Modern England, by Louis Cazamian

I

MODERN ENGLAND

MODERN ENGLAND

BY

LOUIS CAZAMIAN

M

LECTURER AT THE SORBONNK

London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.
New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 191s

/4// r/fM reserved

FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH
EDITION

This book was meant for the French public,

and aimed at giving a summary account of

the evolution of a foreign nation. In

submitting this translation to readers of

this very country, the author begs to

express his sense of diffidence in regard

to the boldness of the undertaking. He

wishes particularly to apologize for the

many points in his study which, on

this side of the Channel, must appear

more or less obvious. The general

economy of the book would

have been destroyed had such

parts been struck out.

24I395

CONTENTS

PAGE

Foreword to the English Edition v

Introduction : Instinctive and Meditated Adaptation.

Subject and limits of this study. — I. Instinct and

reason as main factors of the modern evolution

of England. — II. Their alternate influence in the

nineteenth century ...... i

BOOK I

DEMOCRACY AND RATIONALISM (1832-1884)

:hap.

I Historical Conditions.

I. Industry and the making of modern England.
— II. A change in the economic order ; towns
and country. — III. A change in the social
order ; the middle class . . . .18

II Doctrines.

I. Rationalism and empiricism in English history.
— II. The utilitarian philosophy ; the political
theory of democracy. — III. The economics of
individualism ; the Free Trade movement. —
IV. Darwinism and evolutionism ; the theory
of adaptation. — V. Religious rationalism :
Broad Church and agnosticism . . . 34

viii CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

III Laws and Manners.

I. The Reform Acts ; the democratic movement;
the evolution of parties ; Liberals and Con-
servatives ; the mechanism of government ;
the authority of the Crown. — II. Liberal
logic and the reform of English administration ;
the modern evolution of social life. — III. The
new manners and the influence of the middle
class ; public opinion ; literature. — IV. The
waning of middle-class initiative . . 64

BOOK II

THE REVENGE OF INSTINCT (1832-1884)
Introduction ....... 89

I Historical Conditions.

I. The social elements of the reaction against the
new order : the strength and prestige of the
nobility ; the moral elements ; sensibility and
the idealistic ne"eds. — II. The economic un-
rest ; the industrial anarchy ; the forms and
effects of want in the nineteenth century . 92

II Doctrines.

I. The philosophy of Carlyle ; his social doctrine ;
heroism ; State intervention and feudalism.
His influence; the evolution of economic
concepts. — II. The religious revival; the
Oxford Movement ; its results ; ritualism ; the
Catholic reaction. — III. The aesthetic move-
ment ; spontaneousness and will in English art ;
Ruskin, his artistic and social message ; his
influence . . . . . . .109

CONTENTS ix

CHAP. PAGE

III Laws and Manners.

I. The amending of industrial anarchy ; factory
and labour legislation ; emotional and rational
philanthropy ; the reform of social abuses. —
II. The movement for the organization of
labour ; English Trade-Unionism : its evolu-
tion and means of action. — III. The instinctive
and conservative elements of the new manners ;
snobbery ; the Puritan reaction ; social com-
punction.— IV. The literature of feeling and
imagination. — V. The psychological origins of
Imperialism. — VI. The social equilibrium and
public optimism about 1870 . . .146

BOOK III

THE NEW PROBLEMS (1884-1910)

Introduction . . . . . . .180

I The Economic Problem.

I. The flagging of English prosperity ; foreign
competition; the anxiety of public opinion. —
II. The proposed remedies : the Free Trade
Radical solution ; the Protectionist cure . 185

II The Social Problem.

I. New appearance and greater urgency of the
problem. — II. Contemporary English Social-
ism ; the Marxists ; the Fabians ; municipal
Socialism. — III. The formation of the Labour
Party ; the new Trade-Unionism ; the Labour
Party in the House of Commons . . 20 1

CONTENTS

CHAP.

III The Political Problem.

I. The contemporary evolution of parties ; Home
Rule and the dissenting Liberals ; the rise of
the Unionist party ; its tendencies. — II. The
crisis of Liberalism and its new awakening ;
the Radical elements of the Liberal party ; the
heterogeneous character of its tendencies. —
III. The recent political conflict ; its causes
and possible consequences . . . .218

IV The Imperial Problem.

I. The intellectual and emotional elements of the
Imperialist doctrine. — II. The programme of
action ; the ends, the means, and the difficulties
met with ....... 238

V The Intellectual Problem.

The leading ideas of contemporary England. —
I. Traditionalism in the religious movement,
in education, public life, collective feelings,
artistic tastes. — II. Pragmatism ; its relation
to English utilitarianism. The pragmatic theory $

of truth. Analogous tendencies : moral hygiene,
the craving for energy, the return to Nature.
— III. Rationalism and the new conditions of
life. Religious criticism ; the modes of un-
belief. The criticism of the political and
social order ; the " intellectuals " and English
culture ; the influence of rationalism upon
education, manners, the psychological tempera-
ment, the artistic and literary evolution . 249

CONTENTS xi

PAGE

Conclusion. The Present Time. Decadence or

Evolution ....... 282

General Index ..... . . 289

Index of Dates ....... 292

\

MODERN ENGLAND
INTRODUCTION

INSTINCTIVE AND MEDITATED ADAPTATION

Subject and limits of this study. — I. Instinct and reason as
main factors of the modern evolution of England. — II. Their
alternate influence in the nineteenth century.

The predominant fact in the history of England
for the last hundred years has been a hidden conflict
between a tendency to instinctive readjustments,
which she owes to her early history, and a tendency
to rational adaptations, due to the conditions of
modern life. Taking the lead by turns, those two
forces have combined, at every period, according to
a complex and ever-changing ratio. One stands
for the past, the other claims to stand for the
future. They have both played essential parts and
possessed rich usefulness; at the present day, the
advantage seems to belong to the latter. But there
is no decisive reason for believing in its complete
and definitive victory. For it has not struck into
the national consciousness such deep and primeval
roots as the former; it is, after all, but one of its
secondary growths. The same blind energy bent
on conquering the world of facts is still finding a
new but not self-contradictory expression in the

.2.:.v:;: MODERN ENGLAND

great effort of will, intelligence and method
through which the England of to-day, resuming
the work which that of yesterday had only begun,
tries to adapt her national activities to the more
scientific requirements of life, production and war.

The traditional view of England has been widely
diffused in France; it answered to the necessarily
simple needs of the average mind. A lasting con-
tact with the strong original British genius has
sunk the feeling of a difference into the very
marrow of our bones; two centuries of competition,
fighting or friendship with England have driven
home to us the pronounced characteristics of
English empiricism, so foreign to our own tem-
perament. The almost parallel fates of the two
oldest nations in Europe, the common points in
their civilizations, the analogies in their recent
political developments, have brought out strongly
the moral and practical differences by which the
two sides of the Channel are so strikingly distin-
guished in their governments, industries, societies
and religions.

But the notion of a stubbornly instinctive Eng-
land became commonplace with us only at the very
time when it ceased to be completely true. If we
consider them no longer in their instructive con-
trast with French logic, but as they really are, the
modern activities of the English people must be
depicted in more diversified colours. This book
aims at delineating, if possible, that more accurate
and complex view of the principles which to-day
underlie the practical decisions of England.

Such a study must needs remain of a very

INTRODUCTION 3

general order. It requires the reader's indulgence
on many points. Obviously it cannot but be very
incomplete. Its subject is too wide to allow of
precision in details; its narrow bounds and its aim
have prevented all statement of proofs or authori-
ties. In no way can it then aspire to scientific
rigour. It may plead as an apology the relatively
modest nature of its claims. For it is not an
historical survey, but an essay in the philosophy of
history; it does not relate the facts, but tries to trace
the main lines along which they can best be
grouped. The author would like to supply such
minds as wish to understand the England of yester-
day and of to-day with a very brief account of the
enormous source of material and moral activities
which, at the present time, fills up such a wide
space in the world; and to point out as clearly as
possible the origin and growth of the forces which
are driving her to-day towards an unknown destiny.
As soon as one aims at going beyond the most
summary generalities and gaining an accurate view
of English affairs, one must admit of essential dis-
tinctions within the physical boundaries of that
political unit we call England, and no less essential
adjuncts without it. To treat the matter fully, one
should give separate attention to the diverse moral
and social characteristics of Scotland, Ireland and
Wales, and study the problems which contemporary
England has to solve under the various aspects
they assume in each of those countries, sufficiently
distinct yet to play their own parts in the national
drama. One should, as well, bring Imperial ques-
tions to the forefront, and look upon the British

B2

4 MODERN ENGLAND

Empire from the point of view of the world, not
of Europe only. It is obvious enough that the
present study is too short not to leave out those
causes of complexity. England will be here spoken
of as if she constituted a homogeneous whole such
as France; and the forms of her thought and life
will be regarded only as they belong to her central
unity. We may as a rule object to such simplifica-
tions; but they are perhaps pardonable when one
tries to describe, in its general evolution, the focus
of moral and physical activity which is the heart
of the British Empire.

It would not be convenient, and it is not neces-
sary, to enumerate the authorities on which this
book is based. Such a general view can, it goes
without saying, be to any degree accurate only by
constantly borrowing its substance from competent
writers. Let us simply mention our indebtedness
to a few essential works.1

1 Some of the most interesting suggestions on the general
development of modern England have been put forth in the
books of Messrs. Benn: (Modern England, 1908); Master-
man (The Condition of England, 1909) ; Dicey (Law and
Opinion in England, 1905) ; Lowell (The Government of Eng-
land, 1908) ; Webb (Industrial Democracy, 1897) ; Mantoux
(A tr avers VAngleterre Contemporaine, 1909); Chevrillon
(Etudes Anglaises, 1901, etc.); Berard (VAngleterre et
VImperialisme, 1 900) ; Bardoux (Essai d'une Psychologie de
VAngleterre Contemporaine, 1906, etc.). — As for the facts
themselves, a summary bibliography of English history in the
nineteenth century is collected in the book of Low and Sanders,
The History of England during the Reign of Queen Victoria,
1907. Again, a list of the best works on the various aspects of
political and social life in England is to be found in Social Eng-
land (edited by H. D. Traill), vol. vi., 1898. Those lists
make it unnecessary for us to give here one far less complete and
useful.

INTRODUCTION 5

I

The unceasing effort by which a nation lives
and endures, increases or sustains its life, is above
all an adaptation. An adaptation to natural con-
ditions,— its physical and human surroundings;
and to social conditions, — a necessary economic,
political and moral order. The development of a
given country, whatever the period considered, is
as a whole characterized by the manner and
degree of that adaptation. Holding good every-
where, this assertion is nowhere more easily veri-
fied than in England. It is the most original trait
of the English genius, as everybody knows, to
have first understood, or at least adhered to, the
practical solution of the problem of national exist-
ence; it has ever perceived the physical or moral
conditions in the midst of which it moved as
supreme facts, which must be always and primarily
investigated, and accepted or corrected, by the
exertions of one and all.

Thus considered, the development of England
has been continuous through all its stages; and the
underlying laws which direct and can explain it are
perfectly consistent. But as soon as one has in
view no longer the universal and necessary fact of
adaptation, but rather the particular forms it
assumes, two main processes appear. One is in-
stinctive; systematically, as it were, neglecting all
system, it gives free play to the countless different
forces that make for readjustment, pliancy and
balance, and through which either the units or the
naturally constituted groups in a nation sponta-

6 MODERN ENGLAND

neously adapt themselves to the exigencies of life.
In this operation, consciousness takes hardly any
share, and reason is not called upon to take any;
everything begins and ends in the domain of
obscure activities by which our motions answer to
circumstances, and our decisions to the appeals of
the universe. Infallible whenever it pursues an
imperfect, relative and temporary equilibrium, this
method as a rule fails to establish at once a com-
plex harmony with given conditions as a whole;
nor does it succeed in bringing about continuity
and consistency in the means chosen and the
instruments turned to use. Such has traditionally
been the attitude of England; its effects can be
traced throughout history; its stamp is to be found
at the present time on British institutions, indus-
tries, manners, ideas and feelings.

The other might be defined by its intellectual,
rational character. In it, a demand for co-ordina-
tion and symmetry, a striving after clearness and
order, a conscious and voluntary adjustment of the
means to their ends and to one another, are added
to, and even to some degree replace, the sponta-
neous effort of particular adaptations. This
method is liable to the numberless errors by which
the persistent clash between nature and the mind
of man is made manifest; it possesses neither the
safety nor the practical convenience of the former,
and requires untiring energy of study and medita-
tion. A profession of faith in the power of
thought, it aims at extracting from facts an order
all the elements of which they do not themselves
supply, and whose principle the mind bears within

INTRODUCTION 7

*

itself. Its failures can be ascribed to its superficial
and premature application; its triumphs have
stamped reality with a character of supreme sim-
plicity and beauty which outlives the fleeting of
time. It is a well-known fact that this method has
given the development of France, especially during
the last two centuries, its most individual quality.

What conflicting temperaments, what physical
and psychological dispositions, these opposed
methods can be traced back to, and what diverging
consequences, what diverse social features they have
resulted in, we all know to-day. This antithesis,
again, need no longer be stated; it belongs to the
domain of truisms. Let us only point out that the
former attitude is the one that life does in fact
choose for itself, whilst the latter must be adopted
by science; so we may say that the historical origi-
nality of England has lain in preferring life to
science in the general direction of her national
effort.

But such a preference has nothing of the strict-
ness of a system; would it not, indeed, contradict
itself in becoming systematic? During the last
hundred years, the general conditions of economic,
social and moral life have undergone a thorough
change; and the part played by intelligence and
science seems to have been constantly on the
increase. Now, the vital instinct of England
seems to be transforming itself in keeping with
this transformation of all things; and this is no
doubt the reason why, in the England of to-day,
instinctive and rational adaptations are to be found
at the same time.

8 MODERN ENGLAND

These two forms of man's unavoidable and self-
interested submission to nature, these two general
formulae of the policy of life, are rather tendencies
than exclusive and sharply marked attitudes; they
are not incompatible, and they shade off into each
other. The latter is not of necessity pure rational-
ism, deductive and absolute, in which form it has
sometimes existed in France; nor is the former, as
has too often been said, opposed to all rationalism
by an a priori uncompromising hostility, as it were;
it will not refuse the latter's co-operation under the
pressure of facts, and will thus merge into it. No
doubt the predominance of the one or the other is
sufficient to characterize a people. It is agreed
upon by all that the life-force of the English has
on the whole chosen the ways to which it was
impelled by instinct; and that if it has sometimes
aimed at linking together the roads it followed, at
organizing them into a chart of human experience,
it was not in the hope of forecasting the aspect of
the ground which the future would cover, of map-
ping it out in advance, and proceeding from the
known to the unknown by the light of reason. But
to reduce the intellectual history of modern England
to that one feature would mean simplifying it over-
much. In fact, for the last century, an important
though secondary part has been played by intelli-
gence in directing the evolution of England; at
the present time this part is increasing, and in the
future it will no doubt increase even more; and
into the very process of instinctive readjustment
consciousness and reflection have penetrated,
modifying it materially from within. The instinc-

INTRODUCTION 9

tive and the meditated modes of adaptation are
both English to-day; the former constitutes the
only kind of practical system spontaneously
evolved by traditional England; the latter, the only
theoretical philosophy of action with which the
England of the future can rest satisfied.

As has been said before, they predominated
by turns during the last century. Let us give a
summary account of their alternation; this book
will try and fill up the outline.

II

Modern England has been slowly growing from
the middle of the eighteenth century, and even, in
a way, from the end of the sixteenth; she outgrew
this preparatory stage, without any sudden change,
between 18 15 and 1840, or thereabout. For
convenience' sake, it will be assumed here that she
came fully to light more precisely during the
critical years which preceded the accession of Queen
Victoria.

Social England after Waterloo, in spite of the
disintegrating and revolutionary forces secretly at
work, did not, however, differ so much from the
society Voltaire had seen as from that we see
to-day. Nevertheless, when the young Queen
ascended the throne in 1837, the main lines of
English democracy were already broadly sketched,
and economic, political, social, intellectual life
settled into a new equilibrium on a lasting basis.
On the other hand, the eleven years which the
twentieth century already numbers constitute, to

io MODERN ENGLAND

all appearance, the beginning of a transition. As
a whole, this book still aims at studying the Eng-
land of the Victorian era, together with that of
Edward VII, which followed on the same lines and
is inseparable from it.

Within this period of eighty years (i 830-1910),
from the point of view we have just mentioned,
one can distinguish three stages, the limits of which
are in no way immovable or arbitrary. However
relatively smooth the change which gave rise to
modern England may have been, she grew by
opposing herself to the England of the past; and
however intimately the forces making for progress
and those making for reaction may have worked
together in that splendid social achievement, the
former took the initiative and gave the primary
and principal impulse. Now, these forces were by
nature intellectual; or rather they most often found
a rational expression, and the ideal of reorganiza-
tion which they proposed to the older order differed
from that order by a more logical, methodical and
thoughtful faculty of adaptation.

No doubt the remarkable success of the last
English revolution (183 2-1 8 67-1 8 84), as well as
that of the preceding one (1688), was due to the
political and practical instincts of the English
people; but that last revolution must be set apart
from all the others in so far as it was at the same
time the clear-sighted work of reflection, and the
empirical outcome of instinctive adaptation. A
wave of social and political rationalism, driving
back the waters borne away at one time by the ebb
of the anti-revolutionary movement, swelled again

INTRODUCTION 1 1

in England during the years which followed Water-
loo; shortly after 1830, it overflowed the dams of
the old constitution and the old life; bringing along
with it a democratic reform of laws and manners,
a systematic correction of the most glaring social
evils, freedom in trade and in business under-
takings, liberalism in a word and individualism, it
spread widely over all the central part of the
century, and made its impetus and strength still
felt during its waning years. Modern England
has primarily grown from a first effort to har-
monize society, laws and thought with new, clearly
defined conditions; she has primarily originated in
an attempt at meditated adaptation.

It was, on the contrary, by the free play of in-
stinctive readjustments that she amplified and
strengthened her existence. No sooner had the
individualistic and liberal England which John
Stuart Mill symbolizes realized all her inner possi-
bilities, than a powerful reaction of instincts rose
against her. To the light of reason many thinkers
and poets preferred that of feeling as a guidance for
the new nation. An unavoidable correction of
moral callousness and social egotism was effected, in
which the apostles of reason had no part, whilst
other prophets extolied the saving virtue of faith
and instinct, and the blind, fruitful powers of life.
Having adapted herself to science and industry
through freedom of thought and trade, England
no longer acknowledged the cravings of the soul;
and Carlyle, Ruskin, Newman, Browning, brought
about a readjustment of the English conscience to
its own spiritual wants.

12 MODERN ENGLAND

Along with or after them, other men re-created
collective activities and social or moral links in a
society put out of joint by individualism; a
spontaneous growth gave birth to trade unions;
State interference groped its way into the statute-
book, and went on increasing its hold upon it
every day; the spirit of the law, as well as that
of custom, was permeated by a new feeling of
solidarity; and religious or aesthetic mysticism
fostered an enthusiastic devotion to mankind. As
a last stage in the free expansion of instincts came
Imperialism; a mysterious intuition of common
interests and psychological affinities united the
mother-country to her far-away daughters by a
thrilling sympathy; and the intoxicating pride of
her world-wide power seized on the mind of Eng-
land. State Socialism, the religious revival, the
artistic movement and Imperialism, born at the
same time as democracy and Free Trade, were the
various expressions of the f ' revenge of instinct."

