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I  I 


MEN  AND  THOUGHT 

IN 

MODERN  HISTORY 


NAPOLEON. 


[Frontispiece 


MEN  AND  THOUGHT 

IN 

MODERN   HISTORY 


<By 
ERNEST  SCOTT 

Professor  of  History  in  the   University  of  Melbourne 


56G568 


MELBOURNE  : 

MACMILLAN  AND  CO.  LTD. 

Head  Office:  LONDON 
1920 


MACMILLAN  AND  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  -  BOMBAY  -  CALCUTTA  -  MADRAS 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  -  BOSTON  -  CHICAGO 
DALLAS  -  SAN  FRANCISCO  -  ATLANTA 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


P  x 


PREFACE 


This  book  grew  out  of  a  practical  need  which  the  writer 
experienced  for  a  series  of  short  explanations  of  some  typi- 
cal modes  of  political  thought  illustrating  what  may  be 
figured  as  the  background  of  modern  history.  The  method 
employed  has  been  to  take  a  leading  thinker  or  statesman 
representing  a  distinct  school  or  point  of  view,  to  expound 
the  ideas  which  he  taught  or  upon  which  he  acted,  and  to 
connect  with  this  biographical  nucleus  cognate  systems  of 
thought.  For  example,  the  study  of  "Rousseau  and  the 
Rights  of  Man"  discusses  the  philosophy  of  political  rights 
expounded  by  Rousseau,  and  connects  it  with  the  question 
of  slavery.  By  the  choice  of  typical  examples  an  attempt 
has  been  made  to  illustrate  the  main  currents  of  political 
and  social  thought  in  recent  tinies.  In  each  instance  the 
aim  has  been  to  state  the  case  fairly  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  thinker  or  statesman  selected,  and  to  indicate 
opposing  views.  The  object  is  to  make  diverse  modes  of 
thinking  understood,  not  to  advocate  any  particular  one. 

If  the  book  professed  to  be  either  a  comprehensive  his- 
tory of  events  or  a  complete  exposition  of  political  thought 
it  would  certainly  fail  to  satisfy  reasonable  requirements 
in  either  direction.  But  it  has  a  more  modest  purpose.  It 
selects  twenty-four  men,  each  of  whom  is  representative  of 
some  particular  way  of  looking  at  things,  and  in  consider- 
ing their  personality  presents  a  critical  view  of  their  out- 
look and  philosophy. 

There  was  not  room  for  representing  in  one  book  every 
point  of  view  concerning  subjects  which  cover  so  wide  a 
field,  since  each  of  the  chapters  might  easily  be  expanded 
into  a  volume  of  august  proportions,  and,  in  fact,  each  of 
the  subjects  has  been  considered  in  many  works.  But  as 
the  author  wished  to  indicate  as  many  aspects  as  possible 
he  determined  to  append  to  every  chapter  a  handful  of 


PREFACE 

things  well  said  by  men  of  various  ways  of  thinking.  These 
short  expressions  of  opinion  should  open  up  fresh  trains 
of  thought. 

The  bibliographical  notes  at  the  end  of  each  chapter  have 
been  purposely  confined  to  very  brief  dimensions.  Longer 
lists  of  books  might  easily  have  been  supplied,  but  might 
have  alarmed  instead  of  inciting  some  readers. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

CHAPTER   I 

ROUSSEAU  AND  HUMAN  RIGHTS       .  .         .        1 

CHAPTER  II 
VOLTAIRE  AND  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT      ...       15 

CHAPTER   III 
NAPOLEON  AND  EFFICIENCY  IN  GOVERNMENT  .         .       29 

CHAPTER   IV 

METTERNICH  AND  ABSOLUTISM    ,    .         .         .         .45 

CHAPTER   V. 
Louis  BLANC  AND  THE  RIGHTS  OF  LABOUR         .         .       59 

CHAPTER  VI. 
PALMERSTON  AND  FOREIGN  POLICY  .         .         .         .       75^, 

CHAPTER  VII 
MAZZINI  AND  NATIONALITY     .         .         .         .         .93 

CHAPTER  VIII 
JOHN  STUART  MILL  AND  ECONOMICS        .         .         .     10 

CHAPTER   IX 
LORD  DURHAM  AND  RESPONSIBLE  GOVERNMENT          ..    121 

CHAPTER   X 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  AND  DEMOCRACY       .         .         .     135 

CHAPTER   XI 
KARL  MARX  AND  SOCIALISM   ..... 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

CHAPTER   XII 
COBDEN    AND   FREE"  TRADE 16p/ 

CHAPTER   XIII 
DARWIN  AND  MODERN  SCIENCE       ....     179 

CHAPTER   XIV 
HERBERT  SPENCER  AND  INDIVIDUALISM     .         .         .191 

CHAPTER   XV 
BISMARCK  AND  BLOOD  AND  IRON      ....     205 

CHAPTER   XVI 
GAMBETTA  AND  REPUBLICANISM      ....     217 

CHAPTER  XVII 
GLADSTONE  AND  LIBERALISM 231 . 

CHAPTER    XVIII                    , 
DISRAELI  AND  CONSERVATISM          245, 

CHAPTER  XIX 

\  CHAMBERLAIN  AND  IMPERIALISM    .... 

CHAPTER  XX 
TOLSTOY  AND  PACIFISM          .....     275 

CHAPTER   XXI 

MATTHEW  ARNOLD  AND  EDUCATION          .         ... 


CHAPTER    XXII 
WILLIAM  MORRIS  AND  THE  RELATION  OF  ART  TO  LIFE    303 

CHAPTER   XXIII 
WOODROW  WILSON  AND  THE  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS      .     317 

CHAPTER   XXIV 
H.  G.  WELLS  AND  FUTURISM  .  333 


"There  is  a  history  in  all  men's  lives 
Figuring  the  nature  of  the  times  deceased; 
The  which  observed  a  man  may  prophesy, 
With  a  near  aim,  of  the  main  chance  of  things 
As  yet  not  come  to  life,  which  in  their  seeds 
And  weak  beginnings  lie  intreasured. 
Such  things  become  the  hatch  and  brood  of  time." 


ROUSSEAU. 


MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN 
MODERN  HISTORY 


CHAPTER  I. 


ROUSSEAU    AND    HUMAN    RIGHTS. 


JEAN  JACQUES  ROUSSEAU  was  not  the  first  philo- 
sopher to  expound  doctrines  concerning  human 
equality,  the  fundamental  rights  of  mankind,  and 
the  contractual  nature  of  human  society,  which 
are  the  three  principal  political  ideas  associated  with 
his  name.  There  are  more  persuasive  statements 
of  those  doctrines  than  are  to  be  found  in  his  writ- 
ings. But  he  may  be  taken  as  the  most  famous,  and 
perhaps  by  reason  of  the  wide  influence  of  his  works  the 
most  important,  of  those  who  have  penetrated  beneath  law, 
government,  custom,  morals,  religion,  to  determine  what  it 
is  that  man  in  society  is  justified  in  claiming  by  virtue  of 
his  humanity,  and  what  is  the  nature  of  his  relation  to 
the  political  organism  of  which  he  is  a  part.  Sir  Henry 
Maine  was  of  opinion  that  "the  world  has  not  seen  more 
than  once  or  twice  in  all  the  course  of  history  a  literature 
which  has  exercised  such  prodigious  influence  over  the 
minds  of  men,  over  every  caste  and  shade  of  intellect,  as 
that  which  emanated  from  Rousseau  between  1749  and 
1762." 

Born  at  Geneva  in  1712,  Rousseau  was  by  turns  an 
engraver,  a  footman,  a  music  teacher,  an  ambassador's  sec- 
retary, a  playwright  and  an  author  of  books;  at  heart  he 
was  always  a  vagabond;  he  was,  moreover,  a  lover  of  the 
beautiful  in  nature,  of  not  a  few  women,  and,  theoretically 


2      MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

at  least,  of  all  mankind.  He  made  little  money  out  of  his 
writings,  though  they  gained  him  great  reputation  in  his 
own  lifetime.  His  philosophical  romance  Emile  was 
denounced  by  the  Archbishop  of  Paris  as  containing 
"abominable  doctrine,  erroneous,  blasphemous  and  here- 
tical/' and  to  avoid  arrest  Rousseau  fled  from  France  and 
threw  himself  on  the  indulgence  of  Frederick  the  Great 
of  Prussia.  Men  of  education  who  were  not  affected  by 
theological  bias  perceived  that  this  thin,  bent  man,  with 
refined  features  and  eyes  full  of  fire,  who  spoke  with  such 
sensitiveness  about  plants,  flowers,  mountains,  rivers,  water- 
falls and  birds,  and  who  discussed  the  deepest  problems  of 
the  universe  with  such  profound  conviction,  was  worthy  of 
their  esteem.  The  reigning  Duke  of  Wiirtemberg  consulted 
him  about  a  plan  for  the  education  of  his  daughter.  He 
was  beloved  by  those  of  his  friends  who  learnt  to  overlook 
his  waywardness.  His  happiest  hours  were  spent  in  the 
woods  and  fields,  gathering  plants,  for  he  was  a  devoted 
botanist;  and  he  wrote  about  the  things  of  nature  with 
intense  delight.  In  such  passages  he  is  a  Wordsworth  of 
French  prose;  and  indeed  the  poetry  of  Wordsworth  owed 
very  much  to  Rousseau's  influence.  He  himself  wrote  in 
his  declining  months,  "my  whole  life  has  been  nothing  but 
one  long  reverie  divided  into  chapters  by  my  daily  walks." 

But  his  deistical  views,  which  were  much  misrepre- 
sented, evoked  mob  passions  and  official  condemnation,  and 
he  found  it  to  be  expedient  to  take  refuge  in  England. 
There  the  influence  of  David  Hume  procured  for  him  a 
pension  from  George  III.,  which,  however,  he  did  not  take 
for  more  than  one  year — he  even  refused  to  accept  the 
accumulated  arrears  long  afterwards,  when  he  was  very 
poor — because  a  violent  quarrel  broke  out  between  him  and 
Hume,  and  Rousseau  angrily  spurned  a  benefaction  obtained 
through  one  whom  he  now  regarded  as  his  enemy.  The  inci- 
dent was  not,  in  fact,  to  the  discredit  of  Hume,  who  did  not 
deserve  the  fierce  onslaught  which  Rousseau  made  upon  him. 
At  this  period  of  his  life  he  was  morbidly  sensitive,  over-fond 
of  solitary  brooding,  suspicious  to  the  point  of  misanthropy, 
and  quite  frantically  egotistical.  Edward  Gibbon  called 
him  "an  extraordinary  man  with  imagination  enough  for 
twelve  and  without  common  sense  enough  for  one."  In 
England  he  wrote  a  large  part  of  his  Confessions,  one  of 
the  nakedest  pieces  of  self -revelation  ever  penned  by  a  man. 


ROUSSEAU  3 

Returning  to  France,  he  lived  for  ten  years  in  sickness 
and  poverty,  copying  music  for  a  few  sous  per  page,  dream- 
ing, writing,  arranging  and  poring  over  his  botanical  speci- 
mens. He  died  in  1778. 

The  purely  political  writings  of  Rousseau  fill  two  sub- 
stantial volumes  in  the  edition  edited  by  Dr.  C.  E.  Vaughan, 
and  published  in  1915.  His  earliest  effort  of  the  kind  was 
a  Discourse  on  Human  Equality;  but  the  principal  piece 
was  his  Social  Contract,  which  came  from  the  press  in  1762. 
That  compact  little  treatise,  in  its  forty-eight  very  short 
chapters — some  of  which  consist  of  only  a  few  oracular 
paragraphs,  whilst  one  is  complete  in  three  sentences — 
expounds  his  mature  views  on  government  and  questions 
relative  to  it.  When  he  was  old  and  his  book  had  earned 
celebrity  for  him  he  professed  to  be  dissatisfied  with  it. 
He  then  said  that  "those  who  boast  that  they  understand 
the  whole  of  it  are  cleverer  than  I  am.  It  is  a  book  that 
ought  to  be  re-written,  but  I  have  no  longer  the  time  and 
strength."  But  even  the  author  of  the  Contrat  Social 
might  have  spoilt  it 'by  further  revision.  Rousseau  took 
pains  with  his  work,  and  wrote  slowly.  To  have  elaborated 
the  crisp,  precise,  well-meditated  sentences  might  have 
made  the  book  more  voluminous  but  could  hardly  have 
added  to  its  force.  Great  little  books  should  not  be  mini- 
mised by  inflation.  If  there  are  obscure  passages  it  is  the 
business  of  the  commentators  to  make  them  plain.  We  may 
hope  that  they  have  done  it ;  for  there  have  been  many  more 
writers  on  Rousseau  than  there  are  paragraphs  in  the 
Contrat  Social. 

Rousseau  commences  with  a  proposition  and  a  ques- 
tion. "Man  is  born  free,  and  everywhere  he  is  enslaved. 
Many  a  one  believes  himself  to  be  the  master  of  others, 
and  yet  he  is  the  greater  slave  than  they.  How  has  this 
change  come  about?"  No  man,  acting  compatibly  with  his 
own  nature,  voluntarily  surrenders  his  liberty;  a  slave  is 
only  a  slave  because  another  man,  or  a  political  society, 
has  by  superior  force  established  mastery  over  him.  But 
this  superior  force  constitutes  no  moral  sanction.  The  pos- 
session of  power  does  not  confer  any  right  upon  a  man  to 
exercise  authority  over  his  fellow  men.  True,  a  man  sac- 
rifices something  of  what  Rousseau  assumes  to  have  been 
the  primitive  freedom  of  his  race  when  he  lives  in  a  com- 
munity. He  has  to  obey  laws  and  accept  conventions.  But 


4       MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

in  so  doing  he  enters  into  a  "social  pact."  Each  submits 
himself  to  the  general  will,  and  in  return  becomes  a  mem- 
ber of  the  whole.  By  giving  himself  to  all,  however,  he 
gives  himself  to  nobody;  for  nobody  acquires  any  rights 
over  him  which  he  does  not  acquire  over  others.  He  gains 
an  equivalent  for  what  he  surrenders,  and  a  greater  power 
to  preserve  what  is  his  own. 

The  "social  pact"  is  an  assumption  for  the  purposes  of 
Rousseau's  argument,  not  an  historical  occurrence.  He 
assumed  what  never  happened  anywhere  at  any  time.  He 
made  no  attempt  to  support  his  hypothesis  by  an  examina- 
tion of  the  facts  as  to  primitive  man,  or  man  in  civilised 
society.  Neither  anthropology  nor  history  furnishes  evi- 
dence of  a  "state  of  nature"  wherein  man  enjoyed  unlimited 
freedom,  and  nothing  is  known  of  any  period  when  part  of 
this  freedom  was  consciously  exchanged  for  the  advantages 
secured  by  social  life.  As  Huxley  said,  "even  a  superficial 
glance  over  the  results  of  modern  investigations  into  anthro- 
pology, archaeology,  ancient  law  and  ancient  religion,  suffices 
to  show  that  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evidence  that  men  ever 
existed  in  Rousseau's  state  of  nature,  and  there  are  very 
strong  reasons  for  thinking  that  they  never  could  have 
done  so  and  never  will  do  so."  Competent  scientific  obser- 
vers who  have  lived  amongst  those  tribes  of  savages  whose 
condition  approaches  most  nearly  to  the  "state  of  nature," 
have  been  surprised  to  find  how  complex  their  social  organi- 
sation was.  A  -good  example  is  furnished  by  the  experiences 
of  Baldwin  Spencer  and  Gillen  among  the  Arunta  tribe  of 
Central  Australia.  They  remark  that  "when  a  white  man 
goes  among  Australian  savages,  one  of  the  first  things  which 
strikes  and  also  puzzles  him  is  the  intricate  nature  of  their 
social  system."1  The  elaborate  description  of  the  totem 
system  of  the  tribes  among  whom  these  observers  worked 
bears  out  their  testimony  completely. 

But  this  point  must  not,  in  fairness  to  Rousseau,  be 
pushed  too  closely  against  him.  He  hardly  professed  to 
be  stating  a  historical  fact.  He  said,  "I  assume  that  men 
have  reached  a  point  at  which  the  obstacles  that  endanger 
their  preservation  in  the  state  of  nature  overcome  the  forces 
which  each  individual  can  exert  with  a  view  of  maintain- 
ing himself  in  that  state."  His  hypothesis  was  not  so 

i  Spencer  and  Gillen,  "Across  Australia/'  I.,  p.  201. 


ROUSSEAU  5 

illogical  as  some  of  his  critics  have  represented.  Huxley 
jabbed  his  lancet  into  it  thus:  "The  amount  of  philosophy 
required  to  base  an  argument  on  that  which  does  not  exist, 
has  not  existed,  and  perhaps  never  will  exist,  may  well 
seem  unattainable."  But  it  is  true  that  somehow,  if  not 
originally  at  some  dateable  time  and  in  some  definable  place 
and  by  some  producable  document,  man  has  become  subject 
to  his  fellow  men  in  various  degrees  of  obligation.  We  do 
not  know  of  any  condition  of  society,  since  homo  sapiens 
was  evolved,  wherein  this  was  not  the  case;  yet  for  the 
purposes  of  an  enquiry  into  fundamental  rights,  if  there 
are  any — and  that  is  necessarily  part  of  the  enquiry — we 
commit  no  outrage  on  reason  in  starting  from  the  hypo- 
thesis of  an  unrestricted  freedom.  It  must  be  admitted, 
however,  that  very  often  Rousseau  seems  to  have  taken  the 
assumption  to  be  a  positive  fact  of  history.  He  assumes 
something,  and  then,  getting  warm  with  his  argument, 
forgets  that  it  was  no  more  than  an  asumption  with  which 
he  started. 

Rousseau  proceeds  to  the  contention  that  the  social  pact 
"tacitly  includes"  the  consequence  that  "whoever  refuses 
to  obey  the  general  will  shall  be  constrained  to  do  so  by 
the  whole  body."  Without  this  power  of  restraint  the  social 
pact  would  be  a  vain  formula.  The  general  will  alone  can 
direct  the  powers  of  society  to  the  common  good  of  its 
members.  This  general  will  constitutes  the  sovereignty 
of  the  community.  The  sovereignty  may  be  vested  in  a 
person — a  king  or  a  republican  president — or  it  may  be 
assumed  by  a  tyrant  or  a  conqueror,  or  it  may  be  forcibly 
usurped  by  a  group  in  the  interest  of  a  class;  but  essen- 
tially the  sovereignty  belongs  to  the  whole  body  of  those 
who  have  given  up  part  of  their  individual  freedom. 

What,  then,  are  the  "rights"  of  the  person  in  the  society 
of  which  he  is  a  member?  They  are  not  formulated  in 
any  chapter  of  the  Contrat  Social;  indeed,  the  phrase  "the 
rights  of  man"  nowhere  occurs  in  the  book.  That  phrase 
is  most  familiar  to  us,  perhaps,  as  the  title  of  another 
famous  little  book,  by  Thomas  Paine,  published  as  a  reply 
to  Burke's  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,  twelve 
years  after  Rousseau's  death.  Paine's  title  was  taken  from 
the  "Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man,"  which  was  being 
drafted  by  the  Constitutional  Committee  of  the  National! 
Assembly  of  France  at  the  time  when  he  was  writing  his 


6       MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

book  (1790).  Both  the  Declaration  and  Paine's  work  are 
steeped  to  the  very  commas  in  Rousseau's  dye.  There  is 
nothing  in  the  Declaration  which  is  not  in  Rousseau;  the 
Declaration  is  a  synopsis  of  the  Contrat  Social.  If  then 
we  set  down  its  seventeen  propositions  as  shortly  as  pos- 
sible, we  shall  have  a  convenient  summary  of  the  book  as 
well  as  of  the  preface  to  the  first  constitution  prepared  for 
France.  >. 

They  were  these : —  (¥)  Men  are  born  free  and  with 
equal  rights.  (2^  The  aim  of  every  political  community  is 
to  preserve  the  natural  rights  of  man.  (3)  The  principle 
of  sovereignty  resides  essentially  in  the  nation.  (4)  Liberty 
consists  in  being  able  to  do  anything  which  is  not  injurious 
to  others;  the  exercise  of  natural  rights  by  each  man  is 
limited  only  by  the  assurance  of  the  same  rights  to  other 
members  of  the  community ;  those  rights  can  be  determined 
only  by  law.  (5)  The  law  has  the  right  to  prevent  only 
such  actions  as  are  injurious  to  society.  (6)  The  law  is 
the  expression  of  the  general  will ;  all  the  citizens  have  the 
right  to  concur,  personally  or  through  their  representatives, 
in  the  formation  of  the  law.  (7)  No  man  should  be  accused 
or  arrested  except  in  accordance  with  the  law,  but  every 
citizen  arrested  under  the  law  should  obey  on  the  instant. 
(8)  The  law  ought  to  ordain  only  such  punishments  as  are 
strictly  necessary.  (9)  Every  man  being  presumed  to  be 
innocent  until  proved  guilty,  he  should  be  subjected  to  no 
rigours  while  he  is  under  arrest.  (10)  No  man  should  be 
interfered  with  on  account  of  his  opinions,  religious  or 
otherwise,  provided  that, the  expression  of  them  does  not 
disturb  public  order.  (J0£)  The  free  interchange  of  thought 
is  one  of  the  most  precious  of  the  rights  of  man;  every 
citizen  ought  therefore  to  be  able  to  speak,  write  and  print 
freely,  except  for  abuses  of  that  liberty,  as  may  be  deter- 
mined by  law.  (12)  The  guarantee  of  the  rights  of  man 
necessitates  a  public  force,  to  be  maintained  for  the  advan- 
tage of  all.  (13)  This  force  should  be  maintained  at  the 
expense  of  all.  (14)  The  whole  body  of  the  citizens  have 
the  right  to  express  their  views,  personally  or  through  their 
representatives,  upon  the  taxes  imposed  upon  them.  (15) 
The  community  has  the  right  to  demand  that  any  public 
officer  shall  give  an  account  of  his  stewardship.  (16)  No 
community  wherein  these  rights  are  not  guaranteed  can 
be  said  to  have  a  constitution.  (17)  Property  being  an 


ROUSSEAU  7 

inviolable  and  sacred  right,  no  man  should  be  deprived  of 
his  property,  except  when  public  necessity,  legally  declared, 
demands,  and  then  he  should  receive  a  just  indemnity. 

The  principles  thus  distilled  by  the  Committee  of  the 
National  Assembly  from  the  Contrat  Social  were  not  new. 
Rousseau  had  studied  the  works  of  Hobbes  and  Locke,  and 
there  is  very  little  of  importance  in  his  political  writings 
which  is  not  to  be  found  in  theirs.  Anyone  who  reads 
Locke's  treatises  on  Civil  Government  will  find  himself 
truly  in  a  drier  atmosphere  than  that  which  he  breathes 
in  the  more  humid  and  flowery  landscape  designed  by  the 
gardener  of  Geneva,  but  the  main  topographical  features 
are  alike.  Rousseau  started  from  a  supposed  "social  pact" 
and  a  "state  of  nature."  Locke  starts  with  Adam.  Thus : 
"Adam  had  not  either  by  natural  right  of  fatherhood  or  by 
positive  donation  from  God  any  such  authority  over  his 
children,  or  dominion  over  the  world,  as  is  pretended;  if 
he  had,  his  heirs  had  no  right  to  it."  Locke,  like  Rousseau, 
starts  from  the  hypothesis  of  the  primitive  equality  of  men 
in  "The  State  of  Nature" — which,  indeed,  is  one  of  Locke's 
chapter  headings.  In  Locke's  eighth  chapter  we  find  the 
proposition  that,  "men  being  by  nature  free,  equal  and 
independent,  no  one  can  be  put  out  of  this  estate  and  sub- 
jected to  the  political  power  of  another  without  his  own 
consent" — where  phrasing  and  thought  alike  remind  us  that 
Locke  was  one  of  the  intellectual  parents  of  much  that  is 
in  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  French 
Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man,  and  in  Rousseau. 

But  the  great  influence  which  the  doctrine  of  the  rights 
of  man  exercised  in  the  world  was  directly  due,  undoubt- 
edly, more  to  Rousseau  than  to  Locke.  He  was  the  inspira- 
tional force  of  the  French  Revolution;  and  it  was  from 
him  that  Jefferson  derived  the  formulae  which  he  placed 
at  the  head  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  (1776). — 
"We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident,  that  all  men  are 
created  equal ;  that  they  are  endowed  by  their  Creator  with 
certain  unalienable  rights ;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness;  that,  to  secure  these  rights, 
governments  are  instituted  among  men,  deriving  their  just 
powers  from  the  consent  of  the  governed,"  and  so  forth  in 
a  cascade  of  pellucid  propositions  all  flowing  from  Rousseau, 
as  Moses  in  the  wilderness  struck  the  rock  and  made  the 
water  gush  forth.  In  the  original  draft  of  the  Declaration 


8       MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

Jefferson  had  inserted  a  strong  condemnation  of  George 
III.,  partly  on  the  ground  that  he  "determined  to  keep  open 
a  market  where  men  should  be  bought  and  sold,  he  prosti- 
tuted his  negative  for  suppressing  every  legislative  attempt 
to  prohibit  or  restrain  this  execrable  commerce."  This 
passage,  however,  was  omitted  by  the  American  Congress 
from  the  draft. 

But  here  we  come  against  a  perplexity.  Joseph  Jeffer- 
son, the  author-in-chief  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
who  wished  to  insert  these  harsh  words,  was  himself  a 
slave  owner.  At  the  close  of  the  war  he  owned,  according 
to  one  of  his  own  letters,  ten  thousand  acres  of  land,  "154 
slaves,  34  horses,  5  mules,  249  cattle,  390  hogs,  and  3 
sheep."1  George  Washington  also  owned  slaves  on  his  estate 
at  Mount  Vernon.  Both  represented  Virginia,  which  con- 
tained a  population  of  about  four  hundred  thousand,  one- 
half  of  whom  were  slaves.  It  should  in  justice  to  Jefferson 
be  added  that  throughout  his  public  life  he  professed  him- 
self opposed  to  slavery  as  an  institution,  regretting,  he 
said,  that  "the  public  mind  would  not  yet  bear  the  propo- 
sition;" but  even  if  all  the  slaves  could  have  been  freed, 
Jefferson  confessed  that  "no  preparation  would  render  it 
expedient  to  admit  them  to  the  full  rights  of  citizenship 
by  making  them  a  part  of  the  electoral  body."2  What  a 
mockery  it  was  to  aver  in  a  solemn  state  document  that 
"all  men  are  created  equal,"  and  that  "life,  liberty  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness"  were  "inalienable  rights,"  when  the 
very  hand  which  wrote  the  words  was  that  of  a  slave  owner 
who  did  not  believe  that  it  would  ever  be  expedient  to  admit 
negroes  to  the  full  rights  of  citizenship!  Perhaps  King 
George  III.  had  sometimes  "prostituted  his  negative" — that 
is,  by  disallowing  colonial  acts — but  surely  Jefferson  com- 
mitted something  like  a  prostituting  of  his  positive.  He 
conveniently  overlooked  the  declaration  of  his  mentor  Rous- 
seau, that  "these  terms,  slavery  and  right,  are  contradictory 
and  exclusive."  His  own  objection  to  slavery  never  got 
beyond  the  theoretical  and  sentimental  stage. 

The  application  of  Rousseau's  theories  to  France  led  to 
consequences  much  more  unfortunate.  The  negro  slaves 
of  San  Domingo  claimed  that  the  Declaration  of  the  Rights 
of  Man  applied  to  them  as  much  as  to  the  whites.  The 

iParton's  "Life  of  Jefferson,"  p.  453. 

2  Randall,  "Life   of  Jefferson,"  Vol.  III.,  p.   667. 


ROUSSEAU  9 

National  Assembly  of  France  concurred  with  their  demand, 
and  in  April,  1792,  decreed  that  "people  of  colour  and  free 
negroes  in  the  colonies  ought  to  enjoy  equality  of  political 
rights  with  the  whites."  In  1794  slavery  was  abolished  in 
all  French  colonies.  The  whites  of  San  Domingo  could  not 
permit  the  blacks,  who  greatly  outnumbered  them,  to  become 
their  political  masters,  and  foretold,  correctly  as  events 
proved,  the  total  destruction  of  the  colony.  Outrage  and 
massacre,  a  frenzied  carnival  of  killing  and  burning,  with 
fiendishly  fantastical  devices  for  punctuating  the  tale  of 
horror,  marked  the  risings  of  negroes  and  mulattoes.  The 
Rights  of  Man  prevailed  at  the  cost  of  the  total  extermi- 
nation of  the  white  race.1 

The  principle  was  imprudently  applied  in  this  instance, 
for  people  well  acquainted  with  the  colonies  predicted  what 
would  occur  if  enfranchisement  were  conferred  at  a  stroke, 
without  taking  precautions  to  protect  the  whites.  But  at 
all  events  the  French  cannot  be  accused  of  asserting  funda- 
mental rights  merely  for  their  own  advantage.  They  fol- 
lowed out  the  logical  consequences  of  their  doctrine  to  the 
fatal  end.  Whether  they  were  as  wise  as  they  were  logical 
is  another  matter.  The  unwisdom,  the  sheer  inhumanity, 
is  at  once  apparent  of  leaving  twenty  thousand  white  people 
to  be  butchered  by  nearly  half  a  million  negroes,  drunk 
with  the  insolence  of  suddenly-obtained  freedom. 

When  we  turn  to  writers  of  another  kind — to  what  may 
be  termed  legal-minded  authors — we  find  the  word  "rights" 
used  in  a  different  sense  from  that  given  to  it  by  such  as 
we  have  considered.  It  is,  indeed,  a  word  with  a  bewilder- 
ing variety  of  meanings,  as  may  be  seen  by  consulting  the 
definitions  given  in  the  New  English  Dictionary.  We  have 
been  considering  a  "right"  as  something  inherently  belong- 
ing to  a  human  being,  irrespective  of  law,  something  funda- 
mental, pertaining  to  humanity  as  such.  But  in  reality 
there  is  no  such  thing.  A  savage  living  in  an  actual  "state 
of  nature" — not  Rousseau's  imaginary  state — had  no  rights 
other  than  those  which  his  tribe  allowed.  Civilised  man 
has  no  more  than  his  laws  ensure  for  him.  It  was  simple 
for  the  American  Declaration  of  Independence  to  say  that 
all  men  are  "endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  unalien- 
able  rights,"  but  if  any  Georgian  or  Virginian  slave  in 

IT.  E.  Stoddard's  "The  Fren.ch  Revolution  in  San  Domingo, "  tells 
the  story  vividly. 


10     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

1776,  or  at  any  time  later,  had  quoted  that  rhetorical  sen- 
tence it  would  not  have  been  of  the  slightest  use  to  him. 
Even  now,  when  the  thirteenth  amendment  of  the  United 
States  constitution  (1865)  declares  that  slavery  shall  not 
exist  within  the  territories  of  that  country,  intense  racial 
antagonism  in  the  former  slave  states  imposes  upon  the 
negro  disabilities  which  make  him  less  than  a  free  man 
in  a  free  country.  "Unalienable  rights"  then  are  not  un- 
alienable,  and  they  are  not  rights  in  the  very  country  which 
adopted  those  words  in  the  forefront  of  its  national  charter. 

Mr.  Edward  Jenks,  in  his  Short  History  of  Politics  (p. 
93)  gives  us  a  definition  which  may  not  sound  so  well,  but 
which  means  much  more.  "Leaving  aside  technicalities," 
he  says,  "we  may  define  a  right  as  being  a  power  enforced 
by  public  sentiment.  In  early  times,"  he  goes  on,  "public 
opinion  is  expressed  only  in  the  vague  form  of  custom;  in 
later  days  it  is  definitely  expressed  in  legislation  and 
enforced  by  tribunals  and  officials.  It  sometimes  happen? 
that  the  exercise  of  a  right  is  opposed  to  public  sentiment 
either  because  there  are  special  circumstances  which  render 
a  particular  application  of  it  unpopular,  or  because  public 
sentiment  has  changed.  Nevertheless  a  right  is  really  the 
creation  of  public  sentiment,  past  or  present." 

Similarly,  Mr.  D.  G.  Ritchie,  in  his  searching  book  on 
Natural  Rights,  puts  the  same  point  thus : — "Natural  rights 
when  alleged  by  the  would-be  reformer,  mean  those  rights 
which  in  his  opinion  would  be  recognised  by  the  public 
opinion  of  such  a  society  as  he  admires,  and  would  either 
be  supported  or  at  least  would  not  be  interfered  with  by 
its  laws,  if  it  had  any  laws ;  they  are  the  rights  sanctioned 
by  his  ideal  society,  whatever  that  may  be." 

The  idea  of  rights  only  occurs  among  social  beings,  and 
applies  only  to  things  enjoyed  by  some,  or  by  all.  They 
are  sanctioned  by  law  or  custom,  so  that  in  the  event  of 
their  being  disputed  a  person  affected  could  protest,  "But 
this  is  my  right."  There  would  be  no  question  of  rights 
if  each  of  us  lived  a  solitary  life,  having  no  relations  with 
others.  There  is  no  question  of  rights  about  things  which 
everybody  may  have  unquestioned  by  any.  There  is  no 
right,  for  example,  in  moonlight  or  sunshine,  because 
nobody  wants  all  the  moonlight  or  sunshine  and  everybody 
may  have  as  much  as  is  available.  There  was  no  right  in 
the  air  before  aviation  was  made  possible;  but  already 


ROUSSEAU  11 

there  is  beginning  to  be  a  law  of  the  air,  and  in  time  regu- 
lations concerning  the  use  of  it  by  flying  machines  will 
become  important.  Law  and  custom  will  embrace  atmo- 
spheric rights  when  it  becomes  expedient  to  do  so. 

Human  rights,  then,  do  not  depend  for  their  liberality, 
their  beneficence,  upon  something  inherent,  which  every 
person  may  claim  by  human  prerogative  in  whatever  kind 
of  society  he  may  be  born.  In  some  communities,  as  in 
Sparta,  life  itself  was  denied  to  children  whom  the  com- 
munity did  not  desire  to  grow  to  maturity.  Liberty  has 
been  denied  to  large  classes  of  persons,  even  by  civilised 
nations,  until  quite  recent  times.  Rights  are  conferred  by 
law  and  maintained  by  law,  and  the  attempt  to  get  beneath 
this  foundation  to  a  bedrock  of  natural  right  was  only  suc- 
cessful to  this  extent:  that  it  made  clear  what  ought  to 
be  regarded  as  human  rights  in  a  highly  developed,  morally 
sensitive,  justice-loving  society. 

The  task  of  peoples  who  have  realised  for  themselves 
a  high  conception  of  human  rights  is  to  diffuse  that  type 
of  society  as  widely  as  possible.  The  great  value  of  the 
work  of  Rousseau  was  that,  by  examining  the  form  of  society 
with  which  he  was  most  familiar,  and  questioning  the  prin- 
ciples on  which  it  rested,  he  made  people  think  about  this 
question  of  human  rights,  and,  when  the  appropriate  time 
arrived,  endeavour  to  break  down  a  mass  of  impediments 
to  free  human  development.  He  asserted  much ;  he  proved 
little;  but  by  a  Certain  warmth  and  clarity  of  expression 
he  induced  large  numbers  of  people  to  accept  his  dicta  as 
philosophical  truth,  and  work  towards  the  attainment  of 
a  nobler  ideal  of  human  rights  than  any  previously  realised 
in  European  communities. 

Two  other  things  about  Rousseau  may  be  said  before 
we  leave  the  subject.  (1)  Though  his  Social  Contract  may 
be  taken  as  a  text  book  of  the  principles  of  democratic 
government,  he  recognised  that  a  democracy  is  subject  to 
errors.  The  collective  will  may  be  the  collective  wisdom, 
but  the  collective  wisdom  may  not  always  be  wise.  It 
may  be  ignorant,  selfish,  misled.  He  believed  that  the 
public  advantage  must  on  the  whole  be  promoted  by  giving 
effect  to  the  general  will,  but  did  not  pretend  that  the  deter- 
minations of  the  people  will  always  be  right.  "Men  always 
desire  their  own  good,  but  do  not  always  discern  it."  A 
people  may  be  deceived,  or  influenced  by  factions  to  the 


12     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

injury  of  society  generally.  (2)  He  did  not  stress  the 
importance  of  human  rights  without  recognising  that  they 
imply  duties.  "All  the  services  that  a  citizen  can  render 
to  the  state  he  owes  to  it  as  soon  as  the  sovereign  demands 
them." 


Rousseau's  Social  Contract,  translated  by  Henry  J.  Tozer, 
with  annotations,  is  a  very  serviceable  English  edition  of 
the  famous  book.  H.  G.  Graham's  Rousseau  is  a  charming 
little  book.  Morley's  Rousseau  is  a  magisterial  work,  the 
best  treatise  on  the  subject  in  English.  On  the  matter  of 
human  rights  generally,  there  is  nothing  better  than  D.  G. 
Ritchie's  book  on  Natural  Rights. 


Sir,  I  would  sooner  sign  a  sentence  for  his  [Rousseau's] 
transportation  than  that  of  any  felon  who  has  gone  from 
the  Old  Bailey  these  many  years.  Yes,  I  would  like  to  see 
him  work  at  the  plantations. — Dr.  Johnson. 

Man  cannot  enjoy  the  rights  of  an  uncivil  and  of  a 
civil  state  together.  That  he  may  obtain  justice  he  gives 
up  his  right  of  determining  what  it  is  in  points  the  most 
essential  to  him.  That  he  may  secure  some  liberty  he 
makes  a  surrender  in  trust  of  the  whole  of  it. — Burke. 

A  dozen  books  in  political  literature — Grotius  on  the 
Rights  of  War  and  Peace  (1625),  for  instance,  and  Adam 
Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations  (1776) — rank  in  history  as  acts, 
not  books.  Whether  a  dozen  or  a  hundred,  the  Social  Con- 
tract assuredly  was  one. — Lord  Morley. 

It  would  have  been  better  for  the  tranquillity  of  France 
if  that  man  [Rousseau]  had  never  lived. — Napoleon. 

The  traditional  theory  of  the  conventional  and  mechani- 
cal character  of  political  society  was  too  firmly  fixed  to  be 
shaken  even  by  the  immense  influence  of  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  and  it  continued  to  dominate  European  political 
theory  until  the  genius  of  Rousseau  finally  restored  to 
Europe  the  organic  conception  of  the  state. — A.  J.  Carlyle. 

Rousseau,  though  one  of  the  most  fascinating,  is  one  of 
the  most  inconsistent  of  political  writers,  and  he  continually 
lays  down  broad  general  principles  but  recoils  from  their 
legitimate  consequences. — Lecky. 

While  the  Declaration  of  Rights  was  before  the  National 
Assembly,  some  of  its  members  remarked  that  if  a  decla- 
ration of  rights  were  published  it  should  be  accompanied 


ROUSSEAU  13 

by  a  Declaration  of  Duties.  The  observation  discovered  a 
mind  that  reflected,  and  it  only  erred  by  not  reflecting  far 
enough.  A  declaration  of  rights  is,  by  reciprocity,  a  decla- 
ration of  duties  also.  Whatever  is  my  right  as  a  man  is 
also  the  right  of  another ;  and  it  becomes  my  duty  to  guar- 
antee as  well  as  to  possess. — Thomas  Paine. 

When  the  people  contend  for  their  liberty,  they  seldom 
get  anything  by  their  victory  but  new  masters. — Lord 
Halifax. 

If  men  could  rule  themselves,  every  man  by  his  own 
command — that  is  to  say,  could  they  live  according  to  the 
laws  of  nature — there  would  be  no  need  at  all  of  a  city, 
nor  of  a  common  coercive  power. — Hobbes. 

If  the  liberty  of  man  consists  in  the  empire  of  his  reason, 
the  absence  whereof  would  betray  him  to  the  bondage  of 
his  passions,  then  the  liberty  of  a  commonwealth  consists 
in  the  empire  of  her  laws,  the  absence  whereof  would  betray 
her  to  the  lust  of  tyrants. — Sir  John  Harrington. 

The  constitution  of  all  society  requires  that  each  indi- 
vidual member  of  it  should  yield  up  a  part  of  his  liberty 
in  return  for  the  advantages  of  mutual  help  and  defence; 
yet  at  the  bottom  that  surrender  should  be  part  of  the 
liberty  itself;  it  should  be  voluntary  in  essence. — William 
Morris. 

The  meaning  of  the  term  Natural  Law  necessarily  varies 
from  age  to  age.  It  stands  for  nothing  more  than  the  code 
of  morality  commonly  accepted  in  a  given  state  of  civilisa- 
tion. And  in  an  essentially  unmoral — not,  it  will  be 
observed,  immoral — age,  like  that  of  primitive  man — an 
age  which  is  without  "moral  relations"  of  any  sort  or  kind 
— it  can  have  had  no  existence  at  all. — C.  E.  Vaughan. 

Rousseau  sent  his  children  to  the  foundling  hospital, 
and  could  not  afterwards  trace  them.  His  spiritual  chil- 
dren can  be  found  more  easily.  If  one  considers  the  most 
characteristic  features  of  a  great  part  of  European  thought 
since  Rousseau's  time — the  literature  of  sentiment,  the 
genuine  or  affected  love  for  natural  scenery,  the  reaction 
against  rationalism  and  against  classicism,  even  the  pes- 
simism of  the  nineteenth  century,  along  with  its  deeper 
sense  of  sympathy  (often  more  sentimental  than  rational) 
with  the  poor,  one  might  say  that,  in  some  degree,  we  are 
all  Rousseau's  children.  At  least  there  are  a  good  many 
of  them  at  the  present  time  who  do  not  know  their  spiritual 
father.— D.  G.  Ritchie. 


VOLTAIRE. 


[Page  U 


CHAPTER  II. 


VOLTAIRE    AND    FREEDOM    OF    THOUGHT. 


T 


HE  reason  for  the  choice  of  Voltaire  as  our  typical 
man  in  the  history  of  the  intellectual  warfare  for  i 


freedom  of  thought  is  not  that  he  was  the  great- 
est force,  or  the  most  original  thinker,  or  the 
boldest  among  the  daring  company.  His  methods 
were  often  more  calculated  to  wound  his  adversaries 
than  to  demolish  their  case;  and  as  one  reads  his 
witty,  stinging  attacks,  it  is  easy  to  understand  that  if 
"no  writer  has  ever  roused  more  hatred  in  Christendom 
than  Voltaire,"1  the  reason  was  not  merely  that  his  arrows 
flew  straight,  but  that  their  barbs  were  envenomed.  With- 
out having  any  sympathy  with  his  enemies,  and  fully  recog- 
nising that  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  devil  of  persecution 
could  not  be  exorcised  with  the  holy  water  of  sedate 
reasoning,  the  irritation  provoked  by  this  fierce  foe  of 
clericalism  is  not  very  surprising.  Heresy  is  the  per- 
petual hair-shirt  of  the  church;  Voltaire  added  pin  points 
to  it. 

Whatever  his  limitations,  Voltaire  was  the  central  figure 
in  the  history  of  this  subject.  His  thin,  wizened  form 
casts  its  shadow  between  two  ages:  that  is,  as  nearly  as 
we  can  ever  say  that  there  is  a  clear  demarcation  between 
one  historical  period  and  another.  In  reality,  we  cannot 
paint  streaks  across  the  surface  of  time  and  say  that  one 
period  ended  here  and  another  began  there.  We  make 
such  divisions  for  our  convenience,  but  they  are  never  hard 
and  fast.  There  was  much  free  critical  speaking  and  writ- 
ing about  theological  and  political  things  before  Voltaire; 
there  has  been  a  terrible  amount  of  persecution  of  opinion 
since  Voltaire.  Yet  it  is  true  that  he  is  the  central  man, 

i  Bury,  ' '  History  of  Freedom  of  Thought, ' '  p.  156. 

15 


16     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

standing  between  an  age  when  persecution  was  rife,  free- 
dom of  thought  restrained,  and  one  when  such  freedom 
grew  into  vogue  and  persecution  became  not  so  much  a 
policy  as  an  intermittent  ebullition  of  spiteful  and  half- 
ashamed  bigotry.  Voltaire  himself  contributed  very  largely 
to  produce  the  change. 

The  orthodox  church  wielded  immense  power  in  France 
during  his  lifetime.  "In  France,"  writes  Morley,  "the 
strictly  repressive  policy  of  the  church  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  sometimes  bloody  and  cruel  as  in  the  persecution 
of  the  Protestants,  sometimes  minutely  vexatious  as  in  the 
persecution  of  the  men  of  letters,  but  always  stubborn  and 
lynx-eyed,  had  the  natural  effect  of  making  it  a  point  of 
honour  with  most  of  those  who  valued  liberty  to  hurl  them- 
selves upon  the  religious  system,  of  which  rigorous  intole- 
rance was  so  prominent  a  characteristic."1  It  was  this 
huge  ecclesiastical  machine  that  Voltaire  attacked  with 
the  facile  and  voluminous  energy  which  was  so  characteris- 
tic of  him.  No  one  had  ever  assailed  it  so  fiercely  before. 
Martin  Luther  was  conservative  and  heavy-handed  in  com- 
parison with  Voltaire.  Besides,  Luther's  aim  never  was 
freedom  of  thought;  Voltaire's  emphatically  was  that.  In 
the  whole  fifty-two  volumes  of  his  books  and  correspon4 
dence,  it  is  safe  to  say  that  not  a  sentence  was  writ-j 
ten  for  any  purpose  other  than  that  of  winning  scopej 
for  the  candid  expression  of  the  critical  judgment  of 
the  individual.  Nor  was  he  ever  wantonly  an  enemy  to 
any  kind  of  sincere  belief  which  was  not  associated  with 
an  organisation  seeking  to  wield  power  by  means  of  force 
and  deception.  "You  will  perceive,"  he  says  in  a  letter, 
"that  I  speak  only  of  superstition;  as  for  religion,  I  love 
and  respect  it  as  you  do."2 

Francois  Marie  Arouet,  the  son  of  an  attorney,  was  born 
near  Paris  in  1694.  He  was  educated  at  a  Jesuit  school. 
Before  he  was  twenty  he  was  writing  poems  and  plays 
which  brought  him  into  prominence.  The  turning  point 
in  his  life  occurred  shortly  after  he  adopted  the  name 
which  he  made  so  famous.  Dining  at  the  table  of  the  Due 
de  Sully,  and  flashing  his  wit  freely  in  his  habitual  man- 
ner on  the  subjects  of  conversation,  he  drew  upon  him  an 


2  See  on  this  point  Morley,  p.  221. 


VOLTAIRE  17 

insolent  snub  from  a  young  man  of  the  great  house  of 
Rohan.  The  youth  asked  who  this  was  who  talked  so  loud. 
"It  is  one  who  does  not  drag  a  big  name  about  with  him, 
but  who  secures  respect  for  the  name  he  has,"  replied 
Voltaire.1  The  aristocrat,  vanquished  by  Voltaire's  rapier, 
took  his  revenge  with  cudgels.  He  employed  some 
ruffians  to  belabour  the  poet.  There  was  no  legal  redress 
in  France  for  a  plebeian  against  a  nobleman,  so  Voltaire 
challenged  de  Rohan  to  a  duel.  The  only  satisfaction 
vouchsafed  to  him  came  in  the  form  of  a  lettre  de  cachet, 
by  which  he  was  consigned  to  the  Bastille.  His  imprison- 
ment lasted  only  about  a  fortnight  (April  17  to  May  2, 
1726),  and  he  was  treated  with  much  consideration.  He 
secured  his  liberation  on  giving  an  undertaking  that  he 
would  leave  France. 

In  choosing  England  as  his  place  of  exile,  Voltaire  did 
well.  Already  famous,  he  was  welcomed  among  the  men 
of  letters  and  philosophers,  who  maintained  in  the  reign 
of  George  I.  the  brilliancy  which  had  marked  the  period 
of  Queen  Anne.  Still  more  important  was  it  that  Voltaire 
set  himself  to  study  the  philosophical  writings  of  Locke, 
Shaftesbury  and  Collins,  as  well  as  the  poetry  of  the  mas- 
ters of  English  verse,  from  Shakespeare  to  Pope.  The 
deistical  works  in  particular  gave  an  entirely  new  direc- 
tion to  his  thought.  He  was  mentally  stimulated  by  the 
personal  contacts  and  the  fresh  and  vigorous  thinking 
which  were  the  best  gifts  that  England  had  for  him  during 
his  pleasant  residence  there  of  two  years  and  nine  months. 

There  is  much  that  a  modern  man  will  heartily  dislike 
in  the  England  of  the  first  two  Georges ;  but,  after  all,  it 
was  the  England  of  Newton,  Swift,  Pope,  Bentley,  Butler 
and  Berkeley;  and  Voltaire  found  there  an  atmosphere  of 
freedom  to  which  he  had  been  unaccustomed  in  his  own 
country.  All  things  are  comparative  in  this  imperfect 
world,  and  it  was  surely  something  that  so  acute  and  eager 
a  spirit  should  have  been  impelled  to  say,  "I  must  disguise./ 
in  Paris  what  I  could  not  too  .strongly  say  at  London. 
"The  example  of  England,"  says  Condorcet,  "showed  him 
that  truth  is  not  made  to  remain  a  secret  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  philosophers  and  a  limited  number  of  men  of  the 
world,  instructed,  or  rather  indoctrinated,  by  the  philo- 

1  See  Carlyle,  Frederick  the  Great,  III.,  p.  226. 


18     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

sophers.  .  .  .  From  the  moment  of  his  return  Voltaire 
felt  himself  called  to  destroy  the  prejudices  of  every  kind 
of  which  his  country  was  the  slave."1 

The  productivity  of  Voltaire  during  the  next  twenty 
years  was  amazing.  Poems,  tragedies,  history,  philosophy, 
literary  criticism,  polemical  writings  poured  from  his  pro- 
lific pen;  and  all  the  while  he  kept  up  an  enormous  corre- 
spondence with  a  great  number  of  people.  His  Philo- 
sophical Letters  in  particular  created  a  sensation.  His 
brilliancy  won  for  him  the  favour  of  powerful  friends  in 
those  circles  which  liked  to  be  tickled  and  amused,  and 
even  a  little  shocked.  He  became  something  of  a  person- 
age at  the  court  of  Louis  XV.  and  Madame  de  Pompadour. 
Favours  and  protection  of  this  kind  were  useful  to  him, 
though  he  was  much  bored  by  the  company  which  they 
compelled  him  to  endure. 

Meanwhile  Frederick  the  Great  of  Prussia  had  been 
attracted  by  his  writings,  and  repeatedly  pressed  him  to 
take  up  his  abode  at  Berlin,  with  promises  of  a  liberal 
pension  and  favours  of  the  most  gracious  kind.  The  accep- 
tance of  this  invitation  opened  a  new  chapter  in  Voltaire's 
life.  The  Prussian  king  had  literary  facilities,  and  wanted 
the  aid  of  an  accomplished  man  of  letters  to  polish  his 
periods  for  him.  Voltaire  quite  realised  that  he  was  an 
orange,  and  that  Frederick,  after  extracting  the  juice, 
would  throw  away  the  skin;  or,  as  he  said  to  a  General 
who  asked  him  to  revise  his  Memoirs,  "the  king  sends  me 
his  dirty  linen  to  wash,  so  yours  must  wait."  His  three 
years  in  Berlin  (1750-53),  about  which  there  are  some 
rather  rancid  chapters  in  Carlyle's  Frederick  the  Great, 
made  a  vivid  interlude  between  his  Parisian  period 
and  his  last  twenty-five  years,  which  were  .spent  in 
unflagging  work  at  Ferney  and  Lausanne.  To  this  final 
quarter  of  a  century,  when  he  enjoyed  the  reputation  of 
being,  in  Gibbon's  view,  "the  most  extraordinary  man  of 
the  age,"  belong  his  satire  Candide,  his  essay  on  Manners, 
his  contributions  to  the  French  Encyclopaedia,  and  his 
strongest  attacks  on  the  church.  For  all  his  controversial 
fury  he  was  a  very  gentle,  generous,  lovable  old  man,  easily 
angered  but  easily  assuaged,  as  full  of  humanity  as  of 
genius.  He  died  while  on  a  visit  to  Paris  in  1778. 

i  Cited  by  Morley,  "Voltaire,"  p.  59. 


VOLTAIRE  19 

The  influence  of  Voltaire  has  been  incalculably  great, 
and  his  best  works  are  still  read  and  enjoyed.  There  have 
been  several  collected  editions  of  his  writings,  and  if  we 
estimate  the  number  of  particular  volumes  which  have 
been  issued  we  must  speak  in  terms  of  millions.  In  France 
he  appears  to  have  been  most  read  in  times  of  political 
and  clerical  reaction,  as  a  tonic,  it  is  to  be  assumed.  Thus, 
one  of  his  biographers1  calculates  that  in  the  seven  years 
between  1817  and  1824 — in  the  midst  of  the  Bourbon 
Restoration — no  fewer  than  1,598,000  volumes  of  Voltaire's 
writings  came  from  the  press. 

It  is  natural  to  ask :  Why  did  authorities,  civil  and  eccle- 
siastical, seek  to  control  the  thought  of  mankind?  The 
motives  in  each  case  were  not  always  the  same.  The 
Catholic  Church  claimed  to  be  the  divinely  appointed 
expositor  of  Christian  truth,  and  regarded  heresy  as  a 
crime.  But  before  it  attained  to  a  position  of  spiritual 
supremacy  in  western  Europe  there  had  been  fierce  struggles 
with  a  variety  of  heresies.  Arians  and  Donatists,  the  rival 
schools  of  Antioch  and  Alexandria,  Nestorianism  and  Mono- 
sophytism,  provoked  controversies  about  which  Christians 
fought  among  themselves  with  a  livelier  zeal  than  they 
displayed  in  converting  the  heathen.  Greek  and  Roman 
Christianity  grew  apart,  "the  baseless  fabric  of  unity 
vanished  like  a  dream,"  and  two  great  churches  placed 
entirely  different  interpretations  upon  doctrines.  Even  in 
Western  Europe  the  claims  of  the  Catholic  Church  were 
disputed.  In  the  Middle  Ages  heretical  sects  made  their 
appearance  and  gained  many  adherents.  In  France  the 
Waldenses  in  the  twelfth  century  and  the  Albigensians  in 
the  thirteenth,  in  England  the  Lollards  and  in  Bohemia 
the  Hussites  in  the  fifteenth  century,  were  sects  which, 
holding  unorthodox  views,  were  subjected  to  severe  perse- 
cutions. Morally,  these  pre-reformation  dissenters  were 
good  people.  Their  sincerity  is  evinced  by  their  endurance 
of  suffering  for  their  faiths.  The  Albigensians  were,  how- 
ever, ruthlessly  crushed  by  an  army  which  enjoyed  the 
blessing  of  Pope  Innocent  III.  and  followed  the  leadership 
of  Simon  de  Montfort,  father  of  the  earl  who  rendered 
England  some  service.  John  Huss  was  burnt.  The  Eng- 
lish Lollards  were  hunted  into  the  hills,  and  the  infamous 

1  Gustave  Lanson's  "Voltaire,"  p.   205. 


20     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

statute  de  heretico  comburendo  was  enacted  in  response  to 
the  express  petition  of  the  clergy1  for  the  purpose  of  rid- 
ding the  land  of  heresy  by  burning  its  adherents  at  the 
stake.  The  first  English  martyrs  were  burnt  under  this 
evil  law  in  the  reign  of  Henry  IV.  The  beliefs  entertained 
by  these  sects  may  be  freely  entertained  to-day,  and,  indeed, 
the  Waldensian  sect  even  survives  under  that  name  in 
Italy. 

The  "growing  rigidity  of  dogma"  has  been  noted  as  a 
characteristic  of  church  polity  during  the  Middle  Ages. 
There  was  developed  "out  of  the  original  and  natural  attach- 
ment to  the  teaching  the  Apostles  preserved  by  tradition 
the  idea  that  the  church  is  the  divinely  appointed  guardian 
of  doctrine,  able  to  supplement  as  well  as  to  interpret  the 
revealed  word;  and  with  this  there  had  also  grown  up  the 
habit  of  exalting  the  universal  conscience  and  belief  above 
the  individual."2  To  diverge  from  doctrine  which  the  church 
pronounced  true  was  not  merely  to  err;  it  was  to  commit 
deadly  sin.  The  secular  arm  must  punish  what  the  spiri- 
tual power  condemned.  The  connection  of  the  church  with 
the  actual  perpetration  of  torture  and  death  became  more 
immediate  as  the  spread  of  heresy  increased,  and  when 
the  Inquisition  was  set  up  in  Rome  itself  it  was  governed 
by  a  body  of  Cardinals  with  the  Pope  at  their  head.  "The 
mediaeval  theory  was  that  the  church  condemned  and  the 
state  executed,  priests  having  nothing  to  do  with  punish- 
ment, and  requesting  that  it  might  not  be  excessive.  This 
distinction  fell  away,  and  the  clergy  had  to  conquer  their 
horror  of  bloodshed.  The  delinquent  was  tried  by  the  Pope 
as  ruler  of  the  church  and  burnt  by  the  Pope  as  ruler  of 
the  state."3 

When  the  Reformation  completely  destroyed  that  theo- 
retical unity  of  Christendom,  which  in  fact  had  only  been 
maintained  by  the  stifling  of  criticism  and  by  pitiless  per- 
secution, we  find  the  rulers  of  states  endeavouring  to 
prescribe  the  religion  of  their  subjects.  Why?  It  was  not 
that  these  rulers  were  themselves  religious  people,  in  any 
admirable  sense  of  the  term.  They  might  affect  theolo- 
gical scholarship,  as  Henry  VIII.  did,  or  be  pedantically 
pretentious,  as  James  I.  was,  or  be  merely  secular-minded 

i  Oman,  " Political  History   of  England,"  IV.,  p.   171. 

SBryce,   "Holy  Eoman  Empire/'  p.  94. 

3  Lord  Acton,  "Lectures  on  Modern  History,"  p.  112. 


VOLTAIRE  21 

politicians,  as  Catherine  de  Medici  of  France  and  Elizabeth 
of  England  were,  or  zealots  like  "bloody  Mary" — but  they 
worked  on  the  same  theory,  that  the  religion  .of  the  ruler 
must  be  the  religion  of  the  state — "cuius  regio,  eius  religio." 
After  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  Catherine  de  Medici 
assured  Queen  Elizabeth  that  she  would  have  no  objection 
if  she  treated  her  Catholic  subjects  in  England  as  the 
French  Protestants  had  been  treated.  In  principle  there 
was  no  difference  between  the  rooting  out  of  the  Huguenots 
after  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  by  Louis  XIV. 
on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  the  policy  of  James  I. 
towards  the  Puritans — "I  will  make  them  conform,  or  I 
will  harry  them  out  of  the  land" — and  the  persecutions 
under  Archbishop  Laud,  which  occasioned  the  Puritan 
exodus  to  New  England.  There  was  no  hospitality  for  the 
independent  thinker  under  the  one  regime  or  the  other. 
Little  comfort  was  to  be  gained  from  stepping  out  of  the 
Catholic  frying-pan  into  the  Protestant  fire. 

The  idea  underlying  the  policy  of  these  rulers  was  that 
unity  of  religious  thought  on  the  part  of  subjects  was 
essential  to  the  security  of  the  state.  There  were,  it  is 
true,  some  rulers  who,  as  a  Catholic  historian  says  of  Queen 
Mary,  "conscientiously  liked  to  persecute ;"  some,  like  Philip 
II.  of  Spain,  who  gloated  over  agony — that  sovereign  cried 
to  a  nobleman  on  his  way  to  be  burnt,  "if  my  .son  were  as 
perverse  as  you,  I  myself  would  carry  the  fuel  to  burn  him." 
To  these  the  suppression  of  heresy  was  a  luxury.  But  by 
monarchs  generally  it  was  regarded  as  a  necessity.  By 
controlling  opinion  they  controlled  policy.  Docile  minds 
made  obedient  subjects. 

There  was  an  end  to  that  point  of  view  as  soon  as  men 
perceived  that  the  true  aim  of  government  is  to  promote 
the  good  of  the  governed,  not  to  compel  people  to  submit 
themselves  to  the  will  of  rulers.    But  freedom  did  not  come 
as  a  gift  from  any  church.     There  was  fierce  intolerance 
among  the  Puritans;  the  Church  of  England  during  the 
entire  eighteenth  century  and  a  large  part  of  the  nineteenth 
used  its  political  ascendancy  and  its  social  prestige  with 
bitter  and  rather  supercilious  assertiveness.    But  the  mul-j 
tiplicity  of  sects   at  length   made   systematic   persecution! 
impossible.       Voltaire  put  his  finger  on  the  cause  of  the  \ 
ameliorating  tendency  when  he  said,  "If  there  were  but  one  \ 
religion  in  England  its  despotism  would  be  formidable;  if  \ 


22     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

(there  were  only  two  they  would  throttle  each  other;  but 
there  are  thirty,  and  they  live  happily  and  peaceably."  It 
was  exactly  so  in  America  also.  The  stiff  Puritans  of  Massa- 
chusetts ejected  other  Puritans  who  were  not  so  stiff.  The 
Protestants  generally  persecuted  the  Catholics  of  Maryland. 
But  when  sects  multiplied  they  simply  had  to  put  up  with 
each  other.  To-day  there  are  so  many  of  them,  and  fresh 
ones  arise  so  frequently,  that  statistics  on  the  subject  are 
out  of  date  before  they  are  printed;  with  the  charming 
result  that  "there  are  no  quarrels  of  churches  and  sects; 
Judah  does  not  vex  Ephraim  nor  Ephraim  envy  Judah."1 
And,  when  all  is  said,  Salt  Lake  City  and  Zion  City  smell 
sweeter  than  Smithfield  ever  did. 

Reason  had  done  its  best  to  convince  mankind  that 
freedom  was  the  safe  and  sound  line  long  before  circum- 
stances compelled  the  adoption  of  that  view.  Milton  wrote 
a  defence  of  "the  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing,"  which  is 
one  of  the  noblest  pieces  of  English  literature.  "Though 
all  the  winds  of  doctrine  were  let  loose  to  play  upon  the 
earth,  so  truth  be  in  the  field,  we  do  injuriously  by  licens- 
ing and  prohibiting  to  misdoubt  her  strength.  Let  her 
and  falsehood  grapple;  whoever  knew  truth  put  to  the 
worst  in  a  free  and  open  encounter?"  "Give  me  the  liberty 
to  utter  and  to  argue  freely  according  to  conscience  above 
all  liberties."  Thus  the  great  voice  speaks  in  the  majestic 
sentences  of  Areopagitica.  Locke's  three  letters  on  Tolera- 
tion, which  were  known  to  Voltaire,  contain  the  essence 
of  the  thing,  notwithstanding  that  he  would  have  excluded 
Catholics  and  non-Christians. 

But  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  Locke's  reasons  for  these 
exceptions  were  political,  not  religious.  Writing  in  the 
reign  of  William  III.,  when  England  had  just  legislated 
to  bar  any  Catholic  from  accession  to  th£  throne,  he  could 
not  overlook  the  fact  that  the  Catholic  Church  was  much 
more  than  a  religious  corporation.  It  was  a  .state,  and  the 
Pope  was  a  sovereign  prince.  "They  who  jumble  heaven 
and  earth  together,"  in  Locke's  view,  "create  political  con- 
fusion." He  held  that  "that  church  can  have  no  right  to 
be  tolerated  by  the  magistrates  which  is  constituted  on 
such  a  bottom  that  all  those  who  enter  into  it  do  thereby 
ipso  facto  deliver  themselves  up  to  the  protection  and  ser- 

1  Bryce,  " American  Commonwealth/'  II.,  p.   874. 


VOLTAIRE  23 

vice  of  another  prince."  Secondly,  Locke  would  have  refused 
toleration  to  those  who  "deny  the  being  of  a  God,"  because 
he  held  that  they  could  not  be  bound  by  "promises,  cove- 
nants and  oaths,  which  are  the  bonds  of  human  society." 
Whether  he  had  met  any  who  made  such  a  denial  he  did 
not  say,  nor  did  he  propose  to  place  special  disabilities 
on  any  others  who  had  actually  shown  that  they  were  not 
to  be  bound  by  promises,  oaths  and  covenants,  though  such 
persons  were  particularly  numerous  among  the  prominent 
politicians  of  his  day. 

Except  for  these  limitations,  however,  Locke's  plea  for 
toleration  is  a  cogent  piece  of  reasoning.  One  of  his  best 
passages  is  that  wherein  he  shows  the  impossibility  of  con- 
vincing anybody  by  compulsion;  that  the  political  power 
may  compel  men  to  comply  by  making  hypocrites  of  them, 
but  cannot  lay  hold  of  their  minds. 

"But  after  all,"  says  Locke,  "the  principal  considera- 
tion, and  which  absolutely  determines  this  controversy,  is 
this :  Although  the  magistrate's  opinion  in  religion  be  sound, 
and  that  way  that  he  appoints  be  truly  Evangelical,  yet, 
if  I  be  not  thoroughly  persuaded  thereof  in  my  own  mind, 
there  will  be  no  safety  for  me  in  following  it.  No  way 
whatsoever  that  I  shall  walk  in  against  the  dictates  of  my 
conscience  will  ever  bring  me  to  the  mansions  of  the 
blessed.  I  may  grow  rich  by  an  art  that  I  take  not  delight 
in ;  I  may  be  cured  of  some  disease  by  remedies  that  I 
have  not  faith  in ;  but  I  cannot  be  saved  by  a  religion  that 
I  distrust  and  by  a  worship  that  I  abhor.  It  is  in  vain 
for  an  unbeliever  to  take  up  the  outward  show  of  another 
man's  profession.  Faith  only,  and  inward  sincerity,  are 
the  things  that  procure  acceptance  with  God.  The  most 
likely  and  most  approved  remedy  can  have  no  effect  upon 
the  patient  if  his  stomach  reject  it  as  soon  as  taken;  and 
you  will  in  vain  cram  a  medicine  down  a  sick  man's  throat 
which  his  particular  constitution  will  be  sure  to  turn  into 
poison.  In  a  word,  whatsoever  may  be  doubtful  in  religion, 
yet  this  as  least  is  certain :  that  no  religion  which  I  believe 
not  to  be  true  can  be  either  true  or  profitable  unto  me.  In 
vain,  therefore,  do  princes  compel  their  subjects  to  come 
into  their  church  communion,  under  pretence  of  saving 
their  souls.  If  they  believe  they  will  come  of  their  own 
accord ;  if  they  believe  not  their  coming  will  nothing  avail 
them.  How  great  soever,  in  fine,  may  be  the  pretence  of 


24     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

good  will  and  charity,  and  concern  for  the  salvation  of 
men's  souls,  men  cannot  be  forced  to  be  .saved  whether  they 
will  or  no.  And,  therefore,  when  all  is  done,  they  must 
be  left  to  their  own  consciences." 

What  are  the  limits  to  freedom  of  discussion  in  all 
things,  religious  and  political,  in  a  free  state?  Clearly  there 
must  be  some.  No  important  element  in  life  can  be  outside 
the  reach  of  law.  Regulation,  too,  really  conserves  liberty. 
An  ordered  freedom,  which  makes  for  public  harmony  and 
protects  individuals  against  the  abuse  of  criticism,  is  a 
larger  freedom  on  the  whole  than  the  contrary  condition 
could  be. 

Libel  laws  are  good  and  necessary  limitations  of  this 
kind.  They  restrain  "envy,  hatred,  malice  and  all  unchari- 
tableness,"  and  preserve  a  measure  of  decency  in  places 
where  there  sometimes  seems  to  be  little  natural  inclination 
thereto.  They  make  it  imperative  for  even  the  most  reck- 
less of  publications  to  exercise  some  care  in  their  references 
to  individuals.  There  evidently  should  be  a  restraint  of 
liberty  to  print  things  which  are  false  and  injurious. 
Liberty  should  be  an  instrument  of  public  utility,  not  of 
personal  malignity. 

Laws  enforcing  a  standard  of  decorum  in  the  discussion 
of  subjects  of  public  interest  are  not  an  invasion  of  liberty, 
but  a  proper  regulation  of  it.  Unfortunately  some  laws, 
which  in  practice  are  enforced  under  this  plea,  had  their 
origin  in  less  tolerant  times,  and  are  liable  to  be  used  occa- 
sionally for  their  primitive  purpose.  The  Blasphemy  Laws 
are  an  instance.  They  have  been  enforced  to  punish  bad 
taste,  which  was  said  to  have  "outraged  the  decencies  of 
controversy,"  but,  as  Professor  Bury  has  pointed  out,  the 
law  imposes  no  restraint  on  the  orthodox,  no  matter  how 
offensive  their  methods  of  controversy  may  be — and  theolo- 
gical controversial  literature  can  be  very  offensive  indeed. 
Consequently,  such  laws  are  not  "based  upon  an  impartial 
desire  to  prevent  the  use  of  language  which  may  cause 
offence,"  and,  as  administered,  are  in  principle  persecut- 
ing laws. 

A  censorship  during  time  of  war  is  one  of  the  penalties 
which  a  state  of  war  entails.  It  is  apparent  that  when  a 
nation  is  fighting  for  its  life  disaster  may  easily  be  occa- 
sioned by  the  indiscreet  publication  of  information,  and 
that  morale,  which  is  as  essential  to  endurance  as  munitions 


VOLTAIRE  25 

and  man-power,  may  be  weakened  by  reckless,  ignorant  or 
even  deliberately  mischievous  writing.  It  is  a  grave  mis- 
fortune to  have  to  impose  restraints  upon  free  discussion; 
but  it  is  much  graver  to  imperil  armies  who  are  risking 
their  lives  every  hour,  or  to  slacken  that  moral  fibre  without 
which  armies  cannot  be  efficiently  supported.  In  such  crises 
a  censorship  is  the  least  of  several  evils.  The  United 
States  during  the  Civil  War  found  it  to  be  necessary  to 
enforce  a  very  strict  censorship.1  That  censors  will  at 
times  act  foolishly,  and  even  tyrannically,  is  unfortunately 
true.  Such  evils  are  incidental  to  the  exercise  of  functions 
like  theirs.  But  as  it  is  better  to  suffer  thus  than  to  lose 
in  a  great  cause,  the  sacrifice  of  liberty  to  this  extent 
must  be  reckoned  one  of  the  many  sacrifices — and  assuredly 
not  the  least  of  them — which  the  stern  ordeal  of  war  lays 
upon  free  nations. 

It  is  argued  by  the  apologists  for  persecution  during 
earlier  ages  that,  just  as  the  state  is  justified,  for  the 
defence  of  its  integrity,  in  prescribing  the  liberties  of  its 
subjects,  so  the  church  was  justified  in  endeavouring  to 
maintain  authority  over  belief.  What  treason  and  sedition 
are  in  the  body  politic,  heresy  is  to  the  church.  The 
argument  is  open  to  this  answer:  that  whilst  sedition  and 
treason,  if  permitted,  would  destroy  the  state,  and  thereby 
reduce  social  life  to  anarchy,  heresy,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
has  not  destroyed  the  church,  and  the  spread  of  many  varie,- 
ties  of  it  has  contributed  to  the  welfare  of  mankind.  There 
cannot  in  the  nature  of  things  be  more  than  one  govern- 
ment in  the  state;  but  there  can  be  many  churches  in  the 
state,  and  there  can  be  good  citizenship  without  churches 
at  all.  Experience  has  proved  the  wisdom  of  allowing 
every  citizen  to  suit  himself  in  that  respect.  To  churchmen 
in  the  Middle  Ages  it  did  seem,  no  doubt,  an  appalling  pros- 
pect that  the  seamless  fabric  of  ecclesiastical  unity  should 
be  torn,  and  their  perfect  sincerity  in  restricting  that  ten- 
dency is  not  questionable.  But  events  have  proved  them 
wrong. 

Human  progress  has  been  furthered,  not  by  common  con- 
currence in  accepted  ideas,  but  by  enquiry  and  dissent.  If 
all  agree  there  is  no  movement.  Advance  is  made  when 

1  See  J.  Kandall,  011  ' '  The  Newspaper  Problem  in  its  bearing  on 
Military  Secrecy  during  the  Civil  War/'  in  "American  Historical 
Review,"  January,  1918. 


26     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

an  accepted  proposition  is  challenged  and  shown  to  be  erro- 
neous. Even  when  we  reject  a  criticism  adverse  to  a  belief 
which  we  hold,  we  are  surely  the  better  for  paying  heed 
to  it.  For,  as  John  Stuart  Mill  urged,  "he  who  knows  only 
his  own  side  of  the  case  knows  little  of  that.  His  reasons 
may  be  good,  and  no  one  may  have  been  able  to  refute  them ; 
but  if  he  is  equally  unable  to  refute  the  reasons  on  the  oppo- 
site side,  if  he  does  not  so  much  as  know  what  they  are, 
he  has  no  ground  for  professing  either  opinion."  Impa- 
tience with  arguments  against  our  own  views  too  often  sig- 
nifies inability  to  sustain  them,  not  depth  of  conviction. 
The  employment  of  virulent  abuse  is  commonly  due  to  the 
same  weakness.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  call  a  man  a  fool 
or  a  knave  than  to  prove  him  wrong.  We  ought,  in  truth, 
to  be  grateful  to  anyone  who  furnishes  us  with  a  point  of 
view  or  a  fact  which  we  had  not  perceived  before.  "Truth's 
like  a  torch,  the  more  it's  shook  it  shines,"  and  if  we  will 
not  shake  our  own  torch  the  man  who  jogs  our  elbow  ren- 
ders us  a  service,  though  we  may  not  be  gracious  enough 
to  thank  him  for  it. 

Voltaire  did  very  much  to  unseat  authority  in  the  realm 
of  thought  and  to  make  it  easier  for  reason  to  have  free 
play.  He  was  not  one  of  the  martyrs  of  the  great  cause 
of  the  emancipation  of  the  human  spirit.  Indeed,  his  life 
was  comfortable  on  the  whole,  owing  to  his  friendships  and 
his  shrewd  and  prudent  investment  of  his  earnings.  But 
he  was  a  very  courageous  gladiator  in  an  arena  where  many 
have  been  slain  by  wild  beasts.  His  own  conquests  and  the 
sharpness  of  his  weapons  caused  them  to  be  afraid  of  him 
and  to  gnash  their  teeth  at  him,  but  they  did  not  get  near 
enough  to  bite ;  the  reverberation  of  their  roaring,  however, 
can  still  occasionally  be  heard  together  with  the  sound  of 
his  name. 


Morley's  Voltaire  is  the  most  charming  of  the  author's 
works,  except  the  first  volume  of  his  Recollections.  Ham- 
ley's  Voltaire  is  a  very  bright  short  study.  Voltaire  in  His 
Letters,  by  G.  S.  Tallantyre,  gives  the  essence  of  his  copious 
correspondence.  Mill's  golden  book,  On  Liberty,  in  its 
third  chapter,  presents  an  argument  on  this  subject  on  a 
high  level  of  thought.  J.  B.  Bury's  History  of  Freedom 
of  Thought  is  a  short  volume  in  the  Home  University 
Library.  Two  more  elaborate  works  are  A.  W.  Benn's 


VOLTAIRE  27 

History  of  English  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century, 
two  volumes,  and  J.  M.  Robertson's  Short  History  of  Free 
Thought,  Ancient  and  Modern.  Both  are  better  books  than 
the  more  celebrated  work  of  Lecky's  younger  years,  his 
History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Ration- 
alism in  Europe. 


If  all  mankind,  minus  one,  were  of  one  opinion,  and  only 
one  person  were  of  a  contrary  opinion,  mankind  would  be 
no  more  justified  in  silencing  that  one  person  than  he,  if  he 
had  the  power,  would  be  justified  in  silencing  mankind. — 
John  Stuart  Mill. 

I  found  that  riches  in  every  country  were  but  another 
name  for  freedom,  and  that  no  man  is  so  fond  of  liberty 
himself  as  not  to  be  desirous  of  subjecting  the  will  of  some 
individuals  in  society  to  his  own. — Oliver  Goldsmith. 

Liberty  without  obedience  is  confusion,  and  obedience 
without  liberty  is  slavery. — Wttliam  Penn. 

Men  grind  and  grind  in  the  mill  of  a  truism  and  nothing 
comes  out  but  what  was  put  in.  But  the  moment  they  desert 
the  tradition  for  a  spontaneous  thought,  poetry,  wit,  hope, 
virtue,  learning,  anecdote,  all  flock  to  their  aid. — Emerson. 

No  friend  to  truth  and  knowledge  would  lay  any  restraint 
or  discouragement  on  thinking. — Berkeley. 

I  do  not  like  your  great  men  who  beckon  me  to  them, 
call  me  their  begotten,  their  dear  child,  and  their  entrails ; 
and  if  I  happen  to  say  on  any  occasion  "I  beg  leave,  sir,  to 
dissent  a  little  from  you,"  stamp  and  cry,  "The  devil  you 
do,"  and  whistle  to  the  executioner. — Landor  (who  in  an 
Imaginary  Conversation  puts  the  sentence  in  the  mouth  of 
Montaigne) . 

The  art  of  understanding  adversaries  is  an  innovation 
of  the  present  century  [the  nineteenth],  characteristic  of 
the  historic  age.  Formerly  a  man  was  exhausted  by  the 
effort  of  making  out  his  own  meaning,  with  the  help  of  his 
friends.  The  definition  and  comparison  of  systems,  which 
occupies  so  much  of  our  recent  literature,  was  unknown, 
and  everybody  who  was  wrong  was  supposed  to  be  very 
wrong  indeed. — Lord  Acton. 

Talk  as  we  may  about  reason  and  faith,  no  one  really 
begins  to  depreciate  reason  till  he  suspects  strongly  that 
it  means  to  give  judgment  against  him.  Every  one  gets 


28     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

as  much  of  it  on  his  own  side  as  he  possibly  can. — Sir  James 
Fitzjames  Stephen. 

Ecclesiastical  authority,  not  argument,  is  the  supreme 
rule  and  the  appropriate  guide  for  Catholics  in  matters  of 
religion. — Cardinal  Newman. 

I  always  had  an  intense  desire  to  learn  how  to  distin- 
guish truth  from  falsehood,  in  order  to  be  clear  about  my 
actions  and  to  walk  surefootedly  in  this  life. — Descartes. 

Those  opinions  have  the  most  authority  which  are  the 
most  rational ;  and  the  safest  test  of  rationality  is  that  they 
have  commended  themselves  to  independent  enquirers,  who 
themselves  acknowledge  no  law  but  reason,  and  have  not 
been  propagated  by  ignorance,  blind  submission  to  arbitrary 
rules,  and  reluctance  to  believe  unpleasant  truths. — Leslie 
Stephen. 

Liberty  must  be  limited  in  order  to  be  possessed.— 
Burke. 


CHAPTER  III. 


NAPOLEON    AND    EFFICIENCY    IN 
GOVERNMENT. 


THE  fame  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  as  a  soldier  is 
so  great,  and  warfare  formed  so  large  an 
element  in  his  amazing  life,  that  the  world 
is  apt  to  overlook  his  very  remarkable  work 
as  a  statesman  in  non-military  affairs.  It  certainly  is 
no  part  of  the  purpose  of  the  present  study  to  pretend 
that  his  achievements  as  a  commander  were  in  any  way 
secondary  in  importance  to  his  other  activities.  Such  a 
contention  would  not  only  be  false,  but  would  be  especially 
absurd  when  the  application  of  Napoleonic  ideas  by  a 
general  who  has  been  a  pupil  of  the  great  master's  methods 
has  but  lately  carried  France  and  her  Allies  to  victory  in 
the  greatest  war  in  history.  For  Napoleon  was  the  "creatoi1 
of  the  modern  art  of  war,"1  and  Marshal  Foch  has  been  a 
most  assiduous  student  of  his  maxims  and  principles — has, 
indeed,  put  them  into  scientific  .shape  in  his  own  writings 
and  into  ever-memorable  effect  on  the  field  of  battle. 

Nor  need  we,  in  concentrating  attention  on  Napoleon's 
reconstructive  work,  overlook  his  personal  feelings.  Egoism 
blazed  out  of  him.  Perhaps  a  man  with  such  a  career 
as  his  could  hardly  have  avoided  thinking  himself 
a  super-normal  phenomenon — as,  indeed,  he  rather  was. 
But,  even  so,  he  outraged  the  canons  of  good  sense,  to  say 
nothing  of  good  taste,  by  his  blatant  effrontery  and  self- 
assertion.  Principalities  and  powers,  popes  and  peoples, 
must  bend  to  his  will.  He  saw  himself  as  an  improved  and 
more  powerful  reincarnation  of  Alexander,  Caesar  and 
Charlemagne,  and  the  whole  world  was  made  for  him  to 

l  Colonel  Jean  Colin 's  "Napoleon,"  p.  173 — the  last  book  from  the 
hand  of  this  excellent  French  military  historian,  who  was  killed  in 
battle  in  December,  1917. 

29 


30     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

refashion  according  to  his  desire.  The  train  of  his  errors 
sprang  from  this  egoism,  but  many  of  his  great  qualities 
are  also  traceable  to  it.  A  man  with  a  less  complete  belief 
in  himself  could  not  have  carried  through  as  he  did  the 
coups  which  placed  him  in  supreme  power  in  France.  It 
may  be  that  most  vices  are  virtues  in  excess:  Napoleon's 
were,  at  all  events.  The  qualities  by  which  he  forced  his 
ascent,  grown  stupendous,  were  the  cause  of  his  ruin.  On 
seeing  a  workman  fall  from  a  roof  at  St.  Helena,  he  said, 
"Ah!  well,  he  has  not  fallen  so  far  as  I  have  done."  It 
was  not  so  much  a  matter  of  distance  as  of  moral  decline. 

But  when  we  have  said  all  that  need  be  said  about 
Napoleon's  passion  for  war,  his  egoism,  his  ambition,  there 
remains  what  is  now  our  theme — his  statesmanship;  and 
that  is  worth  studying,  both  for  what  it  was  in  itself  and 
for  what  is  to  be  learnt  from  the  circumstances  of  it.  Much 
of  it  has  been  of  enduring  value.  If,  for  example,  we  com- 
pare the  work  of  Napoleon  in  France  and  that  of  Pitt,  his 
distinguished  contemporary  in  Great  Britain,  and  ask  how 
much  of  what  each  did  is  of  any  importance  in  the  life  of 
the  two  countries  to-day,  the  answer  is  all  in  favour  of 
Napoleon.  Pitt  is  an  illustrious  name  in  British  history, 
and  he  was  a  very  great  man,  but  there  is  nothing  in  actual 
operation  by  which  to  remember  him  in  Great  Britain, 
except  the  Income  Tax,  the  Dog  Tax  and  the  Act  of  Union. 
But  how  different  is  the  case  with  Napoleon  may  be  seen 
shortly  stated  in  one  page  of  Bodley's  France:— 

"Before  the  ambitious  conqueror  had  got  the  better  of 
the  ruler  and  the  organiser,  he  had  accomplished  work 
which  at  the  end  of  the  century,  after  revolutions  and  inva- 
sions, after  changes  of  dynasty  and  misgovernment  of  every 
form,  lasts  as  the  solid  foundation  and  framework  of  French 
society.  The  whole  centralised  administration  of  France, 
which  in  its  stability  has  survived  every  political  crisis,  was 
the  creation  of  Napoleon  and  the  keystone  of  his  fabric. 
It  was  he  who  organised  the  existing  administrative  divi- 
sions of  the  departments,  with  the  officials  supervising  them 
and  the  local  assemblies  attached  to  them.  The  relations 
of  church  and  state  are  still  regulated  by  his  Concordat.1 
The  University,  which  remains  the  basis  of  public  educa- 
tion, was  his  foundation.  The  Civil  Code,  the  Penal  Code, 

i  Mr.  Bodley,  of  course,  wrote  this  passage  before  1906. 


NAPOLEON  31 

the  Conseil  d'Etat,  the  Judicial  System,  the  Fiscal  System 
—in  fine,  every  institution  which  a  law-abiding  Frenchman 
respects,  from  the  Legion  of  Honour  to  the  Bank  of  France 
and  the  Comedie  Franchise,  was  either  formed  or  reorga- 
nised by  Napoleon.  No  doubt  the  revolutionary  assemblies 
sometimes  paused  in  their  work  of  demolition  to  essay  a 
constructive  project.  The  Constituent  Assembly  created 
the  departments ;  the  Directory  remodelled  the  Institute ; 
and  Condorcet  might  have  carried  out  his  schemes  of  educa- 
tion had  not  his  colleagues  of  the  Convention  driven  him 
into  suicide  to  escape  the  guillotine.  But  when  Bonaparte 
arrived  in  France  in  1799  from  the  camp  and  the  battlefield, 
he  found  that  the  result  of  the  Revolution,  for  ten  years 
in  the  hands  of  jurists,  rhetoricians  and  theorists,  was  chaos. 
It  was  illumined  with  a  few  streaks  of  light  which  dis- 
played the  fragmentary  beginnings  of  well-conceived 
designs.  It  was  none  the  less  a  chaos,  needing  the  inspira- 
tion of  a  creator  to  evolve  order  from  it,  and  the  authority 
of  a  master  of  men  to  utilise  the  misapplied  intellects  of 
that  erratic  epoch. 

"The  institutions  of  the  Napoleonic  establishment  sur- 
vive, not  as  historical  monuments,  but  as  the  working 
machinery  which  has  regulated  the  existence  of  a  great 
people  throughout  the  nineteenth  century.  Their  minute 
examination  shows  that  they  operate  satisfactorily.  M. 
Taine  and  other  critics  of  the  Napoleonic  reorganisation 
say  it  was  imperfect,  and  ascribe  to  it  many  of  the  ills 
from  which  France  has  suffered.  It  was  not  perfect;  no 
human  work  is.  Yet  admirably  suited  to  the  French  tem- 
perament is  the  organisation  which,  created  in  less  than 
a  decade  amid  the  alarms  of  war,  has  not  only  performed 
its  functions  for  three  generations,  but  stands  erect  as  the 
framework  to  keep  French  society  together  amid  the  fever 
of  insurrection  or  the  more  lingering  disorder  of  parlia- 
mentary anarchy,  just  as  though  it  owed  its  stability  to  the 
growth  of  ages."1 

Here,  then,  is  something  directly  relevant  to  our  sub- 
ject— an  efficient  government  established  by  a  master  mind 
on  the  ruins  of  an  ancient  system  which  had  been  destroyed 
by  revolution.  We  may  as  well  pause  on  the  threshold  and 
ask  how  it  was  that  Napoleon  secured  the  opportunity  of 

t  "France,"  by  J.  E-  (,'.  Bodley,  pp.  88-9. 


32     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

accomplishing  this  work.  No  series  of  events  in  modern 
history  is  more  deserving  of  close  study  in  the  present  age. 
We  have  been  living  while  great  revolutions  have  been  in 
progress  in  Russia,  Germany,  and  Austria-Hungary.  The 
causes  of  them  are  well  known.  Somehow,  in  some  form, 
order  must  emerge  out  of  the  turmoil  in  those  countries, 
for  man  cannot  do  his  work  in  the  world  without  order. 
Unless  order  can  be  maintained  by  democratic  means,  dic- 
tatorial methods  will  certainly  be  applied ;  for  a  people  who 
retain  their  sanity  will  be  convinced  that  firm  government 
by  a  dictator  is  preferable  to  continual  disturbance.  His- 
tory does  not  repeat  itself,  and  historical  analogies  are  apt 
to  be  misleading;  but  still  it  is  true  that  like  conditions 
will  produce  like  results. 

It  is  a  very  striking  fact  that  years  before  Napoleon 
emerged  out  of  obscurity  the  advent  of  some  such  man  was 
accurately  foretold  by  Edmund  Burke.  There  surely  is  not 
in  political  literature  a  more  prescient  passage  than  that 
wherein  this  searching  student  of  public  affairs — whose 
style  keeps  his  writings  fresh  when  the  events  about 
which  they  were  written  are  more  than  a  century  old- 
prophesied  that  some  such  man  would  arise  in  France  and 
do  precisely  what  Napoleon  did.  These  words  were  written 
in  1790,  almost  at  the  beginning  of  the  French  Revolution, 
Burke  observed  the  decay  of  stable  government,  and  pointed 
to  what  he  believed  would  be  the  inevitable  outcome  :— 

"In  the  weakness  of  one  kind  of  authority,  and  in  the 
fluctuation  of  all,  the  officers  of  an  army  will  remain  for 
some  time  mutinous  and  full  of  faction,  until  some  popular 
general,  who  understands  the  art  of  conciliating  the  soldiery, 
and  who  possesses  the  true  spirit  of  command,  shall  draw 
the  eyes  of  all  men  upon  himself.  Armies  will  obey  him 
on  his  personal  account.  There  is  no  other  way  of  securing 
military  obedience  in  this  state  of  things.  But  the  moment 
in  which  that  event  shall  happen,  the  person  who  really 
commands  the  army  is  your  master;  the  master  (that  is 
little)  of  your  king,  the  master  of  your  assembly,  the 
master  of  your  whole  republic."1 

Every  word  of  that  passage  came  true,  though  France 
had  to  endure  much  suffering  in  the  process  of  realising 

i  Burke 's   "Keflections   on   the  French   Eevolution,"   original   edit., 
.   317. 


NAPOLEON  33 

it.  But  ten  years  after  Burke's  book  was  published,  the 
last  of  the  successive  revolutionary  governments  was  over- 
thrown, and  Napoleon  Bonaparte  became  First  Consul  of 
the  First  Republic  (December,  1799).  The  whole  of  the 
evidence  we  have  shows  that  France  welcomed  the  change 
and  was  prepared  to  trust  this  brilliant  young  soldier  to 
the  fullest  degree.  Pitt  might  declaim  against  "this  last 
adventurer  in  the  lottery  of  revolutions/'  and  describe  the 
final  outcome  of  Jacobinism  as  "at  once  the  child  and  the 
champion  of  all  its  atrocities  and  horrors;"  but  observers 
on  the  spot  were  quick  to  discern  that  the  country  looked 
to  Bonaparte  to  restore  the  order,  tranquillity  and  security 
which  had  so  long  been  absent  from  the  life  of  France. 
"All  previous  revolutions,"  the  Prussian  ambassador  wrote 
to  Berlin,  "inspired  distrust  and  fear.  This  one,  on  the 
contrary,  I  myself  can  testify,  has  refreshed  the  people's 
spirits  and  kindled  the  brightest  hopes." 

What  Bonaparte  gave  to  France  during  the  Consulate 
was  what  she  needed  most — good,  firm,  efficient  govern- 
ment. There  are  times  when  people  need  to  have  it  im- 
pressed upon  them  that  that  is  the  first  requirement  of 
civilisation,  and  that  everything  else  is  secondary  to  it. 
Hence  it  is  that  a  nation  which  has  thrown  everything  into 
the  melting  pot  and  failed  to  construct  a  theoretically  per- 
fect system,  will  prefer  a  despotism  to  disorder.  Bona- 
parte had  grown  up  amidst  talk  about  the  rights  of  man, 
popular  government,  liberal  constitutions,  and  freedom  all 
round.  He  observed  none  of  these  things  when  he  had 
the  power.  He  shackled  the  press,  censored  the  theatre, 
and  cunningly  provided  for  the  construction  of  a  constitu- 
tion which  left  complete  control  in  his  own  hands.  When 
the  Consular  constitution  was  first  proclaimed,  a  woman 
who  heard  it  read  out  confessed  to  a  man  next  to  her  that 
she  had  not  understood  a  word  of  it.  He  replied  that  he 
understood  it  perfectly.  "What  does  it  mean  then?"  "It 
means — Bonaparte,"  answered  the  man.  True,  it  meant 
Bonaparte ;  nothing  less  and  very  little  more.  But  France, 
having  experienced  Bonaparte's  rule,  and  comparing  its 
efficiency  with  the  confusion  of  ten  years  of  revolution,  voted 
by  enormous  majorities  at  plebiscites  for  making  him,  first, 
Consul  for  life  (1800),  and  next,  Emperor  (1804). 

France  made  a  mistake  in  surrendering  herself  so  com- 
pletely, and  Napoleon  allowed  his  ambition  to  carry  him  too 


34     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

far  in  aiming  at  a  dynasty;  but  his  immense  popularity 
had  been  earned  by  invaluable  service.  The  impartial  tes- 
timony of  two  eminent  English  writers  may  be  allowed  to 
clinch  this  point: — 

1.  "He  was  a  great  administrator.    He  controlled  every 
wheel  and  spring,  large  or  small,  of  his  vast  machinery  of 
government.     It  was,  as  it  were,  his  plaything.     He  was 
his  own  War  Office,  his  own  Foreign  Office,  his  own  Admi- 
ralty, his  own  Ministry  of  every  kind.  .  .  .  His  financial  man- 
agement, by  which  he  sustained  a  vast  empire  with  power 
and  splendour,  but  with  rigid  economy  and  without  a  debt, 
is  a  marvel  and  a  mystery.       In  all  the  offices  of  state  he 
knew  everything,  guided  everything,  inspired  everything. 
He  aptly  enough  compared  his  mind  to  a  cupboard  of  pigeon 
holes ;  to  deal  with  any  subject  he  opened  the  pigeon-hole 
relating  to  it  and  closed  the  others;  when  he  wished  to 
sleep    he   closed   them    all.       Moreover,    his    inexhaustible 
memory  made  him  familiar  with  all  the  men  and  all  the 
details  as  with  all  the  machinery  of  government.  ...  In  the 
first  period  of  his  Consulate  he  was  an  almost  ideal  ruler. 
He  was  firm,  sagacious,  far-seeing,  energetic,  just.       He 
was,  moreover,  what  is  of  not  less  importance,  ready  and 
anxious  to  learn.     He  was,  indeed,  conscious  of  extreme 
ignorance  on  the  civil  side  of  his  administration.     But  he 
was  never  ashamed  to  ask  the  meaning  of  the  simplest 
word,  and  he  never  asked  twice."1 

2.  "We  may  call  the  government  of  the  Consulate  and 
the  Empire  a  tyranny  if  we  please,  but,  compared  with  the 
government  which  preceded  it,  it  was  a  reign  of  freedom. 
It  bridled  the  press,  stamped  out  political  debate,  shook 
itself  free  from  constitutional  checks,  and  here  and  there, 
when  political  interests  were  involved,  harshly  interfered 
with  the  course  of  justice  and  the  freedom  of  the  -subject. 
But  it  substituted  a  regular,  scientific,  civilised  administra- 
tion for  a  condition  of  affairs  which  bordered  upon  anarchy. 
It  cleared  the  air  of  spite  and  suspicion,  and  made  life  safe 
and  easy  for  the  ordinary  householder  who  was  content  lo 
let  the  great  world  of  politics  go  its  own  way."2 

The  maintenance  of  public  confidence,  security,  order — 
these  were  the  aims  of  Napoleon's  administration,  and  they 

i  Lord  Rosebery,   "Napoleon,  the  Last  Phase/'  pp.   229  and  234. 
2H.   A.   L.  Fisher,   < '  Bonapartism, »   p.   29: 


NAPOLEON  35 

were  promoted  by  laws  and  policies  which  were  vigorously 
administered.  His  settlement  with  the  church — the  Con- 
cordats— was  made  not  because  he  had  any  fondness  for 
it  as  an  institution,  but  because  he  recognised  that  as  the 
majority  of  the  French  were  Catholic  it  was  expedient  to 
enlist  the  bishops  and  priests  in  support  of  his  government. 
The  church  had  been  treated  with  extreme  harshness  dur- 
ing the  Revolution.  Napoleon  had  no  intention  of  allowing 
it  to  dominate  the  state,  but,  by  making  the  state  its  pay- 
master, he  would  establish  a  claim  to  its  grateful  service, 
whilst  by  retaining  in  his  own  hands  the  nomination  of 
bishops  he  ensured  that  his  purposes  would  be  promoted. 
And,  in  fact,  the  docility  of  the  clergy  during  the  Empire 
in  upholding  the  conscription  from  the  altar  went  far  to 
keep  up  Napoleon's  armies.  The  institution  of  the  legal 
codes  was  due  principally  to  his  driving  force.  The  details 
were  hammered  out  by  expert  committees,  but  he  presided 
over  a  large  number  of  the  meetings  of  the  Council  of  State 
at  which  the  first  drafts  were  finally  revised  and  adopted 
as  parts  of  the  Code  Napoleon.  On  these  occasions  his 
criticism  was  invariably  searching,  going  to  the  very  root 
of  the  matter  under  debate.  Yet  he  was  careful  not  to 
spoil  careful  work  by  dogmatically  enforcing  his  own  autho- 
rity. He  frankly  said  at  one  of  the  meetings,  "In  these 
discussions  I  have  sometimes  said  things  which  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  later  I  have  found  were  all  wrong.  I  have  no 
wish  to  pass  for  being  worth  more  than  I  am."1 

An  energy  scarcely  less  than  that  infused  into  raising 
armies  and  making  war  was  applied  by  Napoleon  to  stimu- 
lating industry  and  commerce  and  improving  education. 
He  chose  the  eminent  chemist  Chaptal  to  be  Minister  of 
the  Interior  because  he  recognised  the  necessity  of  apply- 
ing the  best  science  of  the  day  to  industry,  and  this  able 
man,  backed  up  by  Napoleon  in  all  his  proposals,  promoted 
fresh  industries,  rewarded  inventors,  introduced  skilled 
workmen  from  abroad — principally  from  England — and 
appointed  engineers  to  study  new  machinery  and  arrange 
for  its  adoption  by  France.  Roads  and  canals  were  built 
to  facilitate  trade.  The  finances  of  France  were  completely 
overhauled,  and  standards  of  honesty  and  efficiency  were 
enforced  in  the  taxation  and  spending  departments,  such  as 
it  is  safe  to  say  had  never  existed  in  the  country  before. 

1  Thibaudeau,  "Bonaparte  and  the  Consulate/'  English  edit.,  p.  170. 


36     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

The  very  striking  result  of  this  policy  was  that  though 
France  was  in  a  chronic  condition  of  insolvency  during 
the  years  of  revolution,  yet  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars,  while  Great  Britain  had  a  national  debt 
of  £861,000,000,  the  beaten  nation  was  not  encumbered  with 
any  debt  incurred  during  the  Consulate  and  Empire.1  True, 
the  Napoleonic  policy  of  making  war  "pay  for  itself" — that 
is,  of  making  those  countries  in  which  French  armies  fought 
sustain  them — cheapened  campaiging ;  but  the  fact  remains 
that  Napoleon's  administration  was  consistently  well- 
managed,  capable,  thorough,  and  economically  prudent. 

Especially  was  good  order  maintained.  Brigandage, 
which  had  become  almost  a  national  industry  during  the 
revolutionary  years,  disappeared  from  the  country  districts. 
Life  again  ran  on  quiet,  even  lines.  The  man  who  sowed 
had  not  to  fear  that  some  robber  would  reap.  The  traveller 
had  no  longer  reason  to  dread  that  assassins  lay  in  wait  in 
every  coppice.  In  the  period  when  doctrinaires  argued 
about  rights  and  liberties,  the  right  to  live  in  security  and 
the  liberty  of  ordinary  decent  citizenship  had  almost  dis- 
appeared. Revolutionaries  of  various  patterns  "had  made 
a  divinity  of  the  word  but  proscribed  the  thing."  And  that, 
as  Vandal  points  out,  "is  why  the  French  hailed  Napoleon 
as  a  liberator,  and  exchanged  so  readily  the  oppression  of 
miserable  despots  for  a  high  and  impartial  tyranny."  Fur- 
ther, strong,  firm  rule  put  an  end  to  the  frantic  mob  violence 
which  since  1789  had  placed  Paris  and  the  large  provincial 
towns  under  a  continual  menace.  In  short,  ten  years  of  very 
bad  government  had  taught  France  that  it  was  better  to 
submit  to  a  man  of  genius  who  could  and  would  give  her 
tranquillity  within  her  borders,  though  he  was  a  tyrant, 
than  to  endure  a  chaos  in  which  one  faction  after  another 
fought  for  supremacy  and  no  faction  was  respectably  com- 
petent to  rule. 

If  it  seem  strange  that  a  people  who  had  so  strongly 
indoctrinated  themselves  with  the  "principles  of  1789," 
should  accept  gladly  the  kind  of  government  which  Napo- 
leon gave  to  them,  the  reason  may  be  found  in  their  own 
bitter  experience.  For  however  much  liberal  institutions 

i  See  Pariset,  in  "Cambridge  Modern  History,"  IX.,  p.  119. 

"It  was  Napoleon's  amiable  reflection  after  his  first  abdication  that 
he  had  at  least  planted  this  'poisoned  dart'  in  the  vitals  of  England." — 
Smart,  "Economic  Annals  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,"  p.  433. 


NAPOLEON  37 

may  be  desired,  if  those  who  essay  to  realise  them  do  not 
at  the  same  time  give  order  and  security,  life  under  them 
may  easily  be  less  endurable  than  under  a  downright  des- 
potism. Noble  principles  butter  no  bread,  they  grease  no 
wheels.  Nor,  unfortunately,  is  there  any  guarantee  that 
those  persons  who  espouse  them  will  be  honourable  or  cap- 
able. Many  of  those  who  seized  power  during  the  French 
Revolution  were,  in  fact,  base  men ;  many  more  were  simply 
wind-swollen  stupid  men.  But  the  point  is  that  always 
the  greatest  interest  of  the  great  bulk  of  the  people  in  a 
community  is  order.  Without  order  agriculture  will  decay, 
commerce  will  be  paralysed,  industry  will  languish,  life  itself 
will  be  insecure.  It  is  never  the  wish  of  the  majority  of 
people  that  these  things  should  occur.  When  they  do  occur 
there  is  lessened  production;  consequently  there  is  less  to 
consume,  and  that  means  poverty  all  round. 

So  true  is  all  this  that  it  is  safe  to  say  that  rarely  has 
a  revolution  been  accomplished  anywhere  with  the  sanction 
and  support  of  the  majority  of  the  people.  Revolutions 
have  generally  been  the  work  of  comparatively  .small  fac- 
tions, which,  in  circumstances  favourable  to  them,  have 
seized  power,  commanded  military  force,  and  for  a  time 
dictated  to  the  community  at  large;  and,  because  they 
never  represented  the  majority,  reaction  has  followed  at 
some  time,  often  with  the  consequence  that  the  subsequent 
government  was  more  tyrannical  than  the  one  which  the 
revolution  destroyed.  The  revolution  which  overturned 
the  English  throne  and  culminated  in  the  execution  of 
Charles  I.  in  1649  was  not  the  work  of  the  nation.  It  was 
the  work  of  Cromwell's  army,  which  was  resolved  to  wreak 
vengeance  on  its  arch  enemy..  Cromwell  himself  knew  that, 
and  it  is  well  understood  that  he  would  have  restrained 
the  fanatical  zeal  of  the  army  had  it  been  possible  to  with- 
stand its  resolve  to  have  the  life  of  the  "man  of  blood." 
A  revolution  created  by  the  army  had  to  be  upheld  by  the 
army,  and  during  the  eleven  years  between  the  execution 
of  Charles  I.  and  the  restoration  of  his  son  there  was 
nothing  but  despotic  rule  in  England.  It  is  beside  the 
point  that  it  was  for  the  most  part  good  government,  for 
during  seven  years  the  ruler  was  Oliver  Cromwell,  a  man 
of  sovereign  genius.  What  is  certain  is  that  it  was  not 
government  by  the  will  of  the  people.  And  as  soon  as 
Cromwell  died  the  Commonwealth  tottered,  collapsed,  and 


38     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

was  swept  away  in  the  torrent  of  enthusiasm  which  carried 
Charles  II.  to  the  throne. 

At  the  French  Revolution  the  Jacobin  party,  whose 
members  were  the  master  spirits  of  a  decade  of  disturb- 
ance, were  really  a  very  small  fraction  of  the  French  nation. 
But  they  were  well  organised;  they  understood  the  arts  of 
electioneering,  and  by  manipulating  the  franchise,  com- 
bined with  ruthless  terrorism,  they  forced  their  will  upon 
the  whole  people.  But  we  need  not  dwell  upon  that  classic 
instance:  we  have  a  contemporary  one  of  great  interest. 
The  Russian  Revolution  which  destroyed  the  Tzardom  did 
not  begin  as  a  social  revolution.  It  began  as  an  army 
mutiny.  Thereupon  revolutionists  secured  control  of  the 
disorganised  army,  by  its  means  attained  political  power, 
and,  being  themselves  a  minority,  exercised  tyrannical 
authority  over  the  whole  of  Russia.  Murder,  plunder,  ter- 
rorism, the  gagging  of  the  press,  corruption,  revenge, 
massacre,  and  the  utter  perversion  of  justice  have  been 
the  characteristics  of  Bolshevik  rule.  The  elements  in  the 
nation  which  detested  these  evils  were  held  down  by  Red 
Guards.  No  appeal  was  made  to  the  nation  at  large  to 
express  its  will.  A  truculent  minority  ruled  by  force, 
exercised  in  its  most  repulsive  forms. 

