or shall suddenly be sprung on the nation without having
already received its due weight and consideration. Trusting,
therefore, to the goodwill, if not the assent, of the public and
the Press, I shall endeavour to show how a Free-Trade nation
like England, which, according to the logic of the old political
economy, can never be overtaken if only she will put forth her
full powers and obstinately refuse to close her ports, by hostile
tariffs, against the foreigner, can in actuality be caught up
with and overpassed at a few bounds ; and that, too, as easily
as the fabled tortoise was, which the logic of the Greek
philosophers proved to a demonstration could never, if it got
the start, be overtaken by the hare during all time. In other
words, I shall attempt to show how the margin of our industrial
supremacy, which at the assumed arithmetical rate of progression
might take centuries to be overpassed, can, by the geometrical
progression which my argument involves, be jumped all along
the line in as many decades, and our trade ruined as we sleep.
Now this, I am aware, is what the Americans would call a
44 large order ’’; and as a prophecy it can only be saved from
derision by the most rigid demonstration of the trend,
momentum, and incidence of all the forces maturing to that

154

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

end. But with the hand of cards held by my friends and
myself in this enterprise, I hope, with ordinary good fortune,
to demonstrate its feasibility, relying on my trusty comrades
in arms to eke out my deficiencies by their superior knowledge.
For, to sit here and see our commerce captured by precon¬
certed design, and our industries one by one given over to the
spoiler like sheep on an open plain, because the ghost of a dead
and superannuated political economy has forbidden the erection
of defences against the wolves, and because it has decreed that
trade will best thrive when it is allowed to wander at its will
anywhere and without protection—this, indeed, would be an
inherent cowardice, and those who shall deliver the nation from
this Old Economy under which it sits enchanted will, like
Cato, deserve, if they do not receive, the gratitude of their
country. Let us, therefore, to the arena, and with the gods
and the Press propitious, make another attempt to arouse
opinion on this all-important theme; shaking hands as is the
manner of the prize-ring, before we enter on this friendly
encounter for the public good.

But in order that the controversy may be fought on a
definite issue, and that our demonstration may have the greatest
possible clearness, it is necessary that we should find some
single object, natural or artificial, in which every side and
aspect of our subject may be envisaged and surveyed at once
as in a bird’s-eye view, and on which the reader may concen¬
trate as the course of the demonstration proceeds. And for
this purpose I propose to represent the play and interaction of
the wheels of industry by the Great Wheel at Earl’s Court.
If, therefore, the old economists of the Academic chairs, as
well as the young lions of Parliament and the Press, who, from
sitting at their feet, have come up to town to champion them,
as well as the public generally who have received this gospel
of Free Trade from them as a sacred deposit and heritage, will
do me the honour during the month in which this article runs,
to concentrate on this Wheel I will undertake to say that, with

HOW TO Runs’ A fbek-tka.de nation.

155

the Press as referee, we shall either be victorious all along the
line, or I personally shall be compelled to lay down my arms
and be driven from the field. But if, as 1 hope to show, this
wheel will stand all the strain which can be brought to bear on
it; ami if in the upshot it shall bo seen that the old and fabled
Science of Political Economv, with the Free Trade that hang's
on its skirts, must dash itself to pieces on its iron bars and fall
to wreckage, then out of their ruins there will also be seen to
arise, as out of the dead snake in Groet lie’s tale, a rinsr of
precious jewels of universal currency and validity—a single law
of Trade and of the production of Wealth ; a single law of the
distribution of wealth or division of the spoils; and out of these
two again, a single law for building up Trade, and a single law
for ruining it.

To begin with, then, let the different compartments of the
Earl’s Court Wheel represent those great industries which have
given England, and in the aggregate still give her, although
on a declining day, her world-wide supremacy—the cotton
industry, the coal industry, the shipping industry, the woollen,
iron, steel and machine industries, and the rest. And let these
separate compartments be filled with the workmen connected
with these special industries ; each compartment being divided
into two halves, one half representing the food, shelter, clothing
and other articles of convenience or luxury which the workers
consume and enjoy, the other half (of which the masters hold
the keys) representing the land, workshops, machinery and
tools used by them in their several industries, and by the use
of which all the material wealth of the country is produced.
Next let the great wheel, with these compartments all
suspended from its inner rim and circumference, begin to
revolve, carrying its compartments up and around with it; and
as a standard of the normal activity of industry, let the wheel,
make a single complete revolution in twenty-four hours; any
increase or decrease in the production of wealth by the workers
being represented by the quickening or slowing of the wheel

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

156

in that given time. And now let the workmen in the different
compartments be engaged while ascending the wheel, say in
the evening and at night, in consuming in one division, the
food, clothing, comforts and luxuries, which they have pro¬
duced in the other on their way down the wheel, say in the
morning and afternoon; and let this process go on from day to
day, the occupants all engaged during one-half of the day in
consuming what they have produced in the other.

And now let the owners or others who have interests in the
Earl’s Court Wheel, and who charge the public a certain sum
for entrance to it, and for the permission to enjoy its privileges,
represent the landowners, the capitalists, the shipowners, the
manufacturers, and the rest, as well as the tax-collectors of the
Government, all of whom, or their agents, stand around the
base of the wheel and take tax, toll, rents, commissions, profits,
or what you will, for protecting the wheel, for directing the
running of it, or for the use of the land, workshops, machinery
and tools, which occupy, as we have seen, one-half of each of
the compartments; the landlords taking their toll in the shape
of rents for the use of the land in the agricultural compart¬
ment ; the capitalists and owners of the manufacturing, shipping,
and transport compartments taking theirs in the form of
profits; while the Government takes its share in the form of
taxes from all the compartments alike. And let all these rents,
tolls, profits, taxes, or commissions, be taken out of the pro¬
ducing division of the compartments, as each in turn reaches the
landing-platform, and before what is left over is passed through
to the consuming divisions to be consumed and enjoyed by the
workmen and their families on their way up the wheel again.

The above, then, may stand to represent the great wheel of
industry and its adjuncts and appendages, freed like a mathe¬
matical diagram from all unnecessary complications, and in its
simple structure and arrangements serving as a moving image
not only of the industry of the world in any age or nation, hut,
if we consider it, of its governments and polities as well; and

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION.

157

to it as to a kind of universal touchstone we may bring all
theories of political economy or of national policy to receive
their justification, confirmation, or refutation. Let us regard
it, therefore, for a moment to make sure of its universal and
representative character, before putting to it those special
questions the answers to which will, in my judgment, be seen
to seal the doom of the Old Economy, and of the principle of
commercial policy which is founded on it, namely, of Free
Trade absolute and unlimited for all peoples and at all times.

Now, the first point we would notice, and the most important
of all for our Free-Trade argument, is that the occupants of
the Wheel are neither exclusively producers nor consumers, but
are at once both producers and consumers, each man being a
producer in the daytime and a consumer at night, so that they
may all be called producer-consumers.

The next point is, that the Wheel is equally representative
of industry at any and every stage of its development, from
the savage who lives in the evening on the fruit he has
gathered, the fish he has caught, or the game he has killed in
the morning, whether he give over any part of it to a chief or
medicine-man' or no, up to our own complicated modern de¬
velopment, with its tax-receivers, rent-receivers, profit-receivers,
and interest-receivers, all waiting around the base of the wheel
to take tax, toll, and commission from it.

The third point is, that in strict science the Wheel as it
stands at any given time is the source of all the wealth of the
community; in the same way as the engine, and not the driver,
does the work of the train. So that although the capitalists
and owners who run the wheel for profit are of the greatest
importance, inasmuch as by their energy, invention, and fore¬
sight, or the want of them, they may cause it to revolve more
quickly or more slowly, may run it well or badly, still they are
strictly no essential part of it. Like the engine-driver, if they
run it badly it will slow down or stop of itself, and both they
and its occupants may be ruined; if they run it well and

158 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

skilfully, they, like the rest, will participate in the increase of
the products and in the growing general prosperity.

And now we have to ask of the Wheel how it is to be worked
in order to produce most wealth, in the same way as we ask of
an engine how it will do most work. To answer this we may
begin by remarking that as the amount of wealth depends on
the number of revolutions of the wheel, the question is whether
it can be best increased by stimulating the producing or the
consuming side of the wheel, its downward or its upward move¬
ment. But just as no man will give himself the trouble (except
for sport) of catching half-a-dozen fish when one is sufficient
for his own consumption, unless, indeed, he knows of those
who will take the extra five off his hands and give him
something for his trouble, so the workers on the wheel will not,
if they have no rents, taxes, or commissions to pay, produce
more than they can themselves consume; if they have such
rents to pay, then they will not produce more than both them¬
selves and the rent-receivers can consume. For should they
in one revolution of the wheel produce more than this, as some
of it must go to waste, they will on the next revolution
produce less, and the movement of the wheel will be slowed
again, unless, indeed, foreign consumers can be found to take
the surplus off their hands. So long, for example, as the
Southern planters of America can connect the productive side
of their cotton-growing wheel with the consuming side of a
cotton-spinning wheel in Lancashire (as one wheel in a factory
is connected with another by throwing a belt across both of
them), the cotton-growing wheel may still keep up its pace even
should the negroes on it receive but a bare subsistence; but
were the planters so situated that they had only to produce
sufficient for their own backs and those of their negroes, it is
evident, is it not, that the speed of their wheel would slow
down almost to stagnation '! And, therefore, unless you can
find consumers either in your own nation or in the world
outside, however fast you may start your wheel a-going by

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 159

acting on its productive side alone, it must slow down again
unless the consuming side can take off the produce by being
able to pay for it. On the other hand, if the consuming side
can take it off as fast as it is produced, and can pay for more as
well, the wheel will not only start revolving quickly, but will
increase its speed more and more until the power and the
willingness to consume are exhausted. In other words, the
quickness or slowness of the revolution of the wheel, and
therefore the greater or less production of wealth, depends on
and takes its initiative from the consuming and not the
producing side of the wheel. It seems almost a truism, and
yet it has been entirely missed by the Old Economists from
the time of Adam Smith to the present day. By putting-
production before consumption, they put the cart before the
horse, and while urging manufacturers to go on producing by
whipping up the cart, with Carlyle jeering at them, they could
not understand why the horse would not stir from the spot!
And yet the first tradesman they met could have put them
right. For he would have told them that it was the number
of consumers coming into the front door of his shop that
determine the number of wholsaler’s carts unloaded at his back
door; the number of orders given to the wholesaler, again,
that determines, in turn, the number given by the wholesaler
to the manufacturer; and the number to the manufacturer that
keeps going the cotton-growing, stock-raising, sheep-breeding,
corn-producing, coal and iron mining of the farmers, planters,
and landowners. In other words, the “ turnover,” as it is
called, or the number of revolutions of the wheel in the pro¬
duction of wealth, depends on and takes its cue from con¬
sumption, and not production; as, indeed, might have been
seen a priori from the knowledge of human nature itself,
which, although for sport it may produce what it does not
intend to consume, in business will produce nothing but what
it has a reasonable expectation of consuming and enjoying.

Now, it may seem a small matter this, of whether you make

160

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

consumption or production the primary and initiative cause in
the production of wealth (and it seems so frankly natural that
the production of wealth should depend on its production, and
not on its consumption), but like taking a wrong turning in a
country lane on a dark night, it led the old economists farther
and farther into the bog, until they ended by being not only
wrong in one conclusion, but in practice wrong in all.

The first illusion into which this divorce of production from
consumption led them, was the imagining that the share in the
product which should fall to each class, could be determined
scientifically by economic laws alone. They were prepared to
admit, it is true, that no such scientific division was possible in
other ages of industry; as in the Roman Empire, for example,
where the landlords and capitalists were masters, and much of
the work done by our present capitalists was done by freedmen
and slaves to whom could be thrown such leavings as the
masters in their discretion chose to give them ; nor could it be
scientifically divided when the sword of the conqueror was
thrown into the scale to carve out for himself from the produce
what share of it it was his good pleasure to receive ; nor even
in the present day in countries like Turkey and Morocco,
where rapacious Pashas, with the connivance of their Sultans,
can commandeer such of the stock and produce of factory or
field as lies within their line of sight as they pass along the
highway.

But living, as these Old Economists did, before the time of
the giant ‘‘Trusts” and the equally-powerful Trade-unions,
they figured the isolated capitalists, great and small, as well as
the isolated working man, as ever on the wing, ready to
transport themselves anywhere, and to alight on any the
slightest coign of vantage that offered itself. They imagined
that in countries where property was secure, competition open,
and contracts free, the problem was only to find how quantities
of dead material or of human chattel flowing freely hither and
thither like water or sand shaken in a sieve, would find their

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 161

appointed level according to economic law, yielding so much to
the landlords, so much to the capitalists, and so much to the
workers respectively.

It was Mill who gave to this division its final scientific
expression ; and accordingly in his work on Political Economy
you see the produce piled up in the little mounds or hillocks
that fell to the lot of each, all rising from a common level and
margin of “ free contract ” and “free competition,” like a range
of hills of varying size rising from the margins of a lake. In
this division, while the landlords’ share varied with occasion,
but still by definite law, the labourers’ share always remained
a mere tail-end to capital—a “ bare subsistence wage ” to which
population and necessity for ever kept it down. But these Old
Economists forgot that it was not merely a question of dead
material or human chattel transported hither and thither
according to supply and demand, but that behind all these
hillocks and mounds were human wills, who, by uniting and
combining, could as easily get their backs against the wall by
manoeuvring, as ever rapacious despots and Pashas had done
by their swords. And the consequence was, that they had no
sooner settled the division to their own satisfaction, than the
hillocks began to rock and tumble as if earthquakes or volcanoes
had opened beneath them. Henry George saw in vision the
horrid spectre of Landlordism rising higher and ever higher
till it threatened to fill the whole heaven and to submerge
Capitalist and Wage-earner alike, but imagining that it all
came by economic law, and not realising that subterranean
powers might be at work as well, called on Heaven for justice
and for expropriation while it was yet time, and before
civilisation itself should be submerged. But be had hardly
time to utter his prayer before the subterranean powers lying
behind another mound decreed it otherwise. This time it was
the Capitalists, who in his own country of America had begun
by getting hold of the means of transport and communication,
and from that as point of support, worked outwards, throwing

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

162

their coils alike over forest and mine and field, and by means
of boycott, preferential rate, the alternative of purchase or
ruination, or what not, at last issued in those giant Trusts
which shot the mound of capitalism so high that it filled the
sky like a Chimborazo, dwarfing the spectral landlordism of
Henry George to a wart; while Labour meanwhile rising
steadily higher and higher on the back of its underground
Trades-unions, and no longer now the mere tail-end of capitalism,
confronted these giant trusts on equal terms on its own rival
peak. The truth is, there is no economic law as such for the
division of the products of industry among the different classes;
it depends entirely on the law common to all civilisation, that
44 they will take who have the power/’ and who by manoeuvring
can get their back against the wall as against the rest;—and
there are as many opportunities for this in a rSgime of 44 free
contract ” and 44 free competition” as under the most precarious,
slippery, or ruthless of despotisms. The fear of starvation or
of the poor-house to men cut off from access to the land or to
the workshop, although more slowly and silently operative, is
as effective in its results as the immediate fear of death; and
while throwing open all doors for them individually to walk in
or out without compulsion, you can strangle them in the mass
unless protected, by operating on them individually, as surely
as you can the occupants of a pit or gallery by the cry of fire,
with all the exits free. On the other hand, by detaching each
individually from the union which is his defence, you can do
it with a show of generosity, largesse, and magnanimity even,
as deadly in its effects as if it were a preconcerted massacre;
in the same way as by throwing a few coins into a dense and
excited crowd you can make them trample each other to death,
each strangling the other as in a doorway by his own excess
of eagerness and desire.

The question is, therefore, not whether the game is being
played fairly on a smooth and even table by 44 free contract,”
44 free competition/’ and the like, according to recognised laws;

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 163

for this is never so. One or other of the dice is always loaded.
Either it is done openly and frankly, as at the Bank of Monte
Carlo, where the “ zero ” always gives the proprietors a steady
advantage; or secretly by one or other of those concealed
combinations underneath the table, where the conspirators, by
merely raising their backs, can by means of ‘'corners” and
monopolies upset all the legitimate rules of the game. Let
our idealist friends, therefore, who are nothing if not sticklers
for Justice, and for seeing it rigidly executed in this world,
but who are too often so intent on watching the rat-holes of
life to find the man who stole the sixpence or the loaf of bread,
that they let the elephant go by unheeded—let them, if they
would have a “cause” or theme worthy of their great argu¬
ment, look to these concealed monsters rather, if they would
see the game of industry and life played under fair and equal
conditions. Otherwise grandiose hypocrisies such as would
make the heavens blush, creeping from their concealment, will
stalk through the world blameless and unabashed, posing as if
in all meekness and humility they were the lowly exemplars
of uprightness and peace.

Now, all the Old Economists saw these inequalities, and
deplored them, but thinking them to be the natural effects of
purely economic law (instead of cunningly-devised combinations
of human wills and powers), either resigned themselves to them
as to the ordinances of Nature, like Mill, or appealed to heaven
and abstract justice to right them, and so too often fell into
mere utopias and dreams—Henry George, as we have seen,
calling aloud for the expropriation of the landlords out and out’
and without compensation ; Kuskin, for a division of the
product founded on the range and character of the social
sei vices of each class, and on the amount of ability and virtue
displayed; while Karl Marx, appealing alike to justice and
the street-barricade (when chance offered), on behalf of the
rights of the workers, championed their claim to take most of
the produce, if not all.

164 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

With all these illusions clinging to the skirts of the Old
Economists, we are not surprised to find that, figuring Industry
as a kind of rigid walking-stick divided into parts with Labour
as its tail-end, and where, accordingly, the less Labour got, the
more there was left for the other classes, and vice versa , they
should be perplexed when confronted with the paradox, that
the more Labour got, as in America, the more all other classes
got as well; and the less it got, as under Turkish Pashadom,
the less, instead of the more, did the other classes receive.
But the reason is simple. Industry is not a rigid walking-
stick, but a wheel whose revolutions when stretched out on the
flat are as elastic as rubber; if made to revolve slowly, it
contracts, until there is little or nothing for anyone to divide,
even for the Pasha himself; if quickly, it may measure more
than the entire length of the stick, and so there will be the
more for all. And as it is Labour that is on the wheel, it is
really a case, so far as the Old Economists are concerned, of
the tail wagging the dog!

But the most fatal legacy left by the Old Economists in
their attempt to separate the production of wealth from its
consumption, was their doctrine of Free Trade as a principle
of commercial policy absolute and unlimited, the best for all
nations and at all times. It was as if they had divided the
Wheel of Industry into two parts, and tried to make each part
run independently of the other. Or as if they had divided
men into mouths and stomachs on the one hand, and arms and
hands on the other; and had then said to the one, Consume all
you can, and at as cheap a price as you can get it, whether
from at home or abroad ; and to the other, produce all you can
as cheaply as you can, and when one industry is ruined by the
foreigner, try another where your capital can be employed to
better advantage; and you will all then have attained the
maximum of industrial prosperity and felicity possible to you,
and your problem of industry will be solved. Now, the
difference between a double-sided thing like a wheel, and the

HOW TO RUIN' A FREE-TRADE NATION.

16.5

same thing split into separate halves, is this, that whereas in
the latter you can go to any length with the one half without
paying any regard to the other, in the former you have to be
careful not to pi ess so strongly on one side as to injure the
other. This is true of all concrete things, from a nation as a
whole down to every man or animal in it. If you divide a
nation into two absolutely independent and unrelated sections,
say a warlike class and an industrial class, and treat each as if
it were independent of the other, you can say to the one class,
i ight as much as you cau and whenever and wherever you can;
and to the other, Push your trade wherever you can and to
any extent you can, and all will be well; but if they are only
two related parts of one and the same nation, you can only say
to the one, Fight whenever you can, and as much as you can,
so long as you do not thereby endanger your trade; to the
other, Push your trade wherever you can and by any means
you can, so long as you do not bring on a destructive war. A
State may maintain a class of celibates or Quakers with nothing
but advantage to itself from their example, but all must not be
celibates or Quakers ; some worldlings must be reserved, if the
population is to be kept up; some soldiers, if the national
independence is to be preserved. It is the same with Industry.
A workman may barter all he has for cheap food and clothing,
but not his tools ; a big game hunter all his old guns, but not
his rifle; a fighting tribe of Tied Indians, everything else but
their weapons of war; a stockbreeder all his inferior bulls, but
not his last and best one—that must be reserved.

And now if we apply this principle to the Free-Trade
position, it will be evident at a glance that a nation can only
permit cheaper imports from abroad for the consuming side of
its wheel, so long as it reserves some industries which will keep
the productive side agoing to pay for them. But the Free
Trader is not satisfied with this, but cries, No, let not only
some things come in cheaper, but all things whatever, if they
can be had cheaper abroad. It is as if all the members of a

166

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

tribe were to be secretly inveigled into parting with their
rifles, or all the stockbreeders into parting with their bulls!
And now let ns see how it works out in detail. As each
industry in turn is ruined by being undersold from abroad, the
works of that compartment of the wheel must close down, and
the capitalists, putting the keys in their pockets, must transfer
the wreck of their capital to some other compartment of the
wheel; while the workmen must either clamber up the wheel
and distribute themselves among the other compartments as
best they may, as unskilled workmen, or fall off the wheel
altogether into the gutter or the slums. If now we suppose
our great manufacturing industries invaded in turn, the coal,
iron, steel, w T oollen, and machine industries—those irreat
industries which by weathering the open competition of the
world for a generation or two of Free Trade have best proved
themselves able to survive in the struggle for existence—until
all but a few of the strongest have succumbed; the workers
having all clambered up into these compartments, or fallen off
the wheel into the gutter; still all may yet be well, and the
nation as a whole be richer for it, even although the millions
of workers displaced have to be fed like the Koman populace
on “bread and the circus,” in every city and town of the king¬
dom ; provided always that the one or two industries that still
keep their ground (and in which the wrecks of the capital of
all the rest are now concentrated), can still hold the World
market so securely, that they can pay easily for all the imports
from abroad, and still have something to the good. Even a
single industry would suffice, say the Cotton industry, the
hugest and strongest of our industries. It was so in Spain,
when after having become possessed of the gold and silver
mines of Mexico and Peru, she abandoned all her old cotton
and silk and woollen manufactures, and still grew ever the
richer, waving her flag more triumphantly than before on the
produce of these mines alone. But now let our last industry
be successfully attacked and captured, as Spain in effect was

167

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TR ADE NATION.

when her mines were exhausted, or Rome when Alaric and the
other Barbarians, advancing by easy stages through her
exhausted and now defenceless fields, tenanted as they were
only by Sybarites and slaves, sat down before the walls and
demanded, her keys. Will the Free Trader still wave his flag
and exclaim, “ Oh! let it all come i n , it is all for the benefit
of the ‘ poor consumer ’ ’’ I Will he still shout in the ears of
the capitalists, with all the other industries ruined in their
rear, to wake up and employ their capital and labour in
industries that will give them a better advantage ? Or, most
helpless delusion of all, will he still expect the imports to
go on coming in? Did the English manufacturers still go on
pouring their goods into Spain as a charity when her mines
had given out? Did the granaries of Egypt and Africa still
continue to empty their corn into the lap of Rome as a free
gift, when the Barbarians had taken her sword '?

Man for man, for every consumer on the wheel there is a
corresponding producer, and for the v ery goo d reason that each
man is, as we have seen, a producer-consumer. If, therefore,
you let all products come in free from abroad, because they
can be had cheaper, you (having by the same act been under¬
sold in all) have the keys turned on every workshop in the
kingdom, and unless fed by manna, the grace of God, or
foreign charity, how on the next turn of the wheel are men
to eat, and clothe and house themselves, if they do not, and,
by the nature of the case, can no longer produce anything
either for their own consumption, or in exchange for imports

from abroad? The conclusion is obvious_Free Trade as a

principle of commercial policy absolute and unlimited is false;
to make it true both in theory and fact, we must substitute
for it a Free Trade in which some industries, or a single
industry, must in the last resort be protected and reserved;
like the last rifle of the hunter, and the last bull of the herd;
and, for preference, those industries for which the nation has
the greatest natural advantages, the greatest natural genius,

168

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

and the greatest stock of acquired skill and knowledge. For,
with our last industry captured, the very contemplation of
having to deliver over to the statesmen to feed, some forty or
fifty millions of people who will go on living and will neither
consent of their own free-will to starve, or to be shot, drowned,
or otherwise mercifully disposed of, ought of itself to be enough
to give the unlimited Free Trader pause.

But if the above considerations are not sufficient for the Old
Economist and Free Trader, and he still requires more to
convince him of the illusory nature of the life-belt to which
he has entrusted his fortunes, and by which, as he has recently
declared, it is his intention either to sink or swim, let him take
a glance with me at the phenomena of industry, not as seen
through the mere crack in the wall of a single generation or
two, where only the tail of the dog is visible in the procession,
but when broadly surveyed in full perspective along the course
of History. For then he will see that no nation that has risen
to supremacy, either in commerce or in manufactures, has done
so by Free Trade alone, or yet by Protection alone, but by a
combination or alternation of the two. England, for example,
began by exporting her wool through the shippers of the
Hanseatic League; she then invited the Flemish weavers over
to teach her how to manufacture it; then she made the
Hansards spend all they got from their imports, on English
products; next she expelled the Flemish weavers and let her
own do the work; and lastly, she shut the door in the face of
the Hansards, and let her own shippers do her carrying trade.
And when she had at last, by her natural advantages, become
the chief manufacturer of the world, she shut the door in turn
on the Dutch, who had succeeded the Hansards as the main
carriers for Europe and the East, and by the Navigation Acts
which confined the carrying of her manufactures to her own
ships, mined Holland at a blow.

The Hanseatic League itself began by being, as England is
to-day, the great carrier for all the northern nations of Europe,

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE RATION. 169

buying everywhere in the cheapest markets—wool in England,
iron in Sweden, manufactures in Belgium, agricultural produce
in Poland, and so on—but protecting her commerce meanwhile
by allowing none of this produce to be carried in any but her
own vessels. After a time each of these nations, nursing the
while its own shipping for political and other reasons, closed
its doors in turn on the League, and excluding her vessels
from its ports, she, too, was ruined.

Flanders, on the other hand, began by Free Trade, as well
she might, for there was none to compete with her manufactures,
but when England expelled her workmen, and Colbert closed
b ranee against her goods in order to protect his own, she too
was ruined. Portugal, again, had begun by protecting her
manufactures until they were in a flourishing condition, but
having, in an evil hour, agreed, by the Methuen Treaty, to
admit English manufactures free in return for her wines, the
country was so flooded with them that her home manufactures
peiished, and could not afterwards be revived.

The American manufactures which liad taken root during
the War of Independence were, at its close, threatened with
luin by the influx of the cheaper manufactured goods of
England. A tariff was then put on, and they revived ; it was
taken off, and they again drooped; it was then doubled, and
gi adually raised tier on tier to the formidable and inaccessible
barrier it is at the present dayand with results, as an object-
lesson, which all the world may see. It was the same with
Greimany, who, after the Napoleonic Wars, was threatened
with the ruin of her manufactures by the imports from England,
but after much diffculty she succeeded in getting them pro¬
tected (with Free Trade, however, within her own borders),
and so gradually brought herself to the industrial position
which she occupies to-day.

And when England by reason at once of Protection, of her
great natural advantages, and of the number of great inventors
born within her realms, had managed to outpace all her rivals

170

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

both industrially and commercially, on land and on sea, and so
attained to the industrial supremacy of the world, she too,
having now nothing to fear from foreign competitors, opened
her ports freely to all nations, and invited them all to come in;
and continues to do so to the present hour. But to imagine
that this industrial supremacy thus slowly built up like a coral
reef from stage to stage, and behind a series of enclosures and
barricades in which the exits and entrances were as cunningly
devised to meet the attacks of the enemy as the drawbridges,
portcullises, and underground passages of her old Baronial
castles; to imagine that each of her nascent industries could
have stood on its own feet and without Government protection
in the teeth of older and more developed industrial nations
standing over them with drawn sword, and ready to strike
them down; to imagine all this, and further to believe that
because in looking through the keyhole of a single generation
of men and finding Free Trade flourishing without bolt or bar,
it would have been better had it been always thus, and will be
better to be always so, is to imagine that the unwalled towns
of to-day, protected as they are only by sentiments of peace,
would have been equally secure against the robber-barons of
the Middle Ages, or would be so to-morrow, unless new barri¬
cades were devised, if the country were invaded and overrun
by a foreign foe.

The Old Economists, then, having failed to see that Industry
is a Wheel of producer-consumers, and not a dead, inelastic
walking-stick in which production is separated from con¬
sumption and independent of it, missed the one and only Law
of the Production and increase of wealth, namely, that the
stimulus comes from the side of consumption, and not of
production. They have missed, also, the one and only Law of
its Distribution, a law which comes from civilization in general,
and not from Political Economy at all—the law, namely, that
the lion’s share of the produce must always fall to that class
which, by the most skilful manoeuvring of its forces, succeeds

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION. 171

in getting its back against the wall. They have also misled
the Free Traders into believing that Free Trade is a principle
of absolute and universal validity applicable to all nations and
at all times, instead of being severely limited in its application,
and always with the most vital industries protected and reserved.
And further, both they and the Free Traders alike, by looking
through the keyhole of a single generation, have missed the
one and only lesson of History bearing on the subject, namely,
that nations that have attained to industrial supremacy have
done so by judiciously mingling Free Trade and Protection,
either alternately or in combination, according to the industrial
necessities or conditions of the time.

If all this be true, it is evident that with England as a Free-
Trade nation, thus tempting Providence by lying helpless and
exposed on an open sea like a floating mass of undefended
blubber, ready to be harpooned by every adventurer that passes
along, the problem of how to ruin her ought not to be one
altogether passing human ingenuity. On the contrary, it is
as simple and “ easy as lying,” as Hamlet says; and, indeed,
the process has already begun. The problem being how to
jump the now small margin of superiority on our part which
separates us all along the line of our greatest industries from
that of one or other of our foreign rivals, and to jump it, not
by a slow advance requiring decades or centuries, but by leaps
and bounds, two principles or modes of operation are involved;
first, to get your weapon of attack, and next, to effectively use
it. In regard to the first, it is to be observed that just as a
cannon ball of sufficient size will demolish a fortress which
would be impregnable to the assaults of a number of rifle
bullets, although in the aggregate they were equal in weight of
metal to that ball, so an amount of capital concentrated and
wielded by a single hand will break down industrial defences
which no equal amount of capital dispersed in small amounts
among a number of isolated and independent capitalists can
touch. For, giant capitals wielded by single hands are as

172 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

much a real invention in Industry as the Armstrong gun was in
War, and in their range and efficacy of operation are as the
difference between steam-power and hand-labour; and when
once they have appeared in the field of industry will silence
all lesser aggregations, as the power-looms did the hand-looms,
and especially when brought to bear on a Free-Trade nation
like England, whose capitalists, still more or less isolated and
unrelated, can be bought or sold for money without infringing
any of the current conceptions of commercial honour, and can
be pitted against each other, or caught at angles where they
can be isolated, detached, and defeated in detail, as in the
tactics of Buonaparte in war; and more especially so where,
with open ports and no protective defences anywhere, the
enemy is invited to step in and freely choose his own ground
and points of vantage for the attack. It is a question only of
Capital enough ; give us that, and were the world made up of
Free-Trade nations to-morrow, they could be overrun as easily
in a night as the isolated states of Greece were by Rome, of
the East by Alexander, or of Germany by Napoleon; each
being incorporated in the rolling ball as it went along and
made the instrument of further conquests, until all were
subdued.

And the way in which these giant capitals are to be handled
for the purpose may be seen at a glance, if we observe the way
in which great industries which otherwise might have held out
indefinitely have been ruined at a bound—namely, by means
of Foreign Bounties. Now, a bounty is in essence a certain
portion of capital detached from the great ball of capital which
constitutes the revenue of a State, and is discharged by its
Government at a loss, or altogether sacrificed, for the purpose
of ruining the trade of a rival nation, as was the case with our
Sugar Trade. It was a minor industry, it is true, and although
it involved the ruin of many, both here and in the Colonies,
the loss was compensated in other ways; and on the whole,
perhaps, the industry was one which for the general good

HOW TO RUIN A FREE-TRADE NATION.

173

might with advantage be sacrificed. But the principle of how
to ruin a trade lay in it; the difficulty being in the case of
bounties to get nations to consent to the sacrifice involved in
them for the benefit of a small section of their peoples; and
more especially to find foreign industries so nearly on a level
with their own in point of strength, as to require the sacrifice
involved in their ruination to be kept up for only a limited
time. But in the hands of private individuals, these monster
capitals are, like Olympian bolts, a free force to be directed at
will and without obstruction, by the hands that wield them, to
any point of the industrial horizon. Since the first draft of
this article was sketched, a large slice of our shipping industry
has been detached by a single coup, and in a way so familiar to
all, that further exposition is rendered needless. Suffice it to
say here, that if these American capitalists who can freely
handle an amount of capital equal to the revenue of great
States, should continue to be protected in their home industries
by a wall of tariff so high as to allow of no danger from foreign
competition; and if, after having brought their price-lists in
our own great vital industries of coal, iron, steel, machinery,
and the rest, up to a point where they can not only hold their
own in neutral markets, but have only the Atlantic freightage
standing between them and our own home markets ; if these
men, I say, standing on the shores of the New World, should
concentrate their forces, and call on their nation to stand by
them by permitting them a monopoly price at home, while their
industrial army was carrying the war into the enemy’s country
(in the same way as they would bear military taxation for a like
purpose), could they not promise them, if they were successful
in capturing the World-market after first capturing oura, a
golden harvest for all their sacrifices and for the troubles which
for the time they endured? And would our Free Trader
contemplate this altogether with a light heart? Would he
still trust to his arithmetical progression as regulating the rate
of their advance, and of the time it would take them to defeat

174

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

us, fighting as we do only as isolated Industrial concerns?
Would he still go to his Rip Yan Winkle sleep in the assurance
that he would wake up to find his margin still secure ? Had
he been able to do so, our sugar industries might still have
continued flourishing for a century to come, whereas the
foreign bounties jumped them at a leap, and ruined them in a
night. The great match manufacturing firm of Bryant and
May, believed to be impregnable, was brought to its knees in
an open fight in two years, and had the alternative given it of
amalgamation or ruination. And the way in which it is done
is so obvious that it needs only to be stated; it is to make the
extra profits realised by monopoly on a mammoth capital cover
the losses incurred in detaching a portion of that capital sufficient
in amount to min a rival industry (which must either make the
ordinary rate of profit or succumb) by underselling it.