Having thus settled again into a stable relation
with material and moral circumstances, England
might well believe she had finally adapted herself
to the new world. The prosperous years from 1 8 60
to 1880 were a period of optimism and unfaltering
trust in the future. But soon other problems
arose. English industry, till then supreme in all
markets, must now struggle against competitors
growing daily more aggressive; new nations —
the United States, Germany — threatened the com-
mercial privileges and the political influence of
Great Britain, though not yet her independence.
At the same time, a crisis at home corresponded

INTRODUCTION 13

to perils abroad. The social question came to
the front again in a wider, more dangerous
shape; the Labour Party, stronger every year,
claimed its standing by the side of the historic
parties. The latter were weakened by an inner
principle of decay; drawn together by the necessity
of social conservation, they were merged into one
mass, in which identical instincts could hardly be
disguised under various political tenets. Liberal-
ism, which to that day had remained living and
efficient, was disintegrated by coming into contact
with new needs; critical and negative in its
principles, it proved unable to organize either
democracy or the Empire.

At that very moment, the necessity for a rational
organization made itself more pressingly felt; trade
unions demanded more clearly defined rights for
their increasing strength ; the dogma of Free Trade
was questioned, then shaken by the pressure of
Protectionist tendencies; and the relations of the
mother-country with the various parts of the
Empire required the invention of new political
formulae. Anxiety in men's minds answered to
this unsettled state of affairs; the Church was
endangered on one side by the progress of rational-
ism, on the other by sectarian differences and the
ritualist agitation; philosophy stood wavering
between the old beliefs and the bold innovations
of the day; literature was overflowed by foreign
influences, and a hankering after emotion and
sensation permeated the healthy artistic tradition
of England. By the end of Queen Victoria's
reign, at the beginning of the twentieth century,

i4 MODERN ENGLAND

British greatness, though still offering a stately
front, might seem threatened with impending
decay.

The present time shows us a revival of Eng-
lish energy, passionately bent on maintaining the
national community sound and whole. A new
readjustment has become unavoidable, and once
again the instinct of the race looks for it in the clear
and well-defined paths so long distasteful to it.
In order to bear the competition of rival nations,
younger, better equipped with logic and method,
to raise the standard of her human value, to make
each citizen a more active, better taught, more
useful agent in the common struggle, to be pre-
pared, in case of need, to defend her territory
against a formidably trained invader, to increase,
in a word — a watchword indeed — her national
efficiency, England is to-day straining every nerve.
And this effort brings her to seek in science and
her self-consciousness for means of meditated
adaptation quicker and more consistent than those
of life.

Instinct with renewed and vigorous youth, im-
bued with a radical spirit, the Liberal party boldly
takes the lead in the necessary reforms; it now
stands in England, more than ever before, for the
systematic correction of social evils. The nation
at large follows its guidance, or yields to, whilst
fighting against it; and though the opposition of
instinctive and conservative England succeeds in
retarding the movement as with a powerful check,
it fails to stop it. Nay, this very opposition
assumes a revolutionary aspect; in the present crisis

INTRODUCTION

J5

we see two programmes of substantial reforms con-
fronting each other; and when they rejected the
1909 Budget, the Lords chose quite as bold a
course as did the Asquith Ministry in the Par-
liament Bill.

Meanwhile, a systematic plan presides over the
development of public education; more attention
is being paid every day to the technical parts of
industry and commerce; the expediency of tariff
reform and imperial federation is eagerly discussed;
the navy is methodically strengthened, the army
reorganized, and the possibility of conscription
seriously considered. Those expenses call for new
resources; the Liberal party provides for them with
heavier taxes on wealth; the Unionist party by
advocating the abandonment of Free Trade; and
for or against Finance Bills, between Lords and
Commons, rages a political conflict of exceptional
import.

In that atmosphere the national type itself is
modified; infected with the nervousness and rest-
lessness of modern life, the Englishman of to-day
has grown less unlike his Continental neighbour.
At the same time, thinkers and politicians proclaim
the necessity for England of becoming more con-
scious of herself, more intelligent and learned ; and
through religion, daily life, hygiene, manners, a
new spirit is diffused, a universal pragmatism,
eagerly watching the social and practical conse-
quences of both notions and acts. Contemporary
England is striving to achieve intelligent efficiency.

Thus do the moral and social characteristics of a
great people change under the stress of circum-

1 6 MODERN ENGLAND

stances. This evolution is deep and pronounced
enough to give the England of to-day a unique
character. Shall we say yet that it completely
severs her from her past? As was stated above,
it would be misleading to take it so. The ulti-
mate cause of this new search for an equilibrium,
as on all previous occasions, is the instinctive will
to live; and life is still here directing towards
method and science the forces it formerly grudged
to anything but experience. It is by the teaching
of facts, not by a spontaneous preference, or an
abstract principle, that England has been or is
being convinced of the need to substitute more
modern ways for the ancient sacred routine of her
action and thought; empiricism, in one word, has
found fault with empiricism. Indeed, in the
present instance, the general doctrines in which the
practical philosophy of a people usually finds its
expression neither preceded nor accompanied the
new turn that practice was taking. Contemporary
England has not yet clearly formulated her new
tendencies. She is still, in spite of her craving for
more intelligence, the country in which the leading
influence is least wielded by systems and abstract
ideas. The principles that guide her actions must
be inferred from those actions themselves; and to
study the British people at the present, or at any
period of their history, is to investigate not so
much their doctrines as their doings.

In conclusion, this book will briefly state the
impression a sympathetic observer can gather from
the present state of England; the question will also
be raised whether the improved method through

INTRODUCTION 17

which she tries to increase her efficiency seems fitted
to produce the desired end; whether this bold
attempt at a moral transformation may not prove
an unnecessary violence done to an ancient habit;
and whether we should not interpret it as a symp-
tom of some deep-set uneasiness through which
is revealed the flagging of English vitality.
Whatever one's final impression may be, it is
certain that this vitality is still admirably strong,
and that no one can yet foresee the day when it will
be spent.

BOOK I

DEMOCRACY AND RATIONALISM (1832-1884)

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS

I. Industry and the making of modern England. — II. A
change in the economic order: towns and country. — III. A
change in the social order : the middle class.

I

The chief economic cause from which modern
) England has sprung is the development of industry
and commerce in the eighteenth century. More
generally, the predominance of large-scale industry
has been the main characteristic of English social
activities for the last century and a half. Now, the
very notion of industrial processes bears a direct
relation to that of rational readjustment. The im-
provement in mechanical production, the rise of new
classes and of a new social order, the formation of
political and moral theories deduced from rational
principles, and the institution of democracy in
government and life, are intimately connected
phenomena. In the intricate interplay of their
actions and reactions, whatever may be the suc-
cession man's mind enforces upon them, a common

18

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 19

feature is apparent from the first : they all manifest
the same effort to impose some conscious discipline
on the forces of nature or of the race, and to intro-
duce among them through the working of the
intelligence a clearer and better correlation of
means to ends.

From the day when in the course of its experi-
ments the English genius had discovered the
superiority of industry on a large scale over the
older routines of production, the germ of a reform
was planted deep in its inmost psychological ten-
dencies. Instead of the slow, disconnected methods
of nature, man was substituting in an important
province of social life proceedings elaborately co-
ordinated so as to economize the expenditure of
strength and increase its productive power. Thence-
forth, the ideal of systematic and rational organiza-
tion was sure to grow by the side of the former
ideal exclusively based on tradition and habit;
empiricism was receiving its due counterpart, medi-
tated adaptation. The moment (1791) when
Burke gave its definitive expression to the well-
known theory of the wise political passiveness of
the British people, was the very time when, in the
depths of the national life, the industrial tide was
swelling which was to bring forth a reforming
England. Factories and works were, before Radical
doctrines or reform bills, the first examples and the
first fruits on English soil of rationally systema-
tized social activity.

By its origins, it is true, the industrial era still
belonged to empiricism. The great inventions of
the age were due to practical shrewdness applying

C2

20 MODERN ENGLAND

itself occasionally and locally to the problems of
production and exchange. But before long, their
consequences accumulating and influencing one
another through their natural affinities, they grew
into a distinctly systematic whole, which encom-
passed all the field of economic life in an ever-
widening circle. From that time there appeared
a kind of logic and, as it were, of order in inven-
tions themselves; they sprang from needs realized
in succession, at points which might, so to speak,
have been expected, and thus became a part of
rational adaptation.

Again, natural conditions, either physical or
moral, did greatly contribute to the development
of English industry. The existence of large coal
and iron fields, the situation of the mining districts
close to navigable rivers, estuaries or sea-ports,
could not but turn the destinies of England to-
wards an industrial future. On the other hand,
though the faculty of methodical organization on
a large scale is a newly acquired and still insecure
possession of the English mind, its powers of atten-
tion, initiative and energy date from its very
beginnings. Ardent from the first in its contest
with the material world, it was destined to curb
the forces of nature and turn them to use before
a people of a more speculative disposition could
have even conquered them. Thus the primary
conditions from which the transformation of
modern England sprang were bound up with
the physical and moral characteristics of the Eng-
lish land and race; here once more one may say
that nothing happened by mere chance; that

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 21

England, by undergoing the change which in-
dustry brought about, only fulfilled her destiny.
The length of her coast-line, her exterior and
insular position in Europe, the preferences of her
inhabitants, had made her a commercial nation. It
is well known how in the eighteenth century
economic and political causes secured for her the
sovereignty of the sea, and how her colonial empire
grew. The new facilities afforded for trade, the
extension of the market, called for more intensive
production; modern industry rose out of modern
commerce. And in the iron, spinning and weaving
industries, long established in England, the origi-
nality and perseverance which resulted in the in-
vention of new machinery, the patient efforts of
a Boulton, a Watt, a Crompton, still belonged to
that continuous line of exertions from which, under
the sole guidance of instinct, without any system-
atic view, the material welfare, the political order
and the national greatness of the English people
have wholly taken rise.

But as soon as the industrial system was fully
developed, this creation of triumphant empiricism
proved adverse to empiricism. The inner move-
ment with which the organism was instinct was
quicker, more unbroken, than that of the older
economic cycles; in it, the correspondence between
supply and demand obeyed a more rapid and
regular rhythm; the necessity to produce more at
lower cost worked like a constantly accelerating
impulse; and the formation of a world-wide market,
all the parts of which were interdependent and
open to the same influences, required of all manu-

22 MODERN ENGLAND

facturers a capacity for taking in a large field at one
glance. Simultaneously, science, either pure or
applied, became daily a more essential part of the
industrial process; technical arts grew more elabor-
ate, their operations more minute and precise.
Every factory acted like a magnet, drawing to
itself well-trained minds and powers of organiza-
tion as well as daring and energetic characters.
So industry was a radiating centre of the scientific
spirit; it tended to undermine routine or to per-
meate it with an empiricism ever more methodical,
self -reforming and alert; it gave rise to quicker
and more conscious readjustments. So far, it was
indeed at the starting-point of that evolutionary
process, moral as well as economic, which to this
day characterizes modern England; and it has had
countless ever-widening consequences in all the
provinces of thought and action.

For modern industry, commercial expansion,
and the capitalistic state of society which prepared
the way for and followed them have been influences
unceasingly at work ; their social and moral effects
have developed without any stop, if not without
any check, all through the nineteenth century. It
was between the years 1770 and 1800 that the
industrial era opened in England. The preceding
years had witnessed the rise of commerce and of
the merchant class; mills, the first signs of a
\ concentration in industry, had been built in the
-A higher valleys, on the banks of torrents which
supplied them with motive power. Before long
the steam-engine was improved; the spinning- and
weaving-machines were invented; steam was used

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 23

as their motive power. The manufacture of pottery
was transformed, that of iron renewed. In the
northern and western counties, in Lancashire,
Yorkshire and Staffordshire, an ever-increasing
population, a building rage, a fever of enterprise!
multiplied the number of factories and industrial
centres. By the end of the eighteenth centuryl
England was already the land of modern industry )

From 1800 to 1830, in spite of political or
economic disturbances, this onward progress was
pursued. The carrying traffic afforded new em-
ployment to capital and the faculties of initiative,
and new facilities to commerce. The population
of England, the figures of her trade, her produc-
tive activity, increased with one and the same im-
pulse. The industrial centres grew, business towns
of mushroom growth overtook the older, quiet
cities; a new nation grew up outside the pale of
ancient society. And this evolution was to be-
come ever more intense, to the very last years of
the century. One can perceive ups and downs in
English economic history from 1830 to 1880.
But, on the whole, statistics point to an ever-
increasing industrial and commercial prosperity.

The nineteenth century in England was filled,
to its declining years, by that abundant, inexhaust-
ible tidal wave of enterprise, production and wealth
which rose on British ground during the eighteenth
century. Whatever may be the rivalries of the
present, the anxieties of the future, the main
characteristic of modern England is still her intense
economic activity; she is still the native country,
if not the only home, of fully developed industry.

24 MODERN ENGLAND

II

The consequences of this economic movement
are all apparent in the England of to-day; but they
came to light successively in that of yesterday.
The first and most obvious struck all observers
as early as the beginning of the last century. Eng-
land still bears its strongly marked stamp. It is
possible to describe it by saying that life ebbed
from the country to the towns, from agriculture
to commerce and industry, from the south to the
north and west. Such are the chief aspects of
what might be called a shifting of the natural and
social equilibrium.

When speaking of the industrial revolution,
historians mention as well an agrarian one. In the
latter half of the eighteenth century agriculture in
England seemed to be struck with incurable decay.
Till then the cultivation of the soil and the breed-
ing of cattle had been, with commerce, the chief
sources of public wealth. The older, still half-
mediaeval society — that which lives in Fielding's
novels — was essentially of the agricultural type.
Governed by an aristocracy of landlords and
squires, the English people was mainly composed of
peasants and farmers. The country, leaving out
the larger towns, was divided into economic circles
rather narrow, almost independent of one another,
producing nearly all the necessaries of life, and
gathered round trade centres of limited attraction,
the market towns.

The new prosperity of commerce and industry

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 25

acted like a disintegrating force upon that well-
ordered state of things. The landowners, in whom
the spirit of enterprise was stirring more and more,
carried out by legal contrivances the enclosure of
common pastures, the free use of which was an
indispensable resource for a whole class of labourers
and copyholders. At the same time, wealthy mer-
chants and manufacturers were buying large
estates and turning productive land into parks.
Home industry — the hand-loom weaving of cloth,
which occupied the leisure-time of country people,
was ruined by the competition of machinery. The
bait of higher wages drew to the industrial centres
crowds of farmers and field-labourers whom poverty
drove from their homes. Lastly, the commercial
expansion which came before and followed the rise
of modern industry considerably enlarged the
market in which England could buy her food. The
exportation of industrial goods to foreign lands
called for a compensatory import trade in agricul-
tural produce. Thus was a new economic system
organized within a few decades; agriculture was
neglected to the advantage of industry and com-
merce; and England became entirely dependent on
the rest of the world for her subsistence as well as
for her wealth.

Such were the causes of that desertion of country
districts which has grown more marked ever since.
Cottages crumbled to ruin or were pulled down
by the impatient purchasers of the ground; whole
villages were swept away; a migrating people in-
vaded the industrial quarters of large towns. The
proportion of the rural population to the urban

26 MODERN ENGLAND

kept constantly decreasing; it is now lower in
England than anywhere else. The various parts
of Great Britain did not equally feel this social
upheaval. Geological and geographical causes
had concentrated the new industries in the north-
western and south-western regions, and in the south
of Scotland; in these parts chiefly the populous
towns developed; in the eastern and southern
counties, and in Ireland, solitude and desolation
prevailed. The industrial, busy, energetic north,
and the agricultural, drowsy, aristocratic south, thus
stood opposed. At the present day, the traveller
who goes over the gently undulating regions of
the south and of the midlands, or follows the
eastern coast up to the borders of Scotland, crosses
fields which the nature of the soil and the damp
climate keep always green, bounded by hedges,
strewn with clumps of trees; the whole looks bright
and pleasant, but cultivation is lacking, and human
habitations are scarce. Wide pleasure-grounds and
game preserves, groves, and vast meadows, sur-
round the castles, manor-houses or farms ; here and
there from behind the rich dark-green foliage of
the oaks rises the grey tower of a village church.

How different is the impression when one draws
near the industrial districts, the more important
harbours, London above all, the huge town which
sums up within itself all English economic activi-
ties; an intense, noisy life replaces the drowsy
stillness of the fields and villages; on the dark
misty sky stand out scores of tall chimneys, rail-
ways stretch away in every direction; rows of small
brick houses, huddled close together, yellow or red,

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 27

all similar, surround the swarming, bustling,
murky business centres in an ever-widening circle.
Whole counties thus constitute vast urban dis-
tricts, hardly chequered with scanty gardens and a
few starved patches of green; the smoke never
completely clears away, the thud of machines ever
shakes the ground with a dull vibration. Caused
by an evolution common to all the European
countries of advanced civilization, this contrast is
in England more striking, more thorough, than
anywhere else.

A more precise economic description of the Eng-
lish land should, of course, add many shades to
the preceding sketch. There are intermediate dis-
tricts, in which industry and field-work are both
practised; some branches of agriculture are still
thriving, and life has not entirely ebbed away from
the country. A summary survey must leave out
anything but the pronounced traits of that
economic and social opposition which is the salient
feature of both the physical and the human aspects
of England. This nation has carried to its utmost
limit the evolution which, during the nineteenth
century, drove European civilization out of its
former surroundings. Turned to use only as the
source of mineral wealth, the earth has more and
more become the mere necessary support of all
national activities; and its surface tends to be only
the floor of an immense workshop. Uprooted
from the open country which had given it its
vigour, the race must more and more feel the
strain of town life. One half of England is over-
populated, the other half seems stricken with

28 MODERN ENGLAND

decay. A clearer realization of this essential fact
and its consequences contributes in no small degree
to the spirit of reform which at present urges men's
wishes towards a salutary readjustment, a return to
nature.

Ill

The new nation which grew up in the towns
all through the nineteenth century comprised
two equally active orders, whose unavoidable
antagonism was thenceforth to be the main moving
power of English politics. Along with modern
industry were developed the urban workman and
the middle-class tradesman.

No doubt, the town working men were not the
only members of that particularly disinherited
order whose grievances, in England as elsewhere,
have promoted or inspired most social theories,
schemes and enactments. English Socialism has
not only sprung from industrial poverty; the
condition of the workers of the fields — labourers,
small farmers — made still more serious by the agri-
cultural crisis, was an important chapter of the
social question in the nineteenth century. But, on
the whole, the proletariat was made up of the work-
shop and factory operatives. The distribution of
that human mass and, as it were, that human race
through the industrial regions of the north and
west, the formation of its moral idiosyncrasies,
the shaping of new economic organizations in-
tended as weapons for the defence of its interests,

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 29

the hidden or open pressure of its discontent or
wishes on public opinion and the government, and
the birth of a class-consciousness common to its
various parts, are social facts of primary importance
in the recent history of England.

However, the working men's movements, their
aims and efforts, as well as the feelings and actions
which the sight of their debased condition has
suggested to other classes, belong rather to the
domain of instinctive than to that of meditated
adaptation. Scientific Socialism has not met in
England with the same fortune as in Germany; and
the intervention of the State has not so much been
justified by systematic theories as advocated by
intuitive doctrines and exemplified by empirical
activities. It was only at a recent date that the
positive investigation of the social problem, of its
material and moral factors, its possible solutions or
alleviations, became a formative element of that
general frame of mind which may be considered as
the characteristic feature of contemporary Eng-
land : the voluntary and thoughtful wish for a
better national organization. Until that time, the
direct influence of the proletariat in the psycho-
logical or the political field must be considered as
associated with another aspect of modern English
history, which could be described as a recoil of
rationalism and meditated adaptation. That in-
fluence will be studied along with the " revenge of
instinct."

On the contrary, the development of the trading
order was closely connected with the wave of
rationalism which broke at the time when modern

30 MODERN ENGLAND

England was rising. The progress of the middle
class was the social equivalent of both these move-
ments,— intellectual and spiritual alike. This
class embodied in itself the spirit and influence of
that large-scale industry of which it was the out-
come; it was the focus of that zeal for a more
conscious adaptation which seized and impelled
the English mind after 1830. So its strength, its
temper and tendencies must be summed up at once
before passing on to liberal doctrines and the advent
of democracy.