The  end  of  such  unrighteous  proceedings  has  been  the 
same  wherever  they  have  been  manifested.  Faction  can 
rule  as  long  as  its  armed  support  is  faithful  to  it,  but  no 
longer.  Other  factions  may  succeed  in  usurping  authority 
for  awhile,  but  no  faction  can  permanently  govern  a  nation. 
If  means  are  not  found  for  enabling  the  people  as  a  whole 
to  find  a  form  of  government  which  satisfies  the  majority 
of  them,  sooner  or  later  the  whole  of  the  factions  adverse 
to  the  ruling  faction  will  combine  with  the  mass  of  the 
people,  who  hate  all  factions  alike,  in  support  of  some 
generally-trusted  man  who  will  be  strong  enough  to  give 
peace,  .security,  and  contentment.  He  may  rule  tyranni- 
cally in  many  respects,  but  if  he  rule  well  on  the  whole  his 
faults  will  be  forgiven,  and  gratitude  for  the  order  and 
security  which  he  gives  will  overcome  every  other  conside- 
ration. 

What  do  we  mean  by  efficient  government?  It  may 
be  taken  to  mean  government  which  uses  the  collective 
power  to  provide  for  the  whole  body  of  the  people — first, 
security  and  order ;  secondly,  the  performance  of  certain 


NAPOLEON  39 

functions  which  must  or  can  be  most  advantageously  per- 
formed by  the  state ;  thirdly,  the  freest  possible  scope  for 
the  exercise  by  the  individual  of  his  capabilities  and  the 
pursuit  of  his  own  welfare,  interests  and  pleasures.  How 
much  the  state  shall  undertake  to  do  is  less  a  matter  of 
principle  than  of  expediency.  But  those  functions  which 
it  does  undertake  an  efficient  government  will  discharge  at 
the  lowest  cost  and  with  the  largest  advantage. 

Judged  by  these  standards,  Napoleon's  government  was 
excellent;  and  if  he  had  not  been  so  much  a  soldier  that 
warfare  occupied  the  larger  part  of  his  energies,  it  is  very 
likely  that  he  would  have  been  the  most  capable  statesman 
who  ever  lived.  He  did  not  take  a  narrow  view  of  the 
scope  of  government.  The  arts  were  embraced  within  the 
purview  of  his  policy,  for  he  recognised  that  culture  is  a 
vital  interest  of  a  civilised  community,  and  should  be 
encouraged  by  the  ruler.  To  those  who  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  the  rather  shabby  and  humdrum  life  of  modern 
democratic  countries,  which  treat  the  arts  as  exotics  need- 
ing to  apologise  for  their  existence,  the  vigour  which 
NapoleOn  inculcated  in  these  matters  seems  exemplary. 

Napoleon  had  no  reasoned  philosophy  of  government, 
and  on  some  aspects  of  it  his  ideas  were  extremely  crude. 
In  his  early  years  he  had  read  with  avidity  all  kinds  of 
books,  and  his  attention  is  known  to  have  been  arrested 
by  remarks  in  Plutarch  or  other  favourite  authors  on  ques- 
tions of  law,  administration,  the  exercise  of  power,  and  so 
forth.  But  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  he  had  ever 
studied  such  problems  systematically.  His  singular  shrewd- 
ness and  swiftness  in  penetrating  to  the  heart  of  any  ques- 
tion that  came  up  for  discussion  in  his  presence  was,  how- 
ever, exhibited  in  these,  as  in  all  other  things ;  ,so  that  his 
letters  and  the  records  of  his  sayings  made  by  writers  of 
memoirs  teem  with  comments  which  reveal  his  mind.  He 
was  never  regardless  of  public  opinion,  which,  he  said,  "is 
the  thermometer  which  a  ruler  must  constantly  consult." 
Yet  he  had  seen  so  much  of  popular  passion  that  he  mis- 
trusted mankind  in  the  mass,  considered  them  capricious, 
and  held  that  they  must  be  kept  in  tight  restraint.  "In 
the  last  analysis  it  is  necessary  to  govern  as  a  soldier;  you 
control  a  horse  only  with  the  bridle  and  the  spur."  Yet 
he  fully  recognised  that  moral  forces  are  in  the  long  run 
superior  to  physical  forces  in  the  affairs  of  mankind.  His 


40     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

mind  frequently  recurred  to  this  theme.  "In  all  civilised 
countries,"  he  said,  "force  gives  way  to  civil  qualities. 
Bayonets  are  lowered  before  the  priest  who  speaks  in  the 
name  of  heaven  and  before  the  man  who  commands  atten- 
tion by  his  knowledge."  And  again :  "Force  is  always  force, 
and  enthusiasm  is  nothing  more  than  enthusiasm ;  but  per- 
suasion endures  and  is  engraved  in  the  heart."  Once  more : 
"Intelligence  has  rights  which  come  before  those  of  force. 
Indeed,  force  itself  is  nothing  without  intelligence."  "The 
Idea,"  he  said  on  one  occasion,  "has  done  more  damage 
than  the  Deed.  It  is  the  capital  foe  of  tyrants." 

These  sayings,  and  many  more  which  could  be  quoted, 
are  not  consistent  with  much  that  Napoleon  did,  nor  were 
his  numerous  obiter  dicta  always  consistent  with  them- 
selves. He  often  spoke  with  a  startling  perception  of  the 
essential  truth  of  things,  because  his  mind  was  accustomed 
to  fly,  as  the  lightning  strikes  the  steel  rod,  swiftly  to  the 
mark.  His  art  of  government,  in  which  he  was  singularly 
successful,  was  guided  by  the  same  rapid,  instinctive  divi- 
nation of  the  right  thing  to  do  at  the  moment  to  achieve 
the  best  results,  as  guided  him  in  command  at  such  won- 
derful battles  as  Marengo,  Ulm,  Wagram  and  Austerlitz. 
As  a  practical  man  of  affairs  he  was  incomparable,  and  a 
more  untiring  worker  has  never  lived. 

Fascinating  as  the  military  career  of  Napoleon  is,  and 
wonderful  as  was  the  exhibition  of  his  genius  in  that  field, 
it  is  questionable  whether  his  truest  greatness  was  not  in 
his  civil  administration.  He  performed  a  most  masterly 
task  in  reorganising  France  after  the  unfortunate  period 
of  anarchy,  rascality  and  wild  wandering  after  ideals  that 
would  not  realise  themselves.  True  to  his  power  of  directly 
seizing  the  essential,  he  insisted  on  order  as  the  fundamen- 
tal principle  of  civil  government,  without  which  nothing 
worth  having  is  attainable.  Every  country  which,  after 
shattering  its  social  system,  fails  to  set  up  another  one 
which  will  work  to  the  general  satisfaction,  will  need  its 
Napoleon,  and  happy  will  she  be  if  she  finds  him  soon. 
But  she  will  have  cause  for  grievous  lamentation  if  she  does 
not  succeed  in  keeping  him  to  that  task.  So  much  of  the 
good  Napoleon  did  for  France  was  negatived  by  the  waste- 
ful adventures  of  war.  When,  after  the  final  downfall  of 
Waterloo,  and  the  occupation  of  Paris  by  the  allies,  Metter- 
nich  walked  through  the  splendid  galleries  of  St.  Cloud 


NAPOLEON  ,  41 

with  Marshal  Blucher,  the  old  soldier  said,  "That  man  must 
be  a  regular  fool  to  have  all  this  and  go  running  after 
Moscow."  He  burnt  away  on  the  altar  of  Bellona  more  than 
the  "all  this"  of  St.  Cloud.  He  dissipated  in  smoke  much 
of  the  value  of  his  reconstructive  work. 


Fisher's  Napoleon  in  the  Home  University  Library  is 
the  best  short  study  in  English.  J.  Holland  Rose,  The 
Personality  of  Napoleon,  eight  lectures,  is  a  well-balanced 
review.  The  best  biographies  in  English  are  Fournier's,  an 
Austrian  work,  translated,  two  volumes,  and  Holland 
Rose's. 


Order  means  the  preservation  of  peace  by  the  cessation 
of  private  violence.  Order  is  said  to  exist  where  the  people 
of  the  country  have,  as  a  general  rule,  ceased  to  prosecute 
their  quarrels  by  private  force,  and  acquired  the  habit  of 
referring  the  decision  of  their  disputes  and  the  redress  of 
their  injuries  to  the  public  authorities. — John  Stuart  Mill. 

Much  more  is  dependent  on  government  than  at  first 
sight  appears.  Its  functions  do  not  merely  include  peace 
and  war,  the  maintenance  of  justice  and  the  regulation  of 
police;  but  they  relate  to  material  well-being  of  all  kinds. 
And,  what  is  perhaps  of  even  greater  importance,  the 
advancement  of  art,  science  and  literature  depends  much 
more  than  is  generally  imagined  upon  the  functions  of 
government  being  well  defined,  well  directed,  and  judi- 
ciously exercised. — Sir  Arthur  Helps. 

Anarchy  always  conduces  to  absolute  power. — Napoleon. 

Progress  can  only  arise  out  of  the  development  of  order. 
— Comte. 

Liberty  is  the  perfection  of  civil  society,  but  still  autho- 
rity must  be  acknowledged  essential  to  its  very  existence; 
and  in  those  contests  which  so  often  take  place  between  the 
one  and  the  other,  the  latter  may,  on  that  account,  challenge 
the  preference. — David  Hume. 

The  great  ideas  and  causes  which  were  advanced  by 
the  career  of  Napoleon  owed  neither  their  nature  nor  their 
existence  to  his  selfish  ambition.  They  did  not,  however, 
owe  them  to  any  non-human  cause;  to  any  operation  of 
ideas  otherwise  than  in  the  minds  of  men.  They  came  into 
existence  through  the  working  of  innumerable  minds  to- 


42     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

wards  objective  ends  by  the  inherent  logic  of  social  growth, 
with  various  degrees  of  moral  insight,  and  they  were  pro- 
moted by  Napoleon's  career  in  virtue  of  the  common  char- 
acter which  united  his  aims,  in  so  far  as  they  had  a  reason- 
able side,  with  the  movement  shaped  by  the  ideal  forces  of 
the  age. — Bernard  Bosanquet. 

Napoleon,  as  the  heir  of  the  Revolution,  tried  to  realise 
the  monstrous  plan  of  a  world  monarchy,  which  he,  almost 
cynically,  dubbed  a  federated  system.  His  ideal  was  that 
of  a  France  surrounded  by  her  satellite  states.  At  first 
fortune  favoured  the  gigantic  adventure,  but  it  was  wrecked 
at  last  on  the  rock  of  its  own  unreason. — Treitschke. 

As  for  discussions  about  any  one  ideal  form  of  govern- 
ment, they  are  simply  idle.  The  ideal  form  of  government 
is  no  government  at  all.  The  existence  of  government  in 
any  .shape  is  a  sign  of  man's  imperfection. — Edward  A. 
Freeman. 

In  early  times  the  quantity  of  government  is  much  more 
important  than  its  quality.  What  you  want  is  a  compre- 
hensive rule  binding  men  together,  making  them  do  much 
the  same  things,  telling  them  what  to  expect  of  each  other, 
fashioning  them  alike  and  keeping  them  so.'  What  this 
rule  is  does  not  matter  so  much.  A  good  rule  is  better 
than  a  bad  one,  but  any  rule  is  better  than  none;  while, 
for  reasons  which  a  jurist  will  appreciate,  none  can  be  very 
good." — Walter  Bagehot. 

Sovereignty  is  the  daily  operative  power  of  framing  and 
giving  efficacy  to  laws.  It  is  the  originative,  directive, 
governing  power.  It  lives ;  it  plans ;  it  executes.  It  is  the 
organic  organisation  of  the  state,  of  its  law  and  policy, 
and  the  sovereign  power  is  the  highest  originative  organ 
of  the  state.  It  is  none  the  less  sovereign  because  it  must 
be  observant  of  the  preferences  of  those  whom  it  governs. 
The  obedience  of  the  subject  has  always  limited  the  power 
of  the  sovereign. — Woodrow  Wilson. 

The  difference  between  the  kinds  or  forms  of  common- 
wealth consisteth  not  in  a  difference  between  their  powers, 
but  in  a  difference  between  their  aptitudes  to  produce  the 
peace  and  security  of  the  people,  which  is  their  end.— 
Hobbes. 

Solon,  being  asked  what  city  he  thought  best  governed, 
answered,  That  city  where  such  as  receive  no  wrong  do  as 
earnestly  defend  wrong  offered  to  others  as  the  very  wrong 
and  injury  had  been  done  unto  themselves. — Plutarch. 


METTERNICH. 


[Page  44 


CHAPTER  IV. 


METTERNICH   AND    ABSOLUTISM. 


PRINCE  METTERNICH  was  for  half  a  century  one 
of  the  principal  figures  in  the  politics  of 
Europe,  and  for  over  thirty  years  he  prob- 
ably exercised  more  influence  in  international 
affairs  than  •  any  statesman  among  his  contemporaries. 
First  as  Austrian  Ambassador,  later  as  Foreign  Min- 
ister of  the  Austro-Hungarian  Empire,  and  lastly  as 
Chancellor,  he  acquired  an  exceptionally  large  experience 
of  diplomacy;  he  had  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
monarchs  and  ministers  who  directed  the  policies  of  states 
in  this  period;  and  during  the  whole  of  his  long  official 
career  he  held  with  undeviating  tenacity  to  a  perfectly  rigid 
doctrine  of  government.  "Metternichian"  is  as  well  estab- 
lished a  word  in  politics  as  "Machiavellian,"  and  what  the 
former  signifies  is  far  more  fairly  attributable  to  the  Aus- 
trian statesman  than  the  common  meaning  of  the  latter  is 
to  the  Florentine  philosopher. 

Born  to  great  wealth  and  the  bearer  of  a  name  of  high 
repute  in  Austria,  Metternich  grew  to  maturity  amidst  the 
crash  of  the  French  Revolution.  His  tutor  had  been  an 
intimate  friend  of  Robespierre.  He  entered  the  diplomatic 
service  after  completing  his  studies  at  the  University  of 
Strasburg,  and  he  married  the  grand-daughter  and  heiress 
of  crotchety  old  Kaunitz,  who  had  been  the  Chancellor  and' 
much-indulged  friend  of  the  Empress  Maria  Theresa.  He 
possessed  so  many  estates  that  there  were  some  which  he 
never  had  time  even  to  visit.  He  mentions  in  his  diary  that, 
being  told  that  a  castle  belonging  to  him  overlooked  an 
especially  magnificent  landscape,  he  determined  to  go  and 
look  at  it.  He  arrived  late  at  night.  A  courier  followed  him 
with  important  official  papers,  which  necessitated  his  leaving 
very  early  on  the  following  morning;  so  he  did  not  see  the 

45 


46     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

view,  and  could  not  find  time  to  visit  the  place  on  another 
occasion.  The  list  of  his  honours  and  distinctions  occupies 
sixteen  large  pages  in  the  French  edition  of  his  Memoirs, 
and  he  had  received  more  decorations  than  any  human  chest 
could  have  displayed  all  at  once  unless  it  had  the  spacial 
dimensions  of  Pantagruel's,  or  of  an  advertisement  hoard- 
ing. 

In  private  life  Metternich  was  one  of  the  most  charming 
of  men.  His  portraits  show  a  face  which  might  almost  be 
called  beautiful,  well-modelled  features,  large  eyes  full  of 
liveliness,  a  sensitive  mouth;  alertness  is  written  all  over 
it.  His  manners  were  exquisitely  cultivated;  his  taste  in 
art  was  fine;  he  was  well  read;  and  in  conversation  he 
was  fascinating.  This  personal  charm  is  certified  by  innu- 
merable witnesses.  An  English  woman  of  much  experi- 
ence of  the  world,  Frances,  Lady  Shelley,  who  met  him  at 
Vienna  in  1817,  noted  in  her  diary  pleasing  impressions  of 
his  "elegant  address,  courtly  manners  and  deep  politeness, 
joined  to  a  fine  person."  "A  sparkling  wit  which  never 
wounds,  an  easy  gaiety  which  inspires  those  who  talk  to 
him,  and  the  gift  of  drawing  out  whatever  is  agreeable 
in  those  with  whom  he  converses  (thus  making  them  pleased 
with  themselves)  may  be  used  in  the  cabinet  for  political 
purposes;  but  it  is  in  intimate  society  that  these  gifts 
inspire  an  attachment,  often  feigned  but  seldom  felt,  for  an 
absolute  minister.  Prince  Metternich  is  beloved  to  an  extra- 
ordinary degree  by  all  who  do  not  smart  under  his  diplo- 
matic talents.  He  is  universally  admitted  to  be  the  most 
amiable  man  in  Vienna." 

These  qualities  masked  a  mind  subtle  and  insinuating, 
cool,  calculating  and  sharp.  In  very  many  passages  in  Met- 
ternich's  private  letters  and  diaries  we  are  let  into  the 
secret  of  his  methods,  and  see  him  dexterously  twisting 
monarchs  and  statesmen  round  his  fingers,  looking  into 
their  faces  with  those  luminous  eyes  of  his,  and  leading 
them  to  do  precisely  what  he  wanted;  and  all  the  while 
laughing  at  them  without  betraying  a  sign  that  could  dis- 
concert them.  "Good  heavens!"  he  writes,  after  an  inter- 
view with  Count  Capo  d'Istria,  the  Greek  who  was  for 
a  while  one  of  the  Tzar  Alexander's  Ministers,  "Good 
heavens !  why  is  it  that  so  many  fools  are  thoroughly  good 
men,  as  is  the  case  with  Capo  d'Istria?"  And  again,  after 
some  negotiations  with  the  same  statesman,  "Capo  d'Istria 


METTERNICH  47 

twists  about  like  a  devil  in  holy  water,  but  he  is  in  holy 
water,  and  can  do  nothing." 

In  one  passage  he  expressed  surprise  that  anyone  should 
have  thought  him  a  man  who  disguised  his  real  purposes. 
"I  have  never  worn  a  mask,  and  those  who  have  mistaken 
me  must  have  very  bad  eyes."  That  is  true  enough  as  to 
his  main  political  objects,  but  there  is  much  evidence  in 
Metternich's  own  political  memoirs  which  exhibits  his  per- 
fect self-control,  and  often  his  enjoyment  of  the  art  of 
manipulating  people  who  had  no  perception  that  they  were 
subject  to  the  process.  Thus,  at  the  commencement  of  the 
Conference  of  Vienna  of  1819,  he  wrote :  "I  am  surrounded . 
with  people  who  are  quite  enchanted  with  their  own  force 
of  will  and  yet  there  is  not  one  among  them  who  a  few 
days  ago  knew  what  he  wants  or  will  want.  This  is  the 
universal  fate  of  such  an  assembly.  It  has  been  evident  to 
me  for  a  long  time  that  among  a  certain  number  of  persons 
only  one  is  ever  found  who  has  clearly  made  out  for  himself 
what  is  the  question  in  hand.  I  shall  be  victorious  here  as 
in  Karlsbad:  that  is  to  say,  all  wish  what  I  wish,  and,  since 
I  only  wish  what  is  just,  I  believe  I  .shall  gain  my  victory. 
But  what  is  most  remarkable  is  that  these  men  will  go 
home  in  the  firm  persuasion  that  they  have  left  Vienna 
with  the  same  views  with  which  they  came." 

His  capacity  for  hiding  his  feelings  was  tested  when 
his  daughter  Clementine,  to  whom  he  was  deeply  attached, 
died  while  the  Conference  was  in  session.  (Her  portrait  by 
Lawrence  shows  a  being  of  rare  beauty.)  "I  have,  hap- 
pily," wrote  Metternich  in  his  diary,  "the  art  of  keeping 
my  feelings  to  myself,  even  when  my  heart  is  half  broken. 
The  thirty  men  with  whom  I  sit  daily  at  the  Conference 
table  have  certainly  never  guessed  what  I  was  going  through 
while  I  talked  there  for  three  or  fours  hours  and  dictated 
hundreds  of  pages."  One  is  irresistibly  reminded  of  the 
English  comedian  who  never  clowned  it  better  than  on  the 
night  when  he  was  in  agony  on  account  of  a  dying  child,  for 
in  both  instances,  that  of  the  statesman  and  that  of  the 
player,  habitual  professional  demeanour  overpowered  the 
natural  emotions  of  the  man. 

The  Metternichian  system  of  government,  with  which 
the  name  of  this  adroit  statesman  is  associated,  grew  partly 
out  of  the  eiighteenth  century  benevolently-despotic  idea 
that  Maria  Theresa  and  her  son  Joseph  II.  developed  in 


48     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

Austria;  and  partly  it  was  a  phase  of  shocked  reaction 
against  the  flood  of  liberal  thought  let  loose  by  the  French 
Revolution.  Austria  was  a  strongly  centralised  state,  and 
the  early  sovereigns  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg-Lorraine 
cultivated  a  conscientious  responsibility  for  the  social  and 
spiritual  welfare  of  their  people.  Joseph  went  too  far  for 
his  generation,  and  ended  his  reign  with  the  uncomfortable 
feeling  that  it  is  easier  to  dream  of  a  millennium  than  to 
create  one.  But  the  violence  of  the  Revolution  west  of  the 
Rhine,  and  the  torrential  career  of  Napoleon,  threw  all 
Europe  into  confusion,  and  when  the  great  disturber  was 
at  length  chained  at  St.  Helena,  Austria,  with  Metternich  , 
now  appointed  to  direct  her  destinies,  retained  her  intense  I 
centralisation,  whilst  her  rulers  cast  aside  all  thought  of  J 
meddling  with  such  an  explosive  as  reform.  What  was 
wanted  was  not  change,  but  inflexible  government.  Metter- 
nich made  it  his  proud  boast  that  throughout  his  long 
period  of  rule,  "Ich  war  ein  Fels  der  Ordnung" — I  was  a 
bulwark  of  order;  and  at  the  end  of  his  life  he  said,  "I  have 
proclaimed  in  the  face  of  all  the  world  the  'system  of 
Metternich'  in  a  few  words.  'Force  is  law,'  is  a  motto 
which  I  have  chosen  for  myself  and  my  descendants."  It 
was  the  function  of  law,  dictated  by  sovereigns,  to  ordain ; 
it  was  the  duty  of  subjects  to  obey  and  not  criticise. 

Metternich  took  his  stand  on  the  principle  of  Legiti- 
macy. Existing  governments,  presided  over  by  sovereigns 
who  were  members  of  long-established  ruling  families,  were 
divinely  appointed  to  rule  over  peoples,  and  any  ques- 
tioning of  their  authority  was  an  offence  against  morals. 
As  he  himself  wrote,  "Providence  has  confided  to  princes 
the  duty  of  preserving  authority  and  .saving  the  people  from 
their  follies." 

That  rulers  might  themselves  commit  follies  was  a  con- 
tingency which  was  not  beyond  imagining;  indeed,  Metter- 
nich had  rather  a  deprecating  opinion  of  several  sovereigns. 
The  vanity  and  mysticism  of  Alexander  of  Russia  offended 
him;  he  despised  the  King  of  Naples.  But  the  errors  of 
rulers  could  best  be  mitigated  by  the  brotherly  advice  of 
other  divinely  appointed  kings  and  their  sagacious  and 
friendly-critical  statesmen.  The  remedy  was  not  to  admit 
anything  like  popular  control ;  that  was  only  to  turn  on  the 
deluge.  "From  the  time  that  men  attempt  to  swerve  from 
these  bases  to  become  rebels  against  the  sovereign  arbi- 


METTERNICH  49 

ters  of  their  destinies,"  he  wrote,  "society  suffers  from  a 
malaise  which  sooner  or  later  will  lead  to  a  state  of  convul- 
sion. Respect  for  all  that  is ;  liberty  for  every  government 
to  watch  over  the  well-being  of  its  own  people;  a  league 
between  all  governments  against  factions  in  all  states; 
contempt  for  the  meaningless  words  which  have  become  the 
rallying  cry  of  the  factions;  respect  for  the  progressive 
development  of  institutions  in  lawful  ways ;  refusal  on  the 
part  of  every  monarch  to  aid  or  succour  partisans  under 
any  mask  whatever — such  are  happily  the  ideas  of  the 
great  monarchs ;  the  world  will  be  saved  if  they  bring  them 
into  action,  it  is  lost  if  they  do  not." 

Was  there,  then,  to  be  no  such  thing  as  reform,  no 
change  whatever  in  the  prevailing  system  in  any  country? 
If  the  rulers  thought  a  change  advisable,  yes;  otherwise, 
certainly  not.  Metternich  was  quite  decisive  on  this  point. 
"The  principle  which  the  monarchs  must  oppose  to  the  plan 
of  universal  destruction  is  the  preservation  of  everything 
legally  existing.  The  only  way  to  arrive  at  this  end  is  by 
allowing  no  innovation."  And  again :  "No  time  is  less 
suited  than  the  present  to  bring  forward  in  any  state 
reforms  in  a  wide  .sense  of  the  word.  But,  happily,  the 
machine  of  state  is  constructed  on  such  good  principles 
that  in  a  wide  sense  there  is  really  nothing  in  the  machine 
itself  to  be  altered."  Once  more:  "The  first  principle  to  /' 
be  maintained  by  monarchs  is  the  maintenance  of  the  stabi-/ 
lity  of  political  institutions  against  the  disorganised  excite- 
ment which  has  taken  possession  of  men's  minds,  the 
immutability  of  principles  against  the  madness  of  their 
interpretation,  and  respect  for  laws  actually  in  force  against 
desire  for  their  destruction."  In  a  letter  to  Lord  Palmers- 
ton,  Metternich  said  :"We  follow  a  system  of  preservation 
in  order  that  we  may  not  be  compelled  to  follow  one  of 
repression.  We  are  firmly  convinced  that  any  concession 
a  government  may  be  induced  to  make  strikes  at  the  basis; 
of  its  existence." 

This  idea  of  rigidly  maintaining  existing  systems,  insti- 
tutions, laws,  of  resisting  demands  for  innovation  in  every 
direction,  Metternich  emphasised  repeatedly  He  stressed 
it  in  his  "Secret  Confession  of  Faith,"  written  for  the  edifi- 
cation of  the  Tzar  Alexander  in  1820 — one  of  the  most 
interesting  pieces  he  ever  wrote,  containing  an  interpreta- 
tion of  human  history  strictly  conformable  to  his  point  of 


50     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

view.  He  impressed  the  same  idea  upon  the  mind  of  his 
own  sovereign,  the  Emperor  Francis  II.,  who  was  in  fact 
the  admiring  pupil  of  his  Chancellor,  and  who  left  a  letter 
of  advice  to  his  son  and  heir,  Ferdinand,  which  was  full 
of  echoes  of  Metternichian  maxims — e.g.,  "Disturb  nothing 
in  the  foundations  of  the  edifice  of  state;  govern  and 
change  nothing." 

The  maintenance  of  the  Metternichian  system  involved 
continual  watchfulness,  lest  disturbing  ideas  should  find 
their  way  into  Austria.  The  police  and  the  bureaucracy 
were  directed  to  exercise  the  censorship  .strictly  and  to 
report  any  tendencies  towards  liberalism.  The  importa- 
tion of  all  foreign  journals  was  prohibited.  Every  news- 
paper published  in  Austria  was  under  Government  control. 
One  journal  was  allowed  in  each  province  of  the  monarchy, 
and  these  semi-official  sheets  had  to  take  their  views  from 
the  Austrian  Observer,  printed  at  Vienna.  Metternich 
would  no  more  have  dreamt  of  permitting  freedom  to  pub- 
lish newspapers  than  freedom  to  murder.  He  spoke  of 
"the  liberty  of  the  press"  as  "a  scourge  unknown  to  the 
world  until  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
restrained  until  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  with  scarcely  any 
exceptions  but  England — a  part  of  Europe  separated  from 
the  continent  by  the  sea,  as  well  as  by  her  language  and 
her  peculiar  manners."  "No  government,"  he  said  again, 
"can  pursue  a  firm  and  undeviating  course  when  it  is  daily 
exposed  to  the  influence  of  such  dissolvent  conditions  as 
the  freedom  of  the  press." 

Similarly  a  vigilant  restraint  was  exercised  over  books 
which  it  was  considered  dangerous  to  allow  to  be  imported 
into  Austria.  The  officials  at  the  frontiers  were  furnished 
with  lists  of  prohibited  works,  compared  with  which  the 
Index  librorum  prohibitorum  was  a  broadminded  and  indul- 
gent composition.  Historical  works  of  all  kinds  were  pro- 
scribed. Lest  thought  which  the  government  could  hinder 
from  circulating  through  printed  matter  might  find  cur- 
rency by  means  of  teachers  and  University  professors,  an 
odious  system  of  police  surveillance  over  their  labours  was 
maintained.  "He  who  serves  me  must  teach  what  I  com- 
mand," pronounced  the  Emperor  Francis  II.  Metternich 
became  uneasy  when  he  heard  that  certain  professors  at 
German  universities,  beyond  his  control,  were  expounding 
inconvenient  doctrine.  He  recommended  that  these  gentle- 


METTERNICH  51 

men  should  be,  not  dismissed  in  disgrace,  since  that  might 
defeat  the  object  in  view,  but  provided  with  posts  in  the 
government  service,  where  they  would  be  well  paid  and  well 
watched,  their  university  chairs  being  meanwhile  filled  by 
others,  selected  carefully,  who  could  be  depended  upon  to 
teach  only  things  agreeable  to  authority. 

Heterodox  religious  teachings  were  likely  to  be  as  dis- 
turbing as  unauthorised  political  ideas,  and  therefore  they, 
too,  under  the  Metternichian  system,  must  be  kept  out  of 
Austria.  The  church  was  regarded  by  Joseph  II.  and 
Francis  II.  as  "a  branch  of  the  Civil  Service,"  and  if  Met- 
ternich  himself  did  not  formulate  the  notion  quite  so  crudely 
as  that,  he  acted  on  the  principle  that  whilst  the  church 
was  to  exercise  its  great  influence  to  hold  the  minds  of 
the  people  in  quiet  submission,  the  state  would  see  to  it 
that  rival  sects  were  not  allowed  to  propagate  their  damn- 
able diversities.  In  1817  Metternich  became  alert  to  the 
prevalence  in  the  world  outside  Austria  of  "certain  .mala- 
dies of  the  mind  which  present  all  the  symptoms  of  true 
epidemics."  These  were  evangelical  movements.  "For 
some  time  the  Methodists  have  made  great  progress  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  and  this  sect,  following  the  track  of 
others,  is  now  beginning  to  extend  its  proselytism  to  other 
parts  of  Europe."  The  spread  of  this  dangerous  tendency 
must  be  prevented.  It  was  like  "a  new  kind  of  revolution." 
"It  is  doubtless  worthy  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Great  Powers," 
wrote  Metternich,  "to  take  into  consideration  an  evil  which 
it  is  possible,  and  perhaps  even  easy,  to  stifle  at  its  begin- 
ning, but  which  can  only  gain  in  intensity  in  proportion  as 
it  spreads." 

The  hammer  of  the  Great  Powers  was  not,  however,  called 
into  play  to  crack  the  Methodist  nut,  for  the  very  good 
reason  that  no  other  Power  than  Austria  would  have  sanc- 
tioned such  a  proposition.  The  Tzar  Alexander  was  him- 
self at  the  time  under  the  spell  of  religious  mysticism,  and 
even  used  his  influence  to  try  to  induce  Metternich  to  per- 
mit the  promoters  of  a  Bible-reading  movement  to  carry  on 
operations  in  Austria.  Metternich's  reply  to  the  Tzar's 
Foreign  Minister,  Nesselrode,  is  interesting:  "We  have 
never  abolished  the  Bible  Society  among  us,"  he  wrote,  "for 
one  never  existed.  I  believe,  however,  that  I  am  in  the 
position  to  assure  you  that  the  Emperor  will  never  allow 
the  establishment  of  one,  and  the  confidence  you  have  in 


52     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

me  induces  me  to  acquaint  you  with  His  Majesty's  reasons. 
The  heir  of  so  many  Emperors  .of  Germany  and  the  nephew 
of  Joseph  II.  knows  what  is  due  to  God  and  his  crown. 
The  Catholic  Church  does  not  encourage  the  universal  read- 
ing of  the  Bible,  and  it  acts  in  this  respect  like  a  father 
placed  above  the  passions  and  consequently  the  storms  of 
life.  The  Catholic  Church  not  only  allows  but  recommends 
the  reading  of  the  sacred  books  to  men  who  are  enlightened, 
calm,  capable  of  judging  the  question.  She  does  not  encou- 
rage the  reading  of  such  books,  or  of  passages  full  of  crimes 
and  obscenities  which  the  Book  of  Books  contains  only  too 
often  in  histories  simply  like  the  first  ages,  and  like  all  that 
is  true.  Fpr  myself,  I  think  the  church  is  right,  and  I  judge 
by  the  effect  which  the  reading  of  the  Bible  has  with 
me  at  the  age  of  forty,  so  different  from  that  which  the 
same  reading  produced  on  me  at  the  age  of  fifteen  and 
twenty."  Consequently  no  Bible-reading  societies  were 
permitted  to  be  founded  in  Austria  as  long  as  Metternich 
wielded  power. 

Strict  Catholic  as  he  was,  however,  when  he  visited 
Rome  he  was  much  displeased  with  what  he  saw  of  the 
church  at  its  centre.  The  statesman  in  him  suffered  dis- 
illusionment. "I  acknowledge,"  he  wrote  in  1819  (the 
reigning  Pope  was  Pius  VII.),  "that  I  cannot  understand 
how  a  Protestant  can  turn  Catholic  at  Rome.  Rome  is  like 
a  most  magnificent  theatre  with  very  bad  actors.  Keep 
what  I  say  to  yourself,  for  it  will  run  all  through  Vienna, 
and  I  love  religion  and  its  triumph  too  much  to  cast  a  slur 
upon  it  in  any  manner  whatever." 

Metternich's  period  of  maximum  influence  and  power  in 
Europe  was  between  1815  and  1830.  In  1820  he  endea- 
voured to  induce  the  Great  Powers  to  subscribe  to  the 
Protocol  of  Troppau,  which  would  have  laid  a  political  inter- 
dict upon  any  state-  which  underwent  "a  change  of  govern- 
ment due  to  revolution,"  and  would  have  bound  all  the 
Powers,  if  such  revolution  threatened  other  states,  "by 
peaceful  means,  or  if  need  be  by  arms,  to  bring  back  the 
guilty  state  into  the  bosom  of  the  Great  Alliance."  Great 
Britain,  however,  refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  a 
plan  which,  under  a  very  thin  disguise,  meant  that  the 
Great  Powers  were  to  use  their  military  strength  to  enforce 
absolutism  throughout  Europe.  Both  Castlereagh  and  Can- 
ning, who  succeeded  him  at  the  Foreign  Office,  were  at 


METTERNICH  53 

one  in  this  regard — much  to  Metternich's  annoyance,  since 
the  obstention  of  Great  Britain  made  his  policy  fruitless, 
Canning  especially  became  Metternich's  bete  noir  among 
statesmen;  he  was,  as  the  Prince  said,  "the  malevolent 
meteor  hurled  by  an  angry  Providence  upon  Europe."  But 
Canning's  position  was  firmly  maintained.  "Our  business," 
he  said,  "is  to  preserve  the  peace  of  the  world,  and  there- 
fore the  independence  of  the  several  nations  which  com- 
pose it.  In  resisting  the  Revolution  in  all  its  stages  we 
resisted  the  spirit  of  change,  to  be  sure,  but  we  resisted 
also  the  spirit  of  foreign  domination." 

Between  1830  and  1848  the  star  of  Metternich  waned.  J 
France  in  the  former  year  overthrew  the  last  of  the  Bour-  f 
bon  kings.  In  Great  Britain  in  1832  the  passing  of  the 
Reform  Act  reduced  the  power  of  the  Whig  and  Tory  olig- 
archy which  had  kept  the  control  of  affairs  in  the  hands  of 
a  group  of  governing  families  ever  since  the  downfall  of 
the  Stuart  dynasty.  The  Belgians  tore  up  the  instrument 
by  which  the  Great  Powers  settled  their  destiny  without 
regard  to  their  wishes.  Mazzini  in  Italy  had  commenced 
working  for  the  nationality  and  unity  of  his  country,  which 
meant  the  destruction  of  the  temporal  power  of  the  Papacy 
and  the  uprooting  of  the  petty  Italian  principalities  which 
Austria  really  dominated.  The  spectre  of  revolution  took 
corporeal  form  in  many  countries  at  once,  and  at  last,  in 
1848,  the  entire  Metternichian  system  went  to  pieces  in 
Austria  and  Hungary.  Amidst  political  earthquake  and 
eclipse,  the  Emperor  fled  from  Vienna,  and  Metternich, 
while  the  mob  was  hurling  curses  on  his  name  and  burning 
his  palace,  slipped  out  of  the  capital  and  made  his  way  to 
London. 

In  that  exciting  year  crowns,  sceptres,  fragments  of 
thrones,  scraps  of  constitutions  and  shreds  of  treaties  were 
hurtling  through  the  air  like  roofing  tiles  and  chimney  pots 
in  a  tornado ;  but  the  habitual  ironical  calm  of  the  pictur- 
esque, white-haired  old  gentleman  whose  word  for  so  many 
years  had  been  accepted  as  the  authentic  pronouncement 
of  ultimate  wisdom  in  Austrian  politics,  was  quite  unruffled. 
He  had,  in  fact,  known  all  along  that  the  system  could  not 
last,  but  he  had  made  it  last  as  long  as  possible.  There  is 
pathos  in  that  confession  of  his — "I  have  come  into  the 
world  either  too  early  or  too  late.  Earlier,  I  should  have 
enjoyed  the  age;  later,  I  should  have  helped  to  reconstruct 


64     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

it;  to-day,  I  have  to  give  my  life  to  propping  up  the  moul- 
dering edifice."  Both  the  Emperor  Francis  and  the  Tzar 
Alexander  also  recognised  that  the  political  system  of 
Europe  was  unsound.  "My  realm,"  said  Francis,  "is  like 
a  worm-eaten  house — if  one  part  is  removed  one  cannot  tell 
how  much  may  fall."  And  the  Tzar  confessed  that 
attempts  "obstinately  made  to  revive  institutions  which 
have  perished  of  old  age  did  not  deserve  to  .succeed,"  and 
that  "the  new  spirit  of  the  peoples  is  too  little  consulted." 

Justice  to  Metternich  demands  that  it  should  be  recog- 
lised  that  his  system  entailed  the  maintenance  of  peace 
jtween  nations  as  well  as  the  subordination  of  peoples  to 

sir  rulers.  In  a  sense  both  he  and  the  Tzar  Alexander 
rere  pioneers  of  a  "League  of  Nations."  Unfortunately, 
tree  nations  were  not  within  their  contemplation.  They 
aimed  at  a  league  of  sovereigns  to  enforce  absolute  sove- 
reignty. But  still  it  is  a  fact  that  between  1815  and  IS/IS 
Austria-Hungary  was  not  engaged  in  a  single  war.  The 
statement  commonly  but  unjustly  made  that  wars  have  been 
provoked  by  rulers  and  never  by  peoples  is  conspicuously 
false  in  this  instance.  Peace  is  not  everything,  and  it  is 
true  that  Austria  under  Metternich  was  industrially  stag- 
nant, intellectually  sterile,  and  politically  prostrate.  That 
kind  of  peace  is  bought  at  a  high  price.  Metternich  him- 
self said:  "The  people  know  what  is  the  happiest  thing  for 
them,  namely,  to  be  able  to  count  on  the  morrow,  for  it  is 
the  to-morrow  which  will  repay  them  for  the  cares  and 
sorrows  of  to-day.  The  laws  which  afford  a  just  protec- 
tion to  individuals,  to  families  and  to  property  are  quite 
simple  in  their  essence.  The  people  dread  any  movement 
which  injures  industry  and  brings  new  burdens  in  its 
train." 

Metternich  died  on  llth  June,  1859.  The  Emperor 
Francis  Joseph  had  commenced  his  long  reign  in  the  year 
of  the  distinguished  Minister's  downfall.  Exactly  seventy 
years  later  the  Austro-Hungarian  monarchy  went  up  in 
smoke  and  flame.  The  official  life  of  this  remarkable  states- 
man was  so  long  that  he  experienced  the  strange  sensation 
of  being  able  to  read  works  of  history  wherein  his  own 
actions  were  discussed  in  connection  with  those  of  person- 
ages who  had  vanished  from  the  world,  so  that  he  saw  him- 
self very  much  as  posterity  would  see  him.  An  entry  in 
his  diary  records  such  an  experience:  "I  have  passed  a 


METTERNICH  55 

strange  night.  A  history  of  the  war  of  1814  by  Koch  has 
just  appeared  in  Paris;  one  of  the  best  works  which  has 
yet  been  written  on  that  subject.  Apart  from  some  errors 
.which  an  author  placed  as  he  is,  outside  the  affairs,  can 
hardly  escape,  the  book  contains  much  that  is  true.  I  took 
this  book  to  bed  with  me  yesterday  evening  and  read  it 
with  the  greatest  interest.  To  read  the  history  of  an 
important  epoch  in  which  one  has  oneself  played  a  promi- 
nent part  is  a  most  curious  thing.  I  found  myself  placed 
before  posterity,  and  felt  called  upon  to  judge  myself. 
During  this  three  hours  reading  I  did  not  indeed  feel 
inclined  to  accuse  myself ;  but  how  much  could  I  have  added 
to  every  occurrence,  to  every  page,  indeed  to  every  line  of 
the  book."  In  his  last  years  he  was  always  accessible  to 
historians  who  wished  to  consult  him  about  events  of  which 
he  had  an  intimate  inner  knowledge.  'He  admitted  that  he 
valued  the  good  opinion  of  educated  posterity  more  than 
he  had  ever  cared  for  public  opinion  during  his  political 
lifetime. 

The  personality  of  Metternich  is  attractive  by  reason 
of  his  urbanity,  his  serene  manner,  his  air  of  cultivated 
grace.  He  was  never  an  inaccessible  man  despite  his  lofti- 
ness of  station  and  his  command  of  power.  He  enjoyed 
conversing  with  men  and  women  of  various  ways  of  think- 
ing, though  he  strove  so  resolutely  to  shut  up  Austria  in  a 
hothouse  with  a  regulated  temperature.  He  once  had  a 
long  talk  with  Robert  Owen,  whose  socialistic  experiments 
must  have  seemed  to  him  a  rare  kind  of  lunacy  tinged  with 
sinfulness.  He  stands  as  a  type  of  absolutist  with  whom 
it  is  difficult  to  find  a  parallel  among  modern  statesmen, 
and  his  policy  broke  down  before  a  thrilling  outburst  of 
popular  indignation.  But  dependable  witnesses  testify  that 
Metternich  was  not  personally  unpopular  in  Austria.  In 
Europe  generally  he  was  detested  as  the  incarnation  of  an 
evil  system.  But  he  never  winced  under  such  attacks;  they 
were  as  the  dust  thrown  up  by  his  carriage  wheels — merely 
disagreeable  concomitants  of  the  road. 


Metternich's  Memoirs,  edited  by  Prince  Richard  Metter- 
nich and  A.  von  Klinkowstrom,  are  not  complete  in  the  five- 
volume  English  edition.  The  French  edition,  in  eight 
volumes,  which  is  complete,  has  been  used  for  the  purposes 
of  this  study.  There  are  two  readable  short  books  on  Met- 


56     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

ternich,  one  by  Malleson,  the  second  by  Sandeman,  but 
neither  of  them  devotes  much  attention  to  his  political 
system. 


I  should  have  liked  Robespierre  better  than  Abbe  de 
Pradt,  and  Attila  better  than  Quiroga.  A  tyrant  does  not 
alarm  me;  I  should  know  how  to  avoid  his  attacks  or  bear 
them  with  honour.  But  the  Radical  maniac,  the  senti- 
mental boudoir-philanthropist,  make  me  uncomfortable.  I 
like  iron  and  gold,  but  I  hate  tin  and  copper. — Metternich. 

The  angry  buzz  of  a  multitude  is  one  of  the  bloodiest 
noises  in  the  world.- — Lord  Halifax. 

The  best  political  institutions  are  those  which  are  the 
most  effective  in  the  ablest  hands. — Treitschke. 

Every  supreme  government  is  free  from  legal  restraints ; 
or  (what  is  the  same  position  dressed  in  a  different  phrase) , 
every  supreme  government  is  legally  despotic.  The  distinc- 
tion, therefore,  of  governments  into  free  and  despotic  can 
hardly  mean  that  some  of  them  are  freer  from  restraints 
than  others ;  or  that  the  subjects  of  the  governments  which 
are  denominated  free  are  protected  against  their  govern- 
ments by  positive  law. — John  Austin. 

If  it  be  objected  that  I  am  a  defender  of  arbitrary 
powers,  I  confess  I  cannot  comprehend  how  any  society  can 
be  established  or  subsist  without  them.  The  difference 
between  good  and  ill  governments  is  not  that  those  of  one 
sort  have  an  arbitrary  power  which  the  others  have  not, 
for  they  all  have  it;  but  that  in  those  which  are  well  con- 
stituted this  power  is  so  placed  as  it  may  be  beneficial  to 
the  people. — Algernon  Sidney. 

The  form  in  which  our  King  exercises  Imperial  rights 
in  Germany  has  never  been  of  importance  in  my  eyes;  to 
secure  the  fact  that  he  exercises  them  I  have  strained  all 
the  strength  God  has  given  me. — Bismarck. 

Therefore  my  son  first  of  all  things  learn  to  know  and 
love  that  God  whom-to  ye  have  a  double  obligation;  first, 
for  that  He  made  you  a  man,  and,  next,  for  that  He  made 
you  a  little  god  to  sit  on  His  throne  and  rule  over  other 
men. — King  James  1. 

A  prince  who  is  wise  and  prudent  cannot  or  ought  not 
to  keep  his  parole  when  the  keeping  of  it  is  to  his  preju- 
dice, and  the  causes  for  which  he  promised  removed.  Were 


METTERNICH  57 

men  all  good  this  doctrine  was  not  to  be  taught,  but  because 
they  are  wicked  and  not-  likely  to  be  punctual  with  you, 
you  are  not  obliged  to  any  such  strictness  with  them;  nor 
was  there  ever  any  prince  that  wanted  lawful  pretence  to 
justify  his  breach  of  promise. — Macchiavelli. 

The  revival  of  monarchy  during  the  fifteenth,  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries  had  unquestionably  many  bene- 
ficial results  to  general  civilisation.  It  restrained,  in  con- 
siderable degree  at  least,  the  privileged  classes  from  oppress- 
ing the  common  subjects.  It  improved  the  condition  of 
the  common  man.  It  developed  the  feeling  and  the  idea 
of  national  unity  and  of  the  nation. .  It  substituted  one 
law  for  a  variety  of  feudal  customs.  It  introduced  the 
distinction  between  private  property  and  public  office.  But 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  reconciliation  of  Government 
with  liberty  it  did  nothing,  at  least  nothing  directly.  It 
sacrificed  liberty  completely  to  government,  in  that  it 
made  government  sovereign. — John  W.  Burgess. 

The  people  never  revolt  from  fickleness  or  the  mere 
desire  of  change.  It  is  the  impatience  of  suffering  which 
alone  has  this  effect. — Sully. 

He  that  is  to  govern  a  whole  nation  must  read  in  him- 
self not  this  or  that  particular  man,  but  mankind. — iHobbes. 

There  is  but  one  way  to  govern  men,  and  it  is  eternal 
truth.  Get  into  their  skins.  Try  to  realise  their  feelings. 
That  is  the  true  secret  of  government. — General  Gordon. 


LOUIS  BLANC. 


[Page  58 


CHAPTER  V. 

LOUIS    BLANC    AND    THE    RIGHTS    OF 
LABOUR. 


BETWEEN  1830  and  1848,  in  all  the  countries  of 
Europe  which  had  felt  the  influence  of  the 
great  changes  in  industrial  conditions,  known, 
in  Arnold  Toynbee's  phrase,  as  the  Industrial 
Revolution,  there  was  a  stirring  of  working  class  aspi- 
rations. Among  the  effects  of  that  transformation 
were  an  increase  in  the  size  of  towns  which  were 
centres  of  manufacturing  energy,  and  a  marshalling  of 
men  in  factories,  workshops  and  yards,  for  the  cheaper  and 
more  rapid  production  of  commodities.  The  application  of 
steam  power  to  industry  necessitated  a  decay  of  hand  work 
and  home  work;  labour  was  cantonned  and  regimented. 
But  legislation  lagged  far  behind  the  requirements  of  the 
industrial  world,  partly  because  the  landed  and  legal  classes, 
in  whose  hands  the  mechanism  of  government  chiefly  lay, 
imperfectly  appreciated  the  meaning  and  nature  of  the 
changes,  and  partly  because  the  new  class  of  wealthy  manu- 
facturers used  their  political  influence  to  keep  the  hand  of 
authority  from  laying  restraints  upon  their  activities. 

Consequently  the  evils  attendant  upon  the  rapid  growth 
of  the  factory  system  were  glaring  and  notorious,  whilst 
the  measures  for  protecting  the  victims  of  it  were  weak, 
hesitating  and  ill-administered.  The  first  English  Fac- 
tories Act,  that  of  1802,  restricted  hours  of  labour  in  cotton 
and  other  mills  to  twelve  per  day.  But  it  applied  only  to 
mills  wherein  apprentices  were  employed,  and  was  very 
easily  evaded  by  dispensing  with  apprenticeship.  Children 
could  be  swept  into  the  mills  just  as  easily,  and  the  hours 
of  labour  could  be  as  cruelly  long,  as  before.  The  successive 
efforts  made  to  limit  the  hours  of  work,  to  diminish  the 
barbarous  wickedness  of  child  labour,  and  to  impose  a  stan- 

59 


60     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

dard  of  decency  in  conditions  of  employment  were  founded 
upon  evidence  so  large  in  volume,  so  sickening  in  its  details 
of  human  degradation,  so  discreditable  to  the  authorities 
which  permitted  the  system  and  to  the  manufacturers  who 
profited  from  it,  that  the  period  may  fairly  be  reckoned  as 
one  of  the  darkest  in  modern  history.  The  working  classes 
became,  in  the  cutting  phrase  of  recent  investigators,  "the 
cannon  fodder  of  industry."1 

Not  till  1833,  when  Ashley's  (Lord  Shaftesbury's)  Ten 
Hours  Bill  was  passed,  was  any  substantial  step  taken  to 
set  a  limit  to  the  devouring  process.  Yet  within  about  a 
quarter  of  a  century,  terminating  -with  that  year,  Great 
Britain  had  taken  a  leading  part  in  the  suppression  of  the 
slave  trade,  and  the  final  act  abolishing  slavery  throughout 
the  British  colonies  was  passed  in  the  same  year  as  Lord 
Ashley's  Ten  Hours  Bill.  The  conscience  of  a  people  who 
could  be  horrified  by  West  Indian  black  slavery,  but  could 
endure  with  complacency  the  white  slavery  of  Lancashire 
and  Yorkshire,  was  in  some  need  of  renovation. 

While  ameliorating  measures  were  so  tardy,  all  efforts 
on  the  part  of  the  working  classes  themselves  to  bring 
about  improvements  by  organised  effort  were  viewed  by 
governments  as  dangerous.  The  pioneers  of  Trade 
Unionism  were  threatened  as  promoters  of  associations  of 
"criminal  character,"  "illegal  conspiracies,  and  liable  to 
be  prosecuted  as  such  at  common  law."  As,  however,  Lord 
Melbourne's  government  in  the  early  thirties  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  not  certain  about  the  efficacy  of  the 
existing  law  to  .suppress  Trade  Unions  by  direct  means, 
arid  as  King  William  IV.,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  manu- 
facturers and  mine  owners  on  the  other,  pressed  for 
decisive  action  to  be  taken,  resort  was  had  to  devious 
methods. 

Victims  were  found  in  a  little  group  of  poor  Dorsetshire 
labourers,  who  had  formed  themselves  into  a  union  to 
keep  up  their  wages.  The  government  discovered  a  pre- 
text in  the  fact  that  an  oath  of  secrecy  was  administered 
to  the  members,  and  the  taking  of  such  an  oath  was,  it  was 
maintained,  illegal  under  an  act  of  1797 — which  was  passed 
for  coping  with  the  naval  mutinies  of  that  period.  Five 
members  of  the  union,  all  labourers  of  the  village  of  Tol- 

i  J.  L    and  B.  Hammond,  "The   Town  Labourer. " 


LOUIS    BLANC  61 

puddle,  in  Dorsetshire,  were  arrested,  convicted  and  sen- 
tenced to  seven  years'  transportation.  They  served  part 
of  their  sentences  in  Tasmania;  but  the  scandalous  abuse 
of  power  which  sent  these  very  decent  and  worthy  men 
to  a  penal  colony  to  herd  with  felons  aroused  so  much 
righteous  anger  that  Lord  Melbourne's  government  re- 
prieved them  before  their  term  was  completed.  The  leader 
of  the  five  Dorsetshire  labourers,  George  Loveless,  wrote 
a  short  account  of  the  trial  and  of  his  experiences  in  Tas- 
mania, in  his  little  book,  Victims  of  Whiggery :  A  Statement 
of  the  Persecutions  Experienced  by  the  Dorsetshire 
Labourers.  It  is  incidentally  a  valuable  piece  of  evidence 
as  to  the  convict  transportation  .system  in  its  last  phases. 

These  English  incidents  may  be  taken  as  illustrative 
of  the  conditions  prevailing  in  the  industrial  world  in  the 
first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  because  the  Industrial 
Revolution  had  then  produced  far  more  radical  changes  in 
England  than  elsewhere.  France  was  the  country  upon 
the  continent  wherein  the  system  had  wrought  the  greatest 
changes.  Germany  was  slower  in  development.  In  France 
the  emergence  of  a  definite  working-class  organised  force 
in  politics  was  not  quite  so  clearly  perceived  as  in  Eng- 
land, because  the  numerous  political  changes  which  char- 
acterised French  history  after  the  great  Revolution  rather 
obscured  the  view.  Amidst  the  crashing  of  successive 
forms  of  government,  the  fundamental  economic  transfor- 
mations were  clouded  in  dust  and  smoke.  The  overthrow 
of  the  Directory  Government  by  Napoleon  Bonaparte  in 
1799,  the  establishment  of  the  Napoleonic  Empire  in  1804, 
the  annihilation  of  that  Empire  in  1814-15,  the  restoration 
of  the  Bourbon  kings,  the  destruction  of  that  dynasty  and 
the  setting  up  of  the  "bourgeois"  monarchy  of  Louis  Philippe 
at  the  revolution  of  1830,  the  expulsion  of  that  sovereign 
at  the  revolution  of  1848,  and  the  formation  of  the  second 
republic,  lastly  the  coup  d'etat  by  which  Prince  Louis 
Napoleon  overturned  the  Republic  and  founded  the  second 
Empire  in  1851 — these  events  constitute  a  series  of  chap- 
ters of  rapid  and  radical  alterations  of  the  political 
structure,  which  tended  to  divert  attention  from  the  inte- 
resting fact  that  beneath  the  surface  economic  forces  in 
volatile  France  were  working  out  in  much  the  same  way 
as  in  stolid,  slow-changing  England. 

The  parallelism  is  interesting.     In  both  countries  there 


62     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

were  examples  of  Utopian  Socialism.  In  England  Robert 
Owen  experimented  with  co-operative  production;  and  his 
contemporaries,  Saint  Simon  and  Charles  Fourier  in  France 
dabbled  with  fanciful  schemes  for  regenerating  humanity, 
the  former  by  a  kind  of  propertyless  co-operative  com- 
munism, the  latter  by  starting  human  ant-heaps  or  bee- 
hives, called  Phalansteries,  wherein  all  labour  and  the 
proceeds  of  production  were  to  be  shared  in  common, 
marriage  was  to  be  banned,  and  children  were  not  to  know 
their  own  parents,  but  were  to  be  reared  by  the  community. 
Owen,  Saint  Simon  and  Fourier  were  men  of  generous 
sympathies,  whose  souls  rebelled  against  the  human  degra- 
dation, the  abject  poverty,  the  apparently  hopeless  outlook 
of  the  mass  of  those  who  toiled,  which  were  produced  by 
the  Industrial  Revolution  in  its  most  ruthless  period.  They 
were  optimists  concerning  their  schemes  and  the  perfecti- 
bility of  mankind  if  such  were  adopted.  Saint  Simon  was 
temperamentally  disposed  to  count  his  chickens  before  they 
were  hatched,  as  illustrated  by  his  alleged  proposal  of 
marriage  to  Madame  de  Stael: — "Madame,  you  are  the 
most  extraordinary  woman  in  the  world ;  I  am  the  most 
extraordinary  man ;  between  us  we  should  no  doubt  pro- 
duce a  child  more  extraordinary  still."  No  one  of  them 
effected  permanent  results.  Their  schemes  conduced  to 
bitterness  and  disappointment,  though  a  community 
founded  by  a  disciple  of  Fourier  lasted  in  America  till 
1895;  it  was  called  Icaria,  and  its  promoter  was  Etienne 
Cabet.1 

The  Utopians  were  not  strong  in  their  analysis  of  the 
causes  of  the  misery  which  they  surveyed  and  deplored.  They 
were  men  accustomed  to  the  handling  of  wealth,  with  a 
cherished  dislike  of  their  own  "bourgeois"  class.  Saint 
Simon's  views  were  coloured  by  religious  mysticism,  Owen's 
by  anti-religious  bias,  Fourier's  by  his  almost  fanatical 
dislike  of  individual  distinction.  They  loved  humanity 
better  than  they  understood  it,  but  their  very  failures  were 
valuable,  as  showing  the  way  in  which  progress  could  not 
be  impelled. 

The  word  "socialism"  came  into  use  in  connection  with 
these  plans  of  reconstruction.  Whether  it  was  first  em- 

i  See  the  interesting  article,  "Icarie  et  son  fondateur  Etienne 
Cabet,"  by  J.  Prudommeaux,  in  the  "Kevue  Historique,"  xcviii.,  p.  321. 


LOUIS    BLANC  63 

ployed  in  France  in  1832,  or  in  England  in  1833,  is  of  no 
importance  for  present  purposes.  It  vaguely  designated 
either  the  Owenite  theories,  or  the  fairy-tale,  soap-bubble 
phantasies  of  Saint-Simonism  and  Fourierism.  It  was  a 
nickname  applied  to  those  who  were  thought  to  have  revo- 
lutionary leanings,  or  a  rallying  cry  for  the  builders  of 
castles  in  Spain  of  any  architecture  whatever.  But  Social- 
ism did  not  become  a  force  in  practical  politics  until  a 
school  arose  in  France  with  definite  aims,  principally  under 
the  influence  of  the  writings  of  Louis  Blanc.  Hence  the 
interest  which  attaches  to  the  ideas  of  the  man  who  is 
mainly  the  subject  of  this  study. 

Louis  Blanc  published  his  little  book,  Organization  du 
Travail,  in  1839,  and  five  editions  of  it  were  called  for 
between  that  date  and  the  outbreak  of  the  revolution  of 
1848.  He  was  well  known  as  the  editor  of  journals  which 
were  vehicles  for  the  propagation  of  the  ideas  formulated 
in  his  book.  His  plan  was  pressed  as  being  immediately  prac- 
ticable, and  was  accepted  as  such  by  many  thousands  of 
persons  throughout  France.  During  strikes,  at  elections, 
and  at  gatherings  where  political  issues  were  discussed 
from  the  working  class  point  of  view,  the  teachings  of 
Louis  Blanc  were  accepted  eagerly  as  embodying  a  solution 
of  industrial  grievances  and  social  ills. 

The  consequence  of  this  propaganda  was  that  when  the 
revolution  of  1848  broke  out,  and  King  Louis  Philippe  fled 
from  France  to  England  under  the  name  of  Mr.  William 
Smith,  Louis  Blanc  was  regarded  as  one  of  the  inevitable 
members  of  the  Provisional  Government  formed  under  the 
presidency  of  the  poet  Lamartine.  He  was  the  pre-ordained 
exponent  of  working  class  demands.  The  revolution  itself 
was  not  solely  an  ebullition  of  discontent  on  the  part 
of  workmen.  It  was  a  general  outburst  of  dissatisfaction 
with  a  regime  under  which  political  power  was  held  by 
fairly  well-to-do  property  owners  and  landed  proprietors. 
This  middle  class  autocracy,  under  a  king  who  had  been 
enthroned  by  the  "bourgeoisie,"  and  depended  upon  its  suf- 
frages, had  become  obnoxious  to  France.  It  had  neither 
the  distinction  of  an  aristocracy  nor  the  breadth  of  a  demo- 
cracy; it  was  considered  pretentious,  purse-proud  and 
rather  stupid.  But  while  several  parties  united  to  topple 
over  the  throne  of  Louis  Philippe,  they  were  far  from  being 
in  agreement  as  to  the  kind  of  government  which  they 


64     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

wanted.  Liberals,  Republicans,  Socialists,  Legitimists  and 
Bonapartists  had  only  one  bond  of  union :  to  get  rid  of  the 
old  government.  Having  done  that,  they  watched  each  other 
with  jealous  and  suspicious  eyes,  and  in  the  end  obtained 
a  revival  of  Napoleonic  Imperialism,  from  which,  probably, 
nine-tenths  of  the  people  of  France  would  have  .shrunk  with 
aversion  if  at  the  beginning  of  1848  they  had  realised 
what  was  coming. 

Now,  this  revolution  should  haver  afforded  to  Louis  Blanc 
an  opportunity  to  put  his  plans  for  the  organisation  of 
labour  into  effect.  That  such  would  be  the  result  was  hoped 
by  him  and  by  the  thousands  who  believed  in  him.  That 
they  would  have  failed  if  they  had  been  tried  in  completely 
favourable  conditions  it  is  possible  to  maintain ;  they  might 
have  failed  from  their  own  inherent  weakness.  But  it  if- 
not  possible  to  maintain  that  they  were  fairly  tried  in  1848. 
In  the  reprint  of  the  book  which  has  been  issued  under  the 
editorship  of  Mr.  J.  A.  R.  Marriott,  M.P.,1  it  is  stated  (p. 
xlix)  : — "Louis  Blanc  enjoyed  one  advantage  which  falls 
to  the  lot  of  few  philosophers.  He  had  the  opportunity  of 
putting  his  principles  to  the  test  of  practical  experiment/' 
But  in  fact  no  such  opportunity  was  enjoyed.  Indeed,  we 
have  it  on  the  acknowledgment  of  Lamartine  himself,  the 
head  of  the  government,  that  Louis  Blanc's  colleagues, 
being  determined  that  his  scheme  should  not  succeed,  placed 
the  experiment  under  the  direction  of  a  minister  and 
officials  who  were  known  by  them  to  be  antagonistic  to  it. 
The  naive  Machiavellianism  of  this  confession  is  surpris- 
ing, coming  from  a  poet  with  a  turn  for  moralising,  as 
Lamartine  was;  but  at  least  there  is  no  mistaking  the 
meaning  of  the  passage  in  his  Histoire  de  la  Revolution  de 
1848,  wherein  he  explains  what  was  done.2 

Lamartine  relates  that  M.  Marie,  who  took  charge  of 
this  work,  and  his  officers,  were  men  "who  secretly  shared 
the  anti-socialist  opinions  of  the  government;"  that  the 
national  workshops  were  regarded  as  "merely  a  transient 
expedient,"  and  that  they  were  "tolerated  until  such  time 
as,  the  revolutionary  crisis  having  passed  over,  these  ele- 
ments were  re-absorbed  by  private  labour."  Meanwhile, 
Louis  Blanc  himself,  who  should  have  been  entrusted  with 

1  Published   by   the   Clarendon  Press. 

2  See  the  English  edition,  p.  336. 


LOUIS    BLANC  65 

the  direction  of  his  own  scheme  if  Lamartine's  govern- 
ment wished  to  give  effect  to  it  and  make  it  succeed,  was 
appointed  to  preside  over  a  commission  which  sat  at  the 
Luxembourg  to  enquire  into  "the  claims  of  labour  and  the 
well-being  of  the  working  class."  This  commission  was 
perfectly  useless ;  it  propounded  a  series  of  somewhat  rheto- 
rical propositions  based  upon  the  phrase  "the  right  to  work" 
— "droit  au  travail" — /which  was  a  kind  of  watchword  with 
the  working  class  revolutionaries  of  the  time,1  and  upon 
the  principle  of  securing  "for  him  that  works  the  legitimate 
reward  of  his  labour" — a  vague  phrase,  to  which  the  most 
conscienceless  employer  might  have  subscribed. 

To  state  these  facts  in  justice  to  Louis  Blanc  is  not  to 
affirm  that  his  scheme  had  any  real  chance  of  success  in 
1848,  or  that  it  was  a  workable  scheme  at  all.  But,  in  fact, 
all  that  was  done  was  to  spend  a  large  amount  of  public 
money  in  employing  a  huge  army  of  idle  men  on  utterly 
useless  labour.  As  Louis  Blanc  quite  truly  affirmed,  "the 
national  workshops  were  nothing  more  than  a  rabble  of 
paupers,  whom  it  was  enough  to  feed  from  the  want  of 
knowing  how  otherwise  to  employ  them."  Artisans,  artists, 
clerks,  literary  men,  actors,  mere  idlers  and  wastrels,  all 
whom  the  disruption  of  the  times  had  thrown  out  of  employ- 
ment, and  all  who  never  wished  for  serious  employment, 
were  set  to  valueless  tasks,  and  were  paid  by  the  state 
whether  they  worked  or  did  not.  The  whole  business  was, 
in  the  words  of  Lamartine,  a  "distribution  of  alms  on  the 
part  of  the  state  and  honoured  by  the  semblance  of  labour." 
As  soon  as  the  new  Government  felt  that  it  could  safely  do 
so,  it  dissolved  the  so-called  workshops  and  broke  up  the 
resistance  by  military  force,  by  which  ten  thousand  persons 
were  killed  or  wounded  in  the  streets  of  Paris.  In  these 
circumstances*,  whatever  the  defects  of  the  scheme  might 
be,  no  fair  judgment  upon  it  can  be  passed  on  account  of 
the  failure  of  1848.  As  there  was  no  intention  to  succeed, 
failure  was  a  matter  of  course. 

What,  then,  were  the  ideas  of  the  Organization  du  Tra- 
vail ? 

i  But,  as  pointed  out  by  Sidney  and  Beatrice  Webb,  in  their  "In- 
dustrial Democracy,"  II.,  p.  570,  the  phrase,  "the  right  to  work,"  was 
used  seventy  years  before  1848  by  Turgot,  in  arguing  against  the  mono- 
polies of  the  guilds:  "The  right  to  work  is  the  property  of  every  man, 
and  this  property  is  the  first,  the  most  sacred,  and  the  most  inalienable 
of  all." 


66     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

Louis  Blanc  affirmed  that  by  the  better  organisation  of 
labour  human  misery  would  be  assuaged;  crime,  the  child 
of  misery,  lessened ;  and  the  spiritual  capacities  of  man  ele- 
vated through  education.  Political  reform  alone  was  bound 
to  lead  to  disappointment  unless  coupled  with  economic 
amelioration.  But  no  substantial  change  could  be  effected 
under  the  existing  system.  Competition  was  destructive  to 
the  working  class  and  a  constant  cause  of  impoverishment 
and  ruin  to  the  employing  class.  Salvation  for  all  was  to 
be  found  only  in  the  elevation  of  society  as  a  whole. 

General  propositions  of  this  benevolent  kind  do  not 
carry  the  argument  much  further,  but  the  author  comes 
to  closer  quarters  with  his  handling  of  the  problem  of  unem- 
ployment. He  shows,  from  facts  collected  with  much  care, 
that  the  industrious  work  people  under  the  competitive 
.system  in  vogue  were  continually  thrust  into  poverty  by 
intervals  of  unemployment,  when  savings  accumulated  while 
they  were  at  work  were  consumed.  Further,  competition 
forced  down  wages  below  a  level  at  which  a  man  could  live 
decently.  (He  was  writing  before  there  were  trade  unions 
in  French  industries.)  He  gives  an  example.  Three  work- 
men present  themselves  for  one  job.  "How  much  for 
your  labour?"  "Three  francs;  I  have  a  wife  and  children." 
"Good;  and  you?"  "Two  and  a  half  francs;  I  have  a  wife 
but  no  children."  "Excellent;  and  you?"  "Two  francs  are 
enough  for  me ;  I  am  alone."  "The  job  is  yours."  Com- 
petition, in  his  view,  worked  equally  injuriously  upon  society 
in  general,  and  he  devoted  a  whole  chapter  to  its  ravages 
in  England,  "since  it  is  from  the  English  that  we  have 
borrowed  that  deplorable  system." 

Louis  Blanc,  then,  would  have  eliminated  competition 
from  industry,  and  he  believed  that  that  could  be  done, 
and  the  happiness  of  producers  promoted,  by  the  following 
means: — The  government  should  regulate  production;  it 
should  use  its  credit  to  raise  loans,  which  should  be  applied 
to  the  creation  of  co-operative  workshops  (Ateliers  sociaux) 
in  the  most  important  branches  of  industry.  In  these  work- 
shops should  be  employed  workmen  who  gave  guarantees 
of  good  conduct,  and  all  should  be  paid  alike.  During  the 
first  year  the  government  should  regulate  the  workshops ; 
afterwards,  when  the  workmen  had  settled  down  to  their 
tasks,  and  had  learnt  that  they  were  all  equally  interested 
in  the  .success  of  the  enterprise,  they  should  elect  their  own 


LOUIS   BLANC  67 

management.  The  proceeds  should  be  divided  into  three 
parts.  One  part  should  be  divided  equally  among  all  the 
workmen.  The  second  part  should  be  applied,  one-half  to 
a  fund  for  relieving  sickness,  old  age  and  infirmity,  and 
one-half  to  meeting  crises  affecting  the  industry  in  question 
and  other  industries  which  might  require  similar  aid.  The 
third  part  should  be  devoted  to  purchasing  tools  and  appli- 
ances. To  each  national  workshop  should  be  attached 
groups  of  specialists,  who  would  participate  in  the  division 
of  proceeds.  It  was  contemplated  that  capitalists  might 
invest  in  such  ventures  if  additional  capital  was  required; 
in  such  cases  interest  would  be  guaranteed  on  the  capital 
invested,  but  there  would  be  no .  participation  by  the  capi- 
talists in  the  profits. 

Louis  Blanc  did  not  recommend  the  suppression  of 
private  ventures  in  the  industries  in  which  co-operative 
workshops  might  be  established.  There  might  for  a  time 
be  competition  between  private  and  co-operative  workshops ; 
but  he  did  not  think  that  it  would  last  long,  because  the 
co-operative  workshops  would  have  the  advantage  that  all 
employed  therein  would  be  directly  interested  in  good  and 
speedy  production,  and  would  see  to  it  that  the  system  was 
economically  worked. 

The  scheme  was  subjected  to  severe  criticisms  from  con- 
temporary writers,  and  later  critics  have  too  often  con- 
demned it  in  the  light  of  the  dismal  failure  of  the  national 
workshops  established  to  relieve  the  acute  industrial  dis- 
turbance produced  by  the  revolution  of  1848.  But  it  is 
necessary  to  insist  that  that  experiment  was  not  in  any  way 
a  testing  of  Louis  Blanc's  plan,  that  he  disapproved  of  the 
measures  then  taken,  that  he  was  neither  responsible  for 
them  nor  in  charge  of  them,  and  that  those  who  did  super- 
intend them  were  not  favourable  to  his  ideas.  The  weak- 
nesses of  his  scheme  are  many,  but  he  should  not  be  blamed 
for  the  failure  of  a  policy  which  did  not  try  that  scheme. 

Some  efforts  were  made  by  associations  of  French  work- 
ing men,  without  state  aid,  to  form  co-operative  produc- 
ing societies,  and  these  were  the  chief  practical  results  of 
Louis  Blanc's  writings.  But  they  were  not  permanent. 
Co-operative  industrial  effort  has  never  been  so  successful 
in  France  as  in  the  north  of  England,  notwithstanding  the 
great  impetus  which  might  have  been  expected  to  be  given 


68     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

to  the  co-operative  principle  by  the  movement  which  we 
have  been  considering. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  scheme  of  the  Organiza- 
tion du  Travail  gave  no  promise  of  a  satisfactory  solution 
of  industrial  troubles,  and  that  the  enthusiasm  for  it  in 
1848,  like  so  many  other  enthusiasms,  was  not  based  upon 
careful  consideration.  It  was  very  limited  in  scope.  It 
applied  only  to  factory  workers  and  those  engaged  in  manu- 
facturing commodities.  Farmers,  cultivators,  miners, 
fishers  and  producers  of  raw  material  of  all  kinds  were 
not  contemplated  by  it,  nor  were  those  engaged  in  distri- 
buting and  transport  industries.  The  scheme  seemed  to 
assume  that  the  only  workers  for  whom  it  was  necessary 
to  make  provision  were  those  engaged  in  converting  raw 
material  into  finished  articles.  But  ignoring  the  producers 
of  raw  materials  and  those  engaged  in  the  highly  important 
business  of  distribution  was  seriously  neglectful  of  large 
essential  interests. 

It  was  also  assumed  that  the  payment  of  one-third  of 
the  produce  of  industry  in  wages  would  prove  satisfactory 
to  the  workmen.  But  neither  Louis  Blanc  nor  the  thou- 
sands of  workmen  who  thought  that  his  scheme  would 
confer  blessings  upon  them  took  the  trouble  to  ascertain 
whether  one-third  was  not  less  than  was  already  being 
received  in  most  branches  of  private  employment.  It  is 
highly  probable  that  many  workmen  under  this  scheme,  if 
proper  effect  had  been  given  to  it,  would  have  found  them- 
selves worse  off  than  they  were  before.  It  is  not  possible  to 
state  exactly  what  proportion  of  the  product  of  industry  was 
paid  away  in  wages  in  France  in  the  years  before  1848,  but 
Prof.  A.  L.  Bowley's  calculations  supply  dependable  infor- 
mation as  to  British  wages  in  the  period  before  1914;  and, 
making  every  allowance  for  the  steady  improvement  during 
the  intervening  three-quarters  of  a  century,  it  seems  clear 
that  Louis  Blanc's  provision  of  one-third  would  have  im- 
poverished those  whom  he  desired  to  benefit.  Professor 
Bowley,  in  his  book  The  Division  of  the  Product  of  Industry 
(1919),  shows  that  in  the  group  of  industries  for  which  he 
had  reliable  information,  fifty-eight  per  cent,  of  the  net 
product  went  to  manual  workers,  four  per  cent,  in  small 
salaries,  six  per  cent,  in  salaries  over  £160:  in  all,  sixty- 
eight  per  cent,  to  those  employed. 

The  capital  for  forming  the  National  Workshops  was 


LOUIS   BLANC  69 

to  be  provided  by  the  state — that  is,  by  the  whole  body 
of  the  people — to  set  up  in  business  one  class,  and  no  pro- 
vision was  made  for  repayment,  nor  even  for  payment  of 
interest  on  the  money  borrowed.  Employers  and  workmen 
engaged  in  private  businesses  were  to  contribute  funds  to  be 
used  in  ruining  their  industries — that  is,  assuming  that  the 
co-operative  workshops  did,  by  superior  management  and 
cheaper  and  better  production,  kill  private  competition,  as 
Louis  Blanc  believed  that  they  would. 

No  thought  was  given  to  the  establishment  of  new  indus- 
tries, due  to  scientific  management  and  invention;  nor  to 
the  decay  and  obliteration  of  old  industries  due  to  the  same 
causes.  The  vast  extension  of  electrical  industries,  for 
example,  was  not'  thought  of  in  1848.  Electricity  was  little 
more  than  a  scientific  curiosity  then.  Moreover,  a  single 
important  invention  by  a  person  unconnected  with  one  of 
the  co-operative  workshops  might  easily  make  the  fortune 
of  a  private  firm,  rendering  the  competing  "national"  con- 
cern hopelessly  out  of  date,  and  incapable  of  surviving. 
The  scheme  contemplated  a  stable  condition  of  industry, 
which  would  not  be  disturbed  by  fresh  inventions.  To  make 
it  succeed,  Louis  Blanc  would  have  had  to  play  the  part  of 
an  industrial  Knut,  stationing  himself  at  the  gates  of  the 
National  Workshops,  and  crying  to  the  waves  of  invention, 
Thus  far  shalt  thou  go  and  no  farther.  But  he  would  have 
been  no  more  successful  than  the  legend  credits  the  Danish 
king  with  having  been. 

In  the  history  of  the  labour  movement  of  the  nineteenth 
century  Louis  Blanc  is  an  important  figure,  coming  as  he 
did  between  the  Utopian  Socialists  and  the  more  elaborately 
reasoned  Marxian  system.  Consciously  or  otherwise,  the 
modern  advocates  of  Syndicalism  and  Guild  Socialism  have 
worked  back  to  his  standpoint.  Their  ideas  have  an  affinity 
with  his  rather  than  with  the  teachings  of  Marx ;  for  Marx 
believed  in  the  State  control  of  production  and  distribution, 
whilst  Louis  Blanc,  like  the  Guild  Socialists,  believed  in 
the  control  of  industries  by  those  engaged  in  them. 

For  over  twenty  years  after  the  1848  revolution  Louis 
Blanc  was  an  exile  in  London.  France  was  no  country  for 
him  during  the  greater  part  of  the  period  of  Napoleon  III. 
In  England  he  married  a  German  lady.  There  his  best 
historical  works  were  written,  and  he  enjoyed  the  friend- 
ship of  many  eminent  English  men  and  women  of  letters 


70     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

— Mill,  Grote,  George  Eliot,  Swinburne.  Lord  Morley 
speaks  of  him  as  "my  excellent  and  most  interesting 
friend;"  "the  precision  of  his  speech  matched  his  turn  for 
clean-cut  republican  and  socialist  dogma."  He  was  a  man 
of  diminutive  stature,  with  a  sonorous  voice  which  seemed 
much  too  large  for  him,  and  a  fervent  temperament  which 
probably  owed  much  to  his  Corsican  forebears.  Palgrave 
Simpson,  in  his  Pictures  from  Revolutionary  Paris — one 
of  the  liveliest  descriptions  in  English  of  the  exciting  events, 
which  the  author  witnessed — speaks  of  "his  little,  almost 
dwarfish  person,  which  agitates  itself  as  it  would  swell, 
like  that  of  the  frog,  to  the  giant  proportions  of  the  ox." 
The  orator's  temperament  was  his,  and  he  had  no  little  of 
the  vice  of  orators — that  of  supposing  that  fine-sounding 
phrases  which  draw  applause  from  crowds  represent  real 
things  and  possibilities.  His  sympathies  were  generous, 
his  intelligence  was  keen,  and  if  there  was  ambition  in  his 
composition  it  wa,s  an  ambition  to  serve  as  well  as  to  attain. 
The  silly  story  told  by  one  of  his  contemporaries  that  he 
flung  himself  into  the  arms  of  democracy  because  of  a 
slight  of  his  small  person  by  a  lady  of  rank  is  belied  by  his 
whole  career  and  bent  of  character. 

He  grew  more  mellow  and  less  trustful  of  revolutionary 
methods  as  he  grew  older,  and  when  he  returned  to  France 
towards  the  end  of  the  Second  Empire  he  found  that  he 
had  more  sympathy  with  the  Liberals  than  with  the 
Socialists.  After  the  debacle  of  1870-1,  he  warned  the 
Communists  of  Paris  that  they  were  driving  towards  dis- 
aster. Elected  to  the  Chamber  of  Deputies-,  he  pleaded  hard 
for  a  merciful  handling  of  those  who  had  resisted  the 
re-establishment  of  the  National  Government.  He  was  not, 
however,  a  very  distinguished  man  in  French  politics  at 
the  end  of  his  life.  He  died  in  1882,  at  the  age  of  71 ;  and 
the  tiny,  sharp-featured  old  man  was  felt  to  have  played 
a  sufficiently  important  part  in  the  life  of  France  at  a 
critical  time  to  justify  a  public  funeral  in  the  cemetery  of 
Pere  la  Chaise. 


The  Oxford  reprint  of  Louis  Blanc's  Organization  du 
Travail,  with  critical  introduction  by  J.  A.  R.  Marriott,  is 
indispensable  to  the  study  of  the  ideas  discussed  above. 
Contemporary  accounts  of  the  French  1848  Revolution  are 
to  be  found  in  Palgrave  Simpson's  Pictures  of  Revolutionary 


LOUIS   BLANC  71 

Paris — very  lively  and  vivid ;  Lamartine's  French  Revolution 
of  1848 — egotistical  but  valuable;  Lord  Normanby's  A  Year 
of  Revolution  in  Paris — staid  and  dependable  as  far  as  it 
goes ;  Nassau  Senior's  Journals  Kept  in  France — a  work  of 
a  highly  competent  observer;  and  Louis  Blanc's  own  His- 
tory of  the  Revolution  1848 — written,  naturally,  from  a 
personal  point  of  view. 


Hitherto  it  is  questionable  if  all  the  mechanical  inven- 
tions yet  made  have  lightened  the  day's  toil  of  any  human 
being.  They  have  enabled  a  greater  population  to  live  the 
same  life  of  drudgery  and  imprisonment,  and  an  increased 
number  of  manufacturers  and  others  to  make  fortunes. 
They  have  increased  the  comforts  of  the  middle  classes. 
But  they  have  not  yet  begun  to  effect  those  great  changes 
in  human  destiny  which  it  is  in  their  nature  and  in  their 
futurity  to  accomplish. — John  Stuart  Mill  (1848). 

The  breakfast-table  in  an  ordinary  English  home  to-day 
is  a  monument  to  the  achievement  of  the  Industrial  Revo- 
lution and  the  solid  reality  of  the  economic  internation- 
alism which  resulted  from  it.  There  is  still  poverty  in 
Western  Europe,  but  it  is  preventable  poverty.  Before  the 
Industrial  Revolution,  judged  by  a  modern  standard,  there 
was  nothing  but  poverty. — A.  E.  Zimmern. 

The  golden  age  is  not,  as  the  poets  say,  in  the  past,  but 
in  the  future. — Saint  Simon. 

As  if  in  fact  our  incurable  trick  of  taking  a  word  for 
a  thing  were  not  the  root  of  half  the  mischief  of  the  world. 
— Lord  Morley. 

Those  socialist  proposals  are  connected  with  great  evils, 
and  no  one  who  is  not  absolutely  blind  will  deny  their  exis- 
tence. It  is  our  duty  to  do  all  we  can  to  find  remedies  for 
those  evils;  even  if  we  are  called  socialists  for  doing  so, 
we  shall  be  reconciled  to  it. — Lord  Salisbury  (1890). 

I  am  pretty  certain  that  no  despotism  of  which  mankind 
has  had  experience  would  be  so  searching,  so  all-absorbing, 
so  tyrannical,  as  that  which  would  be  exhibited  and  felt  if 
the  schemes  of  those  who  would  reconstruct  society  were 
accepted  and  carried  out. — J.  Thorold  Rogers. 

The  chief  and  almost  the  only  business  of  the  Sypho- 
grants  i.s  to  take  care  that  no  man  may  live  idle,  but  that 
everyone  may  follow  his  trade  diligently;  yet  they  do  not 


72     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

wear  themselves  out  with  perpetual  toil,  from  morning  to 
night,  as  if  they  were  beasts  of  burden,  which,  as  it  is 
indeed  a  heavy  slavery,  so  it  is  everywhere  the  common 
curse  of  life  amongst  all  mechanics  except  the  Utopians.— 
Sir  Thomas  More. 

Morality  must  be  united  with  economics  as  a  practical 
science.  The  better  distribution  which  is  sought  for  will 
then  be  found  in  the  direction  of  (1)  a  modification  of  the 
idea  of  private  property  by  (a)  public  opinion,  arid  (b) 
legislation,  but  not  so  as  to  destroy  individualism,  which 
will  itself  be  modified  by  duty  and  the  love  of  man;  (2) 
state  action  in  the  interests  of  the  whole  people;  (3)  asso- 
ciation not  only  of  producers  but  of  consumers. — Arnold 
Toynbee. 

Betwixt  the  days  in  which  we  now  live  and  the  end  of 
the  Middle  Ages  Europe  has  gained  freedom  of  thought, 
increase  of  knowledge,  and  huge  talent  for  dealing  with 
the  material  forces  of  nature;  comparative  political  free- 
dom withal  and  respect  for  the  lives  of  civilised  men,  and 
other  gains  that  go  with  these  things;  nevertheless  I  say 
deliberately  that  if  the  present  state  of  society  is  to  endure 
she  has  bought  these  gains  at  too  high  a  price  in  the  loss  of 
the  pleasure  in  daily  work  which  once  did  certainly  solace 
the  mass  of  men  for  their  fears  and  oppressions :  the  death 
of  Art  was  too  high  a  price  to  pay  for  the  material  pros- 
perity of  the  middle  classes. — William  Morris. 

It  is  impossible  to  over-estimate  the  influence  of  pro- 
perty in  the  civilisation  of  mankind.  It  was  the  power 
that  brought  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  nations  out  of  bar- 
barism into  civilisation.  The  growth  of  the  idea  of  property 
in  the  human  mind  commenced  in  feebleness  and  ended  in 
becoming  its  master  passion.  Governments  and  laws  are 
instituted  with  primary  reference  to  its  creation,  protec- 
tion and  enjoyment.  It  introduced  slavery  as  an  instru- 
ment in  its  production ;  and  after  the  experience  of  several 
thousand  years  it  caused  the  abolition  of  slavery  upon  the 
discovery  that  a  free  man  was  a  better  property-making 
machine. — 'Lewis  Morgan. 

The  most  valuable  things  are  common  to  all  mankind, 
and  were  always  so.  Air  and  light  belong  in  common  to 
everything  that  breathes  and  sees  daylight.  Even  in  our 
own  society,  do  you  not  see  that  the  pleasantest  or  the  most 
splendid  properties — roads,  rivers,  forests  that  were  once 


LOUIS    BLANC  73 

the  king's,  libraries,  museums — belong  to  everyone?  No 
rich  man  possesses  any  more  than  I  do  this  ancient  oak 
of  Fontainbleau  or  that  picture  of  the  Louvre.  And  they 
are  more  mine  than  the  rich  man's,  if  I  know  better  how 
to  enjoy  them.  Collective  ownership,  which  people  fear  as 
a  distant  monster,  surrounds  us  already  under  a  thousand 
familiar  forms.  It  is  alarming  when  you  announce  it; 
whereas  the  advantages  which  it  procures  are  already  in 
use. — Anatole  France. 

Louis  Blanc  and  his  proposals  appeared  to  be  over- 
whelmed in  the  disasters  of  the  Revolution  of  1848.  It  was 
not  strange,  then,  that  a  French  writer  about  1865  felt  like 
offering  an  apology  for  compliance  with  a  request  'to  fur- 
nish an  article  on  socialism  for  an  encyclopaedia  of  political 
science.  Socialism,  he  said  in  effect,  is  something  which 
is  now  dead  and  gone;  but,  after  all,  it  has  a  curious  his- 
torical interest  which  may  justify  the  present  article. — 
Richard  T.  Ely. 


PALMERSTON. 


[Page  74 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PALMERSTON  AND   FOREIGN  POLICY. 

THERE  are  many  reasons  for  preferring  Palmerston 
to  any  other  statesman,  British  or  foreign,  for  the 
purposes  of  studying  a  life  and  character  containing 
the  elements  for  a  review  of  ideas  relating  to  foreign 
policy.  He  had  a  long  career  of  eighty  years,  during  which 
he  held  political  office  for  periods  totalling  nearly  half  a 
century,  and  throughout  his  main  interest,  even  when  he  did 
not  hold  the  seals  of  the  Foreign  Office,  was  foreign  policy. 
When  he  entered  Parliament  in  1807  Great  Britain  had 
only  very  recently  lost  Pitt  and  Fox,  and  he  was  still  a 
great  figure  in  politics  when  Gladstone  and  Disraeli  were 
at  the  height  of  their  powers.  He  was,  therefore,  in  touch 
with  the  great  men  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  and 
with  those  who  dominated  the  political  stage  right  down 
to  its  close.  He  served  as  a  colleague  in  governments  with 
Castlereagh,  Canning,  Wellington,  Peel,  John  Russell, 
Althorp,  Melbourne  and  Clarendon,  besides  being  himself 
twice  Prime  Minister.  If  there  is  any  well  established 
tradition  in  foreign  policy,  assuredly  Palmerston  inherited 
it  from  Castlereagh  and  Canning,  and  passed  it  on  to  his 
successors. 

So  much  did  Palmerston  make  the  business  of  the  Office 
his  own  concern  that  in  the  writing  of  despatches  he  treated 
his  colleagues  in  the  Cabinet,  and  Queen  Victoria  herself, 
as  quite  negligible,  managing  the  foreign  affairs  of  the 
British  Empire  very  much  as  he  managed  his  private 
estates ;  and  so  much  was  he  trusted  by  the  nation  at  large, 
so  fully  did  he"  seem  to  embody  the  British  temper,  that 
when,  on  account  of  this  conduct,  he  was  dismissed  from 
office  at  the  direct  instance  of  the  Queen,  he  was  the  most 
popular  man  in  the  country. 

75 


76     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

In  the  eyes  of  foreign  writers,  too,  Palmerston  has  gene- 
rally been  regarded  as  the  typically  British  foreign  minister. 
The  German  historian  Treitschke  draws  a  lively  picture  of 
him  striding  away  from  a  late  sitting  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, his  hat  shoved  back  on  his  head,  his  umbrella  shoul- 
dered like  a  musket,  a  flower  or  a  straw  in  his  mouth, 
his  whole  being  exuding  old  English  exuberance  and  cheer- 
ful ease.  The  same  writer,  who  could  rarely  pen  a  para- 
graph involving  a  reference  to  Great  Britain  without 
betraying  a  rancid  and  vicious  hatred,  represented  Palmers- 
ton  as  impersonating  the  hard  selfishness,  the  bullying  tone, 
the  hypocritical  professions  of  benevolence  and  religion, 
which,  in  his  view,  characterised  British  foreign  policy  in 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Beneath  the  sport- 
ing swagger,  the  jaunty  jollity,  the  good-natured,  easy- 
going appearance  and  air  of  the  Minister,  it  was  repre- 
sented, was  a  John  Bull  with  greedy  eyes  fixed  on  his  own 
advantage,  and  using  the  power  of  his  state  to  cajole, 
intimidate  or  wheedle  in  the  interest  of  British  trade  and 
British  prestige. 

There  is  some  truth,  much  falsehood,  in  such  estimates. 
No  apology  is  needed  on  behalf  of  any  minister  who  makes 
it  his  policy  to  promote  the  interests  of  his  country.  He 
would  need  defending  if  he  did  not.  Amongst  much  wild 
writing  on  foreign  affairs  which  the  excitement  of  the 
years  of  war  produced,  there  frequently  was  a  suggestion 
that  the  promotion  of  national  interests  was  a  kind  of 
political  wickedness,  and  that  Foreign  Ministers,  ambassa- 
dors, and  the  whole  diplomatic  tribe  merited  the  reproba- 
tion of  all  righteous — and  especially  of  self-righteous — 
persons. 

It  may  be  admitted  readily  that  more  boldness  than 
candour  would  distinguish  any  man  who  set  out  to  defend 
every  act  of  British  foreign  policy  during  the  nineteenth 
century.  But  it  has  at  least  been  frank  and  open.  The 
British  system  of  Parliamentary  and  public  criticism,  and 
the  habit  of  dragging  facts  into  the  light  of  day,  has  ensured 
that  what  has  been  done  should  be  known,  and  we  have 
good  warrant  for  the  belief  that  nothing  of  consequence 
has  been  hidden,  or  need  be.  Dr.  Hollancf  Rose,  who  has 
an  incomparably  extensive  acquaintance  with  British 
foreign  archives,  tells  the  impressive  story  that  he  once 
remarked  to  Dr.  Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner,  another 


PALMERSTON  77 

assiduous  labourer  in  the  documentary  vineyard,  that  the 
more  thoroughly  British  foreign  policy  was  examined  the 
better  it  came  out.  Gardiner  replied :  "Yes,  it  always  does, 
it  always  does."  Men  in  responsible  positions  have  to 
choose  courses  which  often  seem  to  many  among  their  con- 
temporaries, and  may  seem  still  more  to  posterity — which 
has  the  advantage  or  noting  how  things  have  worked 
out — to  have  been  wrong.  /In  some  instances  they  have 
admitted  it.  A  good  instance  is  Lord  Salisbury's  candid 
acknowledgment  that  the  government  of  which  he  was  a 
foremost  member,  in  supporting  Turkey  in  1878,  "backed 
the  wrong  horse."  But  Foreign  Secretaries,  however  able, 
cannot  penetrate  the  future  with  infallible  judgment;  they 
have  to  do  their  best  in  perplexing  and  delicate  circum- 
stances; and  Lord  Salisbury  himself  was,  on  the  admission 
of  men  in  all  parties,  one  of  the  best  Foreign  Secretaries 
Great  Britain  has  ever  had,  if  he  was  not  quite,  as  Professor 
Cramb  alleged,  "the  greatest  statesman  in  English  history 
since  the  eighteenth  century." 

But  while  a  Foreign  Minister  is  not  to  be  condemned  but 
commended  for  keeping  the  interests  of  his  own  country  pri- 
marily in  view,  a  proper  regard  for  the  rights  and  interests 
of  neighbour  states  is  virtuous  in  a  great  nation ;  and  on  this 
count  British  policy  has  little  cause  to  shrink  from  the  test. 
Castlereagh  and  Canning,  at  the  beginning  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  laid  down  principles  which  were  reiterated 
in  different  terms  but  with  substantially  the  same  import 
by  later  statesmen  right  down  to  our  own  time.  It  is  admit- 
tedly difficult  to  prescribe  rules  for  dealing  with  a  branch 
of  politics  which  has  to  do  with  governments,  peoples  and 
situations  beyond  the  control  of  any  one  Foreign  Office,  but 
there  is  a  clear  spirit  of  unity  underlying  these  various 
definitions  of  principle,  laid  down  by  successive  Foreign 
Secretaries  and  Prime  Ministers: — 

Castlereagh,  1818. — "The  idea  of  an  Alliance  Solidaire, 
by  which  each  state  shall  be  bound  to  support  the  state  of 
succession,  government  and  possession  within  all  other 
states  from  violence  and  attack,  upon  condition  of  receiving 
for  itself  a  .similar  guarantee,  must  be  understood  as 
morally  implying  the  previous  establishment  of  such  a 
system  of  general  government  as  may  secure  and  enforce 
upon  all  kings  and  nations  an  internal  system  of  peace  and 
justice.  Till  the  mode  of  constructing  such  a  system  shall 


78     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

be  devised  the  consequence  is  inadmissible,  as  nothing  would 
be  more  immoral  and  more  prejudicial  to  the  character  of 
governments  generally  than  the  idea  that  their  force  was 
collectively  to  be  prostituted  to  the  support  of  established 
power,  without  any  consideration  of  the  extent  to  which 
it  was  abused." 

Canning,  1823. — "England  is  under  no  obligation  to 
interfere  or  to  insist  on  interfering  in  the  internal  affairs 
of  independent  nations.  The  rule  I  take  to  be  that  our 
engagements  have  reference  only  to  the  state  of  territorial 
possession  settled  at  the  peace;  to  the  state  of  affairs 
between  nation  and  nation,  not  to  the  affairs  of  any  nation 
within  itself.  Our  business  is  to  preserve  the  peace  of  the 
world,  and  therefore  the  independence  of  the  several  nations 
which  compose  it." 

Aberdeen,  1829. — "Having  no  separate  objects  to  attain 
and  having  nothing  to  fear,  it  has  been  peculiarly  tour 
office  to  watch  over  the  peaceful  relations  of  states,  and,  by 
upholding  the  established  balance,  to  promote  the  security 
and  prosperity  of  each." 

Palmerston,  1848. — "The  principle  on  which  I  have 
thought  that  the  foreign  affairs  of  this  country  ought  to  be 
conducted  is  the  principle  of  maintaining  peace  and  friendly 
understanding  with  all  nations,  as  long  as  it  was  possible 
to  do  so  consistently  with  a  due  regard  to  the  interests,  the 
honour  and  the  dignity  of  this  country.  My  endeavours 
have  been  to  preserve  peace.  All  the  governments  of  which 
I  have  had  the  honour  to  be  a  member  have  succeeded  in 
accomplishing  that  object.  ...  I  hold  that  the  real  policy 
of  England — apart  from  questions  which  involve  her  own 
particular  interests,  political  or  commercial — is  to  be  the 
champion  of  justice  and  right;  pursuing  that  course  with 
moderation  and  prudence,  not  becoming  the  Don  Quixote  of 
the  world,  but  giving  the  right  of  her  moral  sanction  and 
support  wherever  she  thinks  that  justice  is,  and  wherever 
she  thinks  that  wrong  has  been  done." 

Granville,  1851.— "One  of  the  first  duties  of  a  British 
Government  must  always  be  to  obtain  for  our  foreign  trade 
that  security  which  is  essential  to  commercial  success,  but 
in  aiming  at  this  all  considerations  of  a  higher  character 
were  not  to  be  roughly  pushed  aside  for  the  sake  of  sup- 
porting British  traders  abroad  in  every  case.  With  respect 
to  the  internal  affairs  of  other  countries,  such  as  the  estab- 


PALMERSTON  79 

lishment  of  liberal  institutions  and  the  reduction  of  tariffs, 
in  which  this  country  has  an  interest,  Her  Majesty's  repre- 
sentatives ought  to  be  furnished  with  the  views  of  Her 
Majesty's  government  on  each  subject,  and  the  arguments 
best  adapted  to  support  those  views;  but  they  should  be 
instructed  to  press  those  views  only  when  fitting  opportuni- 
ties occurred,  or  only  when  their  advice  and  assistance 
would  be  welcome,  or  be  effectual,  because  the  intrusion  of 
advice  suspected  to  be  not  wholly  disinterested  never  could 
have  as  much  effect  as  the  opinion  given  at  the  request  of 
the  person  who  is  to  be  influenced." 

Clarendon  (as  stated  by  Gladstone),  1868. — "As  I  under- 
stand Lord  Clarendon's  ideas,  they  proceed  upon  such 
grounds  as  these :  That  England  should  keep  entirely  in  her 
own  hands  the  means  of  estimating  her  own  obligations 
upon  the  various  facts  as  they  arise;  that  she  should  not 
foreclose  and  narrow  her  own  liberty  of  choice  by  declara- 
tions made  to  other  Powers,  in  their  own  or  supposed 
interests,  of  which  they  would  claim  to  be  at  least  joint 
interpreters;  that  it  is  dangerous  for  her  to  assume  alone 
an  advanced,  and  therefore  an  isolated,  position  in  regard 
to  European  controversies ;  that,  come  what  may,  it  is  bet- 
ter for  her  to  promise  too  little  than  too  much;  that  she 
should  not  encourage  the  weak  by  giving  expectations  of 
aid  to  resist  the  strong,  but  should  rather  seek  to  deter 
the  strong,  by  firm  but  moderate  language,  from  aggres- 
sions on  the  weak;  that  she  should  seek  to  develop  and 
mature  the  action  of  a  common,  or  public,  or  European 
opinion,  as  the  best  standing  bulwark  against  wrong,  but 
should  beware  of  seeming  to  lay  down  the  law  of  that 
opinion  by  her  own  authority,  and  thus  running  the  risk 
of  setting  against  her,  and  against  right  and  justice,  that 
general  sentiment  which  ought  to  be,  and  generally  would 
be,  arrayed  in  their  favour.  I  am  persuaded  that  at  this 
juncture  opinions  of  this  colour,  being  true  and  sound,  are 
also  the  only  opinions  which  this  country  is  disposed  to 
approve.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  on  that  account  it  is 
one  whit  less  disposed  than  it  has  been  at  any  time  to  cast 
in  its  lot  upon  any  fitting  occasion  with  the  cause  it  believes 
to  be  right." 

Salisbury,  1889. — "Our  policy  is  well  known  to  all  the 
world. .  Our  treaty  obligations  are  matters  of  public  pro- 
perty, and  our  policy  with  respect  to  Europe  and  the  Medi- 


80     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

terranean  has  been  avowed  again  and  again  to  be  a  policy 
of  peace,  of  maintaining  things  as  they  are,  because  we 
believe  that  in  the  state  of  things  as  they  are  there  is  a 
sufficient  opportunity  for  the  progress  and  prosperity  of 
all  those  who  inhabit  those  countries,  without  trusting  any- 
thing to  the  sinister  and  hazardous  arbitrament  of  war. 
But  when  you  pass  from  policy  to  the  precise  measures, 
diplomatic  or  material,  which  on  some  future  occasion  it 
may  be  the  duty  of  this  country  to  adopt,  then  I  say  if  I 
could  foresee  them  I  would  not  tell  you  what  they  were, 
and  I  tell  you  frankly  that  it  is  impossible  for  any  govern- 
ment to  foresee  them.  They  depend  on  conditions  which 
we  cannot  foresee,  and  on  the  actions  of  men  over  whom 
we  have  no  control." 

Lloyd  George,  1919. — "There  is  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  foreign  policy  in  this  country  that  you  never  inter- 
fere with  the  internal  affairs  of  other  countries. " 

If  these  statements  of  general  principle,  by  men  who 
have  held  the  highest  posts  of  responsibility  through  the 
span  of  a  century,  do  not  furnish  a  key  to  the  whole  course 
of  British  policy — and  it  is  not  pretended  that  they  do — 
they  indicate  a  certain  steadiness  of  aim,  a  degree  of  con- 
sistency of  purpose,  which  it  would  not  be  possible  to  match 
in  the  records  of  any  other  country ;  and,  having  in  view 
the  important  fact  upon  which  Lord  Salisbury  commented 
in  the  passage  cited,  that  foreign  policy  depends  to  a  great 
extent  upon  conditions  which  cannot  be  foreseen,  and  on 
the  actions  of  men  over  whom  no  one  Power  has  control, 
that  steady  consistency  is  something  to  be  viewed  with  satis- 
faction. 

The  mistakes  which  have  been  made  in  the  actual  con- 
duct of  British  foreign  policy  have  never  been  the  conse- 
quence of  adhering  with  strength  of  will  to  such  well- 
established  principles,  but  always  of  weakness  and  hesita- 
tion. There  is  no  department  of  government  in  which  a 
firm  line  of  policy  is  of  so  much  importance  as  in  the  man- 
agement of  foreign  affairs.  Drift  spells  mischief;  divided 
counsels  in  Cabinet  invite  aggression  by  a  Power  which 
may  be  inclined  to  pursue  a  dangerous  course.  That  is 
proved  in  the  case  of  the  incident  in  British  policy  in  the 
nineteenth  century  about  which  there  is  still  a  wide  differ- 
ence of  opinion — the  Crimean  War. 

That  Great  Britain  had  a  good  case  at  the  moment 


PALMERSTON  81 

when  war  was  declared  it  is  fairly  easy  to  prove ;  but  that 
the  situation  was  allowed  to  develop  to  the  point  when  war 
became  almost  inevitable  was  a  grave  misfortune,  due,  not 
to  the  strength  and  decisiveness  of  a  Cabinet  which  saw  its 
duty  clear,  but  to  the  lack  of  firm  control.  The  Cabinet 
was  divided;  Lord  Aberdeen,  the  Prime  Minister,  had  no 
grip;  he  acknowledged  that  "it  is  possible  that  by  a  little 
more  energy  and  vigour,  not  on  the  Danube,  but  in  Down- 
ing Street,  it  might  have  been  prevented ;"  and  his  Foreign 
Secretary,  Clarendon,  said,  "we  are  drifting  into  war." 
There  is  no  occasion,  in  a  general  review  like  this,  to 
traverse  the  circumstances  which  led  to  the  Crimean  War, 
but  it  may  be  said  with  some  confidence  that  those  who 
believe  that  it  could  have  been  averted  are  right,  but  that 
it  could  only  have  been  averted  by  strong  handling  from 
the  beginning,  not  by  the  hesitating,  stumbling  policy  of 
a  group  of  statesmen  who  did  not  know  their  own  minds, 
and  who  let  the  steering  wheel  be  knocked  out  of  their 
hands  by  the  wash  of  the  currents.  It  is  easier  to  believe 
that  the  war  would  not  have  occurred  had  Palmerston  been 
at  the  Foreign  Office  than  that  his  strength  would  have, 
precipitated  a  conflict. 

The  disposition  of  British  foreign  policy  towards  particu- 
lar powers  has  varied  very  greatly;  but  this  variation  does 
not  indicate  a  departure  from  main  principles  so  much  as 
changes  in  the  policies  of  those  Powers  affecting  British 
interests.  The  pursuit  of  the  general  principles  laid  down 
in  the  statements  printed  above  is  quite  consistent  with  a 
total  shift  in  attitude  towards  other  countries.  Striking 
examples  are  afforded  by  the  cases  of  Turkey,  Russia  and 
Austria. 