What, then, do I propose should be done ? As my limits of
space are now more than exhausted, I must leave this important
matter for another article.

CHAPTER III.

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION *

T PROPOSE in the present paper to make a few remarks
on what may be broadly called the Condition of England
Question, and particularly on those aspects of it which are of
immediate practical importance to us at the present time. In
discussing this matter I shall use other nations freely as
foils, with the view of developing, by means of contrast and
comparison, a clearer image of just how and where we stand in
the new century on which we have entered, with its new
methods, aims, and potentialities; taking as our standpoint,
throughout, the Political and Social Evolution of the nation as
a whole as the only point of view from which we can truly
understand the present or form a just forecast of the future;
and endeavouring, at the same time, to determine which of
our difficulties are amenable to changes of opinion, and so are
remediable by legislation, and which of them, if there be any,
are so stiff and unyielding as to be practically unchangeable,
and so, as being beyond the reach of political surgery, must
be left as hostages to fate. This done, I shall then outline a
scheme to meet these difficulties, or as far as possible to
alleviate them.

Our subject naturally divides itself into the two great
departments of War and Industry, Of the former I have
* Fortnightly Review, January, 190S.

176 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

neither the knowledge nor the authority to speak, and shall
confine myself, therefore, to the latter, in the hope that under
it the various aspects of our national life which make up what
we have called the Condition of England Question, will be
found, before we have done, freely to range themselves. Of
the historical background necessary to give perspective to
what is to follow, only a word need here be said, and it is this.
By the sagacity and skill of our early Kings and Ministers,
and later, of Parliament, in alternately opening and shutting
our ports to the foreigner; by Free Trade and Protection
skilfully and judiciously applied in varying detail to the
leading branches of our industry as circumstances required ;
by treaties of commerce made and unmade, and often enforced
by our arms; England ruined in turn Belgium, the Hanse
League, Portugal, Spain, and Holland, and grew and grew in
industrial and commercial power, until she became at once the
mistress of the seas, the arbiter of war and peace, and the
provider of all the world by the products of her workshops and
looms.

Sailing thus triumphantly on an open sea, clear at last of all
hostile sails, and with no rivals to fear, she was then able to

take her hand off the tiller, and to let the vessel drift, freely
opening her ports to all the world, and inviting and even
challenging them to come in; cutting her Government loose
from all connection with Industry; hoisting her motto of
“Laissez-faire” over the prow; and giving the Colonies
notice to quit whenever they felt inclined,—the industrial
sovereignty of her own little isle being sufficient for itself and
a match for them all. This halcyon time lasted for just half
a century. But now a new epoch of World-Industry has
opened on us with the appearance in the field of rival nations
who, creeping up stealthily meanwhile from behind their tariff
walls, and armed with the most elaborate scientific devices and
inventions, have inaugurated the new era of what we may call
developed or Scientific Industry, as distinguished from the old

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 177

Feudal Industry with which it is now seriously to dispute the
palm; the difference between the two being roughly this, that
whereas feudal industry is mainly the product of the raw
material of a country existing within its own domains, and the
mechanical skill and knowledge that spring from it are a
natural product adapted to it and limited in quality by it, as
the wild flowers are by the soil in which they grow; scientific
industry, on the other hand, is a highly developed product of
special cultivation, engineered by vast aggregations of capital
concentrated in a few hands, and dependent neither on the raw
material of its own nor of any other particular country, nor on
an y merely local science, invention, or skill, but fully availing
itself of them all, wherever over the wide world they are to
be found.

And this brings us, without further preliminary, to the
nodus of the question to which this article will be mainly
devoted, namely, as to how England is equipped for this new
stage of Scientific Industry into which the old Feudal one has
so suddenly evolved. To answer this question adequately,
none of the great factors that enter into it must be overlooked,
for they comprise not only our material resources, but matters
of government, of policy, of historical and social ideas as well;
and, as we shall now see, a marked deficiency in any one of
them will prove, when the race becomes keen, a severe
handicap. A certain rough general equality among the com¬
peting nations in natural resources and facilities of one kind
or another, and an adequate supply of accumulated capital are,
of course, assumed; and this, of itself, puts out of the
running our own Colonies as still too young and insufficiently
developed, as well as all the minor States of the world. But
this being granted, the conditions essential for industrial
supremacy in the new age opening on us may be reduced
to four:—

1, Centralisation of industrial power, whether in the hands
of the Government or of private capitalists.

M

178

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

2. The spirit of social as distinguished from political

democracy.

3. The identification of the State and its resources with

the interests of Industry, as they have always been
identified with the interests and defence of teiritoiy

acquired by War.

4. The making of Intelligence and Knowledge as such in

all their forms, but especially of Science in its appli¬
cation to the Industrial Arts, a twin-ideal with any
other which happens to exist in the minds of a

people.

Our first factor, a Central Controlling Initiative, is the
primary condition of supremacy in Trade as in War, when
once rivalry becomes keen—a controlling power that shall
freely open up, develop, combine, suppress or transplant
industrial operations as necessity demands, and mass them, as
in "war, at the points where foreign competition presses the
hardest; whether this controlling power be a centralised
despotic Government, or a small number of private individuals
like the organisers of the great American Trusts.

For a political democracy as such, where the votes of a
maj ority rule in all things, although it is the safeguaid of
individual liberty, and indeed of most things that make life
worth living, is as great a handicap in a contest for industiial
supremacy, as it is in war. Of all democratic Constitutions,
perhaps that of America is in this aspect the worst. Had hei
laws been administered as they were intended by the framers
of the Constitution, hardly any industrial or commercial enter¬
prise could have reached beyond the borders of its particular
State; and her industries, far from being a fighting instrument
in the world, would have shown like a series of impotent
scattered molehills; while without her tariffs even those would
have been washed away as they arose by the flood-tide of
English competition,—as indeed they were whenever the
experiment was tried of pulling down the barriers that pro-

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 179

tected them. But it is curious to notice how private individuals,
working each for his own hand, succeeded in turning the edge
of the obstruction (the public winking the while), and did for
American industry what the spirit of the Constitution and the
strict administration of its laws would have forbidden. Free
grants of land for railway and other purposes were the first
beginnings of future industrial greatness; for these getting
into the hands of a few individuals by Stock Exchange manipu¬
lation were used by them as a solid nucleus for their operations;
the discovery of rich silver mines manipulated in the same way
formed a second nucleus ; and the great central emporia for the
corn and cattle trade of the West were a third. These great
balls of capital concentrated in single hands, then united their
forces at this or that point, using their surplus in lobbying and
bribing the weaker members of Congress and State Legisla¬
tures to get their further schemes passed, until at last, having
crushed out all rivals either by underselling, by boycott, by
threats, or by purchase, they formed those gigantic Trusts which
now threaten to bombard the world with masses of capital
compared with which the accumulations of Europe are as bullets
to cannon balls. And having escaped in this way through the
meshes of a political system which otherwise would have
strangled it, American industry now comes before us as the
representative of the most perfect form of industrial concentra¬
tion yet known, namely, free controlling power and initiative
vested in the hands of a few individuals whose personal
interests are staked on the skill with which they are handled;
and that, too, without any weakening of the Constitution,
which can at any moment put its finger on the stop and attune
this enormous power to the general welfare, should self-interest
ever prompt it to overstep it. As for Germany, our only other
serious rival, the central control of the Emperor, which is so
effective for purposes of war, is robbed of half its force for the
direction of industry by the financial power of his Parliaments,
while the mere existence of that control makes a perfectly free

180

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY".

hand on the part of individual capitalists impossible. Russia,
ao-ain, in spite of her absolute political centralisation, and the
power of the Czar to initiate and carry through industrial as
well as political reconstructions, is still a raw, undevelopec
Cimmeria with rapidly growing, but as yet vague and unkown,
industrial potentialities.

And now, if we ask how England stands in reference to t is
first prerequisite of industrial supremacy, namely, the centralisa¬
tion of industry in the hands of either the Government or of
private. capitalists, we shall be obliged, I think, to confess that
she is more severely handicapped than them all. The King has
no power either of initiative or interference, neither the full power
of the Czar, nor the modified initiative of the German Emperor;
Parliament cannot easily be “ lobbied,” nor can the committees
on private Bills be bribed like Congress and the State Legisla¬
tures of America; and the House of Commons is composed
almost entirely of capitalists massed in groups as representatives
of a few great rival interests—land, railways, manufacturing,
mining, banking, shipping, and so on—each with its collaterals
strong enough to entirely block all central legislation initiated
by the Government with the object of coercing, combining, 01
reconstructing them in any single great national industrial
design. Outside of the walls of Parliament, again, there is no
single body of capitalists, as in America, capable of buying out
rival interests where it is unable to crush them, and so of
reconstructing the industrial world after its own dreams—
neither railway magnates, nor mine owners, nor ship owners,
nor manufacturing Trusts—but all alike mutually balance while
they block one another; while the landed interest is so deeply
entrenched in parchment and entail, as well as in the sentiments
of the people, that the attempt to fundamentally interfeie with
the land for industrial purposes while the House of Lords as at
present constituted blocks the way, must be foredoomed to
failure. And hence it is that as neither the State nor private
capitalists can create a central organisation of industry; in this,

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION.

181

the first pre-requisite of industrial supremacy in a world-
struggle in which, as in a pitched battle, the nation who wins
takes not merely its share of the spoil, but, as in an encounter
of rival stags, takes all, we are very seriously handicapped.

The second essential for industrial supremacy under the new
conditions is the spirit of Social as distinguished from merely
Political democracy . In itself, as we have seen by the example
of America, political democracy is a direct drawback to
industrial ascendancy; nor are the mere race qualities usually
found among people with representative institutions, such as
personal courage, steadiness, and character, sufficient to
counterbalance this, unless, indeed, they are exercised under
conditions which breed energetic initiative and which open out
wide ranges of expansion to the individual mind. But these
are only to be found in burning social democracies having
“Liberty and Equality” as their watchwords, as in the
revolutionary period in France, where, at the outset, and before
a new hierarchy had time to be created, not only every soldier
carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack, but every sansculotte
a possible Government portfolio, and where, in the universal
delirium of expansion, no design was too colossal for the
imagination to conceive or the hand to execute, a spirit whose
terrible energy, impossible under all the older regimes , carried
the revolutionary banners from the Pyrenees to Moscow. And
it was this personal elasticity, buoyancy, energy, and initiative
of the “Liberty and Equality ” preached by Rousseau, which,
transferred to the virgin soil of America, and turned there to
industry instead of war, have developed that alertness, resource¬
fulness, and world-storming industrial daring which are at once
the wonder and admiration of the mercantile and industrial
world. Germany, on the other hand, it is needless to say, has
none of this cloud-compelling intrepidity, nor could her stolid
phlegm be whipped to it by any process yet known. Owing to
the Slavonic strain incorporated from early historic times in
nearly all the German blood, except, perhaps, in the regions

182

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

bordering on Switzerland and France, there is a softness, a
tameness, and want of “ go ” in the national character, a
passivity and obedience ingrained by centuries of serfdom,
which not even the trumpet blast of the French Revolution
calling on them to arise could awaken into reaction, and which
forbids the hope for many a long year of a real social democracy
as distinct from the abstractions and dreams of a democratic
socialism. And although we shall see later that she has so
highly developed other qualities necessary to industrial supre¬
macy as to largely neutralise her deficiency in these, still the
practical personal alertness and energy bred in favoured races
by social democracy, and required for industrial success, are in
Germany yet to seek. And now, how does England stand in this
connection ? Not altogether satisfactorily, it must be con¬
fessed, for while her political democracy is, as we have seen,
rather a detriment to her than otherwise in the race, she has,
curiously enough, none of the social democratic spirit which
would help her to make good her deficiency. On the contrary,
hers is the most perfect type of a social aristocracy in the best
sense of that term which the modern world has yet known.
There are no absolute exclusions anywhere, as is still the case
in the old feudal regimes of the Continent, nor are there any
gaps so deep between her different classes as not to leave points
of contact with those below them, but, as in the rungs of a
ladder, each is easily accessible from stage to stage. But
although this has proved most admirable for the development of
her own proper qualities of order, freedom, stability, justice, and
personal liberty, it does not fire the blood to great enterprises
as in a country where all avenues are alike open to all, from
office boy to millionaire, from the log cabin to the Presidency.
For wherever you have a system of caste resting on birth or
occupation, however elastic it may be, there the shadows fall;
and men rarely aspire or range beyond the circuit which has
been cut out for them as the limit of their predestined flight.
This once reached, they no longer have the disposition to tax

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION.

183

tlieir energies farther, but, slackening the pace, sit down con¬
tented for the future to enjoy rather than to work, or to think and
act only in the grooved routine which, by tacit understanding,
society has prescribed for them. This reaches its extreme in
the caste of the East, but is present in all social aristocracies,
and is still, to a certain extent, true of England; and in so far
must, when the race becomes keen, be a bar to her industrial
success.

The third essential for industrial supremacy in this new era
is the identification of the State and its resources with the interests
of industry , as with those of territory acquired by War. This,
as I have shown elsewhere, was always the policy of our Kings
and Statesmen from the earliest times until the era of Free
Trade fifty years ago; and it was by the rare skill and sagacity
with which through the centuries they steered our trade
through the hostile combinations that otherwise would have
wrecked it, that England reached the industrial supremacy
which she has so long enjoyed. And so long as 1 , she can keep
her supremacy in the great staple manufactures which have
made her fortunes, she can continue to enjoy Free Trade
without, on the whole, any serious detriment to herself. But
for other nations to claim this royal prerogative while England
is still supreme, or for England herself to think that she may
still keep it now that the foreigner is closing in around her on
all hands, is a generous but foredoomed illusion. America tried
it several times after the War of Independence, but so speedily
on each occasion were her infant industries brought to the
verge of extinction by the cheap products of the English looms,
that she was obliged to promptly put up her barriers again.
Germany, France, and Russia all tried the same experiment at
one time or another, but with the same result. And when, in
the year 1860, England finally embarked on an out-and-out
Free Trade policy, she deliberately cut the last thread that
bound the State to the interests of industry ; and now that the
sea is once more covered with hostile sails prepared to dispute

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

her supremacy, instead of reaching for the tiller again, she
affects to ignore them and continues to lurch about at the
mercy of wind and tide. Now, this curious reversal of the
consolidated experience of mankind in the matter of trade,
with all the possibilities of disaster that it involves, must be
laid at the doors of the academic Professors, their younger
disciples in Parliament and on the Press, and the old exponents
of the doctrine of Free Trade surviving from its early days;
and its origins, as we have seen, are to be found in the confusion
of thought bred of an old, dead metaphysical economy, and in
the long tenure of our supremacy which has led to the belief
in its indefinite continuance. My excuse for reverting to the
question here is its vital importance; for so long as Free
Trade is accepted as the true principle of trade under any and
every condition, the ghost of its withered form will continue
to haunt the Legislature, and not only confirm the Government
in its illusion of refusing to identify the State with the
interests of industry (thus blocking on the threshold every
attempt to co-ordinate and regulate the course of trade), but
will, as we shall see, vitiate every step taken in our Foreign
and Colonial policy also.

To sum up my objections to the whole doctrine, I would say
that, in my judgment, it confounds the conditions which
facilitate trade with those that determine the continuance of
trade. What the Free Trader says is, that all buying and
selling must benefit both parties alike, otherwise there would be
no deal; that this mutual benefit will be all the greater the
more easily the exchange is effected, and will, therefore, be
greatest of all when all artificial barriers whatever are abolished;
much in the same way as it would be if all the distances over
which goods have to be carried were annihilated, and exchange
could take place now and here. This being granted, for it is
quite indisputable, it would seem to follow that it would make
no difference whether we supplied all the world with goods or
all the world supplied us, for, as the Spectator puts it, “ it is

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 185

essentially as blessed to buy as to sell” And from this the
strange conclusion is drawn that if we will only not interfere
with the beneficent process of exchange by putting on tariffs
which, like irritating grains of dust between the wheels of a
watch, tend to interfere with it at this or that point, or altogether
put a stop to it, it will, like a perpetual-motion machine, go on
indefinitely, and we may rest quietly in the sure knowledge
that all will be well. In other words, we are taught to believe
that if we only make the process of exchange smooth enough,
we may count on the indefinite continuance of trade. Now,
here we must walk warily, for the very nodus of the problem,
it is evident, consists in the continuance of trade, and not in
the benefit both parties receive from each separate transaction.
It is as if you should say that because, so long as a locomotive
continues to run, each side of the piston which drives the
wheels receives the benefit of an equal amount of steam,
therefore, if you will only grease the piston and the wheels
sufficiently, the locomotive will run on indefinitely or for ever !
With the Free Trader, that is to say, the greasing of the
wheels is all; and as for the Editor of the Spectator, he is so
convinced and enamoured of this connexion between the
greasing of the wheels of exchange and the continuance of trade
by this means alone, that he boldly affirms his readiness to
stake the whole doctrine of Free Trade on its truth!

Now, in reply to this, 1 think my readers will agree with
me that in the case of a locomotive there is something
more essential to the continued running than even the
greasing of the machinery and wheels,—namely, the stoking it
with coal! Our next question then is, where the coals are to
come from ? If we take England as an example, with her land
going out of cultivation, and two-thirds of the population
having to be fed on foreign corn, it is evident that the stoking
can only be done from the sale and exchange of the produce of
our manufactories and mines.

The main point then is, how long will these sales continue 1

186

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

To this we reply that with our ports freely open and the
wheels of exchange fully greased, precisely so long as our staple
manufactures cannot be undersold by the foreigner, first in
neutral markets and at last in our home market—and no longer.
When our manufactures are undersold in neutral markets, our
locomotive will slacken; when they are undersold in our own,
it will stop altogether. For with our mills and mines closed
down, we cannot stoke our engine ourselves, and having
nothing now to exchange with the foreigner for doing it for
us, he, too, after we have paid him for it out of our capital
until it is all gone, will cease to do it; and England, ruined
like Genoa and Venice, Spain and Holland before her, will
have to return to her fields and sheep-walks, and sink to the
obscurity and dependence of a second-rate Power. And yet
at each point in the process, and until the last act of exchange
shall have brought the trade to a stop, both sides, if it be any
satisfaction to the Free Trader to know, will have been
mutually benefited. But there need be no mystery in it all,
for how does the Free Trader imagine we came by our
industrial supremacy, except by being able to undersell the
foreigner in the markets of the world ? I have said that the
theory of Free Trade was a product of dead metaphysics, and
now the reader is in a position to see why. For the fallacy of
the Free Trader is the old fallacy of Zeno, who, if you were
prepared to grant him that a flowing line was made up of an
infinite number of separate and isolated points, would prove to
you that the hare could never overtake the tortoise ! Now,
trade is a flowing thing, a question of continued movement, of
dynamics, and its laws can never be seen by regarding it
statically as a number of separate exchanges, with however
little friction these exchanges may be effected. Being a thing
of continued movement, trade always requires a force some¬
where in the background to keep it going, like our locomotive
its coals ; and it is Industrial Supremacy alone that can confer
this force. Free Trade, on the other hand, is a negative thing,

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 187

a meie removal of friction, and lias no force or life in itself for
continuance. Let the Free Trader, therefore, when his engine
threatens to come to a standstill, cease going* round and round
it with lantern and grease-pot in hand, and let him look rather
to his supply of coals. The madness of the old perpetual-
motion schemers consisted in forgetting the gradual loss of
force which the friction of the wheels of their machine
involved; the new perpetual-motion schemers have fallen into
the opposite delusion of imagining that if they only get rid of
the friction, their machine will go on of itself for ever! But
is there any certainty, it will be asked, that our great staple
manufactures will ever be undersold? Not necessarily, and
certainly not as yet; but with America and Germany
confronting us, manufacture for manufacture, with equal
natural resources, and prepared, as in the case of America, to
bombard us with giant capitals compared with which ours are
but, as we have said, as bullets to cannon balls, does the Free
Trader, with our ruined agriculture, with the possibility of our
mills closing down, and with forty millions of people to feed
in case of disaster, himself feel so absolutely secure ?

The reason I have returned to the question here is, that so
long as Free Trade, in its function of greasing the wheels, is
regarded as the sole condition for the prosperity of trade, all
attempts to get the State to identify itself with the interests of
Industry, as it does with War, must be hopeless; and for this
simple reason, that having freely opened our ports we really
believe that we have done all that is necessary, and that, there¬
fore, the best policy of the State is now to leave it absolutely
alone to run of itself; like those ei Peculiar People who,
believing in all simplicity that Providence does all in disease,
will themselves do nothing; or those faddists who, believing
that Nature does all, will equally do nothing. And with
result—what? Two hundred and fifty millions cheerfully
given to shoot the Boers for the acquisition or defence of
territory, to end in our allowing the Americans to walk in and

188

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

take all they can get on equal terms ! We might just as well
have conquered the Philippines for them while we were about
it, and then retired for them to enter in. Ships and armaments
to protect some petty territorial possession not worth keeping,
but not a penny to assist the greatest industrial designs
without which, indeed, there will soon be no armaments with
which to protect ourselves. Imperialism in the abstract
rampant, and yet the Colonies beseeching us to form a closer
union with them commercially, and making the first advances
by cheerfully offering us the preference, but we, catching sight
of the uplifted warning hand of the Free Trade spectre, coldly
turning away. Parliament consenting to the abolition of the
sugar bounties after looking on the slow decay of the West
Indian Colonies for thirty years without a sigh, but on sight
of that dead hand, nervously anxious to prove that the abolition
did not violate the principle of real Free Trade. The land of
this country going to decay and farms deserted, but landlord
and farmer alike hypnotised by this evil eye, humbly
submitting to it all as an ordinance of fate. And all from
w r hat'? From this dead metaphysical ghost of Free Trade,
which haunts the portals of the Legislature, and with its
forbidding hand arrests and petrifies all who would pass it.

And the worst of it all is that the people are being deceived.
It was not for some eosmopolitical gospel for the benefit of all
the world that these millions in all loyalty and trust gave their
allegiance to their teachers and guides in this matter of Free
Trade, but on the understanding rather that it was to be a
strictly national benefit. They did not take in that the Free
Trade argument was as if you should say that because when
some great tradesman ruins all the smaller shopkeepers in his
vicinity by underselling them, the nation is not injured,
therefore, if other nations should undersell us it would be just
the same thing, and we should be none the worse. But the
most clear-headed of the Free Traders, Mr. Hobson, to his
honour be it said, has left them under no illusion on this point;

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 189

for on being challenged he boldly told them that if they meant
trade to be of purely national benefit, and not the international
benefit at which he himself was aiming, they had better either
be prepared to take control of the organisation of industry by
the State again, as before the era of Free Trade, or to put on
at any moment Protection swift and effective, to escape
ruination; for that if a merely national interest was their aim,
Free Trade was likely to prove a will-o’-the-wisp that might
one day land them in the bog. And these millions will have a
rude awakening when they find that in economics, as in life,
nations do not share the spoils with the vanquished according
to the measure of the stake which each pledged before the
contest, but that the nation that wins takes all
And this brings us to the consideration of how England
stands in reference to the fourth and last pre-requisite for
industrial supremacy under the new conditions, namely, in the
making of Intelligence or Knowledge, as such, a twin ideal in the
national life , either with money, as in America, or with
feudalism and caste, as in Germany. Now, in this regard we
may, I think, fairly say that in no empire or nation since that
of ancient Rome, unless, indeed, it be Spain, has the want of
admiration or regard for intelligence and knowledge, as such,
reached a lower depth than in England; and that, too, as a
direct result of those very excellencies which have made her
the mother and home of liberty, of personal freedom, of orderly
government, and even, paradoxical as it may seem, by means
of these, of the advancement of knowledge itself. But in the
present day of developed or scientific industrialism this disregard
for intelligence is as deadly in its effects on the future of the
Empire as that spectral hand of Free Trade itself; and with
this addition, that whereas false views of trade are amenable to
reason and knowledge, the traditional ideals of a nation are
not; and he, indeed, will be a political magician who can
exorcise them. It may be all summed up in the now classic
phrase in which General Ian Hamilton condensed his con-

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

elusions before the Committee of Inquiry into the unsatis¬
factory condition of our military schools : 44 It is not good form
to be keen”—a text which, for its pregnant brevity and
significance, may well be written up with the parallel one from
Dante over the gates of the Inferno : 44 Let all who enter here
leave hope behind.”

Now, as to the cause of this most strange of all anomalies in
the modem world, and especially in a nation that literally lives
by its industry, it is to be found in the difficulty, nay, almost
impossibility, of the human mind entertaining with equal regard
two opposite ideals at once . It is true that in America the
regard for intelligence and knowledge, as such, has grown like a
flower from its baser roots in the twin ideal of money; but
that is because keenness, alertness, smartness, and rapid
assimilating power are precisely the best means for reaching
that ideal, in the same way as in feudal times feats of arms
and chivalry became a twin ideal with noble blood and knight¬
hood because they were the best means of attaining these. In
Germany, again, where Serfdom for many centuries reached
its lowest depths outside of Russia; where the great magnates
of the Church were independent princes; and where the
Universities have always been the centres from which issued
all the great movements, whether in thought, religion, or
politics; Knowledge and Learning, as such, have always
occupied a place of almost coequal authority with feudal rank and
title themselves; so that when the nation, since its incorporation
by the Empire, entered on the race for industrial supremacy, it
got its inspiration, its methods, and stimulus, as it had its
politics and religion, from above, as it were, and not, as in
America and the Colonies, from below. The consequence was
that when it wanted to know how best to compete with a new
industrial method, or how a particular product was to be
obtained and utilised at the least cost, it called to its aid the
University professor and the scientific specialist, and not, as in
America, the born inventor and practical organiser, 44 the

191

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION.

Connecticut man.” And the University professor, with his
infinite patience, his systematic methods, and his cheerful
passivity, was as willing to devote his life to these pursuits as
to the investigation ot the evolution of a gnat, or the origin of a
Gieek verb or particle. And hence the Germans must ulti¬
mately prove most formidable rivals to the Americans in a
necL-and-neck race for industrial ascendancy; for here you
have the scientific process, the minute investigation and calcu¬
lation, the genuine thing; and it will take much “ hustling,”
much of the alertness and practical organising power of the
Americans to cope with the laboratory processes of these
minute and indefatigable workers.

But in England it would be as difficult to engraft the ideal
of Intelligence and Knowledge on her present high but totally
different ideal, as it would be to engraft the ideal of the
Orientals on those of Western progress. And the reasons for
this, again, are not far to seek, but are to be found in the
unbroken continuity of her historical traditions. With a
population of the best-tempered metal, with none of the softness
of the Slav in its composition and with just enough of the Celt
to give it plasticity, England was for many centuries cut off
from foreign disintegrating influences by the sea; and was allowed
to weld her original heterogeneous elements into almost a pure
homogeneity through longages of internal peace. There has been
no grinding oppression of one class by another, as in France
and Ireland, to keep open the deep-seated cleavages of race,
sentiment, or interest, and in consequence no great revolution
to permanently divide the nation; the passing Puritan revolt,
which originated rather in degrees of religious tension or
fervour, and which swiftly ran through its gamut of Presbyterian,
Independent, Baptist and Quaker notes as in a musical scale,
becoming politically acute only at a single point, and being
rapidly absorbed into the old political unity again; until by
the time of Burke, and before the appearance of Whitfield and
Wesley, it had almost disappeared as a serious dividing agency,

192

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

till revived by the Education Bill. The land-owning Aris¬
tocracy, supreme from the beginning, and the guides and
counsellors of the people both in peace and war, have all along
been patterns of paternal and patriarchal rule, living on their
estates and keeping all classes closely in touch and bound to
them in successive ranks and circles of political and social
infeudation. No gaps existed between these classes too deep
to span, but each was in touch with that above it, and capable
of rising into it; while the clergy, except during the Puritan
crisis, everywhere reinforced the authority of the landlords,
upheld their honour and prestige, accepted their ideals, and
inculcated obedience and reverence to them as to the King.
In this ancient, homogeneous land, Modern Industrialism shows
but as of yesterday; and the great towns which have grown
up under its attraction, being perennially recruited from the
country, have never been able altogether to escape from the
encompassing atmosphere of the Castle and the Hail, and
being still but annexes of the counties, have always been
animated and moulded by their sentiments and ideals. These
ideals are purely feudal in character—hospitality, sport, chivalry,
honour, integrity, noblesse oblige, and the cult of the
“ gentleman ”—a consummate flower of feudalism, as it were,
realising that at which other ages have only aimed, and purged
of the grossness, barbarity or cruelty which disfigured it in
other lands; standing unchanged and all of a piece, haiunoniously
modelled and proportioned like a Greek statue, chaste, polished,
and with a classic dislike of excess in all things, avoiding both
the grossness of the German and the elaborate artificiality of
the old French regime —a feudalism transfigured and refined.

After this classic model, streaked but not altered in form by
veins of Puritanism, the entire nation has formed its ideal, in
the same way as the Scotch since the times of Knox have
formed theirs on that of the parish minister, with his devotion
to hard thinking and admiration for things of the mind.
Now, it is evident that on the surface of this polished image

THE CONDITION OP ENGLAND QUESTION. 193

°f sublimated and transfigured feudalism, mere intelligence or
knowledge, as such, can find no crevice in which to take root
(except, perhaps, along the veins of Puritanism), but must fall
off it as from the surface of a mirror. Mr. Benson expresses
this quite naively when, speaking from his experience as a
tutor, of the atmosphere of the Universities and Public Schools,
he says, “ Intellectual things, to speak frankly, are not fashion¬
able. And where intellect, science, and knowledge, as such,
are not ideals, or where, as he also admits, they are openly
flouted or contemned, it is inevitable that the great body of
the people will cultivate them only in so far as they minister
to their private ends, or round off some accomplishment
needed in special spheres, and will be quite satisfied with only
so much of them as, like household bread, will serve them for
the day that is passing over them; while the intellectual men
themselves feel the presence of this indifference as a pall.
Men of genius are, of course, found everywhere, and nowhere
more than in England, but they count for less in public esti¬
mation, authority, and repute than perhaps in any other
civilised land. The consequence is, that only just as much
knowledge is demanded, even in the most important services
of State, as is consistent with the national ideal of the
“gentleman ” and amateur. In the Army, as we have seen, it
is “ not good form to be keen ”; at the Universities and Public
Schools intellectual things are not “ fashionable/’ and football
and cricket have taken their place; while the scions of the
great commercial, manufacturing, and industrial houses on which
the industrial supremacy of England rests, lie so closely on the
fringe of the aristocracy that they become infected by their
ideals, and, taking to their yachts and hunting, cease to keep
in touch with the industrial enterprise of the age; their sub¬
ordinate managers, meantime, being of a lower social grade,
not being thought worthy of the encouragement necessary to
make good the growing slackness of their principals. The
consequence is that intelligence, as such, is nipped as by a

194

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

chilling blast just at the point where otherwise it would become
effective as a differential force in the coining conflict of the
nations for supremacy—a conflict where all our talent must be
sought out and kept at white heat if we are to stave oft
disaster. A further consequence of this national indifference
to intelligence and knowledge is, that great intellectual designs
in all walks of life, if they require either financial or moral
support, are starved or frost-bitten from their birth; and this
deadly blight usually chokes off before middle age all but the
most robust and resolute spirits. Even the Eoyal Society,
the pride of British science, if it has any large and necessary
work in contemplation, is often so cramped for want of funds
that it has to “pass round the hat,” and when the public are
slow in responding, cheerfully accepts a donation from Mr.
Carnegie, the pinched result at best being blazoned as a
triumph of our English way of doing things by “voluntary
effort. The highest honours of the State are given to the
successful generals, but to the inventors of the guns and
scientific weapons that made their victories even possible,
nothing more than is within the easy reach of the successful
tradesman. Two hundred and fifty millions, as we said,
cheerfully given to shoot the Boers, and not a sixpence for
those scientific researches which at no distant date must
decide the question of our supremacy, or indeed of our very
existence as a first-class power. It is part of the madness that
inheres in the core of every solitary and fixed ideal which can
admit no other beside itself; and in an age of industrial
supremacy only wants time to make its influence on the future
of industry as paralysing as that of the Koran itself.

Now, my reason for dwelling on all this with so much
insistence is that it is so important for the world and for
humanity that England, with the precious jewels she carries
and dispenses, should not be degraded to the rank of a second-
rate power by the loss of that industrial supremacy which has
given her her present position in the world. Her high code of

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION.