In the eighteenth century the middle class was
still the " gentry," half aristocratic, mostly com-
posed of landowners, clergy, and lawyers. Even
then, however, the increase of the merchant class
in number and wealth introduced into that old-
fashioned body a more modern element, imbued
with an impatient, innovating spirit. Between
1760 and 1830 the new recruits swamped the
older ranks. Mill owners, manufacturers, business
managers, merchants, brokers, capitalists, had
multiplied along with the wonderful expansion of
industry and commerce. In London, Manchester,
Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, and in a
score of less busy centres, they had seized upon that
social supremacy which is the privilege of riches,
and throughout the kingdom their aspirations,
their instincts, united them in a common will,
stirred in them the consciousness of their strength
and their rights.

Their strength had to make itself felt, their
rights to make themselves recognized; there were
many obstacles in their path. In the former state

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 31

of things, where the measure of wealth was the
possession of land, men were fixed to one spot, the
landlord by his interest, the tenant by the survival
of feudal customs. The economic doctrines, yet in
their first stage, and based on the mercantile theory,
considered the accumulation of gold and silver as
a standard of the wealth of nations, and everywhere
set up barriers against their free circulation. In-
dustry was thus hampered by laws and the habits of
life. It needed workmen, and there were regula-
tions to limit the number of apprentices, to forbid
all emigration of country labourers to the towns.
It needed free exchange of goods, that food might
be cheap, wages low, and that British trade should
not meet with prohibitive tariffs in foreign lands;
the spirit of the old statute-book was protectionist,
and after 1 8 1 5 the Corn Laws raised the price of
bread to the advantage of landlords.

No doubt these obstacles were not insurmount-
able; what the law had done the law could undo.
But at this point the new merchant class came into
collision with the political structure of the old
society. The English constitution about the end
of the eighteenth century was anything but demo-
cratic. The will of the ruling classes alone was
consulted in the choice of the national representa-
tives; members were nominated by noble patrons,
corporations, or a few electors, mostly persons of
influence and wealth. The most important centres
of industry and commerce, the new large towns,
were excluded from the franchise; the constitu-
encies were the same as of old, and the decay of
most of the old boroughs did not deprive them of

32 MODERN ENGLAND

their now unjustifiable privileges. Here a farm
would appoint a member, there a populous, busy
town would elect none. Lastly, the mind of the
nation was yet imbued with feudal prejudices;
social prestige was the appanage of landed wealth;
the ownership of land was the source of honours,
functions, responsibilities, if it was no longer the
unique source of power; commerce and industry,
on the other hand, were yet tainted with social
inferiority; the nobility, the gentry, the professions,
looked down upon manufacturers and merchants.

In the coming struggle, the latter could count
upon the vigour of a new-born class, and of un-
satisfied appetites. They had courage, loved effort
for its own sake, and possessed the faculty of
initiative; they would naturally extend to political
problems the methods by which they had conquered
other more matter-of-fact difficulties. Their in-
dependent temper, their strong will, gave them an
individualistic bent; their positive turn of mind,
their knowledge of business, fortified in them the
utilitarian instincts of the race. In them expanded
perhaps the most essential tendencies, at any rate
the most widespread ones, of the English genius :
the practical, concrete, realistic tendencies. They
were to set the stamp of their idiosyncrasies on the
new society that was the outcome of their triumph,
on modern England; and subsequently the con-
trary, complementary influence of other needs and
other instincts was to smooth down that stamp
without erasing it.

But chiefly, the industrial and trading middle
class carried in itself the motive power of all

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 33

reforms; it felt the want of, and had a preference
for, efficient organizations — not from systematic
views, but from the teaching of experience. It
was galled by the burden of routine, and so destined
to alleviate it. In these men the economic revolu-
tion had focused its power of initiative and enter-
prise; they had acquired the sense of improved
methods from the use of machinery. Determined
on getting elbow-room in the society where they
found no breathing-space, they were to dare im-
pose a more rational order upon it, so as to gain
their proper place in it. As much imbued as the
members of any other class with the matter-of-fact
habits of the English mind, as strongly opposed to
the disinterested play of ideas, they more fully
realized the modern necessities of life, and were to
rise above temporary adjustments to make empiri-
cism into a coherent whole. It was from them that
there rose in England, either directly or through
the intermediary of theories, the first wave of
political and social rationalism; they were the
source of meditated adaptation.

CHAPTER II

DOCTRINES

I. Rationalism and empiricism in English history. — II. The
utilitarian philosophy: the political theory of democracy. —
III. The economics of individualism : the Free Trade move-
ment.— IV. Darwinism and evolutionism : the theory of
adaptation. — V. Religious rationalism : Broad Church and
agnosticism.

What is commonly called the advent of Eng-
lish democracy — that is to say, the accession to
power of the middle classes and the extension of
the franchise to the people, coincided with a
widespread philosophical and political movement,
rational and liberal in tendency, which justified
that evolution, or at least created around it a
favourable atmosphere. With this movement
were connected nearly all the doctrines, the main
principle of which was a clearer organization of
ideas or facts. To this, therefore, can be attributed
one whole aspect of modern England, — if not the
most important one, at least that by which she
is most easily differentiated from her older state.

No doubt the application of reason to moral and
social problems is not necessarily bound up with
the advent of democracy; it can be traced much
further back in England than the nineteenth cen-

34

DOCTRINES 35

tury. Yet one can discover a connection, as early
as the preceding centuries, between the rise of the
middle class, the first phase in the development
of modern society, and the spreading of rationalist
doctrines; in 1688, the English merchants, who
played a leading part in the restoration of public
liberties, found themselves in natural agree-
ment with the ideas of Locke, just as the manu-
facturers of 1832 thought it expedient to follow
the guidance of Bentham. Again, the first en-
deavours of modern philosophy in England, the
doctrines of Bacon and Locke, had been instinct
with an empirical spirit; experience was their guide,
the source from which they constantly drew, and
it has been possible to point them out as the fittest
illustration of the experimental tendencies of the
English mind. But the empiricism of Locke is
one thing, and the impassioned preference of a
Burke for instinctive adaptation is another. What-
ever may be the regard shown by the former for
the sovereign right of things as they are, however
cautious he may prove in his study of possible
reforms, he allows thought to bring some order
into facts, provided their unconquerable necessi-
sities are acknowledged, and all their data taken
into account. By refining on mere empiricism,
Bacon and Locke diverged from intellectual
routine, from pure and simple submission to
nature and history; they opened the way for the
attempts of reason to correct or change what exists.
So far they were essentially different from Burke,
a genuine representative of uncompromising
empiricism.
d 2

2>6 MODERN ENGLAND

So the rationalistic liberalism which took the
lead in the formation of modern England was
rooted on English soil in an already ancient philo-
sophic tradition. It was, on the other hand, con-
nected with a network of European causes and
influences; like French rationalism, it can be traced
back to the Renaissance; the mind freed from its
old fetters was destined to find in itself the light
that gives the world its coherent intelligibility.
This result was achieved in France by the doctrine
of Descartes as early as the seventeenth century.
The English genius, more positive, better aware
of natural necessities, reached it later and only by
degrees. Bacon and Locke stated the theory of
empiricism — that is to say, formulated the laws
which man must obey in order to rule over nature.
By criticizing the theory of innate ideas, Locke
overthrew the belief in a divinely established
harmony between man's mind and the universe,
and thus opened for us the possibility of impart-
ing to the universe a new order, the source of
which is in ourselves. About the middle of the
eighteenth century, the psychological rhythm of
English thought, at one with the European
rhythm, showed an indisputable predominance of
the intellectual faculties over the sensitive ones;
it was the era of " philosophy,55 the time of
" enlightenment,55 when literature, art, religion
and life were, or tried to be, reasonable.

A synthesis of all those elements was to be
found in the wave of theoretical and practical
rationalism usually called the utilitarian move-
ment. With Hume, Adam Smith, Priestley, and

DOCTRINES 37

the English disciples of the French Revolution,
Paine and Godwin, intellectualism combined with
hopes of political and social progress reached the
dawn of the Romantic Movement, that great swing
of the moral pendulum by which the balance was
restored and the sensibility given its due. With
Bentham and the Benthamites, rationalism outlived
the romantic reaction, and, after Waterloo, came
in contact with a new generation, reassured but
secretly uneasy, ripe for reforms which no revolu-
tionary scare could longer delay. From Bentham
and his disciples were derived the various forms
of liberalism and rational philosophy of the nine-
teenth century.

II

In the forefront of the intellectual forces which
moulded modern England stands a liberal, individu-
alistic and democratic movement, — the utilitarian
philosophy and political economy. Though their
influence is not so much felt in the England of
to-day, these doctrines nevertheless react in-
directly on the circumstances of the present time.
The waves they diffused over the century still
bathe the foundations of modern England, under
new names and by distant derivations. This is,
then, the place to trace their main currents.

The utilitarian philosophy was based on the
positive and realistic instincts of the English mind.
But it further developed these tendencies, pushed
them to their utmost limit, and finally to a

38 MODERN ENGLAND

contradiction : it linked into a systematic whole
elements the special value of which was their
concreteness and pliancy. That is how, whilst at
bottom in harmony with the genius of the race,
it came at one time to be opposed to it. For
its fortune was due to exceptional circumstances,
to the predominance of the need for analysis and
rational organization which accompanied the vic-
tory of the middle classes. Helped on by the
current of social evolution, it imparted a doctrine,
principles and a renewed vigour to the old em-
pirical liberalism then exhausted by its long-
deferred and incomplete triumph; for the routine
of the Whigs it substituted philosophical radical-
ism ; for the vague tendencies of industrial individu-
alism it found a justification in political economy.
The Utilitarians had hardly any metaphysics;
chiefly intent on practical problems, they applied
their endeavours to the sciences of man —
psychology, ethics, law, economy. One spirit
pervades all these doctrines. The English
rationalism which corresponded, about 1820, to
the French philosophy of the eighteenth century
differed from its predecessor, whose heir it is in
so many respects, by its more exclusively positive
character. The question is, how to establish the
happiness of mankind, for all pure speculation
is futile. Now, the science of the relations
between men implies the knowledge of the in-
dividual; and Bentham's politics are based on his
ethics, which in their turn are based on his
psychology. Everybody knows the main lines of
this concatenation of ideas, one of the clearest and

DOCTRINES 39

most systematic that English thought has pro-
duced. There is not in man any irreducible
spiritual activity, any absolute or transcendent
self, any innate idea; taking up the task begun by
Locke, and continued by Hume and Priestley,
Bentham and James Mill bring it to comple-
tion; they point out the mechanism through
which, from elementary sensation, are derived the
so-called higher activities of the mind. Per-
ceptions are combined according to the laws of
mental association : the laws of contiguity, resem-
blance and contrast; and the most complex opera-
tions of the intellect can be reduced to these
simple elements.

In the same way, the pursuit of pleasure is for
every man a primary necessity, and, so to speak,
a reflex action; good will thus consist in seeking
one's true pleasure, or real interest; evil, in seek-
ing false ones. Ethics will be the arithmetic
of pleasures. Which are not only the most in-
tense, but the most lasting, the most easily
renewed ? Those, surely, which pertain less to the
senses than to the mind. Interest well understood
thus leads man to find his own delight in that of
others; and altruism is the outcome of egotism.
Human appetites are like elemental forces, whose
interaction, enlightened by reason, must mechanic-
ally produce moral harmony; the chief task of the
moralist is to teach men the calculation which must
guide their conduct; the sum total of all these
individual computations will be for society as a
whole the highest possible net product. The
subsequent efforts of the utilitarian moralists were

40 MODERN ENGLAND

to aim at making nicer distinctions between
pleasures, and at bringing their hierarchy into
closer agreement with that which the human
conscience has established among disinterested
gratifications.

Thus will the interest of all spring from every-
body's personal satisfaction; and, indeed, the
interest of all is the supreme good of the State.
The greatest happiness of the greatest number,
such is the true principle of government. And
so democracy, or at least political equality, results
from utilitarian logic as applied to human policy.
For what is monarchy ? The exclusive rule of one
self-seeking man; the function of the sovereign is
vitiated in its essence, and corrupts the society
over which he reigns. Aristocracy is the regime
in which one class pursues its own interest at the
expense of the public good; the traditional manage-
ment of the commonwealth in England, according
to Bentham and his friends, affords a sad example
of this political absurdity. On the contrary, demo-
cracy is in conformity with reason; each man natur-
ally seeking his own best good, the government of
all will seek that of all; or rather, as unanimity is
not often realized, the rule of the majority is the
best possible approach to social justice. Reformers
must strive to organize such a system.

On the narrow foundation of those simple prin-
ciples and arguments was erected in England,
about 1820, the rational fabric called philosophic
Radicalism. It was conspicuous by its pronounced
opposition to the habits of the English mind.
No political doctrine had ever before assumed such

DOCTRINES 41

a clear-cut expression in its postulates, such a strict
form in its deductions. It constituted a typical
programme of meditated readjustment. Favoured
by social circumstances, by the intellectual needs
of the time, it met, about 1830, with extraordinary
success. Spread by clubs, magazines, lectures, the
propagandism of energetic young men, it gave a
theoretical justification to the longing for reform
with which public opinion was astir. But it did
not survive the incomplete victory of 1832;
running counter as it did, with its rigorous intel-
lectualism, to the instinct for compromise inherent
in the English temperament, it lost all influence
on the day when vanished its transitory har-
mony with the essential interests of an intensely
active class. Diffused thenceforth, popularized
and toned down, it merged into the Liberalism of
the Manchester school; and its vigorous, uncom-
promising method lay dormant, to awake only at
the end of the century, under the stimulus of new
social needs. It none the less gave its stamina
to middle-class criticism of existing conditions, and
fortified the liberal doctrines, which but for it
would have remained purely empirical.

About i860, the philosophical tradition within
Liberalism was represented by John Stuart Mill.
With him political science increased in breadth
and complexity; adhering to the general views of
his predecessors, he yet reacted against the too
simple abstraction of their formulae. For the
" geometrical " method of his father, James Mill,
he substituted the historical or "a posteriori
deductive " method ; on the data of history

42 MODERN ENGLAND

empirical generalizations were grounded, and these
were verified by being deduced from the laws of
human nature previously stated. One can perceive
here the influence of Comte, whose positivism was
then gaining a footing in England, and of that
new spirit of scientific objectivity which character-
izes the middle period of the century. In the field
of practice, John Stuart Mill chiefly emphasized
the advantages of liberty; he strove to extend the
bounds of the domain left to individual initiative,
and thus to arrest the downward progress towards
tyranny of the now inevitable democracy. An
ever-ready attention to the rights of the minority,
a broad intellectual tolerance, an ever-watchful
distrust of the encroachments of the State upon
private consciences, were thenceforward essential
traits of the political attitude of the Liberal
doctrinaires. The influence of Spencer was to
harmonize with theirs; he too was to set up the
individual versus the State in a famous book; and
English Liberalism was to preserve this negative
standpoint till the crisis which about the end of the
century awoke it to the vital necessity of a change.

Ill

At the same time that the political problem was
being freely discussed, philosophers passed on to
the social problem. For two centuries already
English thinkers had been attracted by the mysteri-
ous laws of the prosperity of nations. But modern
political economy, created between 1750 and 1800

I

DOCTRINES 43

by the French " physiocrats " and Adam Smith,
assumed the character of a science, and was made
into a body of strict reasonings, during the first
thirty years of the nineteenth century. It brought
to the industrial and trading middle classes the
intellectual support they needed to establish the
freedom of production and trade.

The liberal or " orthodox " political economy,
as it has been since called by the advocates of the
interventionist or socialistic economy, combined
with the utilitarian philosophy and Benthamism
into a homogeneous whole. The same men, in
many cases, were leaders of both movements; the
two doctrines were united by natural affinities.
Like Bentham's politics, Ricardo's economy is
purely intellectual; it appeals only to reason, and
leaves out intuition and feeling. Though both
theories claimed to be based on experience, and
were indeed imbued with a strong positive and
realistic tendency, they deviated from pure objec-
tivity and put on an abstract and deductive char-
acter. Both expressed the individualistic and
critical effort of the middle classes, for a time
checked in their advance by the vestiges of the
ancient empirical order. Political economy rose
against mediaeval routine and protectionist regula-
tions as eagerly as the science of politics against
the privileges of the ruling aristocracy. So the
system elaborated, or rather perfected, by Ricardo
became part and parcel of the " philosophic "
Radicalism of 1830. When public favour forsook
the philosophic Radicals, and all influence slipped
from their hands, their economic watchwords

44 MODERN ENGLAND

survived them, and supplied the Liberalism of the
Manchester school with its dogmas.

Each of the masters had contributed his part
to the body of doctrines held in common. Adam
Smith had formulated the theory of value; he had
thrown light on the increase in production under
the rule of the division of labour, at the very
time when factories and works were carrying
further the application mills had made of this
system; he had enunciated the famous maxim of
laisser-faire, dealing decisive blows to the inter-
ventionist and protectionist system still in favour,
and pointing out the advantages of unrestrained
freedom in production and exchange. After him,
Malthus had studied the possible consequences of
over-population, at the very time when modern
industry was raising its first human harvests on
English ground. Ricardo lastly, making these
ideas into a system, had added to them his own
theory of rent, and had grappled with the problem
of the distribution of wealth. The doctrine was
then constituted in its essential and definitive
elements. The strenuous propaganda by means of
which the disciples — James Mill, MacCulloch,
Nassau Senior — spread it far and wide from 1820
to 1850, did not materially add to it. John
Stuart Mill, though in close touch with the utili-
tarian and liberal traditions, was the first to try
and infuse a new spirit into economy; but in spite
of his attempt, the classical views were to hold
their ground almost unchanged to the end of the
century.

Ricardo's system is a theory of individualism.
He chose to consider as natural necessities the

DOCTRINES 45

social conditions created by industrial competition.
Society thus appeared as an aggregate of indi-
viduals, exactly similar to atomic elements endowed
with a constantly operating force, the pursuit of
their interests; with entire mobility, thanks to the
breaking of the fetters by which the old regulations
hampered the free circulation of men and goods;
with a faculty of discerning their proper advantage
substantially equal in all. Now, those atoms are
not whirling in empty space; they cannot leave
the surface of the earth, the necessary plane of
all human activity and the only source of
all nourishment. Therefore the ownership and
cultivation of land are the primary condition of
social life, and the most essential privilege. As
for the origin of private property in land, it is
not discussed : the proprietorship of a few is a
fact. And thus is at once determined the social
order; three classes are now distinguishable: the
landowners; the traders and manufacturers, who
manipulate the produce of the soil, transform or ex-
change it, thanks to the possession of capital; and
lastly the wage-earners, who by their work create
the value of things. For the value of an object
is measured, not by its price, but by the quantity
of human work involved in it. The fortune of
this last theory is well known; it was to supply
Marx with the starting-point of his doctrine of
surplus-value, and orthodox German collectivism
was thus to build up its main theoretical contention
with English materials, as well as to illustrate its de-
scription of the capitalistic order with English facts.
But a disturbing agent interferes with the work-
ing of the economic mechanism just constituted :

46 MODERN ENGLAND

population increases at a quicker rate than the
production of food; the former in a geometrical
progression, Malthus had said, the latter in an
arithmetical one. Vainly has nature tried to fore-
stall this danger : hunger, disease, war, are unable
to check the undesirable swarming of the industrial
class; the will of man must intervene; wisdom
requires that all, especially the wage-earner, should
marry late, and that one's family should not
exceed one's income. In spite of this volun-
tary restriction, population will always tend to
increase quicker than wealth and food; and thus,
this peril being constantly realized, the pheno-
menon of rent will never fail to take place. As
the mouths to feed are growing more numerous,
it becomes necessary to till new lands, of necessity
less fertile, the best soil having been everywhere
first cultivated; and every time a zone of poorer
ground is ploughed up round the older fields, the
cost price of the produce in this border zone,
higher than anywhere else, will spread level like
a fluid over the selling prices through the whole
land : for the law of the market is the equalization
of selling prices for goods of the same kind, what-
ever their diverse origins; and thus the most costly
cultivation, that of the newly broken grounds, will
determine the amount of the benefit or rent for
the more cheaply cultivated estates. And in that
progress towards the distant but inevitable cata-
strophe of universal famine, the classes keeping
their several attributes and functions, the distribu-
tion of wealth remaining the same, the privilege
of owning land will be more and more rewarded,

DOCTRINES 47

rents will rise more and more; commercial profits
will, on the contrary, get lower, under the pressure
of machinery and competition; wages will rise
slightly — less than the prices of goods. And so
this vision of the future ends in gloom.