From  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  till  the  out- 
break of  the  European  war  in  1914,  it  may  be  taken  to  have 
been  a  fundamental  aim  of  British  foreign  policy  to  obviate 
the  break-up  of  the  Turkish  Empire.  There  were  two  over- 
whelmingly strong  reasons  for  this.  The  first  was  that 
the  collapse  of  Turkey  would  involve  a  struggle  over 
Turkish  territory  in  Europe,  with  a  disturbance  of  incal- 
culable magnitude  in  the  Balkans,  Asia  Minor,  Arabia  and 
Persia.  The  second  was  that  Russia  clearly  aimed  at  the 
possession  of  Constantinople,  a  situation  of  enormous 
strength  and  importance,  which,  commanding  the  entrance 
to  the  Black  Sea,  would  give  to  a  great  European  Power 


82     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

possessing  it  control  over  the  mouth  of  the  Danube  and 
the  northern  shores  of  Asia  Minor,  and  would  menace  the 
routes  to  India.  Turkey  was  a  foul  bird  for  a  civilised 
Power  to  take  under  its  wing,  and  the  wretched  govern- 
ment which  it  applied  to  its  provinces,  rendered  additionally 
horrible  by  frequent  massacres,  made  the  responsibility 
hard  to  endure.  But  needs  must  when  the  devil  drives ;  and 
it  was  on  the  whole  better  to  have  Turkey  on  our  conscience 
than  to  let  her  tumble  to  pieces  and  then  have  to  cope  with 
a  world-shaking  scramble  for  the  fragments. 

But  when  in  1909  the  Young  Turk  party,  led  by  officers 
trained  in  Germany,  effected  a  revolution  which  dethroned 
the  Sultan  Adbul  Hamid,  a  new  chapter  in  Turkish  history 
was  commenced.  German  plans  for  dominating  Asia  Minor 
were  aided  by  the  new  regime.  Wilhelm  II.,  the  personal 
friend  of  Allah,  who  ten  years  before  had  in  his  theatrical 
fashion  stood  before  the  tomb  of  Saladin  in  Damascus  and 
announced  that  the  three  hundred  millions  of  Mohammedans 
scattered  over  the  globe  might  be  assured  that  the  German 
Emperor  would  be  their  friend  at  all  times,  exploited  the 
situation  to  the  full.  Dreams  of  a  vast  belt  of  Germanised 
territory  extending  from  Berlin  to  Bagdad  rose  like  a 
mirage  to  dazzle  the  Teutonic  imagination.  The  danger  to 
British  interests — indeed,  to  the  vital  arteries  of  British 
commercial  and  political  life — assumed  a  far  more  threat- 
ening aspect  than  had  at  any  time  been  the  case  within 
the  half  century  between  the  Crimean  War  and  the  down- 
fall of  Abdul  Hamid.  And  when,  the  great  war  having 
commenced,  Turkey  threw  in  her  lot  with  Germany,  she 
necessarily  compelled  a  recasting  of  the  British  attitude 
towards  her.  The  reasons  which  had  prompted  a  desire  to 
prevent  the  disruption  of  the  Turkish  Empire  no  longer 
existed.  The  great  war  brought  with  it  few  compensations 
— none  could  be  equal  to  the  enormous  sacrifices  which  it 
demanded — but  among  those  few  must  be  reckoned  the 
ending  of  the  protection  which  Great  Britain  so  long 
extended  to  a  Power  whose  rule  had  cursed  south-eastern 
Europe  for  five  centuries. 

The  British  distrust  of  Russian  expansion  was  partly  a 
legacy  from  the  Crimean  War.  But  there  were  good 
grounds  for  it,  The  persistent  spread  of  the  Russian 
Empire  across  central  and  northern  Asia  to  the  eastern 
shores  of  the  continent  brought  it  close  to  the  out- 


PALMERSTON  83 

posts  of  India.  Russian  intrigues  in  Persia,  Afghanis- 
tan and  Thibet  were  not  figments  of  Anglo-Indian 
imagination.  They  were  realities,  and  the  Power  which 
was  responsible  for  the  safety  of  India  could  not  be  indif- 
ferent to  them.  It  would  have  been  sheer  folly  to  ignore 
them.  A  common  interest  in  checking  Russian  aggression 
in  Asia  led  to  the  concluding  of  the  first  treaty  of  alliance 
between  Great  Britain  and  Japan  in  1902.  But  the  Russian 
defeat  in  the  Russo-Japanese  War  of  1904-5  materially 
changed  the  situation.  Both  France  and  Russia  had  mean- 
while become  alarmed  by  the  threatening  demeanour  of 
Germany,  and,  the  former  state  having  entered  into  an 
entente  cordiale  with  Great  Britain,  by  which  outstanding 
difficulties  in  rival  colonial  policy  were  settled,  used  her 
friendly  offices  to  bring  together  Russia — her  ally — and 
Great  Britain.  The  result  was  the  agreement  concluded  in 
1907  by  which  Russia  and  Great  Britain  cleared  away 
causes  of  friction  and  suspicion.  The  ending  of  over  half 
a  century  of  obstinate  misunderstanding,  which  on  several 
occasions  brought  the  two  Powers  to  the  verge  of  war,  was 
a  substantial  gain. 

The  British  official  attitude  towards  Austria  had  for 
many  generations  been  extremely  friendly  before  the  out- 
break of  the  European  War.  But  here  again  the  chief 
reason  was  because  it  seemed  that  the  preservation  of 
Austria  meant  the  maintenance  of  security.  "I  believe/* 
Lord  Salisbury  once  said,  "that  in  the  strength  and  indepen- 
dence of  Austria  lie  the  best  hopes  of  European  stability 
and  peace."  Similarly,  thirty  years  before,  Palmerston  had 
said:  "The  political  independence  and  liberties  of  Europe 
are  bound  up,  in  my  opinion,  with  the  maintenance  and 
integrity  of  Austria  as  a  great  European  Power,  and  there- 
fore anything  which  tends  by  direct  or  even  remote  contin- 
gency to  weaken  and  cripple  Austria,  but  still  more  to 
reduce  her  from  her  position  as  a  first  rate  Power  to  that 
of  a  secondary  state  must  be  a  great  calamity  to  Europe, 
and  one  which  every  Englishman  ought  to  deprecate  and 
endeavour  to  prevent."  Salisbury  rejoiced  in  the  alliance 
of  Germany  and  Austria,  because  he  thought  it  afforded 
a  guarantee  of  peace.  It  was  recognised  that  the  motley 
aggregation  of  states  gathered  together  within  the  Austro- 
Hungarian  Empire  was  not  naturally  secure,  but  their  fall- 
ing apart  would  have  provoked  conflict,  which  Great  Britain 


84     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

laboured  to  avoid.  That  friendly  attitude  was  shattered  by 
the  action  of  Austria  in  provoking  the  great  war,  and  very 
soon  after  its  commencement  Mr.  Lloyd  George  foretold 
that  the  Austrian  Emperor  would  find  his  "ramshackle  old 
Empire"  tumbling  about  his  ears — a  prediction  quite  liter- 
ally verified  by  events. 

The  British  attitude  towards  France,  after  the  Napo- 
leonic wars,  presented  no  points  of  particular  interest  until 
that  country  had  begun  to  rebuilt  for  herself  a  great  colonial 
Empire  in  Africa  and  the  East  Indies.  There  were  moments 
of  extreme  tension  when  France,  working  eastward  from 
the  Congo  valley  to  the  Nile,  came  in  touch  with  British 
interests  in  the  region  of  the  Upper  Nile.  But  the  French 
nation  had  no  wish  to  renew  old  quarrels,  whilst  the  British 
nation  was  thoroughly  well-disposed  towards  France, 
though  not  inclined  to  sacrifice  vital  interests.  Indeed, 
within  the  last  hundred  years,  the  relations  of  the  two 
countries  have  generally  been  cordial,  and  at  times  ex- 
tremely so. 

The  relations  between  Great  Britain  and  Germany  were 
good,  and  there  seemed  to  be  no  elements  of  suspicion  or 
serious  cause  for  friction  on  either  side  till  1896,  when 
Wilhelm  II.  sent  to  Paul  Kriiger,  then  President  of  the 
Transvaal  Republic,  a  telegram  congratulating  him  on  the 
fact  that  he  had  been  able  to  repel  the  Jameson  Raid  "with- 
out appealing  to  the  help  of  friendly  Powers."  That  was 
plainly  a  hint  that  if  Kriiger  had  appealed  to  "friendly 
Powers"  assistance  would  have  been  forthcoming.  As  Ger- 
many had  no  interests  in  South  Africa,  the  telegram  was 
interpreted  in  Great  Britain  as  a  menace  to  her,  and  it 
revealed  in  a  flash  the  disposition  of  the  German  Kaiser 
towards  her.  From  that  time  till  the  outbreak  of  the  war 
there  were  many  in  Great  Britain  who  refused  to  regard 
Germany  in  any  other  light  than  as  a  dangerous,  scheming 
foe,  ever  on  the  watch  to  inflict  a  deadly  blow  at  British 
interests  wherever  they  might  be  injured. 

The  possession  of  great  power  by  a  nation  confers  great 
benefits  upon  it,  but  is  also  open  to  the  danger  of  the  use 
of  the  power  to  dominate  over  its  neighbours.  The  signal 
downfall  of  Prussianised  Germany,  which  ever  since  the 
accession  of  Wilhelm  II.  had  played  the  unmanly  part  of 
the  bully  of  Europe,  offers  a  salutary  lesson.  Palmerston 
has  been  accused  of  too  great  an  addiction  to  blustering 


PALMERSTON  85 

methods.  Support  has  been  given  to  this  view  of  him  by 
Granville  and  Salisbury.  But  if  Palmerston's  manner  was 
sometimes  off-hand  and  his  tongue  occasionally  rather 
reckless  for  a  Minister  engaged  in  the  delicate  business  of 
diplomacy,  it  is  right  to  remember  that  few  English  Minis- 
ters have  ever  employed  the  power  of  their  country  to 
support  the  aspirations  of  people  struggling  for  indepen- 
dence or  against  oppression  so  whole-heartedly  as  he  did. 
He  took  a  leading  part  in  securing  the  independence  of 
Belgium  in  1830;  he  championed  the  cause  of  the  mis- 
governed people  of  Naples  in  the  strongest  terms ;  and  Glad- 
stone bore  testimony  to  the  sincerity  with  which  he  worked 
to  "rescue  the  unhappy  African  race  whose  history  is  for 
the  most  part  written  only  in  blood  and  tears."  In  the 
cause  of  Italian  unity  he  took  a  lively  interest,  and  the 
personal  friendship  which  he  manifested  for  Mazzini  and 
Garibaldi  alarmed  Queen  Victoria.  His  frank  liking  for 
Kossuth,  the  Hungarian  patriot,  provoked  a  Cabinet  crisis. 
Indeed,  it  has  been  shrewdly  alleged  against  him  that  he 
was  "conservative  at  home  and  revolutionist  abroad."  Per- 
haps he  was;  but  it  is  better  to  have  liberal  leanings  in 
some  directions  than  in  none;  and,  putting  aside  Palmers- 
ton's  manner,  his  use  of  the  power  and  prestige  of  Great 
Britain  in  support  of  small  nations  and  struggling  causes 
was  on  the  whole  salutary  and  creditable. 

At  the  same  time,  insistence  on  exerting  the  strength 
of  Great  Britain  to  protect  her  citizens  in  the  pursuit  of 
legitimate  occupations  abroad  was  a  cardinal  feature  of  his 
policy.  He  was  hotly  attacked  for  his  assertion  of  it  in 
the  once-famous  Don  Pacifico  case  in  1850,  an'd  mature 
opinion  cannot  acquit  him  of  high-handedness  in  this  in- 
stance. But  his  defence  has  a  fine  ring  of  pride  in  British 
citizenship,  for  which  he  can  be  forgiven  much,  as  he  was 
forgiven  by  the  House  of  Commons  before  which  the  glow- 
ing passage  was  delivered: — "I  fearlessly  challenge  the 
verdict  which  this  House,  as  representing  a  political,  a  com- 
mercial, a  constitutional  country,  is  to  give  on  the  question 
now  brought  before  it — whether  the  principles  on  which 
the  foreign  policy  of  Her  Majesty's  government  has  been 
conducted,  and  the  sense  of  duty  which  has  led  us  to  think 
ourselves  bound  to  afford  protection  to  our  fellow-subjects 
abroad,  are  proper  and  fitting  guides  for  those  who  are 
charged  with  the  government  of  England ;  and  whether,  as 


86     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

the  Roman  in  days  of  old  held  himself  free  from  indignity 
when  he  could  say  civ  is  Romanus  sum,  so  also  a  British 
subject,  in  whatever  land  he  may  be,  shall  feel  confident 
that  the  watchful  eye  and  the  strong  arm  of  England  will 
protect  him  against  injustice  and  wrong." 

Palmerston's  dismissal  from  office  at  the  instance  of 
Queen  Victoria  connects  with  the  larger  question  of  the 
control  of  foreign  policy.  In  that  case  itself  he  was  in  the 
wrong.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  writing  despatches  con- 
taining instructions  to  British  representatives  abroad  with- 
out submitting  them  to  the  Queen  or  to  his  own  colleagues. 
The  Queen's  Consort,  Prince  Albert,  took  an  especial  interest 
in  foreign  affairs,  and  desired  to  read  and  criticise  de- 
spatches before  they  were  sent.  He  it  was  who  drew  up  a 
memorandum  in  1850,  wherein  the  Foreign  Secretary  was 
sharply  informed  that  the  Queen  insisted  on  her  rights. 
But  Palmerston  offended  again  in  the  same  manner,  where- 
upon the  Prime  Minister,  Lord  John  Russell,  in  conformity 
with  the  Queen's  wish,  wrote  him  a  letter  dismissing  him. 
That  he  took  too  much  upon  himself  in  conducting  foreign 
affairs  as  though  they  were  his  own  personal  concern  there 
is  no  doubt;  but  there  is  very  good  reason  for  the  belief 
that  he  resented  the  part  that  Prince  Albert  was  ambitious 
to  play  in  shaping  British  policy.  The  British  constitu- 
tional system  had  developed  away  from  the  old  claim  that 
foreign  policy  was  exclusively  within  the  prerogative  of 
the  Crown.  Palmerston  was  wrong  in  making  his  protest 
as  he  did,  if  that  was  his  purpose,  and  it  was  wholly  indefen- 
sible to  act  without  consulting  his  colleagues ;  but  a  Minis- 
ter is  never  out  of  reach  of  Parliamentary  criticism,  and 
could  be  brought  to  book  much  more  effectually  than  the 
consort  of  a  sovereign  could  be. 

The  idea  that  foreign  affairs  pertained  to  the  Royal 
prerogative  was  one  upon  which  the  Stuart  kings  insisted, 
and  which  was  conceded  by  some  eminent  authorities  at  a 
later  date.  James  I.  forbade  the  House  of  Commons  to 
"argue  and  debate  publicly  of  matters  far  above  their  reach 
and  capacity,  tending  to  our  high  dishonour  and  breach  of 
prerogative  royal."  After  the  Restoration  Charles  II. 
insisted  on  the  same  principle.  He  refused  to  comunicate 
to  Parliament  a  treaty  which  he  had  signed.  "But  I  think  it 
very  fit,"  said  a  member  of  the  House,  "to  be  communicated 
to  five  hundred  that  must  give  supply  to  maintain  it."  And 


PALMERSTON  87 

that  really  was  the  essence  of  the  matter.  Obligations 
abroad  cannot  be  maintained  without  Parliamentary  sup- 
port at  home,  and  Parliament,  by  having  control  of  the 
purse,  could  always,  if  it  would,  insist  on  controlling  foreign 
policy. 

After  the  revolution  of  1688-9  William  III.  was  allowed 
to  have  his  own  way  in  foreign  affairs,  and  the  early  Hano- 
verian kings,  having  to  consider  their  Hanoverian  as  well 
as  their  English  interests,  devoted  close  attention  to  foreign 
policy.  Hence  the  elder  Pitt's  stinging  criticism :  "It  is  now 
too  apparent  that  this  great,  this  powerful,  this  formidable 
kingdom  is  considered  only  as  a  province  to  a  despicable 
electorate."  But  by  the  time  of  Queen  Victoria's  accession 
it  was  well-established  constitutional  doctrine  that  the 
government  was  responsible  to  Parliament  for  foreign 
affairs  as  for  every  other  department  of  state;  and  where 
the  responsibility  lies  there  must  the  choice  of  alternatives 
be  made.  A  sovereign  like  Edward  VII.,  who  understood 
foreign  affairs  extremely  well,  and  was  a  keen  judge  of 
political  human  nature,  may  render  valuable  service  to  his 
country  in  consultation  with  responsible  ministers,  but  no 
sovereign  under  the  British  system  of  government  can 
determine  a  line  of  policy,  and  no  administration  could  get 
rid  of  its  responsibility  by  doing  what  a  sovereign  recom- 
mended rather  than  what  its  own  judgment  deemed  right 
and  wise. 

Democracies  are  invariably  neglectful  of  foreign  affairs 
until  some  incident  of  pressing  moment  arises  from 
which  a  crisis  emerges.  But  if  there  is  to  be  a  close  demo- 
cratic control  of  such  matters  of  policy  in  the  future,  as 
some  insist,  there  must  evidently  be  fuller  study  of  them 
by  the  people  at  large.  For  these  things  are  the  overwhelm- 
ingly important  issues.  The  best  governed  country  in  the 
world  rfiight  have  its  well-being  wrecked  by  outside  influ- 
ences. It  is  doubtful  whether  British  foreign  policy  during 
the  past  hundred  years  or  more  would  have  been  materially 
different  had  there  been  more  democratic  control  than  was 
the  case,  for  there  is  no  reason  to  think  that  the  people  as 
a  whole  were  wiser  or  better  than  those  who  had  charge 
of  this  department  of  government,  or  that  they  would  have 
promoted  the  interests  of  the  nation  more  assiduously.  A 
trading  nation  must  cultivate  its  foreign  interests  or  it  will 


V 


88     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 


suffer  losses  of  magnitude,  bringing  unemployment,  poverty 
and  ruin  in  their  train. 


The  standard  biography  of  Palmerston  is  that  by  Lord 
Dalling  and  Evelyn  Ashley.  There  is  an  interesting  short 
book,  Lord  Palmerston,  by  the  Marquis  of  Lome  (after- 
wards Duke  of  Argyle),  containing  much  original  material. 
Egerton's  British  Foreign  Policy  in  Europe  is  a  useful  book. 
An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  International  Relations, 
by  A.  J.  Grant  and  four  other  writers,  is  an  exceptionally 
good  book,  though  small.  G.  P.  Gooch  and  J.  H.  B.  Master- 
man's  A  Century  of  British  Foreign  Policy  is  also  a  short 
book.  Selected  Speeches  on  British  Foreign  Policy,  edited 
by  E.  R.  Jones,  reprints  twenty-four  masterly  deliverances, 
ranging  from  Chatham  to  Edward  Grey  and  Lloyd  George. 


The  more  you  examine  this  matter,  the  more  you  will 
come  to  the  conclusion  which  I  have  arrived  at,  that  this 
foreign  policy,  this  regard  for  "the  liberties  of  Europe," 
this  care  at  one  time  for  "the  Protestant  interests,"  this 
excessive  love  for  "the  balance  of  power,"  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  a  gigantic  system  of  out-door  relief  for  the 
aristocracy  of  Great  Britain. — John  Bright. 

The  greatest  triumph  of  our  time  would  be  the  enthrone- 
ment of  the  idea  of  public  right  as  the  governing  idea  of 
European  politics. — Gladstone. 

You  are  always  talking  to  me  of  principles.  As  if  your 
public  law  were  anything  to  me ;  I  do  not  know  what  it 
means.  What  do  you  suppose  that  all  your  parchments  and 
all  your  treaties  signify  to  me? — Tzar  Alexander  I. 

We  exaggerate  too  much  the  importance  and  the  effect 
of  treaties.  Jn  this  age  of  the  world,  and  in  view  of  the 
fearful  risk  which  every  disturbance  brings  upon  any  nation 
concerned  in  it,  I  do  not  think  that  we  must  rate  too  highly 
the  effect  of  the  bonds  constituted  by  signatures  upon  a 
piece  of  paper.  If  nations  in  a  great  crisis  act  rightly,  they 
will  do  so  because  they  are  in  unison  with  each  other,  and 
not  because  they  have  bound  themselves  by  protocols. — Lord 
Salisbury  (1891). 

Treaties  are  the  currency  of  international  statesman- 
ship.— Lloyd  George  (1914). 


PALMERSTON  89 

I  found  the  Chancellor  very  agitated.     His  Excellency 

once  began  a  harangue,  which  lasted  for  about  twenty 
tinutes.  He  said  that  the  step  taken  by  His  Majesty's 
government  was  terrible  to  a  degree;  just  for  a  word 
— "neutrality,"  a  word  which  in  war  had  so  often  been  dis- 
regarded— just  for  a  .scrap  of  paper,  Great  Britain  was 
going  to  make  war  on  a  kindred  nation  who  desired  nothing 
better  than  to  be  friends  with  her. — Sir  Edward  Goschen 
(August,  1914). 

England  will  never  consent  that  France  shall  abrogate 
the  power  of  annulling  at  her  pleasure,  and  under  the  pre- 
tence of  a  natural  right  of  which  she  makes  herself  the  only 
judge,  the  political  system  of  Europe,  established  by  solemn 
treaties  and  guaranteed  by  the  consent  of  all  the  Powers. 
—William  Pitt  (1793). 

In  1879,  when  foreign  affairs  were  much  before  the 
public,  I  suggested  to  a  publisher  a  series  of  books  dealing 
quite  shortly  and  clearly  with  the  political  history  and  con- 
stitution of  the  chief  states  of  Europe  from  1815.  I 
designed  them  for  popular  instruction,  thinking  it  of  great 
importance  that  people  in  general  should  know  what  they 
were  talking  about  when  they  spoke  of  France  or  Russia. 
.  .  .  The  result  of  my  attempt  was  to  convince  me  that 
our  ignorance  of  the  last  sixty  years  is  colossal. — Mandell 
Creighton. 

There  are  some  at  the  present  moment  who  are  raising 
a  cry  for  democratic  control  of  foreign  policy.  It  is  not 
power  of  control  that  the  British  democracy  lacks  in  respect 
of  foreign  policy;  its  sovereignty  is  equally  supreme  in  all 
departments  of  state.  What  it  lacks  is  interest  and  know- 
ledge.— J.  F.  Heamshaw. 

I  cannot  agree  that  nothing  less  than  an  immediate 
attack  upon  the  honour  and  interest  of  this  nation  can 
authorise  us  to  interpose  in  defence  of  weaker  states  and 
in  stopping  the  enterprises  of  an  ambitious  neighbour. 
Whenever  that  narrow,  selfish  policy  has  prevailed  in  our 
counsels  we  have  constantly  experienced  the  fatal  effects 
of  it.  By  suffering  our  natural  enemies  to  oppress  the 
Powers  less  able  than  we  are  to  make  a  resistance,  we  have 
permitted  them  to  increase  their  strength;  we  have  lost 
the  most  favourable  opportunities  of  opposing  them  with 
success;  and  found  ourselves  at  last  obliged  to  run  every 
hazard  in  making  that  cause  our  own  in  which  we  were  not 


90     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

wise  enough  to  take  part  while  the  expense  and  danger 
might  have  been  supported  by  others. — Chatham. 

The  forces  of  the  world  do  not  threaten;  they  operate. 
— Woodrow  Wilson. 

Upon  1st  April  [1861]  Seward  [the  Secretary  of  State] 
sent  to  Lincoln  "Some  Thoughts  for  the  President's  Con- 
sideration." In  this  paper,  after  deploring  what  he 
described  as  the  lack  of  any  policy  so  far,  and  defining,  in 
a  way  that  does  not  matter,  his  attitude  as  to  the  forts  in 
the  south,  he  proceeded  thus:  "I  would  demand  explana- 
tions from  Great  Britain  and  Russia  and  send  agents  into 
Canada,  Mexico  and  Central  America,  to  raise  a  vigorous 
spirit  of  independence  on  this  continent  against  European 
intervention,  and,  if  satisfactory  explanations  are  not  re- 
ceived from  Spain  and  France,  would  convene  Congress  and 
declare  war  against  them."  In  other  words,  Seward  would 
seek  to  end  all  domestic  dissensions  by  suddenly  creating 
out  of  nothing  a  dazzling  foreign  policy.  ...  In  his  brief 
reply  Lincoln  made  no  reference  to  Seward's  amazing  pro- 
gramme.— -Lord  Chamwood. 


MAZZINI. 


[Page  92 


CHAPTER  VII. 

MAZZINI   AND    NATIONALITY. 

FEW  men  in  modern  history  who  have  devoted  their 
lives  to  political  causes  have  left  a  memory  so  lumi- 
nous and  so  fragrant  as  did  Giuseppe  Mazzini.  There 
could  not  have  been  for  him,  living  when  he  did  and 
in  the  country  which  was  his,  a  nobler  aim  than  that  which 
from  his  early  years  he  set  himself  to  promote.    The  union 
of  the  Italian  people  into  a  nation  was  assuredly  worthy 
of  the  efforts  of  any  idealist.    It  would  be  exaggeration  to 
say  that  the  man  was  as  great  as  the  cause,  since  no  indi- 
vidual could  be.       Yet  there    is   a   sense  in  which  in  this 
instance  such  an  assertion  would  almost  be  true.     Mazzini 
was  the  very  soul  of  the  Italian  national  movement,  the 
inspiring  force  of  the  triad  celebrated  in  George  Meredith's 
stanza — 

"Who  blew  the  breath  of  life  into  her  frame, 
Cavour,  Mazzini,  Garibaldi:  three: 
Her  Brain,  her  Soul,  her  Sword;  and  set  her  free 
From  ruinous  discords  with  one  lustrous  aim." 

And  of  these,  the  aims  of  the  second  were  higher  than  have 
yet  been  realised.  Italy  can  honour  Cavour  and  Garibaldi 
for  what  they  did  for  her;  in  honouring  Mazzini  she  is 
reminded  of  things  still  to  do.  He  burns  on,  an  undimmed 
light.  When  the  first  Italian  Parliament  met,  Mazzini 
exclaimed:  "We  have  made  Italy;  it  is  now  necessary  to 
make  the  Italians."  He  saw  regenerated  Italy  becoming 
"at  one  bound  the  missionary  of  a  religion  of  progress  and 
fraternity  far  greater  and  vaster  than  that  she  gave  to 
humanity  in  the  past." 

How  fine  the  man  "was  in  himself  we  can  discern  from 
his  writings,  and  still  more  vividly  from  the  impressions 
of  many  who  came  under  his  singularly  quickening  influ- 

93 


94     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

ence.  To  Swinburne  he  was  "the  most  wonderfully  and 
divinely  unselfish  man  I  ever  knew,  whose  whole  life  was 
self-sacrifice."  Carlyle,  crabbed  and  sour  towards  so  many 
of  his  contemporaries,  testified  of  Mazzini  that  "he,  if  ever 
I  have  seen  one  such,  is  a  man  of  genius  and  virtue,  a  man 
of  sterling  veracity,  humanity,  nobleness  of  mind;  one  of 
those  rare  men,  numerable  unfortunately  but  as  units  in 
this  world,  who  are  worthy  to  be  called  martyr  souls,  who 
in  silence,  piously  in  their  daily  life,  understand  and  prac- 
tise what  is  meant  by  that."  Lord  Morley  says  that  "be- 
sides his  ceaseless  industry  in  this  vexed  sphere  of  action, 
his  was  the  moral  genius  that  spiritualises  politics,  and 
gave  a  new  soul  to  public  duty  in  citizens  and  nations." 

Professor  David  Masson,  who  knew  Mazzini  well  in  the 
forties,  has  left  a  striking  pen-portrait  of  him.  He  speaks 
of  his  "grace  and  beauty,"  "the  marvellous  face  of  pale 
olive,  in  shape  a  long  oval,  the  features  fine  and  bold  rather 
than  massive,  the  forehead  full  and  high  under  thin,  dark 
hair,  the  whole  expression  unimpassioned  and  sad,  and  the 
eyes  large,  black,  and  preternaturally  burning ;  his  talk  rapid 
and  abundant,  in  an  excellent  English  that  never  failed, 
though  it  was  dashed  with  piquant  foreign  idioms  and  pro- 
nounced with  a  decidedly  foreign  accent." 

There  was  a  touch  of  perversity  and  a  dash  of  obstinacy 
in  Mazzini,  and  his  incurable  aversion  to  compromise  limited 
his  possibilities  in  practical  politics;  so  that,  with  all  the 
moral  glow  that  wins  respect  for  him,  it  becomes  clear  that 
by  his  methods  alone  the  unity  of  Italy  could  not  have  been 
achieved.  The  suppleness  of  Cavour,  the  impetuous  daring 
of  Garibaldi,  the  concentrating  energy  of  Victor  Emmanuel 
were  as  needful  as  the  fervent  idealism  of  Mazzini  to  win 
a  victory  which,  in  fact,  was  one  not  of  ideas  alone,  but 
of  hard  fighting  and  deep  scheming  also.  But  of  the  idea 
Mazzini  was  the  prophet — of  the  idea  which,  when  con- 
vinced of  its  Tightness,  he  esteemed  a  greater  thing  than 
victory. 

Italy  was,  when  Mazzini  grew  to  manhood — he  was 
born  in  1805 — a  mere  "geographical  expression,"  in  Prince 
Metternich's  phrase.  Politically  there  was  no  Italy.  The 
Italian  people  were  divided  among  eight  states,  namely, 
Lombardy  (including  Venezia),  Parma,  Tuscany,  Modena, 
Lucca,  Piedmont  (including  Sardinia),  the  Kingdom  of  the 
Two  Sicilies  (embracing  Sicily  and  the  whole  of  the  lower 


MAZZINI  95 

part  of  the  peninsula),  and  the  Papal  States.  Of  these 
the  first  five  were  under  the  domination  of  Austria,  either 
directly  or  through  feeble  rulers ;  the  Kingdom  of  the  Two 
Sicilies  was  subject  to  a  Bourbon  king;  the  Papal  States 
were  governed  by  the  Pope  and  Cardinals;  Piedmont  was 
under  the  House  of  Savoy.  All  were  despotically  ruled. 
There  was  no  freedom  of  expression  anywhere,  no  popular 
representation.  An  odious  and  all-pervading  police  system 
meddled,  spied  and  suppressed;  an  equally  pervading  and 
scarcely  less  odious  priest  system  worked  in  the  same 
direction. 

Yet  no  country  possessed  such  a  tradition  of  unity  as 
Italy  did.  The  old  centre  of  the  Roman  Empire,  which 
gave  laws  and  culture  to  the  civilised  world,  deserved  a 
better  fate  than  to  be  broken  into  fragments  and  preyed 
upon  by  petty  despots  and  tyrants,  civil  and  ecclesiastical. 
Throughout  her  long  years  of  humiliation  Italy  never  lacked 
sons  who  passionately  desired  the  restoration  of  her  nation- 
ality. Macchiavelli,  in  the  fifteenth  century,  wrote  his 
most  famous  book,  The  Prince,  with  the  object  of  arousing 
the  head  of  the  Medici  family  to  take  the  lead  in  redeem- 
ing their  country  from  "the  cruelty  and  insolence  of  the 
barbarians"  who  oppressed  her.  There  is  a  deep  moral 
gulf  diving  the  opportunist  Macchiavelli  from  the  unpliant 
idealist  Mazzini ;  but  it  is  bridged  by  their  common  faith 
in  the  great  cause  for  which  the  Florentine  would  have 
shed  blood  even  by  the  assassin's  dagger,  and  for  which 
the  later  man  would  have  sacrificed  everything  except  a 
principle. 

Very  early  in  the  nineteenth  century  secret  societies 
began  to  be  formed,  since  open  movements  were  repressed, 
to  promote  revolution.  The  Carbonari  movement  commenced 
in  the  Kingdom  of  the  Two  Sicilies  in  1811.  Mazzini  was 
naturally  brought  into  it  in  his  native  Genoa  when  he  grew 
to  manhood.  But  he  soon  saw  that  it  was  ineffective  to 
achieve  much  solid  work;  and  in  fact  the  master  minds 
among  the  statesmen  who  ruled  Italy  also  recognised  that 
they  had  little  to  fear  f rpm  the  Carbonari.  As  Prince  Met- 
ternich  wrote,  "from  want  of  known  leaders  and  of  con- 
certed action  among  themselves,  the  secret  societies  are  not 
nearly  so  dangerous  as  we  might  fear."  Mazzini,  too,  dis- 
liked the  "complex  symbolism,  the  hierarchical  mysteries," 
which,  in  imitation  of  Freemasonry,  the  Carbonari  had 


96     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

evolved.  Above  all,  he  was  offended  by  the  absence  of  poli- 
tical faith,  of  exalted  purpose.  He  wanted  more  mission, 
less  mystery. 

It  was  therefore  just  as  well  that  his  connection  with 
the  Carbonari  got  him  into  trouble  with  the  authorities 
before  he  had  time  to  become  deeply  entangled.  He  was 
arrested  at  the  instance  of  the  Governor  of  Genoa.  "When 
asked  by  my  father,"  related  Mazzini  in  his  autobiography, 
"of  what  I  was  accused,  he  replied  that  the  time  had  ,not 
arrived  for  answering  that  question,  but  that  I  was  a  young 
man  of  talent  very  fond  of  solitary  walks  by  night  and 
habitually  silent  as  to  the  subject  of  my  meditations;  that 
the  government  was  not  fond  of  young  men  of  talent 
whose  musings  were  unknown  to  it."  The  enforced  leisure 
and  seclusion  of  his  prison  enabled  Mazzini  to  form  plans 
for  the  organisation  of  the  Society  of  Young  Italy. 

The  new  society  came  into  being  in  1831.  Mazzini  was 
exiled  after  emerging  from  prison,  ^and  at  Marseilles,  sur- 
rounded by  a  group  of  young  men  who  shared  his  enthu- 
siasm and  his  poverty,  he  threw  himself  into  a  "policy  of 
permeation."  By  means  of  pamphlets  and  books,  by  intro- 
ducing allusions  into  plays,  poems  and  pictures,  by  conver- 
sations in  homes  and  fields,  by  every  method  that  could  be 
suggested,  these  young  Italians  set  themselves  to  create  a 
great  body  of  national  opinion  in  favour  of  a  united  Italy. 
He  besought  those  who  would  aid  to  climb  the  hills,  to  sit 
at  the  labourer's  table,  to  visit  the  workshops  and  homes  of 
artisans,  to  recount  the  ancient  traditions  and  glories  of 
Italy,  her  old  commercial  greatness.  Italy  must  be  a  nation 
again  by  the  will  of  the  Italian  people. 

All  over  the  country  branches  sprang  up,  fired  by  Maz- 
zini's  ideas.  The  Austrian  government  speedily  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  this  movement  was  far  more  dangerous 
than  the  muffled-cloak-and-slouch-hat  conspiracy-mongering 
of  the  Carbonari  had  ever  been,  for  there  were  ideas  at  the 
back  of  it,  and  Prince  Metternich  was  far  too  intelligent 
a  man  to  despise  the  force  of  ideas.  Secret  the  lodges 
of  the  Association  of  Young  Italy  had  to  be,  for  there  was 
not  a  government  in  the  country  which  would  permit  open 
political  activity.  But  police  agents  wormed  their  way  in, 
the  prisons  were  packed  with  young  men,  and  by  1834  the 
movement  seemed  to  be  crushed.  Mazzini  was  driven,  first 
to  Switzerland,  then  to  England,  where  he  now  com- 


MAZZINI  97 

menced  an  exile  which,  save  for  intervals  when  the 
great  cause  recalled  him  to  Italy,  extended  over  nearly 
forty  years.  In  shabby  poverty,  but  with  many  friends 
who  revered  him,  he  wrote  his  best  pieces  in  that  "sunless 
and  musicless  island,"  which,  nevertheless,  he  acknowledged, 
"affection  has  rendered  a  second  home  to  me." 

Mazzini's  ideal  was  a  united,  Republican  Italy,  and 
from  this  he  did  not  swerve.  "I  do  not  believe,"  he  said, 
"that  the  salvation  of  Italy  can  be  achieved  now  or  at 
any  future  time  by  prince,  pope  or  king."  In  that  predic- 
tion he  was  wrong.  Events  proved  that  a  republican  pro- 
paganda could  not  succeed.  The  army  and  the  leadership 
of  Victor  Emmanuel  of  Piedmont  and  the  statesmanship 
of  his  Prime  Minister  Cavour,  were  essential.  Without 
them  the  eloquence  of  Mazzini  and  the  bravery  of  Garibaldi 
would  have  been  exerted  in  vain.  Indeed,  as  the  struggle 
progressed,  Mazzini  recognised  that  persistence  in  repub- 
lican demands  endangered  the  greater  cause.  A  consider- 
able party  in  Italy  advocated  a  federation  of  the  existing 
states;  .some  would  have  had  a  federation  under  the  king 
of  Piedmont,  some  under  the  Pope.  But  a  federation 
involved  the  retention  of  the  eight  states  as  political  enti- 
ties, and  to  that  Mazzini  was  vehemently  opposed.  Upon 
a  unified  government  he  insisted. 

When  the  tide  of  opinion  seemed  setting  strongly  in  a 
federal  direction,  Mazzini  was  prepared  to  discontinue  tern-, 
porarily  his  republican  propaganda  and  accept  either  a  king 
or  a  papal  sovereignty  rather  than  sacrifice  the  principle  of 
complete  unity.  It  was  a  sharp  pinch  of  alternatives  that 
forced  the  uncompromising  idealist  to  go  to  this  length. 
But  it  is  not  the  case  that  he  threw  over  his  republicanism. 
He  would  agree  not  to  persist  in  it  at  a  critical  time  when 
it  seemed  that  the  vital  point  of  unity  might  be  lost  if  he 
and  his  party  pressed  for  their  complete  programme.  "I 
have  lived,  I  live,  and  I  ,shall  live  a  republican,  bearing 
witness  to  my  faith  to  the  last,"  he  wrote.  Methods  had 
to  be  adapted  to  meet  the  difficulties  of  the  situation.  Maz- 
zini could  be  as  sly  as  a  fox  when  subtlety  was  required  to 
cope  with  a  crafty  foe.  Devices,  such  as  the  enclosure  of 
pamphlets  by  him  inside  bricks  imported  to  Italy  from 
England,  were  part  of  the  process  enforced  by  the  require- 
ments of  the  case.  No  man  was  by  nature  more  honest 
and  frank,  but  the  ways  of  the  dove  are  ill  suited  to  revo- 


98     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

lutionary  work.  Mazzini  never  compromised,  but  he  was 
no  blundering  fool  in  the  devious  labyrinths  of  politics. 
To  sacrifice  the  main  cause  by  inopportunely  insisting  upon 
a  subordinate  principle  would  have  been  folly,  but  to  sacri- 
fice a  principle  even  for  a  cause  would  have  been  a  sin 
against  his  soul  which  he  could  not  commit. 

Indeed,  it  must  be  recognised  that  the  fact  that  Italy 
is  a  unified  state  is  due  more  to  Mazzini  than  to  any  other 
among  the  men  who  played  a  great  part  in  the  movement. 
As  the  historian  of  Italian  unity  bears  testimony: — "It 
was  Mazzini's  faith  that  made  a  united  Italy  possible,  that 
led  men  beyond  the  existing  fact,  beyond  the  schemes  of 
federation  that  till  now  had  been  the  utmost  bourn  of 
national  hope,  on  to  what  seemed  the  Utopian  and  impos- 
sible, but  which  his  teaching  was  to  make  the  gospel  of 
his  nation.  Only  through  unity,  he  believed  and  made 
them  believe,  could  Italy  be  strong  and  democratic;  only 
when  Rome  became  her  capital  could  she  hold  her  place 
among  the  nations  of  Europe  and  teach  a  nobler  ideal  of 
government."1 

What,  then,  was  Mazzini's  aim,  apart  from  his  unrealised 
republican  aspiration?  It  was  stated  in  clear  terms  when 
he  founded  the  Society  of  Young  Italy.  "By  Italy  we 
understand  continental  and  peninsular  Italy,  bounded  on 
the  north  by  the  upper  circle  of  the  Alps,  on  the  south  by 
the  sea,  on  the  west  by  the  mouth  of  the  Varo,  and  on  the 
east  by  Trieste  and  the  islands  proved  Italian  by  the  lan- 
guage of  the  inhabitants."  The  later  ambitions  of  Italy 
have  embraced  a  wider  domain  than  here  set  forth  by  the 
apostle  of  unity.  The  "Italia  Irredenta"  demands  covered 
the  waters  of  the  Adriatic  and  the  western  shores  of  the 
Balkan  peninsula. 

By  the  Italian  nation  Mazzini  stated  that  he  understood 
"the  universality  of  Italians,  bound  together  by  a  common 
pact  and  governed  by  the  same  laws."  The  national  idea, 
he  said,  "has  been  gradually  elaborated  during  the  silence 
of  three  hundred  years  of  general  slavery  and  later  through 
nearly  thirty  years  of  earnest  apostolate,  often  crowned  by 
martyrdom  of  the  noblest  souls  among  us."  For  this  cause 
Mazzini  plotted  and  toiled  and  wrote  unceasingly  during  the 
whole  of  his  life.  He  began  his  propaganda  when  Italy 

i  Bolton  King,  ' '  History  of  Italian  Unity, '  >  I.,  p.  129. 


MAZZINI  99 

languished  under  her  eight  principalities;  he  participated 
in  all  the  adventurous  movements  by  which  the  Kingdom 
of  the  Two  Sicilies  was  destroyed  and  its  territories  were 
made  part  of  the  Kingdom  of  Italy ;  by  which  Austria  was 
ejected  from  the  Lombardy  Plain,  and  finally  from  Venezia ; 
by  which  the  temporal  sovereignty  of  the  Papacy  was 
abolished  and  the  Papal  States  were  incorporated  as  part 
of  the  national  soil. 

The  union  of  Italy  was  a  dream  when  Mazzini  began  to 
work  for  it.  Few  believed  in  the  possibility  of  its  realisa- 
tion. But  his  faith  never  for  a  moment  wavered.  When 
Garibaldi  captured  Rome  in  1849,  and  the  Roman  Republic 
was  proclaimed,  Mazzini  was  the  chief  of  the  triumvirate 
who  ruled  the  eternal  city.  "From  the  moment  of  his  first 
entry  into  Rome,"  relates  Mr.  Trevelyan,  "he  was  its  lead- 
ing citizen  and  its  real  political  chief;"1  and  when  the 
alliance  of  the  Papacy  with  Napoleon  III.  brought  to  the 
gates  of  Rome  a  French  force  too  powerful  to  be  resisted, 
and  Garibaldi  abandoned  the  defence,  Mazzini  protested  to 
the  last,  and  only  withdrew  to  his  refuge  in  London  when 
the  French  were  actually  in  occupation  of  Rome. 

Mazzini  died  two  years  after  the  destruction  of  the  tem- 
poral power  and  the  establishment  of  the  capital  of  Italy 
in  Rome.  The  Kingdom  was  no  place  of  rest  and  honour 
for  him,  because,  uncompromising  in  his  old  age  as  in  his 
youth,  he  would  not  accept  the  monarchy  as  a  settled  insti- 
tution. He  had  sunk  his  republican  advocacy  for  the  time 
being  to  avoid  a  danger  to  the  cause,  but  it  was  not  in  him 
to  cease  working  for  a  principle;  and  so  he  could  not  rest 
content  even  with  the  immense  achievement  which  he  had 
done  so  much  to  realise.  The  practical  politician  may  be 
satisfied  with  what  he  can  get;  the  insatiable  idealist  can- 
not stifle  his  yearnings  with  compromises.  In  truth,  he 
asked  more  of  his  countrymen  than  they  were  willing  to 
realise  in  his  lifetime.  It  was  not  reasonable  for  him  to 
complain,  "the  country,  with  its  contempt  for  all  ideals, 
has  killed  the  soul  within  me,"  but  it  was  natural.  The 
man  who  asks  too  much  of  his  generation  must  steel  his 
soul  against  disappointments.  He  could  not  complain;  nor 
did  he,  that  the  Kingdom  of  Italy  had  no  post  for  him  whose 
self-sacrificing  labours  had  brought  it  into  being.  It  was 

i  Trevelyan,  "Garibaldi's  Defence  of  the  Boman  Republic, "  p.  94. 


100     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

even  under  an  assumed  name,  that  of  George  Brown,  that 
he  stole  back  to  his  own  country  from  the  fogs  of  London 
in  the  waning  days  of  his  life,  hoping  that  the  Italian  sun- 
shine would  give  him  respite  from  the  spasms  that  tore 
his  chest  and  throat.  But  his  task  was  done;  he  died  at 
Pisa  on  10th  March,  1872. 

Mazzini's  fervent  advocacy  of  nationality  was  part  of 
his  religion,  but  there  is  not  in  his  writings  any  attempt 
to  define  what  a  nation  is.  The  Italian  question  was  to 
him  a  comparatively  simple  one.  The  people  of  the  Italian 
peninsula  speak  one  language — with  dialectical  differences, 
truly,  but  the  differences  in  the  speech  of,  say,  a  Venetian 
and  a  Sicilian  were  not  greater  than  the  differences  in  the 
French  spoken  in,  say,  Picardy  and  Provence.  The  Italians 
had  a  common  historical  tradition,  broken  though  it  had 
been  by  the  domination  of  rulers  who  carved  out  the  several 
states.  To  weld  the  peoples  of  this  peninsula  into  a  united 
nation  was  to  bring  them  within  a  political  and  economic 
bond  which  would  elevate  their  status  among  European 
peoples  and  increase  their  material  prosperity.  The  fact 
that  their  governments,  ecclesiastical  and  lay,  were  wretch- 
edly bad — corrupt,  tyrannical,  unprogressive — was  an  addi- 
tional reason  for  union.  The  obstacles  might  be  serious. 
Inertia  and  lack  of  faith  might  retard  effort.  But  the  case 
for  union  was  plain  and  overwhelmingly  strong,  and  Italy 
could  know  no  peace  till  the  cause  was  won. 

Probably  it  would  have  surprised  Mazzini,  had  he  dis- 
cussed the  question  of  nationality  generally,  to  find  how 
difficult  it  is  to  define  the  term  or  to  say  precisely  what  a 
nation  is.  It  would  have  surprised  him  more  could  he 
have  known  that  many  modern  men  of  his  own  type  of 
mind  regard  the  nationalist  ideal  as  a  false  and  mischievous 
one,  believing  that  "the  nationalist  passion  has  been  the 
greatest  of  obstacles  to  mutual  understanding  and  sym- 
pathy among  peoples,  and  the  most  fruitful  provoking 
cause  of  war."1  He  was  absorbed  in  the  Italian  question, 
which  presented  fewer  complexities  than  are  encountered 
elsewhere.  But  across  the  mountains  to  the  north-west  are 
the  Swiss,  a  people  speaking  three  languages,  having  a 
variety  of  racial  types,  and  differing  in  religion.  We  call 
the  Swiss  a  nation  despite  their  differences.  The  United 

1  See  Ramsay  Muir's  "Nationalism  and  Internationalism,"  p.  38. 


MAZZINI  101 

States  of  America  is  a  nation,  though  its  population  is  com- 
pounded of  a  multitude  of  peoples,  transmuted  by  the 
American  schools  and  the  frequent  singing  of  the  "Star 
Spangled  Banner"  into  a  remarkably  good  imitation  of 
homogeneity. 

But  in  truth  tests  of  nationality  by  canons  of  race,  lan- 
guage, religion,  or  historical  tradition  will  stand  in  very 
few  instances.  There  was  more  solemn  truth  in  Defoe's 
brilliant  satire,  "The  True  Born  Englishman,"  than  most 
Englishmen  care  to  remember.  There  are  no  "pure  races," 
and  if  there  were  there  is  no  reason  for  thinking  that  they 
would  be  superior;  there  never  has  been  religious  unity 
among  intelligent  people,  unless  it  were  enforced  by  the 
harshest  of  processes ;  similarity  of  language  in  any  country 
is  a  modern  development,  due  principally  to  the  printing 
press  and  improved  methods  of  locomotion ;  and  the  forma- 
tion of  large  "nations"  out  of  small  states  has  in  the 
greater  number  of  instances  been  brought  about,  not  by 
the  attraction-  of  affinity  among  peoples,  but  by  strenuous 
political  action,  often  enforced  by  the  sword.  It  required 
a  frightful  war  to  prevent  the  United  States  from  splitting 
into  two  nations,  and  Great  Britain  did  not  become  one 
nation  because  the  peoples  of  England,  Scotland  and  Wales 
loved  each  other  so  much  that  they  felt  they  could  not  be 
happy  asunder. 

The  economic  advantage  of  national  union  was  a  con- 
sideration which  Mazzini  did  not  leave  out  of  account,  and 
it  is  one  whicji  is  more  important  than  many  later  writers 
on  nationality  have  recognised.  He  put  it  to  the  Italians 
of  his  day  that  life  would  be  fuller  and  richer  for  them 
in  material  benefits  if  the  country  were  united,  than  could 
be  the  case  as  long  as  they  remained  under  eight  separate 
governments.  Union,  nationality,  was  not  to  him  an  end 
in  itself.  It  was  a  necessary  means  to  an  end,  but  the  end 
was  the  enlargement,  the  ennoblement,  the  enrichment  of 
human  life.  "Do  not  beguile  yourselves  with  the  hope  of 
emancipation  from  unjust  conditions  if  you  do  not  first 
conquer  a  country  for  yourselves,"  he  wrote  in  his  most 
important  work,  The  Duties  of  Man;  "where  there  is  no 
country  there  is  no  common  agreement  to  which  you  can 
appeal.  Do  not  be  led  away  by  the  idea  of  improving  your 
material  conditions  without  first  solving  the  national  ques- 
tion. You  cannot  do  it." 


102     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

But  a  real  nation,  to  Mazzini,  was  not  merely  a  political 
entity  providing  itself  with  cannon,  battleships,  houses  of 
Parliament,  and  so  .forth.  It  was  an  association  of  kindred 
forming  an  economic  and  political  whole,  because  by  such 
union  the  possibilities  of  life  were  increased  for  all.  "A 
country  is  a  fellowship  of  free  and  equal  men  bound  together 
in  a  brotherly  concord  of  labour  towards  a  single  end.  You 
must  make  it  and  maintain  it  as  such.  A  country  is  not  an 
aggregation ;  it  is  an  association.  A  country  is  not  a  mere 
territory;  the  particular  territory  is  only  its  foundation. 
The  country  is  the  idea  which  rises  on  that  foundation;  it 
is  the  sentiment  of  love,  the  sense  of  fellowship,  which 
binds  together  all  the  sons  of  that  territory."  Only  by 
means  of  an  educated  democracy  could  such  an  ideal  of 
nationality  be  realised.  "Votes,  education,  work  are  the 
three  main  pillars  of  the  nation,"  he  said. 

Such  an  ideal  of  nationhood,  it  will  be  seen,  looked 
beyond  the  triumph  of  a  cause  to  the  realisation  of  a  cor- 
porate life  which  would  regard  poverty,  superstition,  ignor- 
ance, disease  as  being  enemies  of  the  commonweal,  to  be 
fought  as  a  united  nation  would  fight  against  a  foreign 
•foe.  It  is  a  higher  conception  of  nationality  than  has  yet 
been  reached  by  any  people.  Through  the  elevation  of  the 
life  of  the  nation — that  is,,  of  a  combination  of  people  who, 
by  reason  of  sympathies,  interests,  tradition,  language,  or 
grouping  affinities  of  any  kind — he  hoped  for  a  larger  con- 
federacy of  peoples,  embracing  at  length  the  whole  civilised 
world.  Mazzini,  therefore,  was  something  more  than  an 
Italian  patriot.  He  was  a  citizen  of  the  world  for  whom 
the  fusion  of  the  Italians  into  nationality  was  a  step  towards 
an  immensely  more  comprehensive  unity. 


Bolton  King's  Life  of  Mazzini  is  the  best  short  bio- 
graphy in  English.  There  is  a  selection  of  Mazzini's  politi- 
cal and  literary  essays,  edited  by  William  Clarke,  in  the 
Scott  Library,  and  a  volume  in  the  Everyman  Library  con- 
tains his  Duties  of  Man  and  other  political  writings.  These 
collections  do  not  contain  his  autobiography,  which  is  to 
be  found  in  the  collected  writings  of  Mazzini.  The  history 
of  the  Italian  national  movement  is  authoritatively  related 
in  Bolton  King's  History  of  Italian  Unity,  two  volumes,  and 
in  three  volumes  by  Mr.  G.  M.  Trevelyan,  Garibaldi's 


MAZZINI  103 

Defence  of  the  Roman  Republic,  Garibaldi  and  the  Thou- 
sand, and  Garibaldi  and  the  Making  of  Italy.  On  nationality 
generally  Ramsay  Muir's  Nationalism  and  Internationalism 
is  a  very  able  study. 


The  conception  of  nationality  is  elastic.  It  is  hard  to 
say  what  is  the  essence  of  nationality.  A  nationality  is 
always  in  a  state  of  flux,  always  changing  in  character. — 
Treitschke. 

The  nation  is  not  a  physiological  fact;  it  is  a  moral 
fact.  What  constitutes  a  nation  is  the  community  of  senti- 
ments and  ideals  which  result  from  a  common  history  and 
education. — Noel. 

Nations  are  intensely  self-conscious  groups,  bound  to- 
gether not  only  by  carefully  cultivated  separate  traditions, 
customs  and  habits  of  life,  but  by  jealously  guarded  econo- 
mic interests. — W.  Alison  Phillips. 

Palaces,  baronial  castles,  great  halls,  stately  mansions 
do  not  make  a  nation.  The  nation  in  every  country  dwells 
in  the  cottage. — John  Bright. 

If  nationalism  has  brought  more  misery  on  the  world 
than  any  other  political  passion,  it  has  often,  by  alliance 
with  the  noblest  causes,  lent  them  power  which  they  could 
never  otherwise  have  obtained. — G.  M.  Trevelyan. 

To  suppose  that  any  nation  can  be  unalterably  the  enemy 
of  another  is  weak  and  childish.  It  has  its  foundation 
neither  in  the  experience  of  nations  nor  in  the  history  of 
man.  It  is  a  libel  on  the  constitution  of  political  societies, 
and  supposes  the  existence  of  diabolical  malice  in  the  origi- 
nal frame  of  man. — William  Pitt  (the  younger). 

The  time  is  at  hand  when  England  will  have  to  decide 
between  national  and  cosmopolitan  principles,  and  the  issue 
is  no  mean  one. — Disraeli. 

Science  works  not  at  all  for  nationality  or  its  spirit. 
It  works  entirely  for  cosmopolitanism. — Lord  Morley. 

This  country  and  this  people  seem  to  have  been  made 
for  each  other,  and  it  appears  as  if  it  was  the  design  of 
Providence  that  an  inheritance  so  proper  and  convenient 
for  a  band  of  brethren,  united  to  each  other  by  the  strongest 
ties,  should  never  be  split  into  a  number  of  unsocial,  jealous 
and  alien  sovereignties. — Alexander  Hamilton  (The  Fede- 
ralist) . 


104     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

All  nations  have  been  welded  'together  not  by  peaceful 
and  equitable  means  but  by  violent  and  inequitable  means, 
and  I  do  not  believe  that  nations  could  ever  have  been 
formed  in  any  other  way.  To  dissolve  unions  because  they 
were  inequitably  formed,  I  hold,  now  that  they  have  been 
formed,  to  be  a  mistake,  a  retrograde  step.  Were  it  pos- 
sible to  go  back  upon  the  past  and  undo  all  the  bad  things 
that  have  been  done,  society  would  forthwith  dissolve.— 
Herbert  Spencer. 

Nationality  merely  as  nationality  is  a  small  motive 
power  in  history,  but  nationality  considered  as  exemplified 
or  expressed  in  customs,  language,  affinities,  even  in  names, 
expresses  a  number  of  mighty  influences  equivalent  to  all 
that  move  as  main  springs  the  internal  life  of  nations, 
and  affect  in  a  great  degree  their  external  history  also, 
their  relations  to  other  nations,  their  development  in  arts 
and  literature  as  well  as  politics,  their  propensity  to  or 
repulsion  from  ideas  of  political  things  and  all  that  forms 
the  historical  interest  of  their  national  life. — Stybbs. 

The  characters  of  nations  frequently  change,  and  what 
we  call  national  character  is  usually  only  the  policy  of  the 
governing  class,  forced  upon  it  by  circumstances,  or  the 
manner  of  living  which  climate,  geographical  position  and 
other  external  causes  have  made  necessary  for  the  inhabi- 
tants of  a  country. — W.  R.  Inge. 


JOHN  STUART  MILL. 


[Page  106 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
JOHN    STUART    MILL    AND    ECONOMICS. 


WHETHER  men  of  action  or  men  of  thought  have 
the  more  profoundly  influenced  human  history 
it  would  be  very  hard  to  determine.    When  one 
studies  the  life  of  a  great  architect  of  govern- 
ment like  Charlemagne,  or  of  an  immense  personal  force 
like  Napoleon,  the  achievements  related  seem  so  vast,  their 
effects  so  deep  and  far-reaching,  that  to  compare  them  with 
writers  of  books,  quiet  thinkers,  studious  resolvers  of  prob- 
lems, would  appear  to  be  futile.  Some  such  image  as  a  great 
storm  uprooting  oaks  and  rending  masonry,  in  comparison 
with  a  gentle  wind  scarcely  strong  enough  to  rustle  loose 
leaves,  might  suggest  itself. 

But  the  question  is  not  settled  by  a  figure  of  speech. 
Very  often  we  find  men  of  action  immediately  impelled  by 
men  of  thought,  and  frequently  where  the  influence  is  not 
directly  evident  it  is  not  difficult  to  trace.  Charlemagne, 
for  all  his  personal  grossness,  read  much  in  Saint  Augus- 
tine's book,  de  Civitate  Dei,  and  believed  that  in  founding 
an  Empire  and  linking  it  up — even  if  loosely — with  the 
Papacy  he  was  in  some  degree  realising  the  saint's  concep- 
tion. Cromwell  translated  Puritanism  into  statecraft.  Rous- 
seau had  as  much  to  do  with  the  American  Declaration  of 
Independence  as  had  Jefferson,  and  much  more  than  Wash- 
ington. In  Heine's  long  poem,  "Deutschland,"  he  repre- 
sents himself  as  being  accompanied  always — at  his  writing 
desk,  in  his  walks  abroad — by  a  ghost,  armed  with  an  axe. 
When  the  poet  calls  upon  the  spectre  which  haunts  him 
thus  to  explain  itself,  it  confesses  that  it  is  the  Deed  that 
follows  from  his  Thought.1 

1  Ich  bin  dein  Liktor,   and  ich  geh' 
Bestandig  mit  dem  blanken 
Richtbeile   hinter  dir — ich  bin 
Die  Tat  von  deinem  Gedanken." 

107 


108     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

If  John  Stuart  Mill  had  ever  so  far  relapsed  from  pure 
rationalism  as  to  suppose  that  he  was  accompanied  by  a 
ghost  which  executed  his  "Gedanken,"  it  would  not  have 
been  armed  with  such  a  sharp,  heavy  weapon  as  was 
Heine's.  It  would  have  been  a  very  stiff  but  a  very  gentle 
ghost,  insistent  to  the  last  extremity  of  courtesy,  but  open 
to  conviction  on  all  things  spectral  and  solid.  It  would  also 
have  been  extremely  busy,  for  no  man  in  the  world  of 
thought  in  his  time  was  so  industrious  as  was  Mill.  There 
are  two  reasons  why  it  seems  appropriate  to  make  a  review 
of  economic  thought  hinge  upon  him.  One  is  that  his 
Principles  of  Political  Economy  has  probably  been  more 
widely  read  than  any  other  economic  work  in  English, 
except  Adam  Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations.  Later  criticism, 
and  the  advance  of  the  science  at  the  hands  of  earnest 
students  during  seventy  years,  have  destroyed  much  that 
he  built.  But  there  was  a  time  when  his  authority  ranked 
so  high  as  to  make  him  somewhat  of  an  economic  pontiff. 
The  second  reason  is  that  he  stands  between  Adam  Smith 
and  David  Ricardo,  who  were  pioneers,  and  the  later 
schools,  which,  while  rejecting  many  of  the  conclusions  of 
their  famous  predecessors,  have  profited  greatly  from  their 
work.  Our  aim  is  to  form  some  estimate  of  the  working 
of  economic  thought  on  modern  history,  and  Mill,  for  this 
purpose,  is  a  central  influence. 

Adam  Smith  produced  the  first  great  treatise  on  politi- 
cal economy,  and  his  Wealth  of  Nations,  though  published* 
in  1776,  and  superseded  by  more  searching  analysis  in  every 
topic  with  which  he  dealt,  is  still  a  classic  which  no  student 
can  afford  to  neglect.  All  later  writers  have  been  influenced 
by  it,  and,  by  reason  of  the  vigorous  style  in  which  it  is 
written,  its  perfect  lucidity  and  its  wealth  of  historical 
knowledge,  it  is  likely  to  hold  a  place  as  a  living  work  for 
many  years  to  come.  Ricardo's  book  on  the  Principles  of 
Political  Economy  and  Taxation  (1817)  is  as  hard  to  read 
as  Adam  Smith's  work  is  agreeable.  But  it  was  based  upon 
a  much  wider  practical  knowledge  of  business  and  finance 
than  books  of  the  kind  have  usually  been.  Nothing  could 
be  wider  of  the  mark  than  an  attack  upon  Ricardo  for 
being  a  "mere  theorist,"  or  an  "abstract  economist."  He 
was  trained  for  business  by  his  father,  a  Jewish  stock- 
broker of  Dutch  birth  and  Portuguese  origin,  who  had 
settled  in  London.  He  entered  his  father's  office  when  he  was 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  109 

only  fourteen  years  of  age,  and  he  himself  made  a  fortune 
on  the  Stock  Exchange  large  enough  to  enable  him  to  buy 
an  Irish  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons.  .  He  had  built  up 
a  reputation  in  the  City  of  London  before  he  courted  fame 
as  an  author,  or  entered  Parliament.  He  was,  in  short, 
a  thoroughly  well-versed  financier  and  man  of  business, 
who,  when  he  wrote  about  currency,  banking,  exchange 
and  market  prices,  not  only  expounded  the  thought  that 
was  in  him,  but  drew  upon  a  large  experience. 

Ricardo  was  a  friend  of  James  Mill,  who,  by  virtue 
of  his  History  of  India,  secured  an  appointment  in  the 
London  office  of  the  East  India  Company.  John  Stuart 
Mill  has  given  an  account  in  his  Autobiography  of  his 
severe  childhood  under  the  tutelage  of  a  stern  father, 
who  pumped  the  stiff est  knowledge  into  his  juvenile  brain 
at  an  age  when  ordinary  boys  are  allowed  to  mingle  play 
with  schooling.  While  he  was  only  thirteen  his  father 
expounded  to  him  the  arid  mysteries  of  economics,  and  set 
him  reading  Ricardo,  giving  daily  a  verbal  account  of  what 
he  read.  "On  money,  as  the  most  intricate  part  of  the 
the  subject/'  writes  Mill,  "he  made  me  read  in  the  same 
manner  Ricardo's  admirable  pamphlets,  written  during 
what  was  called  the  Bullion  Controversy;  to  these  suc- 
ceeded Adam  Smith;  and  in  this  reading  it  was  one  of  my 
father's  main  objects  to  make,  me  apply  to  Smith's  more 
superficial  view  of  political  economy  the  superior  lights  of 
Ricardo,  and  detect  what  was  fallacious  in  Smith's  argu- 
ments or  erroneous  in  any  of  his  conclusions."  Mill  there- 
fore knew  much  about  the  operations  of  currency  and  inter- 
national exchange  at  an  age  when  for  most  lads  how  to 
make  a  little  pocket  money  go  a  long  way  is  more  impor- 
tant than  the  transactions  of  the  Bank  of  England. 

The  first  important  piece  of  work  accomplished  by  Mill 
when  he  grew  to  manhood  was  his  System  of  Logic,  pub- 
lished in  1843,  when  he  was  thirty-seven  years  of  age. 
The  second  was  his  Principles  of  Political  Economy,  pub- 
lished in  1848.  He  prepared  for  both  works  by  writing 
articles  for  the  reviews.  Thus,  he  edited  Bentham's  book 
on  Evidence  before  he  was  twenty,  wrote  papers  on  prob- 
lems of  logic  and  philosophy,  and  published  his  Essays  on 
Unsettled  Questions  of  Political  Economy  seventeen  years 
before  his  larger  work  appeared. 

Severely  trained,  accustomed  to  the  society  of  the  most 


110     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

serious-minded  men  of  his  generation,  such  as  Grote,  John 
Sterling,  and  F.  D.  Maurice,  and  made  acquainted  with 
practical  business  through  a  clerkship  in  the  India  House, 
John  Stuart  Mill  had  the  equipment  of  an  intellectual 
gladiator  and  the  pen  of  a  ready  writer.  The  Principles 
of  Political  Economy  was  written  in  a  little  more  than  two 
years,  during  which  time  Mill  also  produced  a  number  of 
articles  on  current  politics,  which  necessitated  the  laying 
aside  of  the  work  for  about  six  months.  So  that  he  was 
not  continuously  engaged  upon  it  for  more  than  twenty 
months.  As  the  book  contains  about  half  a  million  words, 
he  must  have  written  it  at  the  rate  of  about  twenty-five 
thousand  words  per  month.  It  was,  he  said,  "rapidly 
executed."  As  it  deals  with  the  most  abstruse  questions 
affecting  Production,  Distribution,  Exchange,  Progress  and 
Government,  and  had  to  be  written  while  the  author  was 
daily  engaged  upon  his  duties  as  First-Assistant  at  the 
India  House,  the  book  represents  labour  of  an  exception- 
ally arduous  kind.  It  could  only  have  proceeded  from  a 
mind  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  knowledge  and  the  pro- 
cesses of  reasoning  which  are  exhibited  in  its  pages. 

The  great  popularity  of  Mill's  book  was  due,  not  merely 
to  the  confidence  extended  to  him  as  a  thinker,  but  also  to  its 
remarkable  clearness  of  style  and  the  genuine  human 
warmth  which  pervades  it.  To  think  of  John  Stuart  Mill 
as  a  dry  exponent  of  abstract  formulae,  or  as  a  dull 
analyst  of  obscure  processes,  is  not  possible  to  any  who 
know  the  life  of  the  man  and  have  examined  his  critical 
writings.  The  doctrines  of  his  Political  Economy  may  be 
to  some  extent  demolished,  but  the  book  remains  a  piece  of 
humane,  liberal  thinking,  sometimes  eloquently  expressed, 
always  aimed  at  the  betterment  of  mankind.  In  the  midst 
of  a  disquisition  on  "Credit  as  a  Substitute  for  Money" 
we  come  upon  a  passage  insisting  on  the  economic  value 
of  personal  character,  and  an  assurance  that  "this  benefit 
will  be  reaped  far  more. largely  whenever,  through  better 
laws  and  better  education,  the  community  shall  have  made 
such  progress  in  integrity  that  personal  character  can  be 
accepted  as  a  sufficient  guarantee  not  only  against  dis- 
honesty, but  against  dishonestly  risking  what  belongs  to 
another."  In  the  chapter  on  "The  Stationary  State"  we 
meet  with  this  gentle  admonition  of  the  "hustling"  which 
is  often  extolled  as  a  virtue:  "I  confess  I  am  not  charmed 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  111 

with  the  ideal  of  life  held  out  by  those  who  think  that  the 
normal  state  of  human  beings  is  that  of  struggling  to  get 
on;  that  the  trampling,  crushing,  elbowing  and  treading 
on  each  others'  heels,  which  form  the  existing  type  of  social 
life,  are  the  most  desirable  lot  of  human  kind,  or  anything 
but  the  disagreeable  symptoms  of  one  of  the  'phases  of 
industrial  progress."  Again,  in  a  discussion  on  "Limits  of 
the  Province  of  Government/*  we  find  this  sensitive  plea: 
"To  be  prevented  from  doing  what  one  is  inclined  to,  or 
from  acting  according  to  one's  own  judgment  of  what  is 
desirable,  is  not  only  always  irksome,  but  always  tends,  pro 
tanto,  to  starve  the  development  of  some  portion  of  the 
bodily  or  mental  faculties,  either  sensitive  or  active;  and 
unless  the  conscience  of  the  individual  goes  freely  with  the 
legal  restraint,  it  partakes,  either  in  a  great  or  in  a  small 
degree,  of  the  degradation  of  slavery." 

Scattered  up  and  down  the  Political  Economy  are  many 
such  passages,  which  give  a  moral  and  humane  turn  to  the 
discussion,  and  serve  to  remind  the  reader  of  a  truth  which 
he  might  not  learn  from  some  other  works  on  the  same 
subject,  that  the  aim  of  political  economy  is  the  welfare 
of  human  society.  John  Stuart  Mill  never  lost  sight  of 
that  object  when  dealing  with  money,  rent,  value,  labour, 
wages,  prices,  markets,  and  all  the  other  complexities  of 
the  science.  The  human  heart-beat  was  always  more  to 
him  than  the  chink  of  coin  on  the  counter.  The  mechanism 
by  which  the  business  of  the  world  gets  itself  done  was  but 
a  mechanism,  needing  to  be  explained,  and  difficult  to  be 
understood  by  him  who  reads  as  he  runs,  perhaps ;  but  the 
purpose  of  it  was  to  subserve  life  and  make  happiness 
spread  wide  and  deep  among  the  children  of  men.  Car- 
lyle's  snorts  of  derision  at  "the  dismal  science"  seem  pecu- 
liarly perverse  and  unworthy  when  one  observes  how 
assiduously  Mill  applied  theory  to  its  ultimate  purpose,  and 
humanised  abstruse  things  by  his  vital  and  sympathetic 
touch. 

There  were  in  Mill,  together  with  his  tenderness  of  feel- 
ing and  sense  of  justice,  two  qualities  which  are  not  suffi- 
ciently recognised  in  the  best-known  estimates  of  him. 
These  are  his  love  of  beauty  and  his  strong  moral  courage. 
The  critic  of  literature  who  reads  his  excellent  piece, 
"Thoughts  on  Poetry  and  its  Varieties,"  and  his  essays  on 
Coleridge  and  Alfred  de  Vigny,  must  regret  that  he  did 


112     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

not  find  time  to  write  more  in  this  vein.  His  finely  wrought 
little  book  On  Liberty  has  a  place  apart  in  modern  English 
literature,  and  contains  things  which  people  will  need  to 
read  again  and  again  through  generations.  His  Subjection 
of  Women  was  a  piece  of  pioneer  polemic  on  a  subject  on 
which  he  felt  deeply.  Withal  he  was  alert  to  the  sweetness 
and  charm  of  nature  to  an  unusual  degree.  The  beauty 
of  wayside  flowers  and  the  form  of  great  trees  delighted 
him.  The  songs  of  birds  gave  him  intense  pleasure.  To 
think  of  him  as  engrossed  by  abstract  problems,  beset  by 
cold  calculations,  is  to  misunderstand  him  completely. 

His  courage  was  part  of  his  sincerity.  He  advocated 
many  unpopular  causes  regardless  of  ordinary  opinion,  and 
indeed  never  troubling  himself  whether  his  reasons  for  so 
doing  were  approved  by  those  whom  he  supported.  Though 
a  champion  of  working  class  policies,  and  essentially  a 
democratic  thinker,  he  was  too  honest-minded  ever  to  court 
approval  by  flattering  the  mob.  The  well-known  incident 
of  the  Westminster  election  is  an  example  of  his  straight- 
forwardness. In  a  pamphlet  on  "Parliamentary  Reform" 
he  had  written  that  the  English  working  classes,  though 
differing  from  those  of  other  countries  in  being  ashamed 
of  lying,  were  yet  generally  liars.  This  passage  an  oppo- 
nent at  the  election  had  painted  on  a  placard,  which  was 
handed  up  to  Mill  at  a  meeting  composed  chiefly  of 
working  men,  and  he  was  asked  whether  he  had  written 
and  published  it.  "I  did,"  answered  Mill  at  once;  and  he 
regarded  it  as  creditable  to  his  audience  that  they  applauded 
his  candour  and  preferred  it  to  the  ordinary  "equivocation 
and  evasion  of  those  who  sought  their  suffrages."  In  the 
Principles  of  Political  Economy,  where  approval  of  working 
class  points  of  view  is  stated  with  much  force  in  numerous 
passages,  Mill  treated  them  to  an  occasional  glance  from 
a  stern  eye,  as  in  the  passage:  "As  soon  as  any  ideas  of 
equality  enter  the  mind  of  an  uneducated  English  work- 
ing man,  his  head  is  turned  by  it;  when  he  ceases  to  be 
servile  he  becomes  insolent."  It  must  be  confessed  that 
there  is  a  tinge  of  the  supercilious  here,  as  occasionally 
elsewhere  in  his  writings.  Such  instances  help  one  to 
understand  what  Disraeli  meant  when,  hearing  Mill  making 
one  of  his  early  speeches  in  the  House  of  Commons,  he 
scrutinised  him  through  his  eyeglass  and  murmured,  "Ah, 
the  finishing  governess!" 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  113 

Mill  desired  to  explain  the  doctrines  of  Ricardo  in 
clearer  language,  and  to  correct  the  errors  of  Adam  Smith, 
whose  work  he  believed  to  be  "in  many  parts  obsolete  and 
in  all  imperfect."  But  in  so  doing  he  introduced  fresh 
errors  of  his  own.  One  of  his  critics  has  attributed  his 
failings  as  an  economist  to  his  sympathies:  "Mill  is  won- 
derfully philosophic  in  temper  compared  with  the  average 
man,  but  his  very  enthusiasm  for  humanity  kept  him  short 
of  absolutely  scientific  method."  The  doctrine,  to  which  he 
clung  with  something  of  a  parent's  fondness,  that  "demand 
for  commodities  is  not  demand  for  labour"  (Bk.  I.,  Chap. 
V.,  of  the  Political  Economy) ,  later  economists  have  assailed 
till  it  is  slain  like  Henry  VI.,  "punched  full  of  deadly  holes." 
But  it  was  not  characteristic  of  Mill  to  cling  to  a  theory, 
or  be  reluctant  to  modify  one,  when  satisfied  that  it  had 
been  weakened  by  criticism.  Few  writers  have  been  so 
open-minded,  so  ready  to  accept  correction.  He  threw  over 
the  wage-fund  theory  though  he  had  built  a  large  part 
of  his  discussion  of  wages  upon  it,  as  soon  as  he  was  con- 
vinced that  it  was  unsound.  Professor  Shield  Nicholson 
truly  states  that  Mill  himself  "may  be  said  to  have  headed 
the  revolt  against  his  own  doctrines  in  his  later  treatment 
of  labour  questions  and  socialism." 

There  was  an  absence  of  doctrinaire  finality  or  egotis- 
tical assertiveness  in  Mill's  handling  of  great  questions. 
He  recognised  that  there  were  other  sides  to  issues  upon 
which  he  felt  strongly.  No  man  was  a  more  convinced 
Free  Trader,  but  he  vexed  Richard  Cobden  by  the  admis- 
sion that  protective  duties  might  defensibly  be  imposed  in 
a  young  nation  "in  hopes  of  naturalising  a  foreign  industry 
in  itself  perfectly  suitable  to  the  circumstances  of  the 
country ;"  and  so  we  find  Cobden  in  a  letter  to  John  Bright 
growling:  "I  got  a  letter  the  other  day  from  Australia 
saying  that  the  Protectionists  there  are  quoting  Mill  to 
justify  a  young  community  in  resorting  for  a  time  to  Protec- 
tion." That  appreciation  of  exceptions  to  general  truths 
was  characteristic  of  Mill.  Gladstone  observed  the  same 
detachment  of  mind  in  his  attitude :  "Of  all  the  motives, 
stings  and  stimulants  that  reach  men  through  their  egoism 
in  Parliament,"  he  wrote,  "no  part  could  move  or  even 
touch  Mill.  His  conduct  and  his  language  were  in  this 
respect  a  sermon.  He  had,  I  think,  the  good  sense  and 


114     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

practical  tact  of  politics  together  with  the  high  indepen- 
dent thought  of  a  recluse." 

To  suppose  that  any  man,  however  intellectually  en- 
dowed, could,  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  or 
at  any  other  time,  write  a  book  of  half  a  million  words 
containing  nothing  but  infallibly  true  statements  of  prin- 
ciple affecting  the  economic  aspects  of  society,  would  be  to 
look  for  a  miracle.  Yet  there  were  people  who  believed 
when  Mill's  book  appeared,  that  it  would  soon  convince  the 
world  of  its  universal  applicability.  There  are  large  parts 
of  it  which  are  permanently  valuable,  and  it  is  a  very 
important  work  indeed  in  the  history  of  political  thinking. 
But  no  intelligent  reader  ought  to  expect  to  get  from  it 
what  Mill  himself  would  have  been  the  last  person  to  pro- 
fess to  give,  a  collection  of  dogmas  to  be  swallowed  bolus- 
fashion.  Dogmas  are  the  weapons  of  intolerant  people  and 
the  leaning-posts  of  lazy-minded  people;  but  it  is  not  the 
function  of  economic  or  any  other  science  to  supply  dogmas 
to  the  world.  "We  must  never  forget,"  said  Mill,  "that  the 
truths  of  political  economy  are  truths  only  in  the  rough." 

Economic  science  investigates  the  facts  relative  to  pro- 
duction, distribution,  exchange,  and  all  the  processes  of 
commercial,  financial  and  labouring  life,  and  it  states  its 
conclusions  with  as  near  an  approach  to  exactitude  as  it 
can  get.  But  in  this  domain  there  are  no  final  and  absolute 
truths,  no  immutable  laws.  "Economic  law  is  a  generalisa- 
tion of  average  tendency  in  the  events  it  covers."1  The 
last  word  will  not  be  spoken  until  the  ultimate  fact  is 
known  and  human  affairs  reach  a  stable,  sea-level  state; 
and  that  will  never  be. 

To  regard  political  economy  m  that  rational  light  is  not 
to  depreciate  its  value — which,  indeed,  cannot  possibly  be 
over-estimated.  The  world  would  be  infinitely  happier  and 
richer  if  it  paid  more  heed  to  the  teachings  of  this  most 
humane  of  the  sciences.  But  the  laboratory  of  the  econo- 
mist has  not  the  name  "Sinai"  on  a  brass  plate  on  the 
door.  No  one  knows  better  than  he,  and  he  rejoices  in 
the  fact,  that  his  science  is  continually  advancing  with 
every  change  in  methods  of  business,  the  disposition  of 
labour,  the  variations  of  politics,  the  innovations  of  inven 
tion,  and  so  forth.  We  can  expect  important  things  from 

i  J.  M.  Robertson,  "The  Economics  of  Progress,"  p.  3- 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  115 

political  economy,  and  indeed  we  do  get  them ;  but  we  must 
not  expect  the  wrong  things,  the  things  which  it  has  not 
to  give,  and  which  would  make  it  not  a  science  but  a  system 
of  quackery  if  it  professed  to  give  them. 

The  influence  of  political  economy  on  practical  politics 
has  been  exerted  partly  through  the  direct  effect  of 
thinkers  on  statesmen,  partly  through  the  education  of 
public  opinion.  Pitt  was  in  economic  matters  the  pupil 
of  Adam  Smith.  The  story  is  well  known  of  Adam  Smith 
arriving  late  at  a  dinner  at  the  house  of  Dundas,  when 
Pitt  rose  from  the  table  and  said,  "We  will  stand  till  you 
are  seated,  for  we  are  all  your  scholars."  It  was  under  the 
influence  of  Smith  and  the  Wealth  of  Nations  that  Pitt 
sought  to  free  the  trade  of  Ireland  from  the  restrictions 
which  had  throttled  it  during  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
his  commercial  treaty  with  France,  in  1786,  was  inspired 
from  the  same  source.  The  prejudices  of  the  age  were 
little  favourable  to  freedom  of  trade,  but  it  seems  clear  that 
Pitt  would  have  persisted  in  the  course  thus  entered  upon 
had  not  the  storms  of  the  French  Revolution  made  such 
a  policy  impossible.  Ricardo  had  a  still  more  decisive  influ- 
ence on  Sir  Robert  Peel,  which  lasted,  and  was  realised  in 
important  measures  after  the  death  of  the  economist 
(1823) .  "To  Ricardo  may  be  ascribed  directly  or  indirectly 
the  principles  which  were  adopted  by  Peel  as  the  founda- 
tion of  his  reforms  in  currency  and  banking  as  well  as  in 
financial  policy,  though  the  Bank  Charter  Act  was  only 
passed  in  1844  and  the  Corn  Laws  repealed  in  1846."  * 

From  that  period  British  policy  has  been  generally 
more  informed  and  guided  by  economic  thought  than  has 
the  policy  of  any  other  nation.  Eminent  economists  have 
sat  in  Parliament,  and  some  have  been  members  of  minis- 
tries. Large  questions  of  policy,  it  is  true,  are  rarely 
determined  purely  in  the  cool  light  of  economic  reasoning. 
Political  passion,  clashing  interests,  factional  obscurantism 
play  their  obstreperous  parts  in  modern  democracies.  But 
educated  reason  does  get  in  its  word,  and  not  infrequently 
it  has  been  a  decisive  word.  There  is  a  better  state  of 
information  to-day  among  the  masses  of  the  people  on 
economic  matters  than  was  at  all  customary  among  the 
governing  classes  half  a  century  or  more  ago.  The  discus- 

i  J.  H.  Clapham,  in  «  Cambridge-  Modern  History,"  X.,  p.  773. 


116     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

sion  of  questions  in  a  scientific  spirit  is  continually  becom- 
ing more  general,  and  is  in  itself  one  of  the  most  hopeful 
signs  of  the  advancement  of  political  competency. 

Political  economy,  in  the  period  when  Mill's  influence 
prevailed,  and  even  later,  was  regarded  as  a  self-sufficient 
system.  But  that  view  has  passed  or  is  passing.  The 
humanism  of  Mill,  as  already  observed,  had  regard  to  other 
elements  than  the  mechanism  of  business  and  the  cash  and 
credit  side  of  well-being.  But  he  did  not  go  far  enough. 
Political  economy  is  but  a  branch  of  the  largely  compre- 
hensive subject  of  sociology,  which  neglects  no  aspect  of 
life,  from  government  to  individual  happiness,  and  does 
not  forget  that  "the  economic  man" — that  hypothetical 
biped — is  a  creature  of  emotions,  impulses,  aspirations  and 
longings.  The  result  is  not  to  lessen  the  importance  of 
political  economy,  but  to  prescribe  its  scope  and  place  it 
in  valued  relationship  to  kindred  yet  different  fields  of 
study.  Similarly,  the  historical  investigation  of  economic 
problems  is  complementary  to  political  economy,  and  no 
more  a  substitute  for  it  than  statistics  can  be  said  to  be. 


John  Stuart  Mill's  Autobiography  is  the  best  record  of 
his  intellectual  life.  Two  short  books  upon  him  are  that 
of  Alexander  Bain,  which  contains  some  personal  recollec- 
tions, and  that  of  W.  L.  Courtney.  All  of  Mill's  principal 
books  are  easily  obtainable.  Ingram's  History  of  Political 
Economy  discusses  Mill's  place  among  economic  thinkers. 


So  far  I  have  discovered  only  one  political  principle,  so 
simple  that  I  hardly  dare  to  mention  it.  It  is  contained 
entirely  in  the  remark  that  a  human  society,  and  especially 
a  modern  society,  is  a  vast  and  complex  thing. — Taine. 

Among  the  delusions  which  at  different  periods  have 
possessed  themselves  of  the  minds  of  large  masses  of  the 
human  race,  perhaps  the  most  curious — certainly  the  least 
creditable — is  the  modern  soi  disant  science  of  political 
economy,  based  on  the  idea  that  an  advantageous  code  of 
social  action  may  be  determined  irrespectively  of  the  influ- 
ence of  social  affection. — Ruskin. 

Progress  is  not  achieved  by  panic-stricken  rushes  back- 
ward and  forward  between  one  folly  and  another,  but  by 


JOHN  STUART  MILL  117 

sifting  all  movements  and  adding  what  survives    to    our 
morality. — G.  Bernard  Shaw. 

One  of  the  greatest  pains  to  human  nature  is  the  pain 
of  a  new  idea.  It  is,  as  common  people  say,  so  upsetting; 
it  makes  you  think  that,  after  all,  your  favourite  notions 
may  be  wrong,  your  firmest  beliefs  ill-founded. — Walter 
Bagehot. 

The  geologist  or  the  physicist  has  the  facts  of  the  physi- 
cal world  before  him;  he  can  quietly  observe  them,  he  can 
make  experiments;  but  the  economist  has  to  deal  with 
facts  which  are  far  more  complicated,  which  are  obscured 
by  human  passions  and  interests,  and,  what  is  still  more 
to  the  point,  which  are  perpetually  in  motion. — Arnold 
Toynbee. 

The  friends  of  humanity  cannot  but  wish  that  in  all 
countries  the  labouring  classes  should  have  a  taste  for  com- 
forts and  enjoyments,  and  that  they  should  be  stimulated 
by  all  legal  means  in  their  exertions  to  procure  them.  There 
cannot  be  a  better  security  against  a  super-abundant  popu- 
lation . — Ricardo . 

Respectable  Professors  of  the  Dismal  Science,  soft  you 
a  little.  Alas !  I  know  what  you  would  say.  For  my  sins,  I 
have  read  much  in  those  inimitable  volumes  of  yours — 
really,  I  .should  think,  some  barrowf  uls  of  them  in  my  time 
— and,  in  these  last  forty  years  of  theory  and  practice, 
have  pretty  well  seized  what  of  Divine  Message  you  were 
sent  with  to  me.  Perhaps  as  small  a  message,  give  me 
leave  to  say,  as  ever  there  was  such  a  noise  made  about 
before.  Trust  me,  I  have  not  forgotten  it,  shall  never  for- 
get it.  Those  Laws  of  the  Shop-till  are  indisputable  to  me  ; 
and  practically  useful  in  certain  departments  of  the  uni- 
verse, as  the  multiplication-table  itself.  Once  I  even  tried 
to  'sail  through  the  Immensities  with  them,  and  to  front 
the  big  coming  Eternities  with  them;  but  I  found  it  would 
not  do.  As  the  Supreme  Rule  of  Statesmanship,  or  Govern- 
ment of  Men — since  this  universe  is  not  wholly  a  Shop- 
No. — Thomas  Carlyle. 

I  must  repeat  my  conviction  that  the  industrial  economy 
which  divides  society  absolutely  into  two  portians,  the 
payers  of  wages  and  the  receivers  of  them,  the  first  counted 
by  thousands  and  the  last  by  millions,  is  neither  fit  for  nor 
capable  of  infinite  duration. — John  Stuart  Mill. 


118     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

It  is  an  acknowledged  truth  in  philosophy  that  a  just 
theory  will  always  be  confirmed  by  experiment.  Yet  so 
much  friction,  and  so  many  minute  circumstances,  occur 
in  practice,  which  it  is  next  to  impossible  for  the  most 
enlarged  and  penetrating  mind  to  foresee,  that  on  few  sub- 
jects can  any  theory  be  pronounced  just  that  has  not  stood 
the  test  of  experience.  But  an  untried  theory  cannot  be 
advanced  as  probable,  much  less  as  just,  till  all  the  argu- 
ments against  it  have  been  maturely  weighed,  and  clearly 
and  consistently  confuted. — Malthus. 

In  chemistry  there  is  no  room  for  passion  to  step  in 
and  to  confound  the  understanding — to  lead  men  into  error 
and  to  shut  their  eyes  against  knowledge.  In  legislation 
the  circumstances  are  opposite  and  vastly  different. — Ben- 
tham. 

You  know  as  well  as  I  do  what  is  the  great  aim  of  all 
the  governments  of  the  earth:  obedience  and  money.  The 
object  is,  as  the  saying  goes,  to  pluck  the  hen  without 
making  it  cry  out.  But  it  is  the  proprietors  who  cry  out, 
and  the  government  has  always  preferred  to  attack  them 
indirectly,  because  then  they  do  not  perceive  the  harm  until 
after  the  matter  has  become  law;  and,  moreover,  intelli- 
gence is  not  widely  enough  distributed,  and  the  principles 
involved  are  not  clearly  enough  proved,  for  them  to  attri- 
bute the  evils  they  suffer  to  their  true  cause. — Turgot. 

I  am  reminded  of  an  adventure  which  befell  Archbishop 
Whately  soon  after  his  promotion  to  the  see  of  Dublin. 
On  arrival  in  Ireland  he  saw  that  the  people  were  miser- 
able. The  cause,  in  his  mind,  was  their  ignorance  of  poli- 
tical economy,  of  which  he  himself  had  written  what  he 
regarded  as  an  excellent  manual.  An  Irish  translation  of 
this  manual,  he  conceived,  would  be  the  best  possible  medi- 
cine, and  he  commissioned  a  native  Scripture  reader  to 
make  one.  To  insure  correctness,  he  required  the  reader 
to  retranslate  to  him  what  he  had  written  line  by  line.  He 
observed  that  the  man  as  he  read  turned  sometimes  two 
pages  at  a  time.  The  text  went  on  correctly,  but  his  quick 
eye  perceived  that  something  was  written  on  the  interven- 
ing leaves.  He  insisted  on  knowing  what  it  was,  and  at  last 
extorted  an  explanation :  "Yor  Grace,  me  and  my  comrade 
conceived  that  it  was  mighty  dry  reading  so  we  have  just 
interposed  now  and  then  a  bit  of  a  pawem,  to  help  it  for- 
ward, your  Grace." — /.  A.  Froude. 


DURHAM. 


[Page  120 


CHAPTER  IX. 

LORD    DURHAM    AND    RESPONSIBLE 
GOVERNMENT. 


IT  has  been  a  not  uncommon  experience  in  British  his- 
tory that  the  remedy  for  misgovernment  has  been 
found  to  be  self-government.  This  does  not  mean  that 
self-government  is  necessarily  very  good  government. 
It  may  be  quite  otherwise.  But  if  it  be  the  kind  of  govern- 
ment which  a  people  want,  and  which  suits  them,  it  is  the 
right  kind  of  government  for  them,  and  may  be  better  than 
any  which  expert  jurists,  philosophers  and  statesmen  could 
devise  for  them.  For  thousands  of  years  the  problem  of 
how  to  govern  mankind  has  exercised  the  best  minds,  and 
many  most  admirable  pieces  have  been  written  about  it, 
from  Aristotle  down  to  Dicey.  Ingenuity  and  high  think- 
ing have  been  lavished  upon  every  aspect  of  the  subject. 
As  long  as  people  are  permitted  to  consider  these  wise 
things  as  counsel  which  they  may  accept  or  reject  as  they 
please,  they  are  very  valuable ;  but  if  enforced  upon  an  un- 
willing community  the  best  may  prove  repugnant.  John 
Locke  was  a  very  wise  man.  He  had  thought  more  deeply 
about  government  than  any  man  of  his  generation,  and  his 
writings  on  the  subject  are  full  of  good  things  which  it  is 
still  profitable  to  ponder  over.  But  when  John  Locke  turned 
his  hand  to  constitution-making,  and,  as  Secretary  to  the 
Proprietors  of  Carolina,  produced  an  instrument  of  govern- 
ment for  that  colony,  nobody  had  any  wish  to  live  under 
it,  nor  ever  did.  Being,  as  Professor  McLean  Andrews 
says,  "a  constitution  made  to  order,  without  regard  to  the 
needs  of  the  people  for  whom  it  was  intended,"  it  was  won- 
derfully ingenious  but  completely  unsuitable. 

People  must  have  government  if  they  are  to  live  together 
in  communities.    The  cave  men  must  have  had  their  rough 

121 


122     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

rules  of  life,  and  they  probably  .smote  with  the  thigh  bone* 
of  a  reindeer  or  some  such  admonishing  implement  any 
man  who  offended  against  them.  The  Anglo-Saxons  had 
laws  which  for  easier  remembrance  were  cast  in  rhythmical 
form  and  sung  to  the  harp,  before  they  could  write  down 
what  each  man  was  expected  to  do.  There  was  legislation 
before  there  were  alphabets. 

It  is  indeed  singular  how  the  most  unruly  of  people 
will  create  an  orderly  government  for  themselves  if  let 
alone.  When  a  Portuguese  navigator  discovered  Brazil  at 
the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  government  of  Portu- 
gal, having  no  particular  use  for  the  country  for  trade  or 
settlement,  turned  loose  in  its  ample  territory  a  horde  of 
criminals,  evil-living  persons  and  heretics  condemned  by 
the  Inquisition,  whom  it  was  considered  desirable  to  expel, 
and  left  them  to  shift  for  themselves.  They  might  tear 
each  other  to  pieces  if  they  liked,  and  perhaps  some  of  them 
did  at  first.  But  these  people  sorted  themselves  out  and 
evolved  a  system  of  government  for  the  several  colonies 
which  grew  up  in  various  parts  of  the  country,  each  under 
an  elected  captain,  who  administered  rough  justice,  orga- 
nised defence,  and  exercised  authority  in  accordance  with 
the  general  sentiment  of  the  community.  The  system  was 
not  perfect,  but  it  was  a  natural  growth  out  of  the  needs 
of  man  as  a  social  being  to  reduce  order  out  of  chaos ;  and 
it  worked  so  well  that  when  gold  was  discovered  in  Brazil, 
and  the  Portuguese  government  sent  out  Martin  Affonso 
de  Sousa  as  Governor,  he  wisely  determined  to  allow  these 
curiously-generated  administrations  to  continue.  Conse- 
quently the  captaincy  system  prevailed,  and  left  its  mark 
upon  the  subsequent  development  of  Brazil. 

The  problem  of  the  government  of  colonies  presented 
itself  naturally  when  the  discovery  of  America  opened  up 
vast  new  realms  for  development;  and  the  most  obvious 
thing  for  European  governments  to  do  was  to  govern  their 
over-sea  possessions  on  some  such  plan  and  in  accordance 
with  some  such  ideas  as  were  familiar  at  home  Thus  Spain, 
whose  American  acquisitions  were  immensely  larger  than 
those  of  any  other  nation,  divided  them  into  vice-royalties 
very  much  as  the  mother  country  was  divided  into  pro- 
vinces. The  French  colonies  were  likewise  governed  under 
a  tolerably  close  imitation  of  the  system  which  prevailed 
in  France.  French  Canada  before  the  English  conquest 


LORD   DURHAM  123 

was  as  feudal  in  social  structure  as  was  European  France. 
Colonists  take  to  a  new  country  not  only  seeds  and  live- 
stock for  reproducing  as  far  as  may  be  the  life  of  the  home- 
land, but  also  customs  and  ideas.  They  have  to  adapt 
these,  just  as  they  have  to  adapt  themselves,  to  new  con- 
ditions ;  but,  however  rapidly  they  may  make  changes,  they 
will  more  or  less  closely  copy  the  life  of  the  old  land.  The 
very  names  of  early  colonies  betray  this  imitative  tendency 
— New  England,  Nova  Scotia,  New  Netherland,  la  Nouvelle 
France,  Nova  Hispania.  There  were  also  for  awhile  a  New 
Sweden  in  America,  and  a  New  Albion. 

Few  Americans  realise  the  extent  to  which  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  United  States  was,  despite  its  republican  prin- 
ciple, an  imitation  of  the  English  system  of  government 
prevailing — or,  rather,  supposed  to  have  been  prevailing — 
in  1787 ;  so  that  to  this  day  the  President  is  a  George  III. 
with  a  hat  instead  of  a  crown  on  his  head,  and,  of  course, 
much  better  material  inside  it.  For,  after  all,  as  has  been 
wittily  said,  man  is  an  imitative  animal — "he  imitates  his 
ancestors,  that  is  custom;  he  imitates  his  neighbours,  that 
is  fashion;  he  imitates  himself,  that  is  habit/ 

It  fortunately  happened  that  when  the  English  colonies 
in  America  were  founded,  in  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  the  country  was  very  much  concerned  with  ideas 
about  government;  and  the  prevalence  of  these  ideas 
favoured  the  creation  of  a  new  type  of  over-sea  possessions. 
In  England  Parliament  commenced  under  James  I.  a 
struggle  for  the  popular  control  of  government,  which  was 
continued  with  greater  fierceness  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
I.,  and  culminated  in  the  tragedy  of  Whitehall  in  1642. 
Within  the  thirty-six"  years  before  that  date,  Virginia  and 
the  New  England  colonies  were  established.  If  the  Stuart 
kings  had  prevailed  in  their  struggle  with  Parliament,  such 
English  colonies  as  came  into  being  in  America  would,  we 
cannot  doubt,  have  been  as  despotically  governed  as  James 
and  Charles  desired  England  itself  to  be.  But  more  liberal 
conceptions  of  government  were  held  not  only  by  the 
colonists,  but  also  by  those  investors  in  colonising  com- 
panies who  found  the  money  for  Virginia  and  New  Eng- 
land. It  was  not  by  the  demand  of  the  Virginian  colonists, 
nor  by  the  command  of  the  Crown,  that  Virginia  was 
endowed  with  a  representative  assembly.  It  was  at  the 
instance  of  the  Proprietary  Company  in  London,  whose 


124     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

directors  included  men  who  were  fighting  for  the  popular 
cause  in  the  House  of  Commons,  that  "the  Magna  Carta  of 
America"  was  freely  granted,  under  which  the  first  colonial 
legislature  met  at  Jamestown  on  30th  June,  1619.  This 
was  the  beginning  of  self-government  in  the  colonies. 

In  due  time  all  the  English  colonies  in  America  had 
their  representative  assemblies.  Proprietary  colonies  as 
well  as  others  were  to  some  extent  under  popular  control. 
Lord  Baltimore,  the  proprietor  of  Maryland,  tried  to  foist 
on  the  colonists  a  code  of  laws,  but  the  Assembly  rejected 
them,  and  compelled  him  to  withdraw  them.  William  Penn, 
in  founding  Pennsylvania,  frankly  recognised  the  right  of 
the  colonists  to  exercise  a  voice  in  framing  laws  under 
which  they  were  to  be  governed.  "Any  government  is  free 
to  the  people  under  it,"  he  said,  "where  the  laws  rule  and 
the  people  are  a  party  to  these  laws,  and  more  than  this 
is  tyranny,  oligarchy  or  confusion."  There  was,  in  short, 
self-government  in  the  English  colonies  almost  from  the 
beginning. 

But  there  was  not  responsible  government.  The. Crown 
exercised  a  strict  veto  over  laws  passed  by  colonial  assem- 
blies, and,  in  fact,  about  eight  thousand  colonial  acts  were 
disallowed  during  the  eighteenth  century  before  the  revolt 
of  the  American  colonies.  The  executive  government  was 
in  the  hands  of  Governors  and  officials,  over  whom  the 
Assemblies  exercised  no  legal  control,  though  they  could 
often  make  things  disagreeable  for  governors  who  offended 
them  by  not  voting  their  salaries  and  by  other  annoyances. 

It  is  a  mistake,  though  a  common  one,  to  suppose  that 
the  American  Revolution  made  the  government  of  English 
colonies  more  popular  than  it  had  been  before — that  it 
taught  the  English  government  a  lesson.  It  did  not.  Canada 
remained  loyal  to  the  British  connection,  spurning  the  over- 
tures made  by  the  revolted  Americans  to  induce  it  to  join 
the  United  States ;  and  its  two  provinces,  Upper  and  Lower 
Canada,  were,  by  the  Constitution  Act  of  1791,  appointed 
to  be  governed  under  laws  to  be  made  by  a  nominated 
Legislative  Council  and  an  elected  Legislative  Assembly. 
But  the  administration  under  this  constitution  was  no  more 
responsible  to  the  elected  House  than  was  the  case  before 
the  Revolution.  The  Governors  of  the  provinces  were  Eng- 
lish officials,  and  through  them  the  Imperial  Government 
exerted  a  controlling  hand. 


LORD   DURHAM  125 

Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  complaints  began  to 
arise  about  the  quality  of  the  government  in  both  these  pro- 
vinces. The  French  population  of  Lower  Canada  were  not 
more  bitter  than  the  English  in  Upper  Canada  about  abuses 
which  they  declared  to  exist.  Corruption  and  incompetence 
were  alleged.  The  nominee  councils  were  said  to  be  cliques 
of  wealthy  and  influential  people  who  used  their  opportuni- 
ties to  secure  advantages  for  themselves  and  their  relatives. 
Some  thought  that  the  growing  storm  of  popular  discontent 
might  be  countered  by  making  the  councils  elective,  but  to 
this  mild  reform  King  William  IV.  offered  strong  opposi- 
tion. He  would  never  permit  an  elective  council  to  exist 
in  any  British  colony.  So  the  popular  grievances  were 
neglected,  the  storm  waxed,  and  it  burst  in  open  rebellion 
in  the  two  Canadas  in  1837. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Lord  Durham  comes  into  the 
story. 

Durham  was  a  prominent  member  of  the  Whig  (or 
Liberal)  party  in  the  years  following  the  resettlement  after 
the  Napoleonic  wars.  He  earned  for  himself  the  name  of 
"Radical  Jack"  by  his  strong  opposition  to  the  repressive 
policy  of  the  Tory  governments  which  ruled  England  from 
the  beginning  of  the  century  down  to  the  Reform  Bill  era, 
and  by  his  downright  championship  of  parliamentary 
reform.  A  fervent  temperament  drove  him  into  putting 
the  party  case  in  warmer  language  than  was  customary 
among  his  colleagues.  He  was  inclined  to  "fly  off  the 
handle,"  and  did  not  brook  contradiction  with  a  good  grace. 
But  essentially  Durham  was  an  aristocratic  Whig,  sincerely 
attached  to  the  view  of  politics  which  had  been  bequeathed 
to  the  Whig  party  by  its  great  leader,  Charles  James  Fox. 
He  was  one  of  the  committee  of  Whig  statesmen  who  pre- 
pared the  scheme  upon  which  the  Reform  Bill  was  based, 
and  he  was  the  actual  author  of  the  committee's  report 
to  the  King  and  the  Cabinet.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  Bill,  which  to  many  seemed  so  sweeping  as  to  be  almost 
revolutionary  when  laid  before  Parliament,  would  have 
been  much  more  halting  and  timid  but  for  Durham's  insis- 
tence. His  temper  did  not  allow  him  to  be  a  good  parlia- 
mentary leader,  but  he  was  a  courageous  thinker,  never 
afraid  to  take  the  step  from  conviction  to  action.  Indeed, 
he  would  nave  embodied  household  suffrage,  triennial  par- 


126     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

liaments  and  voting  by  ballot  in  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832, 
if  he  could  have  carried  his  colleagues  with  him. 

There  is  no  evidence  in  Durham's  papers  and  published 
utterances  that  he  had  taken  any  interest  in  colonial  ques- 
tions before  the  occurrence  of  the  Canadian  crisis.  He  had 
never  spoken  upon  them,  nor  been  officially  connected  with 
them.  Nor  was  he  at  first  disposed  to  go  to  Canada  when 
the  Prime  Minister,  Melbourne,  offered  him  the  post  of 
Special  Commissioner,  in  July,  1837.  A  month  later  than 
that  date,  we  find  him  writing:  "I  am  not  going  to  Canada, 
and  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  settlement  of  that  unfor- 
tunate question."  But  apparently  he  now  began  to  study  the 
question  of  colonial  government,  and  to  confer  with  men 
who  had  given  much  thought  to  it;  and  after  about  six 
months  from  the  original  offering  of  the  post  to  him  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  that  there  was  work  to  do  which  he 
could  undertake  with  satisfaction  to  himself.  In  January, 
1838,  he  wrote:  "I  will  consent  to  undertake  this  most 
arduous  and  difficult  task,  depending  on  the  cordial  and 
energetic  support  of  Her  Majesty's  government  and  on 
their  putting  the  most  favourable  construction  on  my 
actions." 

Lord  Melbourne  and  his  government  regarded  the  Cana- 
dian situation  as  a  political  nuisance.  They  were  faced 
with  rebellion  in  both  the  provinces,  and  would  have  been 
quite  content,  for  their  own  part,  if  Canada  had  cut  loose 
from  the  British  Empire.  But  they  recognised  that  if  that 
occurred  it  would  seriously  injure  their  position  in  British 
politics.  They  had  not  sufficient  statesmanship  to  perceive 
that  the  satisfactory  settlement  of  the  question  of  colonial 
government  was  a  necessity  due  to  the  growth  of  a  strong 
feeling  in  Canada  that  the  existing  constitution  was  out- 
worn, and  that  it  was  possible  by  a  new  policy  to  make 
Canada  a  contented  portion  of  the  British  Commonwealth. 
Melbourne  confessed  in  a  letter  to  Durham  his  personal 
indifference  as  to  whether  Canada  did  or  did  not  remain 
British,  but  that  his  chief  concern  was  for  the  maintenance 
of  his  power  at  home.  "The  final  separation  of  these  colo- 
nies," he  said,  "might  possibly  not  be  of  material  detri- 
ment to  the  interests  of  the  mother  country,  but  it  is  clear 
that  it  would  be  a  serious  blow  to  the  honour  of  Great 
Britain,  and  certainly  would  be  fatal  to  the  character  and 
existence  of  the  administration  under  which  it  took  place." 