195

honour, industrial and national, her sense of justice and fair
play, her supreme merits as a coloniser, her skill in the
management of inferior races, and, above all, her humanity,
compared with which that of the best Continental nations
shows like cruelty or brutality, are a precious possession and
model which the world ought not to willingly let die. America
and the Colonies have inherited all this, of course, direct from
the Mother-country, and, except where the curse of mixed
races prevails, have improved on some aspects of it; but they
aie still inferior in those attributes which require for their
perfect fiuition a long course of special cultivation and of
strict tradition continued through centuries; and were England
wrecked by industrial defeat, they could not in these particu¬
lars easily take her place.

What, then, is to be done, it will be asked ! If our
diagnosis be correct, the treatment will be manifest to the
man in the street without prompting, and may be digested into
the following scheme. In the first place, as Free Trade fas an
absolute principle) is our most immediately pressing enemy,
let the State again grasp the tiller of Industry, and be prepared
to reverse this policy the moment our most vital industries
are really threatened, treating the fifty halcyon years of our
supremacy, under its careless and easy drifting, as if they had
never been.

And now to summarise my reasons for this opinion at the
risk of some repetition:—

As a speculative doctrine I ree Trade must be thrown out:

(1) Because it ignores the teachings of history as to the
industrial rise and fall of States—Venice, Genoa, Spain,
Holland, and the rest; ignores the skilful arrangement of
tariffs which originally gave us our supremacy; and ignores
both the beliefs and practice of all other civilised States.

(2) Because in itself it is a product of dead metaphysics,
and proceeds as if dealing with a machine at rest instead of
a machine in motion. It regards Industry as an infinite

196

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

number of isolated exchanges without the force to weld them
into a continuous movement, and imagines, therefore, that if
you can only reduce the difficulties of exchange to a minimum
by the entire removal of tariffs, you will by the same operation
get the force required to keep the whole in continuous
motion,—a most subtle and dangerous, and, in the end, fatal
want of insight.

(3) Because, holding as it does that in all separate exchanges
both parties benefit alike, and that the nation in consequence
that supplies the world gets no more benefit from its separate
exchanges than the world which it supplies, it jumps to the
conclusion that no admission of the products of foreign capital
can hurt us, whereas the truth is that, like standing armies
when they march against each other, capitals engaged in the
same trade fight until one extinguishes the other, as the rays
of the sun the heat of the fire, and all the more quickly the
more the absence of tariffs enables them to come to close
quarters : the process of underselling ruining nations in trade,
as pitched battles do in war.

As a practical doctrine Free Trade must be thrown out:

(1) Because it is true only for those favoured nations that
have already attained industrial supremacy in some great staple
article of world-demand.

(2) Because, it is a cosmopolitical doctrine, not a national
one; a millennial doctrine for the time when all nations shall
be friends and brothers, and where it matters little which is
supreme, as all alike will share in the fortunes of all, and not
for an age like the present, when each nation, like Hal-o’-the-
Wynd, is fighting for its own hand.

(3) Because, in so far as the imminency of the danger is
concerned, giant capitals in single hands are new inventions,
like that of the Armstrong gun in war, and in an industrial
contest are as superior in efficiency, as I have said, to an equal
amount of lesser capitals dispersed, as cannon balls to an equal
weight of bullets.

THE CONDITION OP ENGLAND QUESTION. 197

(4) Because in industry, as in war, the nation that conquers
in a pitched battle takes not merely its relative share of the
spoil, according to its capital invested or men engaged, but
takes all.

If, pending discussion of them, we assume that these argu¬
ments against Free Trade as a principle are valid, we should
not necessarily rush to put on tariffs all round on the ruck of
petty industries, or indeed to put them on at all until neces¬
sary, but only be prepared to concentrate, as in war, on those
great vital industries, like cotton, iron, and coal, in which to
be undersold in our own home, as well as in foreign markets,
would spell ruination, but which if protected would still be a
mighty asset for ourselves, if not for the world.

As for our second great drawback, namely, the absence of
Intelligence and Knowledge from among the ideals of the
nation, this is as impossible to alter as the religion of a people;
for ideals are the hostages that all nations give to fate.
Throughout the entire course of civilisation I know of no
nation that has gone down but has gone down hugging to its
bosom all the more closely the ideals ingrained in its history—
the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Spaniards, and the
Orientals generally; and when the time conies for the Turk to
go too, he will go carrying his ideals and his religion with him.
With nations still flourishing, independent, and free, the most
that can be done, when their ideals become unsuited for a new
era of world-history, is to try, by a process of engrafting and
mental interbreeding, to get the variation required,—as was
done, for example, when the Jewish conception of God, as
modified by Jesus, was engrafted on, and literally bred into,
the pagan world. And in the present day, and in a country
like England, where it is essential to preserve the continuity of
her historical ideal, so necessary for order, for stability, for
justice, and for individual liberty, the only way is to make the
qualities essential to the new ideal the means for realising the
honours of the old one—not disturbing the old, but allowing

198

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

the new to exist side by side with it, and gradually to
interpenetrate it. And for this we should require—

(1) Men of marked originality and energetic initiative in
every department of life,practical and speculative; discoverers,
organisers, inventors, technologists, scientists, men of historical
penetration and speculative intelligence, and all the real
teachers of the people, winnowed and drafted from the Univer¬
sities and schools and from the nation in general wherever
found—a very beehive of original workers ; not mere scholars
or echoes, pedants, encyclopaedists or prize-winners with
engorged memories, who may be left to the ordinary school¬
masters, tutors, and other devotees of routine existing outside
—and all set to work on special problems of larger or smaller
compass, according to the range and character of their powers.*

(2) Premiums put on the services of all the great men who,
in their different walks, are attached to this Government
Service, with honours, distinctions, emoluments, rank and
authority, parallel to those of the other men of rank, position,
character, and authority who now represent the national ideal,
but who, not being 44 keen,” must be left outside the new
Service, or be gradually engrafted on to it.

(3) A table of social precedence remodelled to embody this
scheme and drawn up under the authority of the Crown; for
without this, indeed, in a country like England, where social
precedence is the very soul of the transfigured feudal ideal of
the nation, all else would be in vain.

(4) The principle of gradation, with innumerable rungs and
stages from bottom to top, to be applied everywhere; with no
gaps but those created by genius itself as crown and summit of
each department; the nation to be sifted for this wherever it
is to be found, as Mr. Pierpont Morgan is said to sift the
younger men for the lieutenants necessary to his designs.

(5) The Press, so organised as to be the focussing point of

* For the organisation of this, see the chapters on “ The Bible of the
Nations ” and “ National Education ” in vol. iii. of my History of Intellectual
Development.

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND QUESTION. 199

the intelligence of the nation on the one hand, and the people
at large on the other; selecting those whom it regards as the
real leaders of the nation on either side by an informal con¬
sensus, and so gradually transferring the initiative in all public
policy from the old ideal, with its quasi-sacred official Parlia¬
mentary representatives—whose training has taught them that
too much knowledge is “ bad form/’ and whose boast it is “not
to know ”—to the men whom the new times demand. To the
Press we would give also the keeping well in hand of the
specialists, faddists, dreamers, and unpracticals, on the one
hand, and the wind-bags, the mob-orators, and the multiform
deluders of the populace, on the other. And all this with an
open arena, and “ devil take the hindmost! ”

In this way, by giving precedence to Knowledge in all those
departments of the national life in which it is the controlling
factor, and by gradually marrying it to the old historical ideal
of a refined and modernised feudalism, the nation might still
keep its old supremacy without breach of historical continuity
or the loss of the most valuable traditions of the past.

CHAPTER IV.

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE.*

*1 PROPOSE in this, the fourth of my series of articles on

Free Trade, to direct attention to the practical rather than
the theoretical aspects of our subject, and, taking advantage
of Mr. Chamberlain’s invitation to discussion, shall make the
scheme which he has submitted to Parliament the central point
from which the whole is to be surveyed. But before doing so,
and especially as Mr. Balfour has suggested that the question
should receive as scientific a treatment as possible, I desire to
point out at the outset that no discussion of it at the present
time can hope for the least success, or be bestrewn with aught
but the most dangerous pitfalls, unless two at least of the most
subtle and widespread illusions in connection with it are
removed from the background of the public mind. The first
seems to be practically universal, being held alike by Pro¬
tectionists and Free Traders, by the Press, and by the orthodox
Economists of the schools, and runs to this effect, that however
possible it may be that in the future some measure of Protection
may be necessary for our industries, owing to the walls of
hostile tariffs that everywhere surround us and hem us in, it
still holds true that if all the world would only embrace Free
Trade, not only would the world in general be benefited, but
each nation composing it would participate in that benefit and
be a sharer in its prosperity. Now, this I categorically deny,
* Fortnightly Review, July, 1903.

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 201

an( l assert, on the contrary, and shall now attempt to prove,
that were Free Trade to he embraced by the world to-morrow,
only the strongest industrial nations would be benefited, while
the weaker, far from participating in their prosperity, would
be crushed out all the sooner, sucked dry by their stronger
rivals until nothing was left of them but their skins. Now,
here is a definite issue, but if I am right, how, the reader may
ask, do I account for a whole nation being under so great an
illusion, and for its being so long and so persistently deceived ?
I will answer at once, by giving him the connection of the
subtle threads of assumption that make it up, and he will judge
for himself. Trade, it is said, is in its essential nature a
peaceful thing, and as both parties are alike benefited in every
transaction, otherwise they would not exchange, it follows that
there can* in the nature of things, be no warfare in trade
except the tolls, tariffs, and other barriers that are raised to
impede it. This is the first assumption, and from it there
follows further, and also as a necessary consequence, that,
unlike war, not only the more trade there is the better, but if
each nation or individual will go on producing all it can with
the material at its disposal, not only will the world in general
benefit by the increase, but provided that all tolls are removed
and ports are kept freely open, this benefit, like a fertilising
stream poured on level ground, must diffuse itself equally over
all the nations and peoples, in proportion to their existing
productive powers; and, further, that exchange being free, all
oscillations or disturbances that may occasionally arise here or
there must be self-balancing, and, like the waves of the sea,
when rocked by a sudden breeze, will speedily right themselves
again; the crests and ruffles, as they become calmed, quietly
diffusing themselves over the whole surface as before. And
from this it is concluded that if each nation will only go on
producing that for which it is best suited, and will remain
steadfast in the faith and practice of keeping the ports and
avenues of exchange and communication open and free, it may

202

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

rest in security and have no fear of ever coming to grief. In
other words, absolute freedom of trade among all nations would
be tantamount to the continuance of trade prosperity among them
all, in proportion to their productive powers. Now the above,
I think, is a fair resume of the underlying assumptions of the
public faith, which may be read every day of the week in the
Press; and the fatal thing about them is that they seem so
simple, and sound so true. If, therefore, I can dispose of them
here and now, the back of the Free Trade position will be
effectually broken; for in them, all its fallacies lie concealed.

Now, the first thing we have to remark about this chain of
assumptions is, that if true at all they are abstract truths, truths
of industry in the abstract, of exchange in the abstract, of
production and consumption in the abstract, of mankind in the
abstract, and so correspond in their way to the pasteboard
“ economic man 55 of the old Political Economy. But now we
must bring them down to the concrete, so that they shall
correspond to the actual facts of the world, and consider them
as operating between nations anxious to preserve their indi¬
viduality as political units, and everywhere striving to protect
and aggrandise themselves if necessary at the expense of the
other nations, rooted each in its own geographical locality, with
its own particular climate, soil, and natural productions, and
each more or less specialised in the kind of things it can profit¬
ably produce for exchange with the rest of the world—some,,
corn and foodstuffs, others fruits, others wine, or oil, or tobacco,
others minerals, timber, or other raw materials, and so on.
And now, if we start these nations trading with one another,
what shall we see? The first glance will show us that, as
between the sexes, it is only between opposite or complementary
productions and commodities that a fruitful exchange beneficial
to both parties takes place, and therefore only between the
countries that produce them; between corn and food-growing
countries, and those whose speciality is manufactured goods;
between the wine or fruit-growing and the corn-growing; and

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE.

203

so on ; and not between those mainly or wholly engaged in the
production of the same class of commodities, between whom,
on the contrary, all is rivalry and warfare, as between jealous
lovers suing for the same hand. So that, instead of all the
world exchanging merrily with each other, and each, like a
promiscuous dance of holiday-makers on a village green,
getting its full share of all the kisses and favours that are going,
legulated exchanges only go on, as in a ball-room, between
opposite partners drawn up in regular lines. Or, to show its
tragic side more clearly, the trading world may be compared
to a country intersected by streams, to the opposite banks of
which the nations, like Indian trappers, repair to exchange
their wares, and where the peaceful exchange on which the
Free Traders love to dwell, takes place only between those, be
it observed, who have actually arrived there. But arrived
how ? Bloodstained with the dead rivals they have had to
extinguish on the way, whose bones line the trail as those of
camels do the route of an Eastern caravan, all perished before
they could arrive; but all lying, unseen by the eyes of the
spectator, in the background and interspaces of the streams,
like the heaped-up piles of dead gladiators that filled the pits
in the rear of a Roman amphitheatre. There is not a corn
exchange in the world where the arrival of a peaceful bidder
from a new and unknown land might not, by the figure he
quietly chalks on the blackboard as the price at which he is
prepared to sell his corn, reduce whole countries to permanent
ruin and starvation. The lively exchange that goes on across
the counters of the great retail stores in the leading thorough¬
fares of London and other great cities, and which looks so
peaceful and satisfactory to all concerned, conceals its holocaust
of victims; for it has been built up too often on the ruin of
whole streets of surrounding shopkeepers. The exchange is
between the public and the prizewinners only, all the rest being
drained of customers or obliged to close. Now, it is here, if
the Free Trader will consider it, that the warfare comes in, in

204

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

that peaceful idyllic picture of his in which, if you will not
put up hostile tariffs, trade, being fruitful and peaceful in its
essential nature, can contain in itself none of the destructive
elements of war. Of course, it does not matter who loses or
who wins in the contest between rival shippers, manufacturers,
wholesale men or tradesmen in the same country. It is part of
the game, and however it ends the country as a whole is no
worse off, but probably better than before. But apply it to
rival nations, with ourselves as one of the combatants concerned,
and unless we can complacently assure ourselves that we must
be the winner, how then % And this brings me within sight
of the point at which I am driving, namely, that the more free
the trade, the more open the communications, and the fewer
the tariffs, the more swift, decisive, and complete is the
ruination and defeat. Instead of its oscillations, when left
perfectly free, diffusing and propagating themselves and the
benefits they bring equally, like the waves of the sea, over all
the nations engaged, and leaving each as secure and fixed in
its place as the buoys that rock themselves in even swing from
trough to crest on its smiling waters, the truth is exactly the
opposite. Like these very waves, which in reality are steadily
drifting in the direction of the tides and the moon, this trade
of the nations is ever drifting quickly or more slowly in the
direction of the peoples with the most effective productive powers,
slipping away from one to the other as each is overcome in the
race, heaping its riches now on one shore, and then ebbing
from it to follow the fortunes of its stronger rival, and leaving
it stranded high and dry; and all the more rapidly, be it noted,
the fewer breakwaters there are in the shape of tariff fences or
entrenchments to break the precipitancy of its retreat. All is
drifting, the trade of the little retailers towards that of the
great shopkeepers, leaving them dying or extinct in its wake ;
the old iron and coal mining of Kent and the south long since
drifted to the Midlands and the north; the woollen mills of
the eastern counties to Yorkshire and Lancashire, and becoming

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. ' i^05

concentrated there, with the old mills closed down behind th<srn
in their flight; the freer the trade, the greater the facilities of
transit and communication by canal or steam, and the wider
the area to be tapped and supplied, the quicker the concen¬
tration, the greater the ensuing supremacy, and the more
exhausted and deserted the regions left behind. For the same
river, that by its facility of communication has just brought
trade and prosperity to one of the little landing places in its
course, washes it away again as soon as the country is opened
up, sacrificing it to a more fortunately situated upstart farther
down the stream. The new railway that in its progress from
village to village makes the fortune of each in turn, leaves
them all again, except the one or two more favourably placed,
to sink into stagnation and decay. And these favourites of
fortune, as I have elsewhere insisted, do not, as the Free
Trader imagines, share their advantages with their defeated
rivals, but, like a victorious general after a battle, or the
strongest bull in the herd, take all; or, if not, like the giant
Trusts of America, who, after having crushed out their smaller
rivals one by one, reinstate them again as managers, take the
cream of the trade for themselves, and leave the vanquished
only the skim milk !

Here, then, is a reversal of all our old traditional beliefs on
this matter, and yet I am confident that the History of Nations,
too, will bear me out. The trade of the East and West, which
at first was monopolised by Phoenicia and Carthage, on their
fall concentrated itself in Rome and Alexandria, and afterwards
at Amalfi and Constantinople, being extinguished in each in
turn by conquest in war. When it finally settled in Venice,
Genoa, Florence, and other Italian cities, purely economic
causes did for these, again, what war had done for their pre¬
decessors. The mere discovery of the passage to India around
the Cape was sufficient to transfer their supremacy to Spain
and Portugal, where, after remaining for a time, other economic
causes equally potent in their way next transferred it to Holland

206

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

and the Baltic, and finally to England. But each of these,
instead of sharing in turn its prosperity with the one it had
supplanted, and diffusing its splendour over Spain and the
Italian cities, kept it, on the contrary, tenaciously to itself ; so
that the Free Trader may well ask in mild surprise alike of
Venice and Genoa, Florence, Holland and Spain, where are
your glories now ? And yet each of these rose to supremacy,
not by Protection alone, nor yet by Free Trade alone, but by
a mixture or alternation of each skilfully and wisely applied
according to its own needs and to the circumstances of the
time; always rigorously protecting itself when fighting its
way up to supremacy, and usually relaxing, as we ourselves did,
when that supremacy was assured, and Protection was no
longer required. In a former article I went into this matter in
detail, pointing out especially that England had reached
supremacy long before Oobden and the Corn Laws were heard
of, and I need not repeat it here. Suffice it to sum up the
conclusion I there reached, namely, that when once a nation
like England, that was once industrially supreme in its own
line, is threatened on all hands, as we are at present, by
younger rivals, and is at last effectually beaten, by however
small a margin, in its home markets, in that which gave it its
supremacy, it must be prepared to put on Protection rigid as
quarantine, as the simplest, swiftest, and most efficacious way
of averting disaster, until such time, if ever, as by an internal
reorganisation of its forces, it is able to contest the supremacy
again.

So different a complexion is thus put on the abstract chain
of assumptions on which Free Trade is built, by the actual
economic facts of the world. If we substitute the conception
of animal for that of trade, the Free Trade syllogism will run
thus:—All animals, like trade, are by nature reproductive ; all
animal flesh is good as human or animal food; the more
animals, therefore, you can bring together, if left alone, the
more food there will be for all to divide. But supposing the

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 207

animals brought together were lions and antelopes, wolves and
sheep, cats and mice, how then t Where then would the
increase of food he found!

If Free Trade, then, became universal to-morrow, we may
fairly conclude that, far from being a benefit to all the world,
it would benefit only those 'great complementary nations which
by their original or acquired productive powers have fought
their way to supremacy, degrading all the rest into mere
appendages or annexes, and bringing them all alike more surely
and swiftly to decay; as is seen in our agriculture, for
example, where fields that might now be smiling with golden
harvests, and stocked with men, are lying, in places, as
untenanted and untilled as if the hoof of the conqueror had
passed over them, extinguished as completely by the bloodless
process of being undersold in the corn market, as by war. Had
all the world embraced Free Trade fifty years ago, England
would have extinguished their manufactures in detail before
they had time to take root and grow, much as animals and
tramps and boys do the produce of unfenced fields and gardens;
their populations confined to the country would have remained
as unprogressive as Dutch Boers ; and the total produce of the
world, far from being increased, would have been reduced to
little more than was necessary for mere subsistence, in the
same way as the produce of miscellaneous human promiscuity
must be less than that of separate and regulated families and
homes. And this gives us the hint as to the true law of the
production and distribution of wealth, a truth to which Nature
herself and the present course of the world both point the way.
It is this, that the greatest amount of produce for each , as for
all nations, will be got from a world, each of whose great
divisions, like enclosed fields, is self-contained; in the same
way as Nature gets the greatest amount of work out of a
number of individual animals and plants of endless variety,
each of which is self-sufficing, and stands complete within its
own skin. The nations themselves have long seen it, in spite

208

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

of their pedants and doctrinaires, and are now busily engaged
in rolling themselves together as fast as they can into separate
self-contained balls, founded on racial affinities and geographical
landmarks — Slavonic, Germanic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and
what not—and the attempt to reverse this instinctive process
is like tampering with gravitation, elective affinity, and other
ordinances of fate. And all this means, in a word, Protection
for the great progressive nations in all those productions that
are needed to make them round and self-sufficing, with a free
entry for all that their own soil cannot with advantage produce;
the amount of free or preferential trade being regulated as if
they were port-holes in a ship, which are used to let in a
plentiful supply of fresh air from the outside—but not the sea!

Summing up, then, we may say that most of what is vital in
the new Science and Art of Political Economy which it has
been the object of this series of articles to inaugurate, may
be written on your fingpr nails, and may be catalogued as
follows:

1. That Trade is a game of skill, not an eviscerated

abstract skeleton of pedantry and the Schools, and
that in all its transactions whatever, whether in
regard to rents, profits, and wages, or to a purely
private deal, whether between individuals, classes, or
nations, he wins and takes the lion’s share who by
skilful manoeuvring manages, like Napoleon in his
campaigns, to get the advantage by a larger con¬
centration of effective productive force at each point.

2. That the greatest produce for the world and for each

nation is to be got, not from universal Free Trade,
but from large, enclosed, self-sufficient nationalities
grouped according to race and geographical distinc¬
tions, and following in trade the principle of Pro¬
tection ; the same principle which induces men to
enclose their fields and gardens, and not to leave
them open to the highway for the crops and fruits to

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 209

be plucked or devoured before they have had time to
sprout or ripen; and with gates not to stand open of
necessity , but to be opened or shut as expediency or
circumstance dictates.

8. That, as for purposes of trade, men cannot be divided
into separate classes of producers and consumers, but
each is both producer and consumer at once, you
cannot get the best results by studying cheapness in
consumption alone, but only by studying cheapness
so far as it will not paralyse the arm for production,—
and no farther.

4. That in a Free Trade country like England which,
owing to its undisputed world supremacy, has been
enabled so long to prosper under that r&gime, when
once the great vital industries that gave it its supre¬
macy are seriously attacked or beaten, it must be
prepared to put on Protection swift and sharp; that
when its less important ones are captured, it may
cheerfully let them go, as in a game of cards, only if
it sees its way to confront its opponent by a more
decisive coup later on in the game.

These principles bring us at last full flush on Mr. Chamber¬
lain’s scheme, and if by means of them we have succeeded in
getting the illusions of the old Political Economists well
under hatches, and have exorcised those dead ghosts which,
haunting the background of the mind, by their uplifted warn¬
ing hand have so long affrighted and perplexed the judgment,
we may now sit down and calmly consider what we are to
think about it in detail.

After what has been said, I need scarcely say that in my
opinion the raising of the question at all is of the most vital
and profound importance to the interests of England at the
present time; and further, that could a beginning be made
to-morrow in the introduction of the protective principle on
which the scheme is founded, it could issue in nothing but

o

210

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

good. That the skeleton of the scheme, which is all that
Mr. Chamberlain has as yet vouchsafed us, is in principle
thoroughly sound, I have no doubt; my only fear is that it is
premature, and that the parts of it cannot be so timed in
execution as to form that full, round, and harmonious whole
which is needed to secure its ’acceptance; that its separate
parts will be in turn so blocked by private interest, prejudice,
illusion, and economic fanaticism, that the scheme as a whole,
whether in regard to England alone or as embracing the
Colonies as well, will never get over the bar at all. Indeed, to
carry it out completely would seem to require rather a genera¬
tion than a session or two of Parliament, or even a decade.
But to see how all this will operate, let us fix in our minds
definitely what the general objects are which the scheme is
intended to effect. In the large, they may be said to be, first,
to restock our vacant agricultural fields with men and homes
again; second, to protect our great manufacturing industries
against the foreigner, and relight the mill and factory fires
blown out by bounty-fed foreign products and the cheap sur¬
plusage and excess of gigantic protected Trusts thrown on the
market “at a song 55 ; and, thirdly, to bring in the Colonies,
with a view mainly of knitting the Empire more closely
together and of protecting ourselves and them in the hour of
danger, by means of solid business advantages to be given and
received.

Let us take England, therefore, by itself first, and see what
the difficulties are; we can then bring in the Colonies after¬
wards, and consider how they will advance or retard the
scheme.

Now, to restock our country districts and their fertile fields
with men again—that dark spot in the heritage left us by
Free Trade—with the decline in the value of the land in the
last quarter of a century of £1,000,000,000, and loss of farmers’
capital of £150,000,000, it must be done on a sound scientific
principle. Not on the theory of Rousseau which took effect

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 211

in France after the Revolution, with its millions of peasant
proprietors on their five to ten acre patches, showing like a
vjist sand sea of sordid human particles bent and half embruted
with the toil needed to wring subsistence from them; for this
is a lot worthy of no distinctively human life. Not, again,
like the stalwart quarter-section farmers of America, with
their 160 acres each, and covering the country from sea to
sea that solid backbone of the country and its rock of
defence against all the machinations and corruptions of Bosses
and Trusts; for England is too small to admit of so much
space to each; but graded rather according to the historical
character of the people, and providing at once for equality and
inequality, for authority and liberty, for necessities and even
luxuries; with your u three acres and a cow ” for the working
man and labourer on the outskirts of towns and villages; your
twenty, fifty, one hundred, five hundred acres, in enlaradno*
circles, all alike freehold, as in France, America, and the
Colonies; and as crown and summit, the great landlords and
their castles as the centres of authority, taste, and culture for
all. But how attain this ideal, which would involve the dis¬
memberment and sale of the larger portion of the great estates
(now on the eve of accomplishment in Ireland), with the
House of Lords still standing, and a House of Commons
largely identified with it in sentiment if not in interest 1 It
cannot be done. Besides, to be a success it would involve
Protection, in spite of Prince Krapotkin’s gallant attempt to
prove that the country by a sufficiently intensive culture could
be made self-supporting both in corn and every other form of
produce. But how, again, get the inhabitants of the cities
and towns to so far sacrifice themselves (as they do in France
for the peasant proprietors) as to have the price of bread
raised on them by tariff in order that after a pass or two
the advantage must find its way, as Lord Rosebery himself
admitted, into the pockets of the present landlords ? That,
too, cannot be done.

212

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Let us turn, then, to the protection of our Manufactures*
where, out of our thirteen or fourteen great and supreme
industries, we have in the last quarter of a century declined in
cotton, iron and steel, woollen and yams, linen, leather, engines
and hardware, and have improved only in coal, machinery,
apparel, and chemicals; the improvement in coal ranging
higher than all the rest put together, and our supremacy, there¬
fore, in this, being but a living on capital, and on the pro¬
gressive exhaustion of the mines. Many of the above will soon,
if they do not already, require protection to save them from
gradual extinction. Can we not, therefore, get the working men
to consent to the slight increase in the cost of living which the
protection of agriculture demands, by promising them an
increase of wages, by the protection of manufactures, as its
balance and set off, and so get both our ends by a single
throw ? Yes, if they were sure that protection of manufac¬
tures must lead to a higher wage, or if they were thrown out of
work in great batches all over the country at the time when
the question came on. But how get them to see it while they
are still in work, and the evil day that is surely approaching for
them, if the Free Trade regime goes on, has not yet dawned ?
How, indeed, when not only the universal Press and the
Economists, but their own Leaders din into their ears daily
that they are consumers only, and must study only cheapness
of living; and that as for their employers, the producers, they
cannot go wrong so long as they get their raw material in cheap
and free; and so, in consequence, workmen and employers
being separately best served, both must be best served; not
seeing that if once the employer is undersold in the home
market, whether his material has come in free or not free, all
alike must go down together. Besides, Protection of itself
does not necessarily raise wages, although it can be made
indirectly to raise them, if Government will only ascertain
accurately what the increased cost in living from the Tariff
ought to be, publish it to the world, and then advance the

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 213

wages of all the workmen in its own employ to that amount ;
and so give the Trades Unions throughout the country the cue
as to what their increased demands from their employers ought
to be; and with this moral support at their back leave them to
fight it out for themselves. But to do this the workmen must
put their own shoulders to the wheel. The official publication
of what the increased cost of living ought to be would also help
the workmen to squeeze the great Middlemen, who, sitting like
spiders on their coign of vantage, in secret unseen combination,
are an enemy more remorseless and devouring than any tariff;
for their yearly extortions alone, were they made to disgorge
them, would of themselves go a long way towards giving the
working man his free breakfast table and his old age pension.
And when this superflux, shaken from the middleman, was
combined with the amount we could skim off the foreigner's
profits (who with thirty millions of quarters of wheat more
than the world requires would let us have it in spite of our
tariff at a minimum, rather than feed his pigs with it), the
workmen would be almost as well off in the matter of cheap¬
ness of consumption as before. But in itself Protection would
not raise Wages. They depend in any given country, like all
things else in this world, on custom, precedent, and the stage
of evolution reached, modified by the extent to which, at any
given point of time, one or other of the opposing parties has got
its back against the wall. Eoman nobles had the plunder of
whole conquered provinces made over to them, but their slaves
did not share it; Golcondas fell to Spanish grandees on the dis¬
covery of the Mexican and Peruvian mines, but their serfs
fared the same as before ; capitalists made colossal fortunes out
of their cotton mills in Lancashire at the beginning of last
century, but the men, women, and children whom they
employed had by combination to heave the lead for every
smallest increment of rise they received. Wages are, and
always have been, relatively high in America and the Colonies,
from the history, traditions, and custom of the people; they

214 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

remain so under Protection. They would remain low indefi¬
nitely, for the same reason, among the labourers and peasants
of Italy, Russia, Germany, and the East, if Free Trade were
established in these countries to-morrow.

Again, how are “ the great unwashed ” at the bottom of the
scale, the millions of residuum below the decent poverty line,
the impotent, the besotted, the wrecks and failures whom the
(^population of the country districts has helped to diive into
the slums of towns and cities, how can Protection raise the
wages of these ? There are no Trade Unions to help them, no
power of combination among themselves to secure them a living
wage. No stimulus given to manufactures or production would
in itself much benefit them, for they are unskilled ; and Pro¬
tection is a remedy for the difficulties of the efficients of the
industrial world, and not for its waste refuse. They would be
hopeless under any regime . And yet you cannot run a nation
in the interests of its lamed industrials, however numerous they
may be, any more than you can an army in the interests of its
camp followers, as the Americans found out to their cost when,
for a season, they tried to run their Republic in the interests
of the newly-enfranchised slave. But in an age of Utopian
philanthropy, which long years of peace, abetted by doctrinaire
philosophies and “ the rights of man as man ” have engendered,
where, in considering Mr. Chamberlain's scheme, shall you find
the leverage on public opinion necessary to carry through a
policy which would leave these twelve millions of water-logged
incapables of the slums in its rear ? It cannot be done.
Emigrate them, say you; pack them off in gangs and regiments
to the country to help restock its deserted fields; exclude the
pauper alien, and trust to the rest being re-absorbed in a measure
in the cities, when declining industries shall be revived by Pro¬
tection. So say I; but where is the peasant proprietary and
sub-division of the soil that is ready to reabsorb and distribute
them ? And, if it were, who is going to do it in an age of
laissez-faire , where, except in matters of War, or of Education

free trade, protection, and preference, 215

with sectarian shibboleths as war cry, all alike until but yesterday
upheld the motto, 6t Everything by voluntary effort, nothing
by the State. 5 But in an age of infinite differentiation and
specialisation of nations, of industries in the same nation,
and of individuals in the same industry, where regulation,
and your hand on the rudder, are required at every turn, and
where the politics of a nation demand the mental agility
and poise of a gymnast at every point, this doctrine of
laissez-faire, of go-as-you-please, and things will right them¬
selves, and that what cannot be done by voluntary effort had
better not be done at all, is an even more fatal heritage than
that of Free Trade itself.

And now we have to ask to what extent, if any, a Pro¬
tective policy for England alone, which must be landlocked
for many years, owing to the above and other causes, will
be hastened by working the Colonies into the scheme'? The
answer to this will be found in the answer to the question
as to what, if any, relations of an economic and industrial
kind can be established with the Colonies that shall have
the element of continuance in them, and will be attended
with pure good without danger of friction or the chances of
alienation c l And for this I shall be obliged to confine
myself entirely to the principles involved, and on which the
solution of the problem depends; and as Mr. Chamberlain
has himself not yet gone into details, I shall venture here
only to indicate the more important of these principles, and
the way in which they are to be applied.