Political economy, however, is not only an
explanation of the social mechanism, in its typical
simplicity; at the time when it received its com-
plete expression, it made a vigorous onslaught on
such existing institutions as stopped or hampered
the actual working of that mechanism. The
philosophic Radicals of 1830 urged bitter griev-
ances against the spirit of authority and inter-
vention. With remarkable consistency they sup-
ported the protests of the first working men's
unions against the Combination Laws, which
prohibited such associations. They denounced
the Statute of Apprentices, the old regulations
which in every trade limited the number of
probationers, and their time of service; the law of
Settlement, by which the country labourer was
bound to his parish; and the Poor Law, which
acknowledged the right of the destitute to live,
prevented the extinction of misery, and even
encouraged it to multiply. On all these points
they had already triumphed when Queen Victoria's
reign began.

But the great economic achievement of the
doctrinaire Liberals was Free Trade; and to accom-
plish it, they needed more protracted efforts, an
alliance with all middle-class forces, and the con-
certed action of business men and philosophers. The
name of the Manchester school is associated with

48 MODERN ENGLAND

an agitation which deeply stirred the public mind;
with the passing of a radical reform, justified in
principle by theoretic proofs, as it was called for
by conscious interests; with a patent example of
meditated adaptation.

The men of Manchester were eminent repre-
sentatives of one aspect of English politics and
intellectual life about the middle of last century;
they have even contributed essential features to
the physiognomy of Liberal middle-class England
down to the present time. With Cobden and
Bright, the doctrines of the philosophic Radicals
took a more decidedly practical turn; with them
the objective realistic character of the normal
English mind grew predominant again. They
abode by the principles of classical economy; but
they dwelt more willingly on their application.
Belonging to the industrial class, they spontane-
ously shared its instincts, tendencies and tastes;
they stood out as the champions of a cause, the
leaders of a party, the examples of a moral and
social type. Their clear-sighted activity, their
perspicuous thinking, their firm grasp of realities,
their energy and perseverance, were akin at the
same time to the average qualities of the English
race, in its traditional robustness, and to the new
faculties developed among the factory owners and
business men by the necessities of production and
exchange. They reveal the depth of the moral
transformation which was bending the empirical
habits of English thought towards a bolder and
more logical exercise of initiative, in both the
practical and intellectual fields.

DOCTRINES 49

The history of the Free Trade movement is well
known. It raised, about 1840, modern England
against the England of the past; the impatient
masses of the middle class against the haughty
caste of the landlords. The immediate cause of
the struggle was the protectionist system, and
more particularly the Corn Laws; but the issues
were wider : the nobility were fighting for their
political influence, as well as for their economic
privileges. To justify the artificial raising of the
price of bread, they did not lack reasons to put
forth : it was with taxes levied on their incomes
that England had led Europe against Napoleon;
a national compensation was due to them; more-
over, the decay of English agriculture would leave
the economic life of the country at the mercy of
foreign nations. The men of Manchester, on the
contrary, instinct with a philanthropic zeal, opened
prosperous and peaceful, almost internationalist,
prospects. They dreamt of a universal common-
wealth based on commerce, on free relations
between states, and on a constant exchange of
commodities and ideas. Temperate dreams
indeed, still fraught with wisdom and clear-
sightedness, grounded on a positive sense of
realities; but dreams in which their reason grew
impassioned and ranged far and wide, losing sight
of actual difficulties.

One should not forget that some class-interest
lay unquestionably at the bottom of their action;
when Cobden and Bright demanded the suppres-
sion of taxes on foreign goods, they promoted the
cause of the manufacturers, as low wages depended

E

So MODERN ENGLAND

on cheap food. In the contest of the landlords
with the " cotton lords " there came clearly to light
that struggle of the country gentry and the agricul-
tural interest with the employers of labour which
has been ever since a more or less general trait of
political life in the advanced nations of Europe,
and which is but an episode in the war of classes.
Again, the Manchester men abated nothing of
their corporate middle-class feeling in their deal-
ings with the wage-earners; English Socialists have
not forgiven them their dogmatic, stubborn oppo-
sition to the beginnings of factory legislation.
But with all their limitations, they were fine speci-
mens of British energy; and in the great business
centres, to this day, their spirit and memory have
survived.

After 1846, the fight was decided in favour
of Free Trade. All England soon rallied to that
judgment of fate; national prosperity, indeed,
justified it and seemed to raise it above criticism.
For fifty years the Liberal creed in commercial
matters met with no substantial opposition, and
English economic activity based a tranquil self-
confidence on its splendid achievements. With
the end of the century awoke once more the
problem which had been considered as for ever
solved.

IV

Between classical economy and Darwinism the
affinities are profound, and the transition is easy.
Both are the rational theory of an actual condition

DOCTRINES 51

of things, and of a condition of war; both derive
from mournful statements of facts a spirit of
optimism, or at least scientific equanimity; both
vindicate the triumph of the strong, and agree with
the instinctive aspirations of a thriving class or
a vigorous society. In tender souls, in religious
minds, they were calculated to arouse, and have in
fact aroused, an identical feeling of aversion; both
doctrines, on the contrary, could equally appeal to
lucid cold thinkers on the ground of their realistic
objectivity. No doubt Darwinism has, better
than economy, withstood the impassioned attacks
which were levelled at them on every side; they be-
long none the less to the same current of thought;
they answer to the same craving for intellectual
systematization. One must only bear in mind that
the investigation on which the inductions of Darwin
the naturalist were grounded was immeasurably
more thorough than the economic knowledge on
which Ricardo the financier had built up his
system. In fact, a connecting link, from the
beginning, united evolutionism to. political econ-
omy. The transformist doctrine grew in Darwin's
mind from an attempt to verify the teaching of
Malthus. The notion of a struggle for food
between over-numerous human mouths is to be
found again in the wider conception of the
struggle for life; and the consequences Malthus
had indicated, the defensive " checks " he had
counselled, were reactions similar to those through
which, in the animal world, living beings adapt
themselves to their conditions of existence.

Adaptation is indeed, as everybody knows, one

£ 2

52 MODERN ENGLAND

of the great biological facts the importance of
which has been illustrated and made popular by-
Darwin's transformism and Spencer's evolution-
ism. From this point of view, the favour these
theories have met with among the English is of
peculiar significance. No intellectual influence
has been more effective in bringing up from the
unconscious to a more conscious plane the in-
stinctive reactions and empirical processes through
which traditional England had adjusted herself to
the successive necessities of life. By pointing out
and formulating the principles of these reactions,
by showing them at the very source of vital suc-
cess in the lives of all beings, either individual or
collective, evolutionism has for ever destroyed the
happy ignorance which formerly allowed the slow,
calm progression and blind infallibility of English
readjustments. The very method of instinct, by
growing conscious, has ceased to be purely in-
stinctive, and a process which preserved the
pliancy of elementary vital actions has assumed
the rigidity of a system.

Burke had already seriously impaired the effici-
ency of English political empiricism by probing
its spirit, describing its method and proclaiming
its superhuman value with religious zeal and
dogmatism; his analysis had let the baneful
light of reflection into dark depths which owed
their fecundity only to their darkness. Over and
over again, during the nineteenth century, the
theory of organic growth was put forward by
historians, philosophers, and sociologists to explain
the English social order; and whilst the clear

DOCTRINES 53

realization of that instinctive process somewhat
hampered its free play, criticism springing from
the very feeling of admiration was led to
dangerous comparisons between the success-
ful routine and other possible methods. The
mystery of the divine fortune of the English
genius, stripped of its veils, could no longer check
with awe the impatient spirits chafing at its tardy
operations; and reason, encouraged to try and
understand all, was emboldened to rule everything.
Widely diffused, the explanation of the English
political tradition, in its elementary simplicity,
has not served the cause of this tradition. And
more than any other, the evolutionist doctrine,
by laying stress on the working of universal
adaptation, has tended to make it everywhere
more self-conscious and meditated.

Evolutionism is a complete theory of the
universe; and like all English doctrines, even the
most realistic ones, like political economy from
which it is derived, it aims at laying down prac-
tical principles and reacting upon what exists.
This tendency is chiefly conspicuous in the dis-
ciples of Darwin. The personal contribution of
the great naturalist is well known. Applying to
the study of general biology his admirable
scientific qualities, his fund of precise observation,
his unequalled gift of concrete perception, all the
perseverance and obstinacy of the English genius,
he established the intuitions of Lamarck on a
firm definitive basis. Species were shown to
be variable; the passage from one to the other
was explained by natural selection; and all the

54 MODERN ENGLAND

elements of life, in the constantly flowing stream
of phenomena, were united by a complex inter-
dependence.

With Spencer, transformism is but one portion
of a total synthesis, a scientific history of the
world. His doctrine is not properly metaphysical;
it asserts the relativity of knowledge, and stops on
the verge of the unknowable. All transcendent
research is futile; and with the coming of the new
industrial age man has lost his persistent faith in
dogmatic religions or philosophies. The religious
feeling, however, will not die out; it is not starved,
but fed by the vast hypotheses in which the
thinker's mind soars up to the sublimity of the
universe; it will find its outlet in the silent worship
of the divine Unknown. But keeping within the
limits thus set by nature, scientific investigation
can fully encompass its object, and reach the
supreme end it has always kept in view : the
unification of all laws. Fusing into one the three
main generalizations human thought had evolved,
the system of universal gravitation, the law of
the conservation of energy, and the nebular
hypothesis, Spencer incorporates them into his
own theory of evolution. From the nebula to
the present order of the universe, primitive energy
has kept organizing itself according to the prin-
ciple of gravitation, and its manifold changes have
not altered its invariable quantity. Matter, the
outcome of the condensation of energy, has kept
integrating itself from the homogeneous to the
heterogeneous and from the indefinite to the finite.
And in the domains of all particular sciences,

DOCTRINES 55

astronomy, geology, biology, psychology, soci-
ology, the same principle suffices to reduce the
complexity of phenomena to a regular and clear
rhythm of stability and change.

That synthesis may have lost something of its
apparent validity during the last fifty years. The
immediate possibility of a mechanical explanation
of the universe, apart from the further progress
of special sciences, is no longer readily accepted
by cautious minds; on many points, the relations
Spencer had established between phenomenal
changes and the general formulae of evolution now
seem over-simplified to us. But if we have out-
lived the evolutionist idea as a total and definitive
expression of scientific philosophy, it remains
an essential element of contemporary English
thought, one of the most plausible sketches of
the history of the world, and an almost always
fruitful germ of theories and hypotheses. It can
be found in scholarly or literary works, in moral
or social disquisitions, in the watchwords of states-
men. It has insensibly and deeply modified the
very foundations of thought, has introduced the
notion of universal change into the least conscious
habits of reflection.

However, its influence over official philosophy,
religious dogmas, professed principles of conduct,
has not been proportionate to its overwhelming
predominance in the intellectual field. For it
roused passionate opposition from the very first.
The theory of the animal descent of man had
brought widespread notoriety to Darwin ; Spencer's
attempt to drive back the supernatural into the.

56 MODERN ENGLAND

dim regions of the unknowable, and to extend
the sway of the mechanical over all existence, was
met by the open hostility of all the forces of faith
and moral conservatism. It was only by degrees
that emotional and idealistic tendencies, religious
beliefs, the timidity of thinkers and of the larger
public, could be reconciled with the new light
which cast a strange unexpected intelligibility
over the past and the future of the world. In
England, as elsewhere, the common ways of think-
ing and of feeling have accepted the evolutionist
idea by means or a gradual assimilation, a slow
adaptation. More elastic than Roman Catholic
dogmas, the articles of the Protestant faith could
easily enough yield to this inevitable modifica-
tion. The bold attempt of Darwin and Spencer to
unify the living and cosmic universe, and to
account for it without the help of transcendental
faith, was still responsible for one of the greatest
shocks the English mind felt in its deeper sub-
consciousness during the nineteenth century.
That supreme effort of rational thought con-
tributed, more than any other doctrine, to create
an atmosphere of dry, cold, scientific clear-sighted-
ness, in which the conscience of England could not
long breathe; and it was to a large extent instru-
mental in bringing about the " revenge of instinct."
Whilst evolutionism was opposed to the
emotional needs of the English mind, it agreed
with its practical tendencies. More precisely, its
inner impulse harmonized with the intellectual
aspirations and economic wants of the new society.
It conferred the sanction of philosophy on the

DOCTRINES 57

political changes by which the middle class had
been adapting the old order to its own new power.
It supported the contention of the Radicals and
the economists, who claimed to consider the
mechanical processes of production as constituting
a social progress in themselves, and affording at
least the means of a moral progress. Spencer's
writings put forward the theoretic justification of
the industrial age; like the Manchester men, he
considers it as a decisive stage in the development
of civilization, as the definitive advent of Liberal-
ism and peace.

On the other hand, his social doctrine is aimed
against the encroachments of the State. In the
abstract, evolutionism might just as well lead to
constructive conclusions as to individualistic ones;
it finds solidarity at the core of things, and by
laying stress on the idea that progress consists in
increasing complexity, it might conduce to develop
further the functions of that organism the State.
But impelled by some elements in the logical
concatenation of his system, and no doubt by his
own temperament as well, Spencer put the em-
phasis on his denunciation of State tyranny. He
refused the central power that gradual extension
of its social and economic activities by means
of which England was already trying to repress
industrial anarchy. So far, again, evolutionism
agreed with the preferences and interests of
middle-class Liberalism; and Spencer's arguments
were, down to the end of the century, the back-
bone of the old-fashioned Liberals' opposition to
the advance of State intervention.

58 MODERN ENGLAND

The philosophy of Spencer stopped on the
border of the unknowable. It was thus one of
the symptoms, as well as one of the causes, of
the critical movement called agnosticism. Along
with this movement we may treat of the various
forms of religious liberalism and rationalism
during the nineteenth century.

Protestantism in England had, better than in
Germany, withstood the dogmatic disintegration
whose principle it carries within itself. Not so
fond as German thought of abstract speculation,
and fitter for those illogical compromises which
traditionally secured its balance, English thought
triumphantly reconciled private investigation with
the authority of certain articles of faith. No
doubt Protestant individualism had asserted itself
in England quite as much as anywhere else; since
the Reformation, since the prolonged transition
from Catholicism to Anglicanism during the latter
half of the sixteenth century, and since the
Elizabethan religious settlement, a large portion
of the people had sought for peace of conscience
outside the Established Church. The sects had
multiplied; after their swarming at the time of
the Commonwealth, the Restoration and scepti-
cism had not been able to quench the Puritan
enthusiasm with which the " non-conformists "
were instinct; and by the side of the Roman
Catholics, yet tainted with civil inferiority, the
eighteenth century had witnessed the rise of the

DOCTRINES 59

Methodists, who divided themselves before long
into rival denominations. About 1830, the dissen-
sions between sects were as marked as ever in
England, pointing rather to the vitality than to the
decay of the religious spirit.

But those dissensions were more often due to
social and emotional oppositions, to an unequal
pitch of mystical fervour, than to intellectual
differences. It is not in the rational field that
the struggle for influence is waged among English
sects. The higher culture, habits of logical think-
ing and historical discussion are almost exclusively
to be found in Anglican divines; and these were
then sheltered from the dangerous, fearless initia-
tives of thought by a wise passiveness. Satisfied
with the soundness of their dogmatic position,
protected against the vapid polemics of the
eighteenth-century deists by the deductions of
Butler and Paley, they but dimly caught a distant
echo of German exegetics. The only symptom
of life the Church then showed was the evangelical
movement, by means of which the stirring impulse
propagated among Dissenters by Methodism was
extended to the Anglican clergy.

About 1850, on the contrary, the Established
Church was imbued with a new life. The Oxford
revival had called forth a defensive reaction in
her, whilst she was being permeated by it. The
three tendencies which still prevail to-day within
the Establishment became then more pronounced.
The " low Church " partook of the austere spirit
of the non-conformists, and maintained the prin-
ciple of Protestant exclusiveness in its integrity.

60 MODERN ENGLAND

The " high Church " rather inclined to the hier-
archical and gorgeous forms of Roman Catholic
worship, and showed that retrogressive leaning
which has led back so many religious souls, for
the last half-century, towards the principle of
spiritual authority. To these two tendencies,
inherited from the preceding age, was then added
a third one, that of the " broad Church,' ' which
brought together the critical minds, anxious to
reconcile reason with faith. From both the
historical and the logical points of view, it was
the development of the Broad Church party which
preceded and caused the unexpected growth of
the older High Church in a time of scientific
scepticism. The Oxford Movement, the begin-
ning of the Catholic revival within Anglicanism
and outside its pale, was called to life by the first
symptoms of that spirit which about 1830 was
known by the name of " Liberalism," and was soon
to become the Broad Church and agnosticism.

Many were the origins of this moral attitude.
Successive tributaries swelled the stream of reli-
gious rationalism. The small school of the
Benthamites had propagated philosophic doubt
around them, and the Radicals boldly demanded
Church disestablishment. On the other hand, the
Unitarians, a small sect as well, but composed of
cultivated families, from which distinguished
thinkers would often spring, represented a line of
thought less negative, but independent, and
derived from the disciples' of Arianism. Shortly
after 1830, the works of the German critics began
to make their way to England; Baur and Strauss
were translated. The translator of the latter's

DOCTRINES 6 1

Life of Christ, George Eliot, personified another
current of foreign influence, the positivist ideas.
She was deeply impressed by the religious philo-
sophy of Auguste Comte; she eagerly adopted its
negations, and its constructive part as well, the
religion of humanity. Gathered round Frederic
Harrison, a small group were to preserve that
influence and continue that tradition to the end
of the century.

About i860, such men as Lewes, John Stuart
Mill, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, belonging to
widely different regions of the intellectual world,
professing different beliefs, found themselves at
one in their attitude of reserve towards dog-
matic religions. Agnosticism was, like similar
philosophies of the Continent, an outcome of
the antagonism between modern criticism and
faith. But though its tendency was negative, it
was not markedly aggressive; the effect of the
general environment, the atmosphere of relative
tolerance in which religious discussions are kept
in England, blunted the destructive edge of Eng-
lish rationalism in its bearing upon dogma; whilst
the tone of social life, the respect universally felt
for moral conventions, weakened its force of
expansion. Therefore this form of rationalism
failed to exert the same influence on society at
large as that which the Radical politicians or Liberal
economists had secured for themselves. A refined
scepticism, limited to a select group of thinkers
and scientists, its sphere of action was then but
narrow. The time had not come yet when were
to converge, thanks to the advance in public
education, such phenomena as the downward

62 MODERN ENGLAND

diffusion of scientific criticism, and the gradual
breaking away from all religious observance of an
ever-increasing number of minds in every class
of society. Pretty general in Europe, this process
is taking place in England, at the present time,
more slowly than anywhere else.

Not so radical as agnosticism, and keeping
within the bounds of positive religion, the Broad
Church showed yet similar tendencies. It repre-
sented the attempt of sincere believers to reconcile
their reason and their faith. These men were
anxious to gather into a body all active well-
meaning persons, engrossed like themselves by
the moral and social problems of an unsettled age;
they wished to give up the rigorous enforcement
of dogma, to unite all the members of the Protestant
family in a wider creed. Stanley, Jowett, Kingsley,
Maurice, were instinct with the same zeal.
Maurice was the leader; in his writings the views
of the " Latitudinarian " school were clearly
expressed. With him, original sin and the fall
of man are no longer those supreme facts which
the Protestant tradition considered as the essential
elements in the destiny of man; they are only
incidents in a moral development which starts
from weakness and error. The Atonement is no
longer the necessary redemption of a crime, but
the purification of sinful mankind. The everlast-
ing life, as Christ described it, is not the realm
of material punishments and rewards which a still
pagan imagination has called forth. The ever-liv-
ing, ever-present personality of Christ, such is the
centre of belief and religious life; all that conveys
His personality and faithfully expresses it, is a

DOCTRINES 63

means of truth and salvation; all that obscures it
or tries to supplant it, is a source of error. The
claim of the Bible itself and of the Church is made
good only by their usefulness as instruments of
Christ.