LORD   DURHAM  127 

Certainly  no  settlement  could  be  expected  from  a  govern- 
ment which  took  such  a  selfish  view  of  its  responsibilities. 

Durham  had  made  up  his  mind  before  he  left  England 
as  to  what  the  remedy  for  the  Canadian  discontents  was 
to  be.  "I  go,"  he  said,  "to  restore  the  supremacy  of  the 
law,  and  next  to  be  the  humble  instrument  of  conferring 
upon  the  British  North  American  Provinces  such  a  free 
and  liberal  constitution  as  shall  place  them  on  the  same 
scale  of  independence  as  the  rest  of  the  possessions  of 
Great  Britain."  That  is,  the  Radical  Jack  of  the  Reform 
Bill  days  intended  to  recommend  responsible  government. 
And  it  was  that  recommendation,  made  in  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  and  important  State  Papers  in  modern  British 
history — the  Report  on  the  Affairs  of  British  North 
America  of  1839 — which  completely  reversed  the  British 
attitude  towards  colonial  administration  and  inaugurated 
the  era  of  responsible  government. 

As  a  colonial  ruler  Durham  was  not  a  success.  His 
arbitrary  disposition  led  him  to  take  steps  towards  the 
suppression  of  the  rebellion  which  caused  severe  attacks  to 
be  made  upon  him  in  Great  Britain.  He  was  in  Canada 
only  five  months,  during  which  time  he  used  the  large 
powers  entrusted  to  him  despotically. .  It  does  not  appear 
that  his  repressive  measures  were  considered  in  Canada 
to  be  too  severe  to  meet  the  seriousness  of  the  crisis,  but 
he  had  enemies  in  England  who  were  looking  for  oppor- 
tunities of  injuring  him,  and  the  government  not  only 
failed  to  support  their  representative,  but  virtually  repu- 
diated what  he  had  done.  Durham  therefore  threw  up  his 
commission  and  returned  to  England  angry,  sick  and  dis- 
appointed. 

It  was  after  his  return  that  Durham  produced  his  cele- 
brated report.  Insinuations  which  have  been  published  to 
the  effect  that  he  was  not  the  real  author  of  it  are  totally 
unfounded.  It  is  true  that  he  took  to  Canada  with  him 
Charles  Buller  and  Edward  Gibbon  Wakefield,  both  of  whom 
were  distinguished  students  of  colonial  affairs,  and  of 
course  he  took  them  in  order  that  their  knowledge  and 
experience  might  be  useful  to  him.  Naturally,  he  made 
use  of  their  services.  But  his  own  statement,  quoted  above, 
shows  that  he  had  made  up  his  mind  before  he  went  to 
Canada  as  to  the  general  nature  of  the  reform  which  he 
intended  to  propose,  and  the  report  itself  was  a  task  at 


128     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

which  he  laboured  arduously  in  defiance  of  failing  health. 

The  main  conclusion  of  the  report  was  that  responsible 
government  should  be  extended  to  Canada,  that  is,  that 
the  country  should  be  placed  under  an  administration  which 
should  owe  its  existence  and  be  responsible  to  a  popularly 
elected  legislature.  He  pledged  his  reputation  that  if  the 
-  step  were  taken  it  would  conduce  not  to  the  dissolution  but 
to  the  consolidation  of  the  British  Empire.  An  end  should 
be  put  to  the  old  idea  of  a  colony  as  a  field  for  the  exercise 
of  patronage;  it  should  be  treated  as  a  community  of 
British  oversea  people  entitled  to  manage  its  own  affairs ; 
colonial  governors  should  be  instructed  that  they  must 
carry  on  their  duties  by  means  of  officers  in  whom  the 
legislature  had  confidence,  and  that  they  must  "look  for 
no  support  at  home  in  any  contest  with  the  legislature, 
except  on  points  involving  strictly  Imperial  interests."  That 
is  the  salient  recommendation  of  a  State  Paper  which  has 
been  described  as  "the  most  valuable  document  in  the  Eng- 
lish language  on  the  subject  of  colonial  policy."1 

In  the  light  of  experience  it  seems  so  absurd  that  com- 
munities of  intelligent  British  people  living  in  colonies 
should  have  their  government  controlled  by  statesmen  and 
officials  sitting  in  London  offices,  that  we  find  it  hard  to 
realise  why  Durham's  ideas  were  not  enforced  at  an  earlier 
date.  But  among  eminent  statesmen  of  the  time  there  were 
few  who  had  sufficient  imagination  to  foresee  that  respon- 
sible government  would  work  out  as  he  said  it  would. 
Whigs  as  well  as  Tories  believed  that  disaster  would  follow. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington  assured  the  House  of  Lords  that 
"their  lordships  might  depend  that  local  responsible  govern- 
ment and  the  sovereignty  of  Great  Britain  were  entirely 
incompatible."  Lord  John  Russell,  on  the  opposite  side  in 
politics,  exclaimed:  "If  the  Executive  Council  are  to  be 
named  according  to  the  will  of  the  Assembly,  what  is  to 
become  of  the  orders  given  by  the  Imperial  Government 
and  the  Governor  of  the  Colony?  It  would  be  better  to 
say  at  once,  Let  the  two  countries  separate,  than  for  us 
to  pretend  to  govern  the  colony  afterwards." 

Despite  the  great  force  with  which  Durham  presented 
his  case,  and  the  powerful  advocacy  of  a  number  of  eminent 
writers  and  politicians  who  were  convinced  by  him,  British 

i  Egerton,   "History   of   British  Colonial  Policy,"  p.   304. 


LORD   DURHAM  129 

statesmen  were  very  nervous  about  taking  the  plunge.  For 
several  years  after  his  report  was  presented  Canada  was 
under  representative  but  not  responsible  government,  and 
it  was  not  till  1847  that  Lord  Elgin  was  sent  out  to  govern 
Canada,  with  definite  instructions  "to  act  generally  on  the 
advice  of  the  Executive  Council,  and  to  receive  as  members 
of  that  body  those  persons  who  might  be  pointed  out  to 
him  as  entitled  to  be  so  by  their  possessing  the  confidence 
of  the  Assembly." 

Once  the  experiment  was  tried  its  continuance  was 
inevitable.  In  the  fifties  responsible  government  was 
brought  into  force  in  Australia,  and  later  in  New  Zealand 
and  South  Africa.  Responsible  government  became  the 
keystone  of  the  arch  of  British  colonial  policy.  Colonies 
became  no  longer  areas  for  exploitation  by  the  mother 
country,  but  free  nations  of  politically-conscious  people  con- 
trolling their  own  destinies  within  an  ever-widening  scope 
of  power.  The  consummation  of  the  policy  of  responsibility 
is  to  be  found  in  the  highly  important  Report  of  the  Secre- 
tary of  State  for  India,  Mr.  Montagu,  and  the  Viceroy,  Lord 
Chelmsford,  presented  to  the  Imperial  Parliament  in  July, 
1918.  There  it  was  proposed  that  the  system  which  had 
proved  so  successful  in  the  dominions  should  be  extended  to 
India.  "No  further  development  is  possible,"  said  the 
Montagu-Chelmsford  report,  "unless  we  are  going  to  give 
the  people  of  India  some  responsibility  for  their  own  govern- 
ment. .  .  .  Indians  must  be  enabled,  in  so  far  as  they 
attain  responsibility,  to  determine  for  themselves  what 
they  want  done."  The  process  set  in  motion  by  Durham  in 
1839,  therefore,  worked  out  to  a  scheme  of  responsible 
government  for  a  people  who,  eighty  years  ago,  would 
never  have  been  dreamt  of  even  by  Durham  as  capable  of 
exercising  it. 

Ideas  grow.  The  conception  of  what  responsible 
government  itself  implies  has  grown.  We  are  reminded 
by  an  eminent  authority  that  "it  is  a  blunder  to  think  that 
the  full  doctrine  of  responsible  government  was  realised 
fifty  years  ago;  it  is  a  plant  of  slow  and  gradual  growth."1 
If  we  turn  to  what  Durham  mean  by  it,  and  then  consider 
what  is  meant  by  it  now,  we  shall  see  that  there  has  been 
development.  While  Durham  urged  that  Canada  should 

J  Keith,   "Imperial  Unity  and  the   Dominions/'   p.    103. 


130     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

exercise  over  her  own  affairs  "control  final,  unfettered  and 
complete,"  he  held  that  there  were  some  matters  which 
must  be  dealt  with  as  matters  of  Imperial  policy.  "The 
constitution  of  the  form  of  government,  the  regulation  of 
foreign  relations,  and  of  trade  with  the  mother  country 
and  foreign  nations,  and  the  disposal  of  the  public  lands 
are  the  only  points  on  which  the  mother  country  requires 
a  control."  So  it  seemed  to  the  most  advanced  colonial 
reformer  in  1839.  Defence  also  he  assumed  to  be  so 
entirely  the  responsibility  of  the  mother  country  that  he 
did  not  even  mention  it. 

2?  It  was  found  very  soon  after  responsible  govern- 
ment was  inaugurated  that  the  control  of  public  lands 
must  be  left  to  the  colonies  themselves.  When  the  gold- 
fields  of  Australia  were  discovered,  they  also  were  left  to 
the  colonial  governments  to  manage  as  they  pleased.  It 
also  became  clear  that  the  colonies  must  be  permitted  to 
follow  their  own  desires  and  interests  in  the  matter  of 
trade,  without  check.  When  Canada  desired  to  impose 
customs  duties  even  on  goods  imported  from  Great  Britain 
(1859),  it  was  an  innovation  which  greatly  displeased  the 
English  manufacturing  classes,  who  clamoured  for  the 
imposition  of  an  Imperial  veto.  But  it  soon  became 
apparent  that  it  was  a  necessary  consequence  of  respon- 
sible government  that  the  administration  which  was  respon- 
sible for  raising  revenue  must  be  free  to  do  so  in  its  own 
way.  Again,  when  the  Australian  colonies,  alarmed  at  the 
inrush  of  Asiatic  labour,  passed  laws  retricting  immigra- 
tion, the  British  government  expressed  its  grave  disapproval. 
But  it  was  an  inevitable  consequence  of  responsible  govern- 
ment that  the  colonies  which  were  charged  with  respon- 
sibility for  their  own  peace,  order  and  good  government 
should  have  the  right  to  prevent  the  inruption  of  elements 
which  were  considered  inimical  to  their  well  being. 

The  growth  of  the  Dominions  in  trade,  wealth  and  popu- 
lation has  necessarily  augmented  their  political  status,  and 
the  idea  of  responsible  government  has  proved  sufficiently 
elastic  to  enable  their  increased  importance  to  be  recog- 
nised quite  consistently  with  the  fulfilment  of  their  obliga- 
tions to  the  British  Commonwealth.  Machinery  has  been 
devised  for  enabling  them  to  negotiate  trade  treaties  with 
foreign  nations.  Finally,  after  playing  a  large  part  in  the 
European  War,  the  Dominions  were  separately  represented 


LORD   DURHAM  131 

at  the  Peace  Conference,  and  were  enabled  to  exercise  a 
direct  influence  in  shaping  the  future  of  the  world.  These 
later  developments,  which  would  have  seemed  impossible  to 
Durham  eighty  years  ago,  have  nevertheless  arisen  quite 
naturally  out  of  the  adaptable  system  of  government  which 
was  inaugurated  as  a  consequence  of  his  report.  A  form 
of  government  which  cannot  grow  must  perish.  Conditions 
will  change,  new  needs  and  fresh  demands  will  arise,  the 
outlook  of  peoples  will  vary  from  generation  to  generation. 
The  life  of  mankind  in  progressive  communities  cannot  be 
confined  in  Chinese  shoes.  It  must  stride  onward. 

The  great  service  which  Durham  rendered  was  in  sug- 
gesting a  system  of  government  which  has  proved  capable 
of  such  expansion.  When  he  went  to  Canada  he  took  with 
him  a  number  of  pianos  and  other  musical  instruments, 
being  a  musical  enthusiast.  A  friend  of  his  commented 
on  this  part  of  his  baggage  to  Sydney  Smith,  who  replied, 
"Yes,  he  is  taking  so  many  instruments  because  he  is  going 
to  make  overtures  to  Canada."  He  did  indeed  make  a 
melody  upon  which  a  variety  of  highly  interesting  varia- 
tions have  .since  been  played. 


The  standard  biography  of  Lord  Durham  is  that  by 
Stuart  J.  Reid,  two  volumes;  the  chapters  dealing  with 
Canada  and  the  Durham  Report  are  in  the  second  volume. 
L.  Curtis's  Problem  of  the  Commonwealth  presents  an  argu- 
ment for  the  expansion  of  the  present  system,  with  a  singu- 
larly interesting  historical  review.  Dr.  A.  Berriedale 
Keith's  elaborate  works,  Responsible  Government  in  the 
Dominions  and  Imperial  Unity  and  the  Dominions,  are  of 
very  great  importance.  The  Durham  Report  has  been  twice 
reprinted  in  recent  years.  The  best  edition  of  it  is  that 
edited  by  Sir  Charles  Lucas.  Egerton's  History  of  British 
Colonial  Policy  presents  the  story  from  the  commencement 
to  modern  times.  A  brief  book  is  C.  H.  Curry's  British 
Colonial  Policy. 


A  nation  is  a  mass  of  dough ;  it  is  the  government  that 
kneadeth  it  into  form. — Lord  Halifax. 

What  is  necessary  to  govern  men?  The  free  consent 
of  the  peoples. — Voltaire. 


132     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

Government  is  a  contrivance  of  human  wisdom  to  pro- 
vide for  human  wants. — Burke. 

Responsible  government  is  .simply  a  means  of  securing 
that  the  Executive  can  control  the  Legislature,  the  neces- 
sary condition  of  government. — L.  Curtis. 

0,  glorious  wisdom,  gift  of  Heaven  to  happy  mortals, 
who  hast  often  refined  their  corrupt  natures,  how  many 
evils  wouldst  thou  have  corrected  in  these  dark  times  had 
it  been  vouchsafed  to  Valens  to  learn  through  thee  that 
Empire  is  nothing  else,  in  the  opinion  of  the  wise,  than 
care  for  the  well-being  of  others. — \Ammianus  Marcellinus 
(circa  390  A.D.). 

Wise  and  happy  will  that  nation  be  which  will  be  the 
first  to  adapt  its  policy  to  the  new  circumstances  of  the 
age,  and  to  consent  to  see  in  its  colonies  nothing  more  than 
allied  provinces  and  no  longer  subject  states  of  the  mother- 
land. Wise  and  happy  will  that  nation  be  which  is  the 
first  to  be  convinced  that  commercial  policy  consists  wholly 
in  employing  lands  in  the  way  most  advantageous  for  the 
owners,  also  the  arms  of  the  people  in  the  most  useful  way, 
that  is,  as  self-interest  will  enjoin  if  there  is  no  coercion ; 
and  that  all  the  rest  is  only  illusion  and  vanity." — Ver- 
gennes  (1776). 

I  know,  of  course,  that  the  theory  of  colonies  is  that 
they  exist  for  the  benefit  of  home  trade  and  the  supply  of 
the  metropolis,  but  after  all  the  colonists  are  as  much 
Frenchmen  as  we  are.  They  pay  their  own  way,  they  have 
their  own  interests  to  defend,  and  the  very  least  we  can 
do  is  to  give  them  representation. — Napoleon. 

Those  who  know  the  English  colonies  abroad  know  that 
we  carry  with  us  our  pride,  pills,  prejudices,  Harvey's 
sauces,  cayenne  peppers  and  other  lares,  making  a  little 
Britain  wherever  we  settle  down. — Thackeray. 

Power  and  influence  we  should  exercise  in  Asia ;  conse- 
quently in  Eastern  Europe;  also  in  Western  Europe;  but 
what  is  the  use  of  these  colonial  dead- weights  which  we 
do  not  govern? — Disraeli  (1866). 

There  are  two  things  in  the  self-governing  British 
Empire  which  are  unique  in  the  history  of  great  political 
aggregations.  The  first  is  the  reign  of  Law:  wherever 
the  King's  writ  runs,  it  is  the  symbol  and  messenger  not 
of  an  arbitrary  authority  but  of  rights  shared  by  every 
citizen,  and  capable  of  being  asserted  and  made  effective 


LORD   DURHAM  133 

by  the  tribunals  of  the  land.  The  second  is  the  combination 
of  local  autonomy — absolute,  unfettered,  complete — with 
loyalty  to  a  common  head,  co-operation,  spontaneous  and 
unforced,  for  common  interests  and  purposes,  and,  I  may 
add,  a  common  trusteeship,  whether  it  be  in  India  or  in 
the  Crown  Colonies,  or  in  the  Protectorates,  or  within  our 
own  borders,  of  the  interests  and  fortunes  of  fellow- 
subjects  who  have  not  yet  attained,  or  perhaps  in  some 
cases  may  never  attain,  to  the  full  stature  of  self-govern- 
ment.— H.  H.  Asquith. 

I  regard  the  Imperial  War  Council  as  marking  the  begin- 
ning of  a  new  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  Empire.  The 
war  has  changed  us.  Heaven  knows,  it  has  taught  us  more 
than  we  yet  understand.  It  has  opened  a  new  age  for  us, 
and  we  want  to  go  into  that  new  age  together  with  our 
fellows  overseas  just  as  we  have  come  through  the  darkness 
together,  and  shed  our  blood  and  treasure  together. — Lloyd 
George. 

The  vision  of  a  persistent  endeavour  to  t~ain  the  people 
of  India  for  the  task  of  governing  themselves  was  present 
to  the  minds  of  some  advanced  Englishmen  four  genera- 
tions ago;  and  we  since  have  pursued  it  more  constantly 
than  our  critics  always  admit,  more  constantly  perhaps 
than  we  have  always  perceived  ourselves.  The  inevitable 
result  of  education  in  the  history  and  thought  of  Europe 
is  the  desire  for  self-determination;  and  the  demand  that 
now  meets  us  from  the  educated  classes  of  India  is  no  more 
than  the  right  and  natural  outcome  of  the  work  of  a  hun- 
dred years. — Montagu-Chelmsford  Report  (1918). 


LINCOLN. 


[Page  134 


CHAPTER  X. 
LINCOLN    AND    DEMOCRACY. 


OF  many  men,  any  one  of  whom  might  have  been 
chosen  as  a  "personal  nucleus"  for  a  study  of  demo- 
cracy, none  seems  so  entirely  appropriate  as  Abra- 
ham Lincoln.  The  best-known  short  formula  of 
democratic  government  was  pronounced  by  him ;  his  career 
offers  a  striking  example  of  the  opportunities  which  a  demo- 
cratic community  opens  to  a  man  with  no  other  advantages 
than  native  character,  talent  and  ambition ;  the  whole  bent 
of  his  mind  was  towards  the  way  of  looking  at  life  which  is 
supposed  to  be  democratic.  Yet  he  was  fully  aware  of  the 
weaknesses  to  which  a  democracy  is  exposed  from  its 
own  nature.  He  wrote  no  philosophical  treatise  on  the 
subject,  and  neither  by  educational  equipment  nor  through 
the  habit  of  systematic  thinking  would  have  been  capable 
of  doing  so;  but  he  was  the  democrat  in  action,  and  all 
that  he  did  to  that  end  sprang  from  the  deepest  and  simplest 
conviction.  In  the  end  he  was  the  martyr  of  a  great  demo- 
cratic cause.  We  cannot  better  our  choice,  look  where  we 
may. 

It  was  in  his  Gettysburg  address,  delivered  on  19th 
November,  1863,  on  the  field  of  one  of  the  fiercest  battles 
of  the  Civil  War,  and  while  that  war  was  still  raging,  that 
Lincoln  uttered  the  definition  of  democratic  government 
which,  because  of  its  compact  neatness,  has  been  quoted 
innumerable  times.  The  circumstances  were  full  of  a 
grand  solemnity.  The  great  issue  upon  which  hung  the 
fate  of  the  United  States  and  the  hope  of  freedom  for  mil- 
lions of  slaves  was  not  yet  free  from  doubt.  For  three 
days  in  July  the  Union  troops  and  the  Federalists  had 
fought  a  battle  which  cost  the  two  armies  seventy  thousand 
men.  Upon  the  curved  ridge  round  about  which  so  much 
valiant  blood  had  been  spilt,  a  national  cemetery  was  made 
to  contain  their  remains,  and  the  President  was  brought 

135 


136     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

from  Washington  to  speak  some  words  of  dedication.  In 
ten  sentences,  so  chaste  in  form,  so  rich  in  feeling,  that 
they  could  hardly  have  been  improved,  Lincoln  recalled  the 
fact  that  the  American  nation  was  conceived  in  liberty  and 
dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  all  men  are  created  equal. 
Then  he  spoke  tenderly  of  the  sacrifice  of  life  which  had 
been  made  upon  the  stricken  field,  and  he  concluded  with 
these  memorable  words: — 

"It  is  for  the  living  rather  to  be  dedicated  here  to  the 
unfinished  work  which  they  who  fought  here  have  thus  far 
so  nobly  advanced.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  be  here  dedicated 
to  the  great  task  remaining  before  us — that  from  these 
honoured  dead  we  take  increased  devotion  to  that  cause  for 
which  they  gave  the  last  full  measure  of  devotion ;  that  we 
here  highly  resolve  that  these  dead  shall  not  have  died  in 
vain ;  that  this  nation,  under  God,  shall  have  a  new  birth 
of  Freedom;  and  that  Government  of  the  People,  by  the 
People,  for  the  People  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth." 

The  definition  contained  in  the  closing  period  has  been 
criticised  as  "a  sequence  of  superlatively  barren  plati- 
tudes."1 But,  though  the  critic  labours  at  considerable 
length  to  justify  his  disparagement,  he  fails  to  weaken  Lin- 
coln's terse  and  convenient  statement,  which  means  exactly 
the  same  as  a  more  accomplished  thinker,  Lord  Morley, 
conveys  in  the  phrase  that  "democracy  in  the  discussions 
of  the  day  means  government  working  directly  through 
public  opinion."  The  philosopher  may  elaborately  refine 
his  discussion  of  whom  "the  people"  are,  and  as  to  how  they 
are  to  govern  themselves,  but  Lincoln's  words  carry 
the  essence  of  the  matter.  They  serve  their  broad  purpose, 
and  some  perversity  is  required  to  misunderstand  them. 

A  queer-looking  fellow  was  this  Abe  Lincoln  to  be  the 
sovereign  of  a  great  nation,  and  to  guide  its  fortunes  at 
the  crux  of  its  life.  He  was  always  odd  in  appearance, 
very  tall  and  angular,  with  deep  chanels  cut  into  his  brown 
features,  clothes  that  refused  to  fit  his  body,  and  a  body 
that  refused  to  be  fitted  by  any  clothes.  When  he  was 
practising  law  at  Springfield  he  used  to  stick  valuable 
papers  relating  to  the  business  of  clients  in  the  lining  of 
his  shabby  old  pot  hat.  His  capable  secretaries  were  too 
business-like  to  let  him  do  the  same  with  State  Papers  at 

i  W.  H.  Mallock,  "The  Limits  of  Pure  Democracy." 


LINCOLN  137 

Washington,  after  he  became  President;  but  he  was  essen- 
tially unchanged  by  his  elevation  and  might  have  done  it 
if  let  alone.  One  quite  understands  how  his  appearance 
would  strike  an  English  aristocrat  like  the  Marquis  of 
Hartington,  who  wrote  to  his  father,  the  Duke  of  Devon- 
shire: "I  never  saw  such  a  specimen  of  a  Yankee  in  my 
life.  I  should  think  he  was  a  very  well-meaning  sort  of 
a  man,  but,  almost  everyone  says,  about  as  fit  for  his  posi- 
tion now  as  a  fire  shovel."  Hartington  was  no  fool,  as  the 
high  place  he  won  in  British  politics  goes  to  prove,  but  his 
judgment  in  this  instance  was  as  far  astray  as  it  could 
possibly  be.  The  Times  war  correspondent,  W.  Howard 
Russell,  recorded  that  an  English  friend  who  was  with 
him  at  army  headquarters  asked  why  he  stood  up  when 
"that  tall  fellow"  entered  the  room.  "Because  it  was  the 
President."  "The  President  of  what?"  "Of  the  United 
States."  "Oh,  come  now,  you  are  humbugging  me.  Let  me 
have  another  look  at  him  ?"  He  had  another  look,  and  then 
exclaimed,  "Well,  I  give  up  the  United  States!" 

Lincoln  was  so  great  a  man,  with  so  much  natural  dig- 
nity and  pure  moral  beauty  underlying  his  rugged  skin, 
that  anyone  who  from  a  study  of  his  biography  gets  to 
know  and  love  him,  wonders  at  the  obtuseness  which  could, 
fail  to  perceive  his  worth.  He  was  absolutely  free  from 
all  pose  and  pretension ;  a  crystal  clear  nature ;  upright  and 
of  clean,  strong  fibre.  He  was  not  unaware  that  superfine 
people  smiled  at  his  oddities.  Well,  they  might  if  it  amused 
them  so  to  do.  "I  have  endured  a  great  deal  of  ridicule 
without  much  malice,  and  have  received  a  great  deal  of 
kindness  not  quite  free  from  ridicule;  I  am  used  to  it," 
he  once  said.  It  mattered  not ;  he  had  more  serious  things 
to  think  about. 

The  elevation  of  Lincoln  to  the  Presidency  in  1860  was 
the  occasion  of  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War.  Before  his 
election — before  his  candidature,  in  fact — he  had  expressed 
a  very  decisive  opinion  on  the  slavery  question,  which 
naturally  was  the  question  above  all  others  for  the  southern 
states.  "A  house  divided  against  itself,"  he  had  said,  "can- 
not stand.  I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure  per- 
manently half  slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the 
Union  to  be  dissolved — I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall — 
but  I  do  expect  that  it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will 
become  all  one  thing  or  all  the  other."  From  this  opinion 


138     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

Lincoln  had  not  receded.  But  that  did  not  mean  that  he 
was  prepared  to  inaugurate  an  emancipation  campaign 
affecting  those  states  whose  law  permitted  slavery.  The 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  in  its  judgment  in 
the  Dred  Scott  case,  had  laid  it  down  that  "the  right  of 
property  in  a  slave  is  distinctly  and  expressly  affirmed  in 
the  constitution,"  and  that  Congress  had  no  power  to  declare 
slave  property  illegal.  That  was  the  law  of  the  United 
States,  and  nothing  that  the  President  or  even  Congress 
could  do  could  make  it  otherwise. 

But  it  was  possible  to  prevent  slavery  spreading  beyond 
the  confines  of  the  states  in  which  it  was  legal.  It  could 
be  insisted  that  no  new  state  should  be  admitted  to  the 
Union  on  a  basis  of  the  recognition  of  slavery  within  its 
borders.  The  southern  states,  however,  held  that  they  had 
the  right  not  merely  to  maintain  slavery,  but  that  their 
people  who  migrated  to  new  territory  in  Texas,  New  Mexico 
or  California  were  entitled  to  take  slaves  with  them  and 
keep  them  as  slaves.  Lincoln  believed  slavery  to  be  wrong, 
and  was  prepared  to  prevent  it  from  spreading.  But  he 
was  not  prepared,  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  to  try 
to  disturb  the  existing  law.  He  had  made  that  point  quite 
clear  in  a  public  declaration.  "I  have  no  purpose,  directly 
or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with  the  institution  of  slavery 
in  the  states  where  it  exists;  I  believe  I  have  no  lawful 
right  to  do  so,  and  I  have  no  inclination  to  do  so."  He 
believed  that  if  slavery  were  confined  to  the  southern  states 
it  would  gradually  die  out.  "I  do  not  suppose  that  in  the 
most  peaceful  way  ultimately  extinction  would  occur  in 
less  than  a  hundred  years  at  least,"  he  said.  But  patience, 
good  example  and  inherent  righteousness  were  expected  to 
bring  about  the  extinction  of  the  evil  system  at  some  time. 

It  was  the  action  of  the  southern  states  in  declaring 
their  secession  from  the  Union  as  soon  as  Lincoln  was 
elected  to  the  Presidency  which  forced  the  sharp  issue  in 
which  the  question  of  slavery  or  no  slavery  became  one 
with  what  to  Lincoln  was  the  more  vital  matter — that  of 
the  preservation  of  the  integrity  of  the  United  States. 

There  is  an  important  sense  in  which  the  southern  states 
may  be  said  to  have  stood  for  democratic  principles,  ancl 
the  north,  under  Lincoln's  leadership,  to  have  fought 
against  them;  and,  as  we  have  set  up  Lincoln  as  a  typical 
exponent  of  democracy,  we  must  consider  this  point.  The 


LINCOLN  139 

principle  of  self-government  is  essentially  democratic.  To 
say  that  many  thousands  who  fought  on  the  side  of  the 
south  during  the  Civil  War  did  so,  not  because  they  liked 
slavery  but  because  they  prized  the  principle  of  self-govern- 
ment, is  only  to  do  them  bare  justice.  Robert  Lee  himself, 
the  high-minded  and  chivalrous  soldier  who  did  honour  to 
the  defeated  cause,  regarded  slavery  as  "a  moral  and  poli- 
tical evil."  But  he  was  a  Virginian  citizen,  and  he  held 
that  he  was  bound  to  fight  for  the  rights  of  his  state. 

True  enough,  the  majority  of  the  people  of  the  southern 
states  not  only  believed  in  their  cause  but  in  slavery  as 
an  institution.  Alexander  Stephens,  the  ablest  exponent 
of  the  southern  cause,  declared  that  "the  corner  stone  of 
our  new  government  rests  upon  the  great  truth  that  the 
negro  is  not  equal  to  the  white  man — that  slavery,  subordi- 
nation to  the  superior  race,  is  his  natural  and  normal  con- 
dition." The  doctrine  that  slavery  was  morally  justifiable 
was  preached  from  innumerable  pulpits,  proclaimed  by  the 
legislatures  of  the  eleven  seceding  states,  and  fervently 
believed  by  the  greater  part  of  the  educated  population. 
It  would  be  a  huge  mistake  to  suppose  that  the  south 
blushed  for  its  cause  in  the  great  war.  On  the  contrary, 
it  fought  quite  as  proudly  as  valiantly,  believing  that  it 
had  a  case  that  it  could  make  good  before  high  Heaven 
and  all  just  men.  It  has  been  said  that,  "broadly  speak- 
ing, it  is  certain  that  the  movement  far  secession  was  begun 
with  at  least  as  general  an  enthusiasm  and  maintained  with 
at  least  as  loyal  a  devotion  as  any  national  movement  with 
which  it  can  be  compared."1  But  strictly  the  war  of  1860-5 
was  not  fought  on  the  issue  of  slavery  or  no  slavery ;  slavery 
being  quite  legal,  the  confederated  states  were  under  no 
necessity  to  draw  the  sword  to  defend  it.  It  was  fought 
on  the  issue  whether  those  eleven  states  had  a  right  to 
secede  from  the  Union  and  form  a  separate  federal  govern- 
ment of  their  own. 

With  his  customary  directness,  Lincoln  made  his  posi- 
tion clear  in  his  Inaugural  Address  in  March,  1861,  and 
anyone  who  reads  the  carefully  chosen  language  of  that 
utterance  will  be  convinced  that  in  resisting  the  claim  of 
the  southern  states  to  secede  he  was  not  renouncing  the 
principle  of  self-government,  but  insisting  upon  its  neces- 

1  Lord   Charnwood,   "Abraham  Lincoln,"  p.    177. 


140     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

sary  implications.  For  it  is  an  admirable  characteristic 
of  this  self-taught  but  logical  and  straight-thinking  states- 
man that  he  accepted  no  principle  without  being  prepared 
to  carry  it  to  its  consequences.  "Platitude"  is  the  last 
word  that  should  ever  be  used  in  connection  with  any  doc- 
trine which  he  laid  down.  He  was  not  a  rhetorical  phrase- 
monger who  pelted  pieces  of  the  dictionary  at  audiences 
in  order  to  evoke  what  the  newspapers  call  "loud  and  pro- 
longed cheering."  His  words  meant  things.  It  required 
a  war  to  teach  the  southern  states  that  not  what  they  meant 
by  self-government  but  what  Lincoln  meant  by  it  is  what 
self-government  really  is.  They  wanted  the  thing  without 
its  consequences.  He  insisted  on  the  consequences  going 
with  the  thing. 

The  argument  of  the  Inaugural  Address  makes  the 
position  clear.  The  states  forming  the  Union  entered,  in 
1787,  into  a  national  bond.  The  instrument  of  government 
did  not,  it  is  true,  contain  the  words  "perpetual  union,"  but 
Lincoln  held  that  "perpetuity  is  implied,  if  not  expressed, 
in  the  fundamental  law  of  all  national  governments." 
Sometimes  a  federal  constitution  states  upon  the  face  of 
it  that  it  is  the  bond  of  a  perpetual  union.  Thus,  the  con- 
stitution of  the  Commonwealth  of  Australia  expresses  unity 
"in  one  indissoluble  Federal  Commonwealth  under  the 
Crown."  But,  whether  such  a  term  is  used  or  not,  a  federal 
union  cannot  be  broken  by  the  secession  of  any  member 
or  members  of  it,  except  by  what  Lincoln  described  as 
"insurrectionary  or  revolutionary"  acts,  which  the  other 
members  have  a  right  to  resist.  And  why?  Because,  a 
national  compact  having  been  entered  into,  national  obliga- 
tions having  been  incurred  in  common,  the  whole  country 
belongs  to  the  people  who  inhabit  it,  not  to  any  section 
of  them  living  in  any  particular  part  of  it.  No  state  or 
group  of  states  can  get  out  of  such  a  political  union  with- 
out the  consent  o£  the  whole,  except  by  committing  acts 
of  war.  For  a  part  of  the  people  to  attempt  to  dismember 
a  union  which  was  formed  in  the  interests  of  the  whole 
of  the  people  was  not  to  assert  rights  of  self-government, 
but  simply  to  be  guilty  of  sedition. 

Lincoln  did  not  deny  that  the  Union  might  be  broken. 
"This  country,"  he  said,  "with  its  institutions,  belongs  to 
the  people  who  inhabit  it.  Whenever  they  shall  grow  weary 
of  the  existing  government  they  can  exercise  their  consti- 


LINCOLN  141 

tutional  right  of  amending  it,  or  their  revolutionary  right 
to  dismember  or  overthrow  it."  But  only  a  majority  could 
effect  an  amendment,  and  only  armed  force  could  effect 
destruction.  Self-government  does  not  imply  the  right  of 
a  part  to  wrench  itself  from  the  whole.  On  the  contrary, 
it  requires  the  whole  to  maintain  its  integrity  at  whatever 
cost.  From  Lincoln's  point  of  view,  therefore,  it  was  no 
more  allowable  for  South  Carolina  to  cut  itself  out  from 
the  Union  than  it  would  have  been  for  Manchester  to  sever 
itself  from  Great  Britain  or  Paris  from  France — which 
latter  piece  of  dislocation,  indeed,  the  Communists  of  1871 
did  vainly  attempt  to  effect. 

It  comes  to  this,  therefore,  that  in  a  democracy  we  are 
"members  of  one  another;"  we  are  not  a  bundle  of  splin- 
ters, but  a  coherent  piece  of  political  organisation,  in  which 
the  whole  has  its  rights  as  well  as  the  parts.  The  United 
States  in  1860  had  a  right  to  see  to  it  that  its  security  was 
not  endangered  by  the  setting  up  of  another  nation  upon 
its  borders.  If  eleven  states  could  commit  severance 
because  they  did  not  like  an  abolitionist  President, 
other  states  at  other  times  could  separate  because 
they  disliked  other  things.  A  nation  is  not  like  a  box  of 
nursery  bricks,  to  be  built  up  and  knocked  down  accord- 
ing to  whim  or  fancy.  It  is  a  solemn  and  solid  con- 
trivance for  the  government  of  mankind  living  in  com- 
munities. Nobody  doubts  now  that  Lincoln  took  the  right 
and  the  essentially  democratic  view  of  the  crisis,  and  that 
the  south  was  wrong  even  on  the  democratic  ground  that 
its  best  champions  chose. 

The  same  frank  and  logical  acceptance  of  all  that  demo- 
cracy implies,  as  distinguished  from  a  mere  verbal  recital 
of  shibboleths,  is  found  in  Lincoln's  policy  during  the  Civil 
War.  He  insisted  that  the  maintenance  of  the  Union  was 
the  business  of  every  man  capable  of  bearing  arms,  and 
he  therefore  had  no  hesitation  in  submitting  to  Congress  a 
conscription  law,  which  was  enacted  and  enforced.  He 
wrote  an  Address  to  the  People  justifying  this  policy — a 
close  and  incisive  piece  of  reasoning  based  entirely  on  the 
justice  of  distributing  burdens  on  "the  principle  of 
equality."  The  paper  was  not  published  until  after  his 
death,  apparently  because  after  writing  it  he  saw  that  the 
people  to  whom  it  was  addressed  needed  no  such  appeal. 
They  accepted  the  obligation  of  fighting  to  save  the  Union 


142     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

as  one  of  the  duties  of  citizenship.  The  paper  was 
reprinted,  and  much  read  and  discussed,  when  the  United 
States  entered  the  great  European  war  in  1917,  and  Con- 
gress passed  a  conscription  law — the  Army  Draft  Bill— 
for  raising  a  great  army. 

The  strength  of  Lincoln's  democratic  convictions  was 
tested  on  many  occasions,  and  was  always  proved  sound 
in  definition  and  in  acceptance  of  all  necessary  conse- 
quences. The  opponent  who  sought  to  trip  him  with  the 
question  whether,  if  he  believed  in  the  legal  equality  of 
black  and  white,  he  would  be  prepared  to  marry  a  negro 
woman,  received  the  oft-quoted  answer:  "I  protest  against 
the  counterfeit  logic  which  says  that  since  I  do  not  want 
a  negro  woman  for  my  slave,  I  must  necessarily  want  her 
for  my  wife.  I  may  want  her  for  neither.  I  may  simply 
let  her  alone.  In  some  respects  she  is  certainly  not  my 
equal.  But  in  her  natural  right  to  eat  the  bread  which 
she  has  earned  by  the  sweat  of  her  brow  -she  is  my  equal 
and  the  equal  of  any  man."  He  once  said  that  he  never 
had  a  feeling  politically  which  did  not  spring  from  the 
sentiments  embodied  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  he  was  indeed  all-of-a-piece  in  his  complete  assump- 
tion of  those  sentiments  as  a  guide  of  his  personal  and 
political  life.  He  treated  mankind  individually  no  dif- 
ferently from  his  treatment  of  them  in  the  mass.  His 
democracy  was  not  only  a  political  creed.  It  was  an  atti- 
tude towards  life. 

Lincoln  was  under  no  delusion  as  to  the  failings  of 
democracy.  It  was  not  a  perfect  system  of  government. 
A  hundred  thousand  fools  in  the  mass  may  not  be  as  wise 
as  one  wise  man,  even  as  to  what  is  best  ultimately  for 
themselves.  But  a  hundred  thousand  wise  men  will  not 
know  where  the  shoe  pinches  one  fool  as  well  as  he  knows 
it  himself;  and  government  is  very  much  a  matter  of  adjust- 
ing laws  to  conditions.  Moreover,  wise  men  are  not  always 
wise,  and  fools  are  not  always  foolish ;  and  there  are  many 
grades  between  the  two  extremes.  The  exercise  of  politi- 
cal power  is  apt  to  conserve  the  interests  of  a  few  and  fo 
disregard  those  of  the  many,  and  every  man  has  his  own 
place  and  concerns  in  the  world  to  protect  and  advance. 
It  is  quite  true  that  democratic  government  may  not  be 
better  government  than  autocratic  government.  Very  often 
it  has  been  quite  otherwise.  An  autocratic  government 


LINCOLN  143 

may  be  efficient,  clean,  and  prudent;  a  democratic  govern- 
ment may  be  incompetent,  corrupt  and  extravagant. 
Instances  could  be  given — glaring  instances — of  both  kinds. 
There  is  no  magic  formula  for  ensuring  that  democratic 
government  shall  be  even  respectable.  But  then  there  is 
no  formula,  either,  for  ensuring  that  any  other  kind  of 
government  shall  be  decently  good.  The  nearer  you  get 
to  popular  control,  the  nearer  you  are  to  securing  for 
people  the  kind  of  government  they  deserve,  and  the 
speedier  the  means  of  changing  a  bad  government  for  one 
that  is  less  bad. 

Lincoln  expressed  a  doubt  as  to  whether  "any  govern- 
ment which  is  not  too  strong  for  the  liberties  of  the  people 
can  be  strong  enough  to  maintain  itself."  But  the  history 
of  the  last  sixty  years  has  abundantly  justified  the  capacity 
of  democratic  states  to  weather  storms,  even  the  fiercest. 
Lincoln's  own  country  affords  the  proof.  In  the  greatest 
trial  of  strength  the  world  has  ever  witnessed,  all  the 
nations  which  approached  most  nearly  to  the  democratic 
ideal  came  through  triumphant;  and  all  the  autocratic 
Powers  were  hurled  to  destruction.  Hohenzollern,  Haps- 
burg,  Romanoff — where  are  they  to-day?  But  in  the  very 
midst  of  the  great  war  Great  Britain  enfranchised  her 
women  and  extended  the  suffrage  to  every  man  of  full  age. 

The  dangers  to  which  democracy  is  exposed  are  no  lon- 
ger from  autocracies,  aristocracies,  plutocracies;  but  there 
are  dangers  nevertheless.  They  arise  from  an  anarchist 
section  which  is  just  as  menacing  to  the  liberties  of  man- 
kind as  the  worst  tyranny  ever  was.  The  Italian  syndi- 
calist Labriola  puts  the  aim  quite  bluntly.  "In  politics  as 
in  everything  else,"  he  says,  "the  last  thing  that  trua 
democracy  means  is  the  influence  of  all  men  acting  as 
units  of  equal  influence,  as  though  right  were  always  the 
sum  of  the  largest  assortment  of  like  individual  wills. 
True  democracy,  on  the  contrary,  is  the  concentration  of 
power  in  an  elite,  who  can  best  judge  of  the  interaction  of 
social  cause  and  effect."  And  again  he  says :  "It  is  certainly 
not  revolutionary  tactics  to  entrust  the  sword  of  >Brennus  to 
any  body  of  men  who,  like  peasant  proprietors,  are  inclined 
to  the  sloth  of  conservatism."1  "The  concentration  of 

1  Both  passages  are  quoted  by  Mallock,  "Limits  of  Pure  Democracy," 
pp.  58  and  59. 


144     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

power  in  an  elite,"  the  denial  of  political  power  to  such 
men  as  peasant  proprietors — what  do  these  things  mean 
but  the  creation  of  a  new  kind  of  aristocracy? 

The  same  spirit  was  shown  by  the  Russian  Bolsheviks 
in  January,  1918,  when  they  scattered  the  Constituent 
Assembly  under  the  menace  of  red  guards  and  machine 
guns,  and  by  the  Spartacists  of  Germany,  who  sought  to 
prevent  a  representative  assembly  from  being  elected  and 
governing  the  country.  Against  such  tyrannous  sections 
the  spirit  of  democracy  is  as  much  in  antagonism  as  against 
government  by  royal  families,  junkers,  aristocracies  or 
money-bags.  They  will  have  to  be  overthrown  wherever 
they  endeavour  to  effect  their  designs,  as  their  evil  exem- 
plars have  been.  Reaction  from  such  tyranny  is  inevitable, 
and  the  countries  wherein  they  rear  their  heads  will  be 
fortunate  indeed  if  the  reaction  does  not  .swing  right  back 
towards  autocratic  government. 


There  are  two  reasonably  brief  biographies  of  Lincoln 
— John  G.  Nicolay's  Short  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln  and 
Lord  Charn wood's  Abraham  Lincoln,  the  latter  a  brilliant 
and  fascinating  piece  of  work.  For  a  convenient  history 
of  the  period  which  culminated  in  Lincoln's  Presidency, 
William  McDonald's  From  Jefferson  to  Lincoln  may  be 
recommended.  A  trenchant  examination  of  the  democratic 
standpoint  is  W.  H.  Mallock's  The  Limits  of  Pure  Demo- 
cracy. F.  J.  C.  Hearnshaw's  Democracy  at  the  Crossroads 
is  a  powerful  criticism. 


The  wisdom  of  a  few  may  be  the  light  of  mankind,  but 
the  interest  of  a  few  is  not  the  profit  of  mankind,  nor  of 
a  commonwealth. — Sir  John  Harrington. 

The  idea  of  a  rational  democracy  is,  not  that  the  people 
themselves  govern,  but  that  they  have  security  for  good 
government.  This  security  they  cannot  have  by  any  other 
means  than  by  retaining  in  their  own  hands  the  ultimate 
control. — John  Stuart  Mill. 

Few  probably  are  the  minds,  even  in  these  republican 
states,  that  fully  comprehend  the  aptness  of  that  phrase, 
"the  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the 
people,"  which  we  inherit  from  the  lips  of  Abraham  Lin- 


LINCOLN  145 

coin— a  formula  whose  verbal  shape  is  homely  wit,  but 
whose  scope  includes  both  the  totality  and  all  minutiae  of 
the  lesson. — Walt  Whitman. 

It  is  on  opinion  only  that  government  is  founded;  and 
the  maxim  extends  to  the  most  despotic  and  most  military 
governments,  as  well  as  to  the  most  free  and  most  popular. 
—David  Hume. 

It  is  the  deepest  tragedy  of  modern  history  that  every 
civilised  nation  seems  compelled  to  choose  one  of  two  forms 
of  government,  both  so  bad  that  it  is  not  easy  to  see  which 
is  the  worse.  On  the  one  side  is  the  Prussian  system — 
efficient,  economical  and  honest,  which  ends  in  putting  the 
civilian  under  the  heel  of  the  soldier,  with  his  brutal,  blun- 
dering diplomacy  and  methods  of  frightfulness.  .  .  .  On 
the  other  side  is  a  squalid  anarchy  of  democracy — wasteful, 
inefficient  and  generally  corrupt,  with  a  government  which 
quails  before  every  agitation  and  pays  blackmail  to  every 
conspiracy,  and  in  which  sooner  or  later  those  who  pay 
taxes  are  systematically  pillaged  by  those  who  impose  them, 
until  the  economical  structure  of  the  state  is  destroyed. — 
W.  R.  Inge. 

All  civilisations  that  assume  democratic  forms  are 
speedily  ruined. — Gobineau. 

The  doctrine  that  government  derives  its  just  powers 
from  the  consent  of  the  governed  was  applicable  to  the 
conditions  for  which  Jefferson  wrote  it,  and  to  the  people 
to  whom  he  applied  it.  It  is  true  wherever  a  people  exists 
capable  and  willing  to  maintain  just  government,  and  to 
make  free,  intelligent  and  efficacious  decision  as  to  who 
shall  govern.  But  Jefferson  did  not  apply  it  to  Louisiana. 
He  wrote  to  Gallatin  that  the  people  of  Louisiana  were  as 
incapable  of  self-government  as  children,  and  he  governed 
them  without  their  consent.  Lincoln  did  not  apply  it  to 
the  south,  and  the  great  struggle  of  the  Civil  War  was 
a  solemn  assertion  by  the  American  people  that  there  are 
other  principles  of  law  and  liberty  which  limit  the  appli- 
cation of  the  doctrine  of  consent.  Government  does  not 
depend  upon  consent.  The  immutable  laws  of  justice  and 
humanity  require  that  people  shall  have  government,  that 
the  weak  shall  be  protected,  that  cruelty  and  lust  shall  be 
restrained,  whether  there  be  consent  or  not. — Elihu  Root. 

The  people,  if  consulted,  can  say  what  form  of  govern- 
ment they  would  like,  but  not  the  form  that  will  suit  them ; 


146     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

they  can  only  learn  this  from  experience.  The  social  and 
political  form  into  which  a  people  can  enter  and  remain 
does  not  depend  on  their  whim,  but  is  determined  by  their 
character  and  past  history. — Tain*. 

All  government  is  a  restraint  on  liberty;  and  under 
all  the  dominion  is  equally  absolute.  So  that  when  men 
seem  to  contend  for  liberty,  it  is  indeed  but  for  the  change 
of  those  that  rule. — Sir  William  Temple. 

The  one  pervading  evil  of  democracy  is  the  tyranny 
of  the  majority,  or,  rather,  of  that  party,  not  always  the 
majority,  that  succeeds,  by  force  or  fraud,  in  carrying  elec- 
tions.— Lord  Acton. 

A  majority  held  in  restraint  by  constitutional  checks 
and  limitations,  and  always  changing  easily  with  deliberate 
changes  of  popular  opinion  and  sentiments,  is  the  only  true 
sovereign  of  a  free  people.  Whoever  rejects  it  does,  by 
necessity,  fly  to  anarchy  or  to  despotism.  Unanimity  is 
impossible ;  the  rule  of  a  minority,  as  a  permanent  arrange- 
ment, is  wholly  inadmissible ;  so  that,  rejecting  the  majority 
principle,  anarchy  or  despotism,  in  some  form,  is  all  that 
is  left. — Abraham  Lincoln. 

Instead  of  that  "divinity  which  doth  hedge  a  king"  we 
have  now  the  divinity  which  doth  hedge  a  parliament.  The 
many-headed  government  appointed  by  multitudes  of  igno- 
rant people,  which  has  replaced  the  single-headed  govern- 
ment supposed  to  be  appointed  by  heaven,  claims,  and  is 
accorded,  the  same  unrestricted  powers.  The  sacred  right 
of  the  majority,  who  are  mostly  stupid  and  ill-informed,  to 
coerce  the  minority,  often  more  intelligent  and  better 
informed,  is  supposed  to  extend  to  all  commands  whatever 
which  the  majority  may  issue;  and  the  rectitude  of  this 
arrangement  is  considered  self-evident. — Herbert  Spencer. 


KARL  MARX. 


[Page  148 


CHAPTER  XL 


KARL   MARX   AND    SOCIALISM. 


IF  one  were  asked  to  mention  the  book  in  the  whole  world 
which  has  been  at  once  the  most  talked  about  and  the 
least  read,  one  could  hardly  go  wrong  in  naming 
Karl  Marx's  Das  Kapital.  Some  enquiries  have 
been  made,  before  venturing  that  statement,  at  libraries 
and  bookshops,  to  ascertain  whether  the  work  is  frequently 
borrowed,  bought  and  enquired  for,  and  the  result  has  been 
to  remove  any  hesitation  in  awarding  to  it  the  certificate 
for  Greatest  Unread  Repute.  The  first  volume,  the  only 
one  of  the  three  to  be  published  during  the  lifetime  of  the 
author,  disappointed  him  by  reason  of  its  small  sale.  It 
was  translated  into  English  by  Moore  and  Aveling,  and 
revised  by  Friedrich  Engels.  The  volume  has  been  twice 
reprinted.  The  entire  work  has  been  translated  by  E. 
Untermann  and  published  at  Chicago.  It  has  not  reached 
a  second  edition,  and  no  publisher  in  Great  Britain  has 
deemed  it  worth  while  to  issue  a  translation  of  the  com- 
plete treatise,  though  we  may  be  sure  that  the  opportunity 
of  doing  so  would  have  been  seized  had  there  been  a  prob- 
able demand. 

If  we  make  a  comparison  with  another  famous  book, 
published  eight  years  before  Das  Kapital,  we  shall  realise 
what  these  facts  mean.  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  has 
circulated  in  six  editions  of  the  two-volume  issue,  and  ir 
as  many  reprints  of  a  popular  edition  issued  by  Murray, 
the  original  publisher,  apart  from  some  thousands  of  copier 
in  editions  by  other  publishers,  English  and  American,  and 
translations  into  every  literary  language. 

It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that  Capital  has  been  patiently 
studied  by  many  intellectual  men,  both  Socialists  and 
adverse  critics,  and  that  through  their  writings  and 
speeches  it  has  exerted  an  influence  far  greater  than 

149 


150     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

would  appear  from  the  comparatively  small  amount  of 
direct  attention  which  has  been  devoted  to  it.  But  though 
those  who  call  themselves  Marxian  Socialists  have  been 
numbered  by  tens  of  thousands,  and  Capital  has  been  styled 
"the  Bible  of  Socialism,"  by  far  the  greater  number  have 
limited  their  knowledge  of  Marx's  writings  to  the  violent 
and  rhetorical  Communist  Manifesto  of  1848,  and  "the 
Bible"  has  remained  for  them  a  portentous  mystery  in 
three  thick  volumes,  containing  too  much  hard  reading  and 
too  few  easily  caught  phrases  for  their  liking.  If  every 
Marxian  subjected  himself  to  the  discipline  of  reading 
Marx — and  the  author  himself,  by  the  way,  said,  "I  am  no 
Marxist" — there  would  be  fortune  for  publishers  in  Capital 
and  much  greater  sobriety  of  language  in  the  popular  dis- 
cussion of  Socialism.  Perhaps  those  are  two  reasons  why 
so  few  of  them  do  study  the  book.  We  shall  have  to  return 
to  this  point  in  another  connection  a  little  later. 

The  man  himself  was  on  the  whole  the  largest,  solidest 
figure  in  the  revolutionary  movement  in  Europe  during 
the  nineteenth  century.  There  is  a  certain  mountainous 
ruggedness  about  him.  When  we  think  of  Marx  living  in 
exile  and  poverty  in  London,  piling  up  day  by  day  the 
mighty  heap  of  manuscript  which  formed  his  magnum  opus, 
working  out  the  mathematical  formulae  with  which  it  was 
embellished,  or  confused,  fighting  against  sickness,  raging 
against  opposition,  copiously  vituperative,  patiently  con- 
structive, prophesying  vehemently  and  never  deterred  from 
fresh  predictions  by  the  failure  of  old  ones,  plodding  on 
with  his  tremendous  analysis  of  capitalistic  society  in 
defiance  of  all  discouragements — there  seems  something 
passionately  heroic  in  the  shaggy  old  man  who  believed 
that  he  was  thus  reconstructing  the  earth.  His  life  was 
a  continuous  battle  from  his  youth  till  the  Highgate  Ceme- 
tery gave  him  a  resting  place. 

The  essential  facts  about  him  are  not  many.  Born  at 
Trier  in  1818,  he  was  the  son  of  a  Jewish  lawyer  who  had 
embraced  Christianity.  He  was,  according  to  one  of  his 
biographers,  grateful  to  his  father  for  "freeing  him  from 
the  yoke  of  Judaism,  which  he  felt  was  a  great  hindrance 
to  the  many  revolutionists  of  his  race,  including  his  friends 
Heinrich  Heine  and  Ferdinand  Lassalle."  He  studied  first 
at  the  University  of  Bonn,  afterwards  at  Berlin,  where  he 
took  his  doctor's  degree.  Attracted  towards  journalism  by 


KARL   MARX  151 

an  absorbing  interest  in  public  questions,  he  edited  the 
Rheinische  Gazette  until  its  fierce  attacks  stung  the  govern- 
ment of  Frederick  William  IV.  of  Prussia  to  suppress  it 
(1843).  Then  he  went  to  Paris,  where  he  met  Friedrich 
Engels,  and  formed  the  friendship  which  was  to  endure 
to  the  end  of  his  life. 

Engels,  during  a  residence  in  England,  had  become 
imbued  with  the  political  and  economic  doctrines  of  the 
Chartists.  Marx  soon  got  himself  into  trouble  with  the 
French  government,  and  fled  from  Paris  (1847).  At  that 
time  a  revolutionary  movement  was  being  generated — the 
movement  which  was  to  destroy  the  monarchy  of  Louis 
Philippe  early  in  1848.  At  Brussels,  where  Marx  found  a 
temporary  refuge,  he  was  joined  by  Engels,  and  the  two 
collaborated  in  the  preparation  of  the  Communist  Mani- 
festo. The  revolutionary  troubles  which  convulsed  Ger- 
many in  1848  attracted  these  two  stormy  petrels  back  to 
the  Fatherland ;  but  the  revolution,  like  a  spent  storm,  blew 
itself  out,  and  in  1849  the  Prussian  Government  again 
drove  Marx  beyond  the  frontiers.  He  then  settled  in 
London,  which  was  thenceforth  his  home  until  his  death 
in  1883. 

The  journalism  and  miscellaneous  writing  with  which 
Marx  occupied  himself  during  his  London  residence  never 
returned  him  much  more  than  a  pittance.  But  it  was  here 
that  he  began  the  great  work  of  his  life,  which  was  to  be 
a  critical  analysis  of  political  economy  from  the  Socialist 
point  of  view.  In  1850  he  produced  his  first  considerable 
book,  Zur  Kritik  der  politischen  Oekonomie  (Critique  of 
Political  Economy),  which  was  intended  to  form  the  first 
volume  of  his  principal  work.  But  closer  criticism  revealed 
to  him  crudities  which  made  him  dissatisfied  with  the  book. 
So  he  wrote  it  entirely  again,  and  after  seventeen  years 
produced  (1867)  volume  I.  of  Das  Kapital,  the  treatise  by 
which  he  will  always  be  remembered,  however  thick  the 
dust  upon  it  may  grow.  He  had  nearly  finished  the  second 
volume,  but  did  not  see  it  in  book  form  before  he  died. 
Volume  III.  was  also  largely  written,  though  much  existed 
only  in  notes,  and  parts  of  it  are  fragmentary.  Engels 
put  it  together  from  the  mass  of  material  left  by  his  friend, 
and  saw  the  two  concluding  volumes  through  the  press. 

The  life  of  Marx  during  the  writing  of  his  book  was 
by  no  means  that  of  a  recluse  student.  His  work  would 


152     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

have  been  better  if  it  had  been.  He  was  continually  em- 
broiled in  revolutionary  politics,  denouncing  and  being 
denounced  in  the  wild-elephant  trumpetings  which  are  the 
normal  speech  of  that  stentorian  world.  Mr.  Spargo,  to 
whose  biography,  Karl  Marx:  His  Life  and  Work,  students 
are  much  indebted,  classifies  his  public  career  into  three 
periods.  The  first  culminated  in  the  Communist  Manifesto 
in  1848.  The  second  culminated  in  the  organisation  of  the 
International  Working  Men's  Association  in  1864.  The  Inter- 
national was  meant  to  be  a  union  of  Socialists  and  Revolu- 
tionists of  all  nations.  Racial  and  national  barriers  were 
to  be  disregarded ;  the  working  classes  everywhere  were 
to  subordinate  all  political  aims  to  the  one  great  end  of 
solving  the  social  question  on  social  democratic  lines.  Maz- 
zini  attended  the  inaugural  meetings  in  London,  but  Marx 
was  determined  to  be  the  dominating  personality  and  could 
endure  no  rivalry;  for  his  most  faithful  admirers  cannot 
acquit  him  of  arrogance.  His  attitude  towards  Mazzini 
was  thoroughly  unfriendly;  we  are  told  that  "what  he 
lacked  in  anger  he  more  than  made  up  in  contempt."  Maz- 
zini, on  the  other  hand,  distrusted  Marx  as  a  man  who 
"believes  strongly  neither  in  philosophical  nor  religious 
truth,"  and  with  whom  "hatred  outweighs  love  in  his 
heart." 

The  third  period  of  Marx's  life  culminated  in  the  break 
up  of  the  International  in  1873.  An  anarchist  section, 
under  the  leadership  of  the  Russian  terrorist,  Michael 
Bakunin,  had  during  the  preceding  five  years  endeavoured 
to  capture  the  association.  The  debates  were  tempestuous. 
Marx  nourished  a  fierce  hatred  of  Bakunin,  and  induced 
the  majority  to  expel  him  and  his  associates  at  a  Congress 
at  the  Hague  in  1872.  But  the  split  entailed  the  collapse 
of  the  International,  which  did  not  hold  another  Congress 
after  that,  of  Berne  in  1873. 

It  must  be  said  that  Marx  was  a  redoubtable  hater. 
He  had  little  that  was  good  to  say  of  any  of  his  contem- 
poraries, except  Abraham  Lincoln,  of  whom  we  are  assured 
he  was  "a  most  passionate  and  devoted  admirer."  The 
virulence  of  his  language  towards  other  Socialists  who 
showed  any  signs  of  acquiring  an  influence  which  might 
rival  his  own  often  savoured  of  jealous  spite.  He  spoke 
harshly  of  Lassalle  and  Liebknecht  when  they  brought  about 
the  fusion  of  the  two  rival  Socialist  groups  in  Germany 


KARL   MARX  153 

and  created  the  Social  Democratic  Party  of  that  country. 
He  alluded  in  terms  of  scorn  and  distrust  to  Mr.  H.  M. 
Hyndman,  the  most  brilliant  and  influential  of  the  English 
Socialists  of  the  period  following  the  decay  of  the  Inter- 
national. Nevertheless  in  his  own  circle  he  seems  to  have 
been  a  gentle,  affectionate  and  much-beloved  man,  explo- 
sive at  times  but  with  a  soft  side.  With  children  he  was 
tender  and  playful.  The  little  people  of  his  neighbourhood 
were  always  sure  of  a  smile  and  a  caress  from  the  white- 
haired,  white-bearded,  unkempt  old  fellow  whom  they 
called  Daddy  Marx.  He  was  punctilious  in  all  the  personal 
and  financial  relations  of  life,  so  that  "as  honest  as  old 
Marx"  became  a  phrase  among  his  intimates.  A  volcano 
with  grassy  slopes — Etna  amid  Sicilian  meadows,  smoky, 
sulphurous  and  effulgent,  but  presenting  some  amiable 
moods,  and  with  goats  bleating  round  about — so  does  he 
seem;  and  Etna  is  no  extinct  volcano,  we  may  as  well 
remember. 

It  is  unfortunate  that  Marx  should  be  chiefly  known  to 
those  who  suppose  themselves  to  be  his  followers  through 
the  Communist  Manifesto,  which  its  authors  themselves 
declared  to  be  "in  some  details  antiquated" — a  mild  state- 
ment of  the  case  concerning  it.  The  Manifesto  bears 
upon  it  the  impress  of  the  strenuous  times  when  and  for 
which  it  was  written.  There  is  interesting  material  in  it, 
analysing  historically  the  development  of  modern  industry ; 
but  its  animated  style  too  often  rises  to  a  shrieking  note, 
and  it  makes  too  much  of  an  appeal  to  the  kind  of  Socialists 
who  are,  as  Labriola  says,  "insufficiently  grounded  and 
who  are  sentimental  or  hysterical."  It  evokes  well-deserved 
ridicule  to  find  people  who  are  quite  comfortably  situated 
quoting  such  phrases  as  "the  proletarians  have  nothing  to 
lose  but  their  chains,"  with  no  sense  of  their  utter  incon- 
gruity. Some  of  its  statements  were  only  partially  true 
when  written,  and  have  become  still  more  falsified  with  the 
general  improvement  in  the  condition  of  the  working  classes, 
insufficient  as  those  improvements  admittedly  are.  The 
statement  "but  does  wage  labour  create  any  property  for 
the  labourer?  Not  a  bit!"  is  contradicted  by  the  statistics 
of  Trade  Unions'  and  Friendly  Societies'  funds,  and  by  the 
millions  of  instances  in  which  artisans  own  their  houses 
and  other  property  besides.  The  statement  was  written 
before  Trade  Unionism  had  begun  to  exercise  a  strong 


154     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

influence  upon  industrial  conditions,  widening  the  difference 
between  the  cost  of  living  and  the  wage  received  by  the 
worker. 

Mr.  Spargo  writes  that  the  Manifesto  adheres  more 
rigidly  to  the  "iron  law  of  wages" — the  phrase  was  that 
of  Lassalle — "than  would  have  been  possible  had  it  been 
written  say  twenty  years  later,  when  Marx's  thought  had 
matured."  Undoubtedly  that  is  true,  and  the  same  might 
be  said  of  many  other  statements  in  the  Manifesto.  "The 
working  men  have  no  country;  we  cannot  take  frojn  them 
what  they  have  not  got,"  it  averred,  in  answer  to  the 
charge  that  the  Communists  desired  to  abolish  separate 
countries  and  nationality.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  a 
man  who  has  been  expelled  from  his  own  country,  and  then 
driven  from  another  where  he  had  taken  refuge,  should 
feel  like  that.  But  the  sacrifices  made  during  the  years 
1914-19,  and  the  spirit  in  which  they  were  made,  puts  this 
puling  assertion  in  a  dismally  apologetic  light. 

From  the  violently  revolutionary  tone  which  pervaded 
the  Communist  Manifesto — its  advocacy  of  "the  forcible 
overthrow  of  all  existing  .social  conditions,"  and  its  invi- 
tation to  the  ruling  classes  to  "tremble  at  a  communist 
revolution,"  Marx  also  recoiled  in  later  life.  Here,  again, 
the  Manifesto  is  misleading  as  a  statement  of  his  views, 
unless  read  strictly  with  regard  to  the  exceptional  times 
and  circumstances  amid  which  it  was  produced.  In  maturer 
years  he  rebuked  those  who  would  "substitute  revolutionary 
phrases  for  revolutionary  evolution."  The  proletariat,  he 
then  insisted,  would  use  its  political  power  "to  wrest  by 
degrees  all  capital  from  the  bourgeoisie,  to  centralise  all 
instruments  of  production  in  the  hands  of  the  state." 
Between  wresting  "by  degrees"  and  "forcible  overthrow" 
there  is  a  world  of  difference,  and  it  is  good  to  perceive 
that  the  change  was  produced  after  his  residence  in  Eng- 
land convinced  him  that  the  method  of  reform  was  prefer- 
able to  what  seemed  the  only  possible  means  to  one  reared 
in  autocratic  Prussia.  We  are  assured  that  he  developed 
"an  intense  hatred  and  suspicion"  of  all  attempts  at  insur- 
rection, and  he  refused  to  have  any  part  in  helping  Las- 
salle to  buy  in  England  three  thousand  muskets  for  the 
purpose  of  an  armed  revolt  in  Germany.  "The  years  that 
bring  the  philosophic  mind,"  of  which  Wordsworth  spoke, 


KARL   MARX  155 

contained  enough  enlightenment  to  warn  Marx  that  short 
cuts  to  the  millennium  were  gashed  with  deep  ravines. 

There  were  also  changes  in  Marx's  fundamental,  econo- 
mic doctrines.  In  the  first  volume  of  Capital  he  laid 
emphasis  on  the  idea  that  all  value  is  based  on  labour  and 
on  labour  only,  and  that  the  value  of  commodities  is  in 
proportion  to  the  labour-time  necessary  for  their  produc- 
tion. This  was  not  an  original  observation.  An  earlier 
German  writer,  Rodbertus,  had  said  the  same — /had,  indeed, 
argued  that  a  gold  or  silver  currency  was  not  necessary; 
its  place  could  be  taken  by  labour  certificates  which  would 
indicate  that  so  much  labour  had  been  performed  during 
so  many  hours,  every  such  certificate  being  exchangeable 
for  any  goods  which  represented  an  equivalent  quantity 
of  labour-time.  So  that  the  labour-time  represented  in 
white-washing  Tom  Sawyer's  aunt's  fence  might  be  repre- 
sented by  a  labour  certificate  exchangeable  for  a  picture 
by  a  great  artist  painted  in  the  same  time.  Both  would 
be  efforts  with  the  brush  representing  equivalent  quanti- 
ties of  labour.  Marx  himself  put  the  argument  in  the 
form  that  "the  value  contained  in  a  certain  commodity 
is  equal  to  the  labour-time  required  for  its  production." 

But  (as  pointed  out  forcibly  by  Eugen  von  Bohm 
Bawerk  in  the  chapter  entitled  "The  Question  of  the  Con- 
tradiction," in  his  book  Karl  Marx  and  the  Close  of  his 
System),  Marx  advanced  an  exactly  contrary  theory  in 
the  third  volume  of  Capital.  There  we  are  told  "that 
what  according  to  the  first  volume  must  be  true  is  not 
and  never  can  be  true ;  that  individual  commodities  do  and 
must  exchange  with  each  other  in  a  proportion  different 
from  that  of  the  labour  incorporated  in  them ;  and  this  not 
accidentally  and  temporarily  but  of  necessity  and  perman- 
ently." Yet  the  theory  of  value  was  the  very  foundation 
of  Marx's  system.  If  he  contradicted  himself  as  to  that, 
as  he  did,  can  we  accept  him  as  the  "scientific"  evangelist 
of  a  new  economic  dispensation?  And  does  not  such  an 
instance  go  far  to  justify  a  recent  English  critic's  sweep- 
ing denunciation  of  "the  extraordinarily  involved  tangle  of 
inconsistent  theories  presented  in  Das  Kapital?"1  and  Mr'. 
Bernard  Shaw's  downright  admission  that  "Karl  Marx 
failed  because  he  was  not  an  economist  but  a  revolutionary 

iDr.  A.  Shadwell  in  the  "Edinburgh  Review,"  Oct.,    1917,  p.  211. 


156     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

Socialist  using  political  economy  as  a  weapon  against  his 
opponents." 

Even  Edward  Bernstein,  a  candid  critic  but  a  strong 
admirer  of  Marx,  is  alive  to  that  peculiarity  of  his  mind 
which  led  him  into  .some  of  his  errors.  "It  repeatedly  hap- 
pens/' says  this  writer,  "that  he  points  out  the  phenomena 
connected  with  a  certain  question,  but  afterwards  ignores 
some  of  them,  and  proceeds  as  if  they  did  not  exist."  That 
is  assuredly  what  a  scientific  writer  should  not  do.  And 
there  are  instances,  affecting  the  very  basis  of  his  theories, 
wherein  he  totally  overlooks  essential  elements.  Mr.  W. 
H.  Mallock,  in  his  two  books,  Labour  and  the  Popular  Wel- 
fare and  A  Critical  Examination  of  Socialism,  stresses 
"the  root  error"  of  the  Marxian  theory,  the  omission  of 
directive  ability  as  a  dominating  factor  in  production. 
There  may  be  wide  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  amount 
which  the  inventor,  the  organiser,  the  manager  and  the 
entrepreneur  should  be  entitled  to  take  out  of  the  proceeds 
of  industry.  They  may  be  too  highly  paid  in  many  in- 
stances for  their  services.  But  to  ignore  them  or  treat 
them  as  being  of  no  account  is  not  to  analyse  the  indus- 
trial mechanism  intelligently. 

Think  of  the  fresh  industries  which  have  come  into 
being  since  Capital  was  produced ;  think  of  the  new  methods 
which  have  been  introduced ;  think  of  the  inventions  which 
have  been  devised;  think  of  the  enormous  difference  which 
management  makes  in  determining  success  or  failure; 
think  of  the  old  firms  which  have  gone  down  and  of  the  new 
firms  which  have  soared  into  prosperity.  It  is  quite  a 
common  circumstance  in  large  undertakings  for  managers 
to  be  attracted  from  one  business  to  another,  by  the  offer 
of  extremely  large  salaries,  because  they  are  known  to  be 
men  whose  ability  is  capable  of  securing  decisive  success.  It 
may  be  remembered  that  not  long  after  the  establishment  of 
the  Soviet  Republic  in  Russia  Lenin  told  the  workmen  that  it 
would  be  necessary  to  engage  such  managers  at  large  sala- 
ries in  order  to  make  Russian  industries  run  successfully. 
Commercial  concerns,  which  are  conducted  to  make  profits, 
would  not,  we  may  be  quite  sure,  pay  huge  sums  to  men 
known  to  them  by  reputation,  unless  convinced  that  it  was 
worth  their  while  to  do  so.  In  one  such  instance  a  director 
of  a  large  business,  which  had  attracted  a  manager  from 
another  country  by  the  offer  of  a  salary  of  £10,000  a  year, 


KARL   MARX  157 

told  the  writer  that  as  a  business  proposition  the  engage- 
ment had  been  successful,  since  the  new  manager  had  in 
his  first  six  months  saved  the  company  more  than  his  year's 
salary. 

Yet  so  little  did  Marx  think  of  the  importance  of  direc- 
tive ability  that  he  denounced  the  whole  system  of  boards 
of  directors  as  "a  swindle."1  There  are  bad  directors,  no 
doubt,  just  as  there  are  bad  engineers,  bad  carpenters  and 
bad  chimney  sweeps,  and  the  guinea-pig  is  a  parasite  of 
the  company  system  who  is  not  to  be  admired.  But  nobody 
who  has  any  practical  acquaintance  with  well-managed 
companies,  and  of  the  value  of  the  expert  knowledge  which 
a  well-chosen  board  brings  to  Bear  on  the  several  depart- 
ments of  a  complicated  business,  will  mistake  such  whole- 
sale slap-dash  for  genuine  scientific  criticism. 

Many  of  the  statements  which  Marx  makes  with  the 
utmost  assurance  shrivel  up  at  once  when  confronted  with 
the  question — but  is  that  so  as  a  matter  of  fact?  An 
instance  is  his  contention  that  transportation  of  commodi- 
ties does  not  add  to  their  value.  Transport,  he  .says,  is 
one  of  the  elements  "which  form  a  nominal  value  even  if 
they  do  not  add  any  real  value  to  the  commodities."  "Such 
nominal  values,  which  do  not  add  any  real  value  to  the 
commodities,  are  the  purely  mercantile  costs  of  circulation." 
"They  are  pure  costs  of  circulation."  "The  labour-time 
required  for  these  operations  is  devoted  to  certain  neces- 
sary operations  in  the  reproduction  of  capital,  but  it  adds 
no  value  to  it."2  Those  four  statements  occur  in  three 
pages  of  Marx's  book.  But  in  fact  the  transportation  of 
goods  from  places  where  they  are  useless  to  places  where 
they  are  valuable  is  a  positive  addition  to  their  value.  In 
various  parts  of  the  Pacific  Ocean  are  islands  which  con- 
tain deposits  of  phosphates.  These  phosphates  are  of  no 
value  whatever  on  those  islands.  There  they  are  not  even 
soil  in  which  anything  will  grow.  They  do  not  become 
valuable  till  they  are  transported  to  centres  where  they 
can  be  obtained  by  farmers  and  used  as  fertilisers  for  the 
production  of  wheat,  when  they  have  the  effect  of  increas- 
ing the  yield  enormously.  There  is  no  value  whatever  in 
them  without  transport.  Marx  could  have  found  innumer- 

1  Vol.  III.,  p.  458,  of  the  Chicago  edition  of  "Capital." 

2  "Capital,"  Vol.  III.,  pp.  339  to  341. 


158     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

able  examples  of  the  kind  if  he  had  tested  his  dogmatic 
statements  with  the  touchstone  of  fact. 

Another  example  may  be  given.  Marx  asserts  that  "the 
surplus  value  or  the  profit  consists  precisely  of  the  excess 
of  the  value  of  the  commodity  over  its  cost  price ;  in  other 
words,  it  consists  of  the  excess  of  the  total  amount  of  labour 
embodied  in  the  commodity  over  the  paid  labour  contained 
in  it."  But  is  it  true,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  "the  excess 
of  the  value  of  the  commodity  over  its  cost  price"  is  profit? 
The  disproof  may  be  furnished  from  a  piece  of  sworn  evi- 
dence, which  was  subject  to  cross-examination.  In  1907 
a  certain  make  of  a  well-known  agricultural  machine  called 
a  stripper-harvester  was  being  sold  in  New  South  Wales 
for  £87/2/-.  The  cost  of  manufacturing  that  machine  was 
£67/2/-.  The  profit  to  the  manufacturer,  according  to 
Marx's  formula,  ought  to  have  been  £20.  But  as  a  matter 
of  fact  his  profit  was  only  £2/18/-.  The  difference  between 
that  sum  and  the  £20  was  absorbed  in  selling  costs  after 
the  machine  left  the  factory.1 

Many  other  examples  could  be  given  of  the  way  in 
which  the  statements  of  Marx  break  down  when  confronted 
with  facts.  They  illustrate  that-  characteristic  of  his  work 
upon  which  Edward  Bernstein  has  commented:  -"Imper- 
ceptibly the  dialectical  movement  of  ideas  is  substituted 
for  the  dialectical  movement  of  facts,  and  the  real  move- 
ment of  facts  is  only  considered  as  far  as  is  compatible 
with  the  former.  Science  is  violated  in  the  service  of 
speculation." 

Indeed,  in  one  passage  Marx  confessed  that  the  facts 
conflicted  with  his  theory  of  value;  and  he  naively  urged 
that  for  that  reason  the  attempt  to  understand  the 
phenomena  must  be  given  up!  But  surely  in  that  case  it 
was  the  theory  which  ought  to  be  given  up.  If  it  did  not 
fit  the  facts  it  was  wrong.  The  passage  is  interesting — 
"It  appears  therefore  that  the  theory  of  value  is  here  irre- 
concilable with  the  actual  movement,  irreconcilable  with 

i  The  example  is  taken  from  the  evidence  collected  by  a  Royal  Com- 
mission on  Stripper-Harvesters  and  Drills,  Commonwealth  of  Australia 
Parliamentary  Papers,  1909,  p.  214. 


KARL    MARX  159 

the  real  phenomena  of  production,  and  that  therefore  the 
attempt  to  understand  the  latter  must  be  given  up."1 

The  two  "great  discoveries"  which,  it  was  claimed  by 
Friedrich  Engels,  we  owe  to  Marx,  are  the  "materialistic 
conception  of  history  and  the  revelation  of  the  secret  of 
capitalistic  production  through  surplus  value." 

Marx  took  the  theory  of  value  which  he  found  in  Ricardo 
and  Mill,  re-interpreted  it  in  the  light  of  Rodbertus'  theory 
of  labour-value,  and  gave  it  a  fresh  construction  from  the 
Socialist  point  of  view.  What  he  meant  by  surplus  value 
is  that  the  capitalist  buys  from  the  workman  the  only  thing 
which  he  has  to  sell,  and  which  he  must  sell  in  order  to 
live,  namely,  his  craftsman's  skill  or  his  physical  strength, 
or  both ;  that  he  pays  for  this  commodity  in  wages,  which 
always  tend  to  sink  to  a  mere  subsistence  level;  and  that 
he  sells  the  product  of  this  labour  for  a  price  which  leaves 
him  in  possession  of  the  difference  between  the  wage  paid 
and  the  price  realised.  Out  of  this  surplus  value,  or  profit 
on  the  employment  of  labour,  the  capitalist  makes  his  for- 
tune— if  he  does  make  a  fortune,  for  the  possibility  of  the 
capitalist  losing  by  the  transaction,  as,  indeed,  often  hap- 
pens, is  not  contemplated. 

It  is  not  true  that  labour  is  the  only  source  of  value. 
Value  is  given  to  commodities  by  many  other  factors  than 
the  labour  which  went  to  produce  them.  But,  apart  from 
that,  it  is  true  that  the  capitalist  does,  if  he  can,  sell  his 
goods  at  a  price  which  will  enable  him  to  put  into  his  own 
pocket,  or  into  the  pockets  of  those  who  have  lent  him 
money  for  the  purposes  of  his  enterprise,  a  margin  between 
cost  of  production  and  sale  price.  If  there  were  no  such 
margin  he  would  be  unable  to  carry  on  business.  But  it 
is  not  true,  as  Marx  assumes  throughout,  that  this  margin, 
or  surplus  value,  is  wholly  unearned.  Partly  it  pays,  for 
depreciation  of  plant.  Partly  it  is  a  reward  for  skill, 
enterprise,  initiative,  expert  knowledge,  experience, 
judgment,  vigilance,  and  all  those  qualities  which 

1  Mr.  Untermann  in  his  translation  of  "Das  Kapital"  (Vol.  III.,  p. 
132)  weakens  the  force  of  this  passage  by  transposing  it  into  the  con- 
ditional mood,  making  it  read,  "it  would  seem,  then,  as  though  the 
theory,"  etc.  It  is  not  so  in  the  original.  The  German  text  (Vol.  III., 
p.  181)  reads: — "Es  scheint  also,  dass  die  Werttheorie  hier  unvereinbar 
ist  mit  der  wirklichen  Bewegung,  unvereinbar  mit  den  thatsachlichen 
Erscheimmsren  der  Produktion,  und  dass  daher  iiberhaupt  darauf  verzichtet 
werden  muss  die  letzten  zu  begreifen." 


160     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

make  the  capable  man  of  business.  Partly  it  is  payment 
for  the  use  of  capital;  and  it  is  evident  that  there  would 
be  no  inducement  to  save  unless  there  were  payment  for 
the  use  of  capital  saved.  Partly  it  is,  insurance  against 
risk,  of  which  there  is  an  element  in  nearly  all  businesses, 
and  a  very  large  element  in  some.  The  Marxian  analysis 
was  incomplete. 

To  point  out  the  weaknesses  in  Marx's  system  is  not  to 
deny  value  to  much  that  he  wrote ;  and  it  is  also  true 
that  the  whole  case  for  Socialism  does  not  fall  with  his 
economic  structure.  There  was  Socialism  before  Marx ; 
there  are  Socialists  who  do  not  accept  him  as  a  depend- 
able authority.  Mr.  Mallock  relates  that  Socialists  have 
told  him  that  he  should  discuss  the  principles  of  Socialism 
"as  understood  and  accepted  by  intelligent  disciples,  and 
not  the  worn-out  and  discredited  theories  of  Marx."  That 
would  be  sound  counsel  if  those  theories  were  not  still 
advanced  as  true.  But  as  recently  as  January,  1919,  .a 
Labour  Conference  held  in  Melbourne  formulated  a  state- 
ment of  principles,  which  were  taken  almost  literally  from 
the  Communist  Manifesto  of  1848,  and  embodied  state- 
ments of  doctrine  which  even  Marx  himself  abandoned. 
The  same  things  are  repeatedly  advanced  in  speeches  and 
writings  by  those  who  are  apparently  unaware  of  their 
unsoundness.  Critics  like  Mr.  Mallock  are  therefore  quite 
justified  in  behaving  like  Dry  den's  Timotheus  when  "thrice 
he  routed  all  his  foes  and  thrice  he  slew  the  slain,"  inas- 
much as  others  than  "intelligent  disciples"  treat  that  which 
is  defunct  as  the  "precious  life  blood  of  a  master  spirit 
embalmed  and  treasured  up  on  purpose  to  a  life  beyond 
life." 

There  is  indisputably  a  core  of  solid  worth  in  Marx's 
work,  a  display  of  wonderfully  analytical  ingenuity  and 
an  accumulation  of  detail,  which  is  full  of  interest  for  the 
economic  student.  His  advocacy  of  the  theory  of  surplus 
value,  though  defective,  directed  investigation  into  new 
channels,  and  went  far  towards  producing  a  truer  concep- 
tion of  the'  profit-making  process  than  any  economist  had, 
advanced  before  his  time.  His  originality  has,  indeed,  been 
denied,  both  by  the  anarchist  wing  and  by  more  sober 
writers.  A  French  historian  accuses  him  of  having  stolen 
his  main  ideas  from  the  English  Chartists.  He  has  also 
been  accused  of  having  appropriated  without  acknowledg- 


KARL   MARX  161 

ment  the  ideas  of  Rodbertus.  There  is  little  justice  in  these 
aspersions.  The  man's  work  is  remarkably  original,  though 
no  one  will  ever  say  that  the  presentation  of  it  is  luminous. 
Marx,  like  everybody  else,  drew  in  much  of  his  intellectual 
stuff  with  the  air  he  breathed.  But  a  fair  critic  will  not 
deny  him  originality,  or  honesty,  or  sincerity  of  mind. 

Nor  should  another  aspect  of  Marx's  contribution  to 
knowledge  be  underrated.  His  insistence  on  the  economic 
factor  in  history  has  had  a  thoroughly  salutary  influence. 
That  he  exaggerated  it  is  true.  It  is  simply  not  the  case 
that  the  history  of  every  epoch  can  only  be  explained  in 
the  light  of  economic  factors,  though  it  is  unfortunately 
true  that  these  factors  have  been  too  much  neglected  by 
historians.  There  is  an  economic  side  to  every  aspect  of 
life,  and  to  every  phase  of  history — to  the  Crusades,  to 
the  Reformation,  the  rise  of  Mohammedanism,  and  a  thou- 
sand other  great  events  in  history  which  have  been  fre- 
quently discussed  without  regard  to  that  most  important 
consideration.  Anyone,  for  example,  who  compares  Gib- 
bon's chapter  on  Mahomet  (the  fiftieth  chapter  of  the  Rise 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire)  with  Professor  Becker's 
chapter  on  "The  Expansion  of  the  Saracens"  in  the  second 
volume  of  the  Cambridge  Mediaeval  History  will  see  at  once 
how  the  view  has  been  widened  by  having  regard  to  econo- 
mic considerations. 

But  these  are  not  the  only  considerations,  nor  are  they 
always  supremely  important.  We  must  beware  of  obses- 
sions. Probably  the  economic  side  of  history  would  have 
been  forced  to  the  front  without  the  influence  of  Marx. 
Indeed,  the  study  of  economics  from  the  historical  point  of 
view  must  have  necessitated  the  study  of  history  from  the 
economic  point  of  view.  But  still  his  influence  in  promot- 
ing the  economic  study  of  history  was  powerful.  Perhaps 
it  is  more  apparent  in  this  field  of  research  than  in  any 
other,  and  the  results  present  a  fruitful  harvest  of  fresh 
facts  and  conclusions.  The  reference  to  Mahomet,  too, 
suggests  a  final  point.  Marx  was  the  founder  of  a  sect 
which  in  many  of  its  manifestations  resembles  the  worship 
of  the  Prophet.  But  the  Mohammedans  do,  it  is  believed, 
read  the  Koran. 


As  mentioned  above,  the  English  translation  of  Marx's 
Book  on  Capital,  by  Aveling  and  Moore,  is  not  complete. 


162     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

The  three-volume  translation  by  Untermann,  published  at 
Chicago,  is  the  only  complete  edition  in  English.  Aveling's 
Student's  Marx  is  unfortunately  only  calculated  to  make 
darkness  more  obscure.  Untermann's  Marxian  Econo- 
mics is  a  more  easily  digestible  exposition.  Hyndman's 
Economics  of  Socialism  is  also  a  good  treatise.  Selections 
from  Capital  dealing  with  "Value,  Price  and  Profit"  and 
with  "Wage  Labour  and  Capital"  have  been  reprinted  in 
small  cheap  books.  Among  the  best  criticisms  of  Marx's 
economics  may  be  mentioned  Mallock's  Critical  Examina- 
tion of  Socialism  and  Bohm  Bawerk's  Karl  Marx  and  the 
Close  of  his  System.  The  literature  on  both  sides  is,  how- 
ever, vast  in  bulk.  Gide  and  Rist's  History  of  Economic 
Doctrines,  in  Book  IV.,  chapter  3,  treats  the  Marxian  posi- 
tion in  relation  to  economic  thought  generally.  R.  C.  K. 
Ensor's  Modern  Socialism  prints  a  useful  collection  of  expo- 
sitions of  doctrine  by  leading  Socialists. 


The  mode  of  production  is  in  rebellion  against  the  mode 
of  exchange. — F.  Engels. 

Marx's  Capital  was  not  the  first  book  of  critical  com- 
munism but  the  last  book  of  bourgeois  economics. — A. 
Labriola. 

It  is  not  probable  that  a  work  (Das  Kapital)  so  long, 
so  obscure,  confused  and  tortuous  in  its  meanings,  and  so 
unspeakably  dreary  in  its  style,  has  had  many  readers 
among  the  working  classes,  or  indeed  in  any  class ;  but  the 
mere  fact  that  a  highly  pretentious  philosophical  treatise, 
with  a  great  parade  of  learning,  and  continually  express- 
ing the  most  arrogant  contempt  for  the  most  illustrious 
economical  and  historical  writers  of  the  century,  should 
have  been  written  in  defence  of  plunder  and  revolution 
has,  no  doubt,  not  been  without  its  effect. — Lecky. 

The  social  question  is  a  question  of  the  stomach. — 
Schaeffle. 

Economics,  in  the  main,  though  by  no  means  wholly, 
guide  the  course  of  human  development,  and  the  most 
careful  economic  analysis  of  our  present  society  shows  us 
that,  partly  consciously  and  partly  unconsciously,  the 
greatest  transformation  of  all  the  ages  has  already  begun. 
—Hyndman  (1896). 


KARL   MARX  163 

The  brazen  economic  law  which  fixes  wages  under  the 
conditions  of  to-day,  under  the  control  of  supply  and 
demand,  is  this:  that  the  average  wage  always  remains 
reduced  to  the  necessary  substance  which -national  custom 
demands  for  the  continuance  of  life  and  propagation. — 
'Lassalle  (1863). 

The  old  Marxian  formula  of  an  "iron  law  of  wages," 
falsely  deduced  from  Ricardo's  brief  handling  of  the  sub- 
ject at  a  time  when  the  outlook  as  to  redundant  population 
was  least  promising,  has  long  been  exploded. — J.  M. 
Robertson. 

Socialism,  which  gives  an  industrial  programme,  is 
almost  certain  to  be  the  complement  of  democracy,  which 
only  gives  the  power  of  adopting  a  programme. — C.  H. 
Pearson  (1894). 

Marx,  in  the  true  Hegelian  manner,  omits  what  his 
theory  cannot  explain — that  national  sentiment  is  stronger 
than  economic  common  interest. — C.  Delisle  Burns. 

The  causes  of  wealth  are  not,  as  is  commonly  said,  three : 
Labour,  Land  and  Capital.  This  analysis  omits  the  most 
important  cause  altogether,  and  makes  it  impossible  to 
explain,  or  even  reason  about,  the  phenomena  of  industrial 
progress.  The  causes  of  wealth  are  four:  Labour,  Land, 
Capital  and  Ability — the  fourth  being  the  cause  of  all  pro- 
gress in  production. — W.  H.  Mallock. 

If  a  Socialist  is  merely  a  man  crying  out  for  the  millen- 
nium because  he  wants  unearned  happiness  for  himself  and 
the  world,  not  only  will  he  not  get  it,  but  he  will  be  just 
as  dissatisfied  with  what  he  will  get  as  with  his  present 
position.  There  are  foolish  illusions  as  well  as  wise  ones; 
and  a  man  may  be  opposed  to  our  existing  social  system 
because  he  is  not  good  enough  for  it  just  as  easily  as  because 
it  is  not  good  enough  for  him. — G.  Bernard  Shaw. 

Our  hope  for  the  future  must  depend  on  the  growth  of 
an  educated  and  reasonable  democracy,  and  on  the  exten- 
sion of  the  co-operative  type  of  industry.  A  free,  instructed 
people,  controlling  their  own  interests,  political  and  econo- 
mic, central  and  local,  on  democratic  and  co-operative 
principles — such  undoubtedly  seems  to  be  the  most  desir- 
able form  of  society. — Kirkup. 


COBDEN. 


[Page  104 


CHAPTER  XII. 


COBDEN  AND  FREE  TRADE. 


THE  richness  of  the  English  language  in  terms  of 
abuse  is  probably  due  to  the  need  of  a  copious 
vocabulary  for  describing  our  politicians.  Moderate 
terms  are  of  no  use  whatever  to  the  ordinary 
British  person  in  discussing  his  political  aversions.  He  can 
only  be  articulate  in  derogatory  superlatives.  Lord  Mel- 
bourne showed  a  true  understanding  of  his  countrymen 
when  he  confronted  a  hostile  deputation  with  the  invitation 
that  they  should  "see  each  other  damned  first"  at  the  outset, 
in  order  the  sooner  to  get  to  business.  It  would  be  par- 
ticularly convenient  to  follow  that  process  before  discuss- 
ing Richard  Cobden.  There  are  political  writers  who  can 
never  mention  his  name  without  applying  an  unpleasant 
epithet  to  hint.  The  worst  they  can  say  is  a  pale  shadow  of 
the  vilification  which  he  had  to  endure  in  his  own  life- 
time. He  bore  that  without  being  distressed  by  it,  and  his 
reputation  will  not  suffer  from  such  syllables  as  can  be 
pelted  at  it  now.  Indeed,  the  fact  that  he  is  so  generally 
regarded  as  personifying  all  the  faults  and  merits  of  the 
Manchester  school,  invests  him  with  an  importance  which 
keeps  his  reputation  alive. 

Cobden  never  held  office ;  he  was  rewarded  with  no  title ; 
there  was  no  accidental  circumstance  of  birth,  wealth  or 
rank  to  make  it  easy  for  him  to  command  attention.  He  was 
not  a  great  orator,  or  an  original  thinker.  He  seriously 
imperilled  his  business  interests  by  his  absorption  in  public 
affairs.  The  firm  which  he  and  two  other  young  men 
founded,  principally  with  borrowed  money,  needed  personal 
attention.  When  he  was  in  the  thick  of  the  Free  Trade 
agitation  he  found  himself  on  the  brink  of  disaster,  and 
friends  whom  he  called  in  consultation  told  him  plainly 
what  the  reason  was.  "His  business,"  they  said,  "wanted 
a  head.  If  he  persisted  in  his  present  course  nothing  on 

165 


166     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

earth  could  keep  him  from  ruin."  Yet  so  completely  did 
the  cause  to  which  he  was  devoted  hold  his  interest,  that 
when  one  of  his  friends  expressed  surprise  that  he  could 
either  work  or  rest  with  such  a  black  load  upon  his  mind, 
he  replied:  "Oh,  when  I  am  about  public  affairs  I  never 
think  of  it;  it  does  not  touch  me;  I  am  asleep  the  moment 
my  head  is  on  the  pillow."  He  was  saved  then  by  the 
timely  assistance  of  John  Bright  and  a  group  of  friends 
who  would  not  let  him  slip  over  the  precipice,  though  he 
had  never  asked  for  any  reward  except  to  witness  the 
triumph  of  his  cause. 

This  renunciation  of  personal  interests  has  not  been 
without  its  compensations  in  posthumous  reputation.  He 
stands  as  one  of  a  small  group  of  nineteenth  century  Eng- 
lishmen of  eminence  in  their  day  who  are  now  remembered 
solely  by  reason  of  their  leadership  of  great  causes.  To 
think  of  the  abolition  of  slavery  is  to  recall  Clarkson;  to 
think  of  Free  Trade  is  to  recall  Cobden. 

There  never  was  any  doubt  in  the  minds  of  Cobden's 
contemporaries,  nor  is  there  in  the  mind  of  any  his- 
torical writer  on  the  period,  as  to  the  paramountcy  of  his 
influence  in  converting  England  from  a  Protectionist  to  a 
Free  Trade  country.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  the  minister 
who  swept  away  the  Corn  Laws  in  1846,  breaking  his  party 
i-n  the  effort.  But  when  Peel's  ministry  went  down  before 
that  "spirit  of  vengeance"  which  Disraeli  admitted  to  be 
the  motive  which  induced  the  majority  to  expel  him  from 
office,  he  made  a  closing  speech  wherein  he  acknowledged 
that  his  own  part  had  been  subordinate.  "There  has  been 
a  combination  of  parties,"  he  said,  "and  that  combination 
of  parties,  together  with  the  influence  of  the  government, 
has  led  to  the  ultimate  success  of  the  measures.  But,  sir, 
there  is  a  name  which  ought  to  be  associated  with  the 
success  of  these  measures;  it  is  not  the  name  of  the  noble 
lord  the  member  for  London  (Lord  John  Russell),  neither 
is  it  my  name.  Sir,  the  name  which  ought  to  be  and  which 
will  be  associated  with  the  success  of  these  measures  is  the 
name  of  a  man  who,  acting,  I  believe,  from  pure  and  dis- 
interested motives,  has  advocated  their  cause  with  untiring 
energy,  and  by  appeals  to  reason,  expressed  by  an  eloquence 
the  more  to  be  admired  because  it  was  unaffected  and 
unadorned — the  name  which  ought  to  be  and  will  be  asso- 
ciated with  the  success  of  these  measures  is  the  name  of 


COBDEN  167 

Richard  Cobden.    Without  scruple,  sir,  I  attribute  the  suc- 
cess of  these  measures  to  him." 

Years  later  Gladstone,  in  a  chapter  of  autobiography, 
bore  testimony  to  the  like  effect.  "It  was  Cobden,"  he 
said,  "who  really  set  the  argument  on  its  legs,  and  it  is 
futile  to  compare  any  other  man  with  him  as  the  father 
of  our  system  of  Free  Trade." 

We  have  the  best  of  reasons  for  knowing  that  Cobden 
did  not  promote  this  cause  with  the  object  of  riding  into 
office  on  a  wave  of  success,  for  when  Palmerston  offered 
him  a  post  in  his  government,  and  Russell  strongly  pressed 
him  to  accept,  it  was  declined.  Palmerston  was  unable  to 
understand  why  he  should  refuse  to  crown  his  political 
career  with  official  success,  and  asked  him  why,  if  he 
objected,  he  ever  entered  public  life.  "I  hardly  know," 
was  Cobden's  answer;  "it  was  by  mere  accident,  and  for  a 
special  purpose,  and  probably  it  would  have  been  better 
for  me  and  my  family  if  I  had  kept  my  private  station." 
His  was  a  case  of  pure  conviction  and  transparent  sincerity 
in  urging  a  complete  reversal  of  what  had  always  been  the 
commercial  policy  of  Great  Britain.  There  are  many  who 
now  advocate  a  fresh  departure ;  there  are  in  few  countries 
large  parties  which  support  the  adoption  of  Cobden's  prin- 
ciples. But  a  man  would  surely  be  dead  to  the  inspiring 
influence  of  shining  example  who  should  withhold  his  admi- 
ration from  a  life  devoted  with  unsparing  energy  and 
singleness  of  purpose  to  a  cause  believed  to  be  vital  to  the 
public  welfare. 

It  is  rarely  realised  in  modern  discussions  how  grimly 
the  immense  urgency  of  calamitous  facts  forced  a  reversal 
of  trade  policy  upon  Great  Britain  in  the  forties  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  When  it  is  said  of  the  wet  autumn  of 
1845  that  "it  was  the  rain  that  rained  away  the  Corn  Laws," 
it  is  meant  that  the  spoiled  harvest  was  the  culmination  of 
a  sad,  hungry,  and  impoverished  period.  For  seventy  years 
after  the  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  there  never  was  a  possi- 
bility of  discussing  the  .same  issue  in  England  without 
raising  up  a  gaunt  spectre  from  the  grave. 

An  agitation  to  permit  the  free  importation  of  corn  had 
been  conducted  from  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  and 
since  1836  anti-corn  law  associations  had  organised  the 
opposition  with  ever  increasing  strength.  But  the  landed 
influence  was  too  well  represented  in  Parliament  for  even 


168     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

the  Whigs  to  dare  to  abolish  duties  which  were  designed  to 
protect  the  farmer  against  the  competition  of  foreign- 
grown  grain.  Though  the  Reform  Act  of  1832  had  abolished 
the  worst  evils  of  the  corrupt  and  unrepresentative  parlia- 
mentary system  which  had  come  down  from  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  the  manufacturing  towns  now  had  their  spokes- 
men in  the  House  of  Commons,  still,  the  great  landlords 
and  the  whole  phalanx  of  those  who  depended  upon  agricul- 
ture regarded  the  Corn  Laws  as  only  a  little  behind  the 
established  Church  and  the  House  of  Lords  as  pillars  of 
the  national  well  being. 

Sir  Robert  Peel  was  the  ablest  man  in  the  Tory  party, 
and  the  greatest  leader  vouchsafed  to  it  during  the  nine- 
teenth century;  but  Peel  knew  something  about  the  condi- 
tion of  the  people  in  the  manufacturing  districts,  and  it 
was  borne  in  upon  his  mind  with  irresistible  force  that  the 
case  which  Richard  Cobden,  John  Bright  and  the  repealers 
made  out  was  a  sound  one.  If,  however,  the  process  of  his 
conversion  had  not  been  hastened  by  the  failure  of  the 
harvests,  it  is  scarcely  likely  that  he  would  have  forced 
his  party  to  face  the  issue  of  repeal  as  he  did.  But  the 
rotting  of  the  potato  crop  in  Ireland  in  1845,  followed  by 
a  wretched  corn  harvest  in  England  and  Scotland,  produced 
famine  conditions.  Politicians  like  Russell,  who  had  not 
previously  favoured  repeal,  felt  compelled  to  pledge  their 
support  to  Cobden's  cause.  Peel  knew  that  it  would  shiver 
the  Tory  Party  if  his  government  yielded.  But  the  stern 
logic  of  facts  drove  him  to  propose  at  least  a  compromise 
—the  paring  down  of  the  corn  duties  by  a  sliding  scale. 
His  ministry  broke  and  he  resigned.  Russell  tried  to  form 
a  Whig  government  but  failed.  Peel  returned  to  office 
determined  to  take  the  bold  plunge.  He  now  proposed 
(1846)  that  the  duty  on  all  corn  should  fall  to  the  figure 
of  one  shilling  per  quarter  after  1st  February,  1849. 

This  was  the  crucial  decision  respecting  British  com- 
mercial policy,  for  the  proposal  signified  a  total  abolition  of 
protection  to  industries  of  all  kinds.  The  Repeal  of  the  Corn 
Laws,  indeed,  shattered  the  entire  fabric  of  Protection 
in  England,  which  had  been  previously  weakened  by  a 
series  of  fiscal  amendments.  The  whole  of  the  duties  on 
food  went ;  free  imports  of  raw  material  for  manufacturers 
were  ensured;  the  old  Navigation  Laws  vanished  from  the 
Statute  Book.  England  became  a  Free  Trade  country.  The 


COBDEN  169 

hand  that  struck  the  blow  was  that  of  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
but  the  motive  force  was  that  of  Richard  Cobden  and  the 
Anti-Corn-Law  League.  With  shrewd  tactical  skill  Cobden 
had  concentrated  the  attack  on  the  abolition  of  the  Corn 
Laws,  knowing  that  (as  he  told  Napoleon  III.  years  later) 
when  the  keystone  of  the  arch  was  removed  the  whole 
system  would  fall ;  and  his  calculation  was  verified. 

It  would  be  an  error  to  suppose  that  the  movement 
which  Cobden  led  to  victory  was  entirely  composed  of 
those  who  were  influenced  either  by  the  pure  economic 
doctrines  which  he  taught  or  by  sympathy  for  the  ill-fed 
poor.  There  was  more  than  that  in  the  struggle.  There 
was  a  clashing  of  interests  between  the  manufacturing 
classes  who  wanted  cheap  food,  because  cheap  food  meant 
low  wages ;  and,  on  the  other  side,  the  agricultural  classes, 
who  wanted  to  maintain  a  steady  price  for  English-grown 
corn,  and  to  save  the  market  from  being  depressed  by 
imported  grain.  Free  Trade  made  England  a  country  of 
cheap  living,  and  consequently  a  country  of  cheap  produc- 
tion. A  sum  of  money  would  buy  more  of  the  necessaries 
of  life  there  than  in  any  other  country  in  the  world — a 
factor  of  very  great  importance  in  enabling  English  manu- 
factured goods  to  compete  with  those  of  other  countries. 

A  price,  however,  had  to  be  paid  for  this  advantage,  in 
the  dwindling  of  agriculture ;  so  that  whereas  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Free  Trade  era  the  United  Kingdom  grew 
enough  wheat  to  feed  its  people  eleven  months  of  the  year, 
fifty  years  later  it  did  not  grow  enough  wheat  to  feed  its 
people  for  two  months.  True,  the  population  had  increased 
in  the  meantime,  but  the  disparity  was  not  due  to  this 
cause  only.  There  was  a  positive  decline  in  the  production 
of  grain.  Agriculture  had  become  an  unprofitable  indus- 
try. The  decline  is  shown  clearly  in  the  census  returns  of 
persons  engaged  in  producing  foodstuffs.  Whilst  in  1851 
the  number  so  employed  was  1,482,000,  in  1911  the  number 
was  only  986,000,  though  the  population  in  the  meantime 
increased  from  thirty  to  forty-five  millions. 

But  in  nearly  all  other  departments  of  national  life 
Great  Britain  prospered  amazingly  under  Free  Trade.  In 
manufactures,  textiles  and  hardware,  production  bounded 
ahead  in  increases  figured  in  millions;  the  carrying  trade 
was  conducted  in  shipping  the  tonnage  of  which  expanded 
from  2,570,000  in  1840  to  over  19,000,000  in  1916.  It  is 


170     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

not  necessary  to  heap  up  statistics  to  demonstrate  a  palp- 
able fact.  The  trade  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  the  first 
half  of  1914  reached  the  highest  levels  on  record ;  and  when 
the  disaster  of  war  ruptured  the  arteries  of  the  world's 
commerce,  Great  Britain  was  able  to  endure  not  only  the 
enormous  strain  of  her  own  exertions,  but  to  carry  a  sudden 
and  very  enormous  load  of  obligation  in  behalf  of  her 
allies  and  dominions.  A  Free  Trade  writer  is  fully  entitled 
to  make  the  most  of  this  fact,  as  Mr.  J.  M.  Robertson 
does1  when  he  points  out  that  "since  1914  we  have  piled 
up  and  borne  a  financial  burden  much  greater  than  even 
that  of  tariffed  Germany  (financing  tariffed  France,  tariffed 
Italy,  tariffed  Russia,  tariffed  Canada,  and  tariffed  Aus- 
tralia) ,  with  a  population  only  two-thirds  that  of  Germany. 
Free  Trade  alone  has  made  the  fact  possible.  And  they 
tell  us,  as  before,  that  we  must  abandon  Free  Trade/' 
Whatever  the  critics  of  Free  Trade  may  advance  against 
that  policy,  they  cannot  claim  that  seventy  years  of  it  have 
weakened  the  country  which  adopted  it. 

It  was  the  belief  and  the  hope  of  Cobden  and  the  Free 
Traders  of  his  generation  that  the  general  adoption  by  the 
nations  of  their  policy  would  put  an  end  to  wars.  Free 
Trade  was  "the  best  human  means  for  securing  universal 
and  permanent  peace."  By  "perfecting  the  intercourse  and 
securing  the  dependence  of  countries  one  upon  another," 
the  principal  motive  for  warfare  would  disappear.  There 
was  much  in  the  modern  history  of  mankind  to  support 
that  belief.  The  desire  to  secure  large  areas  of  territory 
for  the  purpose  of  monopolising  the  trading  possibilities 
offered  by  them  has  been  a  fruitful  cause  of  wars ;  and  if 
access  to  markets  were  available  on  equal  terms  to  all 
nations  desiring  to  sell  and  buy,  there  would  be  no  induce- 
ment to  fight  to  secure  such  monopolies. 

Since  the  discovery  of  America,  the  policy  of  Spain  to 
monopolise  the  whole  of  the  new  world  for  her  trade,  the 
struggle  between  England  and  France  to  obtain  a  monopoly 
in  India,  the  Dutch  attempt  to  monopolise  the  trade  of  the 
spice  islands,  the  French  effort  to  monopolise  the  back 
country  of  North  America  westward  from  the  Mississippi 
Valley  and  northward  from  the  great  lakes — all  these 
struggles  to  establish  monopolies  over  vast  stretches  of  the 

i  "Economics  of  Progress,"  p.  200. 


COBDEN  171 

earth's  surface  were  the  cause  of  bitter  warfare  during 
three  centuries.  At  the  back  of  the  greatest  war  in  history 
lay  the  huge  ambition  of  Germany  to  monopolise  the  trade 
of  a  region  stretching  from  the  Baltic  through  the  Balkans 
to  Asia  Minor  and  Bagdad,  and  through  Africa  to  the 
sources  of  the  Nile. 

There  were,  indeed,  many  wars  which  were  due  to  quite 
other  causes,  but  it  is  certain  that  the  danger  of  conflict 
would  have  been  lessened  if  the  policy  of  "the  open  door" 
had  been  maintained.  Under  modern  conditions  nations 
must  trade  to  live.  No  civilised  country  could  nowadays 
carry  on  life  without  access  to  materials  which  must  be 
obtained  from  other  climates.  Policies  which  make  trad- 
ing difficult,  and  set  up  monopolies  of  these  desirable  and 
necessary  commodities,  produce  irritation,  and  an  atmo- 
sphere from  which  the  thunder  and  lightning  of  war 
emanate. 

Directly  opposed  to  Cobden's  conception  of  Free  Trade 
as  an  agency  of  universal  peace,  was  the  teaching  of  the 
German  economist,  Friedrich  List,  who  published  his 
National  System  of  Political  Economy  in  1841.  List  is  the 
economic  counterpart  of  Bismarck  and  Wilhelm  II.,  and  he 
counts  as  one  of  the  intellectual  creators  of  the  pre-war 
Germany.  List  advocated  the  creation  of  a  national  state 
entrenched  behind  protective  duties,  which  should  enable 
the  people  to  build  up  industries  tending  to  make  the  state 
strong,  wealthy  and,  as  far  as  possible,  self-contained.  Pro- 
tection was  projected  by  him  as  the  shield  of  an  intensely 
concentrated  and  aggressive  nationalism.  The  contrast  in 
aim  is  very  striking.  Cobden  looked  primarily  to  the 
interests  of  his  own  country,  which  he  believed  that  Free 
Trade  would  promote ;  but  he  had  regard  also  to  the  wider 
human  welfare  of  all  nations,  to  be  induced  by  the  harmon- 
ising efficacy  of  commerce.  List  looked  to  the  interests  of 
Germany  being  furthered  by  an  iron-bound  tariff  system 
which  would  foster  the  growth  of  a  strong  internal  trade 
together  with  a  strong  national  spirit,  the  two  combining 
to  further  national  power.  Of  these  two  conceptions  of 
commercial  policy  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  which 
conduced  the  more  to  promote  peace  among  the  nations. 

But,  truly,  that  consideration  does  not  exhaust  the  ques- 
tion at  issue.  Great  Britain  was  in  a  more  favourable 
position  for  adopting  a  Free  Trade  policy  in  the  first  half 


172     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

of  the  nineteenth  century  than  was  any  other  nation, 
because  her  industries  were  better  organised.  List  argued 
that  as  no  other  nation  could  sustain  competition  with 
Great  Britain,  she  could  "do  nothing  wiser  than  to  throw 
away  those  ladders  of  her  greatness,  to  preach  to  other 
nations  the  benefit  of  Free  Trade,  and  to  declare  in  peni- 
tent tones  that  she  has  hitherto  wandered  in  the  paths  of 
error,  and  has  now  for  the  first  time  succeeded  in  discover- 
ing the  truth."  The  gibe  missed  its  mark  and  the  image 
of  the  ladder  was  clumsy.  When  Great  Britain  discarded 
her  protective  duties  she  did  not  throw  away  ladders  but 
shackles  which  impeded  her  development — that  develop- 
ment which,  since  the  inauguration  of  Free  Trade,  gave  her 
a  pre-eminence  in  commerce  far  greater  than  can  have 
been  imagined  by  Cobden  and  Bright.  Still,  however,  it 
is  true  that  Free  Trade  offered  more  obvious  and  larger 
advantages  to  Great  Britain,  when  it  was  adopted,  than 
to  any  other  nation,  and  that  if  her  rivals  had  followed 
her  example  she  would  have  benefited  from  it  more  than 
they. 

Free  Trade  did  not  commend  itself  to  foreign  nations  as 
Cobden  believed  that  it  would.  There  have  always  been 
very  strong  advocates  of  the  policy  in  France  and  Ger- 
many, and  in  the  United  States  the  Democratic  Party  has 
Free  Trade  leanings,  though  "the  party  trumpet  has  given 
an  uncertain  sound."  Cobden's  most  distinguished  convert 
was  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III.,  who,  discussing  the  reforms 
effected  by  Peel  in  England,  confessed  that  he  would  be 
"charmed  and  flattered  at  the  idea  of  performing  a  similar 
work  in  my  country."  But  then  he  added:  "It  is  very 
difficult  in  France  to  make  reforms;  we  make  revolutions 
in  France,  not  reforms."  Still,  he  did  make  a  very  deter- 
mined and  highly  interesting  effort  to  promote  a  Free  Trade 
policy  in  France,  and  he  seriously  risked  his  popularity  with 
the  manufacturing  class  in  1860-1  by  negotiating  a  Franco- 
British  commercial  treaty,  the  details  of  which  were  worked 
out  by  himself  .and  Cobden.  The  treaty  reduced  to  a  mode- 
rate amount  the  hitherto  prohibitive  duties  which  France 
had  imposed  on  British  hardware,  machinery,  coal  and 
various  other  commodities,  whilst  Great  Britain  reduced 
duties  on  wines  and  brandy  and  gave  free  ingress  to  all 
kinds  of  French  manufactures.  But  it  was  imposed  upon 
France  by  Napoleon  III.  by  virtue  of  his  prerogative,  and 


COBDEN  173 

was  not  popular  with  the  French,  who  had  never  had  the 
thorough  grounding  in  the  reasons  for  Free  Trade  which 
Cobden  and  his  followers  and  associates  had  given  to  the 
English  public. 

In  the  self-governing  British  colonies  and  dominions  a 
set  of  interests  different  from  those  existing  in  any  Euro- 
pean country  occasioned  commercial  policies  directly  at 
variance  with  that  of  Great  Britain.  There  have  not 
lacked  vigorous  advocates  of  Free  Trade  both  in  Australia 
and  Canada,  and  for  some  years  prior  to  the  completion 
of  federation  in  the  Commonwealth  there  was  the  instruc- 
tive instance  of  a  Free  Trade  state,  New  South  Wales, 
existing  alongside  a  Protectionist  state,  Victoria,  in  each 
of  which  the  champions  of  totally  different  fiscal  systems 
rivalled  each  other  in  vehement  assertion  as  to  which  was 
the  more  effective  for  the  public  advantage.  But  the  prin- 
cipal inducement  to  the  erection  of  customs  barriers  in 
these  countries  has  been  the  fear  that  well  organised, 
heavily  capitalised  and  elaborately  equipped  industries,  such 
as  are  common  in  European  countries  and  America,  would, 
by  their  cheaper  methods  of  production,  make  it  difficult, 
if  not  impossible,  for  the  weaker  industries  which  are  neces- 
sarily incidental  to  new  countries,  to  endure,  unless  pro- 
tected against  such  competition. 

It  is  true  that  Protection  has  been  solemnly  placarded 
as  a  gospel,  and  is  doubtless  sincerely  believed  to  be  econo- 
mically sound  by  large  numbers  of  people,  especially  by 
such  as  profit  from  it ;  but  it  is  in  fact  an  expedient,  adopted 
by  countries  situated  in  wholly  different  circumstances 
from  those  which  Great  Britain  faced  in  the  days  of  Peel 
and  Cobden.  Australia  and  Canada  are  large  granaries, 
and  can  produce  illimitable  quantities  of  food  of  all  kinds. 
Great  Britain  in  the  "hungry  forties"  contained  a  half- 
famished  population,  and  withheld  from  them  the  cheap 
food  which  was  available  across  the  Atlantic.  Circum- 
stances are  often  stringent  dictators  of  policy. 

The  mass  of  men  determine  questions  of  trade  policy, 
when  they  are  called  upon  to  pronounce  an  opinion,  accord- 
ing to  their  own  interests,  or  what  they  believe  to  be  their 
interests.  In  all  countries,  including  Great  Britain,  the 
issue  between  Free  Trade  and  Protection  has  been  resolved 
as  a  struggle  between  conflicting  interests.  It  was  to  the 
interest  of  English  manufacturers  in  the  forties  to  have 


174     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

free  imports,  and  the  franchise  reform  of  1832  enabled 
their  interests  to  prevail  as  against  the  agricultural 
interests.  When  early  in  the  twentieth  century  Chamber- 
lain started  his  tariff  reform  crusade  he  did  so  as  the  mem- 
ber for  Birmingham,  where  the  hardware  manufacturers 
were  feeling  the  pinch  of  American  and  German  competi- 
tion, and  were  so  convinced  that  a  tariff  plus  preferential 
trade  with  the  colonies  would  help  them  that  they  were 
willing  to  make  common  cause  with  the  agriculturists 
against  the  Manchester  cotton  interest  and  the  shipping 
interest,  which  benefited  from  Free  Trade.  Protection,  as 
innumerable  American  and  Dominion  instances  go  to  show, 
does  benefit  particular  interests,  though  at  the  cost  of  the 
common,  general  interest.  Free  Trade  is  theoretically  and 
in  practice  beneficial  to  the  community  as  a  whole,  though 
particular  interests  may  suffer  from  unrestricted  competi- 
tion. 

Chamberlain,  in  one  of  his  campaign  speeches  (Glasgow, 
1903),  used  an  interesting  argument  on  this  point.  He 
said :  "I  see  that  the  labour  leaders,  or  some  of  them,  in  this 
country,  are  saying  that  the  interest  of  the  working  classes 
is  to  maintain  our  present  system  of  free  imports.  The 
moment  these  men  go  to  the  colonies  they  change.  I  will 
undertake  to  say  that  no  one  of  them  has  ever  been  there 
for  six  months  without  singing  a  different  tune.  The  vast 
majority  of  the  working  men  in  all  the  colonies  are  Protec- 
tionists, and  I  am  not  inclined  to  accept  the  easy  explana- 
tion that  they  are  all  fools.  I  do  not  understand  why  an 
intelligent  man — a  man  who  is  intelligent  in  this  country — 
becomes  an  idiot  when  he  goes  to  Australasia."1 

Chamberlain  was  in  error  in  saying  that  "the  moment 
these  men  go  to  the  colonies  they  change."  There  are  scores 
of  artisans  of  English  origin  in  Australia,  for  example — 
there  are  probably  thousands,  but  a  single  person's  acquain- 
tances cannot  be  large  enough  to  testify  with  assurance 
on  that  scale — -who  are  as  convinced  Free  Traders  as  ever 
they  were.  But  there  are  also  many  who  are  engaged  in 
industries  which  would  certainly  suffer,  if  they  did  not  die 
out,  were  protective  duties  removed,  and  whose  views  are 
therefore  as  much  affected  by  their  immediate  interests  as 
were  tho,se  of  Chamberlain's  Birmingham  friends.  The 

i  Bovd's  edition  of  "Chamberlain's  Speeches,"   Vol.  II.,  p.  140. 


COBDEN  175 

argument,  moreover,  cuts  the  other  way  also.  If  those 
English  artisans  who  go  to  the  dominions  do  not  "become 
idiots,"  as  assuredly  they  do  not,  neither  are  those  who 
remain  at  home  fools.  The  climate  of  Canada  or  Australia, 
though  salubrious  enough,  is  no  more  conducive  to  complete 
political  wisdom  than  is  that  of  north-western  Europe,  nor 
less  conducive  to  that  natural  inclination  of  human  nature, 
the  pursuit  of  personal  interest,  as  a  contribution  towards 
what  is  believed  to  be  the  common  welfare. 

The  student  of  Cobden's  writings,  and  of  his  life, 
derives  from  them  a  profound  respect  for  the  character  of 
the  man.  His  single-mindedness,  his  unselfishness,  his  im- 
passioned assertion  of  principle,  his  faith  in  the  triumph  of 
right  over  evil  and  of  truth  over  falsehood  are  apparent  in 
all  that  he  spoke  and  wrote.  Few  political  leaders  have 
been  at  once  so  astute  in  tactics  and  so  little  disposed  to 
play  the  demagogue.  Cobden  always  argued  his  case  on 
a  high  level  of  reason ;  and,  though  he  was  often  blamed 
at  the  time  for  attacks  on  landlords,  there  were,  in  fact, 
fewer  deviations  into  personal  or  class  denunciation  in  his 
speeches  than  is  usual  in  political  controversy.  He  treated 
his  audiences  with  respect,  and,  after  working  at  his  subject 
with  industry,  gave  them  the  best  of  which  his  mind  was 
capable.  His  more  important  speeches  can  be  read  with 
much  satisfaction  three-quarters  of  a  century  after  they 
were  delivered ;  and,  for  a  man  who  was  never,  like  Bright, 
Pitt,  Fox  and  Sheridan,  in  the  first  flight  of  orators,  that 
is  a  severe  test  of  quality. 


Morley's  Life  of  Cobden  is  the  standard  biographical 
authority.  Cobden's  political  writings  have  been  collected 
in  two  volumes,  and  there  is  also  a  convenient  collection  of 
his  political  speeches. 


Foreign  trade  is  the  great  revenue  of  the  King,  the 
honour  of  the  kingdom,  the  noble  profession  of  the  mer- 
chant, the  school  of  our  arts,  the  supply  of  our  wants,  the 
employment  of  our  poor,  the  improvement  of  our  lands,  the 
nursery  of  our  mariners,  the  walls  of  the  kingdom,  the 
means  of  our  treasure,  the  sinews  of  our  wars,  the  terror 
of  our  enemies. — Thomas  Mun. 


176     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

When  trade  is  at  stake  it  is  your  last  entrenchment; 
you  must  defend  it  or  perish". — Pitt  (1739). 

The  greatest  ameliorator  of  the  world  is  selfish,  huckster- 
ing trade. — Emerson. 

All  favour  to  our  trade  or  interest  is  an  abuse,  and 
cuts  so  much  of  profit  from  the  public.  To  force  men  to 
deal  in  any  prescribed  manner  may  profit  some,  but  the 
public  gains  not,  because  it  is  taking  from  one  subject  to 
give  to  another. — Dudley  North  (1691). 

I  believe  that  when  the  verdict  of  posterity  shall  be 
recorded  on  his  (Cobden's)  life  and  conduct,  it  will  be  said 
of  him  that  he  was,  without  doubt,  the  greatest  political 
character  the  pure  middle  class  of  this  country  has  yet  pro- 
duced, an  ornament  to  the  House  of  Commons  and  an  honour 
to  England.— Disraeli  (1865). 

For  why  are  we  surrounded  with  the  sea?  Surely  that 
our  wants  at  home  might  be  supplied  by  our  navigation 
into  other  countries.  By  this  we  taste  the  spices  of  Arabia, 
yet  never  feel  the  scorching  sun  which  brings  them  forth ; 
we  shine  in  silks  which  our  hands  have  never  wrought ;  we 
drink  of  vineyards  which  we  never  planted;  the  treasures 
of  those  mines  are  ours,  in  which  we  have  never  digged ; 
we  only  plough  the  deep  and  reap  the  harvests  of  every 
country  in  the  world. — Anonymous  Pamphlet  of  1701. 

The  great  majority  of  the  democracies  of  the  world  are 
now  frankly  Protectionist,  and  even  in  Free  Trade  countries 
the  multiplication  of  laws  regulating,  restricting  and  inter- 
fering with  industry  in  all  its  departments  is  one  of  the 
most  marked  characteristics  of  our  time. — Lecky. 

A  deputation  of  orange  growers  appealed  to  President 
McKinley  for  an  import  duty  on  bananas.  "We  don't  grow 
bananas,"  said  President  McKinley;  "why  do  you  want  a 
tariff  against  them?"  "We  feel,"  replied  the  spokesman 
of  the  deputation,  "that  a  man  who  is  full  of  bananas  hasn't 
any  room  left  for  oranges." — /.  M.  Robertson. 

The  case  for  Free  Trade  has  been  overstated.  It  is, 
logically,  whether  practically  so  or  not,  quite  conceivable 
that  if  the  end  be  not  the  production  but  the  distribution 
of  wealth  in  a  particular  country,  its  circumstances  may 
be  such  as  to  justify  protection  as  a  means  to  this  end.  The 
ordinary  reasons  in  favour  of  Free  Trade  do  not  touch  such 
a  case. — Lord  Haldane. 


COBDEN  177 

To  found  a  great  Empire  for  the  sole  purpose  of  rais- 
ing up  a  people  of  customers  may  at  first  sight  appear  a 
project  fit  only  for  a  nation  of  shopkeepers.  It  is,  however, 
a  project  altogether  unfit  for  a  nation  of  shopkeepers,  but 
extremely  fit  for  a  nation  whose  government  is  influenced 
by  shopkeepers.  Such  statesmen,  and  such  statesmen  only, 
are  capable  of  fancying  that  they  will  find  some  advantage 
in  employing  the  blood  and  treasure  of  their  fellow  citizens 
to  found  and  maintain  such  an  Empire. — Adam  Smith. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  the  economic  effects  of 
Protection,  whatever  its  necessity  may  be  in  developing  the 
industries  of  a  new  land,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
policy  of  Free  Trade  in  England  has  taken  out  of  the  poli- 
tical arena  a  subject  full  of  conflicts  between  different  parts 
of  the  country  and  different  occupations.  However  men 
may  talk  about  a  scientific  tariff,  the  adjustment  of  the 
schedule  in  a  legislative  chamber  involves  in  practice  con- 
cessions among  the  various  forms  of  industry,  each  of  which 
urges  its  own  claims  to  the  utmost  of  its  power. — A.  Law- 
rence Lowell. 

The  less  well  informed  a  man  is  the  more  prone  he  is 
to  separate  his  own  interest  from  that  of  his  neighbour. 
The  more  a  man  is  enlightened,  the  more  he  distinctly  per- 
ceives the  union  of  his  own  personal  interest  with  the 
general  interest. — Bentham. 


CHARLES  DARWIN. 


[Page  178 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

DARWIN    AND    MODERN    SCIENCE. 

ON  a  Sunday  afternoon  in  1877,  a  party  of  visitors 
to  the  house  of  Sir  John  Lubbock  (afterwards 
Lord  Avebury),  were  taken  by  their  host  to  visit 
his  neighbour,  Charles  Darwin.  Gladstone  was  one  of  them, 
and  it  is  Lord  Morley,  in  his  biography  of  that  statesman, 
who  tells  the  story.  Gladstone  was  then  full  of  indignation 
about  Turkish  atrocities,  upon  which  he  had  been  writing 
a  trouncing  pamphlet.  "Mr.  Gladstone,  as  soon  as  seated," 
says  the  biographer,  "took  Darwin's  interest  in  lessons  of 
massacre  for  granted,  and  launched  forth  his  thunderbolts 
with  unexhausted  zest.  His  great,  wise,  simple  and  truth- 
loving  listener,  then,  I  think,  busy  on  digestive  powers  of 
the  drosera  in  his  greenhouse,  was  intensely  delighted. 
When  we  broke  up,,  watching  Mr.  Gladstone's  erect,  alert 
figure  as  he  walked  away,  Darwin,  shading  his  eyes  with 
his  hand  against  the  evening  rays,  said  to  me  in  unaffected 
satisfaction,  'What  an  honour  that  such  a  great  man  should 
come  to  visit  me !'  " 

To  one  conversant  with  the  scientific  writings  of  Dar- 
win, and  with  his  profound  and  far-reaching  influence  upon 
the  thought  of  the  world,  but  unacquainted  with  his  Life 
and  Letters,  that  manifestation  of  modesty  might  seem 
startling.  Truly,  a  visit  from  Gladstone  was  an  honour 
which  any  man  then  living  might  have  esteemed  as  such; 
but,  then,  there  was  no  man  living  who  should  not  have 
felt  deeply  honoured  at  being  permitted  to  visit  so  great  a 
genius  as  Darwin.  Modesty,  however,  concerning  his  own 
personal  merits  and  attainments  was  one  of  the  outstand- 
ing attributes  of  his  character.  Extraordinarily  patient  in 
investigation,  gifted  with  the  rarest  powers  of  imagination 
which  enabled  him  to  perceive  the  unifying  principle  in  a 
multitude  of  facts,  so  penetrating  in  his  vision  that  the  most 

179 


180     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

minute  phenomena  and  the  largest  sweep  of  geological  time 
were  focused  together  in  his  comprehensive  mind,  he  was 
yet  chiefly  concerned  that  pure  truth  should  be  proclaimed, 
and  regarded  his  own  part  in  the  revelation  as  being  of 
minor  importance. 

The  story  is  well  known  of  Darwin  and  Alfred  Russell 
Wallace,  working  independently  and  unaware  of  each  other's 
line  of  enquiry,  arriving  concurrently  at  the  generalisation 
that  species  have  originated  from  the  operation  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  natural  selection.  Darwin  had  been  reflecting  and 
observing  for  twenty  years  before  his  first  essay  on  the 
subject  was  ready  for  publication.  Wallace,  with  much  less 
labour  to  support  the  proposition,  had  prepared  an  essay 
which  was  ready  to  be  published  before  Darwin's.  Both 
papers  were,  in  fact,  given  to  the  world  in  the  "Journal  of 
the  Linnean  Society"  in  1858.  Wallace,  who  was  in  the 
Malay  Archipelago  when  he  wrote  his  essay — "On  the  Ten- 
dency of  Varieties  to  Depart  Indefinitely  from  the  Original 
Type" — sent  it  to  Darwin  to  read.  Without  a  moment's 
hesitation  Darwin  offered  to  try  to  get  it  published.  There 
was  no  question  of  pique,  no  suggestion  of  holding  back 
Wallace's  work  on  account  of  his  own  claim.  Darwin  had 
written  out  a  sketch  of  the  theory  as  far  back  as  1842,  and 
his  manuscript  existed,  in  proof  of  his  earlier  work.1  Few 
men  could  have  repressed  a  feeling  of  annoyance  at  being 
anticipated.  .  But  Darwin  had  none,  because  to  him  the 
promulgation  of  truth  was  more  important  than  the  estab- 
lishment of  his  priority.  He  simply  noted  in  the  quietest 
style  conceivable,  that  "my  originality,  whatever  it  may 
amount  to,  will  be  smashed ;  though  my  book,  if  ever  it  will 
have  any  value,  will  not  be  deteriorated,  as  all  the  labour 
consists  in  the  application  of  the  theory." 

Wallace,  top,  it  should  be  added,  was  not  less  fine  in  his 
surrender  of  personal  claim.  "I  have  felt  all  my  life,  and 
I  still  feel,"  he  said,  in  relating  his  part  in  these  circum- 
stances, "the  most  sincere  satisfaction  that  Darwin  had 
been  at  work  long  before  me,  and  that  it  was  not  left  for 
me  to  attempt  to  write  the  Origin  of  Species.  I  have  long 
since  measured  my  own  strength,  and  know  well  that  it 
would  be  quite  unequal  to  that  task."  No  person  can  read 

1  The  original  essay  was  found  among  Darwin's  papers  after  his  death, 
and  was  published  in  1909  by  his  son,  Francis  Darwin. 


DARWIN  181 

the  narrative  of  this  great-hearted  courtesy,  so  free  from 
any  tinge  of  egotism,  without  feeling  that  these  men,  from 
the  loftiness  of  their  standpoint,  were  worthy  to  be  the 
founders  of  a  new  order  of  scientific  thinking. 

There  was  no  piece  of  Darwin's  work  which  was  not 
the  result  of  the  same  kind  of  prolonged  reflection  and  obser- 
vation as  delayed  the  publication  of  his  Natural  Selection 
hypothesis  until  he  was  sure  of  his  ground.  A  single  experi- 
ment, which  he  described  in  his  work  on  The  Formation  of 
Vegetable  Mould  through  the  Action  of  Worms,  took  twenty- 
nine  years  to  mature.  It  was  suggested  to  him  after  he 
had  written  a  paper  on  the  Formation  of  Mould,  that  prob- 
ably the  action  of  worms,  in  casting  small  particles  of  earth 
to  the  surface,  had  the  effect  of  covering  stones.  In  1842, 
upon  his  own  land  at  Down,  Darwin  strewed  pieces  of 
broken  chalk  over  parts  of  a  field,  and  carefully  noted  the 
date  and  purpose.  In  1871,  the  pieces  of  chalk  were  found 
to  have  become  buried  seven  inches  below  the  surface,  and 
it  was  further  determined  that  acids  generated  in  the  bodies 
of  worms  have  the  effect  of  disintegrating  stones  and  con- 
verting them  into  soil.  The  experiments  which  Darwin 
made  with  these  lowly  creatures  of  the  underworld,  which 
he  collected  and  kept  for  study,  were  wonderfully  minute, 
ingenious  and  full  of  fascination ;  and  they  proved  so  abun- 
dantly the  work  of  worms  in  the  making  of  soil,  that  a 
horticulturist  who  reads  about  them  should  be  inclined 
thenceforth  to  take  of  his  hat  to  a  worm  whenever  he  sees 
one. 

"The  sublime  patience  of  the  investigator"  was  the 
quality  out  of  which  sprang  those  brilliant  generalisations 
of  Darwin  that  startled  and  illuminated  the  world.  To  think 
of  his  theory  of  Natural  Selection,  of  his  conclusion  that 
man  has  been  evolved  from  lower  forms  of  animal  life,  of 
his  deduction  from  the  existence  of  coral  islands  that  the 
ocean  bed  where  they  are  found  has  subsided — to  think  of 
these  and  all  the  other  hypotheses  which  he  launched  and 
supported  by  a  wealth  of  evidence,  as  guesses,  coming  to 
him  in  flashes  of  insight,  is  to  misinterpret  his  genius.  His 
works  are  crowded  with  freshly  gleaned  facts  affecting 
animals,  plants  and  the  earth,  all  of  which  represent  unre- 
mitting though  delightful  labour.  We  may  try  an  experi- 


182     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

merit  with  the  Origin  of  Species,  opening  the  volume  at 
random.    At  page  539  this  passage  meets  the  eye — 

"I  do  not  believe  that  botanists  are  aware  how  charged 
the  mud  of  ponds  is  with  seeds.  I  have  tried  several  little 
experiments,  but  will  here  give  only  the  most  striking  case. 
I  took  in  February  three  tablespoonfuls  of  mud  from  three 
different  points,  beneath  water,  on  the  edge  of  a  little  pond ; 
this  mud  when  dried  weighed  only  six  and  three-quarter 
ounces.  I  kept  it  covered  up  in  my  study  for  six  months, 
pulling  up  and  counting  each  plant  as  it  grew.  The  plants 
were  of  many  kinds,  and  were  altogether  537  in  number; 
and  yet  the  viscid  mud  was  all  contained  in  a  breakfast 
cup." 

How  interesting  the  fact — five  hundred  productive  seeds 
in  three  spoonfuls  of  mud!  And  how  carefully  made  is  the 
observation;  how  patiently  watched,  counted  and  classified 
are  the  plants !  On  the  opposite  page  of  the  book  as  it  lies 
open  is  another  instance.  Darwin  is  discussing  the  diffusion 
of  .seeds  and  shells  by  means  of  the  feet  of  birds;  so  he 
tries  this  experiment : — 

"I  suspended  the  feet  of  a  duck  in  an  aquarium,  where 
many  ova  of  fresh  water  shells  were  hatching,  and  I  found 
that  numbers  of  the  extremely  minute  and  just-hatched 
shells  crawled  on  the  feet,  and  clung  to  them  so  firmly  that 
when  taken  from  the  water  they  could  not  be  jarred  off, 
though  at  a  somewhat  advanced  age  they  would  voluntarily 
drop  off.  These  just-hatched  molluscs,  though  aquatic  in 
their  nature,  survived  on  the  duck's  feet,  in  damp  air,  from 
twelve  to  twenty  hours;  and  in  this  length  of  time  a  duck 
or  heron  might  fly  at  least  six  or  seven  hundred  miles,  and 
if  blown  across  the  sea  to  an  ocean  island,  or  to  any  other 
distant  point,  would  be  sure  to  alight  on  a  pool  or  rivulet." 

Instances  no  less  remarkable  than  these  can  be  found 
plentifully  in  Darwin's  writings.  Continually  we  find  him 
making  observations  which  reveal  wonderful  things  in 
nature;  always  asking  "the  why"  of  things  and  producing 
the  answer  from  the  study  of  phenomena,  from  experiment 
and  from  comparison.  And  Darwin  knew  much  more 
about  the  things  which  he  discussed  than  he  could  relate. 
We  frequently  find  him  saying  some  such  thing  as  "I  have 
not  space  here  to  enter  on  this  subject,"  though  the 
matter  in  question  was  invariably  exceedingly  interesting. 


DARWIN  183 

Rich  as  his  books  are  in  accumulated  instances  in  proof  of 
his  propositions,  we  never  feel  for  a  moment  that  he  has 
exhausted  his  supply.  We  are  reminded  of  Huxley's  remark 
that  the  great  steps  in  the  progress  of  science  "have  been 
made,  are  made,  and  will  be  made,  by  men  who  seek  know- 
ledge because  they  crave  for  it."  Darwin  thoroughly  loved 
the  work  which  he  did,  and  that  is  why  he  did  so  very  much 
more  work  than  was  needful  for  sustaining  his  arguments. 

A  passage  in  one  of  the  essays  of  Huxley — Darwin's 
"gladiator  general" — seems  hardly  justified.  It  is  that 
wherein  he  speaks  of  the  Origin  of  Species  as  "by  no  means 
an  easy  book  to  read."  A  layman's  point  of  view  is  neces- 
sarily different  from  that  of  another  man  of  science,  to 
whom,  perhaps,  some  of  the  facts  and  the  method  of  hand- 
ling them  may  have  been  familiar.  But  the  assertion  may 
be  ventured  for  what  it  is  worth  that  this  and  all  the  other 
books  of  Darwin  can  be  read  with  abundant  pleasure.  His 
style  is  always  lucid,  whilst  the  freshness  of  his  facts,  the 
ingenuity  of  his  experiments,  and  the  play  of  his  mind  upon 
them,  are  a  source  of  intellectual  pleasure  as  well  as  of 
enlightenment.  It  is,  too,  a  satisfaction  to  a  reader  to  be 
led  into  the  great  subjects  which  Darwin  investigated  by 
such  a  perfectly  candid  author.  He  modified  his  opinion 
on  several  points  in  the  course  of  years,  and  he  never  sought 
to  maintain  a  view  upon  which  fresh  light  enabled  him  to 
see  differently;  so  that  it  is  strictly  true  of  him  that,  as 
has  been  said,  his  "unswerving  truthfulness  and  honesty 
never  permitted  him  to  hide  a  weak  place  or  gloss  over 
a  difficulty,  but  led  him  on  all  occasions  to  point  out  the 
weak  places  in  his  own  armour,  and  even  sometimes  to 
make  admissions  against  himself  which  were  quite  unneces- 
sary." 

The  Origin  of  Species  presented  to  the  world  what  Helm- 
holtz  described  as  "an  essentially  new  creative  thought," 
and  though  its  central  idea  of  evolution  evoked  somewhat 
frenzied  criticism  at  the  time,  it  has  since  become  as  firmly 
fixed  among  scientific  concepts  as  the  Copernican  system  of 
astronomy  or  Newton's  law  of  gravitation.  The  biologist 
and  the  geologist  of  to-day  can  no  more  think  about  the 
salient  facts  of  their  sciences  and  fit  them  into  any  logical 
plan,  without  the  evolutionary  hypothesis,  than  the  naviga- 
tor can  make  a  voyage  without  a  compass. 

But  not  only  in  these  fields  of  knowledge  has  Evolution 


184     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

completely  changed  the  outlook.  The  modern  student  sees 
in  the  growth  of  human  society,  in  the  development  of  reli- 
gion, the  working  of  evolutionary  processes.  "We  have  to 
deal,"  as  Herbert  Spencer  put  it,  "with  man  as  a  product 
of  evolution,  with  society  as  a  product  of  evolution,  and 
with  moral  phenomena  as  products  of  evolution."  History 
is  no  longer  merely  a  narrative  about  the  past ;  it  is  a  trac- 
ing of  the  unfolding  of  nations,  with  all  their  laws,  customs 
and  institutions,  their  language  and  arts,  from  rude  begin- 
nings to  maturity.  The  introduction  of  the  evolutionary 
mode  of  surveying  events  into  the  study  of  history  and 
sociology  is  like  the  introduction  of  perspective  to  drawing 
and  painting.  It  has  given  a  truer  sense  of  proportion  and 
relation  to  those  studies,  and  has  intensified  the  meaning 
of  the  facts  which  they  handle. 

The  evolutionist  who  applies  this  thought  to  social  science 
can  never  believe  in  a  final  state  of  human  society,  or  in 
an  ideal  form  which  will  resist  the  moulding  forces  of 
readjustment.  All  life  is  a  continual  adaptation  to  con- 
ditions which  are  not  stable  and  never  will  be.  Karl  Marx 
said  that  "nothing  ever  gives  me  greater  pleasure  than  to 
have  my  name  linked  on  to  Darwin's;  his  wonderful  work 
makes  my  own  absolutely  impregnable."  That  was  not  the 
least  of  Marx's  misconceptions.  Marx's  work,  as  we  have 
seen,  was  not  "impregnable"  against  his  own  changes  of 
thought,  and  further  winnowing  has  blown  away  from  it 
very  much  that  is  unacceptable  either  to  orthodox  econo- 
mists or  to  Socialists  of  several  rival  varieties.  But  if  the 
ideas  of  Marx  had  ever  been  realised  anywhere,  they  would 
not  have  endured  any  more  than  any  other  form  of  society 
can  remain  unchanged.  The  pursuit  of  an  ideal  permanent 
satisf actoriness  in  social  structure,  is  a  chasing  of  shadows ; 
and,  though  it  may  be  better  to  have  an  ideal  as  a  sort  of 
working  hypothesis  than  to  be  aimless  and  drift  with  any 
current,  it  is  wise  to  be  under  no  delusion  about  the  possi- 
bility of  seeing  it  established.  You  may  get  the  something 
better,  but  the  something  best  will  be  as  elusive  as  a  sum- 
mer's cloud  which  melts  and  re-forms  from  one  moment  to 
another.  Mankind  will  never  stagnate  in  a  condition  of 
blissful  perfection;  for  stagnation  means  decay,  and  decay 
leads  to  death. 

From  one  aspect,  the  evolutionary  view  of  social  science 
may  seem  hard  doctrine.    "The  survival  of  the  fittest" — the 


DARWIN  185 

phrase  was  Herbert  Spencer's,  used  for  the  first  time  in 
his  Principles  of  Biology1 — has  a  harsher  ring  than  its 
Darwinian  equivalent,  "natural  selection."  It  implies  that 
in  human  society,  as  among  plants  and  animals,  those  who 
are  best  able  to  accommodate  themselves  to  surrounding 
aids  to  life  and  to  resist  surrounding  dangers,  will  survive, 
whilst  those  who  cannot  do  so  will  fade  out  of  being; 
and  this  is  as  true  of  nations  and  races  as  of  individuals. 
Darwin  himself  anticipated  that  the  lower  races  of  man- 
kind would  ultimately  be  eliminated  and  give  place  to  higher 
civilised  races.  If  the  doctrine  be  true,  it  is  futile  to  enlarge 
upon  its  pitilessness,  for  it  will  not  become  less  true  by 
growing  sentimental  and  mawkish  about  it.  But  let  us 
understand:  the  survival  of  the  fittest  does  not  mean  the 
survival  of  the  morally  best,  the  intellectually  most 
highly  developed,  or  even  the  physically  strongest.  It  means 
the  survival  of  those  best  able  to  adapt  themselves  to  con- 
ditions which  are  not  fixed,  but  changing,  even  though  in 
some  respects  they  may  change  so  gradually  that  the  dif- 
ferences may  be  scarcely  apparent  to  any  one  generation. 

Since  there  has  been  close  contact  between  Europeans 
and  races  of  people  on  lower  planes  of  development,  the 
history  of  the  operation  of  this  law  has  shown  some  strik- 
ing results.  Though  Hawaii  has  been  part  of  the  territory 
of  the  United  States  only  a  little  more  than  twenty  years, 
the  numbers  of  the  native  race  have  decreased  by  many 
thousands,  and  within  a  few  decades  they  will  probably  have 
disappeared  altogether;  though  it  is  not  alleged  that  the 
Americans  have  treated  the  Hawaiians  otherwise  than 
humanely.  The  Tasmanian  race  vanished  three-quarters  of 
a  century  ago.  The  Maories  of  New  Zealand  are  diminish- 
ing, despite  native  representation  in  Parliament  and  pro- 
tective legislation  which  is  designed  to  give  them  every 
chance.  There  are  hardly  any  of  the  Caribs  left  in  the  West 
Indian  islands.  The  Australian  aboriginals  survive  in  the 
centre,  west  and  north  of  the  continent,  but  are  a  mere 
pathetic  remnant  where  the  white  population  is  thick.  The 
Red  Indians  of  North  America  now  consist  of  only  a  few 
survivors  of  a  people  who  were  once  numerous,  brave  and 

1  "This  survival  of  the  fittest,  which  I  have  sought  to  express  in 
mechanical  terms,  is  that  which  Mr.  Darwin  has  called  'natural  selection/ 
or  the  preservation  of  favoured  races  in  the  struggle  for  life."  (Spencer, 
"Principles  of  Biology,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  531.) 


186     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

capable  of  responding  honourably  to  fair  dealing,  as  Penn's 
Quakers  found  in  Pennsylvania.  It  has  been  confidently 
asserted  that  if  the  Redskins  had  learnt  agriculture  from 
the  first  European  settlers,  they  would  soon  have  been 
numerous  enough  to  fill  up  western  America  and  bar  Euro- 
pean occupation  there.  But  they  could  not  adapt  themselves 
to  new  conditions,  and  the  biological  law  was  inexorable. 

There  is,  however,  another  and  a  more  hopeful  side  to 
the  problem.  Man  is  endowed  with  a  remarkable  capacity 
for  adapting  himself,  if  he  will  make  the  effort,  to  the  con- 
ditions of  his  environment.  Within  limits  prescribed  by 
the  uncontrollable  forces  of  nature,  he  can  shape  those  con- 
ditions. He  has  been  doing  ,so  for  thousands  of  years,  and 
every  step  in  advance  has  enlarged  the  potentialities  of  life, 
so  that  an  ordinary  civilised  man  to-day  has  within  his  reach 
means  of  enriching  his  term  on  earth  which  were  not  avail- 
able to  the  most  favoured  of  former  times.  A  man  in  the 
middle  ages  who  lived  seventy  years  was  not  able  to  do  and 
see  a  Small  fraction  of  what  can  be  done  and  seen  by  a  man 
who  lives  to  the  age  of  seventy  now.  The  great  expansion 
of  the  facilities  of  life  is  really  equivalent  to  an  extension 
of  life  itself,  for  obviously  if  you  can  do  more  and  enjoy 
more  in  ten  years  than  a  man  in  former  ages  could  in 
twenty,  your  ten  years  are  more  than  equal  to  his  twenty. 
"Life  is  not  measured  by  the  time  we  live,"  but  by  what 
can  be  experienced  in  the  time. 

But  our  human  progress  so  far  has  been  mainly  quan- 
titative. It  needs  to  be  made  qualitative.  We  can  do  and 
enjoy  more ;  we  need  to  do  and  be  better.  We  have  evolved 
lop-sidedly ;  we  want  to  get  straight.  Our  wonderful  mecha- 
nical progress  requires  to  be  followed  up  by  a  progress 
in  moral  and  social  things.  Poverty,  disease,  dirt,  igno- 
rance, superstition,  ill-regulated  appetites,  wealth  misused, 
indolence,  and  war  which  destroys  in  a  few  mad  months 
the  fruits  of  ages  of  culture  and  labour:  these  are  the 
plagues  which  have  too  long  frustrated  the  attainment  by 
man  of  his  full  moral  stature  and  his  fit  social  habitation, 
There  is  not  one  of  these  evils  which  cannot  be  overcome  by 
education,  good  will  and  constructive  intelligence.  A  broad 
survey  of  human  origins  inspires  an  exalted  belief  in  the 
future  of  the  race.  But  there  will  be  no  stable  state,  no 
land  "where  it  is  always  afternoon,"  no  paradise  for  fools. 
The  good  world  will  have  to  be  worked  for,  and  it  will  be 


DARWIN  187 

a  world  fit  only  for  those  who  make  themselves  fit  to  live 
in  it. 

It  is  astonishing  that  propositions  which  made  such  a 
thorough  change  in  the  thought  of  mankind  should  have 
suffered  so  little  from  the  attacks  made  upon  them  in  the 
sixty  years  since  they  were  enunciated.  Darwin  himself, 
as  has  been  pointed  out,  corrected  some  details.  The  school 
of  which  Weismann  has  been  the  chief  representative  has 
disputed  the  portion  of  the  theory  of  heredity  which  Darwin 
adopted  from  Herbert  Spencer,  relating  to  the  transmis- 
sion of  acquired  characteristics.  Weismann's  contentions 
are  not,  it  is  true,  accepted  by  all  biologists,  but  they  are 
accepted  by  many  who,  apart  from  this  point,  are  evolu- 
tionists. In  most  essential  respects,  however,  his  writings 
stand  solid,  and  the  waves  of  criticism  have  beaten  against 
them  in  vain.  In  the  beginning  much  of  this  criticism 
was  virulent  and  discreditable.  Darwin  confessed  in  a 
letter  to  Sir  Charles  Lyell  that  "it  is  painful  to  be  hated," 
as  he  knew  he  was.  His  own  gentleness  and  his  truth-loving 
nature  made  him  sensitive  to  attacks  which  were  conceived 
in  spite  and  falsehood.  But  he  has  been  justified  by  time, 
and  the  homage  of  the  most  candid  and  well-informed  part 
of  mankind  is  sincerely  paid  to  the  memory  of  this  patient, 
laborious  and  brilliant  student  of  nature,  whose  thought 
has  left  no  branch  of  knowledge  unaffected. 


The  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  edited  by  Fran- 
cis Darwin,  and  More  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin  are  the 
authentic  biographical  sources.  There  are  also  two  good 
short  biographies,  by  Grant  Allen  and  G.  T.  Bettany.  Hux- 
ley's volumes  of  essays,  especially  his  Darwiniana,  are 
amongst  the  best  scientific  literature  in  English,  for  the 
enjoyment  of  the  ordinary  reader.  All  of  Darwin's  chief 
writings  are  now  obtainable  in  cheap  editions.  Ritchie's 
Darwinism  and  Politics  and  G.  Nasmyth's  Social  Progress 
and  the  Darwinian  Theory  are  two  works  which  apply  Dar- 
winism to  political  theory. 


This  flimsy  speculation. — Bishop  Wilberforce  (1860), 
A  careful  study  of   Darwin's  great  works   and    of   his 
letters  shows  how  shadowy  and  unsubstantial  is  the  vast 


188     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

pile  of  criticism  accumulated  since  1859. — E.  B.  Poulton 
(1909). 

Nature,  which  governs  the  whole,  will  soon  change  all 
things  which  thou  seest,  and  out  of  their  substance  will 
make  other  things,  from  the  substance  of  them,  in  order 
that  the  world  may  be  ever  new. — Mwrcus  Aurelius. 

Mutationism,  Mendelism,  Weismannism,  Neo-Lanarkism, 
Biometrics,  Eugenics,  and  what  not,  are  being  diligently 
exploited.  But  all  of  these  vigorous  growths  have  their 
real  roots  in  Darwinism.  If  we  study  Darwin's  correspon- 
dence, and  the  successive  essays  in  which  he  embodied  his 
views  at  different  periods,  we  shall  find  variation  by  muta- 
tion (or  per  saltum)  the  influence  of  environment,  the 
question  of  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters,  and 
similar  problems,  were  constantly  present  to  Darwin's  ever 
open  mind,  his  views  upon  them  changing  from  time  to 
time  as  fresh  facts  were  gathered. — J.  W.  Judd. 

Few  are  now  found  to  doubt  that  animals  separated  by 
differences  far  exceeding  those  that  distinguish  what  we 
know  as  species  have  yet  descended  from  common  ances- 
tors. Darwin  has,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  disposed  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  immutability  of  species. — Lord  Salisbury 
(1894). 

The  empire  of  man  over  things  is  founded  on  the  arts 
and  sciences,  for*  nature  is  only  to  be  commanded  by  obey- 
ing her. — >Bacon. 

Newton's  greatness  does  not  rest  on  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion alone,  but  much  more  on  the  general  foundations  of 
dynamics  and  natural  philosophy  which  he  has  laid.  So 
also  Darwin's  greatness  is  not  limited  to  the  formula  of 
natural  selection,  but  depends  on  the  novel  conception  which 
he  has  introduced  into  the  study  of  nature  on  the  large 
scale  and  as  a  whole,  viewing  it  as  a  scene  of  conflict  and 
ceaseless  development.  From  this  time  dates  the  study  of 
nature  as  a  whole,  in  contradistinction  to  that  of  natural 
objects  and  processes. — J.  T.  Merz. 

No  man  is  modified  by  external  conditions  alone,  with- 
out any  play  or  reaction  of  inner  needs  and  desires  and 
growth  from  within ;  nor  is  any  man  transformed  in  obedi- 
ence to  an  inner  expansion  without  sundry  lets  and  hin- 
drances from  without.  The  two  forces  are  in  constant  play 
upon  one  another. — Edward  Carpenter. 

There  is  a  hierarchy  of  facts.     Some  are  without  any 


DARWIN  189 

positive  bearing,  and  teach  us  nothing  but  themselves.  The 
scientist  who  ascertains  them  learns  nothing  but  facts,  and 
becomes  no  better  able  to  foresee  new  facts.  Such  facts,  it 
seems,  occur  but  once,  and  are  not  destined  to  be  repeated. 
There  are,  on  the  other  hand,  facts  that  give  a  large  return, 
each  of  which  teaches  us  a  new  law.  And,  since  he  is 
obliged  to  make  a  selection,  it  is  to  these  latter  facts  that 
the  scientist  must  devote  himself. — H.  Poincare. 

The  spectacle  of  the  evolution  of  life  from  its  very  begin- 
ning down  to  man  .suggests  to  us  the  image  of  a  current 
of  consciousness  which  flows  down  into  matter  as  into  a 
tunnel,  which  endeavours  to  advance,  which  makes  efforts 
on  every  side,  thus  digging  galleries  most  of  which  are 
stopped  by  the  rock  that  is  too  hard,  but  which,  in  one  direc- 
tion at  least,  prove  possible  to  follow  to  the  end,  and  break 
out  into  the  light  once  more.  This  direction  is  the  line  of 
evolution  resulting  in  man. — Bergson. 

What  do  we  owe  to  Darwin?  The  first  successful  vin- 
dication of  the  evolution  idea.  It  was  not  his  own,  nor  was 
he  its  first  champion,  yet  we  always  and  rightly  think  of 
Darwin  and  the  Doctrine  of  Descent  together.  He  made  it 
current  coin  of  the  intellectual  realm.  He  made  the  nations 
think  in  terms  of  evolution. — J.  Arthur  Thomson. 

A  true  scientific  judgment  consists  in  giving  a  free  rein 
to  speculation  on  the  one  hand,  while  holding  ready  to  the 
brake  of  verification  with  the  other.  Now  it  is  just  because 
Darwin  did  both  these  things,  and  with  so  admirable  a  judg- 
ment, that  he  gave  to  the  world  of  natural  history  so  good 
a  lesson  as  to  the  most  effective  way  of  driving  the  chariot 
of  science. — Romanes. 


HERBERT  SPENCER. 


[Page  190 


CHAPTER  XIV. 


HERBERT    SPENCER    AND    INDIVIDUALISM. 

IN  1877  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  gave  some  very  interesting 
evidence  before  a  Royal  Commission  on  Copyright 
which  was  then  sitting  in  England.  He  furnished 
full  details  about  the  sales  of  his  books  and  the  remu- 
neration which  had  come  to  him  from  writing  them.  The 
results  were  the  very  opposite  of  encouraging,  and  few  men 
would  have  persisted  in  work  so  large  in  sheer  bulk,  and 
which  involved  so  much  toil,  in  face  of  the  apparent  disin- 
clination of  the  public  to  pay  heed  to,  or  cash  for,  his 
message.  It  required  fourteen  years  to  sell  750  copies  of 
Spencer's  Social  Statics,  twelve  and  a  half  years  to  sell  650 
copies  of  his  Principles  of  Sociology,  and  ten  and  a  half 
years  to  sell  500  copies  of  his  first  volume  of  essays. 
After  commencing  to  publish  his  system  of  philosophy, 
Spencer  had  at  the  end  of  fifteen  years  lost  £1200,  and  was 
so  afraid  that  he  was  ruining  himself  that  he  issued  a  notice 
to  subscribers  announcing  that  publication  would  cease. 
But  a  timely  inheritance  saved  the  situation.  Not  until 
he  had  been  publishing  for  twenty-four  years  did  the  tide 
turn  and  his  books  begin  to  yield  any  profit.  With  some 
humour — in  which  Spencer  was  not  lacking,  despite  the 
Himalayan  altitude  and  solemnity  of  his  philosophical  work 
—he  said  to  the  Commission :  "Now  take  one  of  my  books, 
say,  the  Principles  of  Sociology.  Instead  of  calling  it 
caviare  to  the  general,  let  us  call  it  cod-liver  oil  to 
the  general;  I  think  it  probable  that  if  you  were  to  ask 
ninety-nine  people  out  of  one  hundred  whether  they  would 
daily  take  a  spoonful  of  cod-liver  oil  or  read  a  chapter  of 
that  book,  they  would  prefer  the  cod-liver  oil." 

There  was  no  complaint  of  neglect  on  Spencer's  part, 
not  even  a  note  of  disappointment.  He  was  aware  that  the 
subject  of  his  speculations  was  not  calculated  to  procure 
a  great  number  of  readers.  But  he  had  something  to  say 

191 


192     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

— very  much  to  say,  indeed — which  he  believed  to  be  true, 
and  he  said  it  in  his  own  fashion,  bearing  the  cost  cheer- 
fully until  such  time  as  sufficient  people  were  interested  to 
make  the  sale  of  his  stout  volumes  bear  the  expense  of  their 
production.  Adverse  criticism  had  no  more  effect  upon  him 
than  popular  indifference.  If  the  criticism  were  serious 
and  respectful  he  replied  to  it  copiously ;  if  otherwise,  how- 
ever much  he  might  be  annoyed  for  the  moment,  he  treated 
it  as  an  evidence  of  ordinary  human  stupidity. 

An  example  is  afforded  by  the  case  of  an  article  which 
appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  in  1883.  The  reviewer 
had  spoken  of  Spencer's  First  Principles  as  "nothing  but  a 
philosophy  of  epithets  and  phrases,  introduced  and  carried 
on  with  an  unrivalled  solemnity  and  affectation  of  precision 
of  style,  concealing  the  loosest  reasoning  and  the  haziest 
indefiniteness."  We  find  Spencer  saying  in  a  letter  to  a 
friend,  "I  am  going  this  week  to  .issue  advertisements  of 
First  Principles  in  all  the  leading  papers,  to  which  I  shall 
prefix  this  adverse  opinion  of  the  Edinburgh  by  way  of 
showing  my  contempt  for  it."  The  method  was  afterwards 
adopted  with  gleeful  wit  by  Whistler,  who  issued  a  cata- 
logue of  his  pictures  with  extracts  from  adverse  criticisms 
neatly  printed  beneath  each  title.  But  Spencer's  contempt 
had  an  austerity  which  Whistler,  with  his  malicious  kink, 
could  never  approach.  It  was  like  the  frown  of  Jove;  it 
loomed  with  wrinkles  of  cosmic  severity. 

Spencer  was  the  most  undeviating  of  all  philosophers. 
When  he  issued  the  prospectus  of  his  system  in  1860,  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  about  the  whole  vast  scheme.  He  had,  as 
it  were,  found  out  the  universe,  and  was  going  to  show  it 
up.  First  Principles  were  to  be  explained  in  the  first 
volume,  and  then  were  to  follow  like  the  seasons  in  their 
regularly  prescribed  order  the  volumes  on  Biology,  Psycho- 
logy, Sociology  and  Ethics,  covering  the  whole  field  of 
evolution.  A  stretch  of  thirty-six  years  lay  between  the 
writing  of  the  first  lines  of  First  Principles  and  the  com- 
pletion of  the  great  design.  He  was  seventy-six  years  of 
age  when  he  dictated  to  his  secretary  the  concluding  words. 
"Rising  slowly  from  his  seat" — it  is  the  secretary  who 
records  the  occasion — "his  face  beaming  with  joy,  he 
extended  his  hand  across  the  table,  and  we  shook  hands  on 
the  auspicious  event.  'I  have  finished  the  task  I  have  lived 
for,'  was  all  he  said,  and  then  resumed  his  seat.  The  elation 


HERBERT   SPENCER  193 

was  only  momentary,  and  his  features  quickly  resumed  their 
customary  composure."  One  is  reminded  of  the  moment 
when  Archibald  Alison  finished  the  tenth  and  last  volume 
of  his  History  of  Europe;  he  called  his  wife  out  of  bed  at 
midnight — in  Scotland,  too,  where  the  nights  are  cold — and 
she  stood  in  her  nightdress  holding  his  left  hand  while 
he  wrote  the  final  words  with  his  right.  But,  of  course, 
there  never  was  a  lady  in  the  case  with  Herbert  Spencer. 
He  was  wedded  to  a  System. 

It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  Spencer  never  changed 
an  opinion  which  he  had  once  ^)ut  forth.  He  did  admit 
some  modifications,  but  they  were  few,  and,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, he  did  not  make  them  in  any  confessional  spirit.  In 
this  he  offers  a  contrast  with  Darwin's  perfect  open- 
mindedness.  Thus,  when  Spencer  issued  a  revised  edition 
of  Social  Statics  in  America,  he  wrote  to  his  representative 
there  that  he  had  inserted  a  declaimer  in  a  "comparatively 
vague  form."  He  admitted  that  the  book  "must  be  read  with 
some  qualifications,"  but  could  not  be  induced  to  state  those 
qualifications  plainly,  though  he  did  not  object  to  the 
American  representative  writing  a  preface  and  explaining 
them  therein  if  he  pleased. 

This  magnetic-needle-like  quality  of  Spencer's  mind, 
together  with  the  number  and  strength  of  his  aversions, 
and  his  irritability,  made  him  somewhat  aloof  and  difficult 
of  access.  He  was  not  addicted  to  the  give-and-take  of 
life.  These  characteristics  were  naturally  more  strongly 
revealed  in  his  letters  than  in  his  formal  writings.  It 
required  some  magnanimity  on  Huxley's  part  to  end  a 
quarrel  with  Spencer  which  the  biographer  of  the  latter 
(Dr.  Duncan)  admits  might  have  been  repaired  easily  "had 
Spencer  talked  the  matter  over  with  his  friends  instead  of 
shutting  himself  up  and  seeing  no  one."  When  Wallace 
took  a  view  of  heredity — Weismann's  view — which  was  not 
Spencer's,  the  philosopher  wrote:  "I  am  astonished  at  the 
nonsense  he  is  writing;  he  seems  to  be  incapable  of  under- 
standing the  point  at  issue;"  though  the  subject  was  one 
upon  which  Wallace  was  peculiarly  entitled  to  be  heard 
respectfully.  Several  entries  in  the  index  to  the  Life  and 
Letters  signify  briefly  the  stiff  angularity  of  the  man— 
"Books,  objection  to  seeing;"  "Ceremonial,  aversion  to;" 
"Classics,  aversion  from;"  Criticism,  sensitiveness  to;" 
"Irritability;"  "Reading,  aversion  to;"  "Study,  aversion 


194     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

to;"  "History,  futility  of."  And  there  are  other  examples 
which  are  not  placed  in  the  index. 

He  read  little,  and  attributed  his  dislike  of  the  reading 
habit  to  constitutional  idleness,  which  certainly  was  not  a 
correct  diagnosis  from  one  whose  writings  fill  a  shelf.  Dr. 
Duncan  comes  closer  to  the  mark  with  the  observation  that 
it  was  "probably  due  to  indifference  to  other  men's  opinions." 
Spencer  said  himself,  "All  my  life  long  I  have  been  a  thinker 
and  not  a  reader,  being  able  to  say  with  Hobbes  that  if 
I  had  read  as  much  as  other  men  I  should  have  known  as 
little."  He  tried  to  write-  Sociology  without  a  knowledge 
of  history,  thinking  that  "until  you  have  got  a  true  theory 
of  humanity  you  cannot  interpret  history,  and  when  you 
have  got  a  true  theory  of  humanity  you  do  not  want  his- 
tory." The  formula  is  little  better  than  a  flippant  paradox ; 
it  fails  to  explain  how  you  can  ever  have  a  true  theory  of 
humanity  without  knowing  how  humanity  has  grown  and 
shaped  its  institutions. 

Spencer  was  an  original  thinker,  but  he  was  neither  an 
observer  nor  a  careful  student  of  essential  facts.  Darwin 
put  his  finger,  with  his  habitual  sureness  of  touch,  on  the 
weakness  of  Spencer  when,  after  reading  part  of  the  Prin- 
ciples of  Sociology,  he  said :  "It  is  wonderfully  clever,  and 
I  daresay  mostly  true ;  if  he  had  trained  himself  to  observe 
more,  even  at  the  expense,  by  the  law  of  balancement,  of 
some  loss  of  thinking  power,  he  would  have  been  a  won- 
derful man." 

He  was  a  wonderful  man — a  man  endowed  with  a  sin- 
gular power  of  concentration  and  of  methodising  his 
thoughts.  He  embraced  all  time  and  all  space  in  one  com- 
prehensive synthesis.  Rarely  has  there  been  a  man  with 
such  a  capacity  for  prolonged  abstraction.  He  would  dic- 
tate to  his  secretary  in  a  situation  where  he  could  break 
off  and  play  a  game  like  quoits  or  rackets  when  his  thought 
flagged;  would  think  out  the  next  piece  whilst  playing; 
then  resume  work,  and  so  on  till  fatigued  both  by  the  game 
and  the  thinking.  The  process  enabled  him  to  shape  his 
thoughts  sharply  and  crisply,  and  we  are  assured  that  he 
made  very  few  changes  in  a  completed  manuscript. 

When  he  grew  old,  he  would  never  allow  himself  to  be 
tired  by  the  conversation  even  of  his  most  intimate  friends. 
When  he  had  had  enough  of  such  companions  as  Morley 
and  A.  J.  Balfour,  he  would  "draw  off  in  haste  as  fearing 


HERBERT   SPENCER  195 

cerebral  agitation;"  or,  still  more  disconcerting,  would 
stuff  wads  of  cotton  wool  into  his  ears.  The  conversation- 
alist whose  momentum  could  have  resisted  that  hint  would 
have  been  akin  to  Phoebus  or  an  avalanche. 

Nevertheless,  Spencer  was  genial  among  his  intimates. 
We  rejoice  to  read  that  he  "had  the  blessed  gift  of  hearty 
laughter, "  that  he  was  fond  of  amusement,  liked  music — 
of  his  own  .selection — and  loved  children.  He  would  bor- 
row the  children  of  his  friends,  would  play  with  them,  and 
make  kindly  suggestions  to  their  mothers  about  their  cloth- 
ing. "The  vascular  system  constituted  by  the  heart  and 
by  the  ramifying  system  of  the  blood  vessels  is  a  closed 
cavity  having  elastic  walls,"  hence  the  mischief  consequent 
upon  uneven  circulation  caused  by  uneven  clothing,  and  so 
forth  in  a  luminous  disquisition  which  every  mother  would, 
of  course,  be  better  for  understanding.  He  was  also 
intensely  interested  in  all  kinds  of  public  questions,  and  his 
irritability  was  aroused  to  the  full  on  many  affairs  of 
moment  in  their  day.  Tennyson's  poem  "Hands  All  Round" 
annoyed  him  excessively,  and  he  tried  his  hand  at  a  reply 
to  it  in  verse;  but  we  are  relieved  to  learn  that  he  "got 
no  further  than  two  stanzas,"  which  he  refrained  from 
publishing.  There,  no  doubt,  he  tempered  justice  with 
mercy. 

From  first  to  last  Spencer  was  an  individualist  in  his 
own  life  and  in  his  philosophy.  From  the  time  of  his  boy- 
hood in  Derby,  where  he  aroused  the  derision  of  other  boys 
by  insisting  on  wearing  a  cap  of  peculiar  pattern  while 
they  wore  hats,  and  showed  a  self-willed  "predilection  for 
certain  subjects  not  included  in  the  school  curriculum  of 
those  days,  and  a  still  more  decided  aversion  to  certain 
other  subjects  then  deemed  important  for  every  boy  to 
know,"  down  to  his  designing  of  the  sarcophagus  which 
was  to  contain  his  cremated  ashes  on  reaching  the  end  to 
which  he  said,  "I  look  forward  with  satisfaction,"  Spencer 
was,  in  all  his  thoughts  and  way's,  a  man  not  of  a  type,  but  in 
a  class  by  himself.  He  was  so  much  of  an  Individualist 
that  some  critics  represented  him  as  a  Philosophical  Anar- 
chist, a  designation  which,  however,  he  abhorred. 

There  were  and  are  many  who,  while  thinking  that 
Spencer  performed  valuable  service  in  classifying  and 
systematising  the  philosophy  of  evolution,  have  refused  to 
adopt  his  political  conclusions.  To  him,  his  system  was 


196     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

all-of-a-piece.  He  believed  that  he  "saw  life  steadily  and 
saw  it  whole,"  and  that  very  few  others  did.  But  a  man 
cannot  be  a  thorough-going  Individualist  without  conceding 
to  others  the  right  to  be  the  same,  and  it  is  open  to  anyone 
to  reject  a  part  of  a  scheme  of  thought  while  accepting  the 
remainder.  Spencer  himself  recognised  that  many  students 
of  his  writings  did  so,  and  had  no  complaint  to  make.  He 
saw  that,  while  the  theory  of  Evolution  gained  acceptance, 
the  current  of  opinion  was  running  strong  against  Indivi- 
dualism. "I  am  myself  almost  hopeless  of  any  good  to  be 
done,"  he  wrote  concerning  efforts  to  promote  these  views. 
"The  drift  of  things  is  ,so  overwhelming  in  the  other  direc- 
tion, and  the  stream  will,  I  believe,  continue  to  increase  in 
volume  and  velocity,  simply  because  political  power  is  now 
in  the  hands  of  those  whose  apparent  interest  is  to  get  as 
much  as  possible  done  by  public  agency,  and  whose  desires 
will  be  inevitably  pandered  to  by  all  who  seek  public  func- 
tions." 

The  principle  upon  which  Spencer  based  his  Individu- 
alism is  that  laid  down  in  his  chapter  on  "The  Formula  of 
Justice"  (in  The  Principles  of  Ethics),  that  the  liberty  of 
each  should  be  limited  only  by  the  like  liberties  of  all ;  con- 
sequently, "every  man  is  free  to  do  that  which  he  wills, 
provided  he  infringes  not  the  equal  freedom  of  any  other 
man."  All  tendencies  of  modern  legislation  to  invade  the 
sphere  of  individual  action  were  inimical  to  him,  because 
they  were  limitations  of  this  principle.  He  condemned 
legislation  restricting  hours  of  labour,  Acts  regulating  fac- 
tories, Acts  for  conserving  public  health,  providing  for  the 
ventilation  and  cleansing  of  workshops,  Public  Libraries 
Acts  (by  which  "a  majority  can  tax  a  minority  for  their 
books"),  free  and  compulsory  education,  and,  indeed,  all 
kinds  of  measures  by  which,  as  he  held,  the  community 
did  what  individuals  ought  to  do  for  themselves. 

He  held  that  the  first  duty  of  the  state  was  to  protect 
its  citizens  against  external  dangers,  and  its  second  duty 
to  enforce  justice  among  these  citizens.  Having  performed 
those  two  functions,  the  state  could  do  nothing  else  without 
transgressing  justice,  that  is,  without  interfering  with  the 
freedom  of  individuals  to  do  as  they  will.  A  "mania  for 
meddling"  was,  he  believed,  the  curse  of  modern  legisla- 
tion, and  had,  indeed,  been  the  curse  of  legislation  during 
centuries ;  and  he  mentioned  in  proof  that  between  the  pass- 


HERBERT   SPENCER  197 

ing  of  the  Statute  of  Merton  (1256)  and  1872,  over  14,000 
Acts  had  been  repealed  in  England,  some  because  they  were 
obsolete  or  futile,  but  at  least  3000,  he  felt  sure,  because 
they  had  proved  mischievous,  and  had  consequently  hindered 
human  happiness  and  increased  human  misery. 

This  did  not  mean  that  Spencer  was  in  favour  of  relax- 
ing restraints  upon  evil  doers,  and  letting  everybody  do 
as  he  liked.  The  proviso  to  his  formula  was  as  important 
as  its  proposition.  "Everywhere,  along  with  the  reproba- 
tion of  government  intrusion  into  various  spheres  where 
private  activities  should  be  left  to  themselves,"  he  said,  "I 
have  contended  that  in  its  special  sphere,  the  maintenance 
of  equitable  relations  among  citizens,  governmental  action 
should  be  extended  and  elaborated." 

Still,  it  is  undeniable  that  he  carried  his  dislike  of  inter- 
ference with  the  individual  to  lengths  that  would  have 
permitted  conduct  which  is  hateful  to  every  humane  person. 
To  punish  parents  convicted  of  gross  cruelty  to  their  chil- 
dren had  a  tendency  "to  absolve  parents  from  their  respon- 
sibilities and  to  saddle  these  responsibilities  on  the  com- 
munity." The  objection  ignored  the  purpose  of  such  pro- 
secutions, which  was,  surely,  to  make  cruel  parents  act  up 
to  their  responsibilities,  and  to  protect  those  who  were 
unable  to  protect  themselves.  In  the  case  of  adults,  he 
approved  of  combination  and  co-operation,  though  not  san- 
guine about  the  results  of  schemes  of  co-operative  produc- 
tion, because  "only  a  small  proportion  of  men  are  good 
enough  for  industrial  relations  of  a  high  type." 

It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  Spencer's  Individualism  car- 
ried the  doctrine  of  the  Survival  of  tftie  Fittest  into  the 
political  and  moral  relations  of  life.  In  so  doing  he  was 
well  aware  of  the  hardness  of  the  process ;  but  he  held  that 
biological  laws,  which  apply  to  human  as  well  as  to  plant 
and  animal  life,  impose  this  inexorable  condition  of  struggle, 
and  that  it  cannot  by  any  possibility  be  avoided  by  any 
legislation  or  any  social  organisation  which  the  wit  of  man 
can  devise.  You  can  legislate  to  cure  an  evil,  but  by  so 
doing  you  create  a  crop  of  fresh  evils,  and  do  not  thereby 
decrease,  but  increase,  the  sum  of  evils.  As  he  put  the 
point  in  Social  Statics,  "misery  inevitably  results  from 
incongruity  between  constitution  and  conditions.  All  these 
evils  which  afflict  us,  and  seem  to  the  uninitiated  the 
obvious  consequence  of  this  or  that  removable  cause,  are 


198     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

unavoidable  attendants  on  the  adaptation  now  in  progress. 
Humanity  is  being  pressed  against  the  inexorable  necessi- 
ties of  its  new  position — is  being  moulded  into  harmony 
with  them,  and  has  to  bear  the  resulting  unhappiness  as 
best  it  can.  The  process  must  be  undergone,  and  the  suffer- 
ing must  be  endured.  No  power  on  earth,  no  cunningly- 
devised  laws  of  statesmen,  no  world-rectifying  schemes  of 
the  humane,  no  communist  panaceas,  no  reforms  that  men 
ever  did  broach  or  ever  will  broach  can  diminish  them  one 
jot." 

Spencer  allowed  that,  as  far  as  the  severity  of  this 
process  could  be  mitigated  by  the  spontaneous  sympathy 
of  men  for  each  other,  it  should  be  mitigated;  but  he 
affirmed  that  pure  evil  resulted,  and  the  remedies  defeated 
their  own  end,  when  they  interfered  with  the  law  of  equal 
freedom.  Above  all,  anything  which  favoured  the  multipli- 
cation and  survival  of  those  worst  fitted  for  existence,  and 
by  consequence  hindered  the  survival  and  multiplication  of 
those  best  fitted  for  existence,  inflicted  positive  misery  and 
prevented  positive  happiness.  The  struggle  for  existence 
improved  the  character  of  the  best  elements  of  society,  and 
if  it  killed  off  the  worst  elements,  well,  so  much  the  better. 

It  is  evident  that  Spencer's  teachings,  rightly  appre- 
hended, are  the  very  antithesis  of  those  of  Socialism, 
and,  indeed,  of  all  schemes  of  social  reconstruction  which 
are  based  upon  sentimental  or  philanthropic  aspirations. 
Occasionally  during  his  lifetime  Socialists  would  seize  upon 
some  passage  in  his  writings  and  seek  to  use  it  as  a  con- 
troversial weapon.  Then  the  refutation  would  be  prompt 
and  conclusive.  Such  attempts  were  hazardous  while 
Spencer  was  alive  to  meet  them,  and  in  any  case  they  were 
due  to  a  misunderstanding  of  a  system  which,  within  its 
own  capacious  limits,  was  wonderfully  well-knit  and  logical, 
and  which  by  no  means  whatever  could  in  any  part  be 
reconciled  with  a  non-individualistic  conception  of  society. 

Darwin's  criticism  that  in  biology  Spencer  would  have 
done  better  work  if  he  had  observed  more,  can  be  brought 
against  him  by  the  Sociologist.  There  are  whole  ranges  of 
social  fact  of  which  he  .seemed  to  be  oblivious.  He  despised 
the  practical  politician ;  but  somebody  has  to  attend  to  prac- 
tical politics,  and  current  problems  have  to  be  dealt  with. 
Spencer  does  not  help  us  to  deal  with  them  as  much  as  he 
might  have  done,  because  his  philosophy  is  so  remote  from 


HERBERT    SPENCER  199 

them.  A  philosopher  sitting  in  his  room  with  cotton  wool 
in  his  ears  could  be  deaf  to  the  cry  of  children  in  torture ; 
one  conversant  with  aeons  and  starry  nebula  could  ignore 
conditions  of  life  which  offer  a  blank  future,  not  to  worth- 
less beings,  but  to  men  and  women  capable  of  high  develop- 
ment. The  practical  problems  of  the  world  cannot  be 
waved  aside  by  the  dogmatic  assertion  that  in  the  long  run 
they  will  settle  themselves,  and  that  the  world  will  be  all 
the  better  for  not  interfering.  The  non  possumus  of  the 
Spencerian  Individualist  is  a  counsel  of  despair.  It  is 
pesssimism  masked  with  passive  benevolence.  Men  and 
women  are  indeed  creatures  of  the  cosmos,  subject  to  its 
processes  in  common  with  all  species,  and  the  sun  and  his 
planets,  and  the  infinite  realm  of  stars.  But  they  are  not 
altogether  and  beyond  despair  the  helpless  slaves  of  uncon- 
trollable forces;  and  there  is  no  sound  reason  for  thinking 
that  well-considered  effort  to  mitigate  the  harshness  of 
nature,  to  set  limits  to  rapacity,  selfishness  and  power,  and 
to  afford  opportunity  for  ability  and  character  to  find  scope 
without  being  handicapped  by  soul-crushing  poverty,  will 
be  mocked  by  inevitable  failure. 

But  a  student  of  Spencer  must  feel  too  much  respect 
for  him  to  dismiss  him  on  a  note  of  disapproval.  He  was 
great  enough  in  himself  and  in  his  work  to  tower  above 
many  failings.  The  friend  who  was  perhaps  deepest  in  his 
regard  has  said  a  fine  thing  of  him  in  bearing  witness  to 
"an  indefatigable  intellect,  an  iron  love  of  truth,  a  pure 
and  scrupulous  conscience,  a  spirit  of  loyal  and  beneficent 
intention,  a  noble  passion  for  knowledge  and  systematic 
thought  as  the  instrument  for  man's  elevation."  To  have 
been  worthy  of  these  words  and  to  have  written  the  Syn- 
thetic Philosophy  constitute  large  claims  on  the  enduring 
regard  of  mankind. 


Herbert  Spencer's  Autobiography  is  a  voluminous  expo- 
sition of  his  own  intellectual  growth.  His  official  Life  and 
Letters,  by  Dr.  D.  Duncan,  is  really  a  supplement  to  that 
work.  Among  Spencer's  writings,  his  four  chapters  in  The 
Man  versus  the  State  contain  the  most  convenient  statement 
of  his  Individualism;  but  for  a  fuller  exposition  of  it  the 
reader  has  to  go  to  his  Social  Statics,  Study  of  Sociology 
and  Principles  of  Sociology.  Two  good  short  books  on 


200     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

Spencer  are  W.  H.  Hudson's  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy 
of  Herbert  Spencer,  and  Hector  Macpherson's  Herbert 
Spencer,  the  latter  by  one  who  was  for  a  while  his  secre- 
tary. A  searching  criticism  is  contained  in  D.  G.  Ritchie's 
Principles  of  State  Interference. 


The  sole  end  for  which  mankind  are  warranted,  indivi- 
dually or  collectively,  in  interfering  with  the  liberty  of 
action  of  any  of  their  number  is  self  protection.  The  only 
purpose  for  which  power  can  be  rightfully  exercised  over 
any  member  of  a  civilised  community  against  his  will  is 
to  prevent  harm  to  others.  His  own  good,  either  physical 
or  moral,  is  not  a  sufficient  warrant. — John  Stuart  Mill. 

Du  Pont  attributes  to  Gournay  (1712-59)  the  origin  of 
the  famous  maxim,  Laissez-faire,  laissez-passer.  But  a 
study  of  Turgot's  Eloge  de  Gournay  shows  that  the  expres- 
sion Laissez-faire  is  really  due  to  Le  Gendre,  a  merchant 
who  attended  a  deputation  to  Colbert  about  1680  to  protest 
against  excessive  state  regulation  of  industry,  and  pleaded 
for  liberty  of  action  in  the  phrase,  Laissez-nous  faire.  Bois- 
guillebert  and  D'Argenson  had  used  it  also  before  Gournay, 
who  may,  however,  be  said  to  have  made  it  classical  in  its 
later  form. — Henry  Higgs  (The  Physiocrats,  p.  67). 

The  parent  in  dealing  with  his  child,  the  employer  in 
dealing  with  his  workmen,  the  shipbuilder  in  the  construc- 
tion of  his  ships,  the  shipowner  in  the  treatment  of  his 
sailors,  the  house  owner  in  the  management  of  his  house 
property,  the  land  owner  in  his  contracts  with  his  tenants 
have  been  notified  by  public  opinion  or  by  actual  law  that 
the  time  has  gone  by  when  the  cry  of  laissez-faire  would 
be  answered  in  the  affirmative.  The  state  has  determined 
what  is  right  and  wrong,  what  is  expedient  and  inexpedient, 
and  has  appointed  its  agents  to  enforce  its  conclusions. 
Individual  responsibility  has  been  lessened;  national 
responsibility  has  been  heightened. — G.  J.  (Lord)  Goschen. 

The  species  does  not  grow  in  perfection.  The  weak 
again  and  again  get  the  upper  hand  of  the  strong — their 
large  numbers  and  their  greater  cunning  are  the  cause  of 
it.  Darwin  forgot  the  intellect.  That  was  English.  The 
weak  have  more  intellect.  One  must  need  intellect  in  order 
to  acquire  it.  One  loses  it  when  it  is  no  longer  necessary. 
— Friedrich  Nietzsche. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  201 

Compromise,  in  a  large  sense  of  the  word,  is  the  first 
principle  of  combination;  and  everyone  who  insists  on 
enjoying  his  rights  to  the  full,  and  his  opinions  without 
toleration  for  his  neighbours',  and  his  own  way  in  all 
things,  will  soon  have  all  things  altogether  to  himself,  and 
no  one  to  share  them  with  him.  But,  most  true  as  this 
confessedly  is,  still  there  is  an  obvious  limit,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  these  compromises,  •  however  necessary  they 
be;  and  this  is  found  in  the  proviso  that  the  differences  sur- 
rendered should  be  but  minor,  or  that  there  should  be  no 
sacrifice  of  the  main  object  of  the  combination  in  the  con- 
cessions which  are  mutually  made. — Cardinal  Newman. 

Wherever  the  spirit  of  initiative  possesses  all  alike,  a 
truly  great  individual  is,  of  course,  insufferable ;  any  great 
advance  must  be  a  collective  movement,  and  the  best  ener- 
gies of  the  country  must  be  futilely  expended  in  budging 
the  masses.  It  is  no  accident  that  America  has  still  pro- 
duced no  great  world  genius. — Munsterberg. 

England,  the  country  of  greatest  individual  freedom, 
has  been  the  land  most  favourable  to  the  growth  of  genius 
as  well  as  eccentricity,  and  has  thus  produced  a  dispropor- 
tionate number  of  new  ideas  and  departures. — /.  T.  Merz. 

The  state  lives  in  a  glass  house;  we  see  what  it  tries 
to  do,  and  all  its  failures,  partial  or  total,  are  made  the 
most  of.  But  private  enterprise  is  sheltered  under  opaque 
bricks  and  mortar.  The  public  rarely  knows  what  it  tries 
to  do,  and  only  hears  of  failures  when  they  are  gross  and 
patent  to  all  the  world.  Who  is  to  say  how  private  enter- 
prise would  come  out  if  it  tried  its  hand  at  state  work? — 
Huxley. 

In  action,  in  desire,  we  must  submit  perpetually  to  the 
tyranny  of  outside  forces ;  but  in  thought,  in  aspiration,  we 
are  free — free  from  our  fellow  men,  free  from  the  petty 
planet  on  which  our  bodies  impotently  crawl,  free  even, 
while  we  live,  from  the  tyranny  of  death.  Let  us  learn 
then  that  energy  of  faith  which  enables  us  to  live  constantly 
in  the  vision  of  the  good,  and  let  us  descend,  in  action,  into 
the  world  of  fact,  with  that  vision  always  before  us. — Ber- 
trand  Russell. 

I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  road  to  eminence  and 
power  from  obscure  condition,  ought  not  to  be  made  too 
easy,  nor  a  thing  too  much  of  course.  If  rare  merit  be  the 
rarest  of  all  rare  things,  it  ought  to  pass  through  some 


202     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

sort  of  probation.  The  temple  of  honour  ought  to  be  seated 
on  an  eminence.  If  it  be  opened  through  virtue,  let  it  be 
remembered,  too,  that  virtue  is  never  tried  but  by  some 
difficulty  and  some  struggle. — Burke. 

There  is  no  greater  stupidity  or  meanness  than  to  take 
uniformity  for  an  ideal,  as  if  it  were  not  a  benefit  and  a 
joy  to  a  man,  being  what  he  is,  to  know  that  there  are, 
have  been,  and  will  be,  better  than  he.  Grant  that  no  one 
is  positively  degraded  by  the  great  man's  greatness,  and  it 
follows  that  everyone  is  exalted  by  it.  Beauty,  genius, 
holiness,  even  power  and  extraordinary  wealth,  radiate 
their  virtue  and  make  the  world  in  which  they  exist  a  more 
joyful  place  to  live  in. — George  Santayana. 

To  me,  at  least,  it  would  be  enough  to  condemn  modern 
society  as  hardly  an  advance  on  slavery  or  serfdom,  if  the 
permanent  condition  of  industry  were  to  be  that  which  we 
behold — that  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  actual  producers  of 
wealth  have  no  home  that  they  can  call  their  own  beyond 
the  end  of  the  week ;  have  no  bit  of  soil,  or  so  much  as  a 
room  that  belongs  to  them;  have  nothing  of  value  of  any 
kind,  except  as  much  old  furniture  as  will  go  in  a  cart; 
have  the  precarious  chance  of  weekly  wages,  which  barely 
suffice  to  keep  them  in  health;  are  housed,  for  the  most 
part,  in  places  that  no  man  thinks  fit  for  his  horse;  are 
separated  by  so  narrow  a  margin  from  destitution  that  a 
month  of  bad  trade,  sickness  or  unexpected  loss  brings  them 
face  to  face  with  hunger  or  pauperism. — Frederic  Harrison. 


BISMARCK. 


[Page  204 


CHAPTER  XV. 


BISMARCK  AND   BLOOD   AND   IRON. 

OTTO  VON  BISMARCK-SCH6NHAUSEN  was  called 
to  power  in  Prussia  in  1863,  at  a  moment  when 
that  state  stood  at  the  cross  roads.       Since  the 
"March  Days"  of  1848,  Prussia    had    been  per- 
turbed by  the  choice  which  had  to  be  made  between  develop- 
ment on  constitutional    lines,  and  submission    to    military 
autocracy. 

In  that  year  King  Frederick  William  IV.,  trembling 
with  fear  before  the  insurrectionary  mobs  which  paraded 
in  Berlin,  his  nerves  shattered  by  the  rattle  of  musketry 
and  the  screams  of  the  wounded  as  the  troops  fired  upon 
the  crowds  and  charged  the  barricades,  had  been  constrained 
to  promise  that  a  National  Assembly  should  be  summoned 
to  draw  up  a  constitution.  But,  as  soon  as  the  revolution 
was  suppressed  and  the  King  felt  that  he  could  rely  upon 
the  army,  the  Assembly  was  dissolved,  and  a  constitution 
manufactured  within  the  palace  was  promulgated  by  Fre- 
derick William  himself.  In  1857  the  old  King  became 
insane,  and  his  brother,  Prince  William,  assumed  the 
Regency,  becoming  King  of  Prussia  four  years  later. 

During  these  years  the  forces  of  democracy  and  aristo- 
cracy had  not  ceased  to  struggle.  The  constitution  was 
unsatisfactory  to  the  democratic  party  because  it  did  not 
make  ministers  responsible  to  the  representatives,  and  also 
because  the  electoral  system  was  carefully  devised  to  pre- 
vent the  direct  verdict  of  the  people  from  being  recorded 
at  an  election.  But  another  party  was  bent  upon  the  pur- 
suit of  a  different  line  of  policy,  nothing  less  than  the  unity 
of  Germany  under  Prussian  leadership.  An  effort  to 
achieve  this  result  through  a  Parliament  representative  of 
all  the  German  states,  which  met  at  Frankfort  in  1848,  had 
failed.  The  crown  had  been  offered  to  Frederick  William, 

205 


206     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

but  he  would  not  accept  it  as  the  gift  of  the  German  people ; 
he  required  the  assent  of  the  German  kings  and  princes, 
and  that  was  not  forthcoming. 

His  successor,  William  I.,  just  before  his  accession, 
announced  his  conviction  that  the  unity  of  Germany  could 
only  be  brought  about  under  Prussian  hegemony ;  and  his 
advisers  were  of  opinion  that,  in  order  that  Prussia  might 
achieve  her  ambition  in  this  regard,  her  army  must  be 
strengthened.  The  law  of  Prussia  already  provided  for 
the  compulsory  military  service  of  men  of  fighting  age, 
but  there  had  been  many  loopholes  in  its  administration. 
The  King  and  his  Minister  of  War,  Roon,  considered  that 
the  obligation  of  service  should  be  more  strictly  enforced, 
that  the  military  expenditure  should  be  increased,  and  that, 
in  short,  the  army  should  be  made  a  much  stronger  striking- 
force.  The  Lower  Chamber,  fresh  from  the  constituencies 
in  1862,  showed  itself  extremely  hostile.  William  dissolved 
it,  but  a  newly-elected  Chamber  rejected  the  army  reforms 
with  scant  ceremony. 

Clearly,  then,  the  strengthening  of  the  army  could  not 
be  effected  by  constitutional  means.  If  the  policy  of  the 
King  was  to  be  realised,  the  Lower  Chamber  must  be  defied. 
Roon  advised  William  to  send  for  Bismarck,  then  Prussian 
ambassador  at  Paris.  He  was  known  to  be  contemptuous 
of  popular  opinion.  He  would  shrink  from  no  measures 
that  were  necessary  to  drive  a  policy  to  completion.  Bis- 
marck accepted  office  as  head  of  the  Cabinet;  and  his  bois- 
terous courage  tightened  up  the  nerves  of  the  timid  King, 
who  had  prepared  and  actually  signed  a  deed  of  abdication 
— just  as  his  grandson  was  compelled  to  do  fifty-six  years 
later.  Bismarck  insisted  on  its  being  torn  up.  Then  he 
systematically  ejected  from  the  civil  service  and  from  the 
army  all  who  were  known  to  be  opposed  to  the  scheme  of 
army  reform ;  he  prorogued  the  Chambers  without  waiting 
for  them  to  pass  the  army  estimates;  and  he  proceeded  to 
govern  the  country,  to  spend  all  the  money  needed  for  the 
services,  and  to  carry  out  the  entire  plans  of  Roon,  with- 
out parliamentary  sanction. 

This  policy  was  entirely  unconstitutional,  but  Bismarck 
was  prepared  to  take  the  risks.  The  army,  under  the  com- 
mand of  Moltke,  was  dependable,  and  he  had  no  fear  of  a 
popular  rising  while  a  well-organised  force  was  held  in 
leash.  Criticism  was  stifled.  Press  prosecutions  and  sup- 


BISMARCK  207 

pressions  were  frequent.  His  explanation — not  his  defence, 
certainly  not  his  apology — for  this  conduct  was  contained 
in  one  vivid  sentence  which  he  had  flung  in  the  face  of 
the  representatives  of  the  Prussian  people^-" The  great 
questions  of  the  time  are  not  to  be  solved  by  speeches  and 
parliamentary  votes,  but  by  blood  and  iron." 

This  was  not  a  piece  of  bluster  but  a  piece  of  philosophy. 
Bismarck  was  a  man  of  action,  with  a  faculty  for  striking 
off  strong  phrases  in  moments  of  tense  feeling.  Such  was 
his  statement  in  1877:  "The  war  of  1870  was  but  child's 
play  in  comparison  with  'the  future  war;  on  both  sides  an 
effort  will  be  made  to  finish  the  adversary,  to  bleed  him 
white."  Such  again  was  his  saying,  which  he  profoundly 
meant,  "Sooner  or  later,  the  God  who  directs  the  battle 
will  cast  his  iron  dice."  Such  was  his  original  objection 
to  Germany  acquiring  colonies,  that  she  already  had  "too 
much  hay  on  the  fork."  But  these  and  other  phrases  of 
his  were  not  "wind  on  the  wold,"  as  the  phrases  of  politi- 
cians are  too  apt  to  be.  They  came  glowingly  out  of  a 
masterful  nature,  and  they  meant  doing  things.  Bismarck 
measured  consequences,  and  he  looked  facts  in  the  face,  in 
a  way  that  his  successors  had  a  fatal  habit  of  failing  to  do. 

He  knew  well  that  his  defiance  of  the  Chambers  involved 
the  suspension  of  the  constitution  and  a  period  of  dictator 
ship.  He  told  the  King  so  in  advance.  It  was,  he  said,  a 
question  "of  monarchical  rule  or  parliamentary  govern- 
ment, and  the  latter  must  be  avoided  at  all  costs."  He 
related  in  an  interesting  passage  of  his  Reflections  and 
Reminiscences  how  he  pursued  King  William  when  he  was 
in  a  mood  of  depression,  and  braced  him  up  to  doing  the 
thing  of  which  he  was  afraid.  "I  can  see  well  where  alF 
this  will  end,"  said  William ;  "over  there,  in  front  of  the 
Opera  House,  under  my  windows,  they  will  cut  off  your  head, 
and  mine  a  little  afterwards."  "I  answered  with  the  short 
remark,  'et  apres,  sire?'  'Apres,  indeed,  we  shall  be  dead/ 
'Yes/  I  continued,  'then  we  shall  be  dead,  but  we  must  all 
die  sooner  or  later,  and  can  we  perish  more  honourably? — 
I,  like  Lord  Strafford,  your  Majesty  like  Charles  I.  Your 
Majesty  must  not  think  of  Louis  XVI.  He  lived  and  died 
in  a  condition  of  mental  weakness,  and  does  not  present  a 
heroic  figure  in  history.  Charles  I.,  on  the  other  hand,  will 
always  remain  a  heroic  historical  character,  for,  after 


208     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

drawing  his  sword  for  his  rights  and  losing  the  battle,  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  confirm  his  royal  intent  with  his  blood." 

There  likewise  spoke  the  man  of  ruthless  purpose,  who 
did  not  shrink  from  consequences,  but  was  prepared  to 
wrestle  with  circumstance  and  force  it  to  go  with  him. 
Throughout  his  political  career  Bismarck  held  the  same 
contemptuous  opinion  of  popular  wishes  and  parliamentary 
criticism.  His  successor  in  the  German  Chancellorship, 
Prince  von  Billow,  truly  says  of  him:  "He  held  the  reins 
of  government  with  such  an  iron  grip  that  he  never  ran 
any  risk  of  letting  the  least  scrap  of  power  slip  into  the 
hands  of  Parliament  through  the  influence  he  conceded  to 
a  majority,  when  he  happened  to  find  one  at  his  disposal. 
Above  all,  he  never  dreamt  of  considering  the  wishes  of  a 
majority  unless  they  tallied  with  his  own.  He  made  use 
of  existing  majorities,  but  he  never  let  them  make  use  of 
him/'  The  army  schemes  were  therefore  carried  out  in 
their  entirety,  in  defiance  of  the  Lower  House ;  money  was 
spent  without  having  been  voted ;  and  critics  of  these  arbi- 
trary actions  were  suppressed,  or  expelled  from  office,  or 
disregarded,  according  to  whether  Bismarck  thought  it 
expedient  to  strike  back  or  let  them  whistle  down  the  wind. 

Yet,  beneath  all  Bismarck's  smashing  determination, 
there  was  always  a  calculating  prudence.  He  measured 
the  dangers  and  provided  against  them.  His  peace  was 
haunted  by  two  fears :  the  fear  of  a  coalition  of  continental 
Powers — against  Prussia  before  1871,  against  Germany 
after  that  date — and  the  fear  of  Social  Democracy  within 
his  own  country. 

He  confessed  that  "the  idea  of  coalitions  gave  me  night- 
mares," and  he  shaped  his  foreign  policy  skilfully  to 
avoid  them.  That  was  the  reason  why,  having  cunningly 
inveigled  Austria  into  war  in  1866,  and  the  Prussian  army 
having  defeated  its  enemy  at  Koniggratz  (Sadowa),  he 
stoutly  opposed  an  advance  upon  Vienna  or  the  imposition 
of  humiliating  terms  upon  Austria.  He  desired  a  speedy 
peace  and  a  workable  arrangement  with  the  Hapsburg 
Empire,  ripening  into  an  alliance  after  Prussia  had  attained 
her  ambition  by  uniting  Germany  under  her  domination. 
After  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  Bismarck  sought  to  make 
Germany  secure  by  the  League  of  the  Three  Emperors  of 
Germany,  Austria  and  Russia  (1872)  ;  and  when  this 
friendly  grouping  went  to  pieces  in  consequence  of  the 


BISMARCK  209 

diverse  interests  of  Russia  and  Austria  in  the  Balkans,  Bis- 
marck replaced  it  by  the  Triple  Alliance  of  Germany,  Aus- 
tria and  Italy  (1882). 

Bismarck  was  frequently  arrogant  in  tone,  as  he  was 
always  in  temper,  and  he  no  more  scrupled  to  attain  his 
ends  by  diplomatic  cheating  than  Dickens'  Artful  Dodger 
objected  to  picking  pockets — as  was  evidenced  by  his  flag- 
rant tricking  of  Lord  Granville  in  reference  to  New  Guinea 
in  1884.  But  he  could  always  hold  his  natural  arrogance 
in  restraint  and  simulate  a  conciliatory  and  genial  spirit 
when  it  was  needful  to  allay  suspicion  or  turn  the  edge  of 
a  genuine  danger.  Bismarck  never  blundered  into  a  war 
or  caused  offence  when  it  was  expedient  to  maintain  a 
friendship.  The  wars  which  he  made  were  coolly  calculated 
to  achieve  set  purposes,  and  he  once  confessed  that  he  had 
a  fear  of  even  victorious  wars,  because  "we  cannot  see  the 
cards  held  by  Providence." 

His  fear  of  Social  Democracy  within  Germany  was  no 
less  great  than  his  other  nightmare;  but  he  had  less  suc- 
cess in  coping  with  it,  because  it  was  in  fact  a  force  against 
which  his  weapons  had  no  more  effect  than  sword-cuts  in 
water.  His  resort  to  methods  of  suppression,  by  imprison- 
ing such  leaders  as  Bebel  and  Liebknecht,  and  by  prevent- 
ing the  publication  of  Socialist  books  and  newspapers,  had 
the  effect  of  driving  into  the  Socialist  party  many  thousands 
of  liberal  Germans,  who  were  less  influenced  by  the  econo- 
mic doctrines  of  Karl  Marx  than  by  resentment  against  the 
Chancellor's  blood  and  iron  policy.  The  consequence  was 
that  the  Socialist  party  absorbed  the  greater  part  of  the 
Radical  element  in  German  politics,  and  increased  its  repre- 
sentation in  the  Reichstag  until  it  became  the  largest  party 
there.  Bismarck  then  essayed  to  sap  the  influence  of  the 
Socialist  leaders  by  a  programme  of  social  legislation.  Laws 
providing  for  insurance  against  illness,  accidents,  old  age, 
and  industrial  incapacity  were  enacted.  "Social  oil,"  as  he 
put  it,  was  to  make  the  wheels  run  easily,  and  the  Social 
Democrats  were  to  be  dished.  The  reforms  were  valuable 
in  themselves,  and  did  much  to  improve  conditions  of  life 
in  industrial  Germany,  but  they  did  not  and  could  not 
achieve  their  principal  purpose. 

The  idea  at  the  root  of  Bismarck's  scorn  of  parliamentary 
government  was  that  the  state — by  which  he  meant  the 
sovereign  and  the  government,  wielding  the  executive  power 


210     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

of  the  nation — was  an  entity  superior  to  the  people.  That 
is  the  very  antithesis  of  the  democratic  idea  of  the  state. 
The  democratic  state  is  a  commonwealth,  a  free  community 
of  people  united  under  a  government  of  their  own  choosing 
for  the  protection  of  the  welfare  of  each  by  means  of  the 
strength  of  all.  It  may  be  that  no  democratic  government 
has  yet  done  all  that  should  be  done  to  realise  this  ideal,  not 
even  in  countries  where  enfranchised  democracies  have 
longest  had  opportunities.  Such  peoples  must  blame  their 
own  incapacity,  their  own  inertia,  perhaps  also  the  stubborn 
pressure  of  forces  which  it  is  hard  to  control,  for  their  par- 
tial failure.  But  the  Bismarckian  conception  admitted  no 
yielding  to  popular  desires.  The  palliation  of  discontents 
was  but  a  device  for  maintaining  the  supremacy  of  the  self- 
centred  state.  The  ruler  and  his  ministers,  with  the  army 
to  enforce  their  will  and  a  well-trained  bureaucracy  to 
execute  it,  stood  over  the  people  and  directed  their  destiny 
with  majestic  superiority  and  inscrutable  purpose.  The 
great  war,  while  it  damaged  and  humiliated  Germany,  at 
all  events  performed  for  her  this  great  service:  that  it 
destroyed  the  monstrous  Leviathan  which  Bismarck  created, 
and  left  her  people  free  to  build  a  state  wherein  they  and 
their  wishes  should  prevail. 

Many  great  errors  in  politics  are  perversions  of  truths ; 
and  the  whole  blood  and  iron  policy,  which  Bismarck 
enunciated,  and  which  a  generation  of  Germans  bred  in  his 
school  and  inspired  by  his  policy  expanded  into  a  code,  is 
a  pernicious  perversion  of  a  very  necessary  truth.  A  state, 
no  matter  of  what  kind — democratic,  aristocratic,  even  Bol- 
shevist— cannot  endure  unless  it  maintain  the  strength  to 
resist  decay.  It  may  be  destroyed  by  enemies  from  with- 
out, or  it  may  collapse  from  internal  disruption,  or  from 
corruption.  The  law  that  life  is  the  sum  of  the  forces  which 
resist  death  applies  to  states  as  well  as  to  men.  A  state 
must,  therefore,  perforce  maintain  the  organised  power  to 
enable  it  to  persist.  Otherwise  it  will  inevitably  perish. 
That  is  so  obviously  true  that  it  ought  not  to  require  stat- 
ing; but  political  experience  shows  that  it  does,  in  fact, 
require  reiterating  very  frequently.  Bismarck  was  on  sound 
ground  when  he  said  in  1888  that  the  geographical  position 
of  Germany,  lying  in  the  centre  of  Europe,  liable  to  be 
attacked  an  all  sides,  compelled  her  to  make  great  exertions 
to  protect  herself.  In  another  of  those  striking  phrases 


BISMARCK  211 

with  which  he  so  often  brought  his  thought  to  a  focus,  he 
said:  "God  has  put  us  in  a  situation  in  which  our  neigh- 
bours will  not  allow  us  to  fall  into  indolence  or  apathy ;  the 
pike  in  the  European  fishpond  prevent  us  from  becoming 
carp." 

But  by  a  perversion  of  the  truth  Germany  twisted  this 
necessity  for  defensive  vigilance,  born  of  her  situation, 
into  a  glorification  of  war  for  its  own  sake.  Whenever  efforts 
were  made  to  reduce  armaments  and  to  provide  for  a  more 
rational  mode  of  settling  international  disputes  than  by 
resort  to  the  sword,  Germany  persistently  blocked  the  way. 
She  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  effort  honestly  made 
by  the  Campbell-Bannerman  government  in  England  to 
restrict  the  building  of  warships.  The  entire  nation  thought 
of  the  future  as  red.  War,  and  the  prognostics  of  German 
victory,  which  was  to  be  the  inevitable  consequence  of  war, 
were  blazoned  across  her  sky.  The  hypnotic  condition,  we 
are  told  by  physiologists,  is  caused  by  paralysis  of  the  optic 
nerve  induced  by  fixing  the  vision  on  a  dazzling  point. 
Germany  was  dazzled  and  hypnotised  by  a  mountebank  "in 
shining  armour,"  who  spouted  mock  heroics  with  a  gusto 
only  equalled  by  the  haste  with  which  he  made  his  exit 
from  the  country  when  the  delusion  was  dispelled  and  there 
was  danger  of  the  people  calling  for  vengeance. 

Germany  was  also  persuaded  by  an  influential  school  of 
writers  that  war  is  to  be  regarded  as  in  itself  morally  desir- 
able, and  that  it  elevates  the  moral  tone  of  a  nation.  Moltke 
pronounced  that  "war  is  an  essential  element  in  God's 
scheme  of  the  world,"  and  General  von  Bernhardi  wrote  that, 
so  far  from  being  a  curse,  it  is  "the  greatest  factor  in  the 
furtherance  of  culture  and  power."  The  two  chapters 
headed  "The  Right  to  Make  War"  and  "The  Duty  to  Make 
War,"  in  that  author's  book,  Germany  and  the  Next  War, 
are  a  sustained  argument,  buttressed  by  quotations  from 
German  philosophers  and  statesmen,  in  support  of  the  gran- 
deur, the  glory  and  the  necessity  of  war.  The  touchstone 
is  not  justice,  nor  righteousness,  nor  defence,  but  expedi- 
ency. "Under  certain  circumstances,  it  is  the  moral  and 
political  duty  of  the  state  to  employ  war  as  a  political  means. 
So  long  as  all  human  progress  and  all  natural  development 
are  based  on  the  law  of  conflict,  it  is  necessary  to  engage 
in  such  conflict  under  the  most  favourable  circumstances." 

This  is  the  logical  extension  of  the  policy  of  blood  and 


212     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

iron;  and  it  was  the  belligerent  condition  of  mind  in  the 
German  people  that  made  them,  in  the  years  before  1914, 
the  obstacle  to  every  attempt  to  reduce  armaments  and 
provide  machinery  for  settling  disputes  by  arbitration. 
Germany  set  the  pace,  contemptuously  threatening  small 
nations  with  extinction  and  larger  ones  with  the  dire  penal- 
ties of  defeat,  so  that  all  Europe  had  to  wear  armour 
beneath  its  merchant's  jacket.  But  blood  and  iron  are  not 
so  wholesome  a  compound  for  making  bread  for  those  who 
have  to  eat  it  in  sorrow  as  they  seemed  when  it  was  con- 
fidently supposed  that  they  would  be  food  for  those  whom 
Germany  insisted  on  making  her  enemies. 

It  is,  however,  unfortunately  true  that  Bismarck  is  not  to 
be  regarded  merely  as  a  German  type.  Treitschke,  before  he 
accepted  a  professorship  at  Berlin  and  became  the  academic 
exponent  of  Prussianism,  cherished  an  aspiration  for  the 
success  of  a  democratic  movement  in  Germany.  In  those 
days  (1861) ,  he  observed  that  "it  is  Junkerdom  which  is  the 
Achilles  heel  of  the  north,  just  as  Ultramontanism  is  that 
of  the  south."  The  remark  was  applied  to  Germany,  but 
it  is  relevant  to  Europe  at  large.  Great  Britain  has  her 
tribe  of  Junkers  too,  though  they  would  hate  to  be  known 
by  that  name,  and  France,  where  Bonapartism  is  dead  as 
a  dynastic  principle,  has  never  exorcised  the  spirit  of 
Napoleon.  Bismarck  once  had  his  admirers  among  Eng- 
lishmen. He  stood  for  ideas  which  they  applauded.  A 
military  defeat  does  not  kill  ideas,  and  experience  shows 
that  the  lesson  that  "the  strongest  feet  may  slip  in  blood" 
is  all  too  soon  forgotten.  It  is  not  only  in  Germany  that 
it  will  be  salutary  to  watch  for  the  reappearance  of  Jun- 
kerdom, with  its  anti-social  bias  and  its  insolent  scorn  of 
ethical  standards.  Making  the  world  safe  for  democracy 
does  not  mean  merely  beating  foreign  enemies  of  demo- 
cratic government;  it  means  also  defeating  such  enemies 
wherever  they  may  appear. 

BJsmarck  performed  a  great  service  for  Germany  in 
effecting  her  union,  but  an  ill  service  for  her  by  Prussian- 
ising the  entire  country  and  converting  it  into  "an  arsenal, 
a  stock-exchange,  a  mad  house  and  a  monster  hotel."  He 
also  performed  an  ill  service  for  Europe  by  pursuing  poli- 
tical methods  which  lowered  the  tone  of  international  inter- 
course, made  threats  and  bad  faith  the  current  coin  of 
diplomacy,  and  elevated  brute  force  into  a  principle.  Down 


BISMARCK  213 

to  the  time  of  his  dismissal  from  office  by  the  young  Kaiser 
William  II.,  in  1890,  he  held  to  the  same  view  of  states- 
manship. In  the  very  interesting  and  circumstantial 
account  of  the  dismissal  which  William  wrote  to  the  Aus- 
trian Emperor  Francis  Joseph,  and  which  was  found  in  the 
Archives  at  Vienna  when  the  Hapsburg  throne  was  over- 
turned, the  old  Chancellor  is  alleged  to  have  insisted  that 
industrial  upheavals  such  as  were  then  disturbing  Germany 
"must  be  checked  and  cured  only  by  blood  and  iron — that 
is  to  say,  with  cartridges  and  repeating  rifles."  His  policy 
of  "social  oil"  had  riot  proved  efficacious,  and  he  would  have 
resorted  to  methods  which  were  more  in  accord  with  his 
real  conception  of  the  right  way  to  govern  men.  He  would 
have  let  the  Socialists  stir  up  riots,  and  then  "shoot  into 
it  all  without  any  nonsense,  and  let  the  cannon  and  rifles 
play;"  he  would  answer  petitions  "with  quick-firers  and 
cartridges ;"  "it  must  come  to  shooting  in  the  end,  and  there- 
fore the  sooner  the  better." 

There  was  greatness  in  the  man,  and  he  had  few  com- 
peers as  a  master  of  practical  statecraft.  But  it  was  the 
greatness  of  force  and  calculating  cleverness,  and  was 
devoid  of  nobility.  The  lesser  men  who  sat  in  his  place 
when  he  was  ejected,  lacking  his  prudence  while  they 
thought  they  were  pursuing  his  tradition,  plunged  their 
country  at  length  into  crime  and  disaster. 


Bismarck's  official  biographer,  Busch,  has  put  the  best 
part  of  his  material  into  his  book,  Bismarck:  Some  Secret 
Pages  of  His  History,  which  has  been  translated  into  Eng- 
lish. S.  Whitman's  Personal  Reminiscences  of  Prince 
Bismarck  has  some  very  good  pages.  A  serviceable  his- 
tory of  Prussia,  including  chapters  on  Bismarck's  period, 
is  Marriott  and  Grant  Robertson's  The  Evolution  of  Prus- 
sia. W.  H.  Dawson's  The  Evolution  of  Modern  Germany 
is  a  work  of  solid  value. 


A  prince  should  know  how  to  assume  the  nature  of  both 
the  fox  and  the  lion,  for  the  lion  cannot  defend  himself 
against  snares,  nor  the  fox  against  wolves.  A  prudent  lord 
neither  should  nor  could  observe  faith,  when  such  obser- 
vance might  be  to  his  injury,  and  when  the  motives  that 


214     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

caused  him  to  promise  it  are  at  an  end.  Were  all  men 
good,  this  precept  would  not  be  good;  but,  since  men  are 
bad,  and  would  not  keep  faith  with  you,  you  are  not  bound 
to  keep  faith  ^vith  them. — Macchiavelli. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  lie  deliberately  or  to  practice 
crafty  deception.  A  fine  frankness  has  everywhere  been 
the  characteristic  of  great  statesmen.  Subterfuges  and 
duplicity  mark  the  petty  spirit  of  diplomacy. — F.  von  Bern- 
hardi. 

The  essence  of  monarchy  is  the  idea  that  nothing  can 
be  done  contrary  to  the  will  of  the  monarch.  That  is  the 
minimum  of  monarchical  power. — Treitschke. 

Even  the  word  mon-archy  signifies  rule  by  one. — Hous- 
ton Stewart  Chamberlain. 

Louis  XIV.  did  not  say  "1'etat,  c'est  moi."  Those  words, 
I  believe,  were  invented  by  Voltaire,  but  they  are  profoundly 
true. — Lord  Acton. 

When  a  list  of  Cabinet  Ministers  was  prepared  in  Prus- 
sia in  1848,  during  the  struggle  between  the  King  and  the 
Legislature,  Frederick  William  IV.  wrote  in  the  margin, 
opposite  Bismarck's  name,  "Only  to  be  employed  when  the 
bayonet  governs  unrestricted." — Bismarck's  Reflections  and 
Reminiscences." 

The  true  character  of  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty  is  deter- 
mined by  that  peculiar  institution  of  Prussia,  the  Junker 
class.  It  is  a  phenomenon  to  which  no  parallel  exists  in 
Europe,  a  genuine  aristocratic  military  caste.  It  is  an 
order  of  men  knit  together  by  all  the  ties  of  family  pride 
and  interest;  with  an  historic  social  influence;  with  a  high 
education  and  a  strong  nature  of  a  special  sort ;  rich  enough 
to  have  local  power  both  in  town  and  country,  and  yet 
depending  for  existence  on  the  throne — and  with  all  this 
devoted  passionately,  necessarily,  to  war. — Frederic  Harri- 
son. 

The  year  1848  saw  the  culmination  of  a  long  process  of 
democratic  advance ;  during  its  course  no  less  than  fifteen 
revolutions  shook  the  aristocratic  thrones  of  the  continent 
to  their  very  foundations.  .  .  .  The  rising  democracies, 
deluded  and  misled  by  blind  guides  and  false  prophets, 
blundered  so  inevitably  into  chaos  and  contention  that  only 
men  of  blood  and  iron  like  Bismarck,  men  of  craft  like 
Cavour,  men  of  destiny  like  Napoleon,  could  bring  back 
order  and  secure  rational  progress. — J.  F.  Hearnshaiv. 


BISMARCK  215 

The  main  problem  for  the  twentieth  century  will  be  how 
— while  preserving  the  democratic  form  of  government — 
so  to  rein  it  in  and  coerce  its  eccentricities  of  orbit  that  it 
shall  not  only  be  a  means  of  morality  but  an  efficient  instru- 
ment of  government  as  well. — J.  B.  Crozier. 

I  never  took  the  reproach  of  lack  of  political  principle 
tragically ;  I  have  even,  at  times,  felt  it  to  savour  of  praise, 
for  I  saw  in  it  appreciation  of  the  fact  that  I  was  guided 
by  reasons  of  state.  The  political  principles  which  a  Minis- 
ter has  to  live  up  to  are  very  different  in  character  from 
the  principles  recognised  by  a  party  man ;  they  belong  to 
the  sphere  of  state  policy,  not  of  party  politics. — Prince 
von  Billow. 

"Political  questions  are  question  of  power,"  was  Bis- 
marck's fixed  principle,  and  he  was  never  wanting  in  fidelity 
to  it.  All  Bismarck's  impatience  with  theory,  all  his  con- 
tempt for  the  man  of  thought  and  contemplation,  and  all 
his  rough-riding  over  some  of  the  most  treasured  traditions 
of  political  and  economic  thought  were  but  different  expres- 
sions of  the  same  absorbing  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  resolute 
action. — *W.  H.  Dawson. 

This  wonderful  Kultur,  which  people  blind  to  its  mean- 
ing have  talked  so  much  about,  does  not  mean  civilisation 
in  the  least.  Civilisation  consists  of  delicacy  and  gentle- 
ness of  behaviour,  and  refinement  of  mind.  Kultur  implies 
state  direction,  to  the  end  that  man  and  the  people  shall 
be  assimilated  into  it,  incorporated  within  it,  and  shaped 
to  serve  its  ends,  that  they  may  share  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  its  purpose. — Maurice  Millioud. 


GAMBETTA. 


[Page  216 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
GAMBETTA  AND   REPUBLICANISM. 


FRANCE  between  1815  and  1875  was  continually  en- 
gaged in  jumping  out  of  the  frying  pan  into  the 
fire  and  back  again.  After  the  fall  of  the  Napo- 
leonic Empire,  the  Bourbon  dynasty,  dethroned  at 
the  Revolution,  was  restored  to  power,  and  commenced  by 
promises  of  constitutional  rule.  Louis  XVIII.  (1815- 
1824)  observed  fairly  well  the  charter  which  he  published 
at  his  accession,  but  his  brother  Charles  X.  (1824-1830), 
allowed  himself  to  be  impelled  by  the  aristocratic  and 
clerical  party  into  a  reversion  to  sovereignty  based  upon 
principles  such  as  held  sway  before  the  great  revolution. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington,  perceiving  that  this  way  lay  dis- 
aster, declared  that  "there  is  no  such  thing  as  political 
experience;  with  the  warning  of  James  II.  before  him, 
Charles  X.  was  setting  up  a  government  by  priests,  through 
priests,  for  priests."  The  revolution  of  1830  drove  the  last 
of  the  legitimate  line  into  exile,  and  King  Louis  Philippe, 
of  the  House  of  Orleans,  was  set  up  as  a  constitutional 
sovereign,  supported  principally  by  the  middle  class. 

Another  revolution,  with  an  ultra-democratic  impulse, 
toppled  over  the  throne  of  Louis  Philippe  in  1848,  and 
established  a  Republic  under  the  guidance  of  the  Prince- 
President  Louis  Napoleon.  That  clever  adventurer,  in 
1852,  by  a  coup  d'etat,  converted  the  Republic  into  an  Em- 
pire. Seeing  that  his  Imperialism  was  growing  unpopular, 
Napoleon  III.  (after  1860)  moulted  the  feathers  of  his  auto- 
cracy and  professed  that  his  was  a  Liberal  Empire.  Shel- 
ley's image  of  the  eagle  and  the  serpent  "wreathed  in 
flight"  was  realised  in  1870,  when  the  reptile 

"who  did  ever  seek 
Upon  his  enemy's  heart  a  mortal  wound  to  wreak," 

brought  him  crashing  to  the  ground.     Napoleon  III.  crept 
away  to  die,  and  a  Provisional  Government  proclaimed  a 

217 


218     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

Republic.  But  a  National  Assembly  elected  in  1871  refused 
to  ratify  this  decision,  its  majority  being  monarchical. 
The  Assembly  was  chiefly  concerned,  for  the  time,  to  make 
peace  and  get  the  Prussians  out  of  the  country.  Thiers, 
therefore,  who  was  trusted  because  he  had  consistently 
opposed  the  warlike  policy  of  Napoleon  III.,  was  chosen, 
not  President  of  the  Republic,  but  "head  of  the  executive 
power,"  until  the  nation  decided  what  the  future  form  of 
government  should  be. 

In  Paris,  however,  an  insurrection  against  the  govern- 
ment of  France  was  promoted  by  a  revolutionary  party 
composed  chiefly  of  inhabitants  of  the  eastern  suburbs  of 
the  capital.  They  brought  about  the  election  of  a  General 
Council  of  the  Commune,  which  put  forward  a  programme 
of  defiance  of  the  Government,  advocating  the  establish- 
ment of  self-governing  communes  throughout  the  country. 
The  communists,  therefore,  desired  the  destruction  of  the 
centralised  form  of  government  which  had  been  charac- 
teristic of  France  since  the  re-organisation  of  the  country 
by  Napoleon,  and  the  substitution  for  it  of  federated  com- 
munes. The  General  Council  of  the  Commune  of  Paris 
shared  the  government  of  the  city  with  a  Central  Com- 
mittee, which  stood  for  republican  principles  but  desired 
to  keep  open  negotiations  with  the  government  of  France. 
The  Communists  spoke  of  the  National  Assembly  and  its 
executive  as  "the  Versailles  Government,"  refusing  to  recog- 
nise its  authority.  The  Commune  maintained  itself  by  very 
drastic  means.  Its  forces  massacred  a  party  of  the  suppor- 
ters of  the  government  who  ventured  to  hold  a  demonstra- 
tion, and  many  prisoners  were  shot.  At  length,  in  May, 
1871 — after  the  Commune  had  held  sway  for  about  two 
months — the  national  troops  besieged  Paris,  forced  an 
entrance,  and  suppressed  the  insurrection  by  means  of 
desperate  street  fighting.  In  one  week  there  was  more 
bloodshed  and  destruction  in  Paris,  by  Frenchmen  fighting 
against  Frenchmen,  than  the  Prussians  had  perpetrated 
during  their  siege  and  bombardment,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
7500  prisoners  who  were  transported  to  New  Caledonia 
for  their  share  in  the  Commune. 

The  authority  of  the  national  government  was  asserted 
by  the  capture  of  Paris,  and,  the  Prussians  having  with- 
drawn on  their  terms  being  accepted,  the  National  Assem- 
bly speedily  transferred  itself  to  the  capital.  The  Assembly 


GAMBETTA  219 

retained  Thiers  as  head  of  the  Government,  and  conferred 
upon  him  the  title  of  President  of  the  French  Republic, 
though  as  yet  no  constitution  had  been  drawn  up.  Indeed, 
the  majority  which  created  the  title  was  still  monarchist, 
and  negotiations  were  at  this  time  proceeding  for  the 
restoration  of  the  throne. 

This  task,  however,  was  difficult  for  two  reasons.  One 
was  that  the  representative  of  the  legitimate  House,  the 
Comte  de  Chambord,  was  as  much  of  an  absolutist  as  his 
Bourbon  ancestors  had  been,  and  made  no  secret  of  the 
resolve  that  if  he  became  King  he  would  rule  as  they  had 
done.  He  even  declared  that  he  would  reject  the  tricolour, 
regarding  it  as  a  symbol  of  revolution,  and  would  restore 
the  white  flag.  It  was  impossible  to  set  up  the  throne  on 
the  principles  which  the  Comte  de  Chambord  wished  to 
maintain.  It  would  have  provoked  a  fresh  revolution  had 
the  attempt  been  made.  The  second  difficulty  was  that  a 
very  large  element  in  the  nation  demanded  a  republican 
form  of  government,  and  would  be  satisfied  with  nothing 
else.  The  recognised  leader  of  the  republican  party  was 
Leon  Gambetta. 

The  son  of  a  small  provincial  grocer,  Gambetta  was 
educated  for  the  law,  and  early  in  his  career  as  an  advocate 
made  his  mark  by  virtue  of  his  boldness  and  his  striking 
oratorical  gifts.  Square  built,  with  a  huge  head  mounted  on 
heavy  shoulders,  he  was  capable  of  immense  energy. 
Nature  had  endowed  him  with  a  rich,  sonorous  voice,  with 
which  he  could  thrill  a  court,  a  senate,  or  the  largest  crowd. 
Every  gesture  by  which  an  orator  can  make  his  period?, 
impressive  was  at  his  command.  With  his  head  thrown 
back  and  his  whole  powerful  body  quivering  with  emotion, 
as  he  poured  forth  a  fluent  appeal,  flashing  with  apt  meta- 
phors and  striking  phrases,  the  fascination  of  his  presence 
and  speech  was  extraordinarily  great.  He  was  sensitive 
to  beautiful  impressions  derived  from  nature  or  from  works 
of  art.  A  warm-hearted  cordiality,  a  sympathetic  human 
feeling  towards  his  fellows,  radiated  from  him.  His  emotions 
were  deep,  his  affection  expansive  and  warm.  A  man  with 
the  sunshine  in  his  heart,  and,  quickened  by  it,  a  courage 
which  did  not  know  how  to  falter  in  any  extremity:  such 
was  he  who  cried  in  the  bitterest  hour  of  his  country's 
fate,  "Never  has  despair  dared  to  look  me  in  the  face."  In 
much  he  recalls  Danton — in  his  oratorical  genius,  his  emo- 


220     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

tional  force,  his  audacity;  though  he  was  better  favoured 
as  a  man  than  the  bull-necked  Jacobin.  Yet  both  were 
aboundingly  French,  and  can  be  classified  together  without 
doing  violence  to  the  characteristics  of  either. 

From  the  time  when  Gambetta  first  made  a  definite  poli- 
tical impression  his  Republicanism  was  declared.  In  1869 
the  government  of  Napoleon  III.  had  prosecuted  a  group 
of  Republicans  who  had  taken  part  in  a  movement  for 
raising  a  monument  to  Jean  Baudin,  who  had  been  killed 
during  street  fighting  when  Napoleon  carried  out  his  coup 
d'etat  in  December,  1851.  The  story  of  the  trickery  and 
crime  by  which  the  Republic  had  been  converted  into  an 
Empire  at  that  time  was  one  which  Napoleon  III.  could 
not  bear  to  have  retold.  Gambetta  was  counsel  for  one  of 
the  accused,  and  he  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity,  not 
merely  to  defend  his  client — who,  in  fact,  was  convicted — 
but  to  denounce  those  who,  "plunged  in  debt  and  crime," 
had  engineered  the  coup  d'etat.  Gambetta's  speech  was  a 
denunciation  of  the  government  and  a  prediction  of  its 
imminent  fall.  Audacious  words  were  those  with  which 
the  orator  began  his  peroration: — "Listen,  you  who 
for  seventeen  years  have  been  the  absolute  master  of 
France!"  The  day  was  coming,  he  foretold,  "when  the 
country,  having  become  master  of  itself  once  more,  shall 
impose  upon  you  the  great  national  expiation  in  the  name 
of  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity."  At  the  elections  which 
occurred  shortly  after  the  trial,  he  was  returned  to  the 
Chamber,  and  it  was  as  a  Republican  leader  that  he  went  in, 
determined  to  do  his  part  in  demolishing  the  Empire. 

The  Prussians  in  1870  very  effectually  saved  the  Repub- 
lican party  the  trouble  of  doing  that.  The  Empire  was 
trampled  out  of  being  under  the  boots  of  Moltke's  soldiery 
as  soon  as  Napoleon  III.  capitulated  at  Sedan.  Gambetta 
was  one  of  those  who  in  Paris  proclaimed  a  Republic,  and 
he  threw  his  great  energies  into  organising  the  national 
defence  when  the  defeat  of  the  field  armies  seemed  to  have 
lain  France  prostrate  before  her  most  unmerciful  foe.  His 
exit  from  Paris  in  a  balloon  in  order  that  he  might  marshal 
the  people  of  the  Provinces  in  a  great  national  army  was 
a  brave  attempt,  but  it  was  futile,  because  Paris  could  not 
hold  out  long  enough  to  enable  such  an  improvised  force 
to  effect  its  relief.  The  provisional  government  made  terms 
with  the  Prussians.  Gambetta  always  maintained  that  the 


GAMBETTA  221 

defence  should  have  been  continued,  and  that  France  could 
even  then  have  been  saved ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that 
his  optimism  was  well  grounded. 

It  has  been  held  that  Gambetta  was  "the  true  creator 
of  the  Republic."  That  is  an  admirer's  verdict.  If  it  is 
not  true  of  him  it  is  not  true  of  any  man.  But  in  truth 
the  Republic  was  not  the  creation  of  any  one  individual, 
nor  even  of  the  Republican  party.  Thiers,  who  was  not  a 
Republican  by  conviction,  pointed  out  that  a  Republican 
form  of  government  was  inevitable,  because  "those  parties 
who  want  a  monarchy  do  not  want  the  same  monarchy." 
There  were  three  monarchical  parties — Legitimists,  Orlean- 
ists,  and  Bonapartists — but  there  could  be  only  one  throne. 
In  the  circumstances,  as  Thiers  said,  a  Republic  was  "the 
form  of  government  which  divides  us  least."  It  is  not  clear 
that  a  majority  of  the  French  nation  was  Republican.  The 
National  Assembly  elected  in  1871  contained  a  majority  of 
monarchists,  and  it  seems  extremely  probable  that  if  there 
had  been  one  candidate  for  the  throne  who  commanded  the 
confidence  of  the  nation,  Gambetta's  eloquence  would  have 
been  spent  in  vain  in  the  service  of  the  cause  of  which  he 
was  the  champion. 

But  the  disunity  of  the  monarchical  forces,  and  especi- 
ally the  uncompromising  Bourbonism  of  the  Comte  de 
Chambord,  provided  Gambetta  with  an  opportunity.  He 
flew  about  the  country  like  summer  lightning  about  the  sky : 
fiery,  fluent  and  tireless.  He  called  himself  the  commercial 
traveller  of  democracy,  but  the  phrase  does  scant  justice 
to  his  extraordinary  power  of  persuasion.  Each  of  his 
many  speeches  has  been  said  to  have  been  an  event.  There 
is  nothing  quite  like  this  campaign  of  eloquence  in  the  his- 
tory of  Europe.  The  reported  speeches,  read  in  cold  type, 
give  but  a  pale  impression  of  the  effect  which  they  made 
at  the  time,  for  they  owed  their  impressiveness  greatly  to 
the  personal  magnetism  of  the  man,  to  the  voice  which 
uttered  them  and  the  gestures  which  made  them  smite  like 
blows. 

In  the  years  between  the  suppression  of  the  Commune 
and  the  proclamation  of  the  Republic  as  the  legalised 
government  of  France,  the  decision  hung  in  the  balance. 
The  monarchical  majority  in  the  Assembly,  in  conferring 
upon  Thiers  the  title  of  President  of  the  Republic,  had 
never  intended  that  to  be  a  final  settlement.  It  was  a  tern- 


222     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

porary  expedient  until  the  throne  could  be  filled.  In  1873 
it  seemed  likely  that  the  Comte  de  Chambord  would  be 
chosen.  But  his  candid  avowal  that  the  white  flag  would 
supplant  the  tricolour  wrecked  the  hopes  of  his  supporters, 
and  neither  the  Orleanists  nor  the  Bonapartists  could 
command  a  majority.  They  could  unite — and  they  did — to 
remove  Thiers  from  the  presidency  and  replace  him  by 
Marshal  McMahon,  who  was  also  a  Monarchist,  but  they 
could  not  agree  upon  a  sovereign  who  would  suit  the  three 
parties. 

France,  therefore,  between  1871  and  1875,  was  in  the 
paradoxical  position  of  having  a  President  without  a  Repub- 
lican constitution,  and  a  monarchical  Assembly  which  could 
not  select  a  monarch.  Gambetta,  the  leader  of  the  Repub- 
licans, skilfully  used  this  division  of  opinion  to  further  his 
cause,  and  he  continually  emphasised  the  insecurity  of  the 
situation.  The  Republican  party  was  strengthened  by 
defections  from  the  three  opposing  parties  of  some  who 
wished  to  end  the  deadlock ;  and  at  length,  in  January,  1875, 
while  the  terms  of  a  constitution  were  being  debated,  the 
Assembly,  by  a  majority  of  only  one  vote,  carried  an  amend- 
ment providing  that  the  head  of  the  state  should  be  the 
President  of  the  Republic.  That  was  the  decisive  vote. 
France,  through  her  deputies,  though  by  the  narrowest  of 
possible  majorities,  had  made  her  final  decision. 

To  this  result  none  had  contributed  so  powerfully  as 
Gambetta,  and  it  was  a  result  which  France  was  content 
to  accept  as  a  way  out  of  an  entanglement.  She  accepted 
it  to  gain  security,  settlement  and  quiet ;  and  for  the  same 
reason  she  never  gave  encouragement  to  any  of  the  several 
monarchical  conspiracies  which  were  formulated  after 
1875,  to  promote  Royalist  claims.  The  danger  was  very 
serious  in  1877,  when  the  President,  McMahon,  was  induced 
by  the  Monarchists  to  dissolve  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
which  had  passed  a  resolution  condemning  the  action  of 
the  clerical  party  in  endeavouring  to  induce  him  to  support 
the  efforts  of  the  Pope  to  re-establish  the  temporal  power. 
The  hope  of  the  Monarchists  now  was  that,  backed  by  the 
full  power  of  the  Church,  they  might  overthrow  the 
Republic. 

Then  the  great  voice  of  Gambetta  sounded  like  a  trum- 
pet in  his  call  to  the  nation  to  resist  a  clerical-monarchist 
reaction.  Then  it  was  that  he  threw  down  the  gage  of 


GAMBETTA  223 

battle  in  sentences  which,  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  saved 
the  Republic  in  1877  and  formed  the  anti-clerical  creed  of 
the  French  Republic  between  that  date  and  the  breaking 
of  the  last  tie  between  Church  and  State  in  1906.  "There 
remains,"  said  Gambetta,  "a  party  which  you  know  well — 
a  party  which  is  the  enemy  of  all  independence,  of  all  en- 
lightenment and  of  all  stability ;  a  party  which  is  the  declared 
enemy  of  all  that 'is  wholesome,  of  all  that  is  beneficent,  in 
the  organisation  of  modern  society.  That  is  your  enemy! 
You  may  name  it  in  a  word — it  is  Clericalism."  The 
bishops  and  clergy  of  France  fought  hard  for  Monarchism 
in  France  in  that  bitter  campaign  of  1877.  They  gambled 
on  a  throw,  and  they  lost  irretrievably,  bequeathing  for 
the  Church  a  legacy  of  intense  Republican  hatred  and 
distrust.  The  elections  gave  a  sweeping  majority  to  Gam- 
betta's  party,  and  at  length  established  the  Republic  on  .a 
rigid  basis  of  national  sanction. 

Gambetta's  career  as  a  Minister  in  France  is  of  less 
importance  than  his  achievements  as  the  precursor  of  the 
Republic  in  1869,  its  fiery  advocate  and  astute  political 
engineer  between  1870  and  1875,  and  its  passionate  defen- 
der in  1877.  He  was  to  France  what  Mazzini  would  fain 
have  been  to  Italy.  Circumstances  favoured  him  whilst  they 
fought  against  the  Italian,  who,  lacking  Gambetta's  vivid- 
ness of  personality  and  tempestuous  energy,  excelled  him 
in  philosophical  depth  and  in  purity  of  soul.  Gambetta's 
work  was  done  in  1877.  His  tragic  end,  in  1882,  from  a 
revolver  bullet  which  struck  him  while  he  was  wrenching 
the  weapon  from  the  hand  of  a  woman,  came  at  a  time 
when  he  was  out  of  political  favour.  But  the  attempt  made 
by  the  monarchist-clericals  to  gain  their  ends  by  another 
plot  after  his  death  was  a  tribute  to  his  power,  whilst  its 
ludicrous  failure  was  a  testimony  to  the  stability  of  his 
work. 

The  French  Monarchy  may  be  taken  to  have  been  finally 
extinguished  in  1875.  The  last  chance  of  its  revival 
expired  in  1872,  when  the  Comte  de  Chambord  repeated 
an  announcement  which  he  had  previously  made,  that  if 
he  became  king  he  would  bring  to  the  throne  his  principles 
and  his  flag.  "Nothing  will  shake  my  resolution,"  he  said, 
"nothing  will  weary  my  patience;  and  nobody,  under  any 
pretext,  will  obtain  my  consent  to  becoming  the  legitimate 
king  of  the  Revolution."  That  was  perfectly  honourable 


224     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

and  frank,  but  it  made  the  monarchy  impossible.  An 
institution  which  cannot  adapt  itself  to  changed  circum- 
stances is  doomed  beyond  redemption.  There  was  no  place 
in  France  after  1870  for  a  monarchy  of  the  pattern  of  that 
before  1789. 

The  decision  which  Gambetta  forced,  and  the  form  of 
government  which  he  successfully  defended,  were  histori- 
cally justifiable  and  politically  right.  France  had  experi- 
mented with  constitutions  till  she  was  tired  of  change. 
The  Republic  gave  her  a  democratic  governing  machine 
under  a  President  clothed  with  the  powers  of  a  constitu- 
tional sovereign,  and  it  suited  the  majority  of  her  people. 
But  she  did  not  jettison  the  monarchy  without  much  hesita- 
tion and  regret — a  thing  easy  to  understand  in  a  people  so 
historically-minded  as  the  French  are. 

For  a  constitutional  monarchy  offers  some  features  of 
advantage  which  a  Republic  does  not  possess.  It  carries 
forward  a  tradition,  vested  in  a  family.  An  institution 
which  has  endured  for  a  thousand  years,  and  round  which 
the  entire  history  nf  a  nation  centres,  is  a  part  of  its  life 
which  the  nation  will  not  consent  to  destroy  unless  it  stands 
in  the  way  of  development  or  thwarts  the  realisation  of  the 
popular  will.  The  vitality  of  such  an  institution,  the  touch- 
stone of  its  right  to  endure,  is  its  capacity  for  adaptation. 
If  it  cannot  fit  itself  to  the  requirements  of  a  changing 
world  it  will  die,  and  should.  But  otherwise  it  is  all  the 
better,  and  commands  all  the  greater  respect,  for  having 
its  roots  deep  in  the  soil  of  the  nation's  venerable  history. 

The  crazy  superstition  about  royal  blood  being  more 
precious  than  any  other  human  blood  is  unworthy  of  an 
intelligent  age.  It  has  conduced  to  the  intermarriage  of 
members  of  the  royal  families  of  Europe  until  almost  all 
those  which  are  reigning  and  those  which  have  been  ejected 
have  become  in  fact  one  family,  consisting  to  some  extent 
of  undesirables.  Special  statutes  have  been  enacted  which 
hinder  members  of  such  families  from  marrying  outside 
the  royal  group  or  totem.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
public  welfare,  which  is  all  that  matters,  the  important 
thing  is  not  that  a  prince  or  princess  shall  marry  another 
prince  or  princess,  but  that  there  shall  be  a  continuation 
of  the  monarchical  institution.  There  is  surely  some  dig- 
nity and  much  advantage  in  the  maintenance  of  a  line 
connecting  a  nation's  present  with  its  past.  For  a  nation  is 


GAMBETTA  225 

not  a  casual  and  transitory  aggregate  of  human  beings,  but 
a  commonwealth  with  proud  traditions,  stretching  back  to 
the  dawn  of  recorded  time.  To  many  it  is  a  majestic  cir- 
cumstance that  the  titular  head  of  such  a  nation  should  be 
one  of  a  long  line,  traceable  through  the  centuries  to  a  twi- 
light of  tradition,  and  numbering  captains  and  statesmen 
who  have  been  the  architects  of  a  great  destiny.  The  mind 
which  is  not  touched  by  such  a  fact  surely  lacks  imagina- 
tion. 

A  practical  political  point  is  that  constitutional  mon- 
archy avoids  the  turmoil  of  election,  involving  the  division 
of  the  nation  into  supporters  and  opponents  of  the  head  of 
the  state.  This  may  not  in  itself  be  a  very  great  considera- 
tion, but  partisanship  in  respect  to  the  head  of  the  state 
can  never  contribute  to  the  public  security  and  well  being. 
It  entails  the  clash  of  party  interests  and  the  brawling 
rancour  of  animosity  affecting  the  choice  of  the  one  man 
in  the  state  who  should  be  above  and  apart  from  such 
elements.  One  of  the  great  advantages  of  the  kingship  is 
that  the  office  is  superior  to  all  parties,  and  is  remote  from 
rival  interests.  The  sovereign  is  consequently  able  to  bring 
to  bear  upon  any  situation  a  cool  and  dispassionate  judg- 
ment. He  has  not  to  be  thinking  of  the  effect  of  what  he 
does  upon  the.  electoral  prospects  of  this  party  or  that. 
Being  detached  from  the  strife  and  trusted  by  all,  he  can 
advise  his  advisers  and  listen  to  their  adversaries  in  an 
atmosphere  of  serene  and  splendid  impartiality. 

To  these  points  it  may  reasonably  enough  be  urged  that 
monarchy  precludes  the  attainment  of  the  highest  office  in 
the  state  by  any  citizen  in  it  whom  his  fellow  citizens  con- 
sider fit  to  fill  it,  and  is  therefore  undemocratic  in  principle. 
That  is  undeniably  true;  but  then,  if  the  majority  of  the 
people  in  the  State  prefer  that  its  head  shall  be  a  mona^h, 
that  is  their  choice.  A  constitutional  sovereign  in  a  demo- 
cratic country  is  not  less  the  choice  of  his  people  because 
they  have  not  elected  him.  They  elect  not  to  elect  him. 
The  essential  thing  is  that  the  determination  of  their 
government  shall  be  in  their  own  hands.  The  time  when 
a  king  could  regard  his  country  as  a  personal  possession, 
like  his  watch,  has  gone.  A  monarchy  which  endures 
because  the  people  who  live  under  it  desire  that  it  should 
endure  is  open  to  no  shadow  of  reproach  on  democratic 
grounds. 


226     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

The  argument  is  strongly  urged  by  Mr.  H.  A.  L.  Fisher 
in  his  excellent  book,  The  Republican  Tradition  in  Europe, 
that,  in  a  widely  scattered  group  of  communities  like  the 
British  Commonwealth,  the  personal  nucleus  of  the  sove- 
reign is  a  factor  necessary  to  its  coherency.  If  there  were 
an  elected  President  in  Great  Britain,  he  would  not  com- 
mand the  allegiance  of  the  Dominions,  Crown  Colonies  and 
India.  It  is  a  little  unfortunate  that  the  argument  should 
be  weakened  by  representing  that  these  countries,  "having 
little  ritual  themselves,  are  the  more  fascinated  by  the 
pomp  of  an  ancient  and  dignified  institution  which  they 
have  no  means  of  reproducing  in  their  several  communi- 
ties, but  which  they  regard  as  the  joint  and  several  posses- 
sion of  the  British  race."  Fascination  by  pomp  is  not  a 
species  of  folly  to  which  people  in  Canada,  New  Zea- 
land and  Australia  are  likely  to  fall  victims.  "Let  the 
candied  tongue  lick  absurd  pomp."  Nor  is  it  easy  to  under- 
stand why  those  who  have  little  pomp  of  their  own  would 
be  fascinated  by  pomp  which  they  do  not  see,  except  in 
picture  shows,  where  royal  persons  occasionally  com- 
pete for  interest,  with  only  moderate  success,  against  the 
comedians  and  acrobats  of  the  hour.  Besides,  if  the  domi- 
nions wanted  pomp  they  would  have  pomp,  pomp  being 
the  kind  of  strutting,  upholstered,  dancing-master  business 
that  can  easily  be  had  by  paying  for  it.  Yet  the  argument 
which  Mr.  Fisher  puts  is  a  good  one.  The  sovereignty  is 
a  very  effectual  centre  of  unity,  a  personal  bond,  a  mag- 
netic force  whose  strength  it  would  be  wrong  to  underrate. 


There  is  a  short  biography  of  Gambetta  by  T.  R.  Mar- 
zials,  but  it  is  slight  and  hardly  well  worthy  of  the  subject. 
There  is  no  really  good  political  and  personal  study  of  the 
man  in  English,  and  the  gap  ought  not  to  remain  unfilled. 
An  abundance  of  material  exists  in  French.  The  eleven 
volumes  of  Gambetta's  speeches,  edited  by  Reinach,  are  the 
fundamental  source.  G.  WeilFs  History  of  the  Republican 
Party  in  France  is  an  excellent  book,  but  it  has  not  been 
translated  into  English.  Hanotaux's  Contemporary  France 
gives  the  political  background.  H.  A.  L.  Fisher's  The 
Republican  Tradition  in  Europe  is  of  great  value. 


It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  ruler  of  a  Republic 
which  sprang  from  resistance  to  the  English  King  and  Par- 


GAMBETTA  227 

liament  should  exercise  more  arbitrary  power  than  any 
Englishman  since  Oliver  Cromwell,  and  that  many  of  his 
acts  should  be  worthy  of  a  Tudor. — James  Ford  Rhodes. 

A  king  that  would  not  feel  his  crown  too  heavy  for  him 
must  wear  it  every  day ;  but  if  he  thinketh  it  too  light,  he 
knoweth  not  of  what  metal  it  is  made. — Bacon. 

There  are  kings  enough  in  England ;  I  am  nothing  there, 
and  should  only  be  plagued  and  teazed  there  about  that 
damned  House  of  Commons. — George  II. 

Royalty  is  a  government  in  which  the  attention  of  the 
nation  is  concentrated  on  one  person  doing  interesting 
actions.  A  republic  is  a  goverment  in  which  that  attention 
is  divided  between  many  who  are  all  doing  uninteresting 
actions. — Walter  Bagehot. 

A  monarchy  is  the  best  or  worst  of  all  forms  of  state, 
according  to  the  personality  of  the  monarch. — Frederick 
the  Great. 

Ask  nine  Englishmen  out  of  ten  to-day  what  they  con- 
sider to  be  the  pre-eminent  value  of  the  British  monarchy, 
and  they  will  reply  that  the  Crown  keeps  the  Empire 
together.  This  answer  would  not  have  been  given  in  1837, 
nor  yet  in  1850,  but  it  would  certainly  be  given  now. — H. 
A.  L.  Fisher. 

A  king  is  a  thing  men  have  made  for  their  own  selves, 
for  quietness  sake,  just  as  in  a  family  one  man  is  appointed 
to  buy  the  meat. — Selden. 

The  question  between  Monarchy  and  Republicanism  was 
settled  by  our  forefathers  a  good  many  years  ago,  and  I 
see  no  reason  to  unsettle  it. — John  Bright. 

The  Royal  Marriage  Act,  limiting  the  free  choice  of 
English  princes  and  princesses  by  artificial  restrictions,  was 
one  of  the  most  indefensible  statutes  which  Parliament 
ever  passed.  It  put  difficulties,  often  insuperable,  in  the 
way  of  such  alliances  as  had  linked  the  Plantagenets,  the 
Tudors  and  the  Stuarts  to  the  English  people,  and  it  helped 
to  impress  a  foreign  stamp  on  two  generations  of  the  House 
of  Hanover.— G.  W.  E.  Russell. 

The  essence  of  Monarchy  is  the  personification  of  the 
majesty  and  sovereignty  of  the  state  in  an  individual.  It 
differs  from  Theocracy  because  it  attributes  the  right  of 
rule  to  the  monarch  himself,  instead  of  regarding  him  as 
the  representative  of  God,  who  is  the  real  ruler.  It  differs 
from  Republics  with  a  doge  or  president  at  their  head,  in 


228     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

the  fact  that  the  latter  are  compelled  to  regard  themselves 
as  the  servants  or  delegates  either  of  the  aristocratic 
minority  or  of  the  democratic  majority,  whereas  the  mon- 
arch is  not  the  subject  of  these  powers  but  the  independent 
holder  of  the  government. — Bluntschli. 

The  process  of  election  affords  a  moral  certainty  that 
the  office  of  President  will  never  fall  to  the  lot  of  any  man 
who  is  not  in  an  eminent  degree  endowed  with  the  requisite 
qualifications.  Talents  for  low  intrigue  and  the  little  arts 
of  popularity  may  alone  suffice  to  elevate  a  man  to  the  first 
honours  in  a  single  state,  but  it  will  require  other  talents 
and  a  different  kind  of  merit  to  establish  him  in  the  esteem 
and  confidence  of  the  whole  Union,  or  of  so  considerable  a 
portion  of  it  as  would  be  necessary  to  make  him  a  success- 
ful candidate  for  the  distinguished  office  of  President  of 
the  United  States. — Alexander  Hamilton  (1787). 

Europeans  often  ask,  and  Americans  do  not  always  ex- 
plain, how  it  happens  that  this  great  office — the  greatest  in 
the  world,  unless  we  except  the  Papacy,  to  which  anyone 
can  rise  by  his  own  merits — is  not  more  frequently  filled 
by  great  and  striking  men. — Lord  Bryce  (1911). 


GLADSTONE. 


[Page  230 


CHAPTER  XVII. 
GLADSTONE   AND   LIBERALISM. 


THE  Liberal  and  Conservative  types  of  mind  are 
observable  throughout  history.  Party  names  are 
temporary  things,  but  the  opposing  attitudes  of 
men  towards  political  questions  denoted  by  those 
names  is  declared  in  all  ages  and  all  countries.  The  bias 
towards  change,  the  reforming  energy,  the  willingness  to 
meet  to-morrow  half  way,  are  typical  of  the  Liberal  tem- 
perament. The  bias  towards  stability,  the  maintaining 
inclination,  the  disposition  not  to  trouble  about  to-morrow 
till  to-morrow  comes,  are  typical  of  the  Conservative  tem- 
perament. The  Liberal  has  faith  in  the  future,  the  Con- 
servative has  faith  in  the  past ;  the  former  thinks  the  present 
could  be  improved  upon,  the  latter  doubts  whether  it  is  an 
improvement  upon  what  has  been. 

These,  however,  are  general  statements,  only  true  in 
the  rough;  for  most  people  are  both  Liberals  and  Conser- 
vatives. The  Barons  who  forced  King  John  to  affix  his  seal 
to  Magna  Carta  were  Liberals  concerning  the  claims  of  the 
Crown,  but  Conservatives  concerning  the  maintenance  of 
baronial  privileges.  Many  a  hot  Radical  Trade  Unionist  is 
very  conservative  as  to  the  introduction  of  new  methods 
in  his  own  trade.  It  is  when  decisions  have  to  be  made, 
votes  cast,  that  the  bias  tells. 

The  two  names  and  the  parties  which  bear  them  are,  of 
course,  English  in  origin,  and  in  England  they  have  clear 
lines  of  descent.  They  may  go  out.  of  fashion  through 
being  out  of  repute  or  sounding  stale  to  the  public  ear ;  and 
each  party  may  have  to  endure  rebellious  sections,  trucu- 
lently assertive  of  particular  points  of  view.  But  there  are 
only  two  sides  when  things  are  brought  to  an  issue.  It  is 
always  either  this  or  that. 

English  Liberalism  is  the  descendant  and  heir  of 
eighteenth  century  Whiggism.  The  Whigs  engineered  the 

231 


232     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

revolution  of  1688  which  sent  James  II.  into  exile  and 
seated  the  taciturn  Dutchman,  William  III.,  on  the  throne. 
They  were  in  the  main  the  party  which  provided  for  the 
Hanoverian  succession  when  it  became  evident  that  neither 
William  nor  Queen  Anne  would  leave  heirs.  They  stood 
for  prescribing  the  powers  of  the  Crown,  and  the  British 
constitutional  monarchy  is  largely  of  their  creation.  The 
Whigs,  too,  favoured  the  break-up  of  the  political  power 
which  the  Church  of  England  wielded  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  the  grant  of  full  rights  of  citizenship  to  Dissen- 
ters and  Catholics.  When  George  III.  endeavoured  to 
revert  to  a  system  of  monarchical  rule  which  his  four  pre- 
decessors on  the  throne  had  consented  to  see  reduced,  it 
was  the  Whigs  who  steadfastly  resisted  him.  The  cause 
of  John  Wilkes  was  espoused  by  the  Whigs  against  Court 
influence.  The  eloquent  and  constant  friends  of  the  Ameri- 
can colonists  in  their  quarrel  with  the  King's  disastrous 
government  were  Burke,  Chatham  and  other  Whig  leaders. 

The  Whigs  must  be  judged,  not  by  the  standard  of 
modern  ideas,  but  by  that  of  political  aims  and  political 
possibilities  in  their  own  times;  and,  so  regarded,  it  may 
confidently  be  said  that  if  English  principles  of  toleration 
and  liberty,  and  the  parliamentary  machinery  for  giving 
effect  to  them,  have  conferred  great  benefits  upon  the  world 
— as  is  indeed  the  case — then  the  eighteenth  century  Whigs 
deserve  well  of  mankind's  remembrance.  But  they  were 
an  aristocratic  party.  During  the  long  reign  of  George  III., 
when  all  attempts  to  amend  the  corrupt  and  vicious  elec- 
toral system  were  frustrated,  by  the  influence  of  the  Crown, 
by  threats,  and  by  the  payment  of  bribes  by  the  Sovereign 
himself,  only  an  aristocratic  party  could  have  commanded 
influence.  That  their  policy  rose  above  class  prejudices  is 
not  the  least  of  the  things  standing  to  the  credit  of  the 
Whigs. 

How  much  the  Liberals  of  our  own  day  have  in  common 
with  the  eighteenth  century  Whigs  is  apparent  from  a  com- 
parison of  two  passages,  the  first  from  a  speech  of  Chatham 
on  the  case  of  John  Wilkes,  the  second  from  Lord  Morley's 
Recollections.  Chatham  saw  in  the  determination  of  the 
Tory  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons  to  exclude  Wilkes 
from  Parliament,  because  of  his  attacks  on  the  King  and 
his  government  in  the  North  Briton,  an  infringement  of  the 
liberty  of  the  subject,  which  it  was  an  essential  point  in 


GLADSTONE  233 

Whig  policy  to  safeguard.  Therefore  he  said:  "I  know 
what  liberty  is,  and  that  the  liberty  of  the  press  is  essen- 
tially concerned  in  this  question.  I  disapprove  of  all  these 
papers,  the  North  Briton,  etc. ;  but  that  is  not  the  question. 
When  the  privileges  of  the  Houses  of  Parliament  are  denied 
in  order  to  deter  people  from  giving  their  opinions,  the 
liberty  of  the  press  is  taken  away.  Whigs,  who  would  give 
up  these  points  to  humour  the  Court  and  extend  the  power 
of  the  Crown,  to  the  diminution  of  the  Liberty  of  the  sub- 
ject, I  should  never  call  Whigs;  and  I  should  never  agree 
to  act  with  anybody  upon  that  footing." 

In  precisely  the  same  spirit,  and  in  insistence  upon  the 
same  regard  for  individual  liberty,  Lord  Morley  defines  the 
creed  of  a  Liberal  in  these  terms: — "Respect  for  the  dig- 
nity and  worth  of  the  individual  is  its  root.  It  stands  for 
pursuit  of  social  good  against  class  interest  or  dynastic 
interest.  It  stands  for  the  subjection  to  human  judgment 
of  all  claims  of  external  authority,  whether  in  an  organised 
Church  or  in  more  loosely  gathered  societies  of  believers,  or 
in  books  held  sacred.  In  law-making  it  does  not  neglect 
the  higher  characteristics  of  human  nature;  it  attends  to 
them  first.  In  executive  administration,  though  judge, 
jailer  and,  perhaps,  the  hangman  will  be  indispensable,  still 
mercy  is  counted  a  wise  supplement  to  terror.  General 
Gordon  spoke  a  noble  word  for  Liberalist  ideas  when  he 
upheld  the  sovereign  duty  of  trying  to  creep  under  men's 
skins — only  another  way  of  putting  the  Golden  Rule." 

The  second  passage  is,  truly,  broader  than  the  first,  but 
Chatham  was  applying  Whig  principles  to  a  particular  case. 
There  is,  however,  nothing  in  Morley's  statement  of  the 
Liberal  creed  which  Chatham  would  not  have  accepted, 
whilst  any  modern  Liberal  would  have  thought  about 
Wilkes's  case  precisely  what  Chatham  said  about  it. 

The  transition  from  Whiggism  to  Liberalism  occurred 
at  about  the  time  of  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832. 
The  word  Liberal  had  been  in  use  before  then  to  denote  a 
section  of  the  Whig  party  which  was  more  advanced  than 
the  leaders,  or  than  the  rank  and  file — a  section  which  was 
impatient  of  slow  movement  and  desired  to  force  the  pace 
of  reform.  To  them  the  aristocratic  tradition  of  the  Whig 
party  was  an  impediment.  The  broadening  of  the  fran- 
chise, the  sweeping  away  of  a  multitude  of  corrupt  little 
constituencies,  the  conferring  of  representation  upon  many 


234     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

important  towns  which  had  hitherto  been  without  members 
in  Parliament,  would  necessarily  change  the  political  out- 
look. New  demands,  new  aspirations  would  emerge.  It  is 
not  a  little  significant  that  the  first  locomotive  ran  upon  a 
railway  only  two  years  before  the  passing  of  the  Reform 
Bill.  Whiggism  and  stage  coaches  went  out  together. 
Liberalism  and  railways  came  in  together. 

William  Ewart  Gladstone  entered  Parliament  at  the  first 
election  after  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill.  He  very  soon 
became,  by  reason  of  capacities  for  which  he  was  early  dis- 
tinguished, "the  rising  hope  of  those  stern  unbending  Tories 
who  follow,  reluctantly  and  mutinously,  a  leader  whose 
experience  and  eloquence  are  indispensable  to  them,  but 
whose  cautious  temper  and  moderate  opinions  they  abhor." 
Macaulay  signalised  Gladstone's  appearance  as  an  author 
in  that  sentence,  the  leader  referred  to  being,  of  course,  Sir 
Robert  Peel.  But  the  stern  unbending  brigade  were  here- 
after to  find  their  leader,  not  in  this  brilliant  son  of  Eton 
and  Oxford,  but  in  a  curled  and  oiled  sprig  of  Israel.  Glad- 
stone remained  a  faithful  Peelite  when  the  Tory  party  was 
rent  in  twain  about  the  Free  Trade  budget  in  1846.  A 
Peelite  he  continued  to  be  for  twenty  years,  aloof  from 
and  distrusted  by  the  Tories,  yet  not  absorbed  by  the 
Liberals,  though  attracted  more  and  more  towards  them. 
But  there  was  no  place  for  him  in  such  a  political  twilight. 
"We  who  are  called  Peelites,"  to  use  his  own  phrase,  dimin- 
ished in  numbers ;  the  name  lost  its  significance. 

The  year  1866  is  noted  by  Mr.  Herbert  Paul,  the  anno- 
tator  of  Gladstone's  speeches,  to  be  the  first  in  which  he 
definitely  adopted  the  creed  of  the  Liberal  party;  but  dur- 
ing the  ten  years  preceding  that  date  he  had  been  as  much 
the  hope  of  the  Liberals  as  at  the  beginning  of  his  political 
career  he  had  been  of  the  opposite  party.  In  the  preced- 
ing year  he  had  quite  clearly  signified  his  adhesion  to 
Liberal  views  of  politics.  In  a  speech  of  1865  he  said: — "I 
have  learnt  that  there  is  wisdom  in  a  policy  of  trust  and 
folly  in  a  policy  of  mistrust.  I  have  not  refused  to  acknow- 
ledge and  accept  the  signs  of  the  times.  I  have  observed 
the  effect  that  has  been  produced  upon  the  country  by  what 
is  known  as  liberal  legislation.  And  if  we  are  told,  as  we 
are  how  truly  told,  that  all  the  feelings  of  the  country  are 
in  the  best  and  broadest  sense  conservative — that  is  to  say, 
that  the  people  value  the  country,  and  the  laws  and  institu- 


GLADSTONE  235 

tions  of  the  country — honesty  compels  me  to  admit  that  this 
happy  result  has  been  brought  about  by  liberal  legislation." 

This  hardly  amounts  to  a  "creed"  of  Liberalism,  nor  did 
the  speech  of  1866,  to  which  Mr.  Herbert  Paul  alludes — the 
speech  in  moving  the  second  reading  of  the  Reform  Bill  of 
that  year — formulate  any  such  thing.  He  there  spoke  of 
the  circumstances  in  which  he  had  become  associated  with 
the  Liberal  party,  coming  to  it  "an  outcast  from  those  with 
whom  I  associated ;  driven  from  them,  I  admit,  by  no  arbi- 
trary act,  but  by  the  slow  and  resistless  forces  of  convic- 
tion." The  Liberal  party  had,  he  said,  "received  me  with 
kindness,  indulgence,  generosity,  and  I  may  even  say  with 
some  measure  of  confidence."  But  the  student  of  the  his- 
tory of  ideas  who  turns  to  the  several  biographies  of  Glad- 
stone to  find  out  what  he  meant  by  Liberalism  will  not 
discover  any  definite  declaration.  The  Descriptive  Index 
and  Bibliography  of  his  .speeches,  compiled  by  Mr.  A.  T. 
Bassett,  has  no  entry  under  "Liberalism,"  and  the  only 
entry  under  that  word  in  Morley's  Life  of  Gladstone  refers, 
not  to  something  said  by  Gladstone  himself,  but  to  a  letter 
from  Lord  Acton.  Acton  intended  to  begin  his  contemplated 
"History  of  Liberty" — the  magnum  opus  which  never 
got  itself  written — with  a  hundred  definitions,  and  wrote 
to  Gladstone's  daughter,  "I  wish  I  knew  one  fit  to  stand  in 
your  father's  name."  He  cited  a  phrase  used  by  Gladstone, 
"trust  in  the  people  tempered  by  prudence,"  as  one  which 
could  not  be  allowed  to  stand  alone. 

It  is  surely  curious  that  there  should  have  been  any  diffi- 
culty in  securing  a  definition  of  Liberalism  from  one  who 
was  for  so  long  a  Liberal  leader,  and  who  was  so  copious 
in  the  expression  of  his  opinions.  Perhaps  the  clearest 
statement  which  Gladstone  made  in  that  direction  was  to- 
wards the  end  of  his  life,  in  1890.  He  then  said: — "The 
basis  of  my  Liberalism  is  this :  It  is  the  lesson  which  I  have 
been  learning  ever  since  I  was  young.  I  am  a  lover  oi 
liberty;  and  that  liberty  which  I  value  for  myself  I  value 
for  every  human  being  in  proportion  to  his  means  and 
opportunities.  That  is  a  basis  on  which  I  find  it  perfectly 
practicable  to  work  in  conjunction  with  a  dislike  to  unrea- 
soned change  and  a  profound  reverence  for  anything  ancient, 
provided  that  reverence  is  deserved.  There  are  those  who 
have  been  so  happy  that  they  have  been  born  with  a  creed 
that  they  can  usefully  maintain  to  the  last.  For  my  own 


236     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

part,  as  I  have  been  a  learner  all  my  life,  a  learner  I  must 
continue  to  be." 

That  was  spoken  by  a  man  who  was  then  eighty-one  years 
of  age,  and  was  still  immersed  in  the  business  of  statesman- 
ship. The  buoyancy  of  spirit,  the  open-mindedness,  of  the 
passage,  reveal  a  temperament  which  in  extreme  old  age 
had  not  lost  the  vigour  and  resilience  of  youth.  Gladstone 
was  a  man  of  fifty-six,  who  had  been  over  thirty  years  in 
Parliament,  before  he  signified  his  acceptance  of  what  is 
called  the  Liberal  creed,  and  the  most  remarkable  charac- 
teristic of  his  mind  was  that  it  continued  to  grow  more 
Liberal  in  disposition  as  the  increasing  years  ran  out.  It 
was  the  readiness  to  face  fresh  problems  with  courage, 
resource  and  hope,  the  firm  confidence  in  the  people  at  large, 
the  belief  in  liberty,  nationality  and  humane  policy,  that 
constituted  Gladstone's  Liberalism,  rather  than  any  assent 
to  formulae.  /The  practical  statesman  has  to  grapple  with 
questions  as  they  arise  and  to  settle  them  as  best  he  can 
amid  the  whirl  of  conflicting  interests  and  claims.  Suffi- 
cient for  the  day  are  the  problems  thereof.  The  theorist 
unhampered  by  responsibility  can  sail  his  boat  in  an  un- 
ruffled lake ;  the  statesman  has  to  navigate  in  the  midst  of 
hurricanes,  often  with  a  mutinous  crew. 

Gladstone's  greatest  gift  to  his  party  was  the  intense 
moral  earnestness  with  which  he  espoused  its  causes. 
Whether  it  was  a  question  of  franchise  extension,  or  the 
denunciation  of  the  foreign  policy  of  his  rival,  Disraeli,  or 
Irish  Home  Rule,  or  any  other  of  the  many  matters  which 
he  handled  in  innumerable  speeches,  he  lifted  the  issue  of 
the  hour  into  a  sphere  of  moral  illumination,  and  presented 
it  to  his  countrymen  in  words  aflame  with  conviction.  He 
argued  his  case,  meeting  the  thrust  of  his  adversaries  with 
extraordinary  deftness ;  but  he  argued  it  passionately.  His 
great  election  campaigns  were  like  crusades.  Nothing  like 
his  Midlothian  campaign  of  1879  had  been  known  in  Eng- 
lish politics  before,  and,  striking  as  were  its  results  in 
driving  the  opposite  party  out  of  power,  the  most  remark- 
able thing  about  it  really  was  the  moral  appeal  ringing 
through  the  orations  with  which  Gladstone  electrified  the 
country.  Throughout  his  long  career,  the  flushing  of  politi- 
cal discussion  with  a  warm  glow  was  characteristic  of 
him.  Among  his  thousands  of  speeches,  it  would  hardly  be 
possible  to  find  one  which  did  not  furnish  an  example; 


GLADSTONE  237 

whilst  there  were  several,  like  his  great  speech  on  the  Affir- 
mation Bill  in  1883,  and  that  on  Home  Rule  at  Liverpool 
in  1886,  wherein  the  moral  appeal  was  urged  with  singular 
force. 

No  man,  whatever  his  endowment  of  genius,  could  speak 
and  write  as  much  as  Gladstone  did,  and  maintain  a  distin- 
guished level  of  quality  throughout.  There  is  not  much  in 
his  eight  volumes  of  Gleanings  that  a  student  of  literature 
need  regret  not  to  have  read,  apart  from  his  essays  on 
Macaulay  and  Leopardi.  Political  speeches  lose  the  greater 
part  of  their  savour  when  the  controversies  to  which  they 
pertain  have  died  away.  They  lose  also  from  the  disappear- 
ance from  the  scene  of  the  personality  familiar  to  the  gene- 
ration which  heard  them.  Lord  Bryce  has  commented  on 
what  is  irrecoverable  to  the  reader  of  even  good  reports 
of  Gladstone's  speeches:  "The  Voice  is  lost,  and. his  was 
rich,  sonorous  and  exquisitely  modulated  in  its  tones."  To 
some  who  may  have  heard  him  only  a  few  times,  the  roll 
of  his  tones  can  be  imagined  as  any  characteristic  passage 
is  read;  but  the  sentences  must  be  cold  to  any  who  never 
experienced  the  magic  of  his  presence,  as,  with  dramatic 
gesture,  flashing  eye  and  features  alight  with  feeling,  he 
poured  out  his  message  in  fluent  and  abundant  measure. 

It  was  alleged  against  Gladstone  in  his  day  that  by  his 
dexterity  in  the  use  of  language  he  was  able  to  conceal 
much  more  than  he  expressed,  and  that  he  was  indeed  the 
"sophisticated  rhetorician"  of  Disraeli's  gibe.  His  bio- 
grapher goes  far  towards  admitting  that  there  was  sub- 
stance in  the  charge.  "His  adversary,"  ,says  Lord  Morley> 
"as  he  strode  confidently  along  the  smooth  grass,  suddenly 
found  himself  treading  on  a  serpent;  he  had  overlooked  a 
condition,  a  proviso,  a  word  of  hypothesis  or  contingency 
that  sprang  from  its  ambush  and  brought  his  triumph  to 
naught  on  the  spot.  If  Mr.  Gladstone  had  only  taken  as 
much  trouble  that  his  hearers  should  understand  exactly 
what  it  was  that  he  meant,  as  he  took  afterwards  to  show 
that  his  meaning  had  been  grossly  misunderstood,  all  might 
have  been  well."  His  astonishing  mastery  of  dialectic 
subtleties,  supported  by  a  large  vocabulary,  spelt  confusion 
to  his  foes,  and  not  infrequently  to  his  friends  likewise. 
But  words  were  his  weapons,  and,  if  he  used  them  to 
enmesh  as  well  as  to  smite,  it  was  but  another  aspect  of 


238     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

his  method.  And  there  was  no  doubt  about  the  high  pur- 
pose, the  driving  power,  the  moral  courage,  the  pure  faith, 
which  he  used  for  the  furtherance  of  the  Liberal  policy. 

Gladstone  was  a  Peelite  drawn  towards  Liberalism  by 
force  of  circumstances,  and  the  Peelites  were  Conservatives 
shed  from  their  party  through  their  acceptance  of  Free 
Trade.  The  Conservatism  of  Gladstone  remained  a  part 
of  him,  notwithstanding  his  distinct  leaning  towards  the 
Radical  wing  of  his  party  in  the  latter  part  of  his  political 
life.  One  half  of  his  mind  was  given  over  to  theological 
studies,  and  in  that  field  he  never  moved  out  of  the  ancient 
ways.  It  was  not  altogether  in  accordance  with  his  desire 
that  under  his  leadership  English  Liberalism  shook  itself 
free  from  the  old  aristocratic  Whig  tradition.  But  every 
forward  step  had  the  effect  of  severing  a  cluster  of  Whig- 
gish  Liberals,  who  drifted  into  the  opposite  political  camp. 
Gladstone's  Irish  policy  occasioned  a  serious  cleavage, 
which,  however,  left  his  party  much  more  robustly  demo- 
cratic in  tendency  than  it  had  ever  been  before.  By  the 
time  of  his  death,  in  1898,  the  Radical  section  of  the  Liberal 
party  had  taken  control  of  its  policy,  just  as  about  1832 
the  Liberals  took  control  of  the  old  Whig  party.  The  result 
was  seen  in  the  limitation  of  the  veto  power  of  the  House 
of  Lords  by  the  Parliament  Act  of  1911,  and  in  the  adop- 
tion of  manhood  suffrage  by  the  Representation  of  the 
People  Act  of  1918 — for,  although  the  latter  measure  was 
enacted  under  a  coalition  Ministry,  it  was  a  piece  of 
Radical  policy  in  all  essentials. 

A  very  large  part  of  the  work  of  Liberalism  hitherto 
has  been  concerned  with  reforming  the  structure  of  govern- 
ment. The  constitution  had  to  be  democratised  before  many 
advances  could  be  made  in  other  directions.  The  spread  of 
popular  education  not  merely  justified  but  necessitated  the 
broadening  of  the  basis  of  representation/  The  "points  of 
the  Charter,"  which  seemed  to  threaten  revolution  and  total 
eclipse  to  the  nervous  Whig  and  Tory  people  of  the  early 
part  of  Victoria's  reign,  are  now  (with  trifling  modifica- 
tions) fundamentals  of  the  British  constitution.  But  work 
of  this  kind  having  been  almost  completed,  Liberalism,  if 
it  is  to  endure  as  a  vital  force  in  politics,  will  have  to  reach 
out  to  deal  with  serious  social  and  economic  problems. 
Liberalism  did  good  structural  work  in  its  day,  but  cannot 


GLADSTONE  239 

live  on  its  past  reputation.  The  position  of  a  party  stand- 
ing between  the  Conservatives  and  the  Labour-Socialists 
will  not  be  an  easy  one  to  maintain,  and  may  be  impossible 
to  maintain.  There  is  great  utility  in  a  nation  possess- 
ing a  strong  party  which,  while  eager  to  advance,  is 
cautious  about  the  mode  arid  measure  of  any  given  proposi- 
tion of  reform;  but  every  important  move  forward,  by 
threatening  interests  which  desire  the  maintenance  of  things 
as  they  are,  will  entail  the  splitting  of  the  party.  Liberalism 
must  always  be  prepared  to  lose  adherents  if  it  is  to  fulfil 
any  valuable  function.  A  Liberal  party  which  does  not 
split  at  least  once  in  a  generation  can  fairly  be  accused  of 
stagnation. 

The  study  of  British  Liberalism  helps  to  an  appreciation 
of  this  phase  of  thought  in  its  general  bearings,  because  its 
history  reveals  achievements  which  are  typical  of  what 
Liberalism  stands  for  everywhere.  It  is  not  in  a  particular 
party  programme,  nor  in  any  scheme  of  reform  suited  to 
this  or  that  place  at  this  or  that  time,  that  Liberalism  con- 
sists essentially.  It  is  not  a  creed,  but  an  attitude  towards 
life,  the  problems  of  life,  social  forces  and  humanity.  The 
recognition  of  the  claims  of  the  individual  man  and  woman 
to  exercise  a  voice  in  government;  the  liberation  of  the 
human  spirit  from  clerical  and  §ecular  tyranny ;  the  imposi- 
tion of  restraints  upon  power;/ the  protection  of  the  weak 
and  the  poor  from  the  selfish  and  arbitrary  disposition  of 
the  strong  and  the  rich ;  the  guarding  of  the  just  claims  of 
the  individual  whilst  using  the  collective  efforts  of  the  whole 
community  in  the  performance  of  functions  which  may  thus 
be  best  discharged  in  common  for  the  common  good;  the 
preservation  of  peace  among  nations  not  only  by  a  tem- 
perate and  friendly  foreign  policy,  but  also  by  removing 
hindrances  to  trade,  discouraging  monopoly,  and  promoting 
free  intercourse  among  peoples ;  the  restriction  of  arma- 
ments and  the  deprecation  of  belligerency  in  the  discussion 
of  international  affairs — these  things  are  typical  of  the 
Liberal  temper  and  cast  of  mind. 

For  this  attitude  there  will  always  be  a  useful  place 
in  the  body  politic.  Each  generation  has  to  face  fresh 
problems,  but  there  are  only  two  ways  of  deciding  them, 
and  whether  official  Liberalism  goes  under  that  name  or 
another  matters  little.  It  is  the  Liberal  attitude  and  mode 


240     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

of  approach  that  is  important.  A  creed  is  a  piece  of  frozen 
conviction ;  the  vital  belief  is  that  which  lives  in  the  hearts 
of  men,  and  moves  them.  The  continental  sense  of  the  word 
Liberalism  is  not  really  different  from  its  specialised  mean- 
ing in  British  politics;  the  difference  has  lain  in  the  causes 
which  had  to  be  fought  for.  The  enemy  may  be  Ultramon- 
tane, or  aristocratic,  or  absolutist,  or  plutocratic,  but  the 
object  of  the  conflict  will  still  be  the  same. 


On  Gladstone  the  authoritative  work  is  Morley's  ample 
biography,  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  English  political 
literature.  There  are  several  smaller  lives  of  him ;  one  by 
G.  W.  E.  Russell  is  good.  L.  T.  Hobhouse's  Liberalism,  a 
volume  of  the  Home  University  Library,  treats  the  subject 
philosophically.  A  categorical  account  of  the  aims  of 
Liberalism  is  presented  in  J.  M.  Robertson's  The  Meaning 
of  Liberalism.  Herbert  Samuel's  Liberalism:  Its  Principles 
and  Proposals  is  a  work  by  an  eminent  modern  Liberal 
statesman.  John  Stuart  Mill's  treatise  On  Liberty  is  a 
classic.  F.  W.  Hirst's  book  on  The  Manchester  School  pre- 
sents a  valuable  view  of  the  economic  side  of  English 
Liberalism.  A  Short  History  of  English  Liberalism,  by 
W.  Lyon  Blease,  is  a  useful  work. 


The  upper  class  used  to  enjoy  undivided  sway,  and  used 
it  for  their  own  advantage,  protecting  their  interests  against 
those  below  them  by  laws  which  were  selfish  and  often 
inhuman.  Almost  all  that  has  been  done  for  the  good  of 
the  people  has  been  done  since  the  rich  lost  the  monopoly 
of  power,  since  the  rights  of  property  were  discovered  to 
be  not  quite  unlimited. — Lord  Acton. 

Liberty  does  not  consist  in  making  others  do  what  you 
consider  right.  The  difference  between  a  free  government 
and  a  government  which  is  not  free  is  principally  this— 
that  a  government  which  is  not  free  interferes  with  every- 
thing it  can,  and  a  free  government  interferes  with  nothing 
except  what  it  must.  A  despotic  government  tries  to  make 
everybody  do  what  it  wishes ;  af  Liberal  government  tries, 


GLADSTONE  241 

so  far  as  the  safety  of  society  will  permit,  to  allow  every- 
body to  do  what  he  wishes/  It  has  been  the  function  of 
the  Liberal  party  consistently  to  maintain  the  doctrine  of 
individual  liberty  It  is  because  they  have  done  so  that 
England  is  the  country  where  people  can  do  more  what 
they  please  than  in  any  country  in  the  world. — Sir  William 
Harcourt. 

By  the  admission  alike  of  Liberals  and  Conservatives, 
the  primary  fact  in  political  Liberalism,  in  all  ages,  is  the 
existence  of  a  great  mass  of  "have-nots" — £he  servile  or 
landless  class  in  the  pre-industrial  stage,  the  unenfran- 
chised in  early  democracies,  the  unpropertied  and  wage- 
earning  class  in  the  modern  industrial  world.  It  is  the 
insuppressible  needs  of  these  classes  for  betterment,  for 
education,  for  improved  political  and  legal  status  that,  in 
the  main,  motive  all  democratic  movements,  so-called. — /. 
M.  Robertson. 

Freedom  cannot  be  predicated,  in  its  true  meaning, 
either  of  a  man  or  of  a  society,  merely  because  they  are 
no  longer  under  the  compulsion  of  restraints  which  have 
the  sanction  of  positive  law.  To  be  really  free  they  must 
be  able  to  make  the  best  use  of  faculty,  opportunity,  energy, 
life.  It  is  in  this  fuller  sense  of  the  true  significance  of 
/Liberty  that  we  find  the  governing  impulse  in  the  later 
development  of  Liberalism,  in  the  direction  of  education, 
temperance,  better  dwellings,  and  improved  social  and 
industrial  environment;  everything,  in  short  that  -tends 
to  national,  communal  and  personal  efficiency.  —  H.  H. 
AsQuith. 

Democracy  is  not  founded  merely  on  the  right  or  the 
private  interest  of  the  individual.  This  is  only  one  side 
of  the  shield.  It  is  founded  equally  on  the  function  of  the 
individual  as  a  member  of  the  community. — L.  T.  Hobhouse. 

The  power  which  is  at  once  spring  and  regulator  in  all 
efforts  of  reform  is  the  conviction  that  there  is  an  infinite 
worthiness  in  man  which  will  appear  at  the  call  of  worth, 
and  that  all  particular  reforms  are  the  removing  of  some 
impediment. — Emerson. 

Whiggism,  if  I  understand  it  aright,  is  a  desire  of  liberty 
and  a  spirit  of  opposition  to  all  exorbitant  power  in  any 
part  of  the  constitution. — Richard  Steele  (1719). 

The  fundamental  principle  of  Whiggery  was  resistance 


242     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

to  arbitrary  power.  The  very  phrase  has  now  an  archaic 
sound;  but  when  it  was  originally  coined  it  expressed  a 
very  real  and  threatening  danger. — Lord  John  Russell. 

European  reformers  have  been  accustomed  to  see  the 
numerical  majority  everywhere  unjustly  depressed,  every- 
where trampled  upon,  or  at  the  best  overlooked,  by  govern- 
ments ;  nowhere  possessing  power  enough  to  extort  redress 
of  their  most  positive  grievances,  provision  for  their  mental 
culture,  or  even  to  prevent  themselves  from  being  taxed 
avowedly  for  the  pecuniary  profit  of  the  ruling  classes.  To 
see  these  things,  and  to  seek  to  put  an  end  to  them,  by 
means  (among  other  things)  of  giving  more  political  power 
to  the  majority,  constitutes  Radicalism. — John  Stuart  Mill. 

The  ideal  of  the  Liberal  party  consists  in  a  view  of 
things  undisturbed  and  undistorted  by  the  promptings  of 
interests  or  prejudice,  in  a  complete  independence  of  all 
class  interests,  and  in  relying  for  its  success  on  the  better 
feelings  and  higher  intelligence  of  mankind. — Robert  Lowe 
(Lord  Sherbrooke). 

/  The  passion  for  improving  mankind  in  its  ultimate 
object  does  not  vary.  But  the  immediate  object  of  refor- 
mers and  the  forms  of  persuasion  by  which  they  seek  to 
advance  them  vary  much  in  different  generations/  To  a 
hasty  observer  they  might  even  seem  contradictory  and  to 
justify  the  notion  that  nothing  better  than  a  desire  for 
change,  selfish  or  perverse,  is  at  the  bottom  of  all  reform- 
ing movements.  Only  those  who  will  think  a  little  longer 
about  it  can  discern  the  same  old  cause  of  social  good 
against  class  interests,  for  which,  under  altered  names, 
Liberals  are  fighting  now  as  they  were  fifty  years  ago. — 
T.  H.  Green. 

The  Manchester  School  was  essentially  a  middle  class 
school.  The  Radicals  had  nothing  in  common  except  their 
Radicalism.  The  Manchester  men  were  almost  all  of  that 
sober,  clear-headed,  independent  class,  often  sadly  wanting 
in  gracefulness  and  culture,  but  always  amply  endowed 
with  courage,  enterprise  and  common  sense,  which  has  built 
up  the  cotton  industry  of  Lancashire.  They  were  not  demo- 
cratic in  any  theoretical  sense.  They  cared  nothing  either 
for  aristocracy  or  democracy.  They  were  accustomed  to  mix 
on  terms  of  equality  with  men  of  all  classes,  and  their  esti- 
mate of  a  man's  worth  was  always  their  own,  and  depended 
on  nothing  but  his  capacity. — W.  Lyon  Blease. 


DISRAELI. 


[Page  244 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 


DISRAELI    AND    CONSERVATISM. 

THE  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832  made  ,so  sub- 
stantial an  alteration  in  the  political  organisation 
of  Great  Britain  that  not  only  did  the  Whig  party 
drop  its  name  and  become^Liberal,  but  even  Tories, 
with  all  their  aversion  to  change,  blossomed  out  as  Conser- 
vatives.    The  Bill,  it  must  be  remembered^   remodelled  a 
system  which  had  existed  unchanged  for  centuries.       The 
elder  Pitt  had  described  it  as  corrupt  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  his  son  had  endeavoured  to  reform 
it  towards  the  close  of  that  century,  but  it  had  continued 
with    its    rotten  boroughs,  its  Eatanswill  political  debau- 
chery, its  bribery,  and  its  caricature  of  representation  until 
it  was  washed  away  in  a  current  of  indignation. 

The  Tories  had  exhausted  the  resources  of  ingenuity 
and  eloquence  in  defence  of  this  decrepit  system,  but  in 
vain.  It  seemed  to  many  among  them,  now  that  it  had 
fallen,  that  the  name  of  the  party  which  had  tried  to  main- 
tain it  was  touched  with  the  discredit  which  attached  to 
the  memory  of  the  old  regime.  It  was  not  sound  politics 
immediately  after  1832  to  bear  the  label  of  Tory.  So  the 
new  name,  Conservative,  was  employed  instead.  John 
Wilson  Croker,  the  Tory  writer  whom  Macaulay  so  merci- 
lessly castigated  for  his  "ill-compiled,  ill-arranged,  ill- 
written  and  ill-printed"  edition  of  BoswelPs  Life  of  John- 
son, saw  the  change  coming,  and  suggested  the  adoption  of 
the  new  party  name  in  a  Quarterly  Review  article  in  1830. 
He  there  spoke  of  "the  Tory,  which  might  with  more  pro- 
priety be  called  the  Conservative,  party."  Sir  Robert  Peel 
adopted  the  designation  after  the  Reform  Bill  was  carried. 
There  is,  however,  this  difference  between  the  adoption 
of  new  names  for  the  old  Whig  and  Tory  parties — that 
whereas  Whiggism  went  out  altogether  and  the  name  ceased 

245 


24G     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

to  have  much  more  than  historical  interest  attaching  to  it, 
there  was  after  a  time  a  revival  of  the  Tory  name.  The 
Conservative  has,  as  it  were,  an  eye  at  the  back  of  his  head, 
with  which  he  sees  the  past  with  a  glamour  about  it;  and, 
as  the  discredit  of  defending  the  pre-Reform  Bill  abuses 
became  toned  down  by  time,  there  were  some  among  the 
Conservatives  who  turned  to  the  old  name  with  some  affec- 
tion; so  that  in  1882  we  find  Matthew  Arnold  writing  of 
"the  Conservatives,  or,  as  they  are  now  beginning  to  be 
called  again,  the  Tories." 

That  statement  and  its  date  are  interesting,  for  in  1881 
had  died  Benjamin  Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  who 
became  the  real  leader  of  the  Conservative  party  after  Peel 
fell  from  grace  by  repealing  the  Corn  Laws.  Conservatism, 
then — which  was  Toryism  "camouflaged,"  as  we  say  nowa- 
days, under  a  name  which  seemed  more  respectable  for  a 
while — came  in  under  Peel  about  1832,  and  was  the  political 
name  of  the  party  which  Disraeli  led  down  to  the  eve  of 
1882.  More  recent  Conservative  leaders  have  frequently 
preferred  the  old  name.  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  nearly 
always  spoke  of  the  Tory,  very  rarely  of  the  Conservative, 
party. 

The  ascent  of  Disraeli  to  the  leadership  of  the  British 
Conservatives  was  surely  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
occurrences  in  modern  politics.  His  Jewish  origin  was  a 
detriment  to  him,  though  his  father  had  abandoned  Judaism 
and  become  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England;  for  at 
the  time  when  he  first  secured  a  place  in  Parliament 
(1837),  the  prejudice  against  the  Hebrew  people  so  far 
continued  that  a  Jew  could  not  take  his  seat  unless  he  pro- 
nounced an  oath  "on  the  true  faith  of  a  Christian,"  and 
this  restriction  continued  till  1858.  When  he  was  first 
designated  for  high  office  Queen  Victoria  wrote  that  she 
was  "a  little  shocked,"  which  probably  meant  that  her  con- 
sort, Prince  Albert,  with  his  German  anti-Semitic  bias,  had 
expressed  disapproval  to  her.  Moreover,  Disraeli  had  no 
aristocratic  connections,  no  such  University  distinction  as 
helped  Gladstone  in  the  beginning  of  his  political  career,  no 
powerful  friends  in  the  forefront  of  politics ;  and  he  created 
some  amount  of  distrust  of  himself  by  his  glossy  and  over- 
decorated  dandyism,  his  affectations  of  speech  and  manner, 
his  catch-penny  rhetoric.  There  was  also  the  handicap  that 


DISRAELI  247 

at  the  beginning  of  his  political  career  he  had  posed  as  a 
Radical,  and  went  over  to  the  Tories,  not  on  any  point  of 
principle,  but,  as  was  freely  alleged,  because  their  party 
offered  better  prospects.  Sir  William  Fraser  on  this  sub- 
ject testified: — "The  reason  for  Disraeli  taking  the  Tory 
side  as  a  young  man  was  the  advice  of  Lord  Lyndhurst. 
He  pointed  out  to  him  that  the  clever  young  men  of  the 
day  were  going  in  for  Radicalism;  that  the  Tories  sadly 
wanted  brains ;  and  advised  him  to  join  their  party.  I  had 
this  from  Lord  Malmsbury,  and  it  has  recently  been  con- 
firmed to  me  by  Lord  0 ,  who  knew  Disraeli  intimately, 

and  who  had  it  from  himself."1 

But  discerning  judges  of  Parliamentary  form  perceived 
that  there  was  serviceable  metal  beneath  the  gilding.  A 
gift  of  oratory,  a  knack  of  epigrammatic  sparkle,  an  imper- 
turbable temper,  a  subtle  and  ingratiating  charm,  and  an 
undeviating  ambition  were  to  carry  Disraeli  to  the  high 
places  of  the  state.  He  was  often  cheap  and  meretricious ; 
he  was  never  profound  on  any  .subject ;  but  he  was  nearly 
always  effective  for  the  purpose  on  hand  and  the  audience 
to  which  he  addressed  himself. 

His  abundant  cleverness  was  usually  sufficient  to  carry 
him  through  any  predicament,  and  when  that  failed  he  fell 
back  upon  his  reserve  of  audacity.  Sometimes  he  over- 
stepped the  mark  in  both  respects,  as  when  he  plagiarised 
an  eloquent  passage  from  the  French  historian  Thiers,  giv- 
ing it  out  as  his  own  in  his  oration  on  the  death  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington.  Thiers  had  written  the  piece  in  a 
French  magazine  concerning  Marshal  St.  Cyr,  one  of  Napo- 
leon's officers.  Disraeli  simply  translated  it  and  made  it 
fit  the  general  who  brought  Napoleon  to  the  ground,  and 
this  he  did  without  so  much  as  a  by-your-leave.  When  a 
London  journal  exposed  the  plagiarism  by  printing  the  two 
passages  in  parallel  columns  under  the  heading  "Stop 
Thief !"  Disraeli  showing  no  twinge  of  embarrassment.  He 
explained  in  a  letter  that  when  he  first  read  Thiers'  article 
"the  passage  in  question  seized  upon  me;  it  was  engraved 
on  my  memory;  association  of  ideas  brought  it  back,  and 
I  summoned  it  from  the  caverns  of  my  mind."1  This  simply 

1  Sir  \Yilliam  Fraser,  "Disraeli  and  His  Day." 

1  See   Monypenny   and   Buckle's  "Life  of  Disraeli,"  Vol.  III.,  p.  393 ; 
the  two  passages  are  printed  in  an  appendix  of  the  same  work. 


248     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

amounted  to  saying  that  Disraeli  had  such  a  remarkably 
good  memory  that  every  word  of  a  passage  read  years 
before  remained  in  his  mind;  but  that  at  the  same  time  he 
had  such  a  remarkably  bad  memory  that  he  did  not  recol- 
lect that  the  eloquent  language  was  not  his  own.2 

Disraeli  was  a  remarkably  good  actor,  but  it  is  an  error 
to  say  that  he  played  to  the  gallery ;  he  consistently  played 
to  the  stalls  and  boxes.  One  of  his  masterpieces  was  his 
address  to  a  diocesan  conference  at  Oxford  on  the  invita- 
tion of  Bishop  Wilberforce,  where,  having  an  audience  of 
clergymen  who,  almost  to  a  man,  were  friendly  to  his 
party,  he  took  occasion  to  profess  himself  an  intensely 
loyal  churchman,  and  to  assure  the  reverend  gentlemen 
that  his  sternest  frown  was  reserved  for  the  evolutionary 
theory.  "The  question  is  this:  is  man  an  ape  or  an  angel? 
I,  my  lord,  I  am  on  the  side  of  the  angels."  There  was  a 
general  election  a  few  months  later — Disraeli  had  not  for- 
gotten that  there  would  be  one — and,  being  on  the  side  of 
the  angels,  his  party  came  into  power ;  what  was  still  better, 
on  Lord  Derby's  retirement,  Disraeli  became  for  the  first 
time  Prime  Minister  (1868). 

The  "angels"  deliverance  was  one  of  Disraeli's  very  few 
excursions  into  the  realm  of  theology,  where  his  great  rival 
Gladstone  was  so  thoroughly  at  home.  It  made  the  country 
ring  with  laughter.  Froude,  one  of  his  biographers,  records 
that  "fellows  and  tutors  repeated  the  phrase  over  their 
port  in  the  common-room  with  shaking  sides;  the  news- 
papers carried  the  announcement  the  next  morning  over 
the  length  and  breadth  of  the  island,  and  the  leading-article 
writers  struggled  in  their  comments  to  maintain  a  decent 
gravity."  But  what  of  that?  Disraeli  had  made  sure  of 
the  curates,  vicars,  rural  deans,  etc. ;  for  what  better  thing 
could  they  do  than  extend  confidence  and  support,  with  all 
the  sincerity  that  lay  behind  a  Cuddesdon  collar,  to  a  states- 
man who  was  on  the  side  of  the  angels? 

The  political  career  of  Disraeli  was  exceptionally  bril- 
liant, and  while  he  was  the  head  of  the  Conservative 
party  he  commanded  its  allegiance,  even  if  he  was  held  in 
some  suspicion  by  an  aristocratic  inner  circle.  The  Tory 

2  The  case  was  not  the  only  one  of  the  kind.  There  was  a  glaring 
instance  of  plagiarism  in  Disraeli's  last  book,  "Endymion."  See  the  article 
"Beaconsfield  as  a  Plagiarist,"  in  the  "Academy,"  June  29,  1907. 


DISRAELI  249 

squires,  the  village  and  suburban  middle  class  Conserva- 
tives, and  all  who  were  attracted  by  the  showy  policy  and 
the  captivating  speeches  of  the  leader,  recognised  in  him 
a  politician  of  the  sort  of  genius  that  they  could  appreciate. 
His  remarkably  clever  political  novels  added  to  his  popu- 
larity. Coningsby  and  Sybil  are  still  incomparably  good 
pictures  of  English  social  and  political  life  during  the 
period,  and  they  gain  in  piquancy  from  being  partly  auto- 
biographical. The  young  Sidonia  in  Coningsby  is  a  looking- 
glass  portrait  of  Disraeli  himself,  and  Sidonia's  sparkling 
reflections  on  men,  women  and  institutions  were  the  author's 
own.  Into  the  mouths  of  his  other  characters,  too,  he  could 
put  criticisms  which  it  was  just  as  well  to  advance  for  the 
edification  of  people  all  round.  The  things  which  he  made 
Millbank  in  Coningsby  say  about  the  English  aristocracy 
were  a  sting  to  false  pride  in  fictitious  pedigrees;  and  in 
his  last  novel,  Endymion,  he  launched  a  cutting  piece  of 
irony  against  the  old  Tory  school  for  whom  the  Conserva- 
tives were  a  little  too  modern,  and  who  sniffed  within  their 
drawing  rooms  at  the  Conservative  leader  as  "that  person." 
Zenobia  in  Endymion — 

"mourned  over  the  concession  of  the  Manchester  and  Liverpool  Railway 
in  a  moment  of  Liberal  infatuation,  but  flattered  herself  that  any  exten- 
sion of  the  railway  system  might  certainly  be  arrested,  and  on  this  head 
the  majority  of  society,  perhaps  even  of  the  country,  was  certainly  on 
her  side. 

"  'I  have  some  good  news  for  you/  said  one  of  her  young  favourites 
as  he  attended  her  reception.  'We  have  prevented  this  morning  the  light- 
ing of  Grosvenor  Square  by  gas  by  a  large  majority.' 

"  'I  felt  confident  that  disgrace  would  never  occur,'  said  Zenobia, 
triumphant.  'And  by  a  large  majority!  I  wonder  how  Lord  Pomeroy 
voted.' 

"  'Against  us.' 

"'How  can  one  save  the  country?'  exclaimed  Zenobia.  'I  believe  now 
the  story  that  he  has  ordered  Lady  Pomeroy  not  to  go  to  the  Drawing 
Room  in  a  sedan  chair.' " 

The  Conservatism  of  Disraeli,  stated  satisfactorily  in 
no  speech  or  novel  as  a  formal  creed,  but  expressed  more 
or  less  vaguely  in  many  passages  scattered  over  his  writ- 
ings and  utterances,  was  based  upon  a  natural  love  for  the 
great  traditions  of  Great  Britain,  and  an  admiration  of 
the  institutions  which  had  grown  up  with  the  history  of  the 
country  and  helped  to  maintain  its  stability.  He  was  him- 
self a  romantic  figure.  His  appearance  was  romantic;  his 
cast  of  mind  was  romantic.  He  revelled  in  the  idea  of  a 
constitution  which  had  grown  like  an  ancient  oak  set  in  a 


250     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

stately  park.  In  a  speech  of  1865  he  expanded  himself  in 
profuse  eulogy  of  government  "by  a  most  singular  series 
of  traditionary  influences,  which  generation  after  genera- 
tion cherishes  and  preserves  because  it  knows  that  they 
embalm  custom  and  represent  law."  The  wealth  of  Eng* 
land,  the  vastness  of  the  British  Empire,  the  broad-acred 
solidity  of  the  English  aristocracy,  filled  him  with  pride. 
He  deprecated  any  step  "that  had  a  tendency  to  demo- 
cracy." Parliament  should  endeavour  to  maintain  "the 
ordered  state  of  free  England  in  which  we  live."  The 
Church  of  England  found  in  him  as  resolute  a  champion 
as  any  bishop  on  the  episcopal  bench,  and  his  black  and 
glossy  locks  shook  in  solemn  deprecation  when  it  was  pro- 
posed to  disendow  the  Irish  Church,  and  when  the  Welsh 
Church  was  threatened  with  disestablishment. 

Reforms  were  favoured  only  when  it  was  apparent  that 
small  concessions  might  forestall  greater  changes.  Disraeli 
was  never  a  real  old-school  Tory.  His  philosophy  of  Con- 
servatism, so  far  as  it  was  a  philosophy  and  not  a  policy 
of  expediency,  was  that,  since  changes  cannot  be  prevented, 
they  should  be  taken  in  good  time,  and  be  as  little  like 
changes  as  possible.  He  realised  that  the  Conservative  may 
become — and  has  in  many  historical  instances  been — unwit- 
tingly the  greatest  of  revolutionaries,  through  blocking 
changes  which,  if  taken  in  time,  might  have  been  easily 
and  moderately  made.  Consequently,  just  as  Disraeli  pre- 
served his  own  glossy,  romantic  appearance  by  the  use  of 
hair-dye,  so  he  introduced  the  Reform  Bill  of  1867  to  pre- 
serve the  constitution  with  the  minimum  of  apparent  altera- 
tion. It  was  the  Bill  which  Gladstone  and  Bright  took  in  hand 
and  converted  into  a  household  suffrage  measure,  much  more 
liberal  in  its  terms  and  with  fewer  restrictions  than  Dis- 
raeli and  his  colleagues  had  intended.  He  has  never  been 
quite  forgiven  by  the  Conservatives  for  that  measure.  He 
thought  he  was  "dishing  the  Whigs,"  but  one  of  the  most 
recent  exponents  of  Conservative  philosophy  censoriously 
urges  that  "he  hurried  forward  an  extension  of  the  fran- 
chise before  public  opinion  required  it,  and  to  the  scandal 
of  Conservative  sentiment."1 

For  satisfactory  statements  of  the  Tory  or  Conservative 
state  of  mind  one  has  to  go  to  other  sources  than  Disraeli's 

l  Lord  Hugh  Cecil,  "Conservatism,"  p.  70.  ' 


DISRAELI  251 

deliverances,  which,  indeed,  save  for  a  polished  phrase  here 
and  there,  a  touch  of  irony  or  a  gibe,  are  extremely  dull  to 
read  after  half  a  century's  lapse  from  the  play  of  his  pic- 
turesque personality.  When  we  set  ourselves  to  analyse  the. 
Conservative  view  of  politics  certain  interesting  differences 
emerge. 

There  is  the  Conservatism  of  thinkers  like  Edmund 
Burke,  for  whom  the  British  constitution  represented  the 
realisation  of  perfection  in  political  structure,  and  who 
regarded  inroads  upon  well-established  institutions  as  being 
like  desecrations  of  a  sacred  shrine.  Burke  was  the  greatest 
Conservative  who  ever  lived.  Though  he  was  passionately 
on  the  Whig  side  in  reference  to  the  revolt  of  the  American 
colonies,  and  not  even  Pitt  defended  the  colonists  with  such 
energy  and  eloquence,  his  main  arguments  were  conserva- 
tive. To  him  the  Americans  were  as  a  child  that  wished 
"to  assimilate  with  its  parent  and  to  reflect  with  a  true 
filial  resemblance  the  beauteous  countenance  of  British 
liberty."  It  was,  however,  the  French  Revolution,  with  its 
violent  overthrow  of  an  ancient  order,  which  brought  forth 
Burke's  most  glowing  and  exultant  efforts  in  praise  of  the 
constitution  of  his  own  country.  His  language  on  this 
theme  is  majestic.  The  gorgeous  rhetoric,  the  rich  embroi- 
dery of  imagery,  the  superbly  poised  periods,  which  were 
characteristic  of  his  literary  style  at  its  best,  were  lavished 
on  the  congenial  task  of  revealing  to  his  countrymen,  under 
cover  of  a  flaming  denunciation  of  proceedings  in  France, 
the  splendour  of  their  own  system  of  government.  His 
Reflections  on  the  Revolution  in  France,  his  Appeal  from 
the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs,  his  Letter  to  a  Member  of  the 
National  Assembly,  anci  his  Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace 
almost  allure  even  a  modern  reader  into  a  temporary  feel- 
ing that  Great  Britain  under  George  III.  was  governed 
with  as  near  an  approach  to  perfection  as  could  be  devised 
by  human  beings. 

Nay,  to  Burke  it  was  something  higher  than  human 
handiwork.  When  he  wrote  that  "we  fear  God,  we  look 
up  with  awe  to  kings,  with  affection  to  Parliament,  with 
duty  to  magistrates,  with  reverence  to  priests,  and  with 
respect  to  nobility.  .  .  .  We  are  resolved  to  keep  an  estab- 
lished Church,  an  established  monarchy,  an  established 
aristocracy  and  an  established  democracy,  each  in  the 


252     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

degree  it  exists,  and  in  no  greater" — when  he  wrote  thus 
he  delivered  unto  Conservatism  its  Apostles'  Creed,  not 
as  a  mere  political  recapitulation,  but  as  a  revelation  of 
Divine  beneficence.  Whomsoever  laid  the  hand  of  altera- 
tion on  this  blessed  and  glorious  gift  committed  an  irre- 
ligious act.  "The  awful  author  of  our  being  is  the  author 
of  our  place  in  the  order  of  existence ;  and,  having  disposed 
and  marshalled  us  by  a  divine  tactic,  not  according  to  our 
will  but  according  to  His,  He  has,  in  and  by  that  disposi- 
tion, virtually  subjected  us  to  act  the  part  which  belongs 
to  the  place  assigned  to  us." 

We  have  to  brush  aside  the  rhetoric  and  put  pointed 
questions  in  order  to  test  the  real  validity  of  Burke's  pleas. 
Such  a  pertinent  question  as  Sir  James  Stephen  submits 
brings  us  out  of  the  coloured  and  golden  mist  and  into  the 
clear  daylight  at  once: — "Did  Burke  mean  to  say  that  God 
gave  two  members  to  old  Sarum,  and,  if  not,  what  precisely 
did  he  mean?"1 

But  there  was  a  noble  side  to  Burke's  Conservatism,  as 
there  is  to  that  of  many  who  subscribe  to  his  creed.  He 
was  extremely  sensitive  to  the  feeling  that  the  system  of 
government  under  which  he  lived  was  not  the  work  of  any 
one  generation,  but  has  been  fashioned  by  processes  of 
adaptation  during  a  thousand  years.  That  this  should  be 
so  touched  his  imagination  and  evoked  his  reverence.  He 
hated  the  brand  new.  A  few  sprays  of  ivy  growing  over 
a  mossy  wall  gave  him  pleasure,  and  he  liked  to  have  the 
same  feeling  towards  political  institutions.  Any  man  who 
has  not  that  feeling  in  some  degree  lacks  the  historic  sense. 
About  twenty-five  years  ago  William  Morris,  an  eminent 
Socialist  and  a  very  great  artist,  aroused  a  vigorous  agita- 
tion about  a  proposal  to  pull  down  Lincoln's  Inn  gateway, 
a  fine  piece  of  early  Tudor  brickwork  in  Chancery  Lane. 
Morris  also  formed  the  Society  for  the  Protection  of  Ancient 
Buildings.  Now,  Chancery  Lane  was  a  somewhat  narrow 
street,  and  Lincoln's  Inn  gateway  was  rather  in  the 
way.  The  insensitive  utilitarians  would  have  demolished 
it  without  scruple,  to  make  room,  perhaps,  for  more  omni- 
buses to  rattle  along,  and  for  ugly  suites  of  offices  or  flaunt- 
ing shops,  if  this  Socialist  agitator  with  a  copious  fund  of 
violent  language  and  a  deep  feeling  for  beauty  had  not 
become  appropriately  vituperative  and  saved  it. 

1  Stephen,  "Home  Sabbaticae,"  Vol.  III.,  p.  144. 


DISRAELI  253 

What  William  Morris  felt  about  Lincoln's  Inn  gateway, 
the  west  front  of  Peterborough  Cathedral,  Tewkesbury  Min- 
ster, and  many  another  splendid  survival  of  the  art  of  the 
past,  Edmund  Burke  felt  about  the  constitutional  structure 
of  his  country.  Just  as  a  fine  building  is  an  expression  in 
stone  of  the  spirit  of  man,  and  speaks  with  its  silent  elo- 
quence to  the  present  about  the  past  during  which  it  has  min- 
istered to  man's  needs,  so  also  it  is,  and  in  a  subtler  sense, 
with  institutions ;  and  the  people  who  can  adapt  their  insti- 
tutions to  the  fresh  requirements  of  successive  generations 
thereby  preserve  a  continuity  of  historical  tradition  which 
appeals  powerfully  to  the  rooted  affections  of  reflective 
people. 

The  past  is  not  dead.  It  lives  in  us  and  around  us.  We 
are  born  three  thousand  years  old,  and  if  each  generation 
had  to  start  from  "scratch"  we  should  not  yet  be  out  of 
the  barbarian  stage  of  development.  Indeed,  many  of  us 
are  not  far  out  of  it  yeta  despite  scooters,  kinematographs, 
poison-gas  shells,  and  other  appurtenances  of  an  advanced 
civilisation.  The  preservation  of  a  sense  of  the  past  in 
the  institutions  of  a  country  unquestionably  gives  deep  satis- 
faction to  many  minds.  Truly,  the  past  cannot  be  allowed 
to  squat  on  the  back  of  the  present,  crushing  it  down  by 
weight  like  an  incubus;  there  must  be  adaptation  to  the 
needs  and  ideas  of  living  generations.  But,  saving  this 
important  consideration,  a  nation  is  the  richer  for  what  it 
can  preserve  of  what  its  forerunners  have  set  up.  The  Eng- 
lishman of  to-day  is  certainly  as  well  governed  as  is  the 
Frenchman  of  to-day ;  but  the  Englishman  of  to-day,  if  he 
have  a  spark  of  imagination,  is  the  happier  for  knowing 
that  his  system  of  government  was  not  fashioned  so  recently 
as  1875,  but  is  a  gift  to  him  from  ages,  and  bears  still  upon 
it  touches  of  the  workmanship  of  Saxon  and  Danish  kings, 
of  William  L,  Henry  II.,  Stephen  Langton,  Simon  de  Mont- 
ford,  Edward  L,  Henry  VII.,  Elizabeth,  John  Pym,  Oliver 
Cromwell,  Halifax,  Walpole,  the  elder  Pitt,  Fox,  Peel,  Rus- 
sell, and  Gladstone.  There  is  perspective  in  the  survey  of 
the  long  road,  and  there  is  a  sense  of  evolution  in  the  pro- 
cesses by  which  the  institutional  garments  have  become 
fitted  to  the  frame  of  the  present  age. 

Less  honourable  is  that  "panic  dread  of  change"  of 
which  Wordsworth  spoke,  and  which  marks  the  Conserva- 


254     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

tism  of  the  politically  timorous.  There  was  once  a  Royal 
Duke  who  declared  that  the  British  constitution  was  doomed 
when  the  bishops  in  the  House  of  Lords  ceased  to  wear 
wigs.  The  faintest  stirring  » of  the  wind  of  reform 
gives  some  people  a  bad  cold.  To  these  may  be 
added  the  lazy-minded  and  the  indifferent,  who  con- 
stitute the  mass  of  inertia  which  is  a  great  aid  to 
Conservatism.  It  is  not  only  those  who  are  well  blessed 
with  goods  who  are  content  with  things  as  they  are,  how- 
ever bad  they  may  be.  A  field  of  thistles  is  good  enough 
for  a  donkey,  and  that  animal  .is  in  this  respect  no  worse 
than  millions  of  human  kind.  To  some,  any  kind  of  change 
is  bewildering.  Just  before  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  when  it  became  evident  that  the  old  methods  of 
maintaining  civil  order  and  coping  with  crime  in  England 
had  broken  down,  and  Peel  proposed  to  establish  an  orga- 
nised police  system,  it  is  recorded  that  "so  strongly  rooted 
was  the  old  notion  that  a  professional  police  force  was  con- 
trary to  English  traditions  and  would  constitute  a  menace 
to  individual  liberty,  that  Peel's  proposals  encountered  the 
bitterest  opposition  both  in  Parliament  and  in  the  country 
at  large."  Very  few  are  the  reforms,  however  salutary,  of 
which  a  similar  tale  has  not  to  be  related  when  their  his- 
tory is  traced. 

There  are  likewise  many  persons  whose  Conservatism 
means  no  more  than  the  preservation  of  a  static  condition 
of  society  because  their  own  interests  are  bound  up  with 
it.  It  was  to  catch  the  support  of  such  persons  that  the 
Tory  party  broadened  its  outlook,  first  under  the  leadership 
of  Peel,  but  much  more  thoroughly  under  Disraeli.  From 
the  Revolution  of  1688  down  to  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832 
Great  Britain  was  wholly  in  the  power  of  the  aristocracy. 
The  aristocratic  Whigs  were  as  much  a  conclave  of  leading 
families  as  were  the  Tories.  Up  to  1832  the  House  of  Lords 
had  been  the  special  preserve  of  this  territorial  aristocracy. 
The  landed  interest,  supported  by  the  military  and  the 
wealthier  legal  interests,  completely  monopolised  the  peer- 
age. With  the  exception  of  a  banker,  no  man  whose  wealth 
was  made  from  trade  was  admitted  to  the  House  till  after 
1832.  But  then  came  the  class  of  well-to-do  merchants, 
manufacturers  and  brewers,  equipped  with  political  power 


DISRAELI  255 

and  insisting  upon  recognition.  The  Tory  leaders  saw,  if 
the  thing  were  not  perceptible  to 

"those  old  pheasant-lords, 

Those  partridge-breeders  of   a  thousand  years, 
Who  had  mildewed  in  their  thousands,  doing  nothing 
Since  Egbert," 

that  if  they  laid  themselves  out  to  conserve  the  interests  of 
this  class,  and  tossed  them  a  coronet  or  two  now  and  then, 
they  would  thereby  strengthen  Conservatism  generally. 
Not  even  the  foaming  rhetoric  of  Burke  could  have  glorified 
a  beerage;  but  it  was  a  good  thing  for  Toryism  when  the 
new  class  of  leaders  of  industry,  with  their  shrewdness, 
their  wealth  and  their  energy,  were  attracted  within  the 
fold. 

True,  it  made  Conservatism  more  palpably  the  guardian 
of  money  interests  than  of  great  principles  and  venerable 
institutions,  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  old  Tory- 
ism had  been  the  guardian  of  interests  likewise.  It  was 
not  nourished  entirely  on  rhetoric  and  antiquarian  venera- 
tion. Bolingbroke,  the  most  brilliant  exponent  of  Tory 
ideas  in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  quite 
frankly  acknowledged  that  his  aims  were  "to  fill  the  em- 
ployment of  the  kingdom  down  to  the  meanest  with  Tories," 
and  to  shift  the  burden  of  taxation  from  the  landed  to  the 
monied  interest.  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  after  the  Dis- 
raeli period,  endeavoured  to  give  a  still  more  popular  turn 
to  Toryism  by  his  gospel  of  "Tory  Democracy."  It  was  a 
brilliant  and  audacious  move,  which  had  behind  it  a 
shrewder  knowledge  of  human  nature  than  was  apparent 
to  many  who  greeted  it  with  derision. 


Lord  Hugh  Cecil's  book  on  Conservatism  in  the  Home 
University  Library,  is  an  excellent  and  fair-minded  short 
treatise.  F.  E.  Smith  (now  Lord  Birkenhead)  has  in  his 
Toryism  collected  a  small  volume  of  statements  of  the  Tory 
attitude,  chiefly  from  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century 
writers  and  statesmen,  with  a  critical  introduction  by  him- 
self. J.  M.  Kennedy's  Tory  Democracy  is  an  exposition  of 
the  latest  phase.  The  standard  Life  of  Disraeli  is  Mony- 
penny  and  Buckle's  voluminous  biography.  Froude's  shorter 
biography  is  brilliant  and  not  over  friendly.  Disraeli's 
Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck  is  a  study  of  a  stubborn 
Tory  by  a  more  flexible  Conservative. 


256     MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

I  look  with  filial  reverence  on  the  constitution  of  my 
country,  and  never  will  cut  it  in  pieces  and  put  it  into  the 
kettle  of  any  magician,  in  order  to  boil  it,  with  the  puddle 
of  their  compounds,  into  youth  and  vigour.  On  the  con- 
trary, I  will  drive  away  such  pretenders;  I  will  nurse  its 
venerable  age,  and  with  lenient  arts  extend  a  parent's 
breath.— Burke  (1784). 

If  at  the  present  moment  I  had  imposed  upon  me  the 
duty  of  forming  a  legislature  for  any  country,  and  particu- 
larly for  a  country  like  this,  in  possession  of  great  property 
of  various  descriptions,  I  do  not  mean  to  assert  that  I  would 
form  such  a  legislature  as  we  possess  now,  for  the  nature 
of  man  was  incapable  of  reaching  it  at  once ;  but  my  great 
endeavour  would  be  to  form  some  description  of  legislature 
which  would  produce  the  same  results. — The  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington (1830). 

The  Tories,  who  are  of  the  people,  know  and  exclaim 
that  these  institutions,  which  are  not  so  much  the  work  of 
the  genius  of  man,  but  rather  the  inspired  offspring  of  Time, 
are  the  tried  guarantees  of  individual  liberty,  popular 
government  and  Christian  morality;  that  they  are  the  only 
institutions  which  possess  the  virtue  of  stability  even 
through  all  ages;  that  the  harmonious  fusion  of  classes 
and  interests  which  they  represent  corresponds  with  and 
satisfies  the  highest  aspirations  either  of  peoples  or  of  men ; 
that  by  them  has  our  empire  been  founded  and  extended 
in  the  past;  and  that  by  them  alone  can  it  prosper  or  be 
maintained  in  the  future.  Such  is  the  Tory  party  and 
such  are  its  principles,  by  which  it  can  give  to  England 
the  government  she  requires — democratic,  aristocratic,  par- 
liamentary, monarchical,  uniting  in  an  indissoluble  embrace 
religious  liberty  and  social  order. — Lord  Randolph  Churchill 
(1884). 

The  best  instituted  governments,  like  the  best  consti- 
tuted animal  bodies,  carry  in  them  the  seeds  of  their 
destruction ;  and,  though  they  grow  and  improve  for  a  time, 
they  will  soon  tend  visibly  to  their  dissolution.  Every 
hour  they  live  is  an  hour  less  they  have  to  live.  All  that 
can  be  done,  therefore,  to  prolong  the  duration  of  a  good 
government  is  to  draw  it  back,  on  every  favourable  occa- 
sion, to  the  first  good  principles  on  which  it  was  founded. 
When  these  occasions  happen  often,  and  are  well  improved, 


DISRAELI  257 

such  governments  are  prosperous  and  durable.  When  they 
happen  seldom  or  are  ill  improved,  these  political  bodies 
live  in  pain,  or  in  langour,  and  die  soon. — Bolingbroke. 

The  world  will  not  endure  to  hear  that  we  are  wiser 
than  any  which  went  before.  In  which  consideration  there 
is  a  cause  why  we  should  be  slow  and  unwilling  to  change 
without  very  urgent  necessity  the  ancient  ordinances,  rites 
and  long  approved  customs  of  our  venerable  predecessors. 
The  love  of  things  ancient  doth  argue  a  stay.edness,  but 
levity  and  want  of  experience  maketh  apt  unto  innovations. 
That  which  wisdom  did  first  begin,  and  hath  been  with  good 
men  long  continued,  challenge th  allowance  of  them  that 
succeed,  although  it  plead  for  itself  nothing.  That  which 
is  new,  if  it  promise  not  much,  doth  fear  condemnation 
before  trial ;  till  trial,  no  man  doth  acquit  or  trust  it,  what 
good  soever  it  pretend  or  promise.  So  that  in  this  kind 
there  are  few  things  known  to  be  good,  till  such  time  as 
they  grow  to  be  ancient. — Richard  Hooker. 

Reform  is  affirmative,  conservatism  negative;  conser- 
vatism goes  for  comfort,  reform  for  truth.  Conservatism 
is  more  candid  to  behold  another's  worth;  reform  more 
disposed  to  maintain  and  increase  its  own.  Conservatism 
makes  no  poetry,  breathes  no  prayer,  has  no  invention;  it 
is  all  memory.  Reform  has  no  gratitude,  no  prudence,  no 
husbandry.  It  makes  a  great  difference  to  your  figure  and 
to  your  thought,  whether  your  foot  is  advancing  or  reced- 
ing. .Conservatism  never  puts  the  foot  forward;  in  the 
hour  when  it  does  that  it  is  not  establishment  but  reform. 
— Emerson. 

There  is  a  rule  of  conduct  common  to  individuals  and 
to  states,  established  by  the  experience  of  centuries  as  that 
of  everyday  life.  This  rule  declares  that  we  must  not  dream 
of  reformation  while  agitated  by  passion;  wisdom  directs 
that  at  such  moments  we  should  limit  ourselves  to  main- 
taining.— Metternich. 

There  is  no  probability  of  ever  establishing  in  England 
a  more  democratic  form  of  government  than  the  present 
English  constitution.  .  .  .  The  disposition  of  property  in 
England  throws  the  government  of  the  country  into  the 
hands  of  its  natural  aristocracy.  I  do  not  believe  that 
any  scheme  of  the  suffrage,  or  any  method  of  election,  could 
divert  that  power  into  other  quarters. — Disraeli  (1836). 


258     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

The  trouble  with  modern  Conservatism  is  that  it  is  suf- 
fering from  an  absence  of  Conservative  thinkers.  Disraeli 
was  the  last;  for  Lord  Randolph  Churchill  was  practically 
driven  out  of  the  party  owing  to  his  excessive  originality. 
— J.  M.  Kennedy  (Tory  Democracy). 

The  Tory  party  has  been  called  in  modern  times  Con- 
servative. It  desires,  indeed,  to  stand  in  the  ancient  ways. 
But  it  is  the  vision  which  it  has  inherited,  and  not  the 
unconsecrated  past,  which  it  desires  to  preserve  for  the 
present  and  bequeath  to  the  future.  ...  It  believes  in 
the  Crown,  because  the  Crown  is  the  symbol  and  stay  of 
the  unity  of  the  Commonwealth;  it  believes  in  a  national 
church  because  it  believes  in  the  conservation  of  the  Com- 
monwealth; it  believes  in  a  national  system  of  economy, 
such,  and  so  suited  to  the  genius  of  the  Commonwealth, 
that  human  welfare  is  the  first  care  and  the  first  charge 
on  the  production  of  wealth,  and  while  agriculture  is  not 
sacrificed  to  industry,  neither  is  industry  sacrificed  to  agri-. 
culture. — Lord  Henry  Bentinck  (Tory  Democracy). 

Temperamental  sympathy,  common  in  youth,  is  apt, 
like  optimism,  to  run  thin  with  advancing  years.  This,  in 
fact,  is  the  secret  of  the  number  of  reversions  from  Libe- 
ralism to  Conservatism  among  elderly  men. — /.  M.  Robert- 
son. 

The  word  Tory  had  from  the  first  a  political  application. 
Originally  it  designated  a  particular  class  of  Irish  free- 
booters, and  was  probably  first  used  in  Ireland  to  express, 
in  a  calumnious  form,  that  class  of  politicians  who  attri- 
buted to  the  king  a  right  of  levying  taxes  without  consent 
of  the  subject  appearing  by  his  proxy  in  Parliament. — De 
Quincey. 


CHAMBERLAIN. 


[Page  260 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

CHAMBERLAIN    AND    IMPERIALISM. 

TE  complete  change  of  view  which  appeared  to  be 
indicated  by  Joseph  Chamberlain's  defection  from 
the  English  Liberal  party  in  1886,  and  his  alliamce 
with  the  Conservative  party,  signalised  by  joining 
Lord  Salisbury's  Cabinet,  in  1895,  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  so  surprising  to  those  who  were  intimate  with  him 
as  it  was  to  the  world  at  large.  Lord  Morley,  who  knew 
his  mind  well,  observes  that  "it  is  an  error  to  suppose  that 
Chamberlain  ever  had  anything  like  complete  sympathy 
with  the  Manchester  programme.  As  I  was  writing  about 
Cobden  towards  the  end  of  the  seventies,  our  talk  naturally 
fell  now  and  again  upon  colonies,  non-intervention,  foreign 
policy.  Without  any  formal  declaration  of  dissent,  I  still 
had  an  instinctive  feeling  that  the  orthodox  Cobdenite  word 
was  by  no  means  sure  of  a  place  in  the  operations  of  the 
future  leader." 

This  passage  is  chiefly  convincing  by  reason  of  its  source, 
and  any  confirmation  of  it  can  only  increase  our  wonder 
that  during  the  years  when  Chamberlain  was  a  leader  and 
the  hope  of  what  he  himself  called  "aggressive  Radicalism/' 
he  should  have  concealed  his  Imperialistic  leanings  so  suc- 
cessfully. In  his  Radical  days  he  was  regarded  by  the 
horrified  Tories  as  a  new  Jack  Cade  made  in  Birmingham. 
He  had  then  spoken  of  Gladstone  as  "the  greatest  man  of 
his  time,"  and  of  Salisbury  as  "the  most  immoral  of  poli- 
ticians." He  had  referred  to  England  as  "a  peer-ridden 
country,"  and  to  the  Conservative  party  as  "the  old  stupid 
party,"  as  comprehending  "fossil  reactionaries,"  and  as  a 
heterogeneous  combination  "who  unite  their  discordant 
voices  in  order  to  form  a  mutual  protection  society  for 
assuring  to  each  of  its  members  place,  privilege  and  power." 
Yet  after  the  split  in  the  Liberal  party  on  the  Irish  Home 

261 


262     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

Rule  question,  Chamberlain,  with  the  coolness  that  was 
habitual  with  him,  declared  that  not  he  but  circumstances 
had  changed. 

The  circumstances  of  his  political  environment  had  cer- 
tainly changed,  and  if  his  new  associations  brought  to  the 
front  of  his  mind  views  which  he  had  formerly  kept  at  the 
back,  it  seems  reasonable  to  assume  that  if  he  had  not  been 
warped  out  of  the  Liberal  party  by  his  inability  to  concur 
in  Gladstone's  Irish  policy,  his  latent  Imperialism  would 
not  have  become  vocaljjf  It  is  possible  that  among  the  many 
speeches  delivered  by  a  leader  of  opinion  who  spoke  so 
frequently  as  Chamberlain  did,  there  may  be  some  passages 
manifesting  an  interest  in  colonial  questions  before  1886, 
but  an  examination  of  the  two  volumes  of  his  collected 
speeches  reveals  only  one  such  utterance,  delivered  in 
1885 :— i 

"If  foreign  nations  are  determined  to  pursue  distant 
colonial  enterprises  we  have  no  right  to  prevent  them. 
We  cannot  anticipate  them  in  every  case,  by  proclaiming  a 
universal  protectorate  in  every  unoccupied  portion  of  the 
globe's  surface  which  English  enterprise  has  hitherto 
neglected;  but  our  fellow  subjects  may  rest  assured  that 
their  liberties  or  rights,  and  their  interests,  are  as  dear 
to  us  as  our  own,  and  if  ever  they  are  seriously  menaced 
the  whole  power  of  the  country  will  be  exerted  for  their 
defence,  and  the  English  democracy  will  stand  shoulder  to 
shoulder  throughout  the  world  to  maintain  the  honour  and 
integrity  of  the  Empire." 

That  was  said  in  Chamberlain's  Radical  days,  but  it  is 
generally  true  that  until  he  accepted  the  office  of  Secretary 
of  State  for  the  Colonies  in  the  Salisbury  Government  in 
1895  he  had  been  chiefly  concerned  with  domestic  and  com- 
mercial questions.  Foreign  policy  had  scarcely  interested 
him,  and  the  colonies  did  not  appear  to  be  much  in  his  mind. 
Indeed,  the  political  world  was  surprised  by  his  choice.2  But 
Chamberlain  was  a  man  of  exceptional  vigour  and  alert- 
ness, and  whatever  department  of  state  he  might  be  called 

iBoyd,  "Chamberlain's  Speeches"    (two  vols.,   1914),  Vol.  I.,  p.  136. 

2"Surprise"  is  the  word  used  by  two  historians  of  modern  England — 
Gretton,  "Modern  History  of  the  English  People,"  Vol.  II.,  p.  378,  and 
Marriott,  "England  Since  Waterloo,"  p.  326.  Mr.  Boyd,  the  editor  of 
Chamberlain's  Speeches,  also  says  that  he  "surprised  the  public  mind  by 
taking  the  position  of  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Colonies." 


CHAMBERLAIN  263 

upon  to  administer,  he  would  be  bound  to  have  a  policy, 
and  to  work  for  it  with  enthusiasm.  The  Colonial  Office 
had  hitherto  been  regarded  as  rather  a  refuge  for  some 
politician  whom  the  Prime  Minister  wanted  to  have  in  his 
government,  but  could  not  fit  in  conveniently  anywhere  else. 
That  Chamberlain  would  not  accept  it  in  that  light  was 
certain.  When  he  swung  his  own  party,  the  Liberal 
Unionists,  into  line  with  the  Conservatives,  he  could  have 
had  any  office  in  the  Salisbury  Cabinet  except  the  chief 
one.  He  deliberately  chose  the  Colonial  Office,  because  he 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was  important  work 
to  do  there. 

The  reason  why  Chamberlain  saw  this  opportunity  will 
become  clearer  if  we  follow  out  two  lines  of  enquiry — the 
first  relating  to  the  changed  attitude  of  people  in  Great 
Britain  towards  the  self-governing  colonies,  and  of  those 
colonies  towards  Great  Britain;  the  second  affecting  the 
anxiety  of  British  manufacturing  classes  as  to  their  trade 
in  colonial  and  foreign  markets. 

There  was  a  school  of  British  politicians,  not  large,  but 
with  representatives  in  high  places,  who  cared  nothing  for 
colonies,  believed  that  they  would  soon  insist  upon  their 
independence,  and  did  not  want  to  be  bothered  with  them. 
It  has  been  usual  to  call  this  the  Manchester  school,  and 
to  say  that  Cobden  was  its  prophet.  But  it  existed  before 
Cobden  had  anything  to  do  with  politics,  among  statesmen 
who  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  Manchester  way  of  think- 
ing. As  previously  pointed  out,  Lord  Melbourne,  in  send- 
ing Durham  to  Canada,  troubled  nothing  about  whether 
that  country  remained  British  or  did  not,  but  was  afraid 
of  the  discredit  which  would  attach  to  him  and  his  Ministry 
if  the  breach  occurred  while  they  held  office.  Disraeli, 
assuredly  no  Manchester  politician,  once  spoke  of  "those 
wretched  colonies,  a  millstone  round  our  necks."  Lord 
Glenelg,  a  Colonial  Secretary,  thought  that  Great  Britain 
"had  colonies  enough,"  and  would  if  he  could  have  pre- 
vented the  settlement  of  Victoria,  South  Australia  and  New 
Zealand.  But  the  effect  of  extending  responsible  govern- 
ment to  the  colonies  was  quite  different  from  what  was 
anticipated  by  those  politicians  who  feared  that  it  would 
conduce  to  speedy  separation.  The  competence  of  these 
British  communities  oversea  to  legislate  for  their  own 


264     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

needs,  to  develop  their  enormous  territories,  to  shape  their 
policy  so  as  to  anticipate  dangers,  and 'at  the  same  time 
to  hold  their  place  in  the  British  concourse  of  peoples  with 
dignity  and  self-reliance  evoked  the  admiration  of  men  of 
imagination  in  Great  Britain.  Chamberlain  may  not  have 
paid  much  attention  to  colonial  politics  until  he  was  far 
advanced  in  his  political  career;  but  when  he  did,  a  man 
so  discerning  and  capable  could  not  fail  to  be  attracted  by 
the  clear-eyed,  youthful  vigour  which  he  now  surveyed. 

The  second  aspect  of  the  subject  touched  Chamberlain 
as  one  who  had  been  a  manufacturer  of  hardware,  and  who 
was  .the  foremost  representative  of  the  largest  centre  of 
hardware  manufacture  in  the  world,  Birmingham.  It  was 
very  important  to  Birmingham,  and  indeed  to  British  manu- 
facturers generally,  that  they  should  retain  their  hold  on 
colonial  markets.  In  some  trades  they  were  faced  with  a 
most  aggressive  world-wide  competition,  which  filled  many 
of  them  with  alarm.  The  self-governing  colonies  and 
dominions  in  nearly  all  cases  had  protective  tariffs,  which 
necessarily  imposed  obstacles  to  the  importation  of  British 
manufactures.  Indeed,  colonial  manufacturers,  with  busi- 
nesses established  under  the  shelter  of  tariffs,  had  more 
to  fear  from  British  than  from  any  other  competitors,  and 
when  a  colonial  protectionist  spoke  of  "the  foreigner"  he 
always  meant  the  British  manufacturer  as  well  as  the  pro- 
ducer under  another  flag.  Chamberlain's  new-found  admi- 
ration for  colonies  was  perfectly  genuine,  but  along  with  it 
went  the  strong  hope  that  he  might  be  the  shaper  of  a  new 
colonial  policy,  which  would  conserve  colonial  markets  for 
British  manufacturers  and  secure  for  them  more  favourable 
terms  than  were  conceded  to  really  "foreign"  competitors. 
Hence  the  Imperialism  of  which  Chamberlain  emerged  as 
the  exponent  in  1895  developed  for  itself  a  mercantile  basis. 
In  1902,  after  a  visit  to  South  Africa,  he  propounded  a 
policy  of  "tariff  reforim,"  which  meant  the  thin  end  of  the 
wedge  of  Protection,  coupled  with  a  policy  of  preferential 
trade  with  the  colonies  and  dominions;  and,  being  unable 
to  carry  his  party  with  him,  he  resigned  from  the  govern- 
ment in  1903. 

The  years  which  followed,  until  Chamberlain's  death  in 
July,  1914,  were  not  propitious  to  the  success  of  his  new 
cause,  and  he  must  have  been  disappointed  with  the  little 


CHAMBERLAIN  265 

progress  made.  They  were  years  of  high  trade  prosperity. 
So  far  from  British  exports  declining,  they  mounted  up- 
wards. Eloquence  was  wasted  in  demonstrating  the  danger 
to  trade  under  a  system  which,  in  fact,  refused  to  afford 
any  evidence  of  anything  but  buoyancy.  Nor  was  there 
an  inclination  on  the  part  of  the  Dominions  to  accept  the 
limitations  of  .scope  which  Chamberlain  desired  to  mark  out 
for  them.  Both  Canada  and  Australia,  it  is  true,  granted 
a  preference  to  British  goods  in  their  customs  tariffs,  but 
he  had  asked  for  more  than  that.  Chamberlain  had  put 
the  case  for  British  manufacturers  quite  frankly  in  his 
important  Glasgow  speech  in  1903:— 

"We  can  say  to  our  great  colonies :  'We  understand  your 
views  and  conditions.  We  do  not  attempt  to  dictate  to  you. 
We  do  not  think  ourselves  superior  to  you.  We  have  taken 
the  trouble  to  learn  your  objections,  to  appreciate  and 
sympathise  with  your  policy.  We  know  that  you  are  right 
in  saying  that  you  will  not  always  be  content  to  be  what 
the  Americans  call  a  one-horse  country,  with  a  single  indus- 
try and  no  diversity  of  employment.  We  can  see  that  you 
are  right  not  to  neglect  what  Providence  has  given  you  in 
the  shape  of  mineral  or  other  resources.  We  understand 
and  we  appreciate  all  that,  and  therefore  we  will  not  pro- 
pose to  you  anything  that  is  unreasonable  or  contrary  to 
this  policy,  which  we  know  is  deep  in  your  hearts.  But  we 
will  say  to  you :  After  all,  there  are  many  things  which  you 
do  not  now  make,  many  things  for  which  we  have  a  great 
capacity  for  producing — leave  them  to  us,  as  you  have  left 
them  hitherto.  Do  not  increase  your  tariff  walls  against 
us.  Pull  them  down  when  they  are  unnecessary  to  the  suc- 
cess of  this  policy  to  which  you  are  committed.  Do  that 
because  we  are  kinsmen — without  injury  to  any  important 
interest — because  it  is  good  for  the  Empire  as  a  whole,  and 
because  we  have  taken  the  first  step,  and  have  set  you  the 
example.  We  offer  you  a  preference ;  we  rely  on  your 
patriotism,  your  affection,  that  we  shall  not  be  losers  there- 
by.' "i 

There  were,  then,  according  to  Chamberlain's  desire,  to 
be  certain  things  which  the  Dominions  did  not  then  make 
which  they  were  not  to  try  to  make— "leave  them  to  us  as 

1  Boyd's  edition  of  "Chamberlain's  Speeches,"  Vol.  II.,  p.  140. 


266     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

you  have  left  them  hitherto."  That  was  a  proposition  which 
no  Canadian  or  Australian  protectionist  would  have  enter- 
tained for  an  instant.  It  cut  at  the  very  roots  of  the  pur- 
pose for  which  their  tariffs  were  instituted,  namely,  to  aid 
in  establishing  new  industries,  as  well  as  maintaining  those 
which  were  established.  Commercialism  of  this  type  had 
only  to  be  explained  to  be  condemned  to  failure. 

But  there  are  other  aspects  of  the  Imperial  question  than 
the  commercial.  Chamberlain,  by  his  capable  energy  and 
warmth  of  sympathy,  did  more  than  any  predecessor  at  the 
Colonial  Office  not  only  to  give  importance  to  it  as  a  Depart- 
ment of  State,  but  also  to  make  people  in  the  Dominions 
feel  that  there  was  at  last  in  Downing  Street  a  statesman 
with  the  industry  and  insight  to  understand  their  prob- 
lems. Lord  Milner,  fresh  from  South  Africa,  did  not  speak 
too  strongly  when  he  said:  "There  was  a  man  in  Downing 
Street  in  my  time,  and  there  was  that  in  him  which  made 
every  remote  servant  of  the  state  work  with  a  better  heart 
and  a  keener  purpose,  and  made  the  colonies,  with  whom 
Downing  Street  has  often  been  a  byword  for  bureaucratic 
rigidity  and  aloofness,  begin  to  believe  in  a  new  Downing 
Street  full  of  vigilance  and  sympathy."  It  can  be  said  in 
confirmation  of  that  statement  that  without  exception  Aus- 
tralian statesmen  who  had  to  do  business  with  Chamberlain 
found  him  remarkably  keen  and  sympathetic.  Some  of 
them  had  tough  passages  with  him — notably  the  delega- 
tion who  were  in  charge  of  the  Commonwealth  Bill  when 
it  was  before  the  Imperial  Parliament  in  1900.  The  altera- 
tions made  in  the  judiciary  clauses  at  Chamberlain's 
instance  caused  many  misgivings.  In  clumsy  hands  the 
business  might  have  been  dangerously  mismanaged.  But 
nobody  resented  his  mode  of  handling  it,  nor  doubted  that 
his  motives  were  truly  actuated  by  regard  for  Imperial 
welfare. 

Much  of  what  goes  by  the  name  of  Imperialism  misses 
any  mark  at  which  it  is  worth  while  to  aim.  There  is,  for 
example,  no  advantage  in  having  an  Empire  which  is  so 
many  millions  of  square  miles  larger  than  any  other  poli- 
tical aggregation  of  earth,  unless  the  size  ensures  a  fuller 
and  richer  life  for  the  people  living  within  that  Empire 
than  they  would  enjoy  without  it.  Mere  multitudinousness, 
the  worship  of  bigness,  the  having  under  one  flag  of  lands 


CHAMBERLAIN  267 

on  which  the  sun  never  sets,  all  for  the  sake  of  painting 
red  splashes  on  the  map  and  indulging  in  boastful  raptures, 
.  are  but  megalomania — rhetoric  expressed  in  terms  of  terri- 
tory. It  may  minister  to  a  form  of  pride,  and  it  furnishes 
inspiration  to  a  certain  school  of  minor  poets,  but  if  there 
were  no  other  advantages  it  would  hardly  command  endur- 
ing respect.  Chamberlain  was  too  practical  a  statesman 
to  be  content  with  an  Empire  of  perorations.  He  wanted 
to  do  something  valuable  with  it. 

Strength,  however,  is  an  advantage,  for  strength  entails 
security,  and  security  is  one  of  the  concomitants  of  human 
happiness.  Security  Bentham  referred  to  as  "that  inesti- 
mable good,  the  distinctive  index  of  civilisation."  No 
elevated  standard  of  life  can  be  maintained  by  a  community 
which  is  not  strong  enough  to  protect  itself  from  aggres- 
sion. 

On  general  moral  and  political  grounds  it  may  be  said 
that  the  forces  which  work  for  effecting  and  maintaining 
the  union  of  peoples  are  always  good,  whilst  those  which 
work  for  severance  are  bad.  There  are  normally  too  many 
causes  of  jealousy,  suspicion,  hatred  and  envy  among  the 
peoples  of  the  earth.  It  is  so  much  gained  for  peace,  frater- 
nity and  progress  when  the  four  hundred  millions  within 
the  British  Empire  form  at  all  events  one  solid  block, 
amongst  whom  there  is  a  working  basis  of  good  will  and 
a  common  desire  that  justice  shall  reign.  The  best  possible 
has  as  yet  by  no  means  been  done  to  use  the  capacity  of 
the  whole  of  this  great  union  for  the  good  of  its  less  for- 
tunately endowed  members.  But  it  is  an  immense  achieve- 
ment to  have  such  an  aggregate  of  human  energies  directed 
for  the  most  part  to  the  maintenance  of  peace  and  pros- 
perity over  nearly  eleven  and  a  half  million  square  miles 
of  the  surface  of  the  globe.  It  ensures  a  very  considerable 
limitation  of  the  area  of  confusion  and  strife. 

The  necessities  of  modern  civilisation  make  it  impera- 
tive that  the  white  races  inhabiting  the  temperate  regions 
shall  have  access  to  the  natural  resources  of  tropical  and 
sub-tropical  countries.  It  is  obvious  that  life  as  it  is  now 
lived  could  not  be  supported  without  abundant  supplies  of 
rubber,  oil,  copra,  coffee,  tea,  cocoa,  timber,  and  many  other 
products  which  we  derive  from  such  lands.  Some  of  these 
commodities  were  of  little  or  no  use  to  the  primitive  peoples 


268     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

inhabiting  the  countries  whence  they  are  obtained,  until 
the  more  advanced  races,  through  their  inventiveness,  found 
a  use  for  them.  They  are  now  used  and  required 
in  unlimited  quantities.  The  world  cannot  do  without 
them.  Industries  which  employ  thousands  of  people 
and  minister  to  the  needs  of  millions  would  perish  if 
they  could  not  be  obtained.  Rubber,  for  example,  is  a 
necessary  article  for  electric  and  motor  transport  work. 
Copra  is  necessary  for  soap-making.  It  is  interesting  to 
observe  that  many  German  Socialists,  whose  party  was 
fiercely  opposed  to  colonising  schemes  when  Bismarck  sanc- 
tioned them,  afterwards,  when  the  importance  of  tropical 
products  to  German  industries  came  to  be  realised,  became 
insistent  that  Germany  must  have  direct  access  to  and 
control  over  areas  from  which  such  things  are  obtained. 

While  the  world,  then,  must  have  these  goods  which 
were  largely  valueless  to  coloured  peoples  before  the  white 
races  began  to  use  them,  we  must  consider  that  we  owe  it 
to  those  from  whose  lands  we  take  such  products  to  render 
services  to  them  in  return ;  and  this  debt  we  can  discharge 
only  by  aiding  in  their  advancement  to  a  higher  stage  of 
development.  A  civilised  human  being  gets  more  out  of 
life  than  an  uncivilised  one  does;  otherwise  there  would 
be  no  advantage  in  being  civilised.  -We  might  as  well  be 
cave  men  if  life  did  not  yield  us  a  better  kind  of  existence 
than  the  cave  man  enjoyed.  A  candid  student  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  white  and  coloured  races  has  to  admit  that  there 
is  much  in  it  which  is  discreditable.  Apart  from  the  hor- 
rors of  the  slave  trade — happily  a  thing  of  the  past — more 
recent  times  have  witnessed  many  incidents  which  it  would 
be  comfortable  to  forget  but  which  it  is  salutary  to  remem- 
ber. The  obligations  which  are  due  to  backward  races  can 
only  be  discharged  if  the  necessary  traffic  with  their  coun- 
tries be  conducted  under  an  Imperial  system  wherein  an 
informed  and  vigorous  public  opinion  will  insist  on  right 
being  done. 

As  a  rule,  no  life  is  so  demoralising  to  Europeans  as 
life  in  tropical  countries  where  there  is  a  teeming  coloured 
population.  Unrestrained  power  always  commits  abuses, 
and  the  power  wielded  by  traders  over  ill-protected  peoples 
is  almost  bound  to  lead  to  wrong-doing.  Only  by  means  of 
a  well-organised  Empire,  adequately  policed,  disciplined 


CHAMBERLAIN  269 

* 

under  law,  and  actuated  by  a  quick  and  healthy  conscience, 
can  justice  to  native  peoples,  and  a  policy  of  protecting 
and  advancing  them,  be  ensured.  It  has  been  a  positive 
mischief  that  Radical  parties,  Labour  parties,  Socialist 
parties,  and  the  like,  have  hitherto  revelled  too  much  in 
the  rhetorical  denunciation  of  abuses,  and  have  done  all  too 
little  to  help  to  ensure  that  such  lapses  shall  not  occur. 
It  is  idle  and  blind  and  foolish  to  refuse  to  recognise  that 
European  countries  and  countries  colonised  by  Europeans 
cannot  dispense  with  the  things  which  are  obtained  from 
lands  inhabited  by  backward  races,  and  that  without  an 
Imperial  organisation  and  an  Imperial  policy  those  commo- 
dities would  be  procured  under  conditions  infinitely  more 
injurious  to  such  peoples  than  is  at  present  the  case.  As 
soon  as  democracies  recognise  their  dependence  in  this 
regard  they  will  realise  their  equivalent  obligations,  and 
then  Imperial  policy  will  be  strengthened  in  the  direction 
of  ensuring  for  the  lower  races  of  mankind  the  education 
to  fit  them  for  a  more  advanced  civilisation. 


There  is  an  ample  political  biography  of  Chamberlain 
by  S.  H.  Jeyes,  and  a  useful  collection  of  his  more  impor- 
tant speeches  edited  by  Boyd.  On  Imperialism,  Ramsay 
Muir's  Expansion  of  Europe  is  very  suggestive.  Severe 
criticisms  of  Imperialism  are  contained  in  works  by  John 
Hobson  and  J.  M.  Robertson. 


An  Empire  is  the  aggregate  of  many  states  under  one 
common  head,  whether  this  head  be  a  monarch  or  a  pre- 
siding republic. — Burke. 

Imperialism  is  Space  converted  into  Wealth  through 
Labour. — E.  Corradlni. 

The  choice  to-day  is  not  between  an  Imperialism  and 
liberty,  but  between  an  Imperialism  and  an  Imperialism. 
— Romain  Rolland. 

The  British  Empire  is  not  founded  on  might  or  force 
but  on  moral  principles — on  principles  of  freedom,  equality 
and  equity.  It  is  these  principles  which  we  stand  for  to-day 
as  an  Empire. — Jan  Smuts  (1917). 


270     MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

I  have  in  my  possession  a  Bill  drawn  up  in  the  early 
sixties  of  the  last  century  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished 
law-makers  of  England,  in  consultation  with  prominent 
statesmen  of  the  time — a  Bill  prepared  in  every  detail  for 
submission  to  Parliament,  providing  for  the  gradual  but 
resolute  separation  of  the  great  self-governing  colonies  from 
the  Motherland.  The  framer  of  that  Bill  told  me  that  it 
fairly  represented  the  political  thought  of  his  time.  This 
does  not  look  as  if  greed  of  territory  and  lust  of  world 
power  had  been  the  permanent  policy  of  the  Empire. — G* 
R.  Parkin. 

Men  who  indulge  in  the  rational  ambition  of  Empire 
deserve  credit  if  they  are  in  any  degree  more  careful  of 
justice  than  they  need  be. — Thucydides. 

My  own  experience  certainly  leads  me  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  British  generally,  though  they  succeed  less  when 
once  the  tide  of  education  has  set  in,  possess  in  a  very  high 
degree  the  power  of  acquiring  the  sympathy  and  confidence 
of  any  primitive  races  with  which  they  are  brought  in  con- 
tact. Nothing  struck  me  more  than  the  manner  in  which 
young  men  fresh  from  some  British  military  college  or 
university  were  able  to  identify  themselves  with  the  in- 
terest of  the  wild  tribes  in  the  Soudan,  and  thus  to  govern 
them  by  sheer  weight  of  character  and  without  the  use  of 
force. — Lord  Cromer. 

Imperialism  is  a  depraved  choice  of  national  life,  im- 
posed by  self-seeking  interests  which  appeal  to  the  lusts 
of  quantitative  acquisitiveness  and  of  forceful  domination 
surviving  in  a  nation  from  early  centuries  of  animal 
struggle  for  existence.  Its  adoption  as  a  policy  implies  a 
deliberate  renunciation  of  that  cultivation  of  the  higher 
inner  qualities  which,  for  a  nation  as  for  an  individual,  con- 
stitute the  ascendancy  of  reason  over  brute  impulse. — /.  A. 
Hobson. 

The  contact  of  the  English  race  with  native  races  in 
India,  and  the  process  by  which  the  former  is  giving  the 
material  civilisation,  and  a  tincture  of  the  intellectual  cul- 
ture, of  Europe  to  a  group  of  Asiatic  peoples  is  only  part 
of  that  contact  of  European  races  with  native  races  and 
of  that  Europeanising  of  the  latter  by  the  former  which 
is  going  on  all  over  the  world.  France  is  doing  a  similar 
work  in  North  Africa  and  Madagascar.  Russia  is  doing 


CHAMBERLAIN  271 

it  in  Siberia  and  Turkistan  and  on  the  Amur.  Germany 
is  doing  it  in  tropical  Africa.  England  is  doing  it  in  Egypt 
and  Borneo  and  Matabele  Land.  The  people  of  the  United 
States  are  entering  upon  it  in  the  Philippine  Islands.  Every 
one  of  these  nations  professes  to  be  guided  by  philanthropic 
motives  in  its  action.  But  it  is  not  philanthropy  that  has 
carried  any  of  them  into  these  enterprises,  nor  is  it  clear 
that  the  immediate  result  will  be  to  increase  the  sum  of 
human  happiness. — Lord  Bryce  (1913). 

The  words  "Empire"  and  "Imperialism"  come  to  us 
from  ancient  Rome;  and  the  analogy  between  the  conquer- 
ing and  organising  work  of  Rome  and  the  empire-building 
work  of  the  modern  nation-states  is  a  suggestive  and  stimu- 
lating analogy.  The  imperialism  of  Rome  extended  the 
modes  of  a  single  civilisation,  and  the  reign  of  law,  which 
is  its  essence,  over  all  the  Mediterranean  lands.  The  im- 
perialism of  the  nations  to  which  the  torch  of  Rome  has 
been  handed  on,  has  been  made  the  reign  of  law,  and  the 
modes  of  a  single  civilisation  the  common  possession  of  the 
whole  world.  Rome  made  the  common  work  of  Europe 
possible.  The  imperial  expansion  of  the  European  nations 
has  alone  made  possible  the  vision — nay,  the  certainty — of 
a  future  world-unity.  For  these  reasons  we  may  rightly 
and  without  hesitation  continue  to  employ  these  terms,  pro- 
vided that  we  remember  always  that  the  aim  of  a  sound 
imperialism  is  not  the  extension  of  mere  brute  power,  but 
is  the  enlargement  and  diffusion,  under  the  shelter  of  power, 
of  the  essentials  of  Western  civilisation:  rational  law  and 
liberty.  It  is  by  its  success  or  failure  in  attaining  these 
ends  that  we  shall  commend  or  condemn  the  imperial  work 
of  each  of  the  nations  which  have  shared  in  this  vast 
achievement. — Ramsay  Muir. 

Imperialism  as  a  political  doctrine  has  often  been  repre- 
sented as  something  tawdry  and  superficial.  In  reality  it 
has  all  the  depth  and  comprehensiveness  of  a  religious 
faith.  Its  significance  is  moral  even  more  than  material. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  think  of  it  as  principally  concerned  with 
extension  of  territory,  with  "painting  the  map  red."  There 
is  quite  enough  painted  red  already.  It  is  not  a  question 
of  a  couple  of  hundred  thousand  square  miles  more  or  less. 
It  is  a  question  of  preserving  the  unity  of  a  great  race,  of 
enabling  it,  by  maintaining  that  unity,  to  develop  freely  on 


272     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

its  own  lines,  and  to  continue  to  fulfil  its  distinctive  mission 
in  the  world. — Lord  Milner. 

From  historical  analogies,  Imperialism  is  a  term  that 
automatically  suggests  the  extension  of  rule  by  military 
force  over  unwilling  peoples.  Similarly,  colony  conveys  a 
distinct  concept  of  inferiority  of  status,  and  also  the  idea 
of  ownership  by  the  parent  community.  These  misleading 
implications  have  not  only  somewhat  alienated  sympathy 
from  what  is  essentially  a  movement  towards  greater 
cohesion  among  kindred  peoples,  but  they  have  retarded 
progress  towards  the  real  goal  by  keeping  alive  vestiges  of 
the  old  system. — G.  L.  Beer. 


TOLSTOY. 


[Page  274 


CHAPTER  XX. 
TOLSTOY   AND    PACIFISM. 


LEO  TOLSTOY  died  on  20th  November,  1910,  closing 
a  long  life  of  eighty-two  years  while  on  his  way 
from  his  home  to  a  solitude  in  which  he  hoped  to 
spend  his  last  days  in  peaceful  meditation.  Rarely 
has  the  death  of  a  man  touched  so  many  hearts  in  any  single 
generation,  or  made  such  widely  different  classes  of  people 
feel  that  one  of  the  exceptional  among  mankind  had  ended 
his  course,  as  did  that  of  Tolstoy.  By  the  simple  peasants 
of  Russia,  who  venerated  him  as  a  seer  and  a  friend,  and 
the  most  cultivated  in  all  lands,  who  hailed  him  as  a 
supreme  literary  artist,  by  thousands  of  people  who  had 
read  his  imaginative  works  for  pleasure,  and  thousands 
who  pondered  his  social  and  moral  writings  as  revelations 
of  a  rare  mind,  he  was  held  in  such  honour  as  genius  alone 
can  never  command,  however  great  it  may  be,  and  as  rank 
alone  can  never  merit.  There  are  men  in  every  age  who 
can  be  called  great,  but  who  are  only  great  for  their  age. 
Tolstoy  was  not  one  of  that  kind.  He  was  an  international 
man,  and  a  man  possessing  that  projecting  force  which  pene- 
trates far  beyond  present  time. 

Of  his  very  wonderful  books,  War  and  Peace  and  Anna 
Karenina,  and  the  many  vivid  stories  of  lesser  bulk  which 
he  produced,  it  is  not  to  the  purpose  to  speak  now.  They 
have  their  place  apart  among  the  fine  things  of  the  world's 
literature.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  review  generally  his 
copious  deliverances  on  a  large  variety  of  topics,  except  to 
note  a  characteristic  which  bears  upon  our  particular  theme. 
Tolstoy,  like  most  persons  of  artistic  temperament,  ex- 
pressed himself  through  his  feelings  rather  than  through 
his  reason.  He  did  not  think  out  problems ;  he  leapt  to 
conclusions  about  them.  Reasoning  was  a  roundabout 
road  which  pedestrian  thinkers  might  follow ;  he  preferred 

275 


276     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

the  swifter,  aviating  way.  In  the  little  book  of  his  Essays 
and  Letters  are  opinions  on  religion,  ethics,  science,  govern- 
ment, drinking,  smoking,  novels,  vegetarianism,  and  many 
other  subjects,  thrown  off  from  time  to  time  as  he  felt 
moved  to  express  himself  on  things  which  came  under  his 
notice.  Sometimes  he  is  vehement,  sometimes  ironical;  he 
is  always  sincere,  but  he  is  rarely  convincing.  An  essay 
by  him  on  Shakespeare  and  the  Drama  contains  some  excru- 
ciatingly bad  criticism.  It  is  so  bad,  indeed,  that,  though 
we  know  that  Tolstoy  read  English  easily,  we  are  driven 
to  wonder  whether  he  read  Shakespeare,  not  in  the  original, 
but  in  an  inferior  translation.  That  might  account  for  his 
wild  charge  that  all  the  characters  in  King  Lear  speak, 
"not  their  own,  but  always  one  and  the  same  Shakespearean 
pretentious  and  unnatural  language."  It  might  appear  to 
be  so  in  a  poor  translation;  but  let  anyone  take  the  play 
and  compare  the  speeches  of,  say,  the  Fool,  Lear,  and  Cor- 
delia, and  he  will  see  at  once  that  Tolstoy's  criticism  is  not 
merely  absurd,  it  is  positively  false. 

One  of  Tolstoy's  biographers  comments  on  his  "feeble 
and  erratic  attempts  to  carry  out  his  convictions,"  which 
"led  him  to  an  endless  succession  of  tortuous  evasions  and 
semi-comic,  semi-pathetic  self-contradictions."  Those  con- 
tradictions were,  indeed,  part  of  Tolstoy's  being.  One-half 
of  his  nature  was  continually  at  war  with  the  other,  until 
in  extreme  old  age  the  battle  was  won — and  then,-  like  the 
Lear  of  the  play  which  he  so  sadly  misunderstood,  he  fled 
into  the  wilderness. 

He  was  at  once  a  Western  man  and  an  Oriental,  a  sen- 
sualist and  a  mystic,  an  artist  and  a  prophet.  The  saint  in 
him  wanted  to  run  away  from  the  sinner,  and  the  two 
were  pent  up  together  in  the  same  skin,  to  the  disgust  of 
the  Tolstoy  who  had  to  be  both  of  them  at  once.  He 
tells  us  in  his  strange  Confessions  how  in  early  manhood 
he  wallowed  in  dissipation  and  gambled  away  his  substance, 
and  would  then  suffer  agonies  of  self-condemnation.  He 
made  rules  for  his  guidance  as  severe  as  those  of  monastic 
orders,  and  broke  them  on  impulse.  He  gasped  after  per- 
fection, and  debased  himself  in  animalism.  At  length  he 
married,  "to  put  an  end  to  the  disorders  of  his  tempestuous 
youth,"  and  was  still  tortured  because  even  in  marriage  he 
found  he  was  not  the  anchorite  he  aspired  to  be  but  could 
by  no  means  make  himself.  His  ideals  mocked  him  with 


TOLSTOY  277 

their  non-fulfilment,  and  his  flesh  mocked  him  with  its  insis- 
tence. He  wrote  pieces  pouring  contempt  on  art,  yet  he 
was  a  consummate  artist;  he  professed  to  scorn  even  his 
own  imaginative  writings,  yet  he  went  on  producing  them, 
and  left  several  stories  and  plays  which  were  published 
after  his  death. 

He  was  a  terrible  man  to  live  with.  The  irascibility  of 
genius  suffering  from  an  overworked  brain  is  a  familiar 
phenomenon  in  biographical  literature ;  but  this  powerful 
genius  made  his  own  case  more  acute  by  the  obsession  of 
a  yearning  after  sanctity  which  would  not  have  satisfied 
him  if  he  had  attained  it,  and  was  in  any  case  unrealisable 
by  a  man  with  a  nature  like  his. 

Who  looks  to  this  troubled  seer,  then,  for  serene  and 
sober  guidance  in  the  affairs  of  life,  whether  personal  or 
political,  will  be  likely  to  find  disappointment.  His  light 
does  not  burn  steadily ;  it  blazes  like  a  lighthouse  beam  and 
it  flickers  like  a  damp  candle.  His  philosophy  did  not  fit 
his  own  life  and  is  not  adapted  to  fit  the  life  of  the  world. 
Yet  we  feel  his  greatness  in  almost  every  page  that  he  wrote. 
There  is  the  authentic  touch  of  the  master  upon  the  sen- 
tences which  poured  from  him  with  such  a  copious  flow. 
He  is  by  turns  theologian,  sociologist,  and  critic;  but  he  is 
always  the  artist  also,  didactic  but  passionately  alive, 
creative  and  intensely  human. 

From  his  humanity,  and  from  the  religious  vein  in  him 
which  dominated  his  motives,  sprang  the  views  on  war  and 
patriotism  with  which  we  are  now  concerned.  It  certainly 
was  not  a  religion  of  the  churches,  which  he  detested  no 
less  than  he  detested  governments.  Excommunicated  by 
the  orthodox  Russian  church,  he  assailed  its  solemnities  as 
"barbarous  superstitions,"  and  declared  that  what  priests 
called  blasphemy  was  no  more  than  "the  exposure  of  their 
imposture."  He  spoke  of  the  Church  of  England  as  "that 
great  lying  church,"  founded  by  that  "bloated  monster" 
Henry  VIII.  Roman  Catholicism  "with  its  prohibition  of 
the  gospels  and  its  Notre  Dames,"  Protestantism  "with  its 
holy  idleness  on  the  Sabbath  Day  and  its  bibliolatry," 
came  alike  under  his  stinging  censure ;  but  he  had  a  kindly 
thought  for  the  Salvation  Army.  It  was  official  and  semi- 
official religion  of  all  kinds  that  offended  him.  For  "the 
Kingdom  of  God  is  within  you,"  and  great  rich  organisa- 
tions, presided  over  by  popes,  cardinals,  bishops  and  pastors, 


278     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

made  a  great  noise  and  split  hairs  about  the  letter  but 
neglected  the  spirit.  Tolstoy  made  his  own  religion  out 
of  his  own  heart  with  the  aid  of  the  New  Testament,  and 
it  was  not  the  religion  of  any  sect  on  earth ;  nor  would  he 
have  had  it  adopted  by  any  sect. 

What  Tolstoy  found  in  the  teachings  of  Christ  he 
accepted  fully,  literally  and  with  all  implications;  and 
that  is  why  he  proclaimed  himself  a  Pacifist.  He  found 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  the  command :  "But  I  say  unto 
you  that  ye  resist  not  evil;"  and  he  insisted  that  Christ 
meant  the  injunction  to  be  accepted  without  equivocation 
or  evasion.  It  was  meant  to  apply  to  personal  life  and  the 
life  of  communities.  Tolstoy  enlarged  on  this  theme  in 
his  book  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  Within  You,  and  in  several 
shorter  papers,  notably  in  his  "Letter  on  Non-Resistance" 
and  his  pieces  entitled  "Thou  Shalt  Not  Kill'  'and  "Patriot- 
ism and  Government,"  included  in  Essays  and  Letters.  A 
true  Christian,  according  to  Tolstoy,  could  take  no 
part  in  war,  could  make  no  use  of  weapons,  and 
could  not  resist  a  transgression  by  another.  He  could 
not  voluntarily  contribute  money  to  assist  a  govern- 
ment which  is  supported  by  military  power.  He  could  not 
willingly  pay  taxes  to  such  a  government,  though  he  could 
not  resist  the  payment  of  them.  He  could  not  take  part  in 
elections,  courts  of  law,  or  the  administration  of  govern- 
ment, because  he  would  thereby  be  participating  in  the  vio- 
lence of  the  government.  Satan,  he  urged,  cannot  be  driven 
out  by  Satan,  falsehood  cannot  be  purged  by  falsehood,  nor 
can  evil  be  conquered  by  evil.  True  non-resistance  is  the 
only  real  method  of  overcoming  evil.  Evil  will  not  perish 
by  bringing  other  evils  into  conflict  with  it. 

But  was  this  a  practicable  policy  ?  Yes,  answered  Tolstoy, 
as  practicable  as  any  other  virtue.  Good  deeds  could  not 
be  performed  in  all  circumstances  without  self-sacrifice, 
privations,  suffering,  and,  in  extreme  cases,  loss  of  life 
itself.  Tolstoy  accepted  this  extreme  interpretation  of  the 
non-resistance  doctrine  and  held  it  to  be  sound.  He  often 
discussed  it  with  his  friends,  to  whom  he  professed  his 
readiness  to  abide  by  its  most  extreme  consequences.  The 
taking  of  life  in  any  form  was  repugnant  to  him.  When 
the  argument  was  pushed  to  the  length  of  asking  whether 
he  would  advise  refusal  to  kill  such  a  beast  as  a  wolf,  he 
replied  that  he  would.  "As  an  instance  of  the  length  to 


TOLSTOY  279 

which  Tolstoy  carried  his  theory  of  non-resistance,  Anout- 
chin  mentioned  that  he  once  asked  him,  'May  I  kill  a  wolf 
that  attacks  me?'  and  Tolstoy  replied,  'No,  you  must  not; 
for  if  we  may  kill  a  wolf  we  may  also  kill  a  dog,  and  a  man, 
and  there  will  be  no  limit.  Such  cases  are  quite  exceptional, 
and  if  we  once  admit  that  we  may  kill,  and  may  resist  evil, 
evil  and  falsehood  will  reign  in  the  whole  world  unchecked, 
as  we  see  now  is  the  case/  "*• 

It  seems  a  pity  that  his  interlocutor  on  this  occasion 
did  not  descend  in  the  scale  of  sentient  life,  and  demand 
of  Tolstoy  whether  he  condemned  the  killing  of  flies,  fleas, 
mosquitoes  and  even  microbes.  Adhering  to  his  principle, 
he  would  have  had  to  reply  in  the  affirmative.  The  micro- 
scope shows  us  infinitely  minute  organisms  which  are  as 
voracious  in  a  drop  of  water  as  the  thresher  shark  is  in 
the  Pacific  Ocean.  A  few  ounces  of  phenyle  or  a  house- 
maid's scrubbing  brush  may  work  a  holocaust  among  living 
creatures.  A  good  filter  is  an  instrument  of  prodigious 
slaughter.  To  drain  a  swamp  is  to  take  life  on  a  gigantic 
scale.  To  eradicate  malaria  in  a  tropical  district  is  to  make 
deadly  war  on  the  anophales  mosquito.  But  may  not  such 
evils  be  resisted?  According  to  the  Tolstoyan  ethic,  appa- 
rently not. 

From  a  man  who  objected  in  such  a  thorough-going 
manner  to  the  taking  of  life,  antipathy  to  armies,  military 
service,  and  the  use  of  force  in  every  guise  was  a  matter 
of  course.  Tolstoy  would  have  condemned  the  Bolshevist 
tyranny  as  strongly  as  he  condemned  the  Tzardom,  and 
would  have  met  with  less  tolerance  from  it  than  he  did 
from  the  government  of  Nicholas  II.  He  not  only  denounced 
war,  but  the  making  of  arms  and  the  drilling  of  men. 
Crowds,  he  said,  allowed  themselves  to  be  hypnotised 
by  ranks  of  men  "dressed  up  in  fools'  clothes,  turned  into 
machines  to  the  sound  of  drum  and  trumpet,  all,  at  the 
shout  of  one  man,  making  one  and  the  same  movement  at 
one  and  the  same  moment."  The  meaning  of  it  all  was  very 
clear  and  simple — it  was  merely  a  preparation  for  killing. 
The  whole  organisation  of  governments,  in  his  view,  is 
based  on  violence.  There  would  be  no  need  of  governments 
if  men  would  cease  desiring  to  kill  one  another.  Patriotism 
was  not  a  virtue  but  a  vice;  "patriotism  as  a  feeling  is  bad 

l  Aylmer  Maude,  "Life  of  Tolstoy :   Later  Years,"  p.  474. 


280     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

and  harmful,  and  as  a  doctrine  is  stupid,  for  it  is  clear  that 
if  each  people  and  each  state  considers  itself  the  best  of 
people  and  state,  they  all  live  in  a  gross  and  harmful  delu- 
sion." Emancipation  from  patriotism  would  therefore  be 
beneficial  to  mankind. 

It  is  evident  that  the  Pacifism  of  Tolstoy  went  far 
beyond  that  of  the  ordinary  anti-militarists  who  condemn 
war,  and  even  preparations  for  defence  as  conducing  to 
war.  Many  thousands  of  men  and  women  who  are  not 
pacifists,  including  professional  soldiers,  regard  war  as 
a  barbarous  expedient  for  settling  international  disputes, 
and  heartily  lend  their  support  to  other  methods.  But  that 
was  not  enough  for  Tolstoy.  He  did  not  merely  condemn 
war  because  it  is  cruel,  brutalising  and  destructive.  He 
condemned  the  use  of  force  and  the  taking  of  life  in  all 
circumstances.  He  had  rather  have  been  killed  by  a  wolf 
than  kill  one;  assumably,  he  had  rather  have  been  killed 
by  parasites  or  microbes  than  kill  them.  That  to  him  was 
the  logical  conclusion  of  the  "Passivism"  which  he  preached, 
and  he  did  not  shrink  from  it.  "Thou  shalt  not  kill"  was 
the  command,  and  Tolstoy  would  not  kill. 

In  this  particular  Tolstoy  was  doubtless  able  to  conserve 
his  principle  in  practice  to  a  greater  extent  than  was  pos- 
sible with  some  of  his  other  doctrines.  For,  though  the 
circumstances  of  his  life  gave  to  him  a  greater  measure  of 
freedom  than  is  available  for  the  mass  of  mankind,  even 
he  found  that  the  imperative  pressure  of  events  made  him 
unable  to  square  practice  with  precept.  One  of  the  most 
sympathetic  of  his  biographers  tells  us  candidly  that  this 
was  so: — 

"He  never  attained  to  that  complete  renunciation  and 
surrender  of  self  which  he  preached,  and  his  life  remained 
in  flagrant  contradiction  with  his  teaching.  Therefore  the 
most  uncompromising  of  moralists  was  doomed  to  a  life  of 
perpetual  compromise ;  the  most  sincere  of  men  was  doomed 
to  a  life  of  subtle  evasion.  He  was  opposed  to  railway 
travelling;  and  he  thought  that  he  had  sufficiently  satisfied 
his  scruples  by  tramping  once  or  twice  from  Moscow  to 
Toula.  He  disapproved  of  the  use  of  money;  nor  did  he 
ever  carry  any  with  him,  but  he  let  his  servant  carry  a 
purse  in  his  place.  He  disapproved  of  private  property  in 
land,  and  gave  up  all  his  property  rights,  including  the 
copyright  of  his  books ;  but  he  made  them  over  to  his  wife. 


TOLSTOY  281 

He  disapproved  of  doctors;  yet  he  was  prevailed  upon  to 
have  a  resident  doctor  in  his  house,  and  he  called  him  a 
secretary.  That  Tolstoy  should  have  contradicted  himself 
on  most  vital  points  was  inevitable  when  we  consider  the 
absolute  and  rigid  nature  of  all  his  doctrines,  and  when 
we  consider  that  it  is  impossible  to  live  for  one  hour  in 
this  sublunary  world  without  compromise.  It  is  only  in  a 
monastery  of  Trappist  monks  or  Carmelite  nuns  that  the 
absolute  rules  supreme."1 

If,  then,  Tolstoy  was  unable  to  carry  out  his  theories  in 
such  comparatively  simple  matters  as  using  railway  trains, 
dispensing  with  money,  and  doing  without  a  physician,  can 
we  accept  his  non-resistance  principle  as  workable  in  the 
world  at  large  ?  And  should  we  desire  to  do  so  if  we  could  ? 
Was  it  desirable  that  one  of  the  finest  imaginative  literary 
artists  of  his  age  should  be  killed  by  a  wolf — if  he  had  been 
so  situated  as  to  raise  the  alternative — rather  than  that  the 
beast  should  be  slain?  The  consequence  of  not  killing  the 
wolf,  if  Tolstoy  had  been  attacked  by  one  shortly  after  his 
conversation  with  Anoutchin,  would  have  been  that  he 
would  not  have  written  Resurrection  and  the  posthumous 
stories,  whereas  the  consequence  of  killing  the  wolf  would 
have  been  that  it  would  have  been  prevented  from  slaying 
this  and  other  human  beings.  Which  was  the  preferable 
alternative? 

Is  it  true  that  resistance  to  evil  perpetuates  evil  ?  If  so, 
why  should  it  not  be  equally  true  that  resistance  to  good 
perpetuates  good?  But,  in  fact,  whatever  progress  the 
human  race  has  made  has  been  accomplished  by  encourag- 
ing what  was  believed  to  be  good  and  restraining  what  was 
believed  to  be  evil,  and  whenever  these  encouragements  and 
restraints  have  been  relaxed  evil  has  increased  and  good 
has  decreased.  The  employment  of  force  for  the  suppression 
of  wrong-doing  is  justified  by  human  experience.  There  is 
no  experience  to  show  that  the  contrary  policy  would  be 
successful,  and  Tolstoy  does  not  allege  that  there  is.  He 
was  aware  that  the  contrary  is  the  case.  People  behaved 
dishonestly  towards  those  Russians  who  sought  to  carry  out 
his  principles,  because  they  knew  that  "with  you  Tolstoyans 
we  can  do  what  we  like;  you  won't  defend  yourselves,  and 
won't  employ  the  law  against  us." 

l  Sarolea,  "Life  of  Count  Tolstoy,"  p.  372. 


282     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

It  is  commonly  said  that  our  civilisation  rests  upon  force, 
and  the  fact  that  we  require  policemen,  law  courts  and  sol- 
diers seems  to  give  colour  to  the  assumption.  But  it  is  only 
partially  true.  Force  is  required  only  to  deal  with  excep- 
tional occurrences  at  various  times.  It  is  much  more  true 
that  civilisation  rests  upon  good  will,  because,  fortunately, 
good  will  reigns  to  such  an  extent  among  enlightened  people 
that  force  is  not  required  to  be  exerted  upon  them.  We 
should  not  depreciate  the  extent  to  which  good  will  reigns, 
as  we  can  by  no  means  minimise  its  importance.  The  vast 
majority  of  people  have  never  required  the  attentions  of  a 
policeman.  If  the  fact  were  otherwise  society  would  soon 
disintegrate,  because  the  minority  could  not  all  be  police- 
men, and  even  if  they  were  the  majority  would  sooner  or 
later  defeat  them.  There  is,  happily,  more  love  of  right 
than  of  wrong  among  civilised  beings,  more  good  will  than 
harmful  disposition,  and  it  is  really  upon  this  beneficent 
basis  that  civilisation  rests. 

Tolstoy's  denunciation  of  war  is  no  stronger  than  that 
of  many  other  writers  who  nevertheless  recognise  that 
armies  and  navies  have  been  as  indispensable  in  inter- 
national transactions  as  the  policeman  is  in  civil  affairs. 
Such  arguments  as  those  of  Bernhardi,  that  war  is  a  human 
necessity,  or  of  those  who  urge  that  war  promotes  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest,  are  hardly  worthy  of  refutation.  War, 
in  fact,  uses  up  wastef ully  the  best  energies  of  a  nation,  and 
has  no  use  for  its  inferior  elements.  It  destroys  the  young, 
the  brave,  the  enterprising,  and  leaves  the  wastrels  un- 
touched by  its  fires.  Napoleon,  the  supreme  master  of  war, 
declared  it  to  be  "the  trade  of  barbarians,  in  which  the  whole 
art  consists  in  being  strongest  at  a  given  point."  If  there 
were  soundness  in  the  argumet  of  those  who  have  attempted 
to  justify  war  on  the  ground  that  its  ultimate  effects  upon 
mankind  are  beneficial,  there  ought  to  be  a  great  war  at 
least  in  every  generation,  and  not  to  have  one  would  be 
a  serious  omission  to  employ  an  agency  of  welfare.  But 
the  nation  which  has  made  the  most  boastful  parade  of 
this  philosophy  has  paid  so  severe  a  penalty  for  it  that 
the  prophets  of  Ammon  are  hardly  likely  to  be  listened  to 
again,  until  a  generation  arises  which  forgets  the  lessons 
of  the  past. 

The  same  point,  however,  as  meets  us  in  dealing  with 
the  non-resistance  principle  generally  has  to  be  faced  on 


TOLSTOY  283 

the  question  of  war  as  a  social  factor.  War  is  a  conflict 
of  wills.  A  large  group  of  people  called  a  nation  wills 
to  do  a  certain  thing,  which  is  inimical  to  the  interests  of 
another  group  of  people.  The  aggressor  uses  force  to 
achieve  his  purpose;  the  opponent  uses  force  to  prevent 
him.  Admittedly,  there  is  no  question  of  such  an  appeal 
to  physical  force  deciding  the  moral  issues  involved.  In 
the  middle  ages  criminal  charges  were  determined  by  the 
ordeal  of  trial  by  fire  or  water.  It  was  believed  that 
Divine  wisdom  would  preside  over  the  process  of  compel- 
ing  an  accused  person  to  plunge  his  hand  in  boiling  water, 
or  in  fire,  and  pluck  forth  a  stone.  If  he  succeeded  he 
was  innocent;  if  he  were  burnt  or  scalded  he  was  guilty. 
Knights  who  accused  each  other  of  things  affecting  their 
knightly  honour  fought,  and  the  justice  or  otherwise  of  a 
charge  was  determined  by  the  ordeal  of  battle.  It  would 
have  been  much  more  sensible,  all  now  see,  to  hear  evi- 
dence and  judge  the  issue  accordingly.  The  ex-German 
Kaiser,  throughout  the  great  war,  vociferously  appealed 
to  the  "God  of  Battles"  to  make  his  country  victorious,  in 
very  much  the  same  spirit  as  appeal  was  made  when 
resort  was  had  to  the  ordeal  hundreds  of  years  ago.  Even 
the  ex-Kaiser  would  hardly  desire  to  repeat  the  experi- 
ment. The  method  is  not  only  cruel  and  wasteful ;  it  is 
absurd. 

But  acknowledging  that  a  process  is  absurd  does  not 
dispose  of  it.  What  kept  Europe  in  the  condition  of  an 
armed  ca'mp  before  1914  was  not,  as  often  most  fatuously 
asserted,  the  efforts  of  armament  firms,  soldiers  and  army 
contractors,  but  the  existence  in  the  centre  of  the  continent 
of  a  Great  Power  whose  rulers  and  whose  people  alike  had 
been  reared  upon  a  philosophy  of  force,  who  believed  that 
.they  were  invincible,  and  who  were  determined  to  seek  an 
occasion  for  imposing  their  will  upon  the  rest  of  the  world. 
Other  nations  could  no  more  hope  to  meet  this  menace  by 
a  gospel  of  non-resistance  than  a  volcanic  eruption  could  be 
quelled  by  reading  the  Beatitudes.  It  had  to  be  met  by 
superior  force  and  overthrown.  The  small  groups  of 
Pacifists  in  the  belligerent  countries  included  a  few  men 
of  genius,  like  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  and  Monsieur  Romain 
Rolland — men  to  whom  respectful  attention  is  due.  But 
they  offered  no  solution  of  the  agonising  perplexity  which 
faced  Europe.  They  simply  told  us  in  very  beautiful  Ian- 


284     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

guage  that  they  disapproved  of  war.  They  might  with  as 
little  futility  have  told  us  that  they  disapproved  of  earth- 
quakes. If  the  philosophy  of  force  had  not  been  over- 
thrown in  the  struggle  between  1914  and  1918,  it  would 
have  been  the  immoral  law  by  which  the  world  would  have 
been  governed  for  a  century  to  come.  We  now  have  at 
least  a  hope  of  better  things;  we  should  have  had  none  in 
that  calamitous  contingency.  Pacificism  has  much  to  be 
thankful  for  in  the  result  of  the  war,  even  if  those  who 
fought  in  it  and  those  who  gave  their  lives  in  a  righteous 
cause  had  little  reason  to  feel  thankful  to  the  Pacifists. 


Tolstoy's  views  on  non-resistance  are  most  fully  ex- 
plained in  his  book  The  Kingdom  of  God  is  Within  You 
and  in  the  papers  printed  in  the  collection  of  his  Essays 
and  Letters.  The  best  commentaries  on  his  life  and  work 
are  the  books  of  Mr.  Aylmer  Maude,  Life  of  Tolstoy:  First 
Fifty  Years  and  Life  of  Tolstoy:  Later  Years.  Dr.  Charles 
Sarolea's  Count  Tolstoy:  His  Life  and  Work  is  a  good 
short  book. 


What  I  am  opposed  to  is  not  the  feeling  of  the  Pacifists 
but  their  stupidity.  My  heart  is  with  them,  but  my  mind 
has  a  contempt  for  them.  I  want  peace,  but  I  know  how 
to  get  it,  and  they  do  not. — Woodrow  Wilson  (1917). 

It  is  useless  for  the  sheep  to  pass  resolutions  in  favour 
of  vegetarianism  while  the  wolf  remains  of  a  different 
opinion. — W.  R.  Inge. 

War  has  relapsed  into  all  the  savageness  of  old  times, 
without  the  bright  honour  and  brilliant  courage  that  used 
to  make  one  overlook  its  cruelty. — Lady  Bessborough 
(1805). 

A  mere  universal  disgust  with  war  is  no  more  likely 
to  end  war  than  the  universal  dislike  for  dying  has  ended 
death.— H.  G.  Wells. 

War  is  not  merely  justifiable  but  imperative  when 
peace  is  only  to  be  obtained  by  the  sacrifice  of  conscien- 
tious conviction  or  of  national  welfare. — Theodore  Roose- 
velt. 

Man  has  invented  Fate  that  he  may  make  it  responsible 
for  the  disorders  of  the  universe,  those  disorders  which  it 
was  his  duty  to  regulate. — domain  Rolland. 


TOLSTOY  285 

He  must  not  be  a  man  but  a  statue  of  brass  or  stone 
whose  bowels  do  not  melt  when  he  beholds  the  bloody 
tragedies  of  this  war,  in  Hungary,  Germany,  Flanders, 
Ireland,  and  at  sea,  the  mortality  of  sickly  and  languishing 
camps  and  navies,  and  the  mighty  prey  the  devouring  winds 
and  waves  have  made  upon  ships  and  men. — William  Penn 
(1693). 

The  (primitive)  Christians  were  not  less  adverse  to 
the  business  than  to  the  pleasures  of  this  world.  The  defence 
of  our  persons  and  property  they  knew  not  how  to  recon- 
cile with  the  patient  doctrine  which  enjoined  an  unlimited 
forgiveness  of  past  injuries  and  commanded  them  to  invite 
the  repetition  of  fresh  insults.  .  .  .  But  while  they  incul- 
cated the  maxims  of  passive  obedience,  they  refused  to  take 
any  active  part  in  the  civil  administration  or  the  military 
defence  of  the  Empire.  Some  indulgence  might  perhaps 
be  allowed  to  those  persons  who,  before  their  conversion, 
were  already  engaged  in  such  violent  and  sanguinary  occu- 
pations ;  but  it  was  impossible  that  the  Christians,  without 
renouncing  a  more  sacred  duty,  could  assume  the  character 
of  soldiers,  of  magistrates,  or  of  princes.  This  indolent, 
or  even  criminal,  disregard  of  the  public  welfare  exposed 
them  to  the  contempt  and  reproaches  of  the  pagans,  who 
very  frequently  asked,  What  must  be  the  fate  of  the  Em- 
pire, attacked  on  every  side  by  the  barbarians,  if  all  man- 
kind should  adopt  the  pusillanimous  sentiments  of  the  new 
sect? — Gibbon. 

Savage  as  have  been  the  passions  commonly  causing  war, 
and  great  as  have  been  its  horrors,  it  has,  throughout  the 
past,  achieved  certain  immense  benefits.  From  it  has 
resulted  the  predominance  and  spread  of  the  most  powerful 
races.  Beginning  with  primitive  tribes,  it  has  welded 
together  small  groups  into  larger  groups,  and  again,  at 
later  stages,  has  welded  these  larger  groups  into  still  larger, 
until  nations  have  been  formed.  At  the  same  time  military 
discipline  has  habituated  wild  men  to  the  bearing,  of 
restraints,  and  has  initiated  that  system  of  graduated  sub- 
ordination under  which  all  social  life  is  carried  on. — Herbert 
Spencer. 

In  my  opinion  there  never  was  a  good  war  or  a  bad 
peace. — Benjamin  Franklin  (1783). 

As  civilisation  advances  an  equipoise  is  established,  and 
military  ardour  is  balanced  by  motives  which  none  but  a 


286     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

cultivated  people  can  feel.  But  among  a  people  whose  intel- 
lect is  not  cultivated  such  a  balance  can  never  exist. — 
Buckle. 

There  are  panegyrists  of  war  who  say  that  without  a 
periodical  bleeding  a  race  decays  and  loses  its  manhood. 
Experience  is  directly  opposed  to  this  shameless  assertion. 
It  is  war  that  wastes  a  nation's  wealth,  chokes  its  indus- 
tries, kills  its  flower,  narrows  its  sympathies,  condemns  it 
to  be  governed  by  adventurers,  and  leaves  the  puny, 
deformed  and  unmanly  to  breed  the  next  generation.  Inter- 
necine war,  foreign  and  civil,  brought  about  the  greatest 
set-back  which  the  Life  of  Reason  has  ever  suffered ;  it  exter- 
minated the  Greek  and  Italian  aristocracies.  Instead  of 
being  descended  from  heroes,  modern  nations  are  descended 
from  slaves;  and  it  is  not  their  bodies  only  that. show  it. 
...  To  call  war  the  soil  of  courage  and  virtue  is  like  calling 
debauchery  the  soil  of  love. — George  Santayana. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 


[Page  288 


CHAPTER  XXI. 


MATTHEW  ARNOLD   AND   EDUCATION. 


THE  reason  for  the  choice  of  Matthew  Arnold  as  the 
man  around  whom  we  may  centre  a  consideration 
of  thought  upon  education,  is  not  that  he  was  an 
original  force  in  this  field,  like  Pestalozzi  or  Froebel, 
nor  because  any  particular  theory  or  system  is  associated 
with  his  name.    His  father,  Thomas  Arnold  of  Rugby,  was 
in  many  respects  a  more  considerable  educationalist  than 
he — a    schoolmaster    of    distinguished    attainments,    who, 
whether  as  organiser,  reformer  of  methods,  or  practical 
teacher,  exerted  an  influence  on  English  education  which 
is  not  likely  to  fade  as  long  as  national  ideals  of  culture 
are  valued.     In  some  respects  it  might  be  more  profitable 
to  examine  the  life  and  thought  of  Thomas  Arnold,  and 
endeavour  to  apply  what  is  most  fruitful  in  them  to  the 
educational  problems  of  our  time. 

But  Thomas  Arnold's  experience  was  not  so  wide  as 
that  of  his  brilliant  son,  whose  long  career  of  thirty-five 
years  as  an  inspector  of  schools,  and  who.se  several  studies 
of  continental  systems  of  education,  gave  him  an  outlook 
which  the  head  of  a  great  public  school  could  not  have 
acquired.  Moreover,  Matthew  Arnold  was  in  himself  a 
singularly  interesting  person — one  of  the  outstanding  men 
of  letters  of  the  Victorian  age;  a  poet  whose  finest  work 
ranks  with  the  best  in  English  verse ;  a  critic  of  exquisitely 
discriminating  taste  if  occasionally  of  wayward  judgment. 
That  he  had  certain  well-defined  views  about  education, 
and  especially  about  aspects  of  it  which  it  is  here  desired 
to  emphasise,  warrants  the  present  preference  for  him. 

Some  of  the  writers  on  Matthew  Arnold  have  expended 
regrets  on  the  circumstance  that  he  who  wrote  so  much 
that  was  rarely  beautiful  should  have  had  to  spend  a  large 
part  of  his  life  in  the  laborious  drudgery  of  inspecting 


290     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

elementary  schools.  That  he  found  the  work  irksome  and 
sometimes  exhausting  is  true.  His  collected  letters  contain 
many  passages  commenting  upon  the  dull  routine  of  going 
from  school  to  school,  hearing  nervous  teachers  giving 
lessons  on  the  steam  engine,  gunpowder  plot,  indiarubber, 
the  nature  and  properties  of  the  apple,  simple  arithmetic, 
and  endless  other  things,  to  classes  of  little  boys  and  girls, 
induced  to  assume  an  air  of  interested  docility  by  the  pre- 
sence of  the  eminent  inspector  representing  the  Board  of 
Education.  We  are  even  touched  when  we  read  that  the 
author  of  "The  Strayed  Reveller"  and  "The  Scholar  Gipsy/' 
after  one  long  day,  "having  eaten  nothing  since  breakfast, 
sent  out  for  a  bun  and  ate  it  before  the  astonished  school." 

But  there  is  really  not  much  cause  to  lament  in  Arnold's 
case.  It  is  a  mistake  to  .suppose  that  a  poet,  even  a  great 
poet,  is  a  being  who  needs  to  be  secluded  from  the  rude 
world  and  freed  from  any  kind  of  regular  occupation  in 
order  that  he  may  write  poetry  every  day  and  always.  He 
is  likely  to  be  the  better  for  being  brought  in  contact  with 
life  in  some  of  its  humdrum  activities,  and  there  is  no 
particular  reason  why  he  should  not  sometimes  get  tired, 
just  as  ordinary  unpoetical  people  often  do.  Arnold  once 
wrote:  "The  work  I  like  is  not  very  compatible  with  any 
other;  but  we  are  not  here  to  have  facilities  found  for  us 
for  doing  the  work  we  like,  but  to  make  them."  That 
spirit  certainly  was  better  than  one  of  complaint  because 
he  had  to  earn  his  living  like  most  other  mortals.  He  was 
not,  moreover,  incessantly  inspecting  elementary  schools; 
and  when  he  was  so  engaged  was  not  greatly  overworked. 
English  public  servants  rarely  are.  At  all  events,  he  found 
time  during  his  life  to  write  so  many  poems,  critical  essays, 
books  and  miscellaneous  articles  that  his  bibliography  com- 
prises 178  items,  and  the  fifteen  substantial  volumes  of  his 
collected  works  testify  as  much  to  his  leisured  opportuni- 
ties as  to  his  intellectual  industry. 

A  little  volume  which  is  not  included  in  that  collection 
is  of  especial  interest  for  our  present  subject.  It  consists 
of  the  reports  on  elementary  schools  which  Matthew  Arnold, 
in  the  course  of  his  duty,  furnished  to  the  English  Educa- 
tion Department  during  his  long  career  as  an  inspector, 
together  with  extracts  from  his  reports  on  teachers'  train- 
ing colleges.1  One  of  his  biographers  claims  that  he  was 

l  "Reports  on  Elementary  Schools,  1852-1882,"  by  Matthew  Arnold, 
new  edition  edited  bv  F.  S.  Marvin,  1908. 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD  291 

the  greatest  inspector  of  schools  Great  Britain  has  ever 
possessed.  He  undoubtedly  wrote  the  most  interesting 
reports  ever  furnished  to  a  department.  They  are  as  care- 
fully and  elegantly  written  as  the  best  prose  Matthew 
Arnold  ever  penned,  entirely  characteristic  of  his  refined 
and  subtle  mind,  full  of  finely  expressed  common  sense 
and  ripe  human  wisdom.  If  the  elementary  school  system 
of  Great  Britain  has  been  much  improved  since  he  was  an 
inspector,  as  is  indeed  the  case,  the  reforms  must  have  been 
largely  due  to  his  influence ;  not  so  much,  perhaps,  in  regard 
to  particular  details  as  to  the  broad  spirit,  the  clear  defini- 
tion of  educational  aims,  which  he  laid  before  "my  lords" 
at  Whitehall. 

Those  reports  are  still  of  living  value.  Teachers  and 
educational  authorities  can  learn  from  them  things  good 
for  them  to  know,  which  they  will  not  find  so  admirably 
stated  elsewhere;  and  even  the  reader  who  appreciates 
chiefly  the  Arnold  of  "Thyrsis,"  "The  Forsaken  Mermaid," 
and  "Essays  in  Criticism,"  may  allow  that,  though  more 
excellent  sonnets  and  lyrics  might  have  been  produced  if 
the  inspector  of  schools  had  not  had  to  write  these  reports, 
still  they  are  in  themselves  literature  of  no  inferior  quality. 

Perhaps  the  literary  reader  may  be  surprised  to  find 
how  practical  Arnold  was  in  his  criticisms  upon  teaching 
and  things  taught,  and  how  clearly  he  pointed  out  the 
useful  purpose  of  the  various  subjects  of  the  curriculum. 
Naturally,  he  set  great  store  by  the  teaching  of  good  litera- 
ture. He  severely  criticised  the  poor  stuff  contained  in 
some  of  the  old  reading  books  which  he  found  in  use,  and 
insisted  that  children  should  be  introduced  to  good  prose 
and  the  best  of  poetry.  But  observe  how  he  emphasised  the 
educational  value  of  making  the  sense  of  words  thoroughly 
understood  by  the  scholars,  for  the  very  practical  object 
of  enlarging  their  vocabulary — "I  believe  that  even  the 
rhythm  and  diction  of  good  poetry  are  capable  of  exercis- 
ing some  formative  effect,  even  though  the  sense  may  be 
imperfectly  understood.  But,  of  course,  the  good  of  poetry 
is  not  really  got  unless  the  sense  of  the  words  is  thoroughly 
learnt  and  known.  Thus  we  are  remedying  what  I  have 
noticed  as  the  signal  mental  defect  of  our  school  children 
— their  almost  incredible  scantiness  of  vocabulary." 

Again,  observe  how  he  attributed  a  practical  purpose  to 
the  teaching  of  grammar: — "I  attach  great  importance  to 


292     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

grammar  as  leading  the  scholars  to  reflect  and  reason,  as 
a  very  simple  sort  of  logic,  more  effective  than  arithmetic 
as  a  logical  training  because  it  operates  with  concretes,  or 
words,  instead  of  with  abstracts,  or  figures."  It  was  not 
merely  the  aesthetic  value  of  poetry,  or  the  structural  ele- 
ment in  grammar,  that  he  indicated  as  the  ultimate  educa- 
tional value  of  these  two  elementary  subjects,  but  their 
efficacy  in  the  formation  of  the  mind  of  the  child,  the 
enlargement  of  his  capabilities  of  speech,  and  the  training 
of  his  logical  faculties.  Only  a  man  who  was  a  real  educator 
could  have  pointed  out  those  things  with  the  imaginative 
insight  which  looks  beyond  the  lesson  to  the  purpose  of 
education — the  unfolding  and  strengthening  of  the  mental 
powers  of  the  pupil. 

Similarly,  in  regard  to  all  subjects  of  elementary  educa- 
tion, Matthew  Arnold's  reports  continually  keep  in  the 
foreground  the  object  of  awakening  latent  powers,  of  open- 
ing the  windows  of  the  soul  to  let  in  light  and  air.  The 
teacher  is  exhorted  to  give  his  pupils  "some  knowledge  of 
the  world  in  which  they  find  themselves,  and  of  what  hap- 
pens and  has  happened  in  it;  some  knowledge,  that  is,  of 
the  great  facts  and  laws  of  nature,  some  knowledge  of  geo- 
graphy and  history,  above  all,  of  the  history  of  their  own 
country.  He  has  to  do  as  much  towards  opening  their  mind, 
and  opening  their  soul  and  imagination,  as  is  possible  to 
be  done  with  a  number  of  children  of  their  age,  and  in 
their  state  of  preparation  and  home  surroundings."  Lite- 
rary man  as  he  was,  he  was  keen  for  the  teaching  of  the 
elements  of  science  and  the  laws  of  health ;  only  here  again 
he  insisted  on  the  real  educational  purpose  being  kept 
steadily  in  view.  "The  fruitful  use  of  natural  science  itself 
depends  in  a  very  great  degree  on  having  effected  in  the 
whole  man,  by  means  of  letters,  a  rise  in  what  the  political 
economists  call  the  standard  of  life." 

Matthew  Arnold  wrote  two  long  reports  on  higher  educa- 
tion, which  he  considered  sufficiently  important  to  have 
reprinted  as  books;  they  are  contained  in  the  twelfth 
volume  of  his  collected  works.  The  first  dealt  with  the 
higher  schools  and  universities  of  France,  the  second  with 
those  of  Germany.  It  is  extremely  interesting  to  notice 
that  he  was  not  so  much  enamoured  of  the  German  system 
as  many  English  writers  were  before  the  great  war.  He 
thought  it  elaborate,  though  productive  of  "a  well-informed 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD  293 

people  if  you  will,  but  also  a  somewhat  pedantic  and  some- 
what sophisticated  people ;"  whereas  he  credited  the  French 
with  perceiving  that  democracy  was  becoming  a  growing 
power  in  Europe,  and  with  having  organised  democracy, 
in  their  schools  and  colleges,  as  well  as  politically,  "with  a 
certain  indisputable  grandeur  and  success."  He  attributed 
very  much  of  the  excellence  of  French  prose  to  the  method 
of  studying  languages  practised  in  their  institutions,  observ- 
ing with  interest  and  approval  that  even  the  study  of  Latin 
and  Greek  were  "cultivated  almost  entirely  with  a  view  to 
giving  the  pupil  a  mastery  over  his  own  language." 

Here  again  we  find  recurring  that  feature  of  Arnold's 
educational  criticism  which  was  indicated  above — his  insis- 
tance  on  each  subject  of  study  having  a  practical  purpose. 
He  applied  that  test  to  high  schools  and  universities  as 
well  as  to  elementary  schools.  What  should  a  particular 
subject  of  study  do  for  the  student?  It  should  give  him 
information;  good.  But  what  else?  It  should  open  his 
mind,  unfold  his  faculties,  in  some  particular  direction;  it 
should  develop  some  capability  in  him — memory,  imagina- 
tion, logical  reasoning,  observation,  power  of  expression, 
method,  understanding  of  himself  and  of  the  world,  of  his 
country's  history,  government,  and  so  forth. 

In  the  writings  described  Matthew  Arnold  dealt  with 
educational  principle  and  practice.  In  another  vein — that 
of  good-humoured  irony— he  expressed  some  valuable 
opinions  on  the  parody  of  education  by  which  the  upper 
classes  of  Great  Britain  were  prepared  for  the  duties  of 
their  exalted  .station.  The  sixth  and  seventh  chapters  of 
his  delightful  Friendship's  Garland  represented  his  intelli- 
gent young  Prussian,  Arminius  von  Thunder-ten  Tronckh,, 
enquiring  mto  the  quailfications  of  a  country  bench  of  magis- 
trates. Viscount  Lumpington  was  a  peer  of  old  family  and 
great  estate,  the  Reverend  Esau  Hittall  was  a  sporting 
vicar,  Mr.  Bottles  was  a  wealthy  Radical  manufacturer. 
The  two  former  represented  the  land  and  the  church.  Both 
had  been  to  public  schools  and  to  Oxford,  where,  having 
hunted  and  feasted  away  their  time,  they  got  their  degrees 
at  last  "after  three  weeks  of  a  famous  coach  for  fast  men, 
four  nights  without  going  to  bed,  and  an  incredible  consump- 
tion of  wet  towels,  strong  cigars  and  brandy  and  water." 
Bottles  went  to  the  Peckham  Acadamy,  where  a  pedagogic 
impostor  professed  to  inculcate  his  pupils  with  the  latest 


294     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

discoveries  in  .science,  "none  of  your  antiquated  rubbish, 
all  practical  work,  lots  of  interesting  experiments — lights  of 
all  colours — fizz!  fizz!  bang!  bang!"  The  contemptuous 
opinion  entertained  by  the  young  Prussian  for  the  minds 
and  the  weird  inefficiency  of  the  peer,  the  parson  and  Mr. 
Bottles  is,  as  depicted  by  Arnold,  an  exquisite  piece  of  satire. 
People  in  England  were  talking  about  compulsory  education 
when  Friendship's  Garland  was  written.  Arminius,  with 
his  foreign  impudence,  thought  the  upper  classes  of  England 
needed  educating  even  more  than  others  did.  "Even  at 
the  lowest  stage  of  public  administration  a  man  needs 
instruction,"  he  insisted.  "We  have  never  found  it  ,so,"  he 
was  assured.  Arminius  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  was 
silent. 

The  entire  British  system  of  education  thus  came  under 
Arnold's  criticism — the  elementary  schools  through  his 
professional  reports;  the  public  schools,  the  high  schools, 
and  the  universities  by  comparison  with  corresponding  insti- 
tutions in  France  and  Germany;  the  expensive  substitutes 
for  education  in  the  case  of  the  wealthy  classes.  In  all  these 
writings,  whether  seriously  or  satirically,  he  concentrated 
attention  upon  essentials  and  practical  purposes.  They 
were  the  writings  of  a  man  who  knew  what  education  ought 
to  be  and  who  realised  the  immense  importance  of  it  as  a 
factor  in  the  national  life.  Free  and  compulsory  primary 
education  in  England  originated  directly  from  reports  by 
him.  The  University  Extension  movement  was  largely  due 
to  his  influence,  and  out  of  that  in  turn  sprang  the  vigorous 
Workers'  Educational  Association  movement,  with  its  effort 
to4  bring  about  close  contact  between  the  best  scholarship 
and  thought  of  thp  age  and  the  democracy — that  democracy 
which,  with  his  clear  vision,  he  pointed  out  was  "preparing 
to  take  a  much  more  active  part  than  formerly  in  control- 
ling its  destinies." 

It  was  with  a  nice  sense  of  appropriateness  that  Arnold 
published  his  essay  on  Democracy  as  a  preface  to  a  reprint 
of  his  report  on  Popular  Education  in  France.  He  there, 
in  1874,  warned  his  countrymen  that  "the  time  has  arrived 
when  it  is  becoming  impossible  for  the  aristocracy  of  Eng- 
land to  conduct  and  wield  the  English  nation  any  longer." 
That  he  regretted  for  some  reasons  the  passing  of  the  old 
order  he  did  not  deny;  but  it  was  inevitable.  That  he  saw 
dangers  in  democracy  he  admitted;  but  he  believed  that 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD  295 

these  could  be  avoided  by  efficient  popular  education.  "The 
superiority  of  the  upper  class  over  all  others  is  no  longer 
so  great;  the  willingness  of  the  others  to  recognise  that 
superiority  is  no  longer  so  ready."  Education  would  remove 
the  chief  remaining  differences. 

An  ill-educated  community  under  any  other  kind  of  polity 
than  a  democracy  may  endure,  because  it  may  obtain  its 
competent  leadership  from  a  class  above  the  general  level. 
But  an  ill-educated  democracy  is  a  danger  to  itself,  and, 
inevitably  falling  a  victim  to  its  own  ignorance,  will  fasten 
upon  itself  tyrannies  as  onerous  as  any  which  have 
oppressed  mankind.  An  education  policy  should  be  ja  demo- 
cracy's first  care.  It  must  be  a  policy  designed  to  train 
men  and  women  in  thinking,  feeling  and  enjoying,  as  well 
as  in  working.  Technical  teaching  is  very  necessary,  but 
mechanism  must  not  be  permitted  to  displace  humanism  in 
our  lives.  Commercial  efficiency  is  necessary  also,  but  it 
may  conduce  to  positive  debasement  unless  balanced  by 
moral  efficiency. 

Education  has  two  aspects  which  have  to  be  kept  steadily 
in  view.  It  should  confer  advantages  upon  the  individual, 
and  upon  the  community  of  which  he  is  a  member. 

The  education  which  does  not  enable  a  man  or  woman 
to  get  more  out  of  life  than  would  otherwise  be  possible 
misses  its  mark.  The  eye,  the  ear  and  the  understanding 
alike  need  to  be  trained.  Undeveloped  faculties  are  blunted 
instruments.  It  is  obvious  that  the  artist  in  colour  and 
form  sees  more  and  sees  better  than  he  who  has  never 
learnt  to  look  for  the  things  which  are  present  to  the  vision 
of  the  artist,  and  that  the  musician  hears  meaning  and 
beauty  in  combinations  of  sounds  to  which  the  uneducated 
ear  is  deaf.  It  is  equally  obvious  that  to  the  geologist  and 
the  botanist  the  aspects  of  a  landscape  and  the  vegetation 
with  which  it  is  clothed  have  a  fuller  significance  than  is 
possible  to  those  to  whom  their  import  has  not  been 
revealed.  These  things,  seen,  heard  and  understood,  make 
life  richer.  They  enlarge  the  capacity  for  enjoyment. 
They  make  an  addition  to  the  sum  and  a  deepening  of  the 
quality  of  being. 

Similarly,  an  understanding  of  the  processes  through 
which  nations  have  been  formed  and  their  institutions 
developed,  is  necessary  to  a  comprehension  of  their  present 
condition.  A  knowledge  of  the  past  struggles  of  mankind, 


296     MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

of  what  men  did  in  circumstances  infinitely  various  in  kind, 
and  of  why  they  acted  so,  of  errors  and  their  consequences, 
weaknesses  and  their  penalties,  should  broaden  the  outlook, 
quicken  the  sympathies  and  increase  the  understanding  of 
the  learner.  From  all  such  subjects  of  study  the  individual 
should  derive  humanising  benefits. 

A  narrow  view  of  the  function  of  education  is  too  often 
taken  by  some  who  overlook  this  aspect  of  the  enrichment 
by  its  means  of  the  individual  life.  Thus  an  artisan  whom 
the  editor  of  the  Quarterly  Review  in  1918  induced  to  explain 
the  ideas  of  his  fellows,  observed  that  "with  all  respect  to 
learning,  it  is  surely  a  mistake  to  throw  open  the  avenues 
leading  to  it  to  children  who  have  no  chance  of  following 
them  up."  In  the  same  spirit  the  Rev.  Herbert  Thurston, 
S.J.,  urges  that  "the  vast  majority  must  inevitably  earn 
their  bread  by  the  sweat  of  their  brow,  and  we  believe  that 
they  will  all  be  the  happier  and  more  contented  with  their 
lot  if,  with  due  regard  to  youthful  infirmity  and  the  acquisi- 
tion of  the  bare  essentials  of  learning,  they  begin  the  pro- 
cess early."  Apart  from  the  condemnation  of  a  class  to  a 
career  of  mechanical  toil,  which  both  these  views  express, 
there  is  surely  the  important  point  that  large  vistas  of  hap- 
piness are  opened  up  to  those  who  are  educated  to  use  their 
faculties  in  other  fields  than  the  earning  of  a  livelihood. 
Admittedly,  the  drudgery  of  the  world  has  got  to  get  itself 
done ;  but  there  really  is  no  good  reason  why  those  who  do 
it  should  be  drudges  all  the  time.  Education  can  and  should 
open  up  horizons  lit  with  the  sun  of  hope  for  the  humblest, 
and  a  policy  which  does  not  aim  at  opening  careers  to  those 
who  have  the  wits  and  the  will  to  advance  towards  these 
radiant  distances  is  sadly  lacking  in  inspiring  ideals. 

The  community  also  has  its  expectations  from  the  educa- 
tion of  its  members.  In  the  modern  world  an  efficiently 
trained  people  is  requisite  to  the  maintenance  of  a  position 
in  the  front  rank  of  civilisation.  Technical  training  in  all 
branches  of  industry,  commerce  and  agriculture  has  its 
champions,  and  they  rightly  insist  upon  its  importance.  We 
may  expect  from  this  training  demands  for  a  more  direct 
share  in  the  control  of  industry  by  those  who  educate  them- 
selves to  master  its  intricacies.  There  is  nothing  to  be  said 
for  the  retention  of  control  by  a  class  many  of  whose  mem- 
bers are  intellectually  inferior  to  those  whose  services  they 
command.  If  there  is  truth  in  the  contention  that  ability 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD  297 

is  a  primary  factor  in  production,  as  assuredly  there  is, 
then  there  should  be  abundant  opportunities  for  ability  to 
exercise  itself  and  reap  the  rewards  of  its  superiority. 
Careers  should  be  open  to  talents  in  industry,  as  Napoleon 
opened  them  in  war. 

An  intelligent  understanding  of  the  processes  of  com- 
merce, of  production,  and  of  the  economic  forces  of  the 
world  is  likewise  essential  if  ruinous  strife  is  not  to  hold 
the  field  and  prevent  any  substantial  advance.  It  must 
be  admitted  with  regret  that  in  too  many  instances  men 
allow  themselves  to  be  deluded  by  sophisms,  clap-trap 
phrases,  and  the  bellows.-blown  foolery  of  persons  who  talk 
at  large  without  any  sense  of  responsibility.  The  mecha- 
nism of  industry  is  a  much  more  delicate  and  complex  affair 
than  it  seems  to  those  who  think  that  it  can  all  be  explained 
in  a  formula.  An  educational  policy  should  provide  for  the 
proper  analysis  and  capable  exposition  of  this  mechanism 
by  competent  and  scientific  men  whom  intelligent  people 
will  trust  to  investigate  with  sincerity  and  expound  with 
disinterested  honesty.  Denunciation  is  an  easy  game,  and 
denouncing  the  denouncers  is  an  addition  to  folly.  These 
things  should  be  studied  and  explained- carefully  in  a  spirit 
of  truth.  When  they  are  properly  understood  Boanerges 
with  his  throat  of  thunder  will  have  less  scope  for  his 
assaults  upon  the  air  of  heaven  than  he  appears  to  have  at 
present  in  too  many  lands. 


Matthew  Arnold's  Reports  on  Elementary  Schools,  writ- 
ten between  1852  and  1882,  have  been  collected  in  a  little 
volume,  edited  by  F.  S.  Marvin.  His  elaborate  reports  on 
education  in  France  and  Germany  are  reprinted  in  Vol.  XII. 
of  his  collected  works.  Sir  Johsua  Fitch's  book,  Thomas 
and  Matthew  Arnold  and  their  Influence  on  English  Educa- 
tion, contains  an  excellent  estimate.  Two  short  books  on 
Matthew  Arnold  are  those  by  G.  W.  E.  Russell  and  Herbert 
Paul,  the  latter  in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series. 


I  cannot  approve  of  the  requisition,  in  the  studies  of 
future  statesmen,  of  so  much  theoretical  knowledge,  by 
which  young  people  are  often  ruined  before  their  time,  both 
in  mind  and  body.  When  they  enter  into  practical  life  they 


298     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

possess  indeed  an  immense  stock  of  philosophical  and 
learned  material;  but  in  the  narrow  circle  of  their  calling 
this  cannot  be  practically  applied,  and  will  therefore  be 
forgotten  as  useless.  On  the  other  hand,  what  they  most 
needed  they  have  lost;  they  are  deficient  in  the  necessary 
mental  and  bodily  energy,  which  is  quite  indispensable  when 
one  would  enter  efficiently  into  practical  life. — Goethe. 

To  direct  the  imagination  to  the  infinitely  great  and  the 
infinitely  small,  to  vistas  of  time  in  which  a  thousand  years 
are  as  one  day;  to  retrace  the  history  of  the  earth  and  the 
evolution  of  its  inhabitants — such  studies  cannot  fail  to 
elevate  the  mind,  and  only  prejudice  will  disparage  them. 
.  .  .  The  air  which  blows  about  scientific  studies  is  like 
the  air  of  a  mountain-top — thin,  but  pure  and  bracing. — 
W.  R.  Inge. 

The  exclusion  of  talent  from  careers,  or,  rather,  the 
want  of  any  provision  for  it,  was  the  fatal  policy  of  the  old 
regime  (in  France),  for  which  it  paid  very  heavily.  It 
was  a  just  cause  of  smothered  but  widespread  indignation 
and  heart-burning,  a  grievance  of  first  magnitude,  from 
which  many  great  and  aspiring  spirits  had  suffered,  includ- 
ing even  the  prophet  of  the  Revolution  and  the  preacher  of 
equality,  Rousseau  himself,  who  had  fully  felt  the  pangs 
that  impoverished  genius  has  to  suffer. — William  Graham. 

A  thing  not  yet  well  understood  and  recognised  is  the 
economical  value  of  the  general  diffusion  of  intelligence 
among  the  people. — John  Stuart  Mill. 

The  education  of  the  people  is  not  only  a  means,  but 
the  best  means,  of  attaining  that  which  all  allow  to  be  a 
chief  end  of  government;  and,  if  this  be  so,  it  passes  my 
faculties  to  understand  how  any  man  can  gravely  contend 
that  government  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  education  of 
the  people. — Macaulay. 

The  state  derives  no  inconsiderable  advantage  from  the 
education  of  the  people.  The  more  they  are  instructed, 
the  less  liable  they  are  to  the  delusions  of  enthusiasm  and 
superstition,  which,  among  ignorant  nations,  frequently 
occasion  the  most  dreadful  disorders.  An  instructed  and 
intelligent  people  are  always  more  decent  and  orderly  than 
an  ignorant  and  stupid  one. — Adam  Smith. 

Education  is  the  first  remedy  for  the  barbarism  which 
has  been  bred  of  the  hurry  of  civilisation  and  competitive 
commerce.  To  know  that  men  lived  and  worked  mightily 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD  299 

before  you  is  an  incentive  for  you  to  work  faithfully  now, 
that  you  may  leave  something  to  those  who  come  after  you. 
— William  Morris. 

The  history  of  human  progress  has  been  mainly  the  his- 
tory of  man's  higher  educability,  the  products  of  which  he 
has  projected  on  to  his  environment.  This  educability 
remains  on  the  average  what  it  was  a  dozen  generations 
ago;  but  the  thought-woven  tapestries  of  his  surroundings 
is  refashioned  and  improved  by  each  succeeding  generation. 
— Lloyd  Morgan. 

What  is  considered  in  education  is  hardly  ever  the  boy 
or  girl,  the  young  man  or  young  woman,  but  almost  always, 
in  some  form,  the  maintenance  of  the  existing  order.  When 
the  individual  is  considered,  it  is  almost  exclusively  with 
a  view  to  worldly  success — making  money  or  achieving  a 
good  position.  To  be  ordinary  and  to  acquire  the  art  of 
getting  on  is  the  ideal  which  is  set  before  the  youthful  mind, 
except  by  a  few  rare  teachers  who  have  enough  energy  of 
belief  to  break  through  the  system  within  which  they  are 
expected  to  work.  .  .  .  Hardly  anything  is  done  to  foster 
the  inward  growth  of  mind  and  spirit;  in  fact,  those  who 
have  had  most  education  are  very  often  atrophied  in  their 
mental  and  spiritual  life,  devoid  of  impulse,  and  possessing 
only  certain  mechanical  aptitudes  which  take  the  place  of 
living  thought. — Bertrand  Russell. 

Probably  our  higher  education,  properly  tested,  would 
be  found  to  contain  a  far  larger  waste  of  intellectual  "effi- 
ciency" than  our  factory  system  of  economic  efficiency. 
And  this  waste  is  primarily  due  to  the  acceptance  and  sur- 
vival of  barbarian  standards  of  culture,  imperfectly  adjus- 
ted to  the  modern  conditions  of  life,  and  chiefly  sustained  by 
the  desire  to  employ  the  mind  for  decorative  and  creative 
purposes.  Art,  literature,  and  science  suffer  immeasurable 
losses  from  this  misgovernment  of  intellectual  life.  The 
net  result  is  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  sons  and  daugh- 
ters even  of  our  well-to-do  classes  grow  up  with  an  exceed- 
ingly faulty  equipment  of  useful  knowledge,  no  trained 
ability  to  use  their  intellects  or  judgments  freely  and  effec- 
tively, and  with  no  desire  to  attempt  to  do  so. — J.  A. 
Hobson. 

Acquirement  of  every  kind  has  two  values — value  as 
knowledge  and  value  as  discipline.  Besides  its  use  for 
guiding  conduct,  the  acquisition  of  each  order  of  facts  has 


300     MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

also  its  use  as  mental  exercise ;  and  its  effects  as  a  prepara- 
tion for  complete  living  have  to  be  considered  under  both 
these  heads. — Herbert  Spencer. 

Children  of  the  future,  whose  day  has  not  yet  dawned, 
you;  when  that  day  arrives,  will  hardly  believe  what  obstruc- 
tions were  long  suffered  to  prevent  its  coming!  You  who, 
with  all  your  faults,  have  neither  the  aridity  of  aristocra- 
cies nor  the  narrow-mindedness  of  middle  classes;  you 
whose  power  of  simple  enthusiasm  is  your  great  gift,  will 
not  comprehend  how  progress  towards  man's  best  perfec- 
tion— the  adorning  and  ennobling  of  his  spirit — should 
have  been  reluctantly  undertaken;  how  it  should  have 
been  for  years  and  years  retarded  by  barren  commonplaces, 
by  worn-out  clap-traps.  You  will  wonder  at  the  labour  of  its 
friends  in  proving  the  self -proving ;  you  will  know  nothing 
of  the  doubts,  the  fears,  the  prejudices  they  had  to  dispel ; 
nothing  of  the  outcry  they  had  to  encounter;  of  the  fierce 
protestations  of  life  from  policies  which  were  dead  and  did 
not  know  it,  and  the  shrill  querulous  upbraiding  from  publi- 
cists in  their  dotage.  But  you,  in  your  turn,  with  difficulties 
of  your  own,  will  then  be  mounting  some  new  step  in  the 
arduous  ladder  whereby  man  climbs  towards  his  perfection, 
towards  that  unattainable  but  irresistible  load-star,  gazed 
after  with  earnest  longing,  and  invoked  with  bitter  tears; 
the  longing  of  thousands  of  hearts,  the  tears  of  many  gene- 
rations.— Matthew  Arnold. 


WILLIAM  MORRIS. 


[Page  302 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

WILLIAM   MORRIS    AND    THE    RELATION   OF 
ART   TO    LIFE. 

IT   is   told   of   a   Tory  peer,  once  prominent   in   British 
politics,  that,  discussing  some  literary  question  with 
a  friend  in  his  library,  he  went  to  the  shelves  to  look 
for  a  book;  and  as  he  searched  his  finger  rested  for 
a  moment  on  his  copy  of  The  Odyssey  of  Homer,  done  into 
English  Verse,  by  William  Morris.    "Ah !"  he  said,  tapping 
the  volume,  "if  I  had  known  that  that  fellow  Morris  was 
going  to  become  a  Socialist,  I  wouldn't  have  had  him  bound 
in  red  morocco." 

Doubtless  the  adherence  of  this  distinguished  artist  and 
man  of  letters  to  communistic  Socialism  in  the  eighties  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  and  his  frequently  very  vehement 
assertion  of  its  principles  in  the  course  of  the  agitations 
into  which  he  threw  himself,  were  surprising  and  not  a 
little  shocking  to  many  who  had  known  him  only  as  a  poet, 
a  designer  of  beautiful  patterns,  and  a  maker  of  fine  fabrics. 
What  relation  could  there  be  between  the  author  of  The 
Earthly  Paradise  and  the  stoutish  man  in  a  blue  suit  and  a 
red  tie  who  trudged  along  in  draggle-tailed  processions 
to  make  a  noise  in  Trafalgar  Square  ?  What  had  the  friend 
of  Burne  Jones  and  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti  to  do  with  the 
editor  of  the  Commonweal  and  the  brazen-throated  cohort 
who  spurted  out  their  general  denunciations  at  street  cor- 
ners? Truly  there  was  a  singular  disparity  between  the 
artist  who  decorated  mansions  and  the  pamphleteer  who 
asserted  that  in  the  modern  world  happiness  in  only  pos- 
sible to  artists  and  thieves;  between  the  creator  of  such  a 
splendid  epic  as  Sigurd  the  Volsung  and  the  joint  author 
(with  H.  M.  Hyndman)  of  the  pamphlet  A  Summary  of 
the  Principles  of  Socialism,  and  (with  Belfort  Bax)  of  the 
book  Socialism:  Its  Growth  and  Outcome? 

303 


304     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

Yet  perhaps  the  most  interesting  thing  about  the  intel- 
lectual constitution  of  William  Morris  is  that  there  was  no 
inconsistency  about  his  many  activities.  He  was  essen- 
tially, despite  his  great  learning  and  his  high  accomplish- 
ments as  an  artist,  much  too  simple  a  man  to  be  inconsis- 
tent. His  biographer  states  that  "his  principles  changed 
very  little  when  he  became  a  declared  Socialist,"1  and  they 
changed  even  less  afterwards.  He  did  a  great  variety  of 
things — designing  wall  papers  and  chintzes,  weaving  tapes- 
tries, making  stained-glass  windows,  dying  fabrics  of  wool 
and  silk,  making  furniture,  printing  books,  as  well  as  writ- 
ing a  very  large  quantity  of  poetry  and  prose,  and  trans- 
lating works  from  the  Icelandic,  Greek,  Latin  and  mediaeval 
French.  The  deft  cunning  of  his  hands  was  extraordi- 
nary ;  the  creative  energy  of  his  imagination,  as  revealed 
not  only  in  his  verse  but  also  in  his  wonderful  prose 
romances,  was  unexampled.  In  doing  these  things,  and  in 
agitating  for  a  complete  reconstitution  of  human  society, 
he  performed  tasks  which  were  seemingly  unrelated.  But 
in  truth  his  activities  were  manifestations  of  a  completely 
unified  character,  and  in  doing  them  he  was  acting  on  the 
same  principles,  working  towards  the  same  end.  He  would 
have  thought  anyone  a  fool  who  believed  that  it  was  not 
so,  and  in  some  of  his  moods  he  would  have  said  so  in  an 
eminently  explosive  manner. 

In  the  years  when  Morris  was  delighting  lovers  of  Eng- 
lish poetry  with  a  succession  of  volumes  full  of  the  fresh 
and  vivid  pictures  which  were  his  peculiar  gift  to  litera- 
ture he  was  brooding  over  problems  of  industry,  the  crea- 
tion and  diffusion  of  wealth,  the  production  of  base  and 
vulgar  materials  instead  of  good,  honest,  and  beautiful  work. 
The  ferment  which  was  going  on  in  his  mind  is  revealed 
in  occasional  passages  in  his  narrative  verse.  In  the  Invo- 
cation to  Chaucer,  in  his  Life  and  Death  of  Jason,  he  cried : 

"Would  that  I 

Had  but  some  portion  of  that  mastery 
That  from  the  rose-hung  lanes  of  woody  Kent 
Through  these  five  hundred  years  such  songs  have  sent 
To  us  who,  meshed  within  this  smoky  net 
Of  unrejoicing  labour,  love  them  yet." 

The  touch  about  "unrejoicing  labour"  in  this  early  work 
adumbrates  a  point  of  view  which  in  later  years  Morris 

1  J.  W.  Mackail,  "Life  of  William  Morris,"  Vol.   II.,  p.   164. 


WILLIAM    MORRIS  305 

was  to  emphasise  insistently.  Even  in  Sigurd  the  Volsung 
he  .spoke  of  a  country  something  like  his  mature  ideal, 
where : 

"Glad  was  the  dawn's  awakening,  and  the  noontide  fair  and  glad, 
There  no  great  store  had  the  franklin,  and  enough  the  hireling  had, 
And  a' child  might  go  unguarded  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land, 
With  a  purse  of  gold  at  his  girdle,  and  gold  rings  on  his  hand; 
'Twas  a  country  of  cunning  craftsmen,  and  many  a  thing  they  wrought 
That  the  lands  of  storms  desired  and  homes  of  warfare  sought." 

Though  Morris  threw  himself  furiously  into  the 
Socialist  movement,  his  point  of  view  was  his  own,  and  he 
arrived  at  it  by  a  different  road  than  was  trod  by  all  but 
a  few  of  those  who  styled  him  "comrade."  He  was  the 
artist-craftsman  offended  by  the  products  "made  to  sell" 
under  the. system  of  competitive  commerce;  he  was  the 
humanist  made  sick  at  heart  by  the  squalor,  poverty  and 
degradation  which  he  witnessed  in  the  great  centres  of 
industry.  It  was  through  his  craftsmanship  that  he  thought 
his  way  into  his  political  philosophy.  Like  many  of  the 
Oxford  men  of  his  day,  he  had  his  period  of  Radicalism; 
but  he  was  not  long  satisfied  with  this  attitude,  which 
seemed  to  him  to  fail  to  grapple  with  fundamentals. 

There  were  two  lines  -of  approach  which  are  distinctly 
traceable  in  Morris's  writings  on  social  questions,  and  if 
we  understand  what  they  were  the  reconciliation  between 
his  art  and  his  Socialism  becomes  clear. 

He  saw  around  him  a  great  amount  of  misery  caused 
by  lack  of  work,  by  underpaid  work,  and  by  work  which 
stunted  the  mental  and  moral  qualities  of  the  worker;  and 
he  saw  also,  amongst  those  who  were  in  employment,  much 
discontent,  occasioned  largely  by  the 'weariness  and  mono- 
tony of  their  daily  labour.  He  was  a  very  hard  worker 
himself,  and  he  knew  that  his  work  did  not  fill  him  with 
-disgust  and  discontent  but  with  joy.  "I  try  to  think  what 
would  happen  to  me  if  I  were  forbidden  my  ordinary  daily 
work,"  he  said  in  his  essay  on  "Architecture  in  Civilisa- 
tion," "and  I  know  that  I  should  die  of  weariness  and 
despair  unless  I  could  straightway  take  to  something  else 
which  I  could  make  my  daily  work."  He  spoke  of  himself 
in  another  paper  as  "a  servant  of  the  public"  who  earned 
his  living  "with  abundant  pleasure."  Referring  to  his 
weaving  work,  he  said,  with  a  kind  of  chuckle  very  good  to 
read,  "to  make  something  beautiful  that  will  last,  out  of  a 


306     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

few  threads  of  silken  wool,  seems  to  me  a  not  unpleasant 
way  of  earning  one's  livelihood,  so  long  as  one  lives  and 
works  in  a  pleasant  place,  with  the  workday  not  too  long,' 
and  a  book  or  two  to  be  got  at." 

Similar  references  to  the  pleasure  which  Morris  got  out 
of  his  work  are  frequent  in  his  writings.  He  dwelt  also  on 
times  before  the  Industrial  Revolution,  when  workmen 
generally  found  pleasure  in  their  labour.  Political  freedom 
they  had  not,  but  they  found  a  satisfaction  in  pursuing  their 
craft  which  the  worker  in  a  factory  doing  the  same  mechani- 
cal thing  day  after  day  can  never  find.  Morris  had  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  the  history  of  craftsmanship,  and  in  his 
many  incursions  into  various  kinds  of  production  he  made  it 
his  business  to  revive  the  best  methods  followed  by  artist 
workmen  in  the  best  periods.  We  now  have  machines  for 
doing  nearly  everything,  but  a  man  who  merely  works  a 
machine  for  so  much  a  day  can  find  no  such  pleasure  in 
the  output  as  the  skilled  craftsman  found  in  the  work  of 
his  hands  and  brain. 

Morris  did  not  rail  against  the  use  of  all  kinds  of  machi- 
nery as  John  Ruskin  did.  He  recognised  that  the  wonderful 
products  of  modern  engineering  skill  minimised  the  drud- 
gery that  is  incidental  to  the  rough  stages  of  all  labour. 
"It  is  the  allowing  machines  to  be  our  masters  and  not  our 
servants  that  so  injures  the  beauty  of  life  nowadays,"  he 
held.  "In  other  words,  it  is  the  token  of  the  terrible  crime 
we  have  fallen  into  of  using  our  control  of  the  powers  of 
Nature  for  the  purpose  of  enslaving  people,  we  careless 
meanwhile  of  how  much  happiness  we  rob  their  lives  of." 
Consequently,  though  he  did  not  condemn  the  use  of  machi- 
nery, and  believed  that  a  state  of  improved  social  order 
would  probably  lead  at  first  to  a  great  development  of 
machinery  for  really  useful  purposes,  he  did  desire  to  restore 
the  popular  arts;  the  craftsmanship,  which  made  the  labour 
of  the  workman  of  old  a  source  of  pleasure  to  him — of  the 
kind  of  pleasure  which  the  era  of  cheap  mechanical  produc- 
tion has  largely  destroyed. 

"Those  almost  miraculous  machines,"  Morris  wrote, 
'"which  if  orderly  forethought  had  dealt  with  them  might 
even  now  be  speedily  extinguishing  all  irksome  and  unintelli- 
gent labour,  leaving  us  free  to  raise  the  skill  of  hand  and 
energy  of  mind  in  our  workmen,  and  to  produce  afresh  that 
loveliness  and  order  which  only  the  hand  of  man  guided 


WILLIAM    MORRIS  307 

by  his  brain  can  produce:  what  have  they  done  for  us  now? 
Those  machines  of  which  the  civilised  world  is  so  proud — 
has  it  any  right  to  be  proud  of  the  use  to  which  they  have 
been  put  by  commercial  war  and  waste?"  Consequently 
he,  a  maker  and  designer  of  beautiful  things,  pleaded  for 
a  restoration  of  conditions  of  industry  in  which  drudgery 
might  be  minimised  by  the  right  use  of  the  marvellous  pro- 
ducts of  inventive  genius,  whilst  at  the  same  time  the 
worker  might  once  again  find  that  satisfaction  which  a  good 
craftsman  always  experiences  in  doing  sound  work  which 
he  enjoys. 

To  his  second  main  line  of  thought  Morris  was  led  by 
considering  the  hindrances  to  the  establishment  of  a  better 
state  of  things. 

Competitive  commerce,  in  his  view,  floods  the  markets 
of.  the  world  with  a  vast  output  of  rubbish,  of  useless  pro- 
ducts, and  of  things  ill  made  from  bad  material,  which 
degrade  those  who  make  them,  and  render  it  exceedingly 
difficult  for  the  skilled  and  honest  craftsman  to  sell  his 
genuine  goods.  By  causing  a  great  waste  of  material, 
waste  of  money,  waste  of  time  and  waste  of  labour,  they 
largely  absorb  the  means  by  which  people  could,  if  they 
knew  better,  encourage  good  artist  workmen  to  make  and 
sell  commodities  of  the  best  quality,  produced  under  sound 
conditions,  by  self-respecting  and  happy  people.  Bad  work- 
manship, bad  material,  and  the  making  of  useless  things 
aroused  Morris's  anger  more  strongly  than  anything  else. 
What  a  change  would  be  made  in  the  world,  he  cried,  if 
no  work  were  done  but  that  which  is  worth  doing! 

"I  tell  you,"  Morris  said,  "I  feel  dazed  at  the  thought 
of  the  immensity  of  work  which  is  undergone  for  the  mak- 
ing of  useless  things.  It  would  be  an  instructive  day's 
work  for  any  one  of  us  who  is  strong  enough  to  walk 
through  two  or  three  of  the  principal  streets  of  London 
on  a  week-day,  and  take  accurate  note  of  everything  in  the 
shop  windows  which  is  embarrassing  or  superfluous  to  the 
daily  life  of  a  serious  man.  Nay,  the  most  of  these  things 
no  one,  serious  or  unserious,  wants  at  all;  only  a  foolish 
habit  makes  even  the  lightest-minded  of  us  suppose  that 
he  wants  them,  and  to  many  people,  even  of  those  who  buy 
them,  they  are  obvious  encumbrances  to  real  thought,  work 
and  pleasure.  But  I  beg  you  to  think  of  the  enormous 
mass  of  men  who  are  occupied  with  this  miserable  trum- 


308     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

pery,  from  the  engineers  who  have  had  to  make  the 
machines  for  making  them,  down  to  the  hapless  clerks  who 
sit  day  long  year  after  year  in  the  horrible  dens  wherein 
the  wholesale  exchange  of  them  is  transacted,  and  the  shop- 
men who,  not  daring  to  call  their  souls  their  own,  retail 
them  amidst  numberless  insults  which  they  must  not  resent 
to  the  idle  public  who  doesn't  want  them,  but  buys  them 
to  be  bored  by  them,  and  sick  to  death  of  them.  I  am  talk- 
ing of  the  merely  useless  things;  but  there  are  other  mat- 
ters not  merely  useless,  but  actively  destructive  and  poison- 
ous, which  command  a  good  price  in  the  market;  for 
instance,  adulterated  food  and  drink.  Vast  is  the  number 
of  slaves  whom  competitive  commerce  employs  in  turning 
out  infamies  such  as  these.  But,  quite  apart  from  them, 
there  is  an  enormous  mass  of  labour  which  is  just  merely 
wasted ;  many  thousands  of  men  and  women  making  Nothing 
with  terrible  and  inhuman  toil  which  deadens  the  soul  and 
shortens  mere  animal  life  itself." 

A  principle  upon  which  Morris  insisted  throughout  his 
writings  on  social  subjects  is  that  "no  work  which  cannot 
be  done  without  pleasure  in  the  doing  is  worth  doing."  It 
was  a  craftsman's  gospel,  and  he  was  thinking  of  occupa- 
tions into  which  it  is  possible  for  a  measure  of  handiwork 
to  enter.  One  does  not  find  him  meeting  squarely  the  appli- 
cation of  his  principle  to  trades  which  are  necessary  to  the 
life  of  the  modern  world,  and  which  are  therefore  "worth 
doing,"  but  are  not  capable  of  giving  to  those  engaged  in 
them  the  kind  of  pleasure  that  a  workman  may  find  in 
weaving  tapestry  or  in  making  furniture.  Coal-mining  is 
an  example.  But  Morris  was  concerned  with  the  modern 
world  chiefly  to  demolish  the  social  organisation  upon 
which  it  rests. 

In  his  Utopian  romance,  News  from  Nowhere,  he  pic- 
tured with  vividness  and  charm  the  kind  of  society  which 
he  favoured.  But,  though  he  tells  his  readers  that  the  popu- 
lation of  England  as  he  there  described  it  was  about  the 
same  as  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  whole 
of  the  scenes  suggest  a  country  from  which  millions  had 
somehow  disappeared,  leaving  pleasant  communities  sur- 
rounded by  gardens.  The  road  from  Hammersmith  to  the 
centre  of  London  "ran  through  wide  sunny  meadows  and 
garden-like  tillage."  All  the  houses  were  clean  and  pretty, 
and  were  surrounded  by  delightful  gardens.  Trafalgar 


WILLIAM    MORRIS  309 

Square  was  an  orchard  planted  with  apricot  trees,  and 
between  it  and  the  Houses  of  Paliament — used  in  this  Utopia 
as  a  market  for  turnips  and  other  vegetables,  and  a  store- 
house for  manure — ran  an  avenue  of  tall  pear  trees.  It  is 
all  very  fair  and  village-like,  but  England  simply  would  not 
hold  the  population  which  she  had  at  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  if  things  ran  as  Morris  represents  them  in 
his  romance.  To  make  room  for  such  a  sylvan  paradise, 
there  would  have  had  to  be  much  more  than  "decockneyising 
the  place"  and  sending  "the  damned  flunkeys  packing,"  so 
that  everybody  could  live  "comfortably  and  happily,"  as  the 
people  certainly  did  in  the  picture-book,  doll's  house,  peace- 
and-plenty,  clean-and-tidy  purlieus  of  News  from  Nowhere. 

Morris,  in  short,  not  merely  expected  "a  vast  revolution 
in  the  minds  of  all  men  such  as  had  already  happened  in 
his  own  mind,"  as  one  writer  upon  him  puts  it.  He  pre- 
supposed a  vast  revolution  which  would  somehow  have 
cleared  out  about  nine-tenths  of  the  population,  leaving  as 
a  remainder  a  community  of  artists  wandering  about  in 
embroidered  clothes,  having  an  abundance  of  everything, 
including  an  abundance  of  leisure,  and  nothing  much  more 
irksome  to  bother  about  than  falling  in  love  and  recovering 
from  the  disillusion  thereof. 

The  serious  part  of  the  philosophy  of  Morris,  however, 
is  not  to  be  found  in  his  romance,  vivid  and  fascinating 
as  that  is,  but  in  the  many  applications  of  his  ideas  on  art 
to  social  theory  which  he  expounded  in  his  essays  and  lec- 
tures. He  was  a  revolutionist,  but  those  who  would  dismiss 
him  as  a  mere  dreamer — the  "idle  singer  of  an  empty  day" 
• — are  faced  with  the  fact  that  he  was  in  his  own  activities 
as  practical  a  man  as  any  in  his  generation.  He  was  an 
eminently  successful  doer  of  things.  What  he  set  out  to 
do  as  a  craftsman  he  did  better  than  anybody  else.  He 
printed  better  books,  wrought  better  designs  for  papers  and 
fabrics,  dyed  and  wove  better  materials,  made  better  glass. 
He  established  standards  of  excellence  in  many  branches  of 
applied  art.  He  put  his  finger  upon  a  defect  in  modern 
industry  when  he  spoke  of  the  joyless  monotony  of  the 
labour  which  supplies  the  markets  of  the  world,  and  he  got 
nearer  to  the  truth  about  the  industrial  problem  than  did 
the  whole  concourse  of  economists,  makers  of  systems,  and 
preachers  of  nostrums,  when  he  said  that  "the  chief  duty 


310     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

of  the  civilised  world  to-day  is  to  set  about  making  labour 
happy  for  all,  to  do  its  utmost  to  minimise  the  amount  of 
unhappy  labour." 

The  particular  contribution  which  William  Morris  made 
to  the  discussion  of  social  questions,  therefore,  was  that 
modern  conditions  of  industry  are  fundamentally  wrong 
because  they  have  made  rarer,  and  in  many  directions  im- 
possible, that  pleasure  in  work  which  comes  from  the  par- 
ticipation of  hand  and  soul  in  the  doing  of  it.  Art  of  any 
kind,  Morris  insisted,  can  never  be  produced  without  plea- 
sure, and  "the  divorce  of  the  workman  from  pleasure  in 
his  labour"  has  destroyed  his  interest  in  his  means  of  get- 
ting a  living.  The  whole  significance  of  Morris's  participa- 
tion in  the  Socialist  movement  lies  in  his  assertion  of  that 
doctrine.  He  said  that  he  was  a  communist;  he  wrote,  in 
conjunction  with  Belfort  Bax,  an  exposition  of  the  Marxian 
theory.  But  many  other  people  could  have  done  that  better 
than  he.  There  was  not  a  glimmer  of  his  own  point  of  view 
in  the  voluminous  writings  of  Marx,  and,  apart  from  his  own 
personal  following,  there  were  few  in  the  movement  to  which 
he  devoted  so  much  of  his  valuable  energy  who  .seemed  to 
be  touched  by  the  arguments  which  were  peculiarly  his 
own.  One  of  his  Socialist  associates  bears  witness  to  this 
statement :  "Morris's  Views  are  little  heeded  and  less  under- 
stood even  by  many  of  his  Socialist  friends,  who  are  all 
for  the  enhancement  of  the  productivity  of  labour  by  its  sub- 
division and  the  increased  use  of  machinery."  "Apart  from 
a  few  young  men  and  artists,"  says  the  same  writer,  "Mor- 
ris's art  and  his  art  theories  have  found  their  admirers 
chiefly  among  people  who  are  old-fashioned  Tories,  or  have 
no  politics  at  all." 

That  Morris  was  disappointed  at  the  slight  impression 
he  was  able  to  make  seems  hardly  doubtful.  He  did  not 
altogether  abandon  public  advocacy,  and  he  wrote  Socialist 
pieces  down  to  the  year  of  his  death;  but  during  the  last 
ten  years  of  his  life  he  turned  again  to  imaginative  litera- 
ture, producing  then  the  best  of  his  exquisite  prose 
romances,  and  applying  his  craftsmanship  to  the  art  of 
printing.  His  Kelmscott  books,  the  fruit  of  this  period, 
are  famous,  and  competent  judges  are  of  opinion  that  no 
nobler  volume  has  ever  been  produced  from  a  press  than 
his  great  folio  Chaucer. 


WILLIAM    MORRIS  311 

The  disappointment  with  propaganda — though  he  may 
have  been  too  stubborn  a  man  to  own  it,  and,  despite  much 
provocation,  was  too  loyal-natured  a  man  to  turn  on  old 
associates — was  probably  two-fold.  For  one  thing,  he 
found  many  of  his  Socialist  friends  an  extremely  quarrel- 
some set  of  men,  so  much  in  the  habit  of  denunciation  that 
when  not  bespattering  their  adversaries  they  were  rend- 
ing each  other  and  turning  one  another  out  of  this  society 
or  that.  Secondly,  it  must  have  become  evident  to  him 
that  very  few  hoped  for  or  cared  for  the  kind  of  change 
that  he  would  have  liked  to  see  produced.  It  was  well, 
therefore,  that  in  the  evening  of  his  wonderfully  full  and 
valuable  life  he  gave  himself  more  and  more  to  work  which 
he  could  do  better  than  anyone  else,  and  left  the  denounc- 
ing and  agitating  to  those  who  revelled  in  it. 

It  is  possible  to  maintain  that  the  teaching  of  Morris 
was  as  Utopian  as  that  of  the  early  Socialists,  Owen,  St. 
Simon  and  Fourier,  and  as  economically  unsound  as  that 
of  the  allegedly  "scientific"  school — which  is  indeed  as  little 
scientific  as  alchemy  or  astrology.  He  was  a  man  of  genius 
and  of  exceptional  energy,  whose  art  was  a  vital  part  of 
his  life,  and  who  believed  in  it  so  intensely  that  he  thought 
that  only  a  world  of  artists  could  be  a  happy  world.  He 
interpreted  the  past  and  diagnosed  the  present  by  artistic 
canons.  But,  in  fact,  people  in  the  mass,  in  the  ages  when 
craftsmanship  flourished,  were  no  more  happy  than  they 
are  to-day.  To  assume  from  the  fact  that  some  beautiful 
things  have  come  down  to  us — preserved  by  careful  hands, 
or  by  some  good  luck,  from  the  vast  quantity  which  has 
perished,  because  they  are  beautiful — that  therefore  all 
things  were  beautiful  when  they  were  made  and  used,  and 
that  all  men  then  were  artist-craftsmen  who  worked  in  sheer 
love  of  their  daily  task,  is  much  more  than  the  historical 
evidence  warrants  us  in  doing.  The  thirteenth  century 
was  not  a  period  when  all  was  joyous  because  everybody 
was  an  artist,  any  more  than  the  twentieth  century  is  a 
period  when  all  is  miserable  because  everybody  is  not  an 
artist. 

But  Morris,  nevertheless,  tried  to  hammer  into  the  con- 
sciousness of  his  own  generation  a  truth  which  its  succes- 
sors will  be  the  better  for  learning.  The  industrial  world 
is  sick  of  its  own  huge,  soulless,  vulgar  mechanism.  The 


312     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

"wealthy  lower  orders,"  with  their  inane  expenditure  on 
things  which  they  do  not  need,  often  for  no  better  reason 
than  that  spending  is  a  lavish  habit  with  them,  and  the 
poorer  "lower  orders,"  who  would  spend  equally  lavishly 
on  the  same  worthless  things  if  they  could,  are  equally 
depraved  by  the  ill-organised  wastefulness  of  modern  com- 
merce. Thoughtful  men  in  all  classes  are  agreed  that  there 
is  need  for  a  readjustment  of  social  relations.  Yet  there 
is  grave  danger  of  administering  remedies  that  will  cure 
nothing.  It  would,  for  example,  bring  no  comfort  to  work- 
men to  adopt  a  system  of  Socialism  or  Communism  if  they 
found  that  under  it  they  were  worse  off  than  before,  since 
an  equal  division  of  gains,  if  the  dividend  were  of  lesser 
value  than  a  former  wage,  would  merely  spell  loss  all  round. 
Nor  would  even  an  increased  gain  bring  satisfaction  if  it 
did  not  carry  increased  happiness.  In  that  case  old  dis- 
contents would  simply  assume  new  forms.  The  sailor  on 
a  raft  who  is  gasping  with  thirst  does  not  want  more 
water ;  he  has  all  the  ocean  around  him ;  he  wants  sweet 
water,  which  will  refresh  and  cool  him.  The  exasperations 
of  our  time  do  not  arise  from  an  unequal  division  of  wealth, 
and  an  equal  division  of  it  would  not  lessen  them.  They 
arise  from  some  causes  which  many  believe  to  be  remedial 
if  the  will  to  remedy  them  possessed  those  who  have  autho- 
rity; and  from  other  causes  which  are  connected  with 
the  nature  of  mechanical  routine  industry.  That  is  to  say, 
they  are  psychological  as  well  as  economic.  The  great  war 
revealed  a  percentage  of  physical  unfitness  which  astonished 
and  alarmed  those  statesmen  who  have  a  regard  for 
national  welfare.  If  measurements  and  medical  tests  could 
have  had  regard  to  soul-sickness  the  result  would  have 
been  not  less  disconcerting.  The  remedies  are  not  doses 
from  the  pharmacopoeia  of  Utopia,  but  the  ensuring  of  a 
larger  leisure  for  those  engaged  in  monotonous  and  drudg- 
ing occupations,  and  the  teaching  of  how  to  use  this  leisure 
for  making  life  more  joyous  and  profitable,  and  richer  in 
the  things  that  bring  contentment  and  peace. 


The  standard  biography  of  Morris  is  that  of  J.  W. 
Mackail.  A  short  book  on  him  by  Alfred  Noyes  is  included 
in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series.  The  Art  of  William 
Morris,  by  Aylmer  Valance,  is  richly  illustrated  with 


WILLIAM    MORRIS  313 

examples  of  his  designs.  John  Drinkwater's  William 
Morris  is  also  an  excellent  appreciation.  The  books  by 
Morris  himself  which  contain  his  best  work  on  social  and 
artistic  subjects  are  Signs  of  Change,  Hopes  and  Fears  for 
Art,  and  Architecture,  Industry  and  Wealth. 


Art  without  industry  is  guilt,  but  industry  without  art 
is  brutality. — Ruskin. 

We  ought  to  get  to  understand  the  value  of  intelligent 
work,  the  work  of  men's  hands  guided  by  their  brains,  and 
to  take  that,  though  it  be  rough,  rather  than  the  unintelli- 
gent work  of  machines  or  slaves,  though  it  be  delicate;  to 
refuse  altogether  to  use  machine-made  work,  unless  where 
the  nature  of  the  thing  compels  it,  or  where  the  machine 
does  what  mere  human  suffering  would  otherwise  have  to 
do. — William  Morris. 

Art  is  not  an  isolated  thing ;  it  does  not  merely  happen, 
as  Whistler  said.  We  know  that  it  is  a  symptom  of  some- 
thing right  or  wrong  with  the  whole  mind  of  man  and  with 
the  circumstances  that  affect  that  mind.  We  know  at  last 
that  there  is  a  connection  between  the  art  of  man  and  his 
intellect  and  his  conscience.  It  was  because  William  Mor- 
ris saw  that  connection  that  he,  from  being  a  pure  artist, 
became  a  Socialist  and  spoke  at  street  corners. — A.  Glutton- 
Brock. 

The  nineteenth  century  was  the  age  of  faith  in  fine  art. 
The  results  are  before  us. — G.  Bernard  Shaw. 

The  law  of  nature  is  inevitable  that  the  thing  cut  off 
from  use  is  cut  off  from  life.  A  class  whose  splendour 
and  luxury  are  the  decoration  on  solid  services  performed 
may  be  yet  secure.  But  a  class  whose  splendour  and  luxury 
are  their  own  sole  justification  and  aim  in  life  is  heading 
dead  for  the  guillotine. — L.  March  Phillips. 

The  work  of  William  Morris  is  characterised  by  the 
deepest  insight  into  the  past.  But  as  a  true  and  deeply 
sincere  artist  of  the  nineteenth  century,  alive  to  all  the 
actual  needs  of  the  present  and  still  more  straining  towards 
a  desirable  future,  his  historic  sense  is  permeated  with  the 
love  of  truth  which  forced  the  literary  as  well  as  the  pic- 
torial artist  to  face  nature. — C.  Waldstein. 

The  art  of  a  nation  is  an  epitome  of  the  nation's  intel- 


314     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

ligence  and  prosperity.  There  is  no  such  thing  as  cosmo- 
politanism in  art  ?  Alas,  there  is !  and  what  a  pitiful  thing 
that  thing  is. — George  Moore. 

The  message  that  art  has  to  deliver  is  ever  the  same 
and  yet  never  the  same.  The  emotions  of  mankind  from 
which  it  is  fed  are  constant  in  their  recurrence;  but  each 
new  voice  that  is  rightly  tuned  to  give  them  utterance  finds 
fresh  harmonies  that  echo,  without  repeating,  the  still 
unchallenged  strains  of  the  singers  of  an  earlier  day. — J. 
Comyns  Carr. 

It  is  true  that  Morris,  for  all  his  greatness,  never  faced 
the  fact  that  we  cannot  both  eat  our  cake  and  have  it; 
cannot  use  slow  methods  of  production  and  also  turn  out 
without  overwork  large  quantities  of  consumable  wealth. 
Once,  while  I  listened  to  him  lecturing,  I  made  a  rough 
calculation  that  the  citizens  of  his  commonwealth,  in  order 
to  produce  by  the  methods  he  advocated  the  quantity  of 
beautiful  and  delicious  things  which  they  were  to  enjoy, 
would  have  to  work  about  two  hundred  hours  per  week. 
It  was  only  the  same  fact  looked  at  from  another  point 
of  view  which  made  it  impossible  for  any  of  Morris's  work- 
men— or,  indeed,  for  anyone  at  all  whose  income  was  near 
the  present  English  average — to  buy  the  products  either  of 
Morris's  workshop  at  Merton  or  of  his  Kelmscott  press. 
There  is  no  more  pitiful  tragedy  than  that  of  the  many 
followers  of  Tolsoy,  who,  without  Tolstoy's  genius  or 
inherited  wealth,  were  slowly  worn  down  by  sheer  want 
in  the  struggle  to  live  the  peasant  life  which  he  preached. 
— Graham  Wallas. 

The  aristocrat,  by  his  taste  and  his  feeling  for  the  acci- 
dentals of  beauty,  did  manage  to  get  on  to  some  kind  of 
terms  with  the  artist.  Hence  the  art  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  an  art  that  is  prone  before  the  distinguished 
patron,  subtly  and  deliciously  flattering  and  yet  always  fine. 
In  contrast  to  that  the  art  of  the  nineteenth  century  is 
coarse,  turbulent,  clumsy.  It  marked  the  beginning  of  a 
revolt.  The  artist  just  managed  to  let  himself  be  coaxed 
and  cajoled  by  the  aristocrat,  but  when  the  aristocratic  was 
succeeded  by  the  plutocratic  patron,  with  less  conciliatory 
manners  and  no  taste,  the  artist  rebelled ;  the  history  of  art 
in  the  nineteenth  century  is  the  history  of  a  band  of  heroic 
Ishmaelites  with  no  secure  place  in  the  social  system,  with 


WILLIAM    MORRIS  315 

v 

nothing  to  support  them  in  the  unequal  struggle  but  a  dim 
sense  of  a  new  idea — the  idea  of  the  freedom  of  art  from 
trammels  and  tyrannies. — Roger  Fry. 

Art  has  no  end  in  view  save  the  emphasising  and  record- 
ing in  the  most  effective  way  some  strongly  felt  interest 
or  affection.  Where  there  is  neither  interest  nor  desire 
to  record  with  good  effect  there  is  but  sham  art,  or  none 
at  all.  Where  both  these  are  fully  present,  no  matter  how 
rudely  and  inarticulately,  there  is  great  art. — Samuel 
Butler. 

In  nothing  does  conservatism  do  .so  much  harm  as  in 
art.  Art  is  one  of  the  manifestations  of  spiritual  life  in 
man ;  therefore  as  when  an  animal  lives  it  breathes,  it  gives 
out  the  constituents  of  breath,  so  also  if  humanity  is  alive 
it  displays  the  activity  of  art,  and  so  at  each  moment  art 
must  be  contemporaneous — i.e.,  the  art  of  our  own  time. 
One  must  know  where  to  find  it  (not  in  the  decadents  of 
music,  poetry  and  romance),  but  one  ought  not  to  look  for 
it  in  the  past  but  in  the  present.  People  who  wish  to  show 
off  as  connoisseurs  of  art,  and  for  this  purpose  praise  only 
the  classical  art  of  the  past  and  revile  that  of  to-day,  simply 
prove  that  they  are  not  sensitive  to  art. — Tolstoy. 


WOODROW  WILSON. 

(Photograph  :    Underwood  and  Underwood) 


[Page  316 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 


WOODROW   WILSON    AND    THE    LEAGUE 
OF   NATIONS. 

OF  the  twenty-eight  Presidents  who  have  held  office 
in  the  United  States  of  America,  very  few  have 
been  men  of  personal  distinction.  The  first  four 
— Washington,  John  Adams,  Jefferson  and  Madi- 
son— had  been  tried  by  the  stern  ordeal  of  the  revolutionary 
war,  and  owed  their  elevation  to  valuable  public  ser- 
vice. But  after  them  came  a  commonplace  procession  of 
inferior  politicians,  thrown  up  on  the  beach  by  the  waves 
of  party  storm.  "Who  now  knows  or  cares  to  know  any- 
thing about  the  personality  of  James  K.  Polk  or  Franklin 
Pearce?"  asks  Lord  Bryce,1  and  the  same  question  might 
be  asked  about  John  Tylor,  Zachary  Taylor,  Martin  van 
Buren,  and  the  whole  of  the  remainder  till  we  come  to  Lin- 
coln in  1861.  There  was,  indeed,  a  man  of  quality.  Grant, 
too,  was  eminent  as  a  soldier,  though  he  proved  to  be  a 
weak  and  mischievous  president.  After  him  the  highest 
office  in  the  gift  of  the  great  republic  devolved  once  more 
upon  half  a  dozen  or  so  of  worthy  but  uninteresting  party 
nominees,  till  in  1901  a  man  of  character  and  attainments 
stormed  the  White  House  in  the  boisterous  person  of  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt.  Among  the  twenty-eight,  five  may  be 
marked  as  statesmen  of  eminent  capacity,  fit  to  be  com- 
pared with  the  ablest  of  those  who,  by  the  process  of  politi- 
cal "natural  selection/'  are  celebrated  in  the  history  of  other 
countries.  They  are  Washington,  Madison,  Lincoln,  Roose- 
velt and  Woodrow  Wilson.  All  five  were  concerned  with 
great  wars,  which  profoundly  affected  the  history  of  the 
United  States.  But,  apart  from  policy,  they  were  men  pos- 

i  Bryce,  "American  Commonwealth,"  Vol.  I.,  p.  77.  The  most  interest- 
ing thing  about  Franklin  Pearce  is  that  his  biography  was  written  by  a 
greater  man  than  himself — Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 

317 


318     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

sessing  the  gift  of  leadership,  who  were  capable  of  achiev- 
ing eminence  in  other  fields  of  effort  than  the  political. 

The  man  in  American  history  with  whom  one  is  most 
inclined  to  compare  Woodrow  Wilson  is  he  who,  after 
Washington,  was  best  fitted  to  be  president,  namely,  Alex- 
ander Hamilton.  The  author  of  the  finest  papers  in  the 
Federalist  was  one  of  the  creators  of  the  United  States, 
and  the  book  in  which  those  luminous  pieces  of  thinking 
appear  is  one  of  the  classics  of  political  literature.  Anyone 
who  would  understand  the  principle  upon  which  federal 
government  in  America  was  founded,  and  the  mode  of  its 
operation,  has  to  know  two  books,  The  Federalist  of  Hamil- 
ton and  Madison,  and  the  Congressional  Government  of 
Woodrow  Wilson.  Together  they  make  the  American  state 
intelligible  to  the  intelligent  foreigner  and  to  the  American 
citizen. 

When  President  Wilson  returned  to  America  after  his 
participation  in  the  first  stages  of  the  Peace  Conference, 
he  related  to  a  Boston  audience  (24th  February,  1919)  :  "I 
met  a  group  of  scholars  when  I  was  in  Paris — some  gentle- 
men from  one  of  the  Greek  Universities,  who  had  come  to 
see  me,  and  in  whose  presence,  or,  rather,  in  the  presence 
of  whose  tradition  of  learning  I  felt  very  young  indeed— 
and  I  told  them  that  I  had  had  one  of  the  delightful  revenges 
that  sometimes  come  to  man.  All  my  life  I  have  heard  men 
speak  with  a  sort  of  condescension  of  ideals  and  of  idealists, 
and  particularly  of  those  separated,  encloistered  persons 
whom  they  choose  to  term  academic,  who  are  in  the  habit 
of  uttering  ideas  in  a  free  atmosphere  where  they  clash 
with  nobody  in  particular.  And  I  said,  I  have  had  this 
sweet  revenge." 

The  ex-Kaiser  was  one  of  those  who  were  scornful  about 
"a  college  professor"  interfering  in  international  politics. 
Woodrow  Wilson  is  too  chivalrous  a  man  to  have  thought 
of  giving  particular  direction  to  his  "sweet  revenge"  against 
a  fallen  foe.  But  in  truth  such  remarks,  which  are  always 
stupid,  were  particularly  inapt  in  his  case.  During  his 
mature  life  he  has  been  much  occupied  with  large  public 
affairs  as  well  as  engaged  upon  university  work.  From 
1890  to  1902  Woodrow  Wilson  was  professor  of  Jurispru- 
dence and  Politics  at  Princeton ;  from  1902  to  1910  he  was 
President  of  that  University;  from  1910  to  1912  he  was 


WOODROW  WILSON  319 

governor  of  the  State  of  New  Jersey ;  and  in  1912  he  became 
President  of  the  United  States.  When,  therefore,  he 
attended  the  Paris  Conference  of  1918,  he  had  left  twenty 
years  of  academic  life  behind  him,  and  had  been  eight 
years  engaged  in  strenuous  public  life,  including  the  con- 
duct of  two  campaigns  for  the  highest  elective  office  in  the 
world.  His  period  at  Princeton,  too.,  was  distinguished 
by  a  courageous  effort  to  effect  reforms  by  making 
the  university  a  place  within  which  a  spirit  of  equality 
should  prevail  among  the  students — a  spirit  which  was  hin- 
dered at  Princeton  by  the  growth  of  a  number  of 
luxurious  clubs  for  the  sons  of  the  idle  rich.  In  that  aim 
the  reforming  president  was  beaten  by  the  force  of  circum- 
stances, but  his  policy  was  watched  with  sympathetic 
interest  by  those,  not  in  America  only,  who  cherish  the  true 
ideal  of  comradeship  in  the  pursuit  of  scholarship. 

When  Woodrow  Wilson  attained  the  Presidency  he  gave 
to  the  Democratic  party  one  of  the  rare  tastes  of  victory 
which  it  has  had  since  the  Civil  War.  In  the  intervening 
half  century  there  had  been  but  one  Democratic  President, 
Grover  Cleveland,  and  he  had  had  to  work  with  a  Repub- 
lican majority  in  Congress.  But  when  the  Democratic 
party  swept  the  polls  in  1912,  its  leader  entered  upon  his 
first  term  of  office  with  a  Congress  in  sympathy  with  his 
policy.  He  was  known  throughout  the  United  States  as 
the  author  of  some  of  the  best  books  upon  government  that 
have  been  published  in  that  country — his  Congressional 
Government,  mentioned  above,  The  State,  Constitutional 
Government  in  the  United  States,  and  Division  and  Reunion. 
His  large  History  of  the  American  People  was  valued  by 
students  as  a  .sustained  piece  of  brilliant  writing,  good  to 
read  as  literature  as  well  as  packed  with  well-informed 
reflection  upon  his  country's  development.  America  knew, 
also,  that  she  was  entrusting  her  destinies  to  an  experienced 
man  of  affairs,  since  his  period  of  Governor  of  New  Jersey 
had  been  eventful. 

To  what  extent  the  personality  of  Woodrow  Wilson,  or 
divisions  in  the  Republican  party,  or  a  reaction  towards 
Democratic  policy,  wap  responsible  for  the  election  of  1912 
need  not  now  concern  us.  It  is  at  any  rate  certain  that  at 
that  time  no  thought  of  war  vexed  the  minds  of  people 
in  either  party.  Europe  was  being  rolled  to  the  brink  of 


320     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

Inferno;  but  the  men  in  the  old  world  and  the  new  who, 
from  their  study  of  political  tendencies,  were  convinced 
that  a  world-war  was  brewing,  were  little  heeded.  The 
world  went  on  its  heedless  way,  letting  its  prophets  pro- 
nounce their  warnings  with  but  little  consciousness  that 
they  mattered  much.  The  statesmen  who  cried  "pooh-pooh ! 
there  will  be  no  war,"  were  at  least  as  confident  as  those 
who  pointed  to  the  signs  and  insisted  on  their  meaning. 
Above  all,  the  people  of  the  United  States  felt  secure  in 
their  great  domain,  convinced  that  if  the  nations  of  Europe 
hurled  themselves  against  each  other,  it  need  be  no  concern 
of  any  person  from  the  Great  Lakes  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico, 
and  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  to  the  Pacific  slope.  Was 
there  not  floating  over  them  "that  piece  of  dry  goods" 
cajled  the  Star-Spangled  Banner,  and  was  there  not  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  which  Moses  did  not  include  among  the 
Commandments  only  because  there  was  no  room  for  a  thing 
so  important  on  the  two  tables  of  stone  ? 

When  the  vast  storm  of  passion  and  blood  burst  upon 
the  world  Woodrow  Wilson  was  half  through  his  first  term. 
Another  presidential  election  was  due  in  1916.  It  is  true, 
and  very  honourable  to  American  public  life  that  it  should 
be  true,  that  there  were  eminent  public  men  in  the  United 
States  who  pointed  out  that  there  were  features  of  the  war 
entailing  issues  to  which  a  free,  democratic  people  could 
not  be  indifferent.  They  insisted  that  the  triumph  of  Ger- 
many and  Austria  would  entail  the  overthrow  of  prin- 
ciples of  human  liberty  which  the  American  people  should 
exert  themselves  to  maintain.  But  Germany  had  her  stipen- 
diary propagandists  in  America,  who  represented  that  the 
autocratic  powers  were  as  innocent  doves  attacked  by  birds 
of  prey.  It  was  difficult  for  the  ordinary  American  citizen 
to  make  up  his  mind ;  and  was  it  necessary  that  he  should  ? 
Wrere  his  security  and  his  interests  menaced?  But  no  Pre- 
sident could  fling  the  power  of  the  United  States  into  the 
struggle  unless  he  had  the  nation  with  him;  for,  great  as 
are  the  powers  of  the  President,  he  is  the  servant  of  the 
people,  and  must  do  no  more  than  the  people  will  have 
done. 

In  those  early  years  of  the  war,  the  Germans  were  so 
arrogant  and  confident  that  they  bellowed  to  the  universe 
the  certitude  of  their  invincibility.  Who  dared  to  come 


WOODROW  WILSON  321 

between  them  and  the  objects  of  their  wrath  must  be 
crushed.  Their  submarines  should  sink  any  ship  afloat,  no 
matter  to  what  nation  it  belonged.  The  threat  was  speedily 
put  into  execution.  Passenger  ships  with  American  citizens 
on  board  were  sunk.  America  cried  aloud  that  such  out- 
rages on  the  subjects  of  a  neutral  power  were  wanton  and 
cruel  breaches  of  the  law  of  nations.  The  provocation  to 
immediate  war  was  great. 

But  the  German  authors  of  these  crimes  were  hardly 
less  cunning  than  wicked.  They  knew  that  there  was  to  be 
a  presidential  election  in  1916,  and  they  were  well  enough 
advised  about  American  politics  to  be  aware  that  the  Presi- 
dent would  do  his  utmost  to  avoid  a  war.  The  Democratic 
party  is  not  the  stronger  party  in  the  United  States,  and 
Woodrow  Wilson  was  a  Democratic  President.  If  he  could 
keep  the  country  out  of  war,  it  would  be  likely  in  1916  to 
entrust  him  with  a  further  term  of  office,  in  the  hope  that 
he  would  still  be  able  to  maintain  a  pacific  policy.  The  out- 
rages perpetrated  by  the  Germans  were,  indeed,  hard  for  a 
nation  to  endure.  On  1st  May,  1915,  a  German  submarine 
sank  the  American  oil  steamer  Gulflight,  and  on  7th  May 
the  sinking  of  the  Atlantic  liner  Lusitania  caused  the 
death  of  twelve  hundred  persons,  many  of  whom  were 
American  citizens.  The  President  protested  vigorously, 
but  carefully  refrained  from  using  words  of  menace.  More 
American  lives  were  lost  by  the  sinking  of  the  Arabic  in 
August.  It  became  clear  that  the  Germans  had  a  contemp- 
tuous opinion  of  the  United  States.  In  a  packet  of  papers 
which  an  American  journalist  was  conveying  to  Germany 
and  Austria  in  his  luggage,  and  which  was  seized  in  Great 
Britain,  the  German  military  attache  at  Washington  spoke 
of  "these  idiotic  Yankees,"  and  it  was  boasted  that  secret 
agents  of  the  Germanic  Powers  were  engaged  in  stirring 
up  strikes  in  America.  But  still  the  President  exercised 
remarkable  patience.  The  strain  was  great.  Powerful 
men  in  America  said  that  their  country  had  been  humili- 
ated and  wronged  unendurably.  Citizens  who  had  traversed 
the  seas  in  pursuit  of  their  lawful  avocations  had  been 
murdered.  Was  there  no  limit  to  the  wrong  that  might 
be  done  to  the  United  States? 

The  presidential  election  occurred  in  November,  1916, 
and  Woodrow  Wilson  was  again  chosen  as  the  chief  magis- 


322     MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

trate  of  the  nation.  If  the  German  rulers  had  not  been 
inebriated  by  their  own  arrogant  self-confidence,  they  would 
have  had  sense  enough  to  realise  that  a  President  fresh 
from  the  country  was  in  a  much  stronger  position  than 
the  same  President  with  an  election  in  front  of  him.  Those 
who  calculated  on  Woodrow  Wilson's  weakness  made  a 
fatal  blunder.  But,  so  far  from  realising  the  difference, 
the  German  government  early  in  1917  announced  a  policy 
of  unrestrained  submarining.  Then  things  in  America 
began  to  move. 

The  President  made  no  more  solemn  protests.  He  dis- 
missed the  German  ambassador  from  Washington,  called 
Congress  together,  and  asked  for  power  to  arm  merchant- 
men. It  was  the  first  clear  sign  of  a  war  policy.  On  2nd 
April  he  delivered  a  message  to  Congress,  wherein  he  said : 
"We  are  now  about  to  accept  the  gauge  of  battle  with  this 
natural  foe  to  liberty,  and  shall,  if  necessary,  spend  the 
whole  force  of  the  nation  to  check  and  nullify  its  preten- 
tions  and  its  power.  We  are  glad,  now  that  we  see  facts 
with  no  veil  of  false  pretence  about  them,  to  fight  thus  for 
the  ultimate  peace  of  the  world,  for  the  liberation  of  its 
peoples — the  German  people  included — the  rights  of  nations 
great  and  small,  and  the  privilege  of  men  everywhere  to 
choose  their  way  of  life  and  obedience.  The  world  must 
be  made  safe  for  democracy.  Its  peace  must  be  planted 
upon  trusted  foundations  of  political  liberty." 

It  is  not  the  present  purpose  to  discuss  the  very  gallant 
part  taken  in  the  war  itself  by  the  troops  of  the  United 
States.  In  the  history  of  the  great  conflict  that  story  makes 
an  inspiring  volume.  But  from  the  beginning  President 
Wilson  set  before  the  people  of  the  United  States — and, 
indeed,  of  the  world,  for  his  message  to  Congress  had  a 
universal  appeal — an  ideal  nobler  even  than  that  of 
righteous  vindication,  with  which  the  American  armies 
were  animated.  He  resolved  to  do  his  utmost  to  ensure 
that  when  peace  was  made  it  should  be  built  upon  such  a 
foundation,  and  should  comprehend  suchi  a  machinery,  as 
should  make  it  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  for  wars  to  occur. 
In  his  first  war  message,  that  of  2nd  April,  1917,  he  made 
this  larger  purpose  clear.  The  object  in  view  was,  he  said, 
"to  vindicate  the  principles  of  peace  and  justice  in  the  life 
of  the  world  as  against  selfish,  autocratic  power,  and  to  set 


WOODROW  WILSON  323 

up  amongst  the  really  free  and  self -governed  peoples  of  the 
world  such  a  concert  of  purpose  and  action  as  will  hence- 
forth ensure  the  observance  of  these  principles."  At  the 
moment,  therefore,  when  the  vast  resources  and  man-power 
of  the  United  States  were  flung  into  the  conflict,  the  states- 
manship of  the  President  took  a  wider  view  than  the 
achievement  of  the  immediate  purpose.  Out  of  the  barbari- 
ties and  horrors  of  war  should  arise  an  organisation  for 
preventing  the  recurrence  of  war. 

The  idea  of  forming  an  association  of  civilised  states 
for  the  purpose  of  preventing  wars  is  very  old.  As  long 
ago  as  1305  a  French  lawyer,  Pierre  Dubois,  "proposed  an 
alliance  between  all  Christian  powers  for  the  purpose  of 
the  maintenance  of  peace  and  the  establishment  of  a  per- 
manent Court  of  Arbitration  for  the  settlement  of  dif- 
ferences between  members  of  the  alliance."1  Sully,  the 
Minister  of  Henry  IV.  of  France,  suggested  a  plan  for  the 
same  purpose  of  1603.  Wise  and  humane  men  as  various 
in  their  outlook  as  the  Dutch  jurist  Hugo  Grotius,  the 
English  Quaker  Penn,  the  French  wit  "Voltaire,  and  the 
German  philosopher  Kant,  propounded  projects  for  settling 
the  differences  of  nations  by  other  means  than  the  cruel 
-arbitrament  of  battle.  But  these  were  treated  by  statesmen 
generally  as  the  amiable  aberrations  of  impracticable  philo- 
sophers. When  the  world  was  plunged  into  its  great  agony 
in  1914,  a  number  of  organisations  sprang  into  existence  in 
Great  Britain  and  America,  like  the  British  League  -of 
Nations  Society,  the  American  World's  Court  League,  the 
League  to  Enforce  Peace,  and  the  Organisation  Centrale 
pour  une  Paix  Durable,  centred  at  the  Hague,  having  for 
their  object  the  pressing  forward  of  a  workable  scheme 
which  would  make  wars  in  the  future  impossible. 

These  societies  did  valuable  work,  as  did  also  the  nume- 
rous authors  who  wrote  books  and  pamphlets  to  educate 
public  opinion  in  the  same  direction.  But  it  was  Woodrow 
Wilson  who  made  the  League  of  Nations  a  vital  issue,  to 
be  settled  at  the  Peace  Conference  as  a  necessary  part  of 
the  treaty  which  the  belligerent  Powers  would  sign.  In 
every  speech  which  he  made  after  the  fateful  deliverance  to 
Congress  in  1917,  he  returned  to  this  subject  as  being  as 
much  a  part  of  the  policy  of  the  United  States  as  winning 

1  L.  Oppenheim,  "The  League  of  Nations  and  Its  Problems,"  p.  8. 


324     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN   HISTORY 

the  war.  There  was  to  be  no  peace  without  making  pro- 
vision for  perpetuating  peace.  In  the  celebrated  Fourteen 
Points  which  he  laid  before  Congress  in  January,  1918,  this 
was  the  fourteenth: — "A  general  association  of  nations 
must  be  formed  under  specific  covenants  for  the  purpose 
of  affording  mutual  guarantees  of  political  independence 
and  territorial  integrity  to  great  and  small  nations  alike." 

True  to  his  oft-repeated  pledges,  the  President  submitted 
a  plan  to  the  Peace  Conference  at  Paris  in  February,  1919, 
and  it  was  in  due  course  embodied  in  the  treaty.  He  would 
not  consent  to  negotiate  on  any  other  subject  until  this 
vital  set  of  provisions  was  agreed  upon,  and  they  were  in 
fact  placed  in  the  forefront  of  the  document.  The  plan 
for  a  League  of  Nations  thus  became  an  essential  portion 
of  the  terms  of  settlement  to  which  the  victorious  Powers 
responsible  for  framing  it,  and  the  defeated  Powers  which 
also  signed  it,  were  alike  parties.  The  scheme  set  up  a 
body  of  delegates  with  an  Executive  Council  and  a  perma- 
nent Secretariat.  It  established  a  permanent  Court  of 
International  Justice.  It  bound  the  signatories  not  to 
resort  to  war  without  submitting  their  causes  of  difference 
to  arbitration.  It  bound  the  members  of  the  League  to 
sever  all  relations  with  any  state  guilty  of  violating  its 
obligations  and  pledges.  These  provisions,  and  others  to 
give  effect  to  them,  became,  and  now  are,  conditions  on 
which  the  foreign  relations  of  states  are  to  be  conducted. 
The  League  of  Nations  was  taken  out  of  the  region  of  theo- 
retical discussion  and  made  a  reality  by  President  Wilson's 
insistence.  That  was  the  great  service  which  he  rendered 
to  the  cause  of  peace  among  mankind. 

But  will  the  League  stand?  Will  it  weather  the  storms 
of  international  politics?  The  pessimists  say  that  it  will 
not.  There  is  little  utility  in  considering  the  multitude  of 
hypothetical  objections  which  may  be  raised.  It  may  not 
be  a  theoretically  perfect  scheme.  Plans  for  the  control 
of  the  affairs  of  men  rarely  are.  Defects  can  be  remedied 
by  consent  if  it  be  sincerely  desired  that  the  League  shall 
be  a  success.  Substantially,  there  would  seem  to  be  only 
three  sources  of  real  weakness,  and  they  would  be  operative 
against  any  scheme. 

The  first  is  lack  of  good  will.  If  the  nations  desire  to 
make  the  League  work,  they  can  do  .so,  and  in  that  case 
the  provision  for  the  reduction  of  armaments  is  compara- 


WOODROW  WILSON  325 

tively  unimportant.  Nations  which  have  a  heavy  load  of 
debt  to  carry,  and  which  desire  to  improve  the  standard 
of  living  of  their  people,  will  not  maintain  huge  armies  and 
navies,  at  enormous  cost,  if  the  need  for  them  is  seen  to 
diminish.  The  prodigal  expenditure  on  armaments  before 
1914  was  caused  by  the  imminent  danger  of  war;  and  that 
again  was  made  obvious  by  the  fact  that  the  nations  of 
Central  Europe  had  been  nurtured  on  a  philosophy  of  war. 
But  if  there  is  no  will  to  war — if,  on  the  contrary,  there 
is  good  will,  a  desire  to  maintain  peace — armaments  will 
dwindle  from  the  very  reluctance  of  people  to  pay  for  them. 
If,  however,  there  is  not  good  will,  the  League  of  Nations 
will  not  prevent  war.  Its  machinery  will  be  inadequate  to 
obviate  a  group  of  Powers  from  defying  the  rest  of  the 
world,  as  Germany  and  Austria  ruthlessly  defied  the  rest 
of  the  world  in  1914. 

The  second  source  of  weakness  lies  in  the  difficulty  of 
making  international  readjustments  by  consent.  It  has 
been  said  that  the  League  will  "stereotype  the  existing 
boundaries  of  states  however  artificial  they  may  be."  It 
assumes  that  settlements  made  in  1919  will  be  suitable  for 
^ver.  It  makes  provision  for  a  static  world.  But  condi- 
tions will  change,  as  they  have  changed  in  the  past.  There 
will  be  clashings  of  interests  as  there  have  been  in  the  past. 
It  is  impossible  to  foresee  what  dissatisfactions  will  emerge 
in  the  future  from  the  settlements  now  made.  The  test  of 
the  strength  of  the  League  would  arise  if  it  were  called  upon 
to  adjudicate  upon  a  claim  for  a  readjustment  of  territory 
involving  acquisition  by  one  nation  and  surrender  by 
another ;  or  involving  a  decision  which  a  nation  might  deem 
to  be  an  infringement  of  its  sovereign  powers  and  rights. 

The  third  source  of  weakness  lies  in  the  general  indif- 
ference of  democratic  countries  to  questions  of  foreign 
policy,  except  their  own,  and  then  only  in  times  of  excite- 
ment and  crisis.  The  League  of  Nations  was  brought  into 
being  at  a  time  when  the  wounds  of  war  were  bleeding,  and 
the  horror  of  it  was  vividly  impressed  upon  the  public  mind. 
But  that  impression  will  fade  in  time.  The  next  genera- 
tion, and  the  generation  after  that,  will  only  know  about 
the  great  war  from  what  it  reads  in  books,  as  people  before 
1914  knew  about  previous  wars.  Most  of  these  books  will 
dwell  upon  deeds  of  heroism,  will  extol  the  glory  of  sacri- 
fice, will  describe  the  great  battles  as  splendid  conflicts  of 


326     MEN  AND   THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

brave  men  moved  about  by  brilliant  generals,  whose  por- 
traits will  illustrate  the  pages,  showing  rows  of  stars  and 
medals  on  their  uniforms.  The  description  of  wars  and 
battles  has  always  been  a  special  form  of  mendacity.  No- 
body nourished  on  this  kind  of  fare  will  pay  much  regard 
to  the  sickening,  debasing  side  of  war.  Nations  will  tend 
to  shake  down  into  their  own  limits,  will  pursue  their  own 
policies,  and  their  people  will  not  trouble  very  much  about 
the  affairs  of  other  peoples.  The  great  lesson  that  modern 
war  touches  the  interests  of  the  whole  world  will  be  to  a 
large  extent  unlearnt. 

Will  the  League  of  Nations  count  for  very  much  then? 
Will  the  people  of  Tennessee  or  Minnesota  be  willing  that 
the  United  States  shall  assert  its  enormous  weight  and 
influence  to  prevent  a  war  about  the  Balkans  or  Central 
Asia?  Security,  and  the  sense  of  repose  which  security 
confers,  will  diminish  the  feeling  of  common  concern  for 
the  welfare  of  the  world.  The  United  States  has  always 
been  a  country  wherein  the  people  have  felt  their  remote- 
ness from  Europe  and  its  problems.  There  has  even  been 
a  strong  disposition  to  neglect  United  States  interests  when 
attention  to  them  might  entail  a  clashing  with  outside 
Powers.  When  President  Jefferson  proposed  to  buy 
Louisiana  from  France  in  1801,  representatives  of  the  New 
England  States  were  vehemently  opposed  to  the  policy. 
They  thought  that  the  thirteen  colonies  were  quite  sufficient 
in  themselves,  and  disliked  an  increase  of  territory.  When 
the  question  of  cutting  a  canal  through  Panama  was  mooted, 
and  it  was  seen  that  in  the  event  of  that  work  being  com- 
pleted the  Danish  islands  of  St.  Thomas,  St.  Crois  and  St. 
Jean  would  become  important,  it  was  proposed  to  buy  them 
from  Denmark.  They  could  have  been  purchased  in  1867 
for  $7,500,000.  But  the  Senate  rejected  the  proposition ;  and 
in  1916  the  United  States  had  to  pay  $25,000,000  for  them 
— the  canal  having  been  built,  and  there  being  now  a  danger 
that  if  America  did  not  buy  out  Denmark  some  other  Power 
might.  The  Senate  blocked  the  acquisition  of  Hawaii  for 
years,  and  not  until  the  islands  became  of  paramount  impor- 
tance as  a  station  on  the  highway  to  the  Philippines  was 
annexation  sanctioned.  People  immersed  in  local,  particu- 
larist  policies  do  not  take  long  views  of  things.  Party 
issues  and  the  needs  of  the  moment  restrict  the  vision. 

President  Wilson,  by  the  loftiness  of  his  motives,  and 


WOODROW  WILSON  327 

the  simple  directness,  the  chaste  diction  with  which  he 
enunciated  his  policies,  elevated  the  political  character  of 
his  country  as  no  previous  President  except  Washington 
had  ever  done.  He  taught  the  Americans  that,  though  they 
may  not  have  a  direct  interest  in  European  politics,  they 
are  "interested  in  the  partnership  of  right  between  America 
and  Europe."  He  tried  to  make  them  feel  their  part  in  that 
"keen  international  consciousness"  which  alone  can  make 
the  people  of  one  nation  aware  of  their  responsibility  for 
the  world  at  large.  The  keeping  alive  of  that  conscious- 
ness is  the  task  of  like-minded  men  in  later  generations. 
If  they  succeed  the  League  of  Nations  may  be  a  continu- 
ously operative  machinery  for  settling  the  world's  disputes. 
Success  without  American  co-operation  is  certainly  less 
easy  than  would  be  the  case  if  the  great  Republic  rose 
superior  to  partisan  bickerings  and  to  aloofness  from  the 
affairs  of  the  world  outside  its  borders.  But  the  alternative 
to  success  spells  menace  to  civilisation  at  large,  from  the 
ill  consequences  of  which  America  could  not  escape. 


A  large  number  of  books  on  various  aspects  of  the 
League  of  Nations  has  been  published.  Amongst  the  best 
are  H.  N.  Brailsford's  A  League  of  Nations,  a  general 
political  treatise;  L.  Oppenheim's  The  League  of  Nations 
and  Its  Problems,  an  international  lawyer's  treatment  of 
the  subject;  0.  F.  Maclagan's  The  Way  to  Victory;  Heber 
Hart's  The  Bulwarks  of  Peace;  Sir  George  Paish's  A  Per- 
manent League  of  Nations,  and  a  series  of  pamphlets  pub- 
lished by  the  Oxford  University  Press.  Several  books  have 
been  published  on  Woodrow  Wilson.  Probably  the  best  is 
H.  Wilson  Harris's  President  Wilson:  His  Problems  and  His 
Policy,  which  is  more  than  a  piece  of  ephemeral  eulogy. 


War  is  a  symptom  of  deep-seated  evils;  it  is  a  disease 
or  growth  out  of  social  and  political  conditions.  While 
those  conditions  remain  unaltered  it  is  vain  to  expect  any 
good  from  new  institutions  superimposed  on  those  condi- 
tions. If  the  League  of  Nations  merely  meant  some  new 
wheel  to  the  coach,  I  do  not  think  the  addition  worth  mak- 
ing, nor  do  I  think  the  vehicle  would  carry  us  any  further. 
— Jan  Smuts. 


328     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN  HISTORY 

No  nation  can  any  longer  remain  neutral  as  against  any 
wilful  disturbance  of  the  peace  of  the  world.  The  world 
is  no  longer  divided  into  little  circles  of  interest.  The 
world  no  longer  consists  of  neighbourhoods.  The  whole  Is 
linked  together  in  a  common  life  and  interest  such  as 
humanity  never  saw  before,  and  the  starting  of  war  can 
never  again  be  a  private  and  individual  matter  for  nations. 
— Woodrow  Wilson. 

Envisage  the  situation;  realise  the  changes  that  have 
been  made  by  the  war,  and  the  still  more  disastrous  changes 
which,  if  the  ambitions  of  competing  powers  are  to  con- 
tinue unchecked,  will  be  wrought  in  the  years  that  are 
before  us;  and  then  tell  me  if  you  can  suggest  a  method 
not  only  finer  in  its  conception  from  the  point  of  view  of 
idealism  and  of  abstract  justice,  but  more  practicable,  more 
serviceable,  more  likely  to  attain  its  purpose  of  securing 
the  permanent  peace  of  the  world  than  the  idea  of  a  League 
of  Nations. — H.  H.  Asquith. 

For  the  preservation  of  peace  all  devices,  such  as  inter- 
national conferences,  arbitration,  mediation  and  good 
offices,  are  or  may  be  useful,  according  to  the  circumstances 
of  the  case ;  but  back  of  all  this  we  must  in  the  last  analysis 
rely  upon  the  cultivation  of  a  mental  attitude  which  will 
lead  men  to  think  first  of  amicable  processes  rather  than 
of  war  when  differences  arise. — John  Bassett  Moore. 

'  The  international  mind  is  nothing  else  than  that  habit 
of  thinking  of  foreign  relations  and  business,  and  that  habit 
of  dealing  with  them,  which  regard  the  several  nations  of 
the  civilised  world  as  friendly  and  co-operating  equals  in 
aiding  the  progress  of  civilisation,  in  developing  commerce 
and  industry,  and  in  spreading  enlightenment  and  culture 
throughout  the  world. — Nicholas  Murray  Butler. 

A  day  will  come  when  your  arms  will  fall  from  your 
hands.  A  day  will  come  when  war  will  appear  as  absurd, 
and  will  be  as  impossible,  between  Paris  and  London, 
between  Petersburg  and  Berlin,  between  Vienna  and  Turin, 
as  it  would  be  absurd  and  impossible  to-day  between  Rouen 
and  Amiens,  between  Boston  and  Philadelphia.  A  day  will 
come  when  you  France,  you  Russia,  you  Italy,  you  England, 
you  Germany,  all  you  nations  of  the  continent,  without 
losing  your  distinct  qualities  and  your  glorious  individu- 
ality, will  sink  yourselves  in  a  superior  unity,  and  will  con- 
stitute a  European  fraternity,  absolutely  as  Normandy, 


WOODROW  WILSON  329 

Brittany,  Burgundy,  Maine,  Alsace,  all  our  provinces,  are 
sunk  in  France.  A  day  will  come  when  bullets  and  bombs 
will  be  replaced  by  votes,  by  the  universal  suffrage  of  the 
people,  by  the  venerable  arbitrament  of  a  grand  sovereign 
senate  which  will  be  to  Europe  what  Parliament  is  to  Eng- 
land, what  the  Diet  is  to  Germany,  and  what  the  Legislative 
Assembly  is  in  France. — Victor  Hugo  (1849). 

If  the  sovereign  princes  of  Europe  would,  for  the  same 
reason  that  engaged  men  first  into  society,  viz.,  love  of 
peace  and  order,  agree  to  meet  by  their  stated  deputies  in 
a  general  diet,  estates  or  parliament,  and  there  establish 
rules  of  justice  for  sovereign  princes  to  observe  one  to 
another;  and  thus  to  meet  yearly,  or  once  in  two  or  three 
years  at  farthest,  or  as  they  shall  see  cause,  and  to  be  styled 
the  Sovereign  or  Imperial  Diet,  Parliament  or  State  of 
Europe,  before  which  sovereign  assembly  should  be  brought 
all  differences  depending  between  one  sovereign  and  another 
that  cannot  be  made  up  by  private  embassies  before  the 
sessions  begin;  and  that  if  any  of  the  sovereignties  that 
constitute  these  imperial  states  shall  refuse  to  .submit  their 
claim  or  pretentions  to  them,  or  to  abide  and  perform 
the  judgment  thereof,  and  seek  their  remedy  by  arms,  or 
delay  the  compliance  beyond  the  time  prefixed  in  their  reso- 
lutions, all  the  other  sovereignties  shall  compel  the  submis- 
sion and  performance  of  the  sentence,  with  damages  to  the 
suffering  party,  and  charges  to  the  sovereignties  that 
obliged  their  submission.  To  be  sure,  Europe  would  quietly 
obtain  the  so  much  desired  and  needed  peace  to  her  harassed 
inhabitants;  no  sovereignty  in  Europe  having  the  power 
and  therefore  cannot  show  the  will  to  dispute  the  conclu- 
sion; and  consequently  peace  would  be  procured  and  con- 
tinued in  Europe. — William  Penn  (1693). 

A  League  of  Europe  is  not  Utopian.  It  is  sound  busi- 
ness.— G.  Lowes  Dickenson. 

The  great,  the  supreme  task  of  human  politics  and  states- 
manship is  to  extend  the  sphere  of  law.  Let  others  labour 
to  make  men  cultured  or  virtuous  or  happy.  These  are  the 
tasks  of  the  teacher,  the  priest  and  the  common  man.  The 
statesman's  task  is  simpler.  It  is  to  enfold  them  in  a  juris- 
diction which  will  enable  them  to  live  the  life  of  their 
soul's  choice. — A.  E.  Zimmern. 

The  League  of  Nations,  if  it  is  to  succeed,  must  be  based 
upon  a  common  will  to  maintain  the  peace,  and  a  common 


330     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

readiness  to  repress  the  ambitions  of  those  who  seek  to 
break  it.  No  League  has  yet  succeeded  because  men  have 
hitherto  built  their  states  and  churches  on  their  differences 
from  other  men;  and  he  who  would  found  a  League  of 
Nations  must  base  it  on  their  common  interest  in  peace. 
Instead  of  a  balance,  we  need  a  community  of  power,  with 
no  immunity  for  any  one  from  its  obligations  and  its  respon- 
sibilities.— A.  F.  Pollard. 

The  project  of  a  League  of  Nations  is  the  keystone  of 
the  new  social  order  that  Labour  desires  to  build. — Arthur 
Henderson. 

The  obligation  is  that  if  any  nation  will  not  observe  this 
limitation  upon  its  national  action;  if  it  breaks  the  agree- 
ment which  is  the  basis  of  the  League,  rejects  all  peaceful 
methods  of  settlement  and  resorts  to  force,  the  other  nations 
must  one  and  all  use  their  combined  force  against  it.  The 
economic  pressure  that  such  a  League  could  use  would  in 
itself  be  very  powerful,  and  the  action  of  some  of  the 
smaller  states  composing  the  League  could  perhaps  not  go 
beyond  economic  pressure,  but  those  states  that  have  power 
must  be  ready  to  use  all  the  force,  economic,  military  or 
naval,  that  they  possess. — Lord.  Grey  of  Falloden. 


H.  G.  WELLS. 


[Page  332 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 


H.    G  .  WELLS    AND    FUTURISM. 

MRS.  HUMPHREY  WARD  has  ventured  the  opinion 
that  the.  most  popular  and  prolific  English  author 
of  our  time  will  be  forgotten  in  a  generation  or  so. 
Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  she  is  confident,  "has  not  a  par- 
ticle of  charm,"  and  charm  is  the  one  preservative  of  works 
of  literature.    Critical  writers  are  rather  fond  of  proclaim- 
ing what  posterity  will  read  and  what  it  will  neglect.    They 
sentence  their  contemporaries  to  eternal  oblivion  with  the 
recklessness  of  revivalist  preachers  predicting  damnation 
for  sinners ;  or  they  foretell  with  equal  assurance  that  other 
authors,  whom  they  like,  will  be  the  favourite  reading  of 
ages  unborn. 

Posterity  may  well  be  left  to  pick  and  choose  for  itself; 
and  it  will  think  itself  quite  capable  of  doing  so,  without 
our  aid.  But  if  this  page  should,  through  some  freak  of 
chance,  meet  the  eye  of  a  reader  in  a  time  when  "the  Rud- 
yards  cease  from  kippling  and  the  Haggards  ride  no 
more/'  he  may  be  respectfully  advised  to  pay  no  heed  to 
Mrs.  Humphrey  Ward,  but  to  make  haste  to  come  at  a  few 
brilliant  short  stories  by  Mr.  Wells,  like  "^Epornis  Island" 
and  "The  Kingdom  of  the  Blind,"  and  at  his  longer  novel, 
Kipps.  If  in  the  meantime  anything  better  of  their  kind 
has  been  done,  there  will  have  been  nothing  seriously  wrong 
with  English  imaginative  literature. 

Another  reason  why  it  will  be  a  pity  if  coming  genera- 
tions do  not  read  Mr.  Wells  is  that  they  will  by  their  neglect 
be  deprived  of  an  opportunity  of  comparing  what  the  world 
is  like  with  what  this  specialist  in  Futurity  said  it  would 
be.  It  should  be  interesting  to  note  how  near  he  came  to 
the  mark  and  how  far  astray  he  went.  For  Mr.  Wells 
prides  himself  on  his  gift  of  prediction  and  his  deep  con- 
cern for  what  mankind  will  be  likely  to  make  of  this  planet, 
which  as  a  business  affair  has  been  hitherto  so  sadly  mis- 

333 


334     MEN  AND   THOUGHT   IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

managed.  In  a  piece  of  confession  he  has  acknowledged: 
"Personally,  I  have  no  use  at  all  for  life  as  it  is,  except  as 
raw  material.  It  bores  me  to  look  at  things  unless  there 
is  also  the  idea  of  doing  something  with  them.  I  should 
find  a  holiday  doing  nothing  amidst  beautiful  scenery  not 
a  holiday  but  a  torture.  The  contemplative  ecstasy  of  the 
saints  would  be  a  hell  to  me.  In  the — I  forget  exactly  how 
many — books  I  have  written,  it  is  always  about  life  being 
altered  that  I  write,  or  about  people  developing  schemes  for 
altering  life."  In  other  words,  Mr.  Wells  is  chiefly 
interested  in  the  ferment  of  things,  and  in  the  nature  of 
the  brew  which  will  come  from  it. 

It  was  probably  from  a  recognition  of  Mr.  Wells's  ver- 
satile ingenuity  that  the  authorities  in  England  during  the 
great  war  appointed  him  on  a  committee  to  advise  upon 
inventions.  Whether  the  committee  did  anything  valuable 
is  not  known,  but  some  time  after  this  Mr.  Wells  brought 
forth  a  new  work  on  theology. 

We  have  to  do  here  with  the  books  wherein  Mr.  Wells 
has  endeavoured  to  cast  the  horoscope  of  human  society. 
There  are  four  of  them — Mankind  in  the  Making,  New 
Worlds  for  Old,  Anticipations,  and  A  Modern  Utopia.  The 
two  first-named  works  are  serious  discussions  of  social  and 
economic  problems  from  a  point  of  view  which  is  Socialistic 
whilst  expressly  disavowing  the  Marxian  analysis ;  the  third 
consists  of  reasoned  studies  wherein  attempts  are  made  to 
forecast  "the  way  things  will  probably  go  in  this  new  cen- 
tury." The  fourth— "the  last  book  of  the  kind  I  shall  ever 
publish"  Mr.  Wells  threatens — is  a  romance  which  essays 
to  picture  life  in  the  world  as  it  will  be  when  everything 
is  as  it  should  be,  or  nearly  so. 

In  a  more  recent  work  the  author  has  complained  that 
A  Modern  Utopia  "has  not  been  so  widely  read  as  I  could 
have  wished."  The  reason  for  that  is  that  it  is  not  nearly 
so  attractive  a  book  as,  in  view  of  the  pains  evidently  taken 
in  writing  it,  Mr.  Wells  intended  it  to  be.  It  is  clumsily 
constructed,  there  is  no  vital  character  in  it,  and  the  life 
represented  is  not  so  alluring  as  an  Utopian  life  might  be 
expected  to  be.  The  narrative  unfolded  suggests  the  adven- 
tures of  a  moody  young  man  on  a  holiday  jaunt,  in  com- 
pany with  an  absurd  botanist  who  has  nothing  to  do  with 
whatever  story  there  is,  and  who  is  always  in  the  way. 
There  are  plenty  of  ideas  in  the  book,  plenty  of  vigorous 


H.    G.   WELLS  335 

criticism  of  the  world's  affairs,  but  it  is  an  unenticing 
Utopia  that  is  represented — a  place  to  which  one  would 
not  care  much  to  go  without  a  return  ticket  and  a  time- 
table. 

When  a  writer  sets  out  to  construct  an  imaginary  world 
of  the  future,  he  does  so  not  only  because  he  is  displeased 
with  the  actual  world  which  he  knows,  but  also  because  he 
is  dissatisfied  with  the  Utopias  of  other  writers.  There  is 
a  small  library  of  such  books ;  Plato's  Republic  is  the  first ; 
Sir  Thomas  More's  Utopia  is  a  noble  example;  and  among 
modern  attempts  the  News  from  Nowhere  of  William  Mor- 
ris, the  Traveller  from  Altruria  of  Mr.  W.  D.  Howells,  and 
The  Crystal  Age  of  Mr.  W.  H.  Hudson  are  notable.  But 
no  Utopist  is  content  with  the  efforts  of  his  fellow-dreamers. 
Mr.  Wells  doubts  "if  anyone  has  ever  been  warmed  to  desire 
himself  a  citizen  in  the  Republic  of  Plato;  I  doubt  if  any- 
one could  stand  a  month  of  the  relentless  publicity  of  virtue 
planned  by  More."  It  is  significant  of  the  same  disparag- 
ing disposition  that  when  William  Morris  struggled  through 
that  arid  romance,  Looking  Backward,  he  wrote  to  a  friend : 
"I  suppose  you  have  seen  or  read,  or  at  least  tried  to  read, 
Looking  Backward.  I  had  to  on  Saturday,  having  promised 
to  lecture  on  it.  Thank  you,  I  wouldn't  care  to  live  in  such 
a  Cockney  paradise  as  he  imagines."  Morris  so  far  ab- 
horred the  life  there  described  that  he  declared  that  if  he 
had  to  be  brigaded  like  that  he  would  "just  lie  on  his  back 
and  kick."  Can  we  not  suppose  a  few  more  terraces  added 
to  Dante's  Purgatorio,  consisting  of  Utopias  to  which 
imaginers  of  such  places  are  condemned  so  that  they  may 
expiate  their  mortal  sins  in  one  another's  fancied  elysiums? 
For  if  Looking  Backward  was  a  mere  Cockney  paradise  to 
Morris,  and  More's  Utopia  is  an  intolerable  conception  to 
Mr.  Wells,  might  not  News  from  Nowhere  have  been  a  piece 
of  faddy  foolery  to  the  American  mind  of  Edward  Bellamy, 
and  might  not  Mr.  Wells's  dream-world  simply  bore  others  ? 

Certainly  there  is  a  wealth  of  Utopias  from  which  we 
may  choose;  or  we  may  reject  the  whole  of  them  in  the 
spirit  of  the  poet  who  wrote  of  heaven: 

"Your  chilly  stars  I  can  forego, 
This  warm,  kind  world  is  all  I  know. " 

It  would  seem  that  the  only  perfectly  satisfactory  Utopia  is 
one  which  a  man  makes  for  himself,  unless  it  appear  better 


336     MEN   AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

to  get  along  without  one — which  may  be  the  wiser  course. 

Two  things  may  be  observed  about  Mr.  Wells's  ideas 
which  distinguish  him  from  the  fraternity  of  social  Futur- 
ists. The  first  relates  to  his  method;  the  second  to  his 
psychological  insight. 

In  Anticipations  Mr.  Wells  essayed  to  foretell  the  prob- 
able social  developments  of  the  twentieth  century.  Being 
a  man  of  trained  scientific  mind  as  well  as  one  gifted  with 
imagination,  he  did  not  sit  down  and  guess  at  random.  He 
studied  lines  of  tendency  and  followed  them  out.  That  was 
his  method.  He  saw  the  minds  of  men — inventors,  sociolo- 
gists, reformers,  teachers — working  along  certain  tracks,  in 
certain  directions.  Just  as  the  meterologist  studies  the  data 
relating  to  wind  pressure,  barometrical  and  thermometrical 
readings,  rainfall,  and  so  forth,  and  deduces  from  them  the 
probabilities  concerning  the  weather  at  stated  places  within 
certain  times,  so  Mr.  Wells  took  the  data  available  to  him 
in  a  much  larger  and  more  complex  field  of  observation,  and 
deduced  the  probabilities  which  he  called  Anticipations.  It 
was  not  speculating  at  large;  it  was  reasoning,  aided  by 
imagination,  from  current  facts,  along  paths  the  direction 
of  which  was  inferred  from,  as  it  were,  the  lay  of  the  land- 
scape. 

In  some  cases  actuality  has  outstripped  speculation.  The 
great  war  accelerated  invention.  It  perfected  the  submarine 
and  made  flying  quite  an  ordinary  everyday  occurrence. 
Mr.  Wells  was  nearly  correct  in  his  prediction  that  in  the 
next  great  war — he  wrote  this  in  1899 — "great  multitudes 
of  balloons  will  be  the  Argus  eyes  of  the  entire  military 
organism,  stalked  eyes  with  a  telephonic  nerve  in  each  stalk, 
and  at  night  they  will  sweep  the  country  with  searchlights 
and  come  soaring  before  the  wind  with  hanging  fires."  But 
he  was  too  slow  and  cautious  in  his  conception  that  "long 
before  the  year  A.D.  2000,  and  very  probably  before  1950, 
a  successful  new  plane  will  have  soared  and  come  home  safe 
and  sound."  In  an  early  story,  "A  Dream  of  Armageddon," 
he  had  pictured  the  horror  of  an  air-raid  with  some  pre- 
science. 

Occasionally  he  came  wonderfully  close  to  actuality  in 
a  piece  of  prophecy  which  must  have  appeared  audacious 
to  the  point  of  improbability  at  the  time,  but  which  seems 
credible  enough  now.  Thus,  in  his  chapter  on  "Locomotion 
in  the  Twentieth  Century,"  he  pointed  out  that  railway 


H.   G.   WELLS  337 

trains  are  but  make-shift  expedients.  We  take  railways 
for  granted.  We  were  "born  in  a  railway  age  and  expect 
to  die  in  one."  But  are  they  part  of  the  eternal  scheme 
of  things?  By  no  means,  Mr.  Wells  was  confident  when 
he  wrote  that  chapter  twenty  years  ago.  The  railway 
track  for  heavy  traffic  will  probably  be  retained,  but  for 
all  except  the  longest  journeys  "there  will  develop  the  hired 
or  privately  owned  motor  carriage."  It  is  fascinating  to 
compare  this  forecast  with  the  reasoning  of  a  scientific 
authority  on  "Transport  Reconstruction/'  Mr.  W.  M. 
Acworth,  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  for  January,  1919.  Mr. 
Acworth  shows  that  where  heavy  bulk  traffic  has  to  be 
dealt  with,  the  advantage  of  the  railway  is  unquestionable, 
"But  for  passenger  and  parcel  traffic,  for  miscellaneous 
merchandise,  even  for  agricultural  requirements  in  normal 
English  quantities,  it  is  possible  that  road  transport  will 
be  found  to  be  cheaper,  and  it  is  quite  certain  that  it  will 
be  more  convenient."  Mr.  Acworth  works  out  in  detail 
the  capital  cost  of  a  motor  service  in  comparison  with  a 
railway,  and  presents  a  convincing  case.  In  short,  what 
Mr.  Wells  was  predicting  twenty  years  ago  the  expert  in 
1919  shows  to  be  within  sight  of  realisation. 

Being  a  prophet  is  not  all  plain  sailing,  and  Mr.  Wells 
does  not  always  convince.  There  is  much  that  does  not 
promise  to  come  true.  But,  on  the  whole,  Anticipations 
is  not  only  a  virile  book  but  a  piece  of  reasoning  which 
speaks  on  every  page  of  an  imaginative  intelligence  of  a 
high  order.  It  must  be  understood  that  more  brain  stuff 
has  gone  to  the  making  of  this  work  than  of  such  romances 
as  Lytton's  Coming  Race,  the  fanciful  stories  of  Jules 
Verne,  and  other  futurist  tales,  even  his  own.  It  is  to  be 
taken  as  a  series  of  deductions  .seriously  designed  to  pene- 
trate the  coming  time  along  lines  of  greatest  probability. 

The  second  distinguishing  feature  of  Mr.  Wells'  Utopian 
creations  is,  as  already  said,  his  psychological  acuteness. 
Other  writers  of  Futurist  romances  contemplate  the 
achievement  of  some  sort  of  paradise  where  everything  is 
to  be  so  perfect  and  everybody  so  happy  that  no  more 
change  will  be  desired.  Humanity  is  to  attain  its  final 
state.  There  is  to  be  a  basking  world.  The  wicked  are 
to  cease  from  troubling  and  the  weary  are  to  be  non-exis- 
tent. Edward  Bellamy  wrote  Looking  Backward,  as  he 
tells  us,  "in  the  belief  that  the  Golden  Age  lies  before  us 


338     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

and  is  not  far  away."  Morris  held  that  "there  is  a  time 
of  rest  in  store  for  the  world  when  mastery  has  changed 
into  fellowship."  Donnelly's  The  Golden  Bottle  pictured 
conditions  wherein  "universal  opportunity  and  exact  justice 
bred  universal  peace  and  prosperity."  In  such  Utopias 
there  is  an  eternal  monotony  of  unaltering  as-it-ought-to- 
be-ness. 

But  Mr.  Wells  is  much  too  keen  a  student  of  human 
nature  and  of  sociology  to  make  such  a  mistake.  He  does 
not  anticipate  that  there  will  ever  be  a  condition  of  society 
which  will  be  permanently  satisfactory  to  its  members. 
"The  Modern  Utopia,"  he  insists,  "must  be  not  static  but 
kinetic,  must  shape  not  as  a  permanent  state  but  as  a  hope- 
ful stage,  leading  to  a  long  ascent  of  stages."  And  again 
he  says :  "The  state  is  to  be  progressive ;  it  is  no  longer  to 
be  static;  and  this  alters  the  general  conditions  of  the 
Utopian  problem  profoundly."  The  utmost  that  he  pro- 
mises, therefore,  is  something  better,  perhaps  very  much 
better,  than  the  present ;  but  not  a  best,  nor  even  some- 
thing so  good  that  nobody  will  wish  to  improve  it.  "It  is 
not  to  be  a  unanimous  world ;  it  is  to  have  all  and  more  of 
the  mental  contrariety  we  find  in  the  world  of  the  real." 

But,  if  that  be  so,  a  Golden  Age  of  the  future  is  as  much 
a  delusion  as  a  Golden  Age  of  the  past  is  a  myth,  and  we 
may  as  well  settle  down  to  making  the  best  of  things.  Mr. 
Wells  will  not  pin  his  faith  to  any  idea  of  human  equality, 
or  of  perfect  human  nature.  In  an  extremely  interesting 
chapter  he  deals  with  "Failure  in  a  Modern  Utopia."  "Most 
Utopias,"  he  observes,  "present  themselves  as  going  con- 
cerns, as  happiness  in  being ;  they  make  it  an  essential  con- 
dition that  a  happy  land  can  have  no  history,  and  all  the 
citizens  one  is  permitted  to  see  are  well-looking  and  up- 
right and  mentally  and  morally  in  tune.  But  we  are  under 
the  dominion  of  a  logic  that  obliges  us  to  take  over  the 
actual  population  of  the  world  with  only  such  moral  and 
mental  and  physical  improvements  as  lie  within  their 
inherent  possibilities,  and  it  is  our  business  to  ask  what 
Utopia  will  do  with  its  congenital  invalids,  its  idiots  and 
madmen,  its  drunkards  arid  men  of  vicious  mind,  its  cruel 
and  furtive  souls,  its  stupid  people,  too  stupid  to  be  of  use 
to  the  community,  its  lumpish,  unteachable  and  unimagina- 
tive people?  And  what  will  it  do  with  the  man  who  is 
'poor'  all  round,  the  rather  spiritless,  rather  incompetent 


H.    G.    WELLS  339 

low-grade  man,  who  on  earth  sits  in  the  den  of  the  sweater, 
tramps  the  streets  under  the  banner  of  the  unemployed,  or 
trembles — in  another  man's  cast-off  clothing,  and  with  an 
infinity  of  hat-touching — on  the  verge  of  rural  employ- 
ment? These  people  will  have  to  be  in  the  descendant 
phase,  the  species  must  be  engaged  in  eliminating  them; 
there  is  no  escape  from  that;  and  conversely  the  people  of 
exceptional  quality  must  be  in  the  ascendant.  The  better 
sort  of  people,  so  far  as  they  can  be  distinguished,  must 
have  the  fullest  freedom  of  public  service,  and  the  fullest 
opportunity  of  parentage.  And  it  must  be  open  to  every 
man  to  approve  himself  worthy  -of  ascendancy." 

He  propounds  a  plan  for  using  islands  "lying  apart 
from  the  highways  of  the  sea,"  to  which  the  Utopian  state 
will  .send  its  exiles.  It  will  segregate  its  failures — the 
drunkards,  the  incompetent,  the  lazy,  the  chronically  vio- 
lent, the  people  unfit  to  live  in  a  well-organised  society. 
"Your  ways  are  not  our  ways,"  the  World-State  will  say, 
"but  here  is  freedom  and  a  company  of  kindred  souls. 
Elect  your  jolly  rulers;  brew  if  you  will,  and  distil:  here 
are  vine  cuttings  and  barley  fields;  do  as  it  pleases  you  to 
do.  We  will  take  care  of  the  knives;  but  for  the  rest — 
deal  yourselves  with  God!" 

The  question  arises  whether  an  Utopian  society  which 
developed  the  habit  of  thus  banishing  its  undesirables  would 
stop  at  drunkards  and  such  like.  There  are  grades  of 
undesirableness.  To  a  party  in  power,  inconvenient  agita- 
tors and  rebels  are  undesirables.  Cromwell  used  to  ship 
rebels  to  Barbadoes,  and  a  verb  was  coined  out  of  the  name 
of  the  islands  to  suit  his  process.  "He  dislikes  shedding 
blood,"  says  Carlyle,  "but  is  very  apt  'to  barbadoes'  an 
unruly  man — has  sent  and  sends  us  by  hundreds  to  Barba- 
does, so  that  we  have  made  an  active  verb  of  it,  'barbadoes 
you/  "*  Perhaps  Mr.  Wells  would  not  concede  the  prob- 
ability of  such  a  contingency,  but  human  nature  in  his 
Utopia  is  so  much  like  human  nature  in  the  world  known 
to  us  that  we  feel  that  anything  might  happen.  Observing 
his  occasional  discriminating  references  to  the  qualities  of 
wine  and  beer,  we  may  even  wonder  what  a  "dry"  Utopia 
might  do  even  to  so  moderate  a  man  as  Mr.  Wells. 

By  his  method  of  pursuing  lines  of  tendency,  and  by  his 

l  Carlyle,  "Oliver  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches, "  Vol.  IV.,  p.  114. 


340     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN   MODERN  HISTORY 

recognition  of  constant  factors,  this  writer  has  made  his 
anticipations  and  his  Utopian  pictures  less  incredible  than 
any  of  the  other  Futurists  have  done.  He  allows  for  the 
fact  that  "man  will  remain  a  competitive  creature/'  and 
has  too  keen  an  appreciation  of  the  value  of  the  exceptional 
man,  to  desire  to  keep  him  subordinate  to  the  inferior.  The 
man  of  energy  and  ability,  the.  leader  and  director,  the 
manager  and  organiser,  will  not  be  discouraged  in  Utopia ; 
otherwise  it  will  be  a  stupid  failure.  Nor  has  he  any 
belief  in  the  possibility  of  building  up  isolated  communi- 
ties, perfect  in  plan,  set  in  a  world  which  continues  to 
muddle  along  on  old  lines.  "No  less  than  a  planet  will  serve 
the  purposes  of  a  modern  Utopia."  That  means  that  the 
Negro  and  the  Hottentot,  the  Moor  and  the  Bedouin,  the 
Turk  and  the  Afghan,  the  Laplander  and  the  Redskin,  the 
Kanaka  and  the  Dyak,  the  Kafir  and  the  Pariah  are 
to  be  on  a  level  with  the  European  and  the  American. 
There  must  be  a  world-state  if  there  is  to  be  any  Utopia 
whatever.  There  cannot  be  a  walled  paradise  for  an  elite 
of  mankind.  "We  are  acutely  aware  nowadays,"  he  says, 
"that  however  subtly  contrived  a  state  may  be,  outside 
your  boundary-lines  the  epidemic,  the  breeding  barbarian, 
or  the  economic  power  will  gather  its  strength  to  overcome 
you."  The  previous  Utopists  whose  romances  have  been 
so  popular  never  perceived  that.  They  painted  their  pic- 
tures within  the  frame,  and  allowed  for  no  landscape  out- 
side it. 

The  study  of  a  number  of  Utopian  romances  does  not 
give  one  such  a  discouraging  idea  of  the  prospects  in  store 
for  humanity  as  might  be  expected  from  the  hopeless  dis- 
parity between  the  life  which  they  represent  and  the  life 
which  is  likely  to  be  lived,  or  which  any  considerable  body 
of  people  seriously  want  to  live.  The  least  discouraging 
of  all  is  the  attempt  of  Mr.  Wells,  because  he  is  the  least 
out  of  touch  with  realities  and  the  most  careful  in  his  esti- 
mate of  probabilities.  Those  qualities  make  his  work  in 
this  vein  less  pleasant  as  fiction,  perhaps,  than  it  would 
have  been  if  he  had  "let  himself  go,"  and  had  built  his 
Utopia  entirely  of  dream  stuff. 

But  there  are  still  fundamental  factors  which  he  does 
not  face.  He  holds  that  "the  resources  of  the  world  and 
the  energy  of  mankind,  were  they  organised  sanely,  are 
amply  sufficient  to  supply  every  material  need  of  every 


H.   G.   WELLS  341 

human  being."  It  all  depends  upon  what  the  standard  of 
life  of  every  living  human  being  may  be.  If  there  is  to 
be  a  world  state,  as  pictured,  and  if  the  standard  of  living 
for  every  Chinese  peasant,  and  every  Indian  ryot,  and  every 
negro  in  Africa  is  to  be  the  same  as  that  of,  say,  an  average 
English,  American  or  Australian  middle  class  person,  then 
the  statement  is  probably  not  true.  If  all  the  citizens  of 
the  contemplated  world-state  are  to  live  up  to  the  same 
standard — "and  why  not?"  they  will  ask — then  it  is  exceed- 
ingly doubtful  whether  the  resources  of  the  world  can  by 
any  organisation  whatever  be  made  to  "supply  every  mate- 
rial need."  They  can  do  so  if  the  needs  of  hundreds  of 
millions  are  kept  very  low  indeed,  and  if  those  millions 
do  not  increase  with  such  enormous  rapidity  as  to  be  con- 
tinually overtaking  the  means  of  feeding  them.  But  if 
every  Asiatic  and  every  African  demands  to  breed  as  at 
present  and  to  live  on  the  same  level  as,  say,  a  Newcastle 
engineer,  it  cannot  be  done. 

But  the  discontents  of  civilised  communities  do  not  usually 
arise  from  an  insufficiency  of  supplies.  There  is  social 
unrest  in  countries  like  Canada,  Australia  and  the  United 
States,  among  people  who  experience  no  serious  difficulty 
in  obtaining,  by  the  exercise  of  reasonable  industry,  satis- 
faction for  material  needs.  The  great  troubles  which  beset 
the  more  highly  organised  countries  do  not  relate  to  the 
problems  of  sufficiency.  They  relate  to  the  demand  for 
further  elevation  of  the  living  standard  of  persons  who  are 
already  fairly  comfortable  in  respect  to  material  needs ; 
they  relate  also  to  the  possession  and  enjoyment  of  the 
things  which  cannot  in  any  circumstances  be  obtained  in 
sufficient  quantities  to  supply  everybody.  Envy,  it  must 
be  remembered,  is  one  of  the  constant  forces  in  politics. 
"Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbour's  goods"  was  placed 
in  the  legal  code  of  Moses,  alongside  the  serious  crimes, 
murder  and  theft,  because  it  was  recognised  that  envy  is 
a  fundamental  passion  of  human  nature  fraught  with  serious 
consequences.  There  necessarily  have  to  be  valuable  and 
desirable  things  possessed  by  the  few,  because  there  are  not 
enough  of  them  for  the  many.  For  example,  every  violinist 
would  like  to  have  a  Stradivarius  fiddle,  but  Stradivarius 
made  only  about  eleven  hundred  stringed  instruments  of 
all  kinds  of  which  not  more  than  five  hundred  and  forty 
violins  are  known  to  exist.  These  must  therefore  neces- 


342     MEN  AND  THOUGHT   IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

sarily  be  the  possessions  of  a  fortunate  few.  Probably, 
every  normal  woman  would  like  to  have  a  pearl  necklace; 
but  there  are  not  enough  to  go  round.  So  it  is  in  many 
other  respects.  The  cream  of  life  is  not  so  plentiful  as  the 
milk.  There  is  no  remedy  for  this;  no  Utopia  can  supply 
what  does  not  exist,  and  the  many  will  continue  passion- 
ately to  want  what  in  the  nature  of  things  only  the  few 
can  obtain. 

Another  disconcerting  consideration  for  makers  of 
Utopias  is  that  there  will  always  be  grades  in  society,  and 
must  be.  Nothing  is  more  untrue  to  fact  than  the  state- 
ment that  democracy  levels  down,  or  up.  It  does  not  and 
cannot.  Democracy  is  purely  a  political  expedient  for 
governing,  and  cannot  eliminate  either  radical  differences, 
or  the  tendency  of  human  beings  to  group  themselves.  It  has 
no  more  effect  upon  the  voluntary  groupings  which  are 
formed  in  democratic,  as  in  all  other,  countries  than  upon 
the  stars  in  the  milky  way.  There  is  just  as  much  of  what 
is  called  snobbery  in  democratic  communities  as  in  others, 
and  it  takes  on  quite  as  offensive  forms  as  any  that  Thac- 
keray satirised.  It  would  exist  in  any  Utopia'  which  could 
be  formed ;  and  if  the  Utopian  romancers  have  not  allowed 
for  it,  that  is  only  because  they  have  shut  their  eyes  upon 
obvious  and  persistent  facts.  It  is  a  phenomenon  of  that 
law  of  segregation  which  Herbert  Spencer  so  luminously 
expounds  in  the  twenty-first  chapter  of  Part  II.  of  First 
Principles.  Star  dust  in  space  and  the  sands  of  the  sea- 
shore are  alike  affected  by  the  same  process  of  segregation 
as  affects  people.  "From  each  mass  of  fallen  cliff  the  tide 
carries  away  all  those  particles  which  are  so  small  as  to 
remain  long  suspended  in  the  water;  and,  at  some  distance 
from  shore,  deposits  them  in  the  shape  of  fine  sediment. 
Large  particles,  .sinking  with  comparative  rapidity,  are 
accumulated  into  beds  of  sand  near  low  water  mark.  The 
small  pebbles  collect  together  at  the  bottom  of  the  incline 
up  which  the  breakers  rush ;  and  on  the  top  lie  the  larger 
stones  and  boulders."  People  group  themselves  just  as  the 
sands  and  pebbles  do.  Attractions  and  repulsions  operate 
among  them.  A  sporting  man  who  found  himself  among  a 
group  of  classical  scholars  arguing  about  a  point  of  con- 
struction in  ^Eschylus  would  very  soon  say  to  himself  that 
"these  are  not  my  sort  of  pebbles,"  or  words  to  that  effect ; 
and  a  philosopher  suddenly  dropped  into  a  company  of 


H.   G.   WELLS  343 

jazzing  suburban  featherbrains  would  wish  himself  among 
sand-grains  of  like  specific  gravity  with  himself. 

The  great  popularity  of  Utopian  romances  especially 
among  the  working  classes  is  largely  due  to  the  decline  of 
religious  faith.  There  has  been  a  transference  of  belief 
in  a  heaven  to  be  attained  at  the  end  of  mortal  life,  to  belief 
in  the  possibility  of  establishing  a  heaven  on  earth  by  a 
drastic  change  in  the  constitution  of  the  society.  A  learned 
French  historian  has  asked  the  question  why  England,  of 
all  European  countries,  has  been  the  most  exeimpt  from 
violent  crises  and  brusque  changes;  and  he  answers  it  by 
pointing  to  the  great  influence  which  the  Nonconformists 
churches,  and  especially  the  Methodists,  exercised  over  the 
minds  of  the  English  working  and  middle  classes  early  in 
the  nineteenth  century.1  That  influence  is  still  strong  in 
English-speaking  countries;  but  there  are  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  people  who  are  not  touched  by  it  in  any 
measure,  but  whose  nature  nevertheless  impels  them  to 
have  faith  in  some  kind  of  blissful  state  to  be  realised  for 
the  good  of  mankind.  The  heaven  of  popular  theology,  with 
its  crude  and  banal  beatitude,  has  given  place,  among  these, 
to  faith  in  the  possibility  of  establishing  some  such  social 
condition  as  pictured  in  Looking  Backward,  Csesar's 
Column,  News  from  Nowhere,  or,  if  they  are  of  a  more 
critical  turn  of  mind,  A  Modern  Utopia.  It  may  be  a  vain 
hope,  but  it  is  a  real  one,  widely  prevalent.  For  "we  are 
such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on,  and  our  little  life  is 
rounded  with  a  sleep." 


In  addition  to  the  books  by  Mr.  Wells,  mentioned  above, 
the  following  works  bearing  upon  the  subject  may  be  men- 
tioned:— Ideal  Commonwealths,  edited  by  Henry  Morley, 
contains  the  texts  of  Plutarch's  Lycurgus,  More's  Utopia, 
Bacon's  New  Atlantis,  Campanella's  City  of  the  Sun,  and 
a  fragment  of  Hall's  Mundus  Alter  et  Idem.  Morris's  News 
from  Nowhere  is  a  very  delightful  book,  which  exists  in 
several  editions.  His  Dream  of  John  Ball  is  a  fancy  of  the 
same  visionary  kind,  though  not  strictly  Utopian  in  char- 
acter. Neither  is  Butler's  Erewhon,  though  it  also  is  worth 

1  Elie  Halevy,  "Histoire  du  Peuple  Anglais  au  XIX.  Siecle,"  Vol.  I., 
p.  401. 


344     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

mentioning  as  an  extremely  witty  example  of  the  criticism 
of  society  as  through  a  reversing  glass.  Howell's  A 
Traveller  from  Altruria,  Hudson's  The  Crystal  Age,  Bel- 
lamy's Looking  Backward,  Donnelly's  The  Golden  Bottle, 
Boisguilbert's  Ctesar's  Column,  and  Hertzka's  A  Visit  to 
Freeland  belong  to  the  same  category. 


The  weakness  of  Utopias  is  this,  that  they  take  the 
greatest  difficulty  of  man  and  assume  it  to  be  overcome, 
and  then  give  an  elaborate  account  of  the  overcoming  of 
the  smaller  ones.  They  first  assume  that  no  man  will  want 
more  than  his  share,  and  then  are  very  ingenious  in  explain- 
ing whether  his  share  will  be  delivered  by  motor  car  or 
balloon. — G.  K.  Chesterton. 

Not  that  Utopianism  is  anything  so  bad.  When  it  does 
not  profess  to  be  anything  else,  and  is  well  done,  there  is 
no  more  useful  kind  of  literature.  The  danger  is  of  trying 
to  pass  off  a  Utopia  for  something  serious. — Lester  F. 
Ward. 

Men  will  do  almost  anything  but  govern  themselves. 
They  don't  want  the  responsibility.  In  the  main,  they  are 
looking  for  some  benevolent  guardian,  be  it  a  "good  man 
in  office,"  or  a  perfect  constitution,  or  the  evolution  of 
nature.  They  want  to  be  taken  in  charge.  If  they  have 
to  think  for  themselves,  they  turn  either  to  the  past  or  to 
a  distant  future ;  but  they  manage  to  escape  the  real  effort 
of  the  imagination,  which  is  to  weave  a  dream  into  the 
teeming  present. — Walter  Lippmann. 

Let  us  beware  of  Utopias.  There  is  no  social  remedy 
because  there  is  no  one  social  question.  There  is  a  series 
of  problems  awaiting  solution. — Gambetta. 

One  of  the  things  that  has  disturbed  me  in  recent  months 
is  the  unqualified  hope  that  men  have  entertained  every- 
where of  immediate  emancipation  from  the  things  that 
have  hampered  them  and  oppressed  them.  You  cannot,  in 
human  experience,  rush  into  the  light.  You  have  to  go 
through  the  twilight  into  the  broadening  day,  before  the 
moon  comes  and  the  full  sun  is  upon  the  landscape,  and 
we  must  see  to  it  that  those  who  hope  are  not  disappointed, 
by  showing  them  the  processes  by  which  hope  must  be 
realised,  processes  of  law,  processes  of  slow  disentangle- 
ment from  the  many  things  that  have  bound  us  to  the  past. 


H.    G.    WELLS  345 

You  cannot  throw  off  the  habits  of  society  immediately, 
any  more  than  you  can  throw  off  the  habits  of  the  indivi- 
dual immediately.  They  must  be  slowly  got  rid  of,  or, 
rather,  they  must  be  slowly  altered.  They  must  be  slowly 
adapted.  They  must  be  slowly  shaped  to  the  new  ends  for 
which  we  would  use  them.  That  is  the  process  of  law,  if 
law  is  intelligently  conceived. — Woodrow  Wilson  (1919). 

Before  Darwin,  most  political  speculators  used  to  sketch 
a  perfect  polity  which  would  result  from  the  complete 
adoption  of  their  principles — the  Republics  of  Plato  and 
of  More,  Bacon's  Atlantis,  Locke's  plan  for  a  government 
which  should  consciously  realise  the  purpose  of  God,  or 
Bentham's  Utilitarian  State  securely  founded  upon  the 
Table  of  the  Springs  of  Action.  We,  however,  who  live 
after  Darwin,  have  learnt  the  hard  lesson  that  we  must 
not  expect  knowledge,  however  full,  to  lead  us  to  perfec- 
tions.— Graham  Wallas. 

The  idealist  who  paints  a  fancy  picture  of  -a  social 
Utopia  may  not  be  useful  practically:  to  some  tempera- 
ments his  picture  will  merely  be  an  incitement  to  cen- 
sorious criticism  of  all  existing  institutions  and  powers, 
while  other  people  may  be  depressed  at  the  impracticability 
of  realising  this  ideal,  and  be  inclined  to  despair  of  the 
possibility  of  any  improvement.  Here  the  work  of  the 
statesman  comes  in,  to  shape  a  relative  improvement  that 
is  practicable  and  that  is  therefore  worth  aiming  at. — W. 
Cunningham. 

The  old  type  of  Marxian  revolutionary  Socialist  never 
dwelt,  in  imagination,  upon  the  life  of  communities  after 
the  establishment  of  the  millennium.  He  imagined  that, 
like  the  prince  and  princess  in  a  fairy  story,  they  would 
live  happily  ever  after.  But  that  is  not  a  condition  pos- 
sible to  human  nature.  Desire,  activity,  purpose  are  essen- 
tial to  a  tolerable  life,  and  a  millennium,  though  it  may 
be  a  joy  in  prospect,  would  be  intolerable  if  it  were  actually 
achieved. — Bertrand  Russell. 

The  great  progress  of  our  age  is  that  the  Utopians 
have  died,  or  are  dying-,  out.  Among  the  masses  they  find 
no  foothold — find  one  even  less  to-day  than  ever.  Even  the 
simplest  workman  feels  that  nothing  can  be  set  up  artifi- 
cially, that  what  is  to  be  must  develop,  and  must  develop 
with  and  through  the  whole— not  separated  and  isolated 


346     MEN  AND  THOUGHT  IN  MODERN   HISTORY 

from  it.   The  thing  is  to  clear  the  course  for  development. 
— Bebel 

There  will  be  many  Utopias.  Each  generation  will  have 
its  new  version  of  Utopia,  a  little  more  certain  and  com- 
plete and  real,  with  its  problems  lying  closer  and  closer 
to  the  problems  of  the  Thing  in  Being.  Until  at  last  from 
dream  Utopias  will  have  come  to  be  working  drawings, 
and  the  whole  world  will  be  shaping  the  final  World  State, 
the  fair  and  great  and  fruitful  World  State,  that  will  only 
not  be  a  Utopia  because  it  will  be  this  world — H.  G.  Wells. 

Lycurgus  left  behind  him  a  form  of  government  which 
no  man  ever  before  had  invented,  nor  ever  after  could  be 
followed.  He  hath  made  men  plainly  see  a  whole  city  live 
together,  and  govern  itself  philosophically,  according  to  the 
true  rules  and  precepts  of  perfect  wisdom ;  which  imagined 
that  true  wisdom  was  a  thing  hanging  in  the  air,  and  could 
not  visibly  be  seen  in  the  world.  Whereby  he  hath  worthily 
excelled  in  glory  all  those  which  ever  took  upon  them  to 
write  or  stablish  the  government  of  a  common  weal. — 
Plutarch. 

A  .strange  picture  we  make  on  our  way  to  our  Chimaeras, 
ceaselessly  marching,  grudging  ourselves  the  time  foi  rest; 
indefatigable,  adventurous  pioneers.  It  is  true  that  we 
shall  never  reach  the  goal;  it  is  even  more  than  probable 
that  there  is  no  such  place;  and  if  we  lived  for  centuries 
and  were  endowed  with  the  powers  of  a  god,  we  should  find 
ourselves  not  much  nearer  to  what  we  wanted  at  the  end.  0 
toiling  hands  of  mortals!  0  unwearied  feet,  travelling  ye 
know  not  whither!  Soon,  soon,  it  seems  to  you,  you  must 
come  forth  on  some  conspicuous  hilltop,  and  but  a  little 
way  farther,  against  the  setting  sun,  descry  the  spires  of 
El  Dorado.  Little  do  you  know  your  own  blessedness;  for 
to  travel  hopefully  is  a  better  thing  than  to  arrive,  and 
the  true  success  is  to  labour. — Robert  Louis  Stevenson. 


The   Specialty   Press   Pty.   Ltd.,   174-176    Little   Collins    Street,    Melb. 


Scott,  (Sir)  Ernast 

Men  and  thought  in 
SA        modern  history 
cop. 4 


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