To begin with, I shall assume that the aim and destiny
of the Colonies, as of ourselves, and all other progressive
modern States is to be self-complete and self-contained, so
far as is compatible with the natural productiveness of their
soil; having that healthy balance between town and country
life, between commerce, manufactures, and food supply, which
is essential to nations destined for progress and ,culture.
And the first principle I would lay stress on is the extreme

216

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

difficulty of establishing permanent relations of any but the
most loose, elastic, and general character between countries
separated by sea or inaccessible land barriers, whether they be
Colonies and the Mother Country, or not; as the history of the
colonies of Rome and the cities of ancient Greece abundantly
testifies. And the reason is, that a man’s country or fatherland
extends no farther than the horizon which he figures in imagi¬
nation as the boundary of his life’s activities, and within
which he finds the arena for his dreams; and the pressure of
whose bonds, political, social, and personal, surrounding him as a
milieu , is the deepest influence by which he is at once im¬
pelled, supported, and restrained. All other communities,
however close may be the political and merely sentimental ties
that bind them, are in their nature foreign , and on the slightest
ruffle to these deepest sentiments and interests are apt to
assume an unfriendly or hostile aspect. In considering our
relation to the Colonies, therefore, in the matter of a closer
commercial union, they are to be regarded at once as children
and as adults; children, as being as yet entirely on our hands
for protection against foreign Powers; adults, inasmuch as
they are already full grown and independent, being settled in
life for themselves, and attached to their own land and soil as
to their bride. No bond, therefore, of any kind between us
and them can be drawn more tightly or more permanently
than between sons on the one hand, each with his own family
and business interests to consider, and the parent still engaged
in active business on his own account, where though all are
ready to unite when the common family interest, honour, or
good name is impugned, or the common family possessions
attacked, and are prepared to do good turns to each other in
moments of illness or misfortune, or in putting business in each
other’s way ; still the steady standing business interest of each
is and must be the fixed and permanent principle of action of
each and all alike. To try and get more out of the relation¬
ship than this, is to invite disaster and to court the fate of the

free trade, protection, and preference. 217

Greek cities and their colonies who, although ready to start to
arms on a spurt against the common Barbarian, fell into dissen¬
sion, ending often in permanent hatred and alienation, when
left to themselves to apportion their relative shares of the spoil.
Now, in the relation between us and the Colonies, the common
bond of the Crown, which rests on sentiments and interests deep
and enduring, is quite sufficient for purposes of any casual war
that is likely to arise in the immediate future, provided always
that the steady business interests of each continue to work
smoothly and for mutual advantage, and without the danger of
arousing through friction sentiments unfriendly to ourselves.
But as the very object of our proposed closer amalgamation of
business interests with the Colonies is precisely for the purpose
of strengthening the mutual defences and resources of the
Empire in each and every part, in that larger ultimate war
between gathering and consolidating races—Anglo-Saxon,
Germanic, Slavonic, Celtic, Mongolian, etc.—which is the
dark spot looming in the remoter future, it behoves us to
consider well the lines and principles on which this commercial
union is to be drawn, so as to be most certain of attaining this
end without the danger of reaction or recoil. The problem,
that is to say, is, what is the best business relationship between
us and the Colonies in peace, that will put us all alike on the
best ultimate war footing, and at the same time add to our
immediate and prospective material prosperity?

In the first place, then, I should exclude all that pertains to
War from any arrangement that is intended to be either
definite, permanent, or binding, leaving such contributions as
the Colonies care to make for the common defence to the
sentiment and free will of each and to the honourable rivalry
among them all, while retaining in our own hands, and placing
beyond the reach of cavil, the free ultimate decision in the
disposal of the forces of the Crown for the common defence,
as now. As for the nature of the permanent business basis
between us, I should, in order to diminish friction to a

218 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

minimum, exclude from it all that is personal, as it were, and
peculiar to each Colony, all that each Colony conceives to be
vital to its own individual interests and prosperity, its own
peculiar ideals, aspirations, and aims, and the free manage¬
ment of which it wishes to keep in its own hands, and which
it could not pledge or part with without danger of after
discontent or regret. But of what remains and can be made
a matter of permanent and binding relationship between us I
should, bearing in mind the proverbial difficulty of business
relations between near relatives, have it clearly understood
from the start that all favours or hopes of favour, other than
those in the bond, should be ruled out of purview, all expecta¬
tions that might be made to hang sentimental or other
grievances upon—like that man in the Gospel who expected
more pay for working in the vineyard longer hours than
another, although what he got was what he bargained for;
and that all arrangements whatever should be put on a strictly
business footing, without prejudice, afterthought, or heart¬
burning, each side having a perfectly free hand to agree or
disagree as it likes, as much so, indeed, as m a treaty between
foreign nations. And for this purpose the only way possible,
it seems to me, is to deal with each Colony separately , to find
out the margin of a possible reciprocal deal with each; to
arrange that there shall be such a margin, however small,
against the foreigner wherever the two come into competition
in parallel lines of work, and to give effect to this as the
common principle of trading within the Empire. Any attempt
to deal with these matters, where some of the Colonies must
be behind the rest, by a Round-table Conference of the
representatives of each sitting on them in court, on the basis of
distributive justice measured out to each accoiding to the
several pretensions or claims, would be as hopeless and Utopian
as to attempt to square the circle or to regulate the entrances
and exits of ambassadors without strict rules of precedence,
and would wreck the scheme from the outset. Lot there be

1REE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 219

no question of justice in the strict sense of the term in the
matter at all, but pure business expediency alone; and the
margin of preference that may in each case be granted,
based as much as possible on figures and trade returns, once
agreed upon, let the whole agreement (as between the Colonies
and the Mother Country, there can be no question of coercion)
be held as a matter of sacred honour and good faith. What
this margin may be will depend on circumstances, but as each
will fix it on the principle of what it can afford to do after it
has put on such tariffs as are necessary for its own internal
industrial objects and aims, not only against foreign nations,
but against its sister Colonies and ourselves as well, and vice
versa, the margin of common reciprocal trade between the
several parts of the Empire will, I suspect, be a narrower belt
than is generally anticipated. We can only afford to let in
Colonial com and other produce at a point of cheapness which
will not interfere with our fixed intention of making our own
corn and produce pay sufficiently to enable us again to restock
our country districts with men. The Colonies can only allow
our manufactures to come in at the point where they will not
drown their own, especially in those lines for which they have
sufficient natural advantages and are resolved to develop them.
It is in the narrow belt of discriminating preference lying
between these points and the still higher points of the tariff
fixed for the foreigner that the mutual benefits would arise
from which the Empire would draw its harvest. But as this
belt, however narrow, would constitute a virtual monopoly for
England on the one side, and the Colonies on the other, the
area over which it would extend would ultimately be so rich
and wide as to inaugurate an era of vast and increasing activity
and enterprise throughout the whole Empire, and one, in my
belief, out of all proportion to the loss at first sustained in our
strictly foreign trade. Emigration from England and America
would overflow into Canada to take up farms and get the
differential advantage of our tariff, and the men who entered

220 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

would, in the second generation, become loyal subjects of the
Empire. And so with the other Colonies in their different
ways. As for America, instead of shipping her goods here
and underselling us, she would bring her capital over and
manufacture them here out of such of our natural resources as
are as available as her own; and her sons, too, in the second
generation, would amalgamate with us to our mutual benefit.
In the meantime, common action, on the basis of the Momoe
doctrine, and for such common objects, for example, as
keeping ports open in Asia, as against the aggressions of other
European Powers, would help later to bring America, too, into
the Anglo-Saxon fold, and so help to weld into a unity that
universal Anglo-Saxondom which, before the century has
reached its meridian, will find itself confronted with Pan-
Germanism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Mongolianism, or what not, in
the straggle in which the nations will be engaged in carving
out for themselves heritages among the retrograde peoples and
vacant spaces of the earth.

The inclusion of the Colonies in Mr. Chamberlain’s scheme,
then, owing to the dangerous nature of the material with
which we have to deal, and which must be handled with the
utmost delicacy, cannot be contemplated altogether without a
shade of misgiving, and we may well hesitate before finally
embarking on it; all its aspects being double-edged, both in
regard to the Colonies, the foreigner, and ourselves. Then-
inclusion will hasten, perhaps, the acceptance of Protection for
England, but it will be as much for its glamour as for any just
insight into the complex play of forces involved. But I should
have preferred Protection for ourselves independently, in the
first instance at least, with preferential treatment on either side
purely gratuitous and spontaneous, in the way in which Canada
has set the example, rather than with the slightest tinge of
bargain or sale between us. But, if Mr. Chamberlain and the
Colonial statesmen can see their way to make a business
scheme which shall draw the bonds tighter work without

FREE TRADE, PROTECTION, AND PREFERENCE. 221

friction, the endeavour can be fraught with nothing but
good.

And yet, in contemplating the return to Protection which
sooner or later awaits us, we cannot but linger with a sigh
over the halcyon days of Free Trade, a brief summer of
Imperial supremacy like that of Rome in the age of the
Antonines, before her inevitable decay set in; for, with a
Parliamentary Government without central, controlling initia¬
tive like that of the Czar or German Emperor, to keep its
hand on corruption, the vast interests involved in every change
of tariff under a rigime of Protection must put such pressure
on individual members of the legislature that the present purity
of our political institutions will gradually tend to disappear,
and the Boss, the Lobbyist, and the professional politician, as
in America, will enter with all their train.

CHAPTER Y.

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL

PARTY*

Its Principles and Methods, with Some Applications.

J PROPOSE in this paper to take advantage of the
hospitality of the Editor in permitting me to explain in
some detail, by means of illustrations and applications, the
principles of a New Political Party which for some time I
have been contemplating, and from the standpoint of which
previous articles of mine in this Review have been written ;
a party which I believe to be both desirable and necessary,
and, as I shall now attempt to show, sufficiently urgent to be
ripe for formal statement and discussion. But lest the reader
should be startled at the very suggestion of a new political
party, as of something portentous, presumptuous, or altogether
ridiculous, let me hasten to reassure him by adding that the
party I have in contemplation will not challenge the validity
of any of the existing political parties, or seek in any way to
displace them, hut will attempt at most, in a quiet way, to
modify or qualify them from 'within themselves. It will not
* Fortnightly Review, February, 1905.

223

SUGGESTIONS FOE A NEW POLITICAL PARTY.

lequire any organisation to start it, or keep it a-going—neither
subscription lists, ballot-boxes, nor franchises—but when once
thoroughly grasped, will go on of itself, without either leaders
to direct it, platform orators to justify it, or popular enthusiasm
to keep it alive. It is purely a thing of the mind, as it were—
a new point of view, if I may say so, and principle of
co-ordination founded on Evolution and History—to be applied
to political problems when they have to be handled practically,
and not merely critically, or speculatively; and so can lie side
by side with the older political parties without aggression or
offence. In a general way it will aim at playing the part of a
kind of political mariner’s chart, by furnishing a definite line
or curve along which to steer; and should it prove acceptable,
will rely for its support on that great body of thoughtful voters
among all parties, who, although scattered, are the main agents
in turning out ministries when they become retrograde or lose
their grip on realities—those men who, although firmly
attached to their respective parties, are nevertheless com¬
pelled to steer their course, when obliged to oppose them,
rather by natural instinct, rule of thumb, or that kind of com¬
promise which consists in “ splitting the difference ,’ 1 than by
any body of well-defined principles applicable to all causes and
situations alike. And yet, so great is my faith in these
principles, that when once they are co-ordinated and bound
into a harmonious whole, I expect them to stand like an image
or statue of Peace amid the roar of distracting parties; and
should my hopes in their regard be realised, a decade will not
have elapsed before their influence is definitely felt, nor a
generation without their having so coloured the older political
parties as in a measure to have silently transformed them.
Let me, then, without further preliminary, define the principles
of this New Party from which I expect so much, give the
reasons for its urgency and necessity, point out the wants it
will supply, and explain the manner in which I conceive it will
act. But as it is more than probable that, with the limited

224

SOCIOLOGY ANI> POLITICAL ECONOMY.

space at my disposal, iny explanations will still leave much to
he desired, I propose, in a measure, to remedy this defect by
applying the principle in question to some of the political
problems of the present hour—imitating in this that Yankee
inventor I once knew, who, finding that people would not,
or could not, understand the pamphlet in which the advantages
of his patent hay-and-straw-cutter were described, set up his
machine like a guillotine in the market place, prepared to
demonstrate its merits by chopping wisps of hay or straw for
all and sundry of the farmers who chanced to pass along!

But first, let me not so much apologise for my own temerity
in proposing to start a new political party on the lines of
Evolution, as express my surprise that it should not have been
done before. For there is no other department of life or
thought except this of Practical Politics in which the principle
of Evolution has not driven all other principles out of the
field, not only in speculative philosophy, but m matters so
practical as the breeding of horses, sheep, and dogs. And yet,
in none is its application more urgent and pressing than in
practical politics; and the more so the nearer the government
of a country approaches that of a pure democracy. For, from
the time that the French Revolution proclaimed the doctrines
of absolute Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, which have
been accepted by the progressive parties in all modern States,
you cannot keep the natural evolution of nations in a steady
line by merely “ splitting the difference ” between the rival
parties, as you do in the breeding of animals, and as was still
possible in the days when kings, as mediators, kept their hold
on the rudder of legislation. And the reason is, that these
opposite parties are entirely different in essential nature. One
of them—the party of abstract Equality—is self-contradictory
and absolutely unreliable ; so much so, indeed, that any cross
between it and a party founded on ordinary material interests
would be like a union between angels and men, producing
demons; or between man and horse, woman and fish, pro-

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 225

due mg monsters,—the centaurs and mermaids of fable. But
why so? Because each and every man by nature loves as
much to become superior to his neighbour when he has already
become equal to him, as to become equal when he has been
inferior; loves as much to impose his will on those placed
below him, as to shake off the will of those above him; to
exclude the neighbour whom he has beaten, as to fraternise
with the neighbour who keeps him out in the cold. That is to
say, that in thus facing both ways, men can only believe with
half their mind in abstract liberty, fraternity, and equality
alter all! And lienee, when you attempt to do work with
these principles in the present world, they break in your hand;
and are as useless as is a painted razor when you wish to shave,
01 the razor itself when you wish to cut down trees. It is
only in some millenium of the future where there shall be
neither Physical Force, Inequality, Authority, Exclusiveness,
nor Precedence, but where men shall be as the angels in heaven,
that these abstract ideals as party cries can possibly be realised.
Hence I have called them millcnial ideals. And therefore it is
that in those countries where there are no kings at all, as in
France and America; or where the king reigns but does not
govern, as with us; or, again, where the presidents have the
power of vetoing but not of initiating legislation—there being
no third party of Evolution to keep the ship of State in a
steady, even course—both Government and Legislation have
followed, as we see, a zigzag course, tacking this way and that,
and plunging from side to side in the most erratic manner;
now making a dash to realise an abstract ideal, only to lose
themselves in the open sea, and then back again to the shore
to be stuck in the sands! In France, this zigzag from abstract
Utopias on the one hand, to despotisms of Force on the other,
and back again, first in relation to Government and now to the
Church, has gone on, it is unnecessary to point out, ever since
the days of the Revolution. But America is perhaps the most
piegnant and typical instance for our purpose. Founded on

p

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

226

the pure millennia! ideal of the absolute “equality of man as
man.'’ she plunged into the sea, on the first opportunity, to
realise her dream, sacrificing first a million of men to free the
slave, and then, in order to protect him in his freedom (frankly
and nobly, be it said), giving him the franchise. ^ But, having
rushed to tht/extreme point of the compass, and found, as was
inevitable, that the negro was becoming more and more a mill¬
stone around her neck, she is now reversing her rudder and
setting sail in exactly the opposite direction; and is taking
bark the franchise as fast as the blunder of it all, and the sense
of public decency, will permit. And, after all, what was it all
for?

For an abstract Utopia and dream, hatched

the

ima ,Y inuuon of a single sentimentulist recluse, BoubS6HU; who

delighted hi. a own mind and those of his fellow-sufferers with

the contemplation of this dream as a refuge from the tyranny
of his time; but when fastened on the neck of a virgin
democracy like America, which needed no Utopias, be it
observed, to reinforce the natural equality which her citizens

already possessed, it could only end in disaster. For does any¬
one imagine that if to-day the same situation were to arise
again, a single man would lose his life in the cause ? And,
what is more to our point here, does anyone imagine that had
there been a party of Evolution in America then, such as that
for which I am now pleading, the negro would have ever got
a vote at all ? Or that, having founded their republic on the
absolute equality of all men, they could then have permitted
that primal curse of nations, the mixing of antagonistic races on
the mme soil —a thing only possible at all where one is in
subordination to the other? Or that, if the mixture of races
were already an accomplished fact, they could then have
decreed absolute equality by law ? And again, to what is that
municipal corruption in large cities which soils the fair fame of
American democracy due, but to the same Utopia, to the dream
that equality of opportunity, which is all that any mortal ever
dreams of claiming in civil life, is not enough in political life,

SUGGESTIONS FOE A NEW POLITICAL PAETY. 227

but must be pushed to an absolute equality of rights; that
a t ough a loaf of bread must be paid for under penalties
before it can be eaten, votes which affect the bread of thousands
may b e thrust on all alike-on the drunken, the incapable, the
indifferent, the submerged. And with result—what? The
aiming of the offscourings of Europe, when they land, with the
franchise as with a weapon; and the regimenting of them and
of the existing slum population into battalions of voters by
uccaneers and bosses, for the purpose of extorting toll and
over-ridmg the general will; and this because the ballot-box
and franchise, which originated in old countries as means and
instruments of defence against tyranny, became at last, like some
beneficent tree erected into a heathen god, worshipped on their
own account as ends in themselves. And here again, had there
been a party of Evolution for practical action in the bosom of
the other parties, this grotesque result could not have occurred.

And. now for the principles of this party of History and
Evolution, and its method of handling practical political
problems. To economise space, I cannot do better, perhaps,
than use for their exposition the analogy of the principles and
methods of the Christian Church of the first ten centuries—the
only institution m recorded history confronted by the same
problem which perplexes the political world of to-day. For
she, too, had to find a pathway of orderly evolution between
Pagan societies founded on Force and material interests, on the
one hand, and the abstract millennial ideals, for the first time
introduced into the world by Christianity, on the other;
between the ignorance, brutality, and insolence of barbarian
kings and chieftains, and the saints, the ascetics, the celibates,
who were turning the other cheek, giving their coats as well as
then- cloaks, and in every way trying nobly to carry out the
letter as well as the spirit of the millennial ideals of Jesus in
their purity; hut whose celibacy and asceticism, vows of
poverty and chastity, had they been universally practised (the
only practical test of their absolute truth and rightness), would

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

228

have unpeopled the world; while their obstinacy and their
refusal to fight in the wars of the Empire against the
Barbarians, were becoming, as they increased in numbers, more
and more a source of real danger to the Eoman State. But
the Church was equal to the problem, and managed to saturate
the Paganism and Barbarism of the time with as much of the
abstract ideals of Christianity as they could absorb, binding all
and interlacing all into a single organic unity. For the Church
not only was Society (as all alike, barbarian and saint, belonged
to it), but it was the organ of evolution of society—a third
something in its midst, not made up of abstract ideals, like the
diearns of the celibates and saints, but a concrete living
Ciuirch, as much a Polity as a Religion; and was not got, be it
observed, by merely splitting the differences between saint and
sinner, but required the great systems of St. Paul, St. Augus¬
tine, and St. Thomas to organise it. It may well, therefore,
serve as a model for all succeeding ages when confronted with
the problem of how to get a straight and steady line of
evolution by which to steer between material earthly interests,
on the one hand, and abstract ideals, for which the world is
not yet ripe, on the other.

With this as analogy, then, the principles and methods of our
pioposed party of Evolution may be summarised as follows :_

1. It is a party of action , of practical constructive states¬

manship, and not of party platform propagandism or
appeal.

2. It will form a central core within each and all of the

existing parties, and not a separate party outside them.

3. It will rely for its voting power on the great body of

thoughtful men of all parties, and of all conditions of
life, who furnish that swing of the pendulum, as it is
called, which brings in Ministries and turns them out
again.

As for its principles : —

1. It will admit no rotten planks in the shape of abstract

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY.

229

ideals into its political platform—no abstract “rights of
man as man,” no abstract equality, no abstract
franchises, or quakerisms, in short no impotent blood¬
less abstractions at all—but only such mixed and
tempered ones as will stand the wear and tear of
ordinary human nature, and be in harmony with the
material and social conditions of the time —the glorifi¬
cation of abstract ideals being left to literature, to
the pulpit, to the party platform (their proper ex¬
ponents), for aspiration, for hope, and for solace to
the private heart.

2. And hence it will substitute the principle of equality of

opportunity for that of absolute equality of rights; make
a man earn his vote before he can use or enjoy it; and
instead of regimenting the venal ragamuffins and
incapables of the slums, as in America, by thrusting
votes into their hands with which to prey on society,
it will be disposed rather to take them in hand itself
for their own good.

3. It will for ever abolish both the word and the con¬

ception of laissezfaire from the political speech
of men.

4. Its aim will be to preserve as far as possible the organic

type on which a State is founded, as determined by
its history and antecedents; a different policy being
required in Oriental nations to that in Western
(unless, like Japan, a nation is resolved to jump out
of its old skin altogether); a different one in nations
founded on Roman traditions and Roman law, and in
those that have grown up outside these influences; in
nations that have their roots in Feudalism, and in
those, like America and the Colonies, to whom the
conception is unknown.

For its methods: —

1. It would advance to the next stage in normal evolution

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

by always beginning operations on the existing
material and social conditions , whatever they may be,
as breeders clo with animals, and only indirectly by
doctrinal teachings, or the mere 'preaching of morality
in the abstract , whether in political, religious, or social
affairs. If, for example, the problem were how to
change America from a democratic to an aristocratic
country, reformers might preach its necessity for ever
without advancing a step; for the material conditions
of the country and its present system of land tenure
would of themselves breed democratic sentiments
faster than preaching could uproot them. But if
there were enough millionaires to buy up the land in
large estates, to be let to farmers on the same
precarious tenure as in the United Kingdom, in a
generation men would touch their hats, and women
curtsey to their new masters as they pass, and the
thing would be done of itself !

2. And in order to find the strongest stimulus to personal

exertion for all the citizens, it would do as Napoleon
did when he proceeded to reorganise the institutions
of France after the Revolution; it would leave no
unbridgeable gaps between persons or classes, but let
all be connected by gradated stages, everywhere
careers being open to talent and virtue, and every-
where ladders and openings provided from the bottom
to the top; the very proximity of the next stage at
each and every point being a perpetual incitement to
grasp it.

3. It would, wherever possible, substitute a wider ad¬

ministrative discrimination for fresh legislation ; and,
instead of making general laws which must always be
so wide as to catch the morally innocent while letting
the guilty escape, from the difficulty of enforcing
them, it would be as well provided with administra-

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 231

tive officers to settle all questions of social morality,
as we now are with judges and policemen to deal with
the man who steals a sixpence or a loaf of bread.

But all my efforts to make out a case for a new party of

Evolution within the bosom of the other parties in the State
will be vain, unless I am able in some measure to reverse the
current conception of what constitutes Justice or Right, For it
is only because it is believed that absolute political equality
and liberty can be claimed by all men as their birthright, as
being that which Eternal Justice demands, that so many good
and noble men can be found who will willingly risk so much to
realise their dream. Rousseau was the first to give currency
to this idea of abstract liberty and equality, and from him it
soon found its way into the French and American Constitu¬
tions as their chief corner-stone; and it has ever since been
the watchword of liberal and progressive politics throughout
the world. And yet neither Jesus, nor Paul, nor the Early
Fathers ever dreamt of it: and the reason Rousseau did was,
because he believed that men had once been absolutely free
and equal, but that, owing to bad political arrangements, they
were now, as he said, everywhere in chains. But although the
world which believes in Evolution as a universal fact, now
knows that the golden age for the realisation of its dreams lies
in the far distant future, it nevertheless still retains them in
its politics long after they have lost the philosophical support
which once gave them their power. And this it does because
it believes with Rousseau that Justice or Right is a single,
separate something let down from heaven in its purity, to be
clapped, like the figurehead of a king on a coin, on every
situation that arises, without regard to consequences; whereas
in fact it is always a composite, and is like a medicine rather,
where the effect on the patient has to be taken into considera¬
tion as well as the abstract purity of the drag. It is not like
a single shot, which if it hit the mark, you say that it is right
and just, and ought to be done even should the heavens fall;

23 2

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

but is rather like the throw of a boomerang, of which you
cannot say that it is right until you see whether, in the
rebound, it hits you on the head or not; in other words, it is
the knowledge that, should the heavens fall as the result of
your action, that action could not have been just or right,
however noble the motive may have been. It is to be repre¬
sented rather by a loop or a circle than by a straight line; and
is neither to be identified with pure Might, as with Carlyle,
nor with the abstract ideal of Right, as in the popular concep¬
tion; but rather with the harmonious admixture of both in
every act of Force, Authority, Prescription, Custom, etc., on
the one hand, and abstract or Ideal Right on the other—as
with Shakespeare, who declares that it is between the endless
jar of right and wrong that Justice resides. Either it is this,
or it has never existed in the political world at all. For if you
make a section through Civilisation at any point in its long
history, you will nowhere find the abstract ideal in its purity,
but always alloyed with a certain admixture of baser metal to
give it currency; always as an ingredient in it you will find
Physical Force, open or concealed, and the authority of “the
powers that be ’ that go with possession, prescription, privilege,
or prestige, and even with the soil on which one is born. And
hence it is. that the thoroughgoing application of purely
abstract political ideals without regard to circumstances and
conditions, is in its consequences as fruitful of evil as that of
brute force itself. If, then, the reader remain firm in holding
the old view that Justice is an abstract archetypal and perfect
ideal, to which all things ought to be made to conform should
the heavens fall, no party of political statesmanship founded on
Evolution and History will be possible; but if he take with
me the view that Justice and Right consist in only so much of
this abstract ideal as the stage of civilisation reached can be
made to absorb without reaction or recoil, then the party of
volution must in time become the party of liberal and pro¬
gressive politics, not only in England but throughout the world.

SUGGESTIONS FOE A NEW POLITICAL PAETY. 233

And now for a few concrete examples to show how the party
of Evolution differs in its application from that of the existing
political parties; and here it will be seen that the difference
consists mainly in the way in which it shifts the weight or
emphasis to be attached to the various political factors in the
problems, and so alters the centre of gravity, as it were, on
which their solution depends.

To begin with, then, Conservatism in general, taking its
stand on possession and prescription, would keep up the old
feudal constitution of society, alike in the tenure of land, in
education, in personal ideals, and even in its organisation for
war (“ not good form to be keen,” &c.), and that, too, in an
age of the world when the future of all nations depends on
Science and Industry, on keenness for Knowledge, as such, and
on the application of Science to the art of war. Official
Liberalism, on the other hand, would make haste to de¬
nationalise politics and make cosmopolitan both trade and
territory; and that, at a time when the principle of nationality
not only is not passing away, but is just beginning to get a
real foothold in the world ; and when races everywhere are
beginning to consolidate into great fighting nationalities—pan-
Germanism, pan-Latinism, pan-Slavism, pan-Mongolianism
and so on. Abroad, the Radical wing is ever on the look-out
for more negroes or other barbarians to set free from all
restraint, with ballot-boxes to protect them in their “rights”
—as they lie basking in the sun or sleep away the day in their
kraals—in the firm belief, like Robespierre and his guillotine,
that the cure for the evils of democracy and laissez-faire lies in
still more democracy and laissez-faire! At home, in conse¬
quence, the same Radical wing would look out for still more of
the outcasts, the incapable®, and the derelicts on whom to
confer the franchise, and would mix you different alien races
on the same areas of soil with as much nonchalance and in¬
difference as if they were mixing the ingredients in a pudding,
and with the expectation, too, that the national flavour would

234

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

be improved thereby! It would do anything to reclaim the
drunkard; but with the bogey of laissez-faire before its eyes
stands like a helpless nose-of-wax, and insists that on no
account can he be coerced ! Even the ubiquitous able-bodied
tramps (not more than two per cent, of whom, according to
official accounts, are genuine working-men) can infest the
public parks and litter the seats, swarming with vermin; but
on no account must they be disturbed, as thereby the sacred
“ liberty of the subject ” would be infringed. The most
extreme section, the followers of Henry George, would expro-
priate the landlords without compensation or compunction,
and that, too, in the sacred name of Justice, but would leave
the exploiting, monopolising capitalist to flourish unscathed.
Would these doctrinaires, I wonder, expect rival nations to
share and share alike after one had beaten the other in war ?
If not, why not? For what has a battle or the result of a
battle to do with abstract eternal Justice? The Socialists,
again, of the school of Marx are guilty of still greater intel¬
lectual atrocities. Their theory demands that, as all are to
share equally in the benefits of labour, the work of all must be
somehow equal in value; but, as the inventor has to be expro¬
priated as well as the capitalist, it taxed their ingenuity to see
how this equality could be made good. They were equal to it,
however, and their solution was—what thinks the reader?
That the coalheaver who stokes the engine and the inventor
of the engine are worthy of equal reward, on the ground that
when fully employed their work will occupy the same length of
abstract “labour time”! They might as well contend that
they were equal on the ground that their bodies occupied the
same extent of abstract space! But I have not yet heard that
they have applied this curious estimate of relative values to
the commander and the private soldier, or to the private and
the inventor of a new gun. And if not, again, why not?
Meantime, the important point to note is that the one thing in
which all these devotees of abstract political ideals agree is in j

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY.

235

shouting aloud that if their millennial dreams are not carried
out now and here, what they call Justice and Right will have
suffered a real defeat.

And now, what would our new party of Evolution have
to say to all this ? Acting on the principle that there should
be as few unbridgeable gaps as possible between the different
classes in the State, and replacing the principle of an ideal
equality of rights by that of a real equality of opportunity (which
is as much of ideal equality as the present stage of civilisa¬
tion will bear or can absorb, except the equal “ rule of the
road” and the equal justice of the civil courts), and seeking
to provide as well for inequality and superiority as for
equality and mediocrity, for ambition as well as for present
status or possession, for aristocratic as well as for democratic
sentiment, it would expropriate neither landlord nor capitalist,
nor yet leave them altogether as they are. It would alter
the tenure of land to suit an industrial, not a feudal age of
the world. It would cover the country neither with myriads
of petty holdings, as in France, nor with quarter-section
farms, as in America; but would grade its divisions, all held
in freehold, from “ three acres and a cow ” up to ten, fifty,
one hundred, five hundred, or a thousand acres, but with
sufficient large properties left to keep up the best traditions
both of character and manners of the old proprietors. In
fact, it would grade all callings and industries whatever, and
especially all Education, with free passage everywhere from
bottom to top; it would make men earn the franchise, as
they do their bread, by some broad minimum standard of
social and intellectual attainment; and, as in the old Republic
of Rome, would take the effective initiative power out of the
hands of those who from their mere numbers would fashion the
State in the image of their own ignorance or incompetency.
In this age of consolidating race nationalities, it would, while
deprecating war, still prepare for it by making it scientific, and
not - feudal in character; and would help on pan-Anglo-

286

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Saxondom by not only keeping the Colonies, but by trying to
bring back America to the fold.

But nowhere will the difference which is made by the party
of Evolution in the solution of political problems be more
apparent than in the recent problem of indentured Chinese
labour. As my space is limited, this is the only question that
I am able here to discuss in any detail. The Conservative
party, resting as it does largely on material interests, is frankly
indifferent to any ulterior considerations other than those of
the speedy opening up of the Transvaal and the development
of its material resources, provided always that the external
decencies of civilisation are fairly preserved. Should the
interests, therefore, of miners and landowners conflict with the
higher considerations of general policy, it is to the different
sections of the Liberal party that we must look to restrain
them by a policy which will satisfy the nation at large. How,
then, do the Liberals propose to deal with it ? Why, as we
should know beforehand, by clapping the old, played-out
Utopia and dream of the abstract rights of man, of abstract
liberty and equality, as extinguishers on it! Not that they
would mind the indenturing, the confinement to special task¬
work, or other onerous conditions, into which the coolies have
entered of their own free will, but because the old ballot-box
(which with its vote for every creature above the level of the
ape has been, as we have seen, the curse of America in its
dealings with the negroes) is not to be thrust into their hands.
It is strange, but true ; for have they not distinctly asserted
and reiterated it ? The Westminster Gazette, one of the
accepted Press champions of Liberalism, has pressed the
point over and over again, that it is not the indenturing
of the Chinese that it objects to, but the fact that when
they have served their time they will not be allowed to
mix freely as citizens with the whites and with each other,
not have votes like other people, and not be allowed to

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY.

237

intermarry (even if they filled up the very landscape with
half-breeds), so as to fulfil the law of perfect liberty and

equality!

And now we have to ask, what the party of Evolution would
say to this monstrous proposition ? This, namely: that the
mixing of antagonistic races on the same areas and soils is, as
I have elsewhere said, the supreme crime, the supreme treachery
to the future of a country ; more infamous than treason in war;
and for which the names of all engaged in it must be execrated
in after ages—as, indeed, the history of the negroes in America,
of the mixture of Spaniards and Indians in South America, of
Greeks, Bulgarians, and Turks in the Balkans, of the Magyar,
Slav, and German in Austria-Hungai’y, and of the Jews on the
Continent everywhere, has demonstrated and painted in colossal
characters black on the walls of the world. And that for the
following reasons:—The first, and the one on which the others
depend, will come to most people as a novelty, and yet to
Evolutionists it need only be stated for its truth and signifi¬
cance to be at once seen. It is this: that Civilisation, with its
fine flower of all that is best in character, intelligence, morality,
and love of truth and justice, and which it is as much a part of
national honour with each generation to transmit untarnished
and undimmed to its children as their heritage and birthright
as the national soil itself, is not a thing which is built into the
very texture and organisation of a people, like their appetites,
their sensual loves, their love of children, and the like, as a
thing of course, whose indefinite continuance may be as much
taken for granted as the continuance of abstract time itself.
On the contrary, it is as much an artificial product and hot¬
house growth as the flowers in a conservatory, and like them
will, without the most assiduous care and culture, speedily
relapse into the wild state again. Unfavourable material and
social conditions, like unfavourable atmosphere and soil, will,
indeed, gradually destroy the finest qualities of fruit and flower
of civilisation, but if you would ruin them all at a stroke, all

238

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

you have to do is, as with the finer breeds of dogs or pigeons,
to mix antagonistic races on the same areas, and let them have
a free rim of promiscuity. If this were consistently carried
out, and on a sufficiently large scale, you could set back civilisa¬
tion as much in a generation as in a hundred years by the
ordinary processes of decay. Not even intermarriage or pro¬
miscuity is necessary. Mere proximity is enough. Trans¬
plant enough Kaffirs to England to do its menial or unskilled
work, and enough Chinamen or Hindoos to do the more refined
and skilled forms of labour, and in a generation or two not an
Englishman could be found to do a stroke of manual work for
love or money. England as a factor in civilisation would be
wiped out of the high circle of nations, and its inhabitants
would differ as much from the men we know as the “ mean
whites ” of the South before the War did from their go-ahead
brothers of the North who have made the America of to-day.
So precious, but skin-deep and precarious a thing is Civilisation!
Now, the reasons why a civilisation is so quickly destroyed by
mixing the breed are mainly three. The first is psychological,
where the effect of such admixtures, especially when the races
are so radically different as the Aryan and Semitic, the Negro
and Mongolian, is, as is well known, to eliminate from the
offspring the best points in the character of both parents, and to
bring them down to the instincts of the barbarians from whom
all civilisations alike have started; in the same way as crosses
between the finest opposite breeds of pigeons are sure sooner or
later to bring a reversion to the wild “ blue rock ” pigeon from
which they originally sprang. The second effect is a result of
the first, and is sociological, namely, that all the finer products
of civilisation and morality which come from the breed or stock
of the men on whom these products have been engrafted, are by
this admixture quite shorn away, and the work of civilisation
has all to be worked up again from the beginning, and this time
from an inferior stock; so that the very end for which the
idealist reformers are so zealously striving, namely, a higher

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 26%

morality, is, like the song of an over-fed canary, blasted by the

means used to compass it

The third effect of mixing antagonistic races on the same
soil is to degrade the higher code of morality of civilised
peoples by reason of the political and social antagonisms it
engenders and the passions it lets loose, and which, if continued
long enough, will, as seen in the lynchings of negroes in
America, gradually sink society to the ethics of the ages of
barbarism and civil war ; and so again the work of civilisation
will all have to be built up afresh from the bemnnino-

It will thus be seen that the object of our new party of
Evolution is to supply a norm or concrete image founded on the
laics of History and Civilisation, to which the other parties,
founded on class interest or cosmopolitan sentiments, can turn,
to check each other’s exploitations, vagaries, or reactions; a
table of relative values for those, on the one hand, who would
make two and two five, and for those, on the other, who would
make them three; a kind of political mariner’s chart,* with a
steady line by which to steer amid the alternate plungings and
reactions, the driftings and thwartings which inevitably ensue
in parliamentary government when one party is based frankly
on material interests, the other on purely millennial ideals.

But, being a party for action and not for platform oratory or
party propagandism, it is primarily a body of doctrine for all
those who in any way take the initiative in public affairs; and
therefore for ministers in power, and when actually engaged in
making laws to meet practical emergencies, rather than when
in opposition. It is a body of doctrine, too, for the Academical
Specialists holding chairs of sociology, politics, and political
economy in the Universities, whose judgments given before
Parliamentary Commissions on questions demanding a co¬
ordinated knowledge of many specialisms, but delivered mainly

* For the detailed historical basis of this article, the organisation of
education, the treatment of subject races, and the different policy which the
party of Evolution would prescribe for England, France, and America
respectively, see my “ History of Intellectual Development/ 5 Vol. III.

240 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

from the point of view of their own particular specialism, not

only are not likely to be true, but must be more or less false.
It is a body of doctrine, too, for the Working-class Leaders in
and out of Parliament; for they are nothing if not intellectual,
but being, from the lack of the necessary opportunities for
culture, too often men of one book, if left to themselves they
usually deck themselves out in the old clothes of some favour¬
ite authority—Mill, Karl Marx, Oobden, or other—just at the
time when men of more catholic culture are leaving them off.
But above all it is a body of doctrine for the Press, and for all
those engaged in political writing, whether as authors or
publicists—but mainly for the Press—and that for a number
of reasons. In the first place, the Press is the official political
instructor of the Public, the sole mediator between it and
Parliament, having managed like a College of Cardinals to
extrude from political influence all other mere writers but those
of its own body. In the second place, the Press occupies what
I venture to think is the right attitude in dealing with public
affairs, namely, not that of the doctrinaire, the pedant or the
academic specialist, but that of the man of wide general
culture who collects his arguments and material for judgment
from all the specialities, according to the nature of the
problem and the material with which he has to deal. But as
drawback and set-off to this, it has, in the third place, neither
sufficient instruction nor the right kind of knowledge for its
purpose; for neither its snapshots at the passing day, its
history books, nor its encyclopaedias will avail; nothing but a
scientific correlated knowledge of civilisation as a whole—a
separate science in itself, but one which the Press affects to
have no need for, or else studiously seeks to ignore. And, in
the fourth place, it will neither itself take that initiative in
legislation which its mediating position between Parliament
and the Public demands, nor will it have a care that only the
first-rate players of the game should have that initiative. Now,
this is not the case either in America or in France ; but in

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 241

England, where the Government waits for the voice of the
constituencies, and the constituences for the lead of the Govern¬
ment and the Press, the Press in turn sits waiting for the lead
of both, with the result that all alike lean on each other, back
to back, in a kind of frozen circle of enchantment! It is true
that not long since the Spectator , not waiting for red tape
and the War Office, boldly took the initiative in putting
forward preliminary suggestions as to the reorganisation of the
Aimy and Volunteer forces; that the same journal, with the
Times, Westminster Gazette , and other papers, on the rumour of
the Bagdad Railway and the Venezuelan imbroglio, intervened
at once to stop the mischief without waiting for a Cabinet
decision; and these, together with the impetus originally given
to go-ahead journalism by Mr. Stead, and now by the Daily
Mail and St. James's Gazette, are all admirable examples of the
function which the Press by its position in a self-governing
State (where the Crown has lost its initiative) ought to
fulfil.

But, taking its origin in a time when the government of the
country was in the hands of a few great territorial families who
divided the executive offices of State between them, and
initiated all policy, foreign and domestic—and when it would
have been regarded as as great an impertinence for either the
Press or private individuals outside these restricted family
circles to venture to suggest a new policy as it would be to-day
in the dominions of the Czar—the Press more or less feels and
acts as if it were still not its place to initiate any new policy
or principle, to stir up any new question or issue, but only to
express an opinion when its opinion is asked for by those
whom it loves to contemplate under the jealously-guarded,
rigorously-exclusive and quasi-sacred designation of “ states¬
men. Now, this were both right and proper were the
individuals so designated, as in Science, the professions,
cricket, billiards, or chess, the picked and winnowed players in
the game, but, returned as they are to Parliament for any and

242

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

every reason almost but those relevant to the real game of
statesmanship—for mere wealth or title, stump oratory or
demagogy—and often from the class who make it their boast
that they 44 don’t want to know,” and that it is 44 not good form
to be keen,” there is little more chance of their being the
picked players of the nation in those higher walks of politics
which require science and not hand-to-mouth expediency, than
if they were picked haphazard from the crowds that pass along
the Strand. And when we think of how they rise to Cabinet
rank and get the blue-ribbon badge of 44 statesman ” affixed to
their breasts, with their column and half-column of Press
reports for their lightest utterances (while all the rest of the
world is thankful if it get half-a-dozen lines) the thing becomes
ludicrous. One man rises to full-column Press consideration,
and to within sight of the Treasury Bench, by making a
specialty of small epigrams, which he carefully hatches in his
study and fires off’ in the House to be borne on the wings of
Press quotation to the remotest constituency—epigrams which
the hard-up literary hacks of the British Museum or Fleet
Street will turn you out for a few pence apiece! Another,
especially if he have a safe constituency, hopes to rise by
emulating the example of the late Lord Randolph Churchill,
and by baiting the Ministers on his own side (with a spice of
personal abuse thrown in) either gets a minor office to keep him
quiet, or secures public favour by the prominence given to his
utterances as 44 good copy.” One goes on the grand tour of
the provinces at a critical juncture, and, by the full-page reports
which he gets, finds to his surprise on his return that by the
mere reverberation of his name, and its constant appearance on
the placards, he has already quite outdistanced his former
rivals and equals. Another happens to get his name attached
to a particular clause or amendment of a Bill, the 44 Hcaly-
clause,” the 44 Kenyon-Slaney amendment,” or what not, and it
is his own fault if he is not borne on it to political fortune.
The 44 safe man, again, oftenest rises by a small assiduity and

SUGGESTIONS FOR A NEW POLITICAL PARTY. 243

diligence, as of a responsible head-clerk, in memorising the
figures of Blue-book and statistical reports, or by the more
solemn kinds of gravity befitting the traditional conception of
a statesman; the mere number of times he rises in Committee
being the measure of his importance, and scored as if (as in
cricket) they were real “ runs M ! But, strangest of all,
another will get his column or half-column of report before he
has barely had time to take his seat in the House, and that, too,
without any effort at all, except the reputation he brings with
him that he is in some way or other like his distinguished
father who preceded him! and so on; all of them ways, as if
purposely devised, to catch the tenth-rate players, but as little
likely to catch first-rate statesmen as they would be to catch
first-rate chess players. In all other games the great players
are so winnowed that they represent the best the nation can
show; in the game of statesmanship, it would be a miracle if
by present methods a really great statesman appeared once in
a century. Statesmanship deals with large principles of
general policy, and now that, through rail and telegraph, the
whole nation is one large ear, the Press, were it alive to its full
range of duties and responsibilities, could as easily collect,
focus, and register the best solutions to all political questions
that anywhere appeared, and the best men to handle them, as
it now does the answers to its prize puzzles. But with its ear
resolutely fixed, and even glued, to the utterances of the few
Parliamentarians who have risen to Cabinet rank by the above
or other means, what chance or hope is there of it ? And, after
all, what has the mere holding of Cabinet administrative office
to do with the great principles of statesmanship ? Nine-tenths
of the work is already done by the Permanent Under-Secre¬
taries, and the reason it is not all left to them is because it is
believed that the Cabinet Ministers will bring with them from
the outside a breath of fresh air and originality. But do they ?
And are the training and work of the rent receiver, the carpet
manufacturer, the barrister, the solicitor, the bookseller, likely

244

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

to call forth those greater qualities of statesmanship which
depend on a knowledge of History, of Evolution, of Civilisation?

My conclusion on the whole, then, is, that unless the Press
can contrive to let its searchlight cover more of the intellectual
landscape than the squirrel tracks leading' to the House of
Commons, no statesman of higher rank than a third-rate player
will, except by accident, he found within its portals.

CHAPTER VI.

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES.*

T N the present article I propose to raise afresh the problem of
A Taxation from the point of view at once of Sociology and
of Political Economy.

Now, of all the various schemes of Taxation, those which
will find a place here, owing to the numbers or importance
of their following in the country, may be divided into two
categories.

The first, which stands by itself, is what we may call the
Treasury scheme,—for it has received the sanction of all the
Chancellors of the Exchequer, whether Liberal or Conservative,
from the time of Pitt down to the present hour. It goes on
the principle that Taxation is to be levied, as far as possible,
equally on the incomes of all classes of the population, whether
directly or indirectly, and without consideration of how any or
all of them came by their incomes, so far, that is to say, as any
canons of justice outside or beyond the mere conformity to the
existing laws of the State are concerned. This Treasury
scheme is founded on the Old Economy of Adam Smith, Stuart
Mill, and the whole body of Academical Economists, with their
triple watchwords of Laissez Faire , Free Competition, and the
u Devil take the hindmost.” It is only quasi-evolutionary in
principle, inasmuch as coming down from the past and being
* Financial Review of Reviews, April, 1909.

246

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

changed in detail from year to year for purposes of revenue, it
has never yet incorporated into itself from the environment
anything outside of, or beyond, these, its original principles.

The second category, on the other hand, consists of those
recalcitrants who a generation ago began to raise the question
of how these different classes of people came by their incomes,
and whether it was right that they should have them at all or
not, to be taxed. These men have broken themselves up into
different divisions or schools, but have now so increased in
numbers that they lie like whole armies of rebels in the field,
overshadowing and threatening the Liberal camp itself to which
in then ultimate general economic principles they are naturally
allied. They consist, firstly, of the great body of Land Taxers,
of whom the Daily Chronicle has made itself the representative,
all of whom derive ultimately from Henry George; next of the
taxers of the Capitalists, as represented on the one hand by
Mr. Sidney Webb and Mr. Bernard Shaw in the County
Councils and Municipalities, and on the other hand by
Mr. Eamsay MacDonald and Mr. Snowden with the Inde¬
pendent Labour Party as their following in the House of
Commons and the country; all of them being the pale
exsanguined ghosts of Karl Marx and his army of Continental
Socialists ; and lastly, of the advanced Liberals and Radicals,
whose scheme,, although founded on the Individualist princi¬
ples, of the Liberal Party, has now become so encompassed
and interpenetrated with Socialism, that it, too, finds itself in
the field against the traditional principles of the Treasury and
of the Liberal Party to which it naturally belongs.

Now, all these men take their stand not on Evolution, but on
something which they love to represent to themselves either as
Eternal Justice, or Ideal Human Justice; the whole or a part
of which they would ruthlessly apply now and here to whom-
soever it conceins, as a protest against the traditional method
of the Treasury, which (as it regards all incomes as the result
of Work and Saving) considers Justice in taxation to be fully

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES.

247

met when it has distributed its burdens equally on all classes
and persons alike according to their respective incomes, without
regard, as we have said, to how they came by them. Henry
George himself would apply it in full measure, and let his
heavy axe fall on the necks of all Landowners whatever, with
its full weight of 100 per cent., and so decapitate them out¬
right ! But he would not touch a hair of the heads of the
Capitalists, on the ground that, owing to the ease with which
they can pass over the borders to join the ranks of the
Labourers, and the Labourers over to them in turn, like water
at opposite ends of a trough, neither can exploit the others of
anything that is justly due to them.

The extreme Socialists, again, who follow Marx, agree with
George as regards the Landowners, but would go a full step
farther, and include the whole body of Capitalists as well in one
fell swoop and condemnation. This they do on the ground that,
as Machinery and the great Chemical processes are the origin
of all the “surplus wealth ” by which the vast populations of
Europe are maintained, and as the existing laws have already
sweated or starved the great Scientists and Inventors down
below the taxable point (unless, indeed, like Kelvin, Edison,
and Marconi, they have become their own manufacturers), the
ordinary Capitalists have no claim to a penny of what is actually
produced by the labour of their Workmen, skilled and unskilled.
Off, then, with their heads, too, to the tune of 100 per cent,
taxation ! This we may call Eternal Justice, or Ideal Human
Justice, in its fail measure, now and here!

But the rebels whom I am now to consider, and who have all
sprung originally from the loins of Henry George or Karl
Marx, or of the two combined, are at once more modest and
less precipitate in their claims; and would give the Landlords
and Capitalists a longer time to turn round in before their
ultimate extinction. Their method is to inject the virus of
taxation into these, their victims, by easily graduated instal¬
ments, as it were, satisfying the demands of Ideal Justice the

248

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

while by a snippet only at a time from the skirts of her robe;
and trusting either, as Mr. Sidney Webb, Mr. Shaw, and their
followers do, to the ingenuity of their own particular scheme,
whereby, after a small preliminary tax laid on the landlords, all
will follow, with ease and without further disturbance, the
general laws of business competition; or, as the Land Taxers
of the Daily Chronicle do, to the trick which they think they
know, whereby a tax when once laid, will, like a tombstone on
its incumbent, lie where it falls, without the possibility of its
ever being shifted!

Let us, then, proceed at once to pass under review the separate
contingents of these rebel Taxers, all devotees of Free Trade,
as they lie entrenched within the borders of the Liberal camp*

and see how they will figure under closer inspection and
analysis.

And, first, we will take, as our objective, those fallacies of
the .Treasury scheme of Taxation which have caused all this

defection and revolt. They may be all summed up in the
single watchword which successive Chancellors of the Exchequer
have accepted in all simplicity from the Old Economists,
namely, that “ capital is the result of saving”; from the deifica¬
tion of which virtue, indeed, they have been fortified in their
conclusion that justice will be broadly done if you tax men
rigidly according to the amount of their possessions, without

inquiring more curiously as to how they came by them. Now,

this was all very well in the days of the small competing
capitalists for whom this system of taxation was originally
designed. But to-day the great capitals are made not by
Saving,, but by Combination, Scarcity Value, or Monopoly— -as
we see in the giant Trusts of America, which have extinguished
there all hope of a return to the days of small private competi¬
tion ; or even in England, where combinations, as readers of
Mr. Macrosty’s authoritative work may see, are marching to
the same consummation with an ever accelerating stride. That
the Treasury should imagine that the £100,000,000 or so of

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 249

Mr. .Rockefeller, or the £40,000,000 odd of Mr. Carnegie,
were solely the result of Saving, was to damn its scheme of
Taxation from the beginning; and was enough of Itself to call
all these rebel hosts into the field.

Gladstone, who was more infected and hypnotised by this
delusion of Saving than perhaps any other man of his time
(even after he had lived long enough to see these vast exploita¬
tions of the American Trusts), could close his eyes on the
Treasury Bench, and praise the Lord for the money-saving
virtue of which colossal fortunes like these were the blessed
fiuits; and would have hesitated as much to put an income-tax
on these Leviathans (except on the rare occasions when the
pinch of his Free Trade policy of taxation for revenue com¬
pelled him) as on the smallest capitalist minnows in the stream.
With the shades of Adam Smith and Cob den ever before him,
he was haunted as much by this shibboleth of u Capital, the
result of Saving,” as a savage is by a ghost or the magical
taboo of his tribe; and crossed himself day and night con¬
tinually for his sins, until he had taken the obnoxious income-
tax off again ! But the Liberals of the present day have no
such compunctions, superstitions, or fears; and it may safely
be predicted that, so long as a Free Trade regime lasts, with the
increasing perplexities of how to find revenue enough for the
necessities of a modern civilised State, never again will those
who possess incomes over a certain decent amount find the
incantation or drug which will u medicine them to that sweet
sleep which they owed yesterday.”

The Scheme of the Fabian Society.

Let us turn, then, to the men who are prepared to disturb
this complacent naivete of the Treasury, and begin with the
scheme of Taxation of Mr. Sidney Webb, Mr. Bernard Shaw,
and the Fabian Society, a scheme which exercises a vague,
diffused influence over the “ intellectuals ” of all classes en¬
gaged in the study of these problems.

250

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

It proposes to start from the extremities—the Municipalities
—in the hope that if it succeeds in them, it will have thereby
converted to full-blown Socialism the entire policy of Parlia¬
ment and the State. It is an elaborate scheme, and yet simple
and superficially harmonious in its construction, and by its
autonomous action proposes to create the smallest amount of
initial disturbance in the existing order; and, indeed, were it
not so slow in its action as to take a millennium to realise it in,
its easy, Bobadil-like air of confidence and self-sufficiency
would give it an insidious kind of attraction for the less
furnished minds. Its plan is this:—The Municipality will
purchase at market rates any piece of land it may want for its
own purposes, and pay for it by taxing all the other landlords
in the municipal area at a rate just sufficient, and no more.
It will then erect a municipal workshop, or start some business
on this site, which being now free from ground rent, will be
able to under-sell all other private capitalists in the same
business who still have to pay this rent. It will then buy up
another piece of land for another kind of business or workshop,
and then another, and yet another, until the landlords are all
paid off; the amount of the tax on the remaining landlords at
each stage becoming, like the price of the Sibylline Books,
ever the greater the fewer in number they become, until at last,
as they look around on the dead bodies of their confreres,
strangled by this insidious Municipal taxation, they can only
emit a groan and die !

But the private owners of business premises, especially of
those valuable sites which would enable them to hold out
against the competition of the Municipal businesses in spite
of the freedom of these latter from ground rents—What of
them? Why, says Mr. Shaw, nothing could be easier than
to bring them to their knees. Let the Municipality run a
tramway, say, in a direction that would take their custom away
from them; or neglect the paving of their street, until their
customers had to wade through a sea of mud to get to them;

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 251

or. If that did not suffice, erect a lunatic asylum within earshot
of them; or, finally, if that, too, failed, try the effect of a
smallpox hospital in their immediate neighbourhood! And if
that does not put a whole street of these obstinate competitors
to flight, and throw their premises into the hands of the
Municipality u for a song,” nothing will ! In all this, I recognise
Mi. Shaw s sense of humour, but in his Fabian .Essay on
l ransition, in which it is propounded, he is serious to
desperation, and “means business ” all the same !

Having thus disposed of the Landlords and the competition
of private property owners, how does he propose to deal with
those a Managers of Ability ” who play so great a part in the
great American Trusts, where they are considered cheap for
their money at £20,000 to £50,000 a year; but who in England
earn, according to Mr. Shaw, only about £800 V Easily, says
Mr. Shaw: “ Establish Technical Schools all over the land,
and they will then lie as thick as leaves on the ground, to be
had, like present-day clerks, for the picking up.” But should
any u organiser of genius’’ appear among them, who would
still enable the private capitalist to hold out against Municipal
competition, or any great professional men who still get high
fees, then put an income-tax on them which will sweat them
down to the pay of an artisan, or even less—of a navvy! To
tins, Mr. Shaw thinks, the municipal managers of ability will
wittingly consent, on the ground that their importance, pom¬
posity, and rods of office as Parish Bumbles or Malvolios, will
fully compensate them for any lose of pay ! (rood Heavens!
<. >h yes ! says Mr. Shaw, with pious unction (for he is a con¬

vinced fanatic, in all this)—for “whosoever of you will be the
dliefest, shall be servant of all! ” After this puerile ineptitude,
we may well exclaim with Enobarbus in “ Anthony and Cleo¬
patra,” u Caisar, thou hast subdued his judgment also ! ” For
in it we see the cloven hoof of Karl Marx (from whom Mr.
Sidney Webb and Mr. Shaw originally derived their fanaticism
—namely, that the pay of all men whatever should be equal as

2!)2

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

counted by hours of average “ labour-time ” alone) appearing ;
and the more deadly earnest they become in their advocacy,
the more apparent it is.

Now, my reply to all this may be put in a few words In
a general way, I may say that it is Utopian throughout, and
that the chain of consequences which they expect to flow from
their original small tax on Land Values is so full of fallacies
at each link, that it is impossible it should ever u materialise.”

In the first place, it is Utopian, because it begins at the
wrong end, at the Municipalities—at the back door, as it were,
and by way of the tradesmen’s entrance —before they have got
their sword of taxation at all from the authority of Parliament,
and by permission of the Central Power. The consequence
would be that, with the guillotine thus suspended over them,
Landlordism and Capitalism would consolidate everywhere
into a fully-armed phalanx, ready to crush it long before it
could make its first move. To imagine that they can recon¬
struct society by beginning at this side-door entrance, and
playing their game there of hide-and-seek between municipal
and private capitalists, like boys on the village green, is to
justify us in believing that Mr. Webb and Mr. Shaw must have
sat all their lives, as an eminent American once said, “ watching
the rat holes of life while letting the elephant pass by
unheeded! ”

Secondly, it is as fallacious as it is Utopian, inasmuch as it
rests on absolutely free competition among petty employers ,
whereas the great watchword of business to-day, as we have
seen, is Monopoly through Combination. It is true that these
gieat capitalist monopolies in the cotton, wool, hardware,
breweries, soap, and, indeed, every other trade, are built on
municipal or parish land somewhere; but their works, or
premises, are so few in number that they may practically be
counted on the fingers. To believe that the remission of
ground rent to all the tens of thousands of petty municipalities
in the kingdom would enable one or all of them thereby to

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIIi VALUES. 253

compote with these few giant private manufacturers of the

staple necessities of life, merely because the latter would still
have to pay the rent, is a dream. For however large this
Land Tax may be when their works happen to be in the centre
of great cities, it is but a trifle in comparison with their
enormous business turnover; and unless you tax their capital
almost to extinction as well, they would overleap every muni-
eipal wall, and break down and trample out each little municipal
business in detail as it arose, while still carrying the load of
Land Tax on their shoulders with an easy grace. And if our
own great Capitalist Magnates could not do it, the great
Trusts of America, whose land taxation is inappreciable, would,
with our Free Trade policy, soon teach Mr. Webb and Mr.
Shaw how easily it could be done.

Thirdly, this scheme is inconsistent with itself, inasmuch as
it is precisely on these combinations of Municipal businesses,
working on a great scale, that they rely to oust the stronger
private Capitalists who threaten to hold their own; and pre¬
cisely by the same means as those used by the great existing
Combinations and Trusts, namely, by setting aside large
blocks of over-remunerated capital to crush them out by
underselling them.

As for the Education that is going to breed a race of
“managers of ability, 57 who, on account of their municipal
pride of office, can be had for “ less wages than an artisan 57 —
What kind of managers and organisers do they expect them to
be if they are to stem the tide of the great Combines ? A
whole race of managers of ability you can breed by Technical
Education it is true, as you can clerks of ability by School
Boards; but the few great organisers of genius whom the big
combinations must have at any price, are bom and not manu¬
factured in the gross; and unless things will so change under
Mr. Webb and Mr. Shaw’s regime that men will be as the
angels in heaven, they will not be picked up by municipalities
at “ less than the wages of an artisan 77 ! It is clear that

:2f>4

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

although this scheme seems to lay claim to our consideration
on the ground that it is a very slow and evolutionary one, it is
not an evolution that would complete itself in the short span
of a few mortal lives, but one that works rather on the slow
scale of Nature, each step of which takes a millennium to
make good !

The Scheme of the Independent Labour Party.

As for the Taxation Scheme of the Independent Labour
Party, with its mixed following of Socialists and Trades
Unionists, little need here be said, inasmuch as it is pervaded
by precisely the same fallacies and Utopias as those 1 have just
passed under review—but with this difference in the quicken¬
ing of the pace of its evolution, that it has two strings to its
bow instead of one. It would tax the u unearned increments 15
of capitalists, as well as the ground rents of landlords; and if
it once got a foothold would soon skin them both as effectually
and completely as the Marxian Socialists propose to do; the
one by a tax on land values, the other by a super-tax on
incomes. It is more revolutionary, but less Utopian, than the
scheme of the Fabians, inasmuch as it proposes to enter into
power not by the back door of the Municipalities, but by
capturing the Central Government whenever it can pack
the House of Commons with a sufficient number of its own
nominees.

The Scheme of the Land Taxers.

With this, we may now pass to the much-debated scheme of
the Land Taxers—with the Dozily Chronicle as its representa¬
tive. They are essentially followers of Henry George, but on
the instalment and small increment plan, and, like their master,
far from touching a hair of the head of the Capitalists, they
would even make them a substantial present by relieving them
of a portion of their taxation, by shifting it on to the Land¬
lord’s ground rents; and, like good Radicals, all on the specious

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES.

255

plea that it will eventually find its way into the pockets of the
hard-worked, straggling poor. Their scheme, in brief, is simply
to put a tax of a penny in the pound on to the market value of
land, in the belief that half of it, say, will go to help the
necessities of the Treasury without resort to Protection, and
that the other half will be taken off the taxes now paid by the
farmers on their buildings and improvements, by the builders
on the dwelling-houses or business premises they erect in cities
and towns, and by property holders of any kind everywhere,
as distinguished from the ground landlords. And the theory
on which they proceed is, that according to the teachings of
the Old Academic Economy, a tax on land cannot be shifted,
but must lie where it falls ; whereas a tax on all industrial
works, constructions and operations whatever, engineered by
Capital, will be shifted by the Capitalists on to the already
overburdened shoulders of the “ consumers ”—the great body
of the population.

Now, nowhere will the curse of that old dead Economy of
the Schools, when used as text-book and gospel, become more
manifest than in a dangerous experimental scheme of Taxation
like this of the Daily Chronicle. For it proceeds from founda¬
tion to roof on the pre-supposition that a competition alert and
omnipresent presses everywhere like an atmosphere on each
and every square foot of all departments of industry, and of all
the employers, organisers, and workers engaged in it; and in
justification of this, they point to the shoals of applications
that come by every post for situations of all kinds, qualities,
or degrees everywhere, and from all points of the compass.
It is this that lends the doctrine its plausibility, but it is
fallacious nevertheless. For Competition, in this its full¬
blown universality, is as a principle strictly limited to the
class of the employed , as distinct from their masters ; and to
the products of industry as distinct from the instruments of
production owned by these masters. It is only partially
operative among the capitalist employers themselves; but

258

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

among the greater magnates (so far, that is to say, as the
Daily Chronicle's dependence on it as a panacea against
shifting is concerned) it is scarcely operative at all. For in
the present day, it has among these been almost entirely
replaced, as we have said, by Combination (or by gigantic
private capitals which in themselves have the power of com¬
binations), and by whole or partial Monopoly; and every
consequence that hangs on this state of affairs is, it is to be
observed, the diametrical opposite of the corresponding one
which follows from the law of unlimited Competition. For by
Competition, every business bargain that is made between man
and man is cut down to a money minimum of difference;
whereas by Combination or Monopoly, this difference is every¬
where expanded to the maximum; so much so, indeed, that
one of the parties can often make a fortune by a single coup
while the other may be skinned to the bone—as may be seen
in America to-day, where the great Trusts have managed to
get their ropes around the necks not only of their Employes
and of all other Capitalists of lesser degree, but of the Stock
Exchangers, of Bankers, of Financiers, of Inventors, of
Organisers, of the general population, and even, in a degree,
of the Government itself!

Again, there is no level law of competition between the
Capitalist Employers and their employes—who can be crushed
out in detail (unless they are protected by their Trade Unions)
as they always have been. The employes lie on a level plain,
and are exposed to universal competition; but the great pro¬
ductive Combinations and the Trusts, the holders of monopoly
or scarcity values, the landlords, and the builders on favoured
sites, lie on the slope of a hill, as it were, in an ascending
hierarchy of bargaining power; and between them there is
little or no real, but only a formal, competition. For their
instruments of production, according to their efficiency and scale
of magnitude, already determine the results of competition
beforehand, however many competitors may have entered the

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES.

257

market witli the products of these Instruments for sale.
Whether they can shift a tax from one to another, or on to the
consumer, will depend entirely on the power they respectively
have of resisting or “ exploiting ” one another—it matters not
whether that power is purely economic, from the weight of
their possessions; or political, as the result of the position
which the law gives them. As for the miscellaneous millions
among whom pure and severe competition rules, they must
for ever, so far as an even bargain is concerned, be among the
exploited.

Replacing, then, the principles of the Old Economy with
these principles of the New—how does the matter stand in this
question of the shifting of a tax? It is evident, is it not, that
it will depend on what I have called the incidence of power; and
not on any mere vague presumption of a “ square deal ”
through competition at all. The landlord can make a shrewd
guess as to whether he can shift the proposed tax on his land
on to one or all or none of his capitalist tenants: the tenants,
on the other hand, will know to what extent he can afford to
give them notice to quit if they do not pay the tax. If he be
a duke, for example, with large estates of good land, it is
probable that he will shift the tax on to his tenants; If a small
squire, with sons at college to educate, he probably will not,
but will pay the tax himself. So, too, with the ground land¬
lords of favoured sites in great cities. While the leases of the
capitalists who hold the property run, the landlords will have
to bear the tax; but to imagine that the relieved capitalists are
going to pass on the immunity from taxation of their buildings,
to their tenants, in cheaper house rents, and without a fight to
keep it in their own hands, is a myth. So, too, with the Builders
on the outskirts of congested towns. If there are a number of
them actively competing on borrowed money, the tenant will
probably get the benefit in a remission of rent; if one of them
be sole building king of the neighbourhood, he will probably
pocket the difference, and make his tenants pay the same rent

258 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

us before. But tbe Daily (chronicle find, its large contingent of
Land Taxers, not perceiving that the area within which houses
are desired on the outskirts of any town or city, even of
London itself, is strictly limited , and that these limits once
defined will in any given direction meet the wants of the
people for, perhaps, a period of ten, twenty, or thirty years, will
have it that the competition will and must extend these limits
until the landlords let go their grip over their tenants—even if
fresh builders have to take all the distance between John o’
Groats and Land’s End, or between the Irish Sea and the
German Ocean, to do it in 1

The thing is altogether ridiculous; and if the Chancellor of
the Exchequer and the Treasury are, as is surmised, favourably
inclined to this particular scheme of the Land Taxers—partly
as a good war cry against “ idle, do-nothing Landlordism,” and
partly because they traditionally believe and act as if
competition everywhere ruled without limits—let them consider
well and think twice before they embark upon it. Not that
they cannot get their own revenue out of it; for they stand to
win by the tax whoever loses in the fight between the Land¬
lords, the Capitalists, and the General Public as to who shall
bear the burden. But if their aim, like that of the Land
Taxers, be a larger instalment of justice as well as of revenue,
they will be mightily surprised to find, as I venture to predict
they will, that their sword of justice will in a good half of the
cases be found to have fallen on the wrong necks! And
further, that in the process, the existing investments of the
poor in Building and Friendly Societies, and the monetary
position of Landlord, Capitalist, and Tenant, everywhere, will
be so disturbed, that the stable footing on which all credit as
well as all business forecasts rests, will for a time be shaken,
and the wealth of the country be more impaired by the
stoppage of business, than the Treasury enriched by the tax.

To sum up my criticism, then, in a word—if this scheme of
the Land Taxers and the Daily Chronicle is to succeed, it must

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES. 259

be accompanied by a drastic law making all contracts evading
it null and void—with the endless interference with business
enterprise which this would involve.

The Protectionist Schemes.

Let us now take a sample or two of Protectionist schemes
by way of contrast. These differ from the Free Trade ones,
inasmuch as they are based not on any fancied Ideal of Justice,
whether in full flower like those of Henry George and Karl
Marx, or to be inj ected only by gradual instalments, like those
we have passed under review, but on ordinary business
principles, and a total repudiation of the Old Political
Economy and all its works. It would be idle for me to deny
that I come to them with a very large measure of sympathy,
inasmuch as in my 44 Wheel of Wealth ” I have advocated
a scheme of Protection more rigid than any of them, and more
thoroughgoing than is to be found outside Japan.

It is necessary to begin with a passing formal allusion to the
scheme of Mr. Chamberlain, as it, or something like it, will be
the Treasury scheme when once the Protection Party comes
into power. It throws away once and for all the Laissez Fairs
and other worthless baggage of the Old Academical Economy,
along with its Gospel of Free Trade, but still lays too much
stress, I think, on the value of the Competition principle which
I have just exposed. It is accordingly rather a hesitating,
tentative experiment and instalment in the right direction than
a completed scientific scheme. Whether the putting of a 2^%
Tariff on manufactured articles and a 70 o on food stuffs, is the
ideal ratio for a Protective Tariff at the present time or not, is
open to discussion; but these details can easily be modified,
when once a start has been made, by the officials of the Board
of Trade, by the Chambers of Commerce, the Tariff Reform
League, or other expert agencies, when controlled at once by
an alert Parliamentary Opposition, by the Press, and by
competent independent outside Protectionist Economists

260

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The scheme, besides, is one based, as it should be, on purely
ousmess principles, precisely as in the case of a great private
estate, or a great private corporation like that of the Standard
Oil Company; only that it is a national and not a private
domain that is being handled by it. I need scarcely say that,
personally, I am inclined to entirely bless it as the beginning
of a new order of things, but one which for its perfecting will
have to be broken up and extended as time goes on into ever
finer differentiations, with ever increasing scientific precision,
and with a more iron hand to control its operations—not only
as regards imports, but exports as well. As to the amount of
ordinary human justice that can be realised in the fair and equal
distribution of the results of the scheme, this must be left to
Parliament, the Pulpit, and the Press in combination, who on
behalf of the community at large, will, like the Church of the
Middle Ages, but with the finer ideal of the humanities proper
to the present age, stand by and watch all the operations from
stage to stage, to see that substantial justice according to these
higher standards is done. This is evolutionary economic
Politics in its true and best sense; and consists in first laying
the Economic basis securely, and then injecting as much of
Ideal Human Justice as the people can be made to absorb after¬
wards, or coincidently with it. But to commence with some
abstract Eternal Ideal of Justice stuck like a postage stamp on
the backs of certain individuals or classes so as to mark them
out for exploitation for their sins (as we have seen the framers
of the various schemes I have alluded to do), and then try to
make taxation follow and conform to it, would be, like the
fanatics of the French Revolution, with their abstraction of
c£ Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” to turn a high ideal, good
as a stimulus and inspiration, but useless as an instrument for
working with, into a practical curse. But why, the reader will
ask, should it necessarily do this? Simply because Man is only
a higher animal that comes slowly down the centuries like other
animals, grouped in families and herds under the direction of

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIK VALUES.

261

leaders, and lias as yet only the feeblest spark of this Ideal in
him at best; and human justice, in consequence, as distinct
from this white-robed ideal kind, must at each and every point
in his evolution, be a compromise between the authority of
Tradition, Custom, Power, Law, Precedent, and Family ties,
on the one hand (with all the complex web of obligations which
they impose on a society" for at least a generation as the unit of
time), and this abstract Eternal Ideal of Justice on the other.
For this is only suitable to white-robed angels, or for Man when
he has become as abstract and bloodless as itself. How this
distinction between Human Justice and Ideal Justice will
operate when men get their eye on it, and how it will affect the
ideal taxation-schemers who with their gleaming blades would
decapitate whole classes and families of mankind at once, or
with their lancets more slowly bleed them to death, it needs no
wizard to foresee. They have shied at sight of it, as their
academical Economic brethren have at the New Protection
Economy; but with Shakespeare himself as its prophet and
sponsor, they will have in the end (unless Mr. Shaw puts his
foot down!) to face it, and get accustomed to it, all the same !
But to return.

The first, and in my judgment the most successful, attempt
yet made to introduce a finer scientific differentiation into this
tentative early scheme of Mr. Chamberlain—which, in passing,
I may say was anticipated in its essential outlines some five or
six years earlier by Mr. W. J. Harris, of the Statistical Society
—was made by Mr. Henry Lowenfeld in a pamphlet published
about a year ago, entitled “ Our Unjust Taxation and its
Remedy.” The basis of his scheme, in brief, is the separation
in the case of all manufactured imports whatever entering this
country, of the amount of raw material they contain, from the
amount of labour which has been expended on them in the
foreign countries from which we have received them. This, he
believes, could be done with ease by our Associated Chambers
of Commerce if they were supplied by the Board of Trade with

262 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

a complete and accurate list of all the variety of goods we
import. He would then put a protective tariff on the labour
only which has been expended on their production abroad,
leaving that part of their value which comes from the raw
material in them untaxed. This, in effect, would throw the
manufacturing of all articles whatever for which we have any
facility (and with our machinery and the hereditary shill of our
workmen, for what articles have we not?) into our own hands,
while giving us all the raw material we require at its cheapest
rate. It would, besides, set all the mills and factories of all
kinds at work for which we could find workmen; and so realise
that first moral obligation of every nation, namely, to give the
utmost possible employment to its own people.

But would it have this effect? In my judgment it un¬
doubtedly would, provided Mr. Lowenfeld is right in saying
that either the Chambers of Commerce or the Board of Trade
can really discriminate between what is labour value and what
is raw material value in the finished article. He avers that they
can, and that he himself is prepared to “ explain to the perma¬
nent officials the practical means of surmounting any obstacles
which may baffle them.” He claims for his scheme that it
would turn our country from an ever-increasing importer of
manufactured articles to an importer, largely or mainly, of raw
materials; and that it would turn us back again, as before the
regime of Free Trade, into our old role of a nation of manu¬
facturers and shippers— the original basis of our wealth. This
he illustrates by the pregnant instance of the Tobacco Trade,
where the simple fact that manufactured tobacco pays double
the import duty charged on the raw article, has had the effect
of giving employment to something like double the number of
men engaged in manufacturing it here, while the number of
those engaged in manufacturing it for us abroad has remained for
twenty years almost stationary. In a word, we now, in
consequence of the duty, do the manufacturing ourselves, while
they supply us with more and more of the raw material

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIE VALUES.

263

necessary. By this scheme, Mr. Lowenfeld goes on to say, that
our own exporters would be no worse off in their competition with
foreigners, inasmuch as in the case of the half-manufactured
imports which serve often as raw materials for our own more
highly-finished products, they would be given, as is quite right
and proper, a .rebate on the tariff which they had paid on the
foreign labour embodied in them; and thereby would be
enabled to compete in the foreign market as successfully as
before. And as upshot of it all, if on account of the tariff we
had less manufactured imports than before, we should now have
more raw material imported to balance the trade; while we
should export quite as much of our own manufactured goods to
pay for them all; besides getting all the profit that comes from
the use of our own machines to supply our wants instead of
paying the foreigner for the use of his.

And above all, and as a set off to the rebate, we should be
giving employment to an ever-increasing number of competent
workmen among our own people. He claims, besides, for his
scheme, that by it there would be, firstly, a stability in the
amount of Tariff that would be put on the foreign labour in an
article, inasmuch as every manufacturer knows himself precisely
the amount of that labour; secondly, that all traders would be
protected by the tariff in an equal degree, because it would
automatically adjust itself to the labour in each article; and,
lastly, that by treating all alike it would make lobbying for
favours to special trades unavailing, and political corruption
impossible.

When once his scheme had been put into operation, he
contends that the extent to which the tariff would fall more
heavily on the poor than on the rich, or vice versa, would be
known by the labour embodied in the goods these respective
classes habitually consume; after which an income-tax on the
rich, or a corresponding tax on the household budget of the
poor, could be so laid as to make the balance of taxation fall
equally on all classes of the community alike. As for a tax on

264

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

imported corn, with the object of rc-peopling anew the vacant,
half-deserted lands of England, and so helping the better to
feed the population in the event of war—-that, like the Army
and Navy, belongs to the category of 'political necessities,
which in the present imperfect world lie high above all else,
and must dominate all mere considerations of taxation and its
incidence. But here again, an equalisation of the incidence,
so as to be fair all round, could be easily effected by a still
further adjustment, either of the tariff or of internal taxation—
and in it all there must be no more easy-going laissez fa,ire , but
a scientific coercive adaptation to circumstances and necessity.

Such is Mr. Lowenfeld’s scheme in bald outline, uncompli¬
cated by the admirable analysis of present day taxation which
precedes and enforces it. In itself it is, in my judgment, an
excellently clean-cut, scientific, and harmonious scheme, and
much superior to the simpler, less differentiated, and rightly
tentative scheme of Mr. Chamberlain—provided, as I have said,
that the Board of Trade or Chambers of Commerce can clearly
separate between the raw material and the labour entering into
imported goods, which is its basis.

Personally, I can the more cordially approve of it, not only
because it is the first and most important stage in that scientific
differentiation required for the New Economy of Protection,
and which we shall still have to carry some stages further
before the Tariff is entirely water-tight and complete; but
because it emphasises the principles I laid down in my “ Wheel
of Wealth”—namely, firstly, that it is the wealth-producing
powers of Nature , and not of Man, that give to all instruments
of production—whether of the Soil, or of Machinery, or of the
Chemical and other processes which are their adjuncts—that
a surplus ” of wealth on which alone the increasing populations
of the world are fed, and from which the rents, interests, or
profits of all those who own this land or this machinery are
drawn; secondly, that these wealth-producing powers of
Nature are a free gift to their capturers and owners, over and

TAXATION SCHEMES AND THEIR VALUES.

265

above all the mere human labour that is expended in preparing
the soil or making and fitting the machines; thirdly, that in
consequence of this, in the trade between nations, it is the
nation which owns the most effective of these machines, and
in the greater number, that gets this free gift in any and every
deal between them; the other nations so far satisfying their
wants the while, it is true, but economically speaking 64 eating
their heads off” and merely marking time—at any rate until
they can get better land, or the same or other kinds of
machines of greater efficiency by which to exploit their trade
rivals in turn. And, therefore, fourthly, that no nation should
part with an instrument of production, even if it has become
inferior to a corresponding one owned by its foreign rivals,
without, in the international deals between them, haggling and
bargaining for it by means of 4 ‘ reciprocity ” arrangements and
otherwise to the last penny.

CHAPTER VII.

PROFESSOR MARSHALL’S
“MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.”*

TJROFESSOR MARSHALL, who is regarded by his circle
of academic associates as “ the greatest of English econo¬
mists,” has just published as a Parliamentary Paper, by order
of the present Government, a “ Memorandum ” written by him
in 1903 on the “Fiscal Policy of International Trade,” and on
it in this article I propose to offer some comments. It is
a document of considerable length, and is divided into 82
separate paragraphs; but I shall only be able to give here the
most general view of the character of his performance and of
the kind of fallacy by which from beginning to end it is
pervaded. In a general way it may be characterised either as
an expansion of that Free Trade Manifesto drawn up by
himself and twelve of the other academical High Priests of
Political Economy in 1903, over which the Press, both Free
Trade and Protectionist, made itself so merry, at the time, on
account of its pontifical airs and its solemn platitudes; or it
may be regarded, on the other hand, as a concentrated basket¬
ful of all the old dead Political Economy of the schools on this
question of Free Trade and Protection, emptied on to the
benches of the House of Commons in a heap I But in every
way it is a most poor and unsatisfactory document—vague and
evasive at the points where it ought to be most definite and
* ‘‘Financial Review of Reviews,” January, 1909.

PROF. MARSHALL’S “ MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.” 2<>7

precise; heavy, confused, and platitudinous throughout; and
each of its separate propositions so worm-eaten with exceptions
that you can find no solid footing anywhere as you go along.
Now, in saying this, it is not I that am seeking to damn
Professor Marshall’s “ Memorandum ” beforehand; for the
President of the Economic Section of the British Association
of last year has already officially done this for me. He said in
so many words in his Address that the Political Economy of
Adam Smith and Stuart Mill was dead; so, too, was that of
Jevons; while that of the present Austrian and American
schools was in not much better plight—and Professor Mar¬
shall’s is but a concentrated rehash of all four! The document,
as I have said, is only an expansion of the old u Manifesto ” of
1903; and I take it as a piece of rare hardihood, therefore, on
the part of Professor Marshall that he permitted this precious
document to be tabled on the House of Commons; as if,
indeed, it had come, by a consensus of opinion, triumphantly
out of the ordeal of the Magazine and Press controversy of
that year, instead of being received, as it was, with general
derision. For while, during all that time, Mr. Garvin in the
Telegraphy Mr. Wilson in the Daily Mail) Mr. Holt Schooling,
Sir Vincent Oaillard and others, in the Monthlies, were raining
on its abstract propositions an array of facts, arguments, and
accurately verified statistics that ought, if there is any virtue
in human reason, to have drowned them out;—what did Pro¬
fessor Marshall and his twelve academic and apostolic associates
in the Manifesto do? Reply? Not at all; on the contrary,
in disgust at the indignity they had met with from the public,
they retired, like the Olympians, to their lofty peaks, wrapped
their cloaks around them, and with the tables of Economic
Law under their arms, sat in silence and sulked! Professor
Pigou, if I remember rightly, as the youngest member of the
band, alone appearing as their champion before the people, but
without result. Now, had the Government asked Mr. Hobson,
for example, who is a Free Trader, to table a Memorandum on

268

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Free Trade, it had been well; for he deals with realities, not
with economic abstractions, and everything he says on Econo¬
mics is well worth careful pondering; but the academic
economists had long since boycotted his boohs for heresy, and
their ban rests on him and them to this day.

But this by way of preliminary, and now let me at once
come to the pervasive fallacies in Professor Marshall’s “ Memo¬
randum,” which have so discredited it.

1. The first great fallacy is one he has in common with all
the academical economists, and lies in his splitting the Wheel
of Wealth down the middle, as it were, into two separate and
independent halves, and treating these as if they had no
necessary connection with each other. He keeps the Produc¬
tion factors in wealth—the land, the mines, the factories, the
machinery, and other instruments—apart from the Consumption
factors which enter into men’s food, clothing, and other
necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, as if these were
as different in fact as they are in name; whereas the slightest
reflection will convince the reader that the two cannot for a
moment be disjoined without producing endless fallacies in all
our economic thinking. For it is precisely the same goods
which are put on the one side of the wheel, from the land, the
mills, and the factories, that are in the “ turnover ” taken off
it to be consumed on the other side: and, it is evident, is it
not, that anything which interferes with or clogs the mechanism
of Production slows the whole wheel, and lessens Consumption
as well; while this lessening of Consumption again, on the
next turn of the wheel, causes fewer orders for goods to be
given, and less wealth to be produced to meet them. On the
other hand, anything that stimulates Production and increases
its products, thereby raising either Wages or the numbers of
W orkmen employed, or both, stimulates Consumption also by
increasing the demands of the workmen, who have more money
to spend on the products ; and this again, on the next turn of
the wheel, stimulates production anew in order to meet this

PROF. MARSHALL'S “ MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.’' 269'

increased demand, and so on indefinitely. In other words, just
as in an ordinary running wheel you cannot accelerate the pace
of one side without accelerating that of the other, or put a
brake on the one without putting it on the other to a precisely
equal degree; so, too, is it with the continuously running
Wheel of Wealth. Now, what conclusions do I ask the reader
to draw from this, and to keep in his mind for what is to
follow? These, namely :—

1. That Production and Consumption must never be

disjoined and treated separately, but always as a con¬
tinuous process or whole without a break; and one in
which Production and Consumption, continuously
running into and reacting on each other, are to be
regarded as complementary sides or aspects only.
And therefore:—

2. That in any “ Memorandum M or statement professing

to be scientific, no cause operating primarily on the
one side (whether it be the Production or Consump¬
tion side matters not), can show its whole range of
effects until it is followed around the wheels full
circle to the point from which it started.

Now, does Professor Marshall in the 82 paragraphs of his
44 Memorandum,” or do his academic Free Trade colleagues, in
their books, follow the effects of a tariff, or the absence of a
tariff, around the whole circuit of the wheel of circulation in
this way? Not at all; or only when they are driven by some
complication into a corner, and are searching about anywhere
for some plausible avenue of escape. What they do is to
confine their investigations to that side only on which the
tariff at first directly falls, namely, the side of Consumption;
or if they glance at Production, it is to consider the effects of
the tariff on the foreign countries against whom the tariff is
laid; as the reader will see, for example, in the long disserta¬
tion of Professor Marshall in his " Memorandum” (sec. 6-17)
on whether any part of a tax on foreign imports is paid by the

270

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

foreign producer—and where, by the way, he decides with the
Protectionists, and contrary to all Free Trade orthodoxy, that
in some cases it is so ! But it never occurs to him that the
point is, what effect the tariff will have on the home producer.
And the reason of this is, as I have said, that having split the
wheel of a nation’s wealth into two separate halves, which, as
he believes, although they may have an occasional, have no
necessary connection with each other, he does not think it
either worth while or incumbent on him to consider its other
side. Now, I protest that this procedure is as absurd as if a
physiologist were to cut the human body in two, and then
frame his doctrines from the effects of food and drink, on one
part alone, without reference to the other. Indeed, if anyone
doubts that Production and Consumption are but the two
sides of a single process, and can never be disjoined in thought
or business speculation, let him ask himself what is the reason
that the great Bankers and Financiers who stand on the axle
at the centre of the Wheel of Industry are obliged, if their
business is to prosper, to keep an accurate register both of
what is being produced and what is being consumed in the area
of their operations, and never for a moment to take their finger
off the pulse of this double movement. It is because in doing
this they know that they can with safety make larger advances
to farmers, millowners, and merchants, when the consumption
of any of their products is likely to be greater; but must
restrict their advances, when the consumption shows signs of
falling off. And the great International Financiers do pre¬
cisely the same for the world as a whole. And does this not
prove to demonstration that Production and Consumption
must be considered together at each and every point of any
argument on Free Trade or Protection; and not separately
and each by itself, as is done by Professor Marshall and his
academical associates ? Indeed, if it were for nothing else, a
falsity like this at the very basis of their science would be
enough to make their arguments as fallacious, bankrupt, and

PROF. MARSHALL’S “ MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.” 271

out-of-date as are treatises on Arab Philosophy or Mediaeval
Theology.

With these preliminaries to show how unjustified are the
authority and prestige which this old Political Economy of the
Universities and Schools, of which Professor Marshall’s
“ Memorandum ” is the outcome, enjoys, we can now concen¬
trate on the real nodus of this whole problem of Free Trade or
Protection, namely:—As to whether or not there is anywhere
to be found on the Production side of the wheel of industry
any gratuitous asset or suplus which can not only neutralise a
tariff put on foreign goods on the Consumption side, but if
judiciously handled will recoup all national loss from the tax on
the side of Production as well; and so will leave to the Nation
a balance of wealth to the good ? This is the whole problem
in a nutshell; and according to how we answer it, shall we be
Free Traders or Protectionists. It is necessary to put the
question in this way, because Professor Marshall and the Free
Traders deny that there is any such gratuitous surplus to be
found anywhere as a set-off to a tax on foreign manufactured
goods.

Now, that there is such a gratuitous asset on the Production
side of the wheel, may be shown to be at least possible, if we
can find anywhere a tax on Consumption which is not only
recouped, but more than recouped, from the Production side—
as everybody, including Professor Marshall, will admit. Now,
what are the facts ? In backward countries, as in Egypt, for
example, a man like Lord Cromer will, as we have seen, add
manyfold to the wealth of a nation, after paying all the addi¬
tional taxes on Consumption which his reforms necessitate;
and that merely by the superior organization of its existing
Productive forces, without having cultivated a single acre of
ground, planted a single fruit-tree, or built a single factory or
mill at the public expense. In troubled times, this recouping
of a tax by a great Administrator or Statesman is still more
marked. When Bonaparte undertook the reorganisation of

272

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

France from the impending bankruptcy into which she had
been plunged by the Revolution, he so vastly increased the
productive energies of the country by the stimulus he gave to
them through his superior organization of them, that when the
balance was struck before and after his Consulate, it was found
that the national wealth had increased so enormously that the
taxes on consumption necessary to meet it had been reduced
from 79 per cent, of individual income to 21 per cent.; and
that, too, with all the expenses of his wars thrown into the
opposite scale. Even in the midst of the colossal wars of the
Empire, he never had to borrow a penny; the French Funds
stood as high as with most nations in times of profoundest
peace; and remained steadily there until the eve of his down¬
fall. Economically speaking, it was an object-lesson on the
grandest scale to prove that there is no mere necessary tax
on Consumption which cannot be recouped, and more than
recouped, by a nation from its Production side, if you only
know where to look for, and how to organise its existing pro¬
ductive resourcesinstead of sitting, as the Free Traders do,
nursing the old fetish of laissez-faire which has been their
bane, and terrified as misers lest a preliminary shilling tax
once extracted from the people’s pockets, can never again be
recouped to them in this world!

But to all this Professor Marshall and his Academic followers
will object that these administrative organisations are really
mental assets—the gratuitous surpluses that come from the
brains of great men,—and not from solid, tangible economic
quantities, like a mine, a piece of land, a steam or locomotive
engine, or a machine in a mill or factory. Precisely so; but if
I can show them where they will find in the plant of these very
mills and factories (for it is around these mainly that the tariff 1
controversy turns) a gratuitous surplus infinitely in excess of
any that can ever be got out of the mere reorganising arrange¬
ments of administrators or statesmen, I shall, I contend, have
shattered the very foundations of the Free Trade theory, which

PROF. MARSHALL’S “MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.” 273

goes on the pre-supposition that there is no such surplus or
asset anywhere to be found. Well! these gratuitous surpluses
are so patent when once pointed out, that, like Columbus’ egg,
the wonder is that anyone ever could have missed them! They
are to be found, of course, in the enormous productivity of the
great Machine Inventions (which had no existence, it is to be
remembered, in the time of Adam Smith) over and above all
the cost of Labour spent in making them and putting them
together. This, too, is a brain surplus, if you choose, but it is
one pioceeding from a different order of men to the Statesmen
and Administratorsprimarily from the great Physical
Scientists, who discover the laws and modes of operation of
the great wealth-producing powers of Nature; next from the
great Inventors, who by their constructive mechanical ingenuity
are able to yoke these gratuitous powers of Nature to their
machines; then from the great organising Capitalists and
“ Captains of Industry,’’ who so arrange these machines that
they shall do the greatest amount of work at the least cost;
and finally from the great Financiers, who enable the
Capitalists to increase the number of their machines as they
are needed, and plant them on those areas of territory where
they can function with the greatest efficiency. Now, where in
Professor Marshall’s “Memorandum,” or in the books of the
Academic Economists, shall we find any recognition of this
enormous asset given by the powers of Nature as a free gift to
a nation? Nowhere. If, therefore, I can now give a satis¬
factory reason why the Free Traders should have missed so
obvious a surplus, and one which will more than recoup a tax
on Consumption, I shall, I trust, be considered to have entirely
justified my impeachment of them in this article.

Now, the first reason why they have not seen this gratuitous
surplus is, that it has not been written down in the treatises of
the Fathers of the Science, or in those of the line of Apostolic
succession of the Professoriate of the Universities and Schools,
who have hung on each other’s skirts in regular file from the

274

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

Physiocrats and Adam Smith to the present time. The
Physiocrats, from whom Adam Smith derived nine-tenths of
his doctrine, frankly denied that there was any surplus to be
found anywhere except from the Land; and contended that
Manufacturers, Merchants, and Workmen alike 46 eat their
heads off.” Adam Smith was willing to admit that a certain
surplus came from 44 the division of labour,” as he called it,
owing to the time it saved, and the greater skill of the work¬
men—as was shown in the manufacture of pins. Then came
Stuart Mill, who was so impressed and even awed by these
pins of Adam Smith-five thousand of them a day by 44 the
division of labour ” made by each man, if I remember rightly,
as against two or three only a man without it!—that in spite of
the great modern Machanicai Inventions, with their enormous
productivity staring him in the face, and in spite of his open-
mindedness, he took not the slightest notice of these huge
additional sources of wealth. And the reason of this again
doubtless was, that seeing the Scientists and Inventors (who
were the main authors of this hugh surplus, it must be
remembered), getting themselves either nothing at all
personally for their labours; or, in the case of the Inventors, a
sum which in most instances barely kept them from starvation
for the fourteen years during which their patent-rights ran, he,
naturally enough, concluded that that for which these men
were not paid, could not have much economic value, however
creditable to them otherwise ! At any rate, he never saw any
surplus on the Production side of the wheel which could be
drawn on as a balance or offset to a tax or tariff on
Consumption, except that caused by the 44 division of labour”
of Adam Smith. Why, then, the reader will ask, did he and
his successors, including Professor Marshall, not utilise even
this comparatively modest asset in considering the problem of
Protection or Free Trade? Probably because, having split the
wheel of wealth into two separate , independent parts, they did
not even think of it! There was an excuse for the Physiocrats

prof, marshali/s 44 memorandum on fiscal policy.” 275

and Adam Smith, because they lived before the days of
Modern Machine Industry; but there is no excuse for Stuart
Mill, or for Professor Marshall and the modern school of Free
Trade Economists.

Now, that I am right in saying that these older Academical
Economists believed that there is no asset or surplus anywhere
available which can counteract the depressing effect on Trade
of a tariff, will be seen If we take their most definite and
characteristic doctrines. They laid it down that all Wealth
was the product of Labour, and of the organisation of labour
by its capitalist employers. The pay of the Labourer, owing
to the pressure of population on the means of subsistence,
tended always, they believed, towards “a bare subsistence”
wage. It was evident, therefore, that, as the labourer thus
4 ‘ eats his head off,” no tax or tariff on his consumption, could
be recouped from him, on his production, without driving him
into actual starvation. As for the Capitalist employer, again,
he, according to the Free Trade Economists, was only paid the
bare interest on his capital, his bare wages for superintending
the organisation of labour, and his legitimate trade risks. Here,
again, it was evident that he, no more than the labourer, could
stand any tax or tariff on the articles he wanted for his mill or
factory without having either to throw up his industry altogether
or go into bankruptcy. And hence we see why it was that the
old Free Trade Economists really believed that there was no
asset or surplus anywhere in the nation’s Production, that could
by any possibility recoup it for a tax or tariff laid on the foreign
products which it used or consumed. But they forgot (because
they did not even suspect) the tremendous gratuitous surplus
which, as we have seen, the Inventors and Scientists, utilising
the free gifts of the wealth-producing powers of Nature , had
given the nation on its productive side, and which were packed
and stored in the machinery of the factories and mills of the
kingdom—a surplus which of itself would not only enable the

276

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

nation to stand an ordinary necessary Protective tariff, but
would yield besides an enormous surplus to the good.

To make this quite clear, let us take a nation isolated from
commercial intercourse with its neighbours; and let us suppose,
to begin with, that its productive powers, as embodied in its
Land, Mines, Machine industries, and Chemical processes,
represent on an average a free, gratuitous surplus of, say, fifty
units of wealth, got by it from the powers of Nature after all
costs of labour, etc., have been paid.

Let us further suppose that this average of fifty units is
made up of land, machinery, etc., embodying some of it one
hundred units of gratuitous wealth, others eighty units, others
fifty, and so on, down to thirty, twenty, or ten, until at last we
get to ordinary horses and ploughs, carts, wheelbarrows, or
spades, which we may represent by five units, or even by one,—
all being gratuitous gifts, and all averaged at a standardized
cost, whether in terms of horse-power or food-power, matters
not. Now, let us imagine that this nation is England, and that
the industries which would in a fair and open field still give her
a world supremacy—say her cotton, coal, shipping, iron and
steel, machinery, engines, woollens, hardware, etc.,—represent
her one -hundred-unit standard of surplus work done for her by
the powers of Nature for nothing; that others, like chemicals,
apparel, leather, linen, etc., represent, say, a ninety or eighty-
unit standard, while all the rest are but a common ruck of
fifty, forty, thirty, or twenty-unit powers, in which she has
little or no advantage over many other nations, and where a
small difference of freightage one way or the other would be
sufficient to put a stop to all exchange between them in these
products. And now' let us assume, for the nonce, that some
one or more of these foreign nations has at last caught up to,
and finally beaten England in her supreme, her one-hundred-
unit industries, in her own home market, by however small a
margin (so long as that margin gives the rival nation a final and
definite power of underselling her)—say of two units in the

PJROF. MARSHALL^ 66 MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.” 277

hundred—so that it can put its hundred-and-two-unit machines
in the field against her hundred-unit ones, what then will happen?
Clearly that her hundred-unit industries will be wiped out,
and their great wealth-producing machines put out of action
altogether; and that she will then have to fall back, first on
her ninety and eighty ones, and at last on the poor fifty, forty,
or twenty-unit standards of industry which would reduce her
at a blow to the rank of a fourth-rate industrial power. And
not only that, but she would have to carry down with her in
her defeat the tens of thousands of workers who had been
dependent on her high-class machines for their existence, but
whom she could neither shoot like rabbits, nor allow to perish
of famine like Hindoos, but must manage in some way or
another to keep alive. In other words, while Protection would
only lose her the three per cent, of Tariff necessary to keep out
the two per cent, superiority of the Foreigners in wealth
producing power, a continuance in Free Trade would lose her
ten, twenty, or forty per cent. By Protection she would still
keep her highest wealth-producing machines, and would lose
only the small percentage of their products represented by the
Tariff; but if she continued the Free Trade regime she would
lose the machines themselves and all that they produce. In
other words, if she were really defeated by the superior
productive powers, natural or acquired, of other or larger
nations, her descent and fall, under Protection, would be slow
and gradual (in so far, that is to say, as she had to put on
more and more tariff to protect her most valuable industrial
assets), and would be only an arithmetical progression towards
decay; whereas under Free Trade, like Milton’s fallen angels,
she would be Hung sheer down from battlement to battlement
in geometrical acceleration, to the bottomless pit itself! Is
this good business ? I think not. And if not, where, then,
is the value of the Free Traders 9 old standing argument, that
if we are beaten in one trade or industry we can turn to another
and yet another, when that is seen to mean, not that we are to

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walk along a level business thoroughfare where the profits or
costs are the same at each stage, but are to be forced up a steep
and steeper hill where at each stage we can only get the same
amount of real wealth as before in a given time, at double, or
treble, or quadruple its cost. At any rate, on the argument
embodied in the above crude illustration alone, I am prepared, in
the last resort, to take my stand, and to stake on it the whole case
for Protection as against Free Trade; and all because, if I may
put it in a word, the Free Traders have neglected to take into
account in their calculations the immense and increasing surplus
of gratuitous wealth given to a nation by the possession of
superior machines over lower-class ones, when compared with
the small difference of cost in the mere making, fitting, superin¬
tending, and running them; and because they have also
neglected the broad fact that Protection is strictly analogous to
Insurance ; and that just as in Insurance you can, for a small,
percentage of its value, protect your property from spoliation
or fire, so by Protection you can also for a small percentage of
the value of their products, prevent your greatest wealth-pro¬
ducing machines from being brought to a standstill, without
any compensation at all. Now, I protest that neglects of this-
kind at the very core and basis of the old Free Trade Political
Economy is absolutely fatal to it. For where, but from the
gratuitous surplus of these machines, do they suppose that the
enormous and continuous increase of the wealth of nations like
America, Germany, and France, who impose Protective tariffs
high as sea walls, come from! And why, the reader will ask,
have present-day economists like Professor Marshall missed this
asset? Simply because, strange as it may seem, they have not
seen or even looked for a gratuitous surplus from Machine
Invention; but, imagining that Mill and the older Economists
had settled the matter once and for all, have since his time
concentrated on “ theories of value/’ “ marginal increments,”
and other ingenious academic exercises, which, whether true or
false (and in my “ Wheel of Wealth/’ I have tried to show

PROF. MARSHALL’S 44 MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY. 1 ” 279

they are absolutely false), have no bearing whatever, one way
or another, on the problem of Free Trade and Protection.

But to show into what a state of perplexity Professor
Marshall and his associates have been thrown in this problem,
we have only to look into his 44 Memorandum,” where he admits
that countries with 44 infant industries ” may be protected.
But why so, we ask, if there is no surplus wherewith to pay a
tariff to be got out of any industry ? Besides, when any one
country has unified and consolidated its great industries to the
point reached by America, for example, with its gigantic
Trusts, and so has reduced expenses to a minimum, the manu¬
factures of all other countries, even England included, must be
put in the category of 44 infant industries/’ however supreme
they may once have been. It is no wonder, then, that John
Bright, on reading this exception to universal Free Trade in
Mill’s book, was heard to remark that the admission was
sufficient to neutralise, for the cause of Free trade, the whole
of the arguments in the remainder of his two volumes! It is
not merely their 44 theory of value,” therefore, that Professor
Marshall and the existing Academical Economists have to
perfect, but rather to remodel and reconstruct their whole so-
called Science from the foundation.

If, then, I have proved to the reader’s satisfaction that there
is a gratuitous asset in Machine-industry which the Free
Traders have missed, and one which is capable of recouping a
nation for a tariff on its foreign products, we have now to see on
the other side into what pitfalls Professor Marshall and his
followers have fallen when they are defending Free Trade.
And here, again, we shall see that they repeat their old fallacy
of considering only one side of the wheel by itself, and without
connection with the other. But this time it is the Production
side to which they are glued. They admit ad hoc that any
particular industry might be ruined under Free Trade, when¬
ever any foreign nation was able by its superior efficiency to
send us a cheaper article and of equal quality to that turned

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

out by our own machines. But instead of following the effects
of this around the wheel to the Consumption side (where they
would find that when a great industry has to close down, the
whole body of workmen employed will, in spite of their duty¬
free loaves and shirts piled to the ceiling in the retail shops
around them, either have to starve, steal or beg), they ignore
this Consumption side altogether; and fail to see that with
sufficient tariff to protect the industry and keep its machinery
going, these workmen would still have enough of modest fare
to keep them alive, out of that gratuitous surplus which, as we
have seen, all the great machine inventions yield over and
above the produce of men’s mere hands. For, u what is the
use of your 4 free loaf,’ ” as the last remaining old Stoic of the
Protection age who had come down to the time when Free
Trade was the universally accepted doctrine of these islands,
said contemptuously to me thirty years ago ;— 44 What is the
use of your 4 free loaf 5 if you have no Saturday night’s pay to
buy it with?” This lias since become so palpable a truism
that it is almost an insult to the reader’s intelligence to force it
on him. I only do so to make more apparent the absurdity of
Professor Marshall and the Free Trader’s entire procedure in
dealing with the problem. For, obsessed with the craze for
keeping the two sides of the wheel apart, what they do is to
consider how the loss of a particular industry (driven out of
the field by foreign competition in its own as well as foreign
markets), will affect, not the home consumers on the other side
of the wheel, but the home producers on the same side. And
their conclusion is, that the capital of the closed-down industry
will be transferred in bulk, to help some other industry in need
of it. If that, too, is extinguished by the free imports of some
other nation which has caught up to and surpassed us, then the
combined capitals of these two extinct industries will be again
tiansfened to a third, and so on; and when all the manu¬
facturing industries which have made England’s greatness are
extinguished one by one, the united capitals of them all can,

pbof. Marshall’s “ memorandum on fiscal policy.” 281

in the last resort, be put into jams, pickles, bottles, sweated
clothing, and other nondescript miscellanea, which, one may note
in passing, from the accumulation of capital thus invested in
them, the whole world itself could scarcely take off our hands
at a remunerative price and when barred out of other nations
by hostile tariffs (as they would be almost sure to be) would
stand piled here in stacks so high and unsaleable, that, like the
wheat of Western America, which, before the days of cheap
transportation, was used to feed the pigs, it would almost pay
us to make a present of it to the foreigner to get it out of the
way 1 The whole argument, especially in these days when the
separate great industries are so compactly organised in closely-
knit co-operating groups, and with multitudes of minor branches
as adjuvants to each of them, is too ridiculous for serious
discussion. For what does it mean ? It means that Professor
Marshall and the Free Traders really believe that the Capital
of a country is as round and solid as a billiard ball, which can
be put first into one pocket, and then into another, then into a
third, and so on, and come smilingly out of the last as unworn
and undiminished as when it was put into the first; instead of
being like a “ sweated ” sovereign, which loses something at
the coiner s hands at each operation and transfer. If the
reader doubts it, let him put his capital into a farm, and if that
fails, into a manufactory, and then again into a wholsesale
concern, and see whether it comes out of the ordeal as solid
and intact as our billiard ball! And yet, with these practical
facts of industry before them, the Academicals, with Professor
Marshall at their head, still keep up their ghastly monotonous
refrain: ‘‘ If the capital of a country is driven out of one

industry after another by the competition of one or another
foreign nation, it can always recoup itself by being transferred
to the others that still remain.” Is it any wonder, then, that
business men have long since “ kicked their foot ” through this
old so-called science of Political Economy, and ignominiously

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flung it out of doors as the useless rubbish, the convicted,
priggish, pedantic absurdity it really is ?

But these are not the only patent facts that Professor
Marshall and the Free Traders are blind to. They do not see
any difference made in the problem of Free Trade by the
distinction I have drawn in my 6 ‘ Wheel of Wealth” between
complementary and competitive foreign imports. This distinction
is vital and fundamental, and the neglect of it fatal. Comple¬
mentary products are all such goods as we require either
directly as food or as subsidiary and essential to our industries,
but which we have no natural facilities for growing or pro¬
ducing at home—oranges, grapes, currants, lemons, tea, sugar,
silk, coffee, gold, silver, copper, or the like. These can be
admitted duty-free as helps and adjuncts, and with nothing
but advantage to the general wealth of the country. But if
anyone imagines, as Professor Marshall does, that therefore we
can let in foreign products that directly compete with our own,
duty-free, for the sake of their greater cheapness, let him fix
his mind on the land that has gone out of cultivation and the
hundreds of millions of capital which has been lost by our
fanners, beyond redemption, in the last thirty years, from the
free importation of foreign food and cattle, and say whether
there is or is not any validity in the distinction. And the
result will be precisely the same both in principle and in fact
under the free importation of foreign competitive manufactured
goods. I know that Free Traders will say in reply, that all
these are but the cheaper products of foreign land and machinery
more fertile and effective than our own, and so will be all to
our gain. Now, this looks plausible, but it only brings out the
same great oversight at the very core of their system which I
have already so often pointed out. They do not see, and will
not see, that the only surplus which can make a nation richer
next year than it is this, comes, as I again repeat, not from the
labour as such, but from the gratuitous potoers of Nature in
the soil, and in the great machine inventions; and as, in the

PROF. MARSHALL^ “MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICY.” 288

case now under consideration, it is the foreigner who owns the
land and the machines, this surplus goes to him, not to us—
except the small portion we save , as represented by the slight
difference in cheapness of the price of goods under free imports
and under a tariff; whereas the great bulk of our national loss
is all our own, as our great instruments of production—our
land and our machines—in consequence of this foreign compe¬
tition, fall gradually but surely into disuse. Of course, if
you do not mind whether it is your own or another nation that
is benefited, so long as the world in general is benefited by the
free exchange of goods—as, indeed, is the case with many
good Free Traders who take a cosmopolitan standpoint—there
is nothing more to be said. My argument concerns only what
will benefit my own country primarily ; and I take it that this
is the point on which the reader will expect all my arguments
to converge.

The truth is, that Professor Marshall and the Academical
Economists have not the slightest conception that there is any
difference not only between complementary and competitive
imports, but between an instrument of Production and the
consumable products of that instrument; and therefore they
ought in theory to be as willing to put a direct tax on the
instruments of production as on their consumable products.
For if there is no difference between an instrument of pro¬
duction—whether it be a piece of land or a machine—and its
products; if there is no asset on the Production side which is
not balanced by an equal one on the Consumption side ; there
ought to be no difference between putting a tax on the instru¬
ment of production on the one side of the wheel, or on its
products on the other. And yet who ever heard of any
statesman in a civilised country, be he Free Trader or Pro¬
tectionist, ever dreaming of laying a direct tax on an instrument
of production—on a man’s horse and cart, a farmer’s stock-in-
trade, a peasant proprietor’s fruit trees, a manufacturer’s
buildings and machinery, etc.—however high he may pile them

284

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

on the consumable products of these very instruments? On
the contrary, except under stress of the direst political necessity,
he will keep them free as air, in order to give every stimulus
to their extension, expansion, and free, unimpeded functioning;
as knowing well, by instinct if not by theory, the spontaneous
gratuitous wealth they give to a nation over and above their
labour and cost. It is only Turkish and other Oriental despots
who ever dare to touch these “ hen-roosts ”; and that is why
these countries, in spite of their great natural riches, have
remained barren and poverty-stricken from the days of the
Roman Empire to the present hour. When Cromwell taxed
the landlord Cavaliers’ rents to the point almost of extinction,
and they were forced to give up their establishments and live
in genteel poverty, if not penury, abroad, he but scotched the
snake; for having left them with the title-deeds to their lands
still intact, on the return of Charles II. they came back with
him smiling, to be soon as prosperous as ever, and to remain so
to this day. But when the French Revolution took the land
itself from the noblesse and the Church—where, we ask, are
the family descendants of this noblesse , and where the wealth
of France’s once red-heeled Cardinals and Archbishops now?
The Revolution, in a word, had confiscated the Rand itself—
an instrument of Production; Cromwell had only taxed its
products. Hence the difference. This is why the ravages of
war, fire, or flood, even if they devour a country’s stock of
provisions as remorselessly as if a horde of locusts had passed
over them, are so ephemeral, so long as its mills, machinery,
warehouses, and other instruments of Production are spared;
and why whole generations of men may still feel their desolating
effects, if these have not been spared. But Professor Marshall
and his academical contingent, seeing, as we have said, no
distinction between complementary and competitive imports,
between taxing instruments of production and taxing their
products, lump them all alike together as gains for Free Trade,
and keep calling aloud to the nation to “ let them all come in

PROF. MARSHALL’S 66 MEMORANDUM ON FISCAL POLICV.” 285

duty free, and the more the better ! ” It is as if they were to
advise a man who lived by hunting, to yield up his only rifle or
gun to a rival, for a more highly tempting or larger mess of
pottage. With his gun he could have worried along somehow,
better or worse, even if he had to put up with some temporary
privation ; but without it, he must starve. And the reason, of
course, is that the gun yields him a permanent gratuitous asset
which he could not get with his own hands, arms, or skill,—an
instrument of production which, with a little cleaning or re¬
pairing, will last him a life-time; whereas the larger mess of
pottage yields him a momentary enjoyment or satisfaction only,
to which, if he give way, he will rise on the morrow with his
gun gone, and with nothing now to give in exchange for
another cheap meal, or, indeed, any meal at all; and hence¬
forward his rival has no need of shooting him to get him out
of the way, but has merely to pass him by on the other side,
and allow him quietly to starve! It is in this way that a
nation’s industries can be ruined piecemeal and in detail by
Free Trade, when once other nations have become superior to
it in productive efficiency, however slightly —one in one industry
and another in another—and all because of its encouraging, for
the sake of some extra cheapness, the importation of foreign
products duty-free. The shoemaker’s wife may from pride or
disgust refuse to buy a cheaper American boot, but her neigh¬
bour, the piano-maker’s wife, will; the piano-maker’s wife a
cheaper German piano, which the shoemaker 1 s wife will; but
in spite of this cross-firing, if Free Trade become effective all
along the line , from one industry to another, all alike must be
ruined in the end. For so long as the present stage of society
lasts, people will take the cheapest route to their economic
wants and ends, irrespective of their neighbour’s interests, and
will all,—like people who on the cry of “ Fire ! ” in a theatre,
in their eagerness to save their own skins, strangle themselves
on the staircases and corridors—make so great a rush for
cheapness for itself alone that, unless a protective tariff is forced

286

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

on them by law, all the industries in the country may be choked
and rained by their act, almost before they are aware of it.

But I must stop here. For a detailed exposition of all this,
and of what I have had to leave unsaid on the other complica¬
tions of the problem, I can only refer the reader, who cares to
prosecute the matter farther, to my “ Wheel of Wealth, 55
where, what I may venture to call the principles and methods
of the New Political Economy, are set forth in detail. But
I must permit myself just a word or two in conclusion.

The first is the general remark, that there is no reason for
imagining (for America proves the contrary) that under Pro¬
tection there will be less competition among our own manufac¬
turers, and therefore less efficiency, than there would be with
the stimulus of foreign competition under Free Trade. The
second is a practical one, namely, never to sacrifice an Instru¬
ment of Production so long as we can hold it; and when
we are obliged to let it go to another nation, to haggle and
bargain for it—by threats of tarifi or otherwise—as if we were
housewives bargaining at a fish shop for remainder sales on a
Saturday night! yielding not an inch of economic territory
except for a quid pro quo .

And my last word is Educational, namely, that pressure
should be put on those Professors of Political Economy in our
Universities and Schools, who are turning out our future
Statesmen, year by year, indoctrinated with those Free, Trade
principles which in this article I have attempted to show are
now utterly bankrupt; and that these men should be compelled,
by the pressure put on them by public opinion, to withdraw the
boycott which they are now systematically and persistently
putting on the principles of the New Economy of Protection.
For the problem is now becoming urgent, and its solution
fraught with the most serious consequences to the nation,
according as it is decided in this way or in that.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN
OPERATION.

I N general terms, we may say that all the virtues of a
Banking System may be summed up in the extent to
which it can fulfil the two supreme necessities of all Banking,
namely, the certainty with which it can meet its issues and
liabilities when called on, and the degree of elasticity it
possesses compatible with that certainty. The first demands
a rigid and inflexible mechanism beyond the reach of individual
will or caprice, either to alter or control; the second, a
discretionary power of adaptation to circumstances and con¬
ditions which must be confided to the judgments of individual
men. And accordingly, in any organized system of Banking,
composed of many banks, and, therefore, of many independent
and yet correlated parts, a division of function is necessary to
adequately meet these supreme necessities, so opposite in
character and in the virtues they demand. But unlike all other
organized things, where mind takes the initiative and is
supreme over all its mechanical adjuncts, Banking, on the
contrary, demands that mechanism should take the supreme
place; and that to this mechanism not only the functions of all
other parts must be subordinate, but the wills of all who preside
over them must bend; like that impersonal and abstract
necessity which the Greeks believed to be supreme over all

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

their personal gods, from Jupiter ( on Olympus to the Lares
and Penates of their hearths and homes. Now, to fulfil its
function properly as the supreme head of a Banking System,
this Mechanism must have a number of clearly defined
characteristics. To begin with, it must have a cast-iron rigidity ,
and must work with the precision, certainty, and regularity of
a machine; when set in motion it must be as self-compensating
and self-acting as a piece of clock-work, and as devoid of impulse
or passion as a guillotine, but with all the sharpness in
execution of that instrument in the incidence of its stroke and
the precision of its fall. It must be as independent of the
Executive Government of a country as a Supreme Court of
Judicature; and as free from individual caprice as a code of
abstract Law. It must, in a word, have all the virtues of that
old Doctor’s Head in the Arabian Tale, which performed all
the functions of intelligence without conscious personality,
could be screwed on and off at pleasure, and be as good dead
as alive ! And such, indeed, is the Public Department of the
Bank of England; and that is why it approaches in its way the
ideal of what the head of a Banking System should be. It is
also a large part of the reason why it can carry not only the
finances of England, but in an emergency a large part of the
finances of the outside world as well, on its single shoulders
with security and ease. It combines, as is well known, the
responsibilities of a Private and of a Public Bank, but I have to
speak here of its public side only; and it is the rigid, self-acting,
self-protecting mechanism of this Public or Issuing department
of the Bank (as distinct from its ordinary Banking department;
that gives it a stability which neither its own private side nor
the raids and incursions made into it by the other Banks, by
Bill Brokers, and by the Public generally—with demands for
credit in their hands, and on the security of paper, good, bad
or indifferent—can touch.

Now, this really admirable mechanism, it may be said in pass¬
ing, was not struck out, as from a die, by a single stroke, but

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 289

grew to what it is bj haphazard, as it were; by chances and
changes in connexion with the Bank Acts at the time unforesee¬
able in their consequences; like those institutions which, having
failed in their original intention, have been found, after slight
modifications, to answer admirably for some ulterior design.
Since the Bank Acts were passed, the other banks have one
by one lost their former power of issuing their own notes,
until now this power has been confided for all practical pur¬
poses to the Bank of England alone; and it is in this particular
that one of its supreme merits lies. Another merit is, that it
is independent both of the Government and of the Public in
fulfilling its high function; inasmuch as it is in private hands,
and so is neither subject to the changes and caprices of Parlia¬
mentary majorities and factions nor to the interference of the
geneial public, but “ all alone,” as Shakespeare says, “ stands
hugely politic ’; and yet is so open in its methods withal, in
the midst of the vast responsibilities that lie on it, that it can
be checked at any time, not merely by the Government, but
by the Public itself as well. It stands, in a word, in the open
forum of the world, with its colossal self-compensating clock¬
work, registering, as on a dial plate, the moving equilibrium of
its gold and of its note issues for the public to read from week
to week; and with as yet no overgrown magnates, potent both
over it and over the public alike, concealed within its inner
mechanism to alter its hands; and so is not only as safe, but
is more steady and reliable, and, besides, more free from pertur¬
bation, than if the note-issuing power of the country had been
in the hands of the Government itself. So far, then, as the
Bank of England is concerned, all is as well as need be with
the financial credit of the nation as a whole.

The faults in the English Banking System, such as they are,
lie not with the Bank of England as its head, then, but with
the other banks that are its feeders and dependencies, but over
which, it must be remembered, it has not a shred of legal
authority or control. Not, indeed, that much blame is to be

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

attached to these banks, when regard is had at once to the
vast scope of their operations and to the difficulties under
which they work. In fact, such faults as they have are refer¬
able to a lack of sufficient control, for which the Government,
rather than themselves, is responsible; and, in any event, the
onus has to be shared by the Foreigner, the Bill Broker, and
the public generally. And yet that there is a certain danger
lurking in this lack of sufficient control is not to be altogether
denied. The safeguards at present against such dangers as
there are, are mainly three; all of them psychological rather
than material in their nature, but none the less potent on that
account. The first is the mere presence among them of the
Bank of England; and their knowledge that, as the keeper of
their cash balances, it can form a very shrewd guess as to how
they are trading. The second is, that owing to the prevalence
of the Joint-Stock principle in Banking at the present day, their
independently audited balance-sheets are open to the inspection
of their shareholders at their yearly meetings, and through
them to the public indirectly by the reports in the columns of
the Press; but as to how they are trading in the interim, or on
what kind of securities, neither their shareholders nor the
public can know. That they habitually do business on an
insufficient reserve is generally believed, and as we shall see
presently, is as good as demonstrable; and it is also generally
understood that a good deal of fiff window-dressing ” in the
matter of refusal of accommodation, and the calling in of loans,
has to be gone through, with the object of concealing the
insufficiency of these reserves, before their yearly or half-
yearly statements can be presented to their shareholders with
satisfaction. The third safeguard lies in the general high
character of the directorate of these banks - their “ psychological
reserve,” as an admiring American has called it. These three
safeguards, then, shadowy as they may appear, but in my
judgment very effective all the same, are the only protection
the public has against a condition of affairs which under certain

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 291

contingencies might become as dangerous as in the bad old
times of seventy years ago, before the Bank of England had
taken over their note issues, and when they tumbled down into
bankruptcy and insolvency by the score. But on the whole
we may say that any positive danger to the banks, as such, is
but trivial, and need give neither the shareholders nor the
public a sleepless night. That is not the difficulty • it lies
rather in the discomfort, the disturbance, and the consequent
pecuniaiy loss to the trading community, which attends on
anything which shakes the steadiness of a market on which
business forecasts depend. But to bring out the position
which I wish to make in this chapter, I must ask the reader
to accompany me a little farther, until we get a closer grip
on this all-important matter, and on the central cause which
underlies it.

Now, to begin with, we may say that no system of any kind,
as such, whether it be a Religious System, a Political System,
01 a Banking System, can have any hope either of ultimate
endurance, or of a steady equable movement as a working
concern in this world, which does not keep a definite relation ,
gradation, and proportion between its several parts; or where
each part fails to keep time, as it were, with all the rest. And
the first thing in this connexion that strikes us in a comparison
between the English Banking System of to-day and what it
was forty years ago is, that the Bank of England has gradually
lost one of the most important of the bonds by which the other
banks were kept in due subordination, gradation, and time, with
itself as the head and crown of the entire system. I mean that
it is they who now fix among themselves the actual market rate
of interest for discounts and loans, as distinct from the nominal
rate which is fixed by the Bank of England; and although
their rate bears, of course, some relation to the Bank rate, it is
more loose and intermittent in character, and not so close and
continuous as it was formerly. Forty years ago, when Bagehot
wrote his classical book on the Money Market, the Bank of

m

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

England itself still did so large a part of the ordinary banking
business of the country that it was able, through its own rate
of discount, to give the cue, as it were, and to fix the price of
the loans and discounts of all the other banks in some sort of
definite relation to its own, and to keep them there. And as
its own rate of discount was neither a matter of its own dis¬
cretion, nor yet subject to the ups and downs of competition,
but was fixed for it, as we have seen, by the mechanical
necessity under which it lay of keeping its gold and Govern¬
ment securities in an exact moving equilibrium with its
fluctuating note-issues, the consequence was that the whole
banking system was, in its great organic outlines, so integrated
and knit together, that the other banks not only kept time and
tune with it, but largely with each other; and so formed a
compact, harmonious unity. But much has changed in the
conditions of the banking world since then. The great Joint-
Stock Banks have enormously increased in numbers, and in the
vast extension of credit which they have created for themselves
out of their own and their depositors’ money, through the
medium of cheques—a species of short-time qua si-currency, I
may remark in passing, which extinguishes itself almost as
soon as it is born, by being written off against itself, as it were,
in its passage through the Clearing House,—and so can neither
be regulated in its issue, checked in its amount, nor followed
up to its destination, as the Bank of England note circulation
can be. It is this, together with the decline in the use of the
legal tender notes which these cheques have superseded, that
has brought it about that the public can get almost all the
accommodation it requires through the other banks, without
the necessity of applying, except at a pinch, to the Bank of
England. And the consequence of this, again, has been, not
only to throw the Bank of England (on its ordinary banking
side) out of the running, as it were, in ordinary jog-trot times,
but to reverse the former relation existing between it and the
other banks. For now, as I have just said, it is the other

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 298

minks that fix the market rate of discount for their customers;
the tank of England only fixes it for the stability and fixity
oi Public Credit at large. And with this result, that the
unity of the Banking System has been divided, relaxed, and
v, eakened; so that, instead of living together like children of
one family, the banks are more like married couples, under the
same paternal roof, indeed, but each with its own separate and
independent menage , and with no responsibilities to their
common parent, but each to its own belongings only—its
Shareholders. I had long suspected this, but I am glad to be
confirmed in it by the book of Mr. Hartley Withers, recently
published— a book, I ought in justice to say in passing (for I
have got some most important particulars from it which I had
no opportunity of knowing otherwise), which is as clear-cut,
accurate, and authoritative for the Banking System of to-day
as Bagehot’s was for forty years ago. Let us, then, in order to
make this position good, take a glance at some of the semi-
humorous incidents in this moving melodrama of Banking* as
seen in its actual working from day to day.

Now, the first to create a disturbance in the ordinary hum¬
drum of events in the Banking world, is the Foreigner—whom,
with some of his fellow-conspirators here at home, we may
good-naturedly figure for the nonce as the fifi villain ” of the
play. For it is he who watches his time and opportunity to
appear on the scene just when the money market is ripe for
him. Knowing that England alone of all the world keeps a
free and open market for gold, he walks into the Exchange
when this market is full to overflowing, and when money, in
consequence, awaiting suitable investments, can be had cheap.
Into the complex causes which produce cheap money, I cannot
enter here farther than to say in general terms that it is pro¬
duced by three variables between which a balance has to be
struck; namely, a slackness of demand for it for business pur¬
poses ; an abundant supply of it; and a business sky free from
clouds or suspicions. If either of these factors be absent, the

294

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

market rate will immediately tighten, money will rise in value,
and the rate of interest for its loan will become high. If, for
example, money has been greatly in demand for, say, a number
of Government Loans, home or foreign, and has been sunk in
them to the extent of millions perhaps, with no return of this
money from them except the bare interest as it dribbles in
from year to year; if, again, in addition to this, and at about
the same time, a number of established businesses, owing to
the briskness of trade, are clamouring for money for extending
their premises, or adding to their plant, or what not, and
money is sunk in them, too, without hope of immediate return
except in the same small driblets in the shape of interest or
dividends; and upon the top of these, again, all kinds of new
enterprises as well are absorbing money which can only return
to the money market in the same slow and trickling way—as,
for example, when some new, rich, and accredited mine has
been discovered, or new railways opening up virgin fields of
admitted wealth in new countries are being constructed, or
what not—in all these conjunctures of absorption, money must
be dear, and the interest payable for the use of it high. Not
that the money or its worth is lost, for we will assume for the
nonce that all of it has been invested, whether by governments,
or individuals, or corporations, in reproductive works, which are
turning out fresh money or money’s worth daily, but which
cannot, of course, replace the amount of money sunk in them
in less than ten or fifteen years, on an average, in the most
prosperous times. The consequence is that for the time being
you cannot put your hand on the money sunk, however much
you may want it. It is not lost, but is as unavailable for the
money market as if it were sunk at the bottom of the sea. It
is locked up, in a word, for the present, and there is no key
that can get it out, except in such yearly driblets as we have
seen. Money, in consequence, must be dear, and its rate of
interest high. But that is not all. Even what comes in will
be put under a second and different kind of lock and key, if

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 295

another class of contingencies happens to follow on the first.
If, fox example, ominous bix-ds appear in the business sky:
revolutions in governments; new forms of taxation, the incidence
of which, and the persons they will hit, is uncertain; irruptions
into the settled order of States of new-fangled schemes like
those of aggressive Socialism, with confiscation of the property
of those who have any to lose, as its end, and producing, in
consequence, a vague unrest in the mind of each individual as
to how he may fare in it all; bankruptcies of eminent firms of
hitherto undoubted credit; the suspicion that great banking-
houses have been involved; or, indeed, any widespread sus¬
picions whose causes are unknown, and the extent of whose
ramifications, as affecting the credit of individuals, are hidden,
and therefore incalculable. In all cases like these, it matters
not how much money may be returning from all kinds of
legitimate business enterprises, it will not come into the open
market for investment; but will either be put away into
Consols or other gilt-edged securities, or left to stagnate in
Bank ledgers, or even be hoarded in gold or notes in old stock¬
ings, up the chimneys, under the beds, or in holes in the
ground, until the business sky is clear again; and so the dearth
and dearness of it will still continue. And, a fortiori , if this
business suspicion reaches what Carlyle called the “ preter¬
natural” point, and has brought on a banking crisis or panic,
money then can hardly be had at any rate of interest whatever.

Now, it is conjunctures like these which explain the paradox
that money may be dear even when legitimate individual
business is abounding, and will throw light, as we shall see
later, on the problem of the Geographical Distribution of
Capital. The money, or money's woi-th, is there all right, but,
like ladies’ parasols, no one would know it on a l'ainy day, or
believe it, perhaps, until the sun shone out again.

On the other hand, money will be dear (and this, too, is a
paradox) when business and trade, instead of being abounding,
are slack; and still more so when for the time being they are

296

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

half paralysed or altogether dead. This will occur, not
immediately, but after a time, if the money invested in the
Government loans has been blown away, either by our own or
by foreign Governments who are our debtors, in war or war
material—armies, navies, barracks, fortresses, and the like—
none of which in themselves are productive enterprises or can
bring back to the money market, as such, any return ; or, again,
if private Joint-Stock Companies have tempted millions out of
the pockets of the investing public for mines without metal in
them, or for the thousand-and-one rotten Stock Exchange
speculations, the money sunk in which is lost beyond recall—
amounting during the last forty years, it is said, to a figure
which would pay off the entire National Debt; three times over.
Now, after a period of this kind, it is evident that there are
no parasols to bring out, sunshine 01* no sunshine, but black and
dripping umbrellas instead ! Under such circumstances money
is dear, not because business is good, and money accumulating,
as in the former case, but because business is bad, and there 1 s*
no money to be had. But why not run oif the gold that is
filtering in from the mines, into this channel of the money
market? the reader may ask. It would avail nothing; for the
gold is wanted by the public, not for its use by the goldsmith
or jeweller, but as a medium of exchange; and once credit is
paralyzed or dead, Exchange will be paralyzed or dead also;
and so the gold would be of no use except for hoarding. But
even then the gold would have to be paid for in money ;
inasmuch as all kinds of credit notes or other securities would
for the time being be so much waste paper merely. Ami
hence, even if the gold were flowing in from the mines in a
Pactolian stream, not a bar of it would be turned into money
on that account; on the contrary, it would only lie as dead a
drug on the banker’s hands as a bale of unsaleable goods on a
draper’s.

Let us now return to the point from which our Banking

x o

drama was about to start, namely, from a period of cheap

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 297

money. This, l may also say in passing, is caused by a
reversal of all the conditions which we have just seen producing
dear money; and usually occurs after a long period of business
prosperity, during which money has been accumulating in great
masses in banks, consols, or elsewhere, waiting for a sunny sky
a,ml fresh enterprises to bring it into the industrial market
again: but where, for some reason, business lias become slack,
either from some arrest of normal consumption, due to bad
harvests, or to workmen thrown out of work, or to other
conditions which for the time being have dried up the
innumerable rivulets of demand which feed the greater streams
of business enterprise, and on which, after all, they mainly
depend. It is this combination of an idle, stagnant, but
plethoric money market, following, as by a kind of exhaustion,
on a period of intense business activity, together with the
absence of any tiling ominous or suspicious in the business sky;
it is these two conditions mainly that give rise to cheap money;
and when they both pull together, like the sun and moon on the
waters, the money market is likely to be in full tide and
(> verf:lowing wi th eheapness.

Now, it is in times like these that the Foreigners—not only
the steady-going trader, but the whole tribe of Company
Promotors and their camp followers—flock to our shores from
ail the winds, to carry our gold away ! In ordinary times money
is dearer everywhere abroad than it is here, and is much harder
to get at even in the best of times. If the German opens his
mouth too wide in seeking for accommodation at home, the
banker will look at him so hard, however good his securities
may be, that he will think twice before making a second
application ; while the French banker will be apt to hand over
to his customer a part of what he wants in silver, which wiU, of
course, be of no use to him in other countries, where it is not
legal tender. Accordingly, when the state of the Exchanges
is favourable to him— that is to say, when money in our market
is cheap, and he has the best of the trading that is going on

298

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

between the two countries,—the steady-going but wily foreign
trader decides that he will take the trade balances due to him
on his bills back home with him “ in gold, if you please,” and
not renew these bills, inasmuch as the gold will be of more
value to him at home than here ; and no one can say him nay.
Now, when this depletion of our gold has been going on for
some time, the result will presently be that the Bank of
England, in order to stop the drain, and to get back the gold
again to the point where it will balance its outstanding notes,
will be obliged to raise the rate of discount to the point where
the Exchanges will be reversed, and the gold, through the
same process in the bill market, will come flowing back to the
Bank again from abroad. But the moment the stringency of
the money market is again relaxed, whether from a temporary
or more lasting cause, and money is again cheap, in steps the
foreigner again, to carry it off as before! If the cause is one
of those I have enumerated, which usually operate over a
considerable period, he will be accompanied or followed by a
whole train of Company Promoters, who will help him to
complete his depredations—not like himself, through the Banks
and Bill Brokers, so much as indirectly through the medium of
the Stock Exchange—on the pockets of the public. And thus
the gold goe3 in and out of the country in regular systole and
diastole, with the Black Flag of the Bank run up and down as
its accompaniment, announcing to all the world when it is
hoisted, that cheap credit is dead for the time, and that the
Foreigner may as well depart; and when it is hauled down,
that the rate of interest has fallen, and he may come back
again; but keeping the unhappy English trader the while
rocked up and down in endless business uncertainty and pertur¬
bation. And yet it is not the Foreigner who is to blame; it is
rather the Bankers, the Bill Brokers, and the Stock Exchangers
who have given him a standing invitation to come in. For
now that the Bankers and Bill Brokers between them practi¬
cally fix the market rate of interest for themselves, they have

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 299

got quite out of hand ; and in the keenness of their competition
with each other for discounts and advances, continually keep
their rates so low that the Foreigner is hardly out before he is
in again ; and the Black Flag of the Bank, in consequence, has
to be hoisted in self-preservation half a dozen times for once
that would be necessary if the other banks would keep their
rates more closely in relation and consonance with its own.

And this brings us to the vital question:—Are these banks
really overtrading on an insufficient reserve ? At the first
blush, one would say—yes, certainly, if for nothing more than
the comedy that goes on between them. The Bankers, it is
generally understood, in their competition with the Bill Brokers,
habitually cut their rates so fine that in their eagerness to catch
a stray customer they positively stumble over each other in a
way that would be dangerous if it were done even on large
cash reserves, and if their operations were not covered up under
a veil of secrecy. The Bill Brokers play the same game as the
Bankers, and when in the midst of some superfinely-cut deal,
the rate of interest happens to be raised on them by the Bank
of England, they are obliged to run to the very bankers against
whom they are competing for accommodation to replenish
their temporarily depleted credits. And when both bankers
and bill brokers have extended their nets so wide, in order to
catch the smallest minnows in the stream, that they cannot
haul them in again, they both have to hie them in hot haste
and desperation to the Bank of England for relief. And she,
good old grandmother, takes them in—but on her own terms,
of course,—until the tension and stress on their resources have
passed! What they would do if she refused, and what the
Public would think of it all, had they not the vague idea that
whatever the Bank of England does, the Government, in the
event of a crisis becoming imminent, would always intervene
and by its credit prevent its going any farther, it is difficult to
say. But if proof more relative than this were wanted that
these banks are constantly straining their reserves to an illegiti-

300

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

mate extent, it will be found in what I read in Mr. Withers 5
booh, but which I did not know before, namely, that the Bank
of England will, when she sees these banks making too free
with their cash, buy up that cash herself even when she does
not want it, and lock it up under her own wings, like a hen its
chickens when a hawk is in the sky, in order to save them from
themselves; as well as to avoid raising the bank rate on the
Trading Public—as she otherwise would be obliged to do. For
it is the trading public, it must be remembered, who have to
44 pay the piper 55 for all this fast and loose disposal of the
depositors 5 money on the part of the banks in their breakneck
race to make dividends for their shareholders on an insufficient
cash reserve of their own. It is the trading public that has to
pay to get the gold back from the astute and wily Foreigner
who is continually carrying it off. And it is the trading public
that has to pay the bankers for that Free Trade in gold which,
like all one-sided things in this world, has a double edge when
you come to use it. And yet when the Bank of England, like
a good policeman in a congested street traffic, has to intervene
to save the public from all this and from itself, by the use of
its guillotine, it is abused by all alike as a common enemy,
rather than hailed and thanked as the common protector!
The Bill Brokers cry out against the Bank when they find
themselves entangled in their own meshes, and when a rise in
the Bank rate cuts down into the middle of their too finely cut
transactions and turns their calculated profits into losses. The
other bankers grumble when the Bank rate is lowered so far
that they can only skim off the thinnest layer of cream in the
way of discounts for their shareholders, and these, too, on
securities of less assured quality. The Underwriters, Stock
Exchangers, and the whole tribe of Company Promoters cry
out, on the other hand, when money is dear ; and their occupa¬
tion, thus gone for the time, has to wait for the turn of the tide,
which, however, may be a long time in coming. And, lastly,
the Trading Public cries out against the Bank when it finds

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 801

itself held up, like a South Eastern train at the entrance to a
station, by a rise in the Bank rate, in the midst of delicate business
operations, when a fraction of one per cent, may mean success
01 failure,, and kept waiting there until the signal is lowered
again; and all because the Foreigner and his cohort, abetted
by the competition of the bankers and bill brokers, have been
allowed to make off with our gold when it was cheap; and
because the bankers themselves are forced to dole it out more
sparingly and suspiciously when it is dear—or even button it
up in their pockets altogether !—but either way to the detriment
of the sound and steady-going trader. It is little wonder,
then, that he calls out, and even u uses language ” on occasion;
especially when he finds himself either rocked up and down in
a windy sea, now in the trough and now on the crest of the
wave, in endless uncertainty, or else stranded or beleed alto¬
gether in midstream until gold from abroad arrives at the Bank
to float him into harbour again. And when he has to pay for
all this out of his own pocket (for that is what it amounts to),
his feelings may better be imagined than described! And yet
the Trading Public are not altogether free from blame in this
matter, for it is they who in their own private interests abet
and accentuate the neck-and-neck competition of the bankers
and bill brokers by the pressure they put on them for cheap
and risky credit and accommodation, and then turn round and
abuse the Bank of England when it is obliged to come down
on them all alike with its guillotine in order to save the credit
of the Nation. But the Foreigner—what of him? He lies
low and keeps dark the while, of course, waiting his opportunity
to make off with our gold again as his share of the spoil, rubbing
his hands with glee and laughing in his sleeve that we should
be the fools we are to give him such easy invitation and access!
The frock-coated Banker himself is of all these stage players
the one perhaps who can afford to take it all the most uncon¬
cernedly and philosophically. Shielded by the Bank of
England, which winks and says nothing to outsiders, when his

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SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

cash balances are getting suspiciously low, he takes his toll
from all alike indifferently, whether the Bank rate be high or
low. If he has a preference, it is that money should be at that
medium price which will combine the highest rate compatible
with the largest amount of turnover; but whatever befalls, he
can still sit in his bank parlour and whiff his cigarette in con¬
scious security and ease ! And yet it is this mere handful of
Bankers, Bill Brokers, Stock Exchangers, Company Promoters,
and Foreigners who are making all this commotion on the
public stage, and who fill the general ear with their din and
uproar. Like those stage armies where a number of supers
dressed up as soldiers come in at one wing of the theatre, cross
the boards in single file, disappear at the other wing, and
reappear from behind the curtain in an unbroken, continuous
stream, these consequential gentlemen are enabled to bulk
themselves out so large in the public imagination that they
would almost seem to be the saviours of the credit of the State,
rather than its exploiters! It would indeed be surprising, then,
if, as is well known, the news of the arrival or departure of
gold at and from the Bank of England were not awaited by
them with intense interest and anxiety, as well as by the
Trading Public generally.

Now, from all this it is evident, is it not, that it is to the
Bank of England, and to it alone, that the public must look for
the integrity and security of the national financial Credit as a
whole? Not that I imagine that if the safeguards I have
mentioned were withdrawn, something equally efficacious or
more so would not be found to take their place; but so long as
that old doctrine of Laissez-faire , which reached its climax as
a serious pronouncement in the memorable dictum of John
Bright, that “ adulteration is only another form of competition”;
so long as this abomination still clings to English Political and
Business methods and ideals, it would probably take the public
so long to turn round before it dawned on it that any business
whatever should not do as it pleased within the limits of the

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 303

law, that in this momentous matter of National Banking Credit—
of all things the most delicate and dangerous instrument to
tamper with—irreparable injury might be done before the
Government would be called upon to intervene. What the
Government, in my humble judgment, ought long ago to have
done, and would, indeed, have done, but for the paralyzing
influence of this old fetish of Laissez-faire, would have been to
have tightened up those bonds of the Banking System which
had been allowed to become relaxed, and to have compelled all
the other banks to line up more closely and in nearer touch
with the Bank of England in this matter of their discounts
and reserves; so as to leave no part of the Banking System
outside of the legitimate influence of that Bank. It is the official
Bank Rate which, by the self-acting mechanism that equalizes
its notes and its reserves, gives a continuous stability and
safety to the whole Banking Edifice; but that weary old Titan,
the Bank of England, already loaded up to the full, can carry
no more responsibilities on its back in the present state of the
law; and cannot go on for ever buying up the cash of the other
banks to prevent their making “ ducks and drakes ” of it! It has
enough to do to look after the public and keep its own private
skirts clean. It is the other banks, I repeat, that are at fault,
and not the Bank of England, as so many imagine. For,
having slipped the official noose, as we have seen, they have set
up housekeeping on their own account, and with the exception
of a casual glance at the official Bank rate signboard, to see
what game is afoot, they can play as fast and loose with their
cash reserves, their advances, and their securities as they please.
It is this divided authority in what ought to be a single
undivided household, this double centre in a single system,
that is the prime cause of the eccentric comedy which we see
constantly being played (at the expense of the trading
community) between the Foreigner, the Banker, the Bill Broker,
the Company Promoter, and the Stock Exchange operators
generally. It is essential, of course, to business enterprise that

304 SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL .ECONOMY.

there should he a very large measure of elasticity and fluidity
in the accommodation offered to the public by the other banks,
as a balance and set-off against the stiffness, the rigidity, and
the top-hat respectability of the Bank of England. But this
should be kept in more close and definite relation to the official
Bank rate; and the freedom which is willingly accorded the
other banks should not be allowed to go so far as to degenerate
into license—as it does at present. And if it be true, as Mr.
Withers authoritatively declares (and this is the point I should
like my readers to make sure of for themselves), that the Bank
of England really has at times to buy up its own legal tender
notes to prevent the other hanks from using them to the public;
detriment, then I contend our case has been made good.

And yet, after all, it would not take much to put the whole
matter right. The Government could itself solve the problem
by taking charge of the relation existing between the reserves
and the business of the banks; but this, for political and other
reasons, is not to be entertained. A better way would be for
it to give additional powers of pressure to the Bank of England
in insisting that the reserves of the other banks should be kept-
in normal proportion to their trading; and make the Bank
responsible for seeing that it was clone. Or, better still (for
there would then be no need of official coercion of any kind),
that these banks should be obliged to publish as full and faith¬
ful a weekly statement of their assets and liabilities as the
Bank of England does now. The Public would then, through
the publicity of the Press and the lynx eyes of its shrewd and
able City Editors,be itself the judge of how things stand; and
with the light thus let in on the banks, as in all other human
concerns where self-interest is the main-spring of action, it is
extremely improbable that further legislation or regulation of
any kind would be necessary.

Were this done, the market rate of money would no longer
diverge as widely as it often does now from the official Bank
rate, and the banks would no longer stretch their arms so far

THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM IN OPERATION. 305

afield to catch the smallest competitive increments of gain,!;’
only to draw them in again in haste when they find they have
gone too far; but all of them would move in unison as a single
column, at a regulated distance from their head. The Foreigner
would be checked in his incursions on our shores, and would
not find it worth his while to come here so often to carry away
our gold, to the detriment of our own traders and at the public
expense. The Foreign Exchanges would not be made so easily
to kick the beam against us on so small a margin of trade
difference in the Foreigner’s favour, to the still further detri¬
ment of the industries on which our prosperity depends. For
no merely Banking prosperity will long avail a country unless
it has great and independent industrial resources at its back to
give it permanence; as the history of the ephemeral nations
that were mainly Banking or Commercial centres—Holland,
Venice, and the Italian cities of the Middle Ages—abundantly
establishes. Banking prosperity always follows, it must be
remembered, Industrial or Commercial prosperity, but never
either precedes or survives that prosperity. The Black Flag
would not have to be so often hoisted and hauled down again
over the Bank of England; and the anxiety of all City men
and Traders as to the arrival or departure of gold at or from
the Bank would be allowed to sleep over longer periods of time.
The weaker and more unscrupulous of the banks in this matter
of straining their reserves would either have to mend their
ways or lose their clientele ; the honest and soundly secured
traders would make up in greater facilities of accommodation
for what they might perhaps at times lose in higher rates;
while the shady or utterly bad concerns would have either
more difficulty in carrying out their nefarious designs to begin
with, or would anticipate their fate and the open bankruptcy
which awaits them anyway, before they had time to draw the
investing public wholesale into their meshes. Foreign relations
and political complications would be less disturbing than they
are at present even to the soundest investors; and bank crises

v

306

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

and panics, already almost unknown here, would in future be
rendered still more difficult either to foment, precipitate, or
create. And yet the danger of these crises and panics can
never altogether be dismissed in a trading world so complex
as the present, where business men have to adventure their
barks every day on unknown seas, and take chances against
the unknown future and its unsuspected conjunctions of the
stars and the fates. Like the occasional earthquakes in great
cities, these crises have always to be reckoned with, even if
they are only to be classed among the “ visitations of God ”;
for no amount of bank reserve in the shape of gold, however
adequate in ordinary times, would then be of any use; inasmuch
as there is not to-day in existence in England more than a
tenth of wha<. the banks would require if at any moment they
were pressed to meet their existing legal liabilities.

CHAPTER IX.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN
BANKING CONTRASTED—A DANGER FORECAST.

TN the present article I would invite the reader’s attention
JL to some dangers which I imagine I foresee lying in the
future of English Banking, in spite of itself, as it were. To
bring out this point, a passing consideration of the differences
which exist to-day in the relations between General Industry
and Banking in America and England respectively will best
serve our purpose.

Now, in America it is a matter of common notoriety that
there is scarcely a single department of trade, a single staple
article of food or clothing, a single necessary household
utensil, or other convenience of life, which has not been swept
up and amalgamated into some gigantic Trust or Combine,
which—like the Standard Oil, Steel, Beef, Sugar, and other
established Trusts—either already enjoys a real and undisputed
monopoly, or, at the pace at which this tendency to combi¬
nation is going, a prospective one in the near future. Not only
are the incomes of these great monopolies colossal in themselves,
but, what is more important for our present purpose, they are
concentrated mainly in the hands of a few great controlling
millionaires; and with this result, that the ingenuity of these
gentlemen is as much taxed to find fresh openings outside their
own special lines of business for the investment of their

308

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

enormous incomes as in the superintending of these businesses
themselves. Indeed, in one instance that I have known, an
expert at the head of the Investment Department of a great
Insurance Company was induced to throw up his position and
go over to the service of one of these great Trusts, at a yearly
salary equal to the income of a millionaire. Where, then, are
the most feasible of these investments naturally to be found ?
Obviously, when once they have lapped up the stock of other
companies still competing with them in their own line of
business, or gobbled it up when these opponents are in difficul¬
ties. they naturally turn for their fresh investments to the stock
of other successful monopolists in other lines of trade; and
notably—as at once the easiest of admittance, and on the
whole the most reliable and secure—to Insurance Companies
and Banks. It is generally understood, I believe, that the
Standard Oil Company, for example, has a finger, if not a
controlling interest, in most of the great industrial and com¬
mercial enterprises—Railways, Electric, Water, Gas, and
Tramway Companies, Insurance Corporations and Banks—
between the Atlantic sea-board and the Pacific Coast. For
when these great magnates enter in as investors, it is not by
the front door, as it were, like the ordinary public, wdio are
content if they can get a little more than the usual rate
of interest for their savings, but by the side door, and into the
parlour where their fellow monopolists and magnates sit, and
where they mean not only to get special terms and the most
plum-yielding part of the stock, but, what is more to the
purpose, a seat on the controlling board of the Directorate
as well.

Now, the danger which attends this entrance of the great
Industrial Magnates into the Banking System is, that by their
money power, their influence, and their general prestige, they are
enabled at a pinch to obtain from the Bank advances, loans,
and renewals of loans, on terms which no outside customers
could obtain with anything like the same facility; or on

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN RANKING CONTRASTED, 309

u collateral ” which would be passed and accepted with so light a
scrutiny by their fellow members. But the time has as yet been
much too short for them to have already taken possession of,
and divided between them, the heritage of the Banks. For
these institutions still retain much of their original independence,
and in most instances, perhaps, a large measure of their original
freedom from the domination of any body of business men. It
is true that the Directorate of Banks are themselves drawn
from the ranks of such men, but as a rule these men are so
independent of each other in their business concerns, that no
single voice has much more weight than another. But at the
present time (now that the great magnates have entered in)
many members of the Board are already leagued together by a
secret bond, namely, that of each being as pecuniarily interested
in the business of these fellow members, through his own holdings
of their stock, as in his own. And hence I venture to predict,
that if the Constitution of the United States remains as it is
to-day, and if the wings of these great Trusts are not in the
meantime clipped by the extension of a socialistic legislation,
growing daily more and more menacing in the Press and in the
streets, these Trusts will in a decade or two, at the geometrical
pace at which they are going, not only have swallowed up the
Banks as a field for the overflow of their investments, and have
dominated them entirely, but, in my judgment, will have begun
to lay their unholy hands on the Land of the country itself, as
the crown at once of their social ambition and family pride.
Then farewell, a long farewell, to the boasted Democracy of
America, and to the glorious traditions of freedom which
heretofore have made of her the envy and the ideal of the Old
European world. But that by the way. The question here is,
how in the present early and transitional stage of the develop¬
ment and concentration of the capital of the country in a few
hands, and the entrance of the men who control it into the
Banks,—how is all this affecting the stability and security of
American Banking itself ? The answer is written large in the

810

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

history of the Bank panic of 1907, where the suspicion that
these great corporations were using the assets of the Bank to
further their own designs ended by precipitating the crisis.
And what conclusion do I propose to draw from this 1 ? It
would seem natural that if these things are done in the green
tree —that is to say, in the transitional period, when the
magnates, having already entered in, have not as yet been able
to bring the Banks entirely under their subjugation and
control—what we may expect them to do in the dry, when they
are fully enthroned, must be something much worse. But that
is not my opinion. On the contrary, I venture to suggest,
that when the magnates have once fully incorporated the Banks
as a separate department among the other departments of their
business energies and enterprises, these Banks will be as safe
as their other purely industrial monopolies; and indeed quite
as safe as the English Joint-Stock Banks are to-day, or, for that
matter, the Bank of England itself. Now, as it is necessary for
me to raise this point, in view of what is to follow, the reader
will, perhaps, permit me for a moment to indicate some of my
reasons for this opinion.

In the first place, when once all the greater fields for invest¬
ment have been captured and closed by the magnates, and when
the lesser members of the plutocracy meantime have been
squeezed and weeded out by ruthless and insistent pressure
(after the maimer described by Mr. Lawson in his book on
Frenzied Finance), a limited number of multi-millionaires,
with boundless and unimpeachable credit and prestige, will have
come into the ownership, management, and control of the
Banking system of America. And when that time comes, they
will not only have all the capital and credit in general which
can possibly be required of them by the public to maintain their
position, but they can set aside, as among the smallest of their
liabilities, all the legal tender necessary for their Banking
reserve as well. As monopolists, too, of all the great instru¬
ments of production, distribution, and exchange, and with

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN BANKING CONTRASTED. 311

tariffs to keep themselves free from competition from without,
they could anticipate their incomes and earnings with a degree
of certainty undreamt of at the present time. Besides, by the
very magnitude of their credit, and the tranquillizing effect
this would have on the public mind, they would stand in as
good a position for the allaying of panics as most of those
States do whose Governments come to the rescue of the Banks
in times of anxiety, when a run on them is imminent or has
begun; inasmuch as by that time the known resources of this
confederacy of millionaires would not only be equal to what
these States could raise by taxation, but would be free from the
political difficulties involved in getting these taxes voted and
brought into the Treasury. They would simply tax themselves
by setting aside a certain portion of their income as a Banking
reserve, and the thing would be done. But this is not all.
Being a purely economic concern, and not a political one, they
would have this further advantage over anything like Govern¬
ment supervision and control, namely, that they would be
obliged to administer the banking side of their business with
an even greater scrupulosity and regard to the public interest
than to their own; inasmuch as a Banking crisis would not
only ruin their banks, as such, but would for the time being
min all the other departments of their business as well. It is
one thing to leave the administration of a man’s own property
to himself, in the full belief and confidence that every penny
of it will be expended to the best advantage for his own safety
and security; it is quite another to leave to governments and
bureaucracies the disposal of the property of other people.
With the Banks, then, in the hands of the same people who
would practically own and control all the other great instru¬
ments of production, distribution, and transport, the public
would be doubly secure; first, from the fear of Socialistic
legislation, provided, that is to say, that socialistic ideas, which
are advancing in all countries with steady even tread, shall not
get ahead of the march of concentration and combination of

312

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

the magnates before they reach the goal at which, if unchecked,
they are destined to arrive; and secondly, the public would be
protected, inasmuch as, if the control of the magnates as
Bankers were used for extraneous mercenary, and not for
internal legitimate Banking ends, the sword they wield would
be turned inwards on themselves, and bleed them more effectu¬
ally than it could the public; thereby securing that what was
for the nation’s best advantage would be for their own best
private interest and advantage also. Personally, I have no
belief that these high-soaring eagles will ever reach the height
of domination necessary to give them that control of all the
instruments of commerce towards which they are surely tend¬
ing, and at which, if not arrested in mid-career, they are almost
sure in time to arrive. On the contrary, all indications go to
show that they will not be permitted to go on at their present
pace much farther without the Public itself intervening, and so
clipping their wings by legislation in many and various direc¬
tions as to bring them down to the level of the ordinary earthly
biped again. I have indulged in these matters of pure specula¬
tion entirely with the view of emphasizing the position I wish
to make, and that is simply this : that it is not when the
great Trusts have been fully consolidated, regimented, and
concentrated in a few hands by the squeezing out of all their
weaker members, that there will be any danger either to the
soundness, the credit, or the efficiency of the Banks which they
control; but that, on the contrary, the danger of panics and
crises like that of 1907 is only to be apprehended in the present
transitional stage both of American Banking and of American
Industry. For at the present time in America, and while the
higher business principle of combination confronts the old and
primitive method of competition , without as yet having alto¬
gether subdued and subjugated it; and where the frontiers of
all the great businesses still overlap each other, and their juris¬
dictions are still in separate hands; where competition still
disputes inch by inch, but on a retiring clay, the inroads of

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN RANKING CONTRASTED. 818

combination and the Trusts; where there are as yet neither
skeleton keys enough to unlock all private doors by nighty nor
power enough to openly force them in the public daylight; the
invaders, like those kings who have to round off their still
unconquered dominions either by direct purchase, or a tempt¬
ing share in the new jurisdiction, or by the marriage of their
daughters with the recalcitrants, are obliged to resort to endless
“deals, 7 ’ manoeuvres, stratagems, diversions, and transfers of
property to attain their end; the consequence being that great
blocks and bales of over-watered or over-depreciated stock,
with unknown possibilities and values, are flung across between
the parties to the deal in bewildering profusion; and in the
pell-mell and bustle of business and bargaining are, and must be,
accepted more or less at the face value of their labels, or on the
reputed standing of their owners, and so find their way as
“ collateral ” into the Banks, already inflated, if not entirely
dominated, by the very men between whom these transactions
occur. And with result—what? Panics like those of 1907,
with the danger of more ahead, so long as this transitional period
ushering in the full triumph of the combination and consolida¬
tion of industry continues. Indeed, this must be so in a country
still half developed, and with thousands of new and unknown
ventures emerging on the horizon of every day, puffed up or
depressed with Stock Exchange and newspaper inflation and
intrigue, to-day in the trough of the wave, and to-morrow on
its crest.

Now, at the present time, none of the conditions which 1
have just described are to be found in connexion with the
English Banking System. Here all is different, and all in a
more primitive stage, but one which the Old Academical
Economists would fain persuade us is the very apex and
flowering of the golden industrial age! In the first place,
beyond a few manufacturing industries in special lines of
work, no great department of English trade has as yet even
begun to fall under the domination of a Trust, or the control

314

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

of one or a few individual men, in the American sense of these
terms—none of the railways or other great carrying agencies,
none of the great staple articles of universal domestic con-

sumption, or utensils of household necessity, not the great
steel industry, not the shipping, not the wholesale trade, not
insurance, and, lastly, not the banks. All these alike have
hitherto been split up and distributed among individual films
independent largely of each other, many of them great in
themselves, hut, with a few exceptions, none of them as^ yet
able to dominate or dictate terms to the rest. Now, as a Pro-
tectionist, I am quite prepared to admit that this relative
backwardness of England in emerging from a more primitive
stage in the organization of Industry, namely, that of free com¬
peting Industries, with their waste, friction, and expense, into
the higher constructive stage of Combination, with its immense
economic advantages and its saving of waste and cost, is to a
large extent due to our system of Free Trade. But to those
Academical Economists, who knowing well that, if Competition
as an economic principle were once replaced by Combination,
they and all their works would be sunk in the deep sea; and
who, in consequence, love to imagine that this little three-legged
tripod of theirs, resting on Competition, Laissez-Faire , and
Free Trade, will remain as an eternal oracle of the world, I
will venture to say that, Free Trade or no Free Trade, they
might as well attempt to hold back the planets in their courses
as to prevent the principle of Competition in the business
world from passing everywhere in all complex industrial States
into the principle of Combination, as we see it to-day in
America.

In Mr. Macrosty’s standard work on Trusts, we see the
quiet and insidious way in which these Combines are already
extending—here in this business, there in that but, as yet, like
submarines with only their funnels visible to the man in the
street; but they have arrived, nevertheless, and mean to stay
all the same. Nor is there any living reason why they should

ENGLISH 4ND AMERICAN BANKING CONTRASTED. 815

not arrive. There is a sufficient Home Trade to justify them
in all the great industries which have given England her
position in the world, and which still constitute a good three-
fourths of all her trade; while as a fighting force in her
Foreign Trade, the mass and weight of capital behind each of
their keen cutting blades would, whether in resistance to the
4£ dumping * of other nations on us, or in helping us to dump
on them, be an enormous industrial asset in our favour. The
sharing of the spoils with these great magnates, as a legitimate
offset to the extra profits which their monopolies permit them
to enjoy, is a separate matter, and belongs to the domain of
Politics and Legislation, if, as is most probable, their beards
will have to be trimmed and their locks cropped in some
proportionate measure to the privileges which, as monopolists,
they will enjoy. But as it is only the economic and purely
business aspects of the matter that I am considering, this need
not now concern us. What I wish to emphasize here is simply
this, that no political movement, whether in the direction of
the most aggressive Socialism or of the most rigid or
reactionary Conservatism, can arrest the progress and develop¬
ment of Industry in England from the stage of Competition
to that of Combination; and that in the transitional period
between the two, on which we are now only just entering,
great Trusts and magnates here, like those in America, will
find their way into our Bank parlours precisely as they have
done there, and with the same danger to Banking stability and
credit here, during the period over which the transition lasts,
as we have seen there. And when that period is fully entered
on, no longer will the frock-coated gentlemen who preside over
these Banks enjoy that sweet repose which they own at present;
nor the Banks over which they preside, that confidence and
stability which is theirs to-day. At the present time, and,
indeed, for generations, the Boards of Directors of the great
English Banks have, like the Jewish Priests in the Temple
Service, held themselves unspotted in their high calling, and

316

SOCIOLOGY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.

have preserved unsullied the semi-sacred traditions of their
office—of high business honour, integrity, decorum, and scrupu¬
losity in the minutest matters of their Law,—but once the
exploiting magnates of the coming Trusts have entered in, they
will, like the money-changers who had their seats in the outer
courts, transform them into Boards of hustlers and stock-
exchangers rather, shoving their sheaves of securities, good and
bad alike, into their managers" hands by compulsion, and
making of the Banks themselves convenient houses of resort
for the driving home of accommodations and deals between
themselves and their fellow-conspirators. That is the idea, a
little overcharged, perhaps, to bring out my meaning and
conviction, for purposes of illustration,—but it may stand.
Besides, it is a thing not for the present but for the future
to see, if at all.

INDEX

A

America, Unity with.. 220

Asceticism, Practice of ... 87

Ashley, Professor . 12

Augustin, St. • 85

B

Banking System, Dangers of

American . 808

Millionaires and . 810

Banks, Faults in English ... 290
Bax, Mr., on Marx’s Book ... 61

Benson, Mr., on Public Schools 195
Blatchford, Mr. Robert ... 3, 16
On Surplus Wealth ... 69

Attitude to Inventors, etc. 70

Buckle, Divisions of. 80

Sociology of . 116

c

Capital, Saving and . 248

Carlyle, Sociology of ... 7, 114

On Political Economy ... 199

Carnegie, Mr. 6

Chamberlain, Mr., Residuum

under Scheme of 209, 214

Colonies and ... 210, 215

On tariff.259

H'err Houston, his “ Foun¬
dations of the XIXth
Century . Ill

Christianity, Mr, Kidd and ... 84-

Effect on Civilization ... 86

How Paganism crossed to 93

Church, Method of . 227

Civilization, Kidd on. 80

Great Problem of... 83, 98

Kidd’s Theory of, useless 89

What Kidd should have

given us on . 90

Kidd's Confusion of Cate¬
gories in Principles of 91
Not a Natural Product ... 287

Colonies, War and . 217

How to Deal with. 218

Comte, His Three Stages ... 8o
Mr. Wells and ... 98, 110

Sociological Factors of ... 117
Competition, Combination and

256, 312

in Banking... . 315

Credit, Bank of England and 802

D

Durkbeim, Professor, Sociology

of..'".114

On Spencer . 117

E

Economists, Old, on Free Trade 164
Mistakes of. 170

318

INDEX.

PAGE

Economy, Political, Old ... 8

Producers and Consumers

and ... 157, 164, 212

Illusions of. 160

Resume of New . 208

Edison. 7, 19

England, National Ideal of

189, 191, 197

Importance to World of ... 194

To Re-stock Fields of ... 210
Bank of ... 288, 305, seq.

Equality, Marx on . 65

America and Doctrine of... 226

Evolution, Party of and Political

Problems ... 228,226

Principles of Party of 228, 235
Whom Party of, Suited for 239

F

Fabians, not True Socialists ... 41

Why their Methods Impos¬
sible . 44, seq.

On Inventors . 69

Families, Man goes in 22, 45

Family, Socialists and Institu¬
tion of. 30

G

Gal ton, Sir Francis, Wells’

Treatment of. 110

George, Henry, and Landlordism 161

Justice and. 246

Land Taxers and. 254

Gladstone, on Saving ... 249

H

Hyndman, Mr. ... 29, 59

PAGE

I

Ideal, The, in America,
Germany, England,
Scotland. 189

Knowledge not England’s

193, 197

Consequence of England’s 194

New, for England

197

Industry, Feudal and Scientific

177

American Constitution and
No Centralization of, in

178

England .

180

Social Democracy and

181

Social Aristocracy and ...
State, Non - interference

182

with.

187

Inequality, Love of.68, 74

Inventors . 7, 17, 30

Pay of .

36

Marx on .

62

J

Justice, Economic

...11, 14

Of Power.

... 15

Mixing of Races and

121, 124

Social .

23, 125

Definition of

26, 231

Idea of, Stolen
Christianity

from
... 33

Economic Rights and

...35, 38

Marx on Economic

... 62

Idealists and

... 163

In Taxation

246, 260

K

Kidd, Mr., On Spirit of
and Future

Past

81, seq.

Kitson, Mr., On Money

Problem. 107

I

Labour, Trade Ur
Old Economist
Laissez-faire, An .
Taxation and
Bank Credit a
Lowenfeld, M

Tariff Schei

Macrosty, Mr., (
Marshall, Profes
Consuin
Product!
Finds no Sm
Marx, Karl ..
His Book on
Political Ec<
Fallacies of
On Taxation
McDonald, Mr.
“ The Tail ”
On Taxatiou

Mill, John Stuf
Industries

Political Eco
Money, Love of
Dear and 01

Nature, Powers

Origen ...

Past, Mr. Well
of...

INDEX.

319

I

in America,

England,

... 180

not England’s

103,197
e of England’s 194
igland ... 197
si and Scientific 177
onstitution and 178
lizatioii of, in

fi . 180

>eniey and 181

icratjy ml ... 182
* interference

187
68, 74
17, 30
86
62

of

!8 and

den

is and
nic

from

it of Fast

Money

Labour, Trade Unions and ... 162

Old Economists and ... 164

Laissez-faire, An Age of 214, 233

Taxation and . 245

Bank Credit and. 302

Lowenfeld, Mr. Henry,

Tariff Scheme of.261

M

Macrosty, Mr., On Trusts ... 314

Marshall, Professor, Separating
Consumption from
Production . 274

Finds no Surplus. 278

Marx, Karl . 5

His Book on Capital 59, seq.

Political Economy of ... 67

Fallacies of . 68

On Taxation . 246

Perdicaris, Mr. Ion, suggestion

of, on ‘units of value’... 107

Present, Mr. Kidd on Living

in .81, 92, seq.

Press, Attitude of . 240

Origin of English. 241

“ Statesmen ” and ... 241

Producers, Consumers and

157, 212

Production, Instruments of.

256, 264, 283

Marshall on Consumption

and ... ... 268,280

Surplus . 271, 273

Protection, Conditions which

Justify ... 141

England and . 142

Gives National Guarantee 145

Hobson, Caillard, Holt-

Schooling, Byng, on... 151

Wages and.213

“The Boss” under ... 221

McDonald, Mr. Ramsay

3

11, 14

“ The Tail ” and.

55

On Taxation .

246

R

15

Mill, John Stuart, On Infant

, 124

Industries .

142

Race Degeneration, causes of

132

5, 125

Political Economy of

161

Difficulties in dealing with

133

, 231

Money, Love of ... 73,

seq.

Sociology and .

134

Dear and Cheap.

295

Remedies for .

136

33

Races, Mixing of 121, 186,

238

r >, 38

N

Government Fallacies in

62

Mixing .

124

163

Nature, Powers of

6

Why Wish to Mix

126

, 260

Spencer on Mixing

126

0

Admixture in Europe ...

128

Four Alternatives in . .

129

Origen.

88

Roosevelt, Negro and

120

Rousseau, Negro and

226

seq.

107

p

Justice Mid .

231

Past, Mr. Wells on uselessness
of.

101

Ruskin, On Division of Pro¬
duct .

163

320

INDEX.

s

Samaurai, Mr. Wells, 99,104,107,109

Shaw, Mr. Bernard. 3

On Taxation ... 246, 250

Fallacies of Ms Scheme ... 252

Smith, Adam.

8

Snowden, Mr.

3

On Taxation

. 246

Socialism, Boredom of

. 70

Socialists, Proposals of

4

Sympathy with llebellio

n 37

Their Utopia

.. 71

What, Stole from Christi¬

anity

Marxian

... 234-

Taxation .

246, 250

Eminent, Wells on...

... 110

Sociology, Problem of...

105,115

Based on Past

... 106

Its Function

Durkheim and

... 113
114, 116

Laws of, whence drawn

... 114

Buckle’s, Carlyle’s,
Hegel’s Factors of

and

... 116

Mr. Branford and...

... 118

False, and Race Degener-

ation.

... 135

Spectator, on Buying
Selling .

and

... 184

Spencer, Herbert—Mr. Wells

1 on . 99

Sociology of

... 117

T

Taxers, Land, Schemes of
Taxes, Shifting of

254, 258
... 257

Tertullian .

... 88

Trade, Laws for Building up... 155

Like Locomotive Engine... 185

C omplementary ...

... 202

Historical resume of

... 205

Trade, Free, Conditions that

favour . *«• 140

England and ... 153, 169

When, is false . 166

Historical Survey of 168, 176

To ruin England under

171, 183,277, seq

Cosmopolitanism and

146, 188, 196

Reasons for throwing out 195

When Profitable. 202

Universal ... ..207

In Gold . 300

Traders, Free, Illusions and

Fallacies of 142, 186, 200

Peaceful Exchange and 201, seq.

Surplus Production and

273, 275, 27,^

Their Theory of Capital ... 281

Complementary Products and 282
Turkey, Mew Constitution of 122

Utopia, Foundation of Mr. Wells’ 10 f
Utopias, Mr. Wells on ... 99, seq
Easy to Construct ... 10';

w

Webb, Mr. Sidney, Scheme of,

and Mr. Bernard Shaw 51, 252

Wells, Mr., What he ignore!

s 46,

seq.

Scheme of.

...

54

Indebtedness of ...

106,

111

Claims for his Utopia

107

Wheel.

155

Producers and Consumers on

157, 167

Withers, Mr. Hartley, on Bank

of England . 300