Those ideas, widely accepted to-day, still came
as a shock in England about the middle of the last
century. The bold initiative of several Broad
Churchmen in political matters, the Christian
Socialism of Maurice and Kingsley, must be his-
torically and psychologically connected with the
other main aspect of English evolution — with the
"revenge of instinct." But to scared middle-
class minds, religious liberalism and social philan-
thropy appeared as the inseparable expressions of
one rash dangerous spirit. On the whole, the
rationalism or latitudinarians, the scepticism of
agnostics, the criticism of exegetists, contributed
to drive back the English sensibility to the simpler
and more spontaneous forms of faith as well as
of life. The publication of Essays and Reviews,
theological disquisitions inspired with a spirit of
innovation, in 1 8 60, and the famous case of Bishop
Colenso, who about the same time defended
audacious propositions, were among the symptoms
of that crisis. Thenceforth the religious problem
showed in England, as in Germany or France,
all the urgent, painful character it derives from
the modern conflict between exegetics and faith.
And in England, as elsewhere, more perhaps than
anywhere else, one of the solutions given to this
problem was to be the assertion that faith is
superior to science, and belongs to another order
than reason.

CHAPTER III

LAWS AND MANNERS

I. The Reform Acts ; the democratic movement ; the
evolution of parties ; Liberals and Conservatives ; the mechanism
of government ; the authority of the Crown. — II. Liberal logic
and the reform of English administration ; the modern evolution
of social life. — III. The new manners and the influence of the
middle class ; public opinion ; literature. — IV. The waning of
middle-class initiative.

Swayed by the economic and social forces the
industrial revolution had let loose, and by the
theories which expressed reason's attempt to under-
stand and organize reality better, English society
underwent important changes in its structure and
life. From 1830 to 1884, political power changed
hands, the balance of government was shifted, the
administrative system was developed; new manners
prevailed, and, permeated by this atmosphere,
literature, the arts and all the higher activities, were
brought into harmony with it. A democratic
evolution, the wiping out of some abuses, a better
adjustment of means to ends in all the social
mechanism, the triumph of middle-class spirit and
art, followed close upon the advent of new classes,
and constituted a first adaptation of national life
as a whole to modern facts and necessities.

64

LAWS AND MANNERS 6$

I

The English constitution has grown democratic
without a revolution, and by degrees. The three
successive Reform Acts (1832, 1867, 1884) point
none the less to a political evolution bolder and
quicker than the previous history of England
would have allowed one to expect.

The Reform Act of 1832 was by no means a
radical measure. It deprived the most scandal-
ously "rotten" boroughs of their representatives,
and conferred them on the big industrial towns;
in the country it gave the franchise to peasants
owning an income of ten pounds; in the towns, to
householders paying the same amount in rent. All
told, there were less than 500,000 voters under the
new regulation. But its import was decisive.
Making the first breach in the stronghold of
English oligarchy, it prepared and foretold the
unavoidable victory of numbers. Long delayed
by the impassioned opposition of conservative in-
stincts, hailed by popular agitators as the dawn of
a better era, it bestowed political power, in fact,
upon the higher middle class. The Act of 1867
did extend the basis of government to a democratic
breadth. In the towns, it granted the franchise to
all tax-payers; in the country, it lowered the
standard required by the 1832 Act. The urban
working classes were thus allowed to make their
political influence felt. The extension of the same
privilege to the country people could no longer be
prevented; in 1884, this stage was reached; almost

66 MODERN ENGLAND

universal suffrage thenceforth prevailed in Eng-
land. Only paupers, tramps, and a few orders of
citizens deprived of their civil rights are excluded
from it. Yet the electoral system, after this
measure, still lay open to the criticisms of the
Radicals; at the present day, they demand the
suppression of some irregularities and of plural
voting; and everybody knows what eager con-
troversies the question of feminine suffrage is
raising.

Thus has the political balance been shifted in
England. The predominant influence, in the
selection of national representatives, has passed
from an oligarchy — the nobility and gentry — to
the middle class, and then to the whole people.
But this transference of power has been gradually
effected; it has allowed the privilege of each dis-
possessed class to subsist and linger through the
domination of the class newly called to power.
The prestige of the aristocracy has remained very
great; supreme in matters of taste and in social
life their authority is felt in the direction of public
affairs also, even outside the hereditary- chamber
in which the conservative tradition is perpetu-
ated. It was only at a very recent date that
the unavoidable conflict between Lords and
Commons became acute. In the same way, it
would be misleading to say that the Reform Acts
of 1867 and 1884 have placed political . omnipo-
tence in the hands of the lower classes. The spirit
of the English democracy from the very first
proved moderate and respectful of tradition.
Thanks to the weight of ancient habits, to the

LAWS AND MANNERS 67

economic strength of the wealthy classes, and to
the fact that the higher or lower middle classes
come in contact with the people at many points and
shade off into it, the focus of political power is
not placed among the workers of the field, the
factory or the shop, but among the superintendents
of their labour — substantial farmers, tradesmen,
employers. It is to the middle rank, in a word,
that the extension of the franchise has imparted
political supremacy; and down to the present time,
this supremacy might seem undisputed.

On several occasions, however, popular griev-
ances emphasized the problem of national repre-
sentation, with uncompromising vigour. The
advent of English democracy was not altogether
quiet and peaceful; and if the forces making for
prudence and equilibrium have always conquered,
it has not been without a struggle. The years
1830-32 were a disturbed, almost revolutionary
period. In order to overcome the resistance of the
Lords, to secure the passing of the Reform Bill,
the theories of the philosophic Radicals and the
complaints of the manufacturers needed the sup-
port of a European crisis — the French Revolution
of 1830 and its consequences — as well as the last-
ing impression left by the Bristol riots (183 1) on
the public imagination. From that time, all social
hope was intimately connected with the desire for
political justice, and through the masses was
diffused the idea, dimly understood, that the
expression of their collective will would be the best
means to react upon their conditions of life.

After the measure so eagerly wished for had

F 2

68 MODERN ENGLAND

deceived the fond hopes of the people, and the
reformed Parliament had revealed its conservative
bent, a movement of political and social vindica-
tion, Chartism, raised a portion of the nation, for
ten years, against the established order. It sprang
from the widespread industrial distress which
reached its climax about 1842; from the grudge
left in men's minds by the new timorousness of
the triumphant middle class; from the agitation
propagated through the lower classes by the first
tentative trade-unions, by the exhortations of the
Radical leaders, which still rang in their ears, and
by the socialist doctrines which were then begin-
ning to spread. Chartism was a dark muddy
wave whose waters broke over English society in
a confused transitory period. By the mystical
enthusiasm with which it was permeated, by the
intuitive nature of its claims, by the impassioned,
inspired characters of several among its chiefs, it
belonged to the other aspect of modern England,
the reaction of instincts against reason. But the
people's u Charter " was none the less a direct
outcome of liberal agitation; and by demanding
universal suffrage, the payment of members and
annual Parliaments, the Chartists followed the lead
of the Radical politicians, at one with such men
as wished for a rational reorganization of political
justice.

Weakened by inner dissensions, revived for a
while by the European crisis of 1848, this move-
ment was not to outlive it. After 1850, it
vanished away. But its usefulness was to endure
in the silent acquiescence of the ruling classes in

DAWS AND MANNERS 69

a new electoral reform; and the era of economic
prosperity, of quiet national development upon
which England then entered contributed to the
same result by means of a general pacification of
feelings. Some outbursts of popular anger and
stormy meetings were yet necessary, in 1866-67,
to overcome conservative misgivings and carry
through the second Reform Bill. Thenceforth the
transformation of the electoral system went on to
its completion in a serene atmosphere of civic
union, in which opposition itself grew milder and
more easily reconciled. The self-satisfied optimism
of the middle Victorian period easily forgot the
disturbed beginnings of English democracy during
the preceding age.

As the national will now shared more and more
in the direction of public affairs, the mechanism
of government was adapted to these new circum-
stances. The great political parties, after 1832,
were modernized. The names of Whigs and
Tories were fraught with antiquated associations;
they evoked the memories of the eighteenth cen-
tury, of intrigues between the leading families, of
private competition, Court cabals, selfish struggles
between the two portions of one oligarchy, both
of them routine-ridden and conservative. New
watchwords, suggestive of principles and not of
ancient traditions, were needed for the ampler and
graver problems raised by the industrial revolution,
by the victory of the middle classes. The Whigs
became Liberals, the Tories called themselves
Conservatives. The alternation in power of the
two parties kept its relative regularity; but the

70 MODERN ENGLAND

tendencies they stood for grew more clearly-
defined, and the differences between them were
more pronounced. These differences were to get
gradually weaker again as years went by, down to
the end of the century.

In Liberalism, the Whig spirit refreshed and
renewed its temper; it assimilated something of
the utilitarian doctrines and the Benthamite
philosophy; it became a force making for rational
progress and systematic reform, positive in political
matters, rather negative in matters social, and
always inclined to be critical and individualistic.
In Conservatism, the Tory spirit was to be found
again, with its eager devotion to the prestige of
the Crown, its loyalty to the Church, its prefer-
ence for the upholding of the existing order. But
to these, new elements were added, completing and
sometimes contradicting its bland respect for tradi-
tion : a shrewd realization of necessary changes, a
constant anxiety to forestall political crises, a desire
to allay revolutionary tendencies by timely con-
cessions. Under the influence of the emotional
reaction, the Conservative party obeyed the im-
pulse given by a great statesman, Disraeli; it paid
unsparing attention to social difficulties, and
claimed to oppose a constructive ideal of patriarchal
organic monarchy to the destructive anarchical
aims of the Liberal party. This opposition was to
grow oarticularly significant when a third party,
that of labour, rose in the twentieth century.

As for the English constitution itself, it under-
went no substantial change; but the precedents,
ever supple and flexible, which constituted it were

LAWS AND MANNERS 71

adapted to new circumstances. The House of
Commons more directly represented the nation;
its power and privileges were still on the increase,
whilst those of the hereditary Chamber insensibly
declined. It was more and more clearly under-
stood that money bills belonged to the exclusive
competence of the Commons ; ministers were
responsible to them, and so conformed to the
wishes of their majority. For the last time, in
1834, King William IV dismissed the Melbourne
Ministry of his own accord; for the last time in the
nineteenth century, in i860, the Lords attempted
to modify a Finance Bill. The predominance of
the Commons was thenceforth the main principle
of government; chosen from among the party in
power, the Prime Minister was the true head of
the executive. Great personalities, Disraeli, Glad-
stone, soon conferred the sanction of success on
this more logical and clearer organization, this
simpler working of the political mechanism; and
the same England in which Pitt and Fox were
formerly dependent on the favour of the monarch,
witnessed the functioning of the parliamentary
system in conditions outwardly analogous to those
of the French Republic.

However, the authority of the Crown is not in
the English democracy a mere survival of the past.
On the contrary, during the last century it has
resumed much of its strength and prestige. The
Kings of the Hanoverian family, since 17 14, had
let all material influence over State affairs slip
from their idle or unworthy hands; the tradition
obtained that the King reigned but governed not;

72 MODERN ENGLAND

irresponsible, the monarch partook neither of the
risks nor of the privileges of power. The lowest
ebb was reached by the English Crown in the first
thirty years of the nineteenth century. The reign
of Victoria was the beginning of an evolution in
the opposite direction. The bitterest foes of the
authority of the sovereign were the great Whig
families, the members of the oligarchy which
during the eighteenth century practically ruled
over English politics. The victory of the middle
classes in the Reform Acts, by overthrowing caste
government, has restored a wider and more direct
contact between the sovereign and the nation at
large. A popular King, in the constitutional
regime of democratic England, is a power with
which the elected or hereditary representatives of
the country have to reckon.

The personal character of Queen Victoria, the
dignity of her life, her political insight, did much
to give these new conditions their full effect. The
reign of Edward VII, as will be shown subse-
quently, continued and still further increased this
revival of the prestige of the Crown. But among
the causes of this change, besides social circum-
stances and the democratic evolution, other influ-
ences of a moral and intellectual kind should not
be forgotten. The instinctive movement of
emotional and imaginative reconstruction which
has, during the last sixty years, reacted against
individualistic rationalism, is the main source of
social monarchy as well as of imperialism. It is
to the revenge of instinct and to the doctrines
which embody it — to the new Toryism of Disraeli

LAWS AND MANNERS 73

principally — that the restoration of the royal
authority in the nineteenth century must be
ascribed.

II

The great wave of theoretic and practical ration-
alism which submerged England about 1830 and
slowly ebbed away till the end of the century,
driven back by the ho'stile tide of instinct, has
not only brought with it a readjustment of the
political equilibrium and a readaptation of the
mechanism of government to the new conditions.
The whole social order was modified according to
the same principles. From 1820 to 1870, the
several provinces of administration, the criminal
law, the great municipal or national functions were
reorganized in agreement with the same tendencies.
It was, so to speak, a clearing away of all the bushy
undergrowth which the passive tradition of Eng-
lish empiricism had allowed to thrive. The task
was urgently needed. Whilst modern industry,
the new facilities afforded to traffic and trade, the
rise of towns, the development of the middle class,
had been everywhere diffusing a new atmosphere,
the structure of society, about the time of the first
Reform Act, was still essentially archaic. Dickens's
novels give us an accurate picture of it; to the end
of his life, the great novelist drew his material from
the rich fund of observation he had stored in his
youth, and he described a merry quiet England,
following the tried paths, the homely ways of the
eighteenth century. The same society is depicted

74 MODERN ENGLAND

by Thackeray; it bears, too, more resemblance to
the England of Fielding than to that of to-day.
On the contrary, the first half of Queen Victoria's
reign had hardly elapsed when Meredith and
Hardy came forward, whose very different sensi-
bilities absorbed and reflected a society so much
transformed. The modernization of England was
effected in laws, no less than in manners, as late
and as slowly as possible, after the old-fashioned
modes of life had been doomed by the political
fate which revealed itself in 1832. And yet it has
been effected, sooner and more completely than
her past would have allowed one to expect.

The first effects of this movement were per-
ceptible as early as the eve of the Reform Act.
The philosophic Radicals and the Benthamites
in their propaganda rose against the body of
customs and precedents which made up English
law; in this intricate maze, their logic pointed out
innumerable contradictions, their humane sense of
justice denounced excessive severities. The legal
protection of property was still, about that time, so
utterly uncompromising, that the most petty theft
was punished with death. In the years imme-
diately after Waterloo, a series of special measures
began the recasting and the mitigation of criminal
law. About 1850, the penalties enacted by the
code of punishments answered, on the whole, to
the exigencies of the average conscience; thirty
years before, they so obviously overshot the mark
that sentences, in a great many cases, were not
carried out. To the same spirit of liberal con-
sistency the working classes, in 1824, owed the

LAWS AND MANNERS 75

right of combining in order to bring the pressure
of their concerted action to' bear on the labour
market. Strikes thus became lawful in England,
thanks to the very men who, in a different
field, were to oppose the beginnings of factory-
legislation.

Another great victory of political rationalism
over instinct was religious emancipation. In
1828, the abolition of the Test Act gave Dissenters
a free access to Parliament and public functions;
the next year, Roman Catholics in their turn were
granted full civil rights. In these reforms, one
must acknowledge, besides the active impulse
originating in the Liberal party and the democratic
doctrines, the assistance conceded by the Conserva-
tive party. We see here at work the method of
experimental adaptation which was to be that of
English Toryism through the nineteenth century.
It had already practised it during the previous
ages; but in the period of intense evolution
brought about by modern life, this experimental
tradition borrowed something from the boldness
and clearness of the reforming theories; it felt their
influence and was carried away by them. If most
of the measures with liberal tendencies were passed
by the heirs of the Tories, it was because the
pliancy of their principles allowed them to yield for
a while to the adverse principles; it was also be-
cause they had more clearly realized their own
political part, and the necessary surrenders. It is
impossible not to discern the revolutionary influ-
ence of the new England in the remarkable
acceleration which the slow concessions and sacri-

j6 MODERN ENGLAND

fices of Conservative empiricism have shown
during the nineteenth century. An important
aspect of instinctive adaptation, from this point
of view, belongs in fact to meditated adaptation.
The recent years have revealed to us how far this
change could permeate the tactics of the party
which boasted of being only guided by habits,
and which to-day seems to own a method.

Immediately after 1832, the Liberal Parliament,
returned under the Reform Act, put into practice
the two main principles on which the electoral
battle had been fought and won. Public relief to
the needy had been organized, since the time of
Elizabeth, under the presiding notion of the
mutual dependence which, in the older society,
linked classes and castes to one another. Deprived
of all assistance by the scattering of religious
orders, the poor had been committed to the care
of their parishes. This system implied an acknow-
ledged right to live; by its working, it inevitably
put a premium on the perpetuation and propaga-
tion of misery. It was thus contrary to the
individualistic spirit of classical economy, and to
the recommendations of Malthus. The New Poor
Law (1834) reorganized and systematized public
assistance. Gathered in special asylums, where
children and adults, men and women were kept
apart, paupers were compelled to work, and their
diet was made sparing enough not to encourage
laziness. The workhouse had never been popular;
thenceforth it was even less so, and this law has
not a little contributed, ever since, to foster social
rancour among the destitute.

LAWS AND MANNERS 77

The preceding year, slavery had been abolished
in the English colonies. In 1835, tne Municipal
Corporations Act remodelled the administration of
towns. It was the starting-point of the irresistible
movement to which elected councils, the necessary
instruments of the democratic life of modern
human aggregates, owed their ever-increasing
powers and authority during the nineteenth cen-
tury. Instead of closed privileged bodies, self-
recruiting, the corporations became direct expres-
sions of local interests. The creation of county
councils, in 1888, was the final stage in this
development. At the same time there was a
decline in the ancient influence of the Squire,
usually a Justice, who formerly held in his own
hands the civil and moral government of country
districts ; and English society started on its
progress towards that extension of the paid bureau-
cracy and civil services which to-day characterizes
it as well as all European nations. To the same
spirit were due the postal reform, which instituted
a uniform democratic tax instead of the costly
complexity and injustice of the old system; the
abolition, in 1871, of the purchase of military
commissions, by which a better order was intro-
duced into the selection and promotion of officers;
and the Ballot Act of 1872.

As has been seen before, widely diverging
interests and opposed doctrines were at the bottom
of the agitation for the suppression of tariffs. The
victory of Free Trade was the crowning triumph of
the middle class; but so far as economic and
political forces require the help of intellectual

78 MODERN ENGLAND

forces to find both their expression and confirma-
tion, it was a triumph for liberal logic and classical
economy. Even before the Reform Act, Huskis-
son had begun relaxing the system of prohibitive
duties. From 1838, the Anti-Corn Law League
aimed at rousing public opinion against the privi-
lege of landlords. In 1842, Peel, a Conservative
minister, won over to the new ideas, commenced
the reform of the tariff; he went on with it in
1845 and 1846; this last year saw the complete
abolition of the Corn Laws. In 1852, Disraeli
solemnly discarded the protectionist doctrine in the
name of the Tory party.

With most of his political friends, this conver-
sion was not so much an intellectual adhesion to
principles, as the acknowledgment of a successful
economic experiment. English prosperity, since
1 842, had been constantly on the increase. Com-
merce, like industry, had been much benefited by
Free Trade ; agriculture seemed not to have
materially suffered from it. A great wave of
optimism rose at this time in the whole nation,
and for a long period associated the success of
Corn-Law repeal with an unconquerable hope in
the future. Feeling secure in the assurance of its
strength, the English shipping interest, at the same
time, gave up the privilege it owed to the protec-
tion of the law; the Navigation Act was abolished
in 1849, and foreign ships were allowed to com-
pete, in English sea-ports, with British vessels.
Thus was completed the work of liberation by
means of which, thanks to the harmony between
interests and principles, the Liberal doctrines
and laisser-faire have extended their hold over

LAWS AND MANNERS 79

English economic life. In the same age, as will be
seen, under other influences, the contrary practice
of intervention implanted itself in social matters.
The commercial arrangement between England
and France (i860) was another application of
Free Trade ; it was due, on the English side,
to Cobden's initiative, and to the great Liberal
minister, Gladstone.

Lastly, the higher activities of the nation also
were reached by the spirit of systematic readjust-
ment. England had not yet officially recognized
the educative function of the State. The utili-
tarian doctrines and the theories of the philoso-
phic Radicals had emphasized the vital importance
of public education, the formative influence of
free minds and enlightened wills. The advent of
democracy, thenceforth unavoidable, called for a
huge effort to spread culture and moral discipline.
The new society still sought for its guiding prin-
ciples in the morals of puritanism, the hold of
which on public manners had been further
strengthened by the victory of the middle class.
But the intellectual development of the people had
been neglected in England for the last two cen-
turies. The average standard of knowledge was
lower there, barring the elite, than in Germany
and France. The old Universities had been
drowsing in the torpor of a formal teaching and
antiquated traditions. The private schools, free
from all control, were most often managed by men
destitute of conscience or culture. The public
schools, exclusively aristocratic, at least maintained
a pretty high ideal of civic formation, and Rugby
was even then starting a movement of reform.

80 MODERN ENGLAND

It was in 1833 tnat a veiT moderate sum was
first granted for the building of schools. In 1839,
the grant was increased; a committee of the Privy
Council was appointed to see that the money was
efficiently spent. From these humble beginnings
sprang the Board of Education, with all its present
powers. From 1830 to 1870, the central power
extended its sway over public instruction.
Matthew Arnold's personal action, his theory of
culture, his attempt to elevate English traditional
ways to the same level as French methods and
German pedagogy, were important influences in
this progress. The famous Act of 1870 created
a State system of elementary education. In every
place where free schools were deficient, special
Boards were to allow out of the rates for the open-
ing of neutral schools, in which religious teaching,
confined to the reading of the Bible, would be
given in an undenominational spirit. As early as
1835 had been created the University of Londoh,
a more modern intellectual centre, freer from aristo-
cratic and religious influences than the venerable
colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.

On several points besides, the logic of Liberal-
ism reduced the traditional abuses which served
the interest of the Established Church. In 1833,
ten Anglican sees were suppressed in Roman
Catholic Ireland. In 1869, the Irish branch of
the English Church was disestablished. These
measures were not carried without raising much
opposition; they contributed to bring about the
religious revival from which a new strength accrued
to both Anglicanism and Catholicism.

LAWS AND MANNERS 81

III

The victory of modern England thus found its
echo in the laws. Political, administrative and
social life were reorganized under the guiding
stimulus of an aspiration towards order and logic.
Of course the extent of this transformation should
not be exaggerated; it was neither complete
nor revolutionary. English society about 1880
differed from what it had been about 1830 only by
its mixed character. Instead of a structure still
wholly feudal, a constant preference for the spon-
taneous growths of life, and an entirely empirical
adaptation to conditions of life long-standing and
dimly perceived, we find an almost democratic
government, partly adapted to more clearly dis-
cerned conditions, according to better-defined
methods. In the working of this organism, a very
large part must still be ascribed to such forces,
ideas, feelings and influences as were merely in-
herited from the past. Neither the political con-
stitution, nor the system of administration, nor
law, nor religion, nor social habits, nor manners,
recall to the observer's mind the centralized
uniformity, the detachment from tradition, the
spirit of equality, which were the main features
of French society.

Visiting England in i860, Taine, like so many
others, chiefly remarked the strong stamp of her
empiricism, and the characteristics by which the
English nation differed from the French. Empha-
sized by the authority of his genius, supported

82 MODERN ENGLAND

since by the Conservative school whose leader he
was, his judgments, however acute they might be,
still showed a somewhat insufficient knowledge of
modern historical evolution. All things con-
sidered, it was from 1830 to 1884 that there first
appeared, under the stress of the economic changes
which moulded contemporary Europe, that inner
leaning of England towards a new ideal of con-
scious efficient activity which is to-day at stake in
her dramatic struggle against herself. Constantly
interrupted, crossed, often thwarted by the hostile
action of conservative forces, the weight of tradi-
tional habits, and the irresistible rebellion of
instinct, this intellectualization of English empiri-
cism is none the less, below the surface ripples,
the main current of national evolution that the
nineteenth century has bequeathed to the twentieth.
And the example of contemporary England may
no longer be invoked to defend the ideal of a
conservatism resigned only to unavoidable sur-
renders. There is breaking out in it, working in
it a spirit of reforming initiative and systematic
adaptation which is the hidden soul of the present.
During the quiet period from 1850 to 1880,
the intellectual and social forces which were in con-
flict in the previous age settled into a temporary
equilibrium. The middle Victorian period was an
era of relative stability. Typical manners developed
then which became characteristic of the new
English society. Middle-class habits coloured all
the aspects of life. Their peculiar character might
be described by means of that incomplete and
imperfect modernization already apparent in the

LAWS AND MANNERS 83

social structure. In this mixed essence, two
elements, two tendencies were discernible. So far
as the manners of i860 manifested a new spirit,
they partook of recent changes, of the democratic
evolution; so far as they preserved traditional and
older forms, they illustrated the resistance which
checked or retarded that evolution, and thus be-
longed to the revenge of instinct. Let us consider
here the former tendency; the latter will be studied
further on.

The main features of middle-class England were
a more conscious and strenuous effort of initiative
applied to the utilitarian labour of economic,
political and administrative life; the sense of enter-
prise and a gift for business, implying some power
of organization; and at the same time, a routine-
ridden passive inferiority in the disinterested fields
of thought and art. The apostle of culture,
Matthew Arnold, imposed a name on this unfitness
for artistic invention : Philistinism. The atten-
tion of the industrial and trading classes, which
owing to their activity and wealth set the tone in
the new society, was entirely bent upon gain ; they
took nothing into account but material facts,
acknowledged only measurable quantities, and
allowed the inner life to wither away. Reduced
to narrow formalism or puritan strictness, religion
no longer brought them a breath of beauty and
joy. What appealed to them was cheap, common-
place, sentimental or pointlessly pretty art; con-
ventional and snobbish literature. This was the
reason why the rebellion of instinct against the tame
middle-class rationalism was headed by the prophets
g 2

84 MODERN ENGLAND

of living and expansive religion, of rich spon-
taneous art, of mystical morals — by such men as
Newman, Ruskin, Carlyle. The moral personality
of the English people had as it were been impover-
ished by the application of its energy to the problems
of the material world. To the improvement in its
external organization, brought about by more
efficient methods, corresponded no such develop-
ment in its disinterested faculties. The revival of
the higher activities of the soul was produced by
the movements opposed to democratic rationalism.
The literature of England is not in such close
touch as that of Germany or France with the great
social and intellectual syntheses which yet have
been no less powerful in shaping its course. The
framework of philosophy is usually slighter and
far less apparent in English writers than in the
German ones; and the universally essential and
deep connections between literary works and the
phases of social life are in the former less obvious
and suggestive than elsewhere. This seeming
divorce between art and philosophy or life is due
to the particular character of the English mind, to
which abstract speculation is an unfrequent, quite
peculiar form of activity; and to English manners,
in which, more efficiently than in others, moral
and social conventions stand between the creations
of artistic imagination and the contact of crude
realities. In spite of the favourable reception of
the novel with a purpose and of the social descrip-
tive novel, in spite of the vein of strong realism
which runs through English literature as a whole,
one may say that by means of an idealization it has

LAWS AND MANNERS 85

traditionally aimed at freeing itself from the
trammels of life, politics and ideas, or at least from
their most prosaic elements.

We must not, then, expect to find the same close
relation as in Germany between the succession of
literary schools in England, and the great move-
ments of facts and doctrines which guided her
evolution. Neither modern industry, nor the
liberal philosophy, permeated the imagination and
sensibility of the public at large deeply enough
to become part and parcel of the social or intel-
lectual significance of all works of art; their
influence upon literature was limited, and often
indirect. Literature nevertheless, in some of its
aspects, expressed from 1830 to 1880 the trans-
formation of society and thought under the action
of industrial rationalism.

No school of philosophy and literature issued a
manifesto to proclaim the principles of a demo-
cratic and liberal art; there were, however, striking
affinities between the liberal democracy and a
portion at least of literature. Poets like Tennyson,
thinkers like Carlyle, and theorists like Ruskin,
voiced the mystical intuitions and the traditionalist
instincts; on the contrary, the novel, whose popu-
larity kept increasing as the reading public was
extended, was closely connected with the needs, the
feelings, the ideas of the new England. Taken as
a whole, the group formed by Dickens, Thackeray
and George Eliot constituted the transition from
romanticism to naturalism; it illustrated the con-
verging influences which led literature, about the
middle of the century, towards a critical, realistic

86 MODERN ENGLAND

and philanthropic inspiration. English naturalism,
as it appeared fully developed in George Eliot,
was, as in France, the product of a time in which
middle-class democracy came to the front, whilst
the diffusion of scientific rationalism imparted
more strictness and method to observation, more
philosophical and humanitarian views to writers.
Dickens was the novelist of the lower middle
class; he carried within himself the desire for
political reforms and social justice he owed to his
birth, education and temperament. Though with
him liberal logic was touched with emotion, though
he denounced the hardness and dryness of the pre-
vailing individualistic ideal, and thus partook to
some extent of the revenge of instinct, he was none
the less all his life long a " Radical,5' the adversary
of antiquated institutions and conservative routine.
His novels promoted the necessary reforms; he
contributed to clear English society of its parasitic
abuses; and to infuse into it more kindness as well
as more reason. Thackeray, a psychologist and an
artist, wrote in a spirit of moral equality between
all men. His free clear-sighted criticism dissolved
the illusive prestige with which tradition clothed
aristocratic bodies; he saw more nobleness and
beauty in simple souls than among the great of this
world; and his irony delighted in the ruthless study
of snobbery, the fruit of conservative instincts
which had again struck root and blossomed in
middle-class servility. George Eliot conveyed
through her novels an earnest, meditative thought,
which the. scientific view of things had coloured
with sadness and sublimity. She, too, preferred to

LAWS AND MANNERS 87

depict the lives of the humble; she, too, lulled and
comforted human suffering with a gospel of pity
and sympathy; but more consciously with her, as
with Thackeray or Dickens, the love of mankind
grew to assume the first place in religious life.
Open to all the influences of critical thought,
she stood, about i860, as a living synthesis of the
intellectual movements derived from pure reason.
Realistic in different degrees, unequally hostile
to the middle-class atmosphere which permeated
their novels as well as life, those three writers
were still the outcome of the new society; even
whilst outgrowing them and turning against them,
they carried in themselves the influences of
democracy and rationalism.

IV

Secure in the enjoyment of its prosperity, freed
from the most tangible absurdities or most glaring
injustices which galled it in its interests or instincts,
the middle-class society born of the industrial
revolution devo'ted itself to the pursuit of a
practical adaptation always incomplete, always
requiring fresh efforts: comfort. This material
harmony of wants and life was the degenerate form
assumed by the spirit of reforming logic which
the triumph of the middle class had brought in its
train. It was the only kind of improvement in
well-being this class thenceforth clung to. When
new problems later on forced themselves upon it,
it had lost all nerve to grasp and solve them; and

88 MODERN ENGLAND

new social elements, instinct with a fresher zeal,
were to take up again the work of necessary
adaptation it had only begun.

English society, however, was sometimes startled
out of the drowsy optimism to which it abandoned
itself from 1850 to 1880. In 1854 and 1855, tne
Crimean War unpleasantly awoke it from its self-
confidence. The army, the conduct of operations,
the auxiliary departments, the home administra-
tion, all appeared suddenly chaotic, inorganic,
purposeless, devoid of all method and rule. A fit
of anger and humiliation seized on all minds; for
a while, England realized, more clearly than she
had ever yet done, the besetting sin of her
empiricism and routine. On all sides, a better
adaptation, a better adjustment of means to ends
was demanded. The question of national efficiency
was raised for the first time. Then, the war over,
past difficulties were forgotten ; the measures taken
were left incomplete; public services fell back into
their old grooves, and so'ciety returned to its
optimism. It was to be ruthlessly shaken out of
it at the end of the century.

BOOK II

THE REVENGE OF INSTINCT (1832-1884)

INTRODUCTION

At the same time as English democracy was
being moulded by the pressure of the industrial
system and the influence of liberal ideas, modern
England was deeply stamped by a complementary
movement of action and thought. To a different
moral and social world belonged the works and
doctrines which during the last half-century have
corrected or compensated the effects of rationalism
and industry. Instead of a conscious, methodical
and clear adaptation, we have here a spontaneous,
eager, confused upheaval of bodies crushed by
suffering and souls preyed upon by secret uneasi-
ness; no order, no system in the theoretic or
practical complaints, no unity in the principles, no
consistency in the doctrines; the lost equilibrium -
blindly tended to reassert itself in a new balance;
imperfectly adapted, the race was bound to readapt
itself, according to the all-powerful and unjustified
laws of instinct. The transformation of English)
society, of its manners, its organs, its preferences !
and ideas, under the action of social solidarity and ]
of the prophets' idealism, drove back the evolu-

89

9o MODERN ENGLAND

tion of England to its empirical traditions; and it
was not by mere chance that this counter-move-
ment of thought and will often took the shape of
a revolt against industry, the modern spirit, the
ways of the new time; that it sought for progress
in a retrogression, and extolled the past as a con-
trast to the present. A rich manifold complex of
men, forces, acts and ideas, between which the
obvious differences might hide the secret harmony,
this aspect of modern England, this phase in her
formation, was directed as a whole by the open or
hidden influence of intuition; it may be called a
revenge of instinct.

It was the outcome of both the needs of the
body and the troubles of the spirit. Its causes
/were, first, the social anarchy brought about by the
(industrial system, with the breaking of the old
retters which bound but upheld men, with the
growth of the proletariat and the extension of
poverty; next, the slow gnawing of commercial
calculation and utilitarian harshness on the in-
eradicable feelings which feed the English inner
life. Mysticism or religious faith, the belief in
another world, the faculty of moral perception,
family love and national or human solidarity, the
yearning after tenderness, the craving for beauty,
the longing for the communion of souls, all such
aspirations were bruised by a society where the
vile rush after ignoble pleasures and unveiled
interests held universal sway in an atmosphere of
universal selfishness and relentless strife. There-
fore the equilibrium once more destroyed tried
to re-establish itself by restoring the links

INTRODUCTION 91

between men and the peace between classes; by
reviving the disused spiritual activities and emo-
tional functions. The indignation and the endeav-
ours of men of social good-will, the economic
reforms, the organization of trade-unions, the birth
of solidarity as an efficient force, the doctrines and
fiery criticisms of the prophets, Carlyle, Ruskin;
the religious revival and the aesthetic movement;
the first conscious stirrings of imperialism; all that
during the last seventy years has tended to render
England more homogeneous, more stable, more
serene, more earnest and beautiful — or at least, all
that has tended to this consummation by other
ways than those of reason — may be traced to one
source, the immediate, obstinate, traditional trust
of the English genius in its instinctive inspirations
and infallible vitality.

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS

I. The social elements of the reaction against the new
order ; the strength and prestige of the nobility ; the moral
elements; sensibility and the idealistic needs. — II. The
economic unrest ; the industrial anarchy ; the forms and effects
of want in the nineteenth century.

From 1832 to 1884, a body of facts — economic
wants, spiritual requirements — called for a new
adjustment of middle-class industrial England to
the necessities of life. The doctrines which de-
manded and planned out this adaptation, the laws
which to some extent realized it in manners, sprang
primarily from those requirements and wants, and
must be accounted for by them.

A well-known feature of the English mind is
the readiness and regularity with which, in politics,
it brings on the reaction after the action. Tradi-
tionally swayed by a dim sense of instinctive
wisdom, it has ever sought for a warrant against
the possible errors of reason in the successive or
simultaneous development of contradictory or
complementary tendencies. The Liberal doctrin-
aires of 1830 had tried to curb this habit by force,

92

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 93

and had succeeded for a while. Their relatively
uncompromising principles, their radical doctrines,
had impressed on both friends and foes the notion
that England had just gone through a revolution-
ary stage. It was enough to put in motion that
deep-set silent-working spring, that inner mechan-
ism which, with irresistible unerring strength, after
a pronounced swing in one direction, drives men's
thoughts back again to the other. Immediately
after the great reforms of 1834 and 1835, tms new \
leaning of most minds grew evident. It brought
back the Conservatives to power as early as 1841.
It failed to check the progressive advent of
democracy; it allowed the Liberal programme to be
carried out by degrees, introducing a minimum
dose of logic and method into the social order.
But it was effective in raising a hostile tide of
forces, ideas and feelings against the current which
was carrying England away. The reaction against
liberalism and democracy, the opposition of the
older society to the new one, thus owed their exist-
ence and unity to the very forces against which
they waged war; they sprang, previous to all ex-
perience, from pure instinct, from the fundamental
law which rules over the balance of English
politics, like gravitation over that of bodies.

But at the same time, experience strengthened
this reaction, confirmed and fostered it on every
side. Industrial middle-class England had no
sooner conquered the opposition of the old world,
than along with the consequences of her prin-
ciples, her faults came to broad daylight. The
individualistic ideal she brought with her, if it

94 MODERN ENGLAND

answered to the needs of the time, if it expressed
at once old tendencies and the fresh vigour of
commercial forces, could not assert itself without
hurting other instincts, other tendencies, ways of
life no less ancient and hallowed. The new ideal
consisted in political liberalism, by which the indi-
vidual was set free; in democracy, which over-
threw the traditional hierarchies; in economic
laisser-faire, which magnified competition into a
law of life. A destructive and negative ideal, it
thus disintegrated the so far co-ordinated elements
of the social organism; and all such parts of this
organism as did not derive a necessary freedom
from this disintegration, were bound to be injured
by it and to set up against it a defensive reaction.
These parts of the nation, these classes, though
defeated, were still powerful. It v/as first and
chiefly the landed aristocracy, the nobility and
gentry, who stood for the old order, its feelings
and discipline, against the encroaching middle
classes. The landlords, still surrounded and pro-
tected by the instinctive deference of the country
people; the owners of those castles and manor-
houses whence political authority, financial in-
fluence, judicial rights and patriarchal charity had
emanated for centuries; those barons of a feudal
organization which economic decay had under-
mined without destroying its prestige, in the
England of 1840, through themselves and their
immediate followers, still wielded an enormous
social power. From their ranks still came, with
the members of the Upper House, almost all the
great dignitaries of the State. Their influence was

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 95

closely connected with that of the Established
Church; they supported her, and shared in her
authority. Their word was still law in those wide
provinces of Britain which the feverish anxiety of
industry had left untouched; the whole of agricul-
tural and pastoral England — that of the South
and East especially — remained, even in the middle
of the nineteenth century, under the undisputed
sway of the old families and manners. The middle
and working classes swarmed elsewhere; here, in
this smiling quiet scenery, where national life
grown torpid seemed to slumber, the masters of
the soil had not conceded any of their proud
privileges to the upstart lords of iron and cotton.

And their authority still ruled directly or in-
directly over a large portion of the people. Within
the circle of their influence moved all the members
of country society, necessarily grouped according
to a traditional hierarchy; farmers great and small,
peasants of all kinds; servants, from the steward
to the gamekeeper; tradespeople, shopkeepers and
craftsmen of the neighbouring market-town;
lawyers, physicians and clergymen attached to the
lord of the castle for interested motives, by his
free hospitality, by common tastes and habits. The
country world was thus truly a world of its own;
the economic oppositions, both effects and causes,
which elsewhere accompanied the rise of modern
England, were there softened down, modified by
the still active spirit of the old manners.

There, the middle and the working classes — i. e.
the professional people and the field labourers —
were severed neither from the aristocracy nor

96 MODERN ENGLAND

from each other, by sharp and passion-stirring con-
flicts of interest. A rationalist doctor now and
then, a dissenting minister, would evade through
his unbelief or his faith the powerful hold of the
spirit which ruled over provincial society. And
no doubt agricultural distress, in more than one
place, roused resentment and even riot. Among
the violent episodes of English history in that dis-
turbed time, many — rick-fires, scenes of robbery
or murder — took place in villages, farmyards
or moors. But in spite of these local outbursts,
the country people as a whole remained more
respectful of the hereditary order, more submissive
to the guidance of its temporal or spiritual masters,
than the inhabitants of large towns and industrial
centres. Thus were increased in number and
diversity the social elements which, injured in their
interests by the victory of the new England, con-
stituted a body of forces and influences hostile to
her. The weight of the passively accepted tradi-
tions was superadded, to counterbalance the
strength of aggressive individualism, to that of
the threatened privileges struggling for existence.
But over the whole of society, both urban and
rural, spread far and wide another preference, a
psychological and moral one, by which one half of
England was united in a common reaction against
the new spirit. The utilitarian philosophy,
political economy, religious liberalism, evolution-
ism, all the intellectual movements which followed
the rise of English democracy, were equally
characterized by their exclusive appeal to reason.
They formed the most rationalistic body of

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 97

doctrines which England had yet entrusted, were
it for one moment, with the direction of her
thought and conduct. Now, the average temper
of English minds is such, that an exclusive con-
fidence in the rational faculties has been so far
limited to a few among them, and that this mental
attitude has never been or seemed to be accepted
at large without being at once eagerly opposed,
and soon defeated, by the contrary tendencies.

The exercise of the emotions, of practical or
mystical faith, of fanciful or disciplined imagina-
tion, has been indispensable, ever since the decisive
ages in which the national idiosyncrasy was
evolved, to the moral health of most Englishmen.
Taken as a whole, this people, in all the periods of
its modern history, has shown glowing religious
passions and enthusiasms; its literature, its poetry
are instinct with a deep tender sensibility, a free,
rich, gorgeous imagination; its daily home life
hides, under an assumed cold self-possession,
genuine attachments, a full earnest sense of the
moving and soul-ennobling aspects of life, sincere
beliefs seriously carried out. The respect for emo-
tion, the need of emotion are quite as essential to
the English mind as its calm energy and firm hold
on reality. Therefore the abundant source of
mystical ardours, of idealistic outbursts, is ever
ready to spring afresh in most hearts, on those
occasions chiefly when the inborn instinct of moral
balance is calling for a reaction against the passing
predominance of positive reason.

Even the advance made by meditated adaptation
in the consciousness of modern England has not

98 MODERN ENGLAND

encroached upon the fund of passion, of emotion
and faith which most of her sons preserve in them-
selves. It is by one of those supple compromises
in which her practical genius excels, that to-day,
in an increasing number of men, she unites the
clear-sighted shrewd sense of the utilitarian logic
life requires, with loyalty to the hereditary feel-
ings— the worship of the home, of the fatherland,
of duty, of the national Church, of Christ. Rather
than renounce these venerable sacred occasions
for salutary, stirring and purifying emotions, the
average soul will prefer to remain inwardly
divided and at war with itself, — modern and prac-
tical in most of its feelings and actions, guided by
positive experience or science; and at the same
time, in the province of the inner life, or on the
public occasions for symbolic pious acts, entirely
devoted to the collective emotions which have
preserved the cohesion, the unity, the health of
the national character for centuries. England has
never been able, never been willing, never perhaps
will consent, to disown for long the idealistic feel-
ings from which, exclusively or concurrently with
utilitarian reason, she expects the full satisfaction
of her heart and instinct. Therefore the victory
of industrial interests and rationalist doctrines,
about 1830, and the lasting consequences of this
social and moral transformation all through the
century, were to call forth a contrary and com-
pensatory movement of emotions and ideas among
men of feeling and passion, and among the more
numerous order of the average minds, blindly bent
on the restoration of moral balance.

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 99

The moral unrest from which this idealistic
reaction, this revenge of instinct sprang, assumed
many forms, was felt in many of the aspects of
life. The middle class had conquered by means
of industry and trade; it brought with itself and
diffused into the national atmosphere a calculating
spirit of interested ingenuity. The breaking of
the old social links, the overturning of the political
and economic order, the undermining of habits
and traditions, everything contributed to afflict
tender souls with the impression of a moral
calamity. This impression was strengthened under
the withering breath of utilitarian criticism, of
rationalist philosophy, of evolutionism and posi-
tivism. A humiliating, prosaic and cold view of
human nature, of the world and of destiny was re-
placing the soothing illusions fostered by the old
beliefs. As at all the stages of scientific progress,
heart-rending sufferings, crises of despair, would
seize on such souls as were unable to find a new
equilibrium on the new basis, or to make the
necessary delusions bloom again on the bare walls
within which they were imprisoned by reason.

The irresistible impetus of a wholly material
civilization seemed to carry mankind away in a
feverish whirl towards lightless, joyless regions.
Every day brought a new invention, a new victory
of mind over matter; every day, too, destroyed
a faith, a reason to live, a motive for pride or
dignity, and drew man closer to matter which he
subdued and by which he was himself absorbed.
At a time when the eager, impatient middle classes
were dealing the first blow to the time-honoured

H 2

J

/

ioo MODERN ENGLAND

fabric of political oligarchy; when clear-sighted,
hard-hearted philosophers, whose figures, magni-
fied and distorted, haunted the popular imagina-
tion, Bentham, Malthus, were imposing the
tyranny of their cold, cruel calculations upon
society and life; when sacrilegious criticism beset
religion and the Church, and threatened the super-
natural without which man could not live; v/hen
the boundless power of money was displayed in
broad daylight, and when manners appeared
dominated by the selfish pursuit of comfort and
gain, it was only natural that the idealistic instincts
of the English soul, bruised, wounded, distressed
in the depths of subconsciousness, should awake
from their torpor, and bring forth a rich manifold
revival in all the fields of thought and action.

And the concrete aspects of the present, no less
than the moral atmosphere, were such as to call
forth this revival. The physical and social sur-
roundings in which the new English civilization
was placed offended all eyes with ever more
glaring ugliness. Town life, the uprooting and
transplanting of the agricultural classes, put an end
to the invigorating wholesome contact between
man and nature; at a very early stage, in the first
thirty years of the nineteenth century, as soon as
the great industrial towns rose, this peculiar uneasi-
ness was felt and tried to express itself. Severed
from the glorious beauty of sky and earth, man
in towns met with squalor at every step. The
roads, grimy with soot and mud, which he trod
between the smutty rows of low houses, through
suburbs endlessly stretching away towards the

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS ibi

deserted fields, suggested to him only deep numb
feelings of sadness. Along with the advent of
the new manners, the victory of the middle class,
and the extension of the franchise, a uniform
prosaic dulness seemed to have hidden away the
gay, many-coloured variety of the old life; under
a sky darkened with smoke, the debasing pursuit
of gain, the crude display of tasteless luxury, were
the characteristics of modern society. Low mean
souls, a harsher competition, a cold utilitarianism
in human relations, vulgarity and ugliness in the
visible aspects of life, such seemed to be the moral
and social outcome of an over-praised material
progress.

Even in all those men whom the substitu-
tion of the new order for the old did not injure
in their interests and rights, the industrial and
middle-class civilization was bound to rouse many
a revolt; and the first consequences of rationalism
and democracy were bound to bring about im-
passioned reactions of sensibility and instinct
among the very men who were benefited by their
victory.

II

But industrial individualism contained another
germ of suffering and disorder. The social evil
from which the revenge of instinct took rise was
before all the economic anarchy — want. Directly
felt by the labouring classes, this cause roused the
complaints and revolts which disturbed England

.io2 :MODERN ENGLAND

from 1830 to 1850; indirectly perceived by others
through emotions of pity or fear, refracted in the
conscience of the higher classes, it resulted in the
doctrines and efforts of social good-will, it was the
source of State intervention.

Modern industry, as we have seen above, had
introduced forces making for rational and scientific
organization into the empirical tradition of Eng-
lish activity. But the power of co-ordination and
system which machinery constitutes had been at
first effective only within the factory, for the ex-
clusive benefit of production; and its incomplete
attraction had drawn to itself such material or
human elements only as its working required; out-
side, upon the whole of society, it had told, under
the law of that stern utilitarianism, as an influence
of disorder and social disintegration. It was by
degrees, and thanks to the reforming energies of
the properly human activities, that industry be-
came, for society at large, an agent of order and
meditated adaptation. And it is obvious enough
that this progress has not yet reached its final
stage. Though the industrial frame of mind,
generally speaking, was fitter for the psychological
changes required by modern conditions than was
the more timid and traditional spirit of the former
productive system; though the English middle
class had applied to the direction of public affairs
the more acute and more impatient realization of
facts it owed to the practice of business, — yet in-
dustry and trade, considered in themselves, began
but tardily to regulate the spontaneously unruly
action of their individualistic tendencies. From the

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 103

intellectual and moral point of view, the advance of
English thought in the nineteenth century towards
a clearer notion of efficient organization can be
traced back to the industrial revolution. In social
matters, about the middle of the century, this same
revolution appeared chiefly as a cause of anarchy.

The reason was that no law, no foresight of
probable or certain consequences, no broad dis-
interested reflection, had presided over the
development of industry. It had spread along
the lines of least resistance, through the most
favourable districts, drawing to itself the most
easily movable human masses, and imposing con-
ditions of life ruthlessly derived from the principle
of competition upon the particular world which
came into being under its sway. The organization
of labour, the rhythm of production and sale,
wages, the housing and hygiene of workmen, the
police of the working-class aggregates, — all these
material or moral aspects of industrial life, had
been shaped exclusively by the economic forces
and bore their rough irregular stamp : an unavoid-
able result of pure commercial utilitarianism, un-
aware as yet of the solicitude required by its
human capital; a necessary consequence, too, of
theoretic and practical individualism. Craving
for freedom and political and social emancipation,
the middle class had applied all its energy to
destroy the antiquated bonds which hampered its
productive activity; it was still unable to perceive
the new bonds it was itself to create. Political
economy, bent upon the demonstration of laisser-
faire, directly or indirectly countenanced this

104 MODERN ENGLAND

indifference or even encouraged it. The theory of
social intervention, before it could take shape, had
to overthrow economic dogmatism.

As early as the first years of the nineteenth
century, a dim feeling of unrest had revealed to a
few attentive observers the threatening perils im-
plied in the new industrial activity. Before 1830,
some incomplete measures had vainly attempted to
check the worst abuses. It was between 1830 and
1850 that the "condition of England" took the
first place in the preoccupations of the public; it
was from 1840 to 1845 tnat English distress
reached its climax. A series of sensational blue-
books brought into daylight the hidden scandals
of the factory, the mine and the slum; the apostles
of philanthropy were roused, and social charity
grew into a bold conscious force. The inorganic
incoherent working of industry was known as it
really was, and called for a thorough reform. Too
long postponed, the intervention of the collective
will and of the law was seen to be obviously and
immediately necessary.

The distress of 1840 resulted from the free play
of competition. Lowering the cost of production
as far as possible, industry allowed the pressure of
this economic law to bear unrestrictedly upon the
human agents it employed. The labour of women
and children, cheaper than that of men, was in
great demand. Children under ten were numer-
ous in spinning- or weaving-factories; girls, women
pregnant or after their confinement were required
to perform the same tasks as men. Country
parishes would deliver into the hands of manu-

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 105

facturers batches of pauper children who had fallen
into their care; the fate of these "apprentices"
constitutes a particularly shocking chapter in in-
dustrial history. The discipline of the work-room
was harsh; overseers were armed with whips;
machines were cleaned at meal-times, or while they
worked; accidents were numerous, and no com-
pensation was due. The working-day was as long
as pleased the employer; it usually exceeded twelve
hours, reached fifteen or even sixteen hours; night
work was everywhere exacted; the young and the
adult were given the same tasks. Though higher
than those of agriculture, the wages of industry,
in different economic surroundings, hardly sup-
ported a miserable diet. Arrangements now for-
bidden allowed the manufacturer to pay them in
kind, or to replace part of them by the letting of
cottages adjoining the works.

Nowhere else was the condition of labour harder
than in mines. There, very young children, for
fourteen hours running, would pull trucks along
low-roofed flooded galleries; manners were brutal,
life cruel, and men became more than half barbar-
ous. The official and self-respecting England was
horror-stricken when there suddenly rose before
her these ghastly hidden abominations. And the
debasement of souls answered to bodily sufferings.
The industrial class had grown up untouched by
any civilizing influence; the loose morals of the
factory were a by-word; they were encouraged by
the behaviour of employers or overseers. The
absolutely untaught condition of the workmen,
either children or adults, was emphasized at every

106 MODERN ENGLAND

page of the Parliamentary reports. Drunkenness
had ceaselessly increased ; the consumption of
alcohol, the number of public-houses, reached ever
higher figures from 1 8 1 5 to 1 840; street drunkards
became an accepted sight; Saturday nights and
Sundays in industrial districts then assumed the
peculiar features they have since kept. The
number of criminal offenders was equally on the
increase; and England maintained an army of
convicts in Australia.

Around the proper field of modern industry,
in the backward or minor branches of production,
the condition of wage-earners was no better.
Struck with decay by the combined influences of
the industrial and the agrarian revolutions, Eng-
lish agriculture laboured under a deep depression
all through the century; a series of causes or acci-
dents, about 1840, made the distress of the country
people equal to that of the town proletariat. From
18 15 to 1845, m spite °^ tne rismg cost of life,
rural wages had fallen. The average earnings of
a field labourer, about the latter time, were from
six to nine shillings a week. Strictly enforced,
the New Poor Law (1 834) deprived many paupers,
in the country, of a resource to which they had
grown accustomed. Therefore the migration of
rural people towards towns and factories still grew
larger during this period; the peasants, torn from
their native villages, went and merged, in the
industrial quarters of great towns, into a poverty-
stricken, degenerate crowd, contact with which
sapped their fund of health and strength within
two generations.

HISTORICAL CONDITIONS 107

Harder still was the condition of minor in-
dustries. The handicraftsmen imprisoned in the
routine of home work, the hand-loom weavers
unable to stand the competition of the new
machines, slowly and miserably died away during
the first half of the century. The slums where
their distress hid itself presented the most striking
picture of economic decay. In London, in Man-
chester, in twenty similar towns, a ragged people,
a prey to murderous epidemics, swarmed in filthy
rickety houses, and even in cellars. Like the
weavers who resisted the attraction of factories,
the men and women engaged in needlework, all the
members of the old or unskilled trades, left aside
by the main vivifying current of industrial activity,
all home workers, bore the weight of competition
even more crushingly than in the larger branches
of industry. The sweating system developed at
that time; tailors and needlewomen were to supply
the social writings of the period with some of their
most pathetic illustrations.

Such was the predicament of the English people,
ten years after the victory of the middle classes.
These sad facts stood in glaring contrast with the
hopes of bliss which the political agitators had
stirred among the working masses before the
Reform Act. Therefore the first gleams of class-
consciousness and of socialism were dimly seen
during these tragic years. The Chartist move-
ment was instinct with an ardent spirit of social
vindication; in its leaders, in its followers, in many
of the enthusiastic mystical theorists who advo-
cated rebellion or human brotherhood, historians

108 MODERN ENGLAND

recognize the forerunners of English Socialism.
But these eager or naive reactions of popular in-
stinct cannot be studied here; and the more fully
developed doctrines of Owen, Hodgskin and
Thompson have not sufficiently influenced the
following course of events for this summary sketch
to dwell upon them.

The hard fact of want has been much more
directly and more deeply effective in the develop-
ment of England. Revealed to the eyes and the
conscience of the public at large, it harmonized
with the influences and forces which strove to start
an emotional reaction against the new society, and
fused them into a wide current of thought and
action. The scandalous sight of poverty by the
side of middle-class luxury supplied the denuncia-
tions of social prophets with the necessary impulse;
the ugliness of industrial squalor was an incentive
to the hankering regrets of beauty's apostles; the
perils of subversion and death implied in this
social scourge spurred on the instinctive search
after an equilibrium from which resulted that
readjustment to life called interventionism. The
revenge of instinct, prepared by oppositions,
rancours, fears, prejudices, emotions, found its
necessary nucleus and its solid starting-point in
the concrete mass of economic evil.

CHAPTER II

DOCTRINES

I. The philosophy of Carlyle ; his social doctrine ; heroism ;
State intervention and feudalism. His influence ; the evolution
of economic concepts. — II. The religious revival ; the Oxford
Movement ; its results ; ritualism ; the Catholic reaction. —
III. The aesthetic movement ; spontaneousness and will in
English art ; Ruskin, his artistic and social message ; his
influence.

I

There is a philosophy of intuition; and this
philosophy, like all others, is indebted to the
reasoning faculty for its expression and demon-
stration. It is yet essentially different from all
the doctrines which rely upon reason alone in their
search after truth. Without losing touch with
psychological realities, and keeping in mind the
natural inner divisions of ideas, not only is it pos-
sible to contrast the body of rationalist theories
with the intellectual movements impelled by a con-
trary spirit — one can also trace these movements,
by means of their characteristics, back to the
network of social and moral tendencies which
thwarted the logical aim of individualism. One
may find the most conscious expression of the
revenge of instinct in Carlyle's intuitive and )
mystical philosophy.

109

no MODERN ENGLAND

With the Liberals and the dogmatic exponents
of political economy, English thought had been
attracted by the ideal of scientific lucidity; it had
undergone the influence of the philosophers of
France, and was thus in some way a product of
French thought engrafted on the English tempera-
ment. On the contrary, with Carlyle and his dis-
ciples, the European reaction against the eighteenth
century drove England back to the Germanic
elements of her national originality. Owing largely
to the puritan tradition which had kept its ground
in Scotland better than elsewhere, Carlyle' s philo-
sophy borrowed many of its leading ideas from
German criticism; it was largely derived from
Kant, Fichte and Jean-Paul. Taking up again the
work Coleridge had begun, Carlyle opposed an
. idealistic system of metaphysics, German in its
origin, to French-born rationalism.

There are two modes of existence : the real one,
which is that of mind; the mode of appearances,
which is that of nature; or rather, mind only exists,
and the visible world has no other reality or value
than that of a symbol; it is the external concrete
expression through which mind makes itself per-
ceptible to the senses. By clothing itself with
matter, the divine universal soul becomes nature;
by clothing themselves with bodies, the created
souls become men; by clothing themselves with
cloth and insignia, the relations between men, mere
abstractions, become hierarchies, classes, govern-
ments, and the whole social and moral organization.
Thus both human society and the universe are
based on necessary symbols; these only give sub-

DOCTRINES in

stance to the immaterial spirit; and one may say
that clothes are the essence of society, the essence
of everything, provided one only considers appear-
ances; as soon as one looks for being, for reality,
clothes vanish away, an illusory ghost; there re-
mains only mind, the intelligences, wills and feel-
ings, the hidden activity of which upholds the
scenery we call nature and society in the infinite
void. In the same way did Kant's forms of per-
ception and understanding clothe the unknowable
noumenon with time, space, and intelligible
relations.

The humorous " philosophy of clothes " is thus
a picturesque expression of transcendental idealism.
Carlyle's metaphysics are neither original nor
complex; but the creative effort of his thought has
tended chiefly to draw practical consequences from
those principles. At a very early date — in his
strange and wonderful Sartor Resartus — he pre-
pared the subsequent development of his social
doctrine. The commotion of events, the anxious
years which followed the Reform Act, the bitter
depressing sight of industrial anarchy, helped his
indignation and anger to take a definite shape.
Saying that clothes are everything in human
society, is an ironical way of reminding us that
they are nothing. Only the soul exists; and only
that human order exists which is based on it. Now
the divine soul is Justice; and society crumbles to
ruin unless it be just. Should the hierarchy of
clothes clash with that of souls, the former it is
that would be wrong, and would have to be set
right. Thus is laid down the principle of a social

ii2 MODERN ENGLAND

reform, grounded on an idealistic conceptio'n of
nature and life.

To such hearts as mean well, love justice, and
rebel against social wrong, who shall point out the
way ? One man, or men, if several there be, whom
the universal Spirit has inspired with a fruitful
emanation of itself. By probing his conscience,
by following the obscure suggestions of instinct,
the "hero" comes into touch with immanent
wisdom, the source of truth and life, but before
all the source of strength. In the superhuman
energy of his words, his faith, his acts, will dwell
the sign of his mission, the token of his right;
he shall freely shape the plastic clay of minds,
laws and nations; and his will shall have its own
reason deeper than all reasoning. A founder of
religions, nationalities, dynasties, a prophet or a
seer, a tribune or a soldier, a poet or a philo-
sopher, he shall create or destroy, as the eternities
have decreed. But absolute sincerity, impassioned
earnestness, a complete rejection of all petty selfish-
ness, will always raise him above the mean crowd.
It is through those privileged souls that the will
of the universe speaks; and their initiative inspires
all other men. More flatly than any doctrine,
this mysticism of personal intuition contradicts the
patient effort of collective clear-sightedness by
means of which rationalism tries to erect the house
of truth, made by all, open to all. Incommuni-
cable, haughty, the hero's message, as Carlyle
preaches it, brings us no demonstration but itself.

So his social doctrine is an imperative gospel
of authority and obedience. England is diseased,

DOCTRINES 113

says Carlyle; distress is spreading everywhere; to
stop one's ears and eyes would be a guilty and
vain attempt. Chartism, the scare of the ruling
classes, is not an eruption of hell, one day's out-
burst; it has its deep cause and reality; let it be
crushed, and it will burst forth again in another
shape; only a vast effort of will and conscience can
spare England a revolution. If she is suffering, it
is because her soul is diseased; and to discern the
evil that preys upon her, we must look back
through former ages, compare the present with the
past.

In the Middle Ages, society enjoyed a stable and
relatively harmonious order because it was based
on a discipline accepted by all, in which duties
and rights were fairly balanced. Feudalism rested
upon strength ; but strength was then a real superi-
ority, and close by the sheltering walls of the castle
rose the convent, the symbol and focus of a
spiritual hierarchy, the spreading influence of
which mitigated the rule of the other. In this
organic whole, every one found his place, and
mutual, acknowledged links bound all men to-
gether. The lowest peasant had his legal and
moral status, could rely on the support of the lord
whom he served, and who knew him personally;
the swineherd who tended his pigs, in the depths
of the Saxon woods, never feared lest he should
miss, when night came, the bacon he freely drew
from his master's larder. . . . The present, on the
contrary, is an age of anarchy and rebellion. Two
principal errors have hastened on the downfall of
the old order : individualism, which sets up each

ii4 MODERN ENGLAND

separate being, not the aggregate, as the true social
unit; mechanism, the superstition of material and
industrial progress, the rash faith in the instru-
ments, the institutions, the systems, which man has
tried to substitute for the direct all-essential contact
between soul and soul, between human energy and
the matter which it must subjugate. The era of
industry and freedom is thus that of competition
and selfishness; no more faith, no more charity or
hope; the sway of facts and figures is a thousand
times more inhuman than that of feudal force. In
the universal struggle of unchecked appetites, the
weak are crushed, the strong triumph, until they
succumb in their turn; and the atmosphere of
society is but materialism.

For this degeneration, the ruling classes are
responsible more than any other; it is from their
indifference that want has taken rise; theirs should
be the initiative of the cure, since theirs was that
of the evil. Carry le's mystical idealism led him,
as has been seen, to an aristocratic theory of social
salvation. To the God-appointed guides of
nations is due the progress of mankind towards
justice and order; and industrial anarchy will be
cured, provided it finds its true chiefs. But where
are they to be looked for ? The exhausted nobility
is engrossed by a drowsy and futile dilettantism;
it plays with life, preserves game on its lands,
dresses itself up in the tawdry clothes of Dandy-
ism; a decayed class, it no longer fulfils any social
function, and so has no longer any title to live;
let it wake up, realize its duties, enforce its rights;
its authority will be justified from the day when

DOCTRINES 115

it grows salutary. The middle class has lost its
soul; the worship of Mammon has replaced with it
that of Christ; its eager spirit of gain and pelf
gnaws at its heart; it turns the industrial under-
taking into a devilish enterprise, soiled through
and through by injustice. It thus taints a source
of wealth which might have proved fertilizing;
industry, taken in itself, has its own greatness
and beauty; it fights with matter, and displays the
sacred virtue of effort. A better organization of
labour will restore its social function to the middle
class, if only, inspired with a new spirit, it can
grasp its duty, and realize the justification of its
existence : i . e. to raise all men's lives to an ever
higher level above material nature and its needs.
Making a bold attack on the conclusions of
political and economic individualism, Carlyle ex-
tols the necessary action of beneficent authority.
His fierce bitter criticism upsets the barriers put
up by the doctrinaires of Liberalism. Democracy
is the government of prattlers; liberty does not
matter; the only right man has is to mean well;
his only freedom, to do good. And if the ruling
classes fail to fulfil their task, the State will inter-
vene. Standing for the divine power, uniting in
itself moral and physical strength, it will allow no
legal superstition to check the free play of its ever-
watchful activity. Inspectors of labour will visit
works, mines, cottages; will see that nowhere is
man turned by man to selfish uses beyond the
bounds settled by human and religious laws. Pre-
cise rules will fix these limits, will protect the wage-
earner against all possible abuses. The State will

n6 MODERN ENGLAND

undertake that essentially national task, education;
knowledge will kill social rebellion, born of ignor-
ance. And should poverty prove stronger than
laws, should there be too many men in England,
emigrants, at the expense of the State, will go and
people the far-away colonies, those fragments of
an empire in the making.

Meanwhile, economic life must be altered in its
very principle; the obligation under which the
employer lies to the workman will not be acknow-
ledged only by the payment of wages; a deeper
and more effectual solidarity, accepted by the heads
of industry, will bind them to the troops they lead.
After the pattern of armies, each factory will obey
its captain, and his careful, paternal and firm dis-
cipline. Thus will lasting relations be recreated
between individuals; competition will no longer
draw together human atoms, and scatter them
again unceasingly; production and exchange will
centre round permanent points, and life will screen
over with its flowery growth the harsh, rigid
framework of economic laws. Brought into closer
touch with one another, men will no longer bruise
and gall each other's selfishness; and society, by
submitting to the indispensable authorities, will
again secure that organic health which the intoxi-
cation of freedom had ruined.

This aristocratic mystical form of State Socialism
was fraught with the message of the moment; it
answered to the dim-felt needs of all minds. The
unrest spread by industrialism at its worst, the
bitterness of the old oligarchy undermined or
overthrown, the sufferings of tender hearts, of

DOCTRINES 117

devout souls, of the imaginations shocked by the
hard matter-of-fact life of the age, were bound to
be soothed by this bitter criticism of the present,
by this impassioned enthusiasm for a better past.
Around this doctrine have crystallized all the feel-
ings of opposition or preference which might,
about 1850, withstand the progress of democracy
and rationalism. Pointing out a remedy for the
distress caused by industrial laisser-faire, it
would win many hearts by its spirit of charitable
intervention; leaving the ruling classes their con-
firmed privileges, it would naturally agree with
political conservatism. Diversely modified by
temperaments and surroundings, it has been mainly
efficient, now through the forces of social reform,
now through the elements of anti-liberal reaction
it contained; but on the whole it has been chiefly
a source of moral energy.

From the restlessness and depression of spirits
in which romanticism on the wane still lingered,
it called up a brief, clear-cut, striking idea and
image of duty; spiritualized and diffused in the
mists of transcendency, the puritan God, stripped
of dogmas, was thus identified with Kant's moral
imperative; and an absolute injunction, perceived
by all in their deepest consciousness, brought to
man the only revelation of the infinite he could
receive. Thenceforth action, ceaseless action, was
the only possible end; in it alone was life; and when
confronted by social anarchy, by the running sores
of misery and want, charitable, healing, construc-
tive action proved the surest and most necessary
virtue. This doctrine was thus an unparalleled

n8 MODERN ENGLAND

suggestion of positive altruistic activity; awaking
souls, kindling the fire of zeal, it raised the elite
of an English generation to a clearer consciousness
of solidarity. If " social compunction," that feel-
ing which arose about 1840, under the stress of
stirring revelations, at the pathetic call of poets
and novelists, has left its stamp on the history of
England in concrete lasting activities; if it has
altered, along with the atmosphere of public life,
the views of philosophers and the notions of
economists, it owed its effect chiefly to the powerful
massive impact of the ideas of Carlyle, the prophet,
in a new language, of an old conservative faith.
For the reform of laws and manners, as Carlyle
demanded it, was but a return to the empirical
habits of English thought. Burke would not have
disowned that bitter denunciation of rationalism;
and there the pursuit of order, instead of being
promoted by the exigencies of the mind, blindly
followed the directions imposed by life.

Next to Carlyle, a less incomplete history of
intellectual evolution would have to notice many
a symptom of the same movement. His influ-
ence touched many disciples, men of thought or
of action; the Christian Socialists of 1848 were
imbued with it. Though F. D. Maurice, by his
theology, was rather a representative of the Broad
Church and of religious rationalism, the practical
doctrines and efforts of the group whose leader he
was were directly derived from Carlyle. Kingsley
was true to his master's spirit when he tried to
find a cure for poverty in the concerted, strenuous
activity of the ruling classes; when to Chartism,

DOCTRINES 119

that profane levelling movement, he opposed a
form of social charity which accepted the existing
inequality between men, and was wholly bent on
reviving a patriarchal Christian society; when he
extolled co-operation as a system of production
able to cope with all industrial difficulties.

In the same way one might find a direct relation
between the intellectual aspirations centring round
Carlyle and the transformation of political economy
with John Stuart Mill. Starting from an opposite
point of the philosophical horizon, the great utili-
tarian logician had been reached by the wave of
social sentiment. A moral crisis had overthrown the
exclusive predominance of reason in his mind; a
feminine influence had opened him to the percep-
tion of heart-stirring human realities. His Prin-
ciples of Political Economy were, about 1850, the
meeting-point of democratic rationalism and of
instinctive interventionism.

This book illustrates the rise of a new, eclectic
and complex mood, in which a temporary equili-
brium was found between the contrary require-
ments of thought and conscience, — a mood which
prevailed in England during the quiet optimistic
years of the middle Victorian period. John Stuart
Mill studies, not only the production, but the dis-
tribution of wealth; science with him dwells, not
only on principles, but on applications. A human
element is reintroduced into the calculations and
deductions of the economist; he awakes to the fact
that he does not deal with abstract quantities, but
with living sentient beings. A new light, espe-
cially, must be thrown upon the consideration of

120 MODERN ENGLAND

services; the exchange of commodities does not
cover the whole field of economic relations. It is
not a definite order that the scientist analyses and
describes; social advance is still possible through
the action of the national will; the distribution of
riches is governed by human laws, which man has
created and can therefore modify. And the instru-
ment of this progress will be the State; its func-
tions, which no theoretic prejudice must any
longer curtail, will be justified so far as they prove
useful. The problem of the future will be how to
reconcile the greatest possible degree of individual
freedom with collective ownership of the imple-
ments of labour, and an equal share for all in
the produce of the common industry. So Mill's
doctrine, compatible to some extent with State
Socialism, is not unlike Carlyle's on several points.
Enthusiastically welcomed by some, sharply cen-
sured by others, his book dealt the first blow to the
prestige of Ricardo's system within the very pale
of utilitarian orthodoxy; it marked the beginning
of a long process of revising and correcting which
has been during the last half-century the salient
feature in the history of political economy.

II

The sources of religious life are so deep, so
abundant in the English genius, that the historical
periods when they seemed to run short were always
followed by a fresh outburst of welling vitality.
Everybody knows the rhythm of those successive

DOCTRINES 121

revivals since the Reformation, and even in the
Middle Ages. The eighteenth century had wit-
nessed a widespread movement of faith and popular
conversion, Methodism, born at Oxford, diffused
all over England by the indefatigable exertions of
Wesley. But its growth had been rapid chiefly in
the lower classes, outside the Established Church
and the fashionable circles; an obscure and, as it
were, subterranean growth, the social and moral
effects of which are none the less among the chief
formative influences of modern England. The
tone of idealism and practical earnestness, of phi-
lanthropy and collective charity, which became that
of the English middle class about 1840, and the
secret leaning of the average minds towards a
revenge of instinct, were largely due to that quick-
ening of conscience which Methodism effected
among the people, and which by degrees reached
the adjacent superior human strata. The puritanic
temper of contemporary England, the strictness of
her life, of her literature, of the theatre, these
new and comparatively recent characteristics defini-
tively prevailed about the time of the first Reform
Act. No doubt the cause must be looked for in
the advent of the middle class, to a large extent
permeated by the spirit of dissenting sects; but
among these sects, it was Methodism that directly
or indirectly was most effective in producing that
social transformation.

The Anglican Church, as has been seen, had
during the first thirty years of the nineteenth
century continued to rest in the same drowsiness
as in the preceding age; whilst from widely distant

122 MODERN ENGLAND

parts of the intellectual or political horizon were
gathering against her the threatening storms of
rationalism and liberalism. The Evangelical party,
within the Established Church, alone showed initia-
tive and life; somewhat analogous to Methodism
in spirit, it hardly appealed to cultivated minds
and classes. Its intellectual narrowness, its ex-
clusive attention to moral conduct, did not impart
to it that sympathetic quality and winning attrac-
tiveness without which imaginations are not stirred.
Its strength was spent in generous philanthropic
movements, in the anti-slavery agitation, in prison
reform; it was another unseen tributary to the
wide stream of social intervention which by that
time was collecting its plentiful waters from all
regions. The spark which kindled both intelli-
gences and hearts, restoring to the English Church,
to religion itself, their living strength to resist the
onslaught of modern criticism, and their power of
initiative in the necessary work of social adaptation,
came not from Evangelicalism.

The general causes which brought about the
Oxford Movement were, on the one hand, the latent
restlessness of souls, which a torpid religious life
deprived of the spiritual emotions they needed;
on the other, all the forms and effects of rational-
ism : the attacks of philosophers and politicians on
the Establishment, on the social influence of the
clergy, on the authority of dogma; the formation
of a new society guided by no other light than that
of the mind, bent on no other victories than
worldly ones, hardly respectful of the past, and
obeying no law but its own. The Liberal govern-

DOCTRINES 123

ment, in 1833, reformed the Irish episcopate.
Two archbishoprics, ten bishoprics were abolished.
The movement began at once; on July 14, 1833,
John Keble delivered a sensational sermon at
Oxford on " national apostasy." An apostasy
might indeed be apprehended, he argued, since a
solemn denial of the ecclesiastical privilege had
contradicted the doctrine of apostolic succession,
the direct link maintained by ordination between
the Anglican bishops and the apostles. Thus to
trace back the origins of the English Church to
the very beginnings of Christianity, was to en-
hance its authority, prestige and venerable sacred-
ness. This historical contention was the main
point in the teaching of Keble and the other leaders
of the movement : Froude, Rose, Palmer, Percival,
Pusey, above whom rose the rich, strong and
versatile personality of Newman.

It is not necessary, and it would be difficult to
sum up here the history of this crisis. The
essential point is to give a summary account of the
reformers' position, of the difficulties they found
in their path, of the results they obtained. What
Newman and his followers wanted, was first to
fortify the weakened authority of the Anglican
Church; in order to reach this end, they founded
an Association of the Friends of the Church, to
maintain her doctrines, her worship, her discipline
and prerogatives in their entirety. At their call
the clergy took heart again; the widespread feeling
of traditional loyalty to the national Church was
roused, and expressed itself on every side by de-
clarations of attachment; the fears aroused by the

i24 MODERN ENGLAND

threats of political liberalism were soon allayed.
The Oxford revivalists wanted as well to stir up
new powers of energy and activity within the
Church; a series of " Tracts for the Times," dealing
with dogma, discipline and morals, came out from
September 1833; tney appealed to the clergy, with
a view to stimulating their efforts, and helping
them to realize more clearly their own duty and
faith. Lastly, the Puseyites, as they were called,
attempted to trace the historical origins of the
Anglican persuasion, so as to found its doctrine
and worship on a basis more ancient and more
stable than that of the Reformation alone. To
their minds craving for continuity, longing for the
consecration of centuries, secretly leaning to the
solemn rites of Catholicism, the Protestant idea,
in its rational and cold novelty, did not afford
complete religious satisfaction. The principle of
inner evolution and disintegration implied in the
spirit of free investigation in matters of faith had
since Luther's time brought about, and was still
intensifying, an endless process of division among
sects; not giving up this spirit as yet, divided from
the Roman confession by many a difference in
belief, they nevertheless tried to find a compromise
between Protestant rationalism and Catholic
tradition.

According to Newman, the English Church does
not date from the sixteenth century; it is as old as
the Church of Christ, and indeed a branch of it; it
sprang directly from the primitive stock, and pre-
serves the direction first assigned by the apostles
better than do the other shoots — the Roman and

DOCTRINES 125

Greek Churches. Hence the emphasis laid on
apostolic succession. But for the direct contact,
from episcopal ordination to ordination, be-
tween the Anglican bishops and the very disciples
of Christ, the former would lack the mystical
stamp of divine Grace; whilst this derivation, once
placed beyond controversy, secures their sacred
imprescriptible rights to all the clergy. Thus was a
breach opened between the new Anglicanism and
popular Protestantism. To the minds of Dis-
senters and " Low Churchmen," the essential con-
stitutive element of the reformed religion was its
breaking away from a corrupt tradition; a negation
before all, the Protestant idea rose in uncom-
promising hostility against the errors of the past
or the present.

So Newman had to fight his Puritan adversaries
no less than his Liberal opponents. In both
categories, he discerned and pointed out the same
destructive rationalism. In order to resist and
conquer them, he looked for support among the
great Anglican divines of the seventeenth century;
among theologians yet free from sectarian narrow-
ness, and uniting sound Protestant reason with
the serene broad-mindedness of Catholic thought.
With a view to confirm the historical basis of his
main contention, he undertook to publish a col-
lection of the Holy Fathers, with the help of his
friends. And as he had already to meet the charge
of Romanism, which the tendencies of the move-
ment made every day more plausible, he defined
his own attitude more clearly by the theory of
the via media. Between the two errors and ex-

i26 MODERN ENGLAND

tremes — Roman Catholicism, vulgar Protestantism
— the genuine tradition of the primitive Church
is represented by a golden mean : Anglicanism.
This thesis was not new : as early as the seven-
teenth century, theologians had striven to bring it
to light; but formulated by Newman, and marked
by him with a character of perfect precision, it was
very successful; the High Church party, even
now, builds up its pretensions on no other ground.

A winning speaker, a fascinating personality,
Newman drew to his sermons in St. Mary's
Church at Oxford enthusiastic, spell-bound flocks
of young men; whilst his influence was spurring on
the ever-widening group of the Tractarians. But
on all sides resistance was breaking out. A medi-
tated opposition with many ; an instinctive
emotional hostility with most. Against the move-
ment rose especially those two foes whom it itself
attacked : first, the Protestant spirit, in its aggres-
sive irreconcilable vigour, the old spirit of hatred
against Rome, the Puritan preference for an inner,
democratic and individual religion, the dislike for
that traditional and hierarchized worship to which
the Puseyites wanted to bring England back; so
the successive Tracts roused much anger among
middle-class readers ; the reformers were denