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 :
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1920
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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.
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Men and thought in
SA modern history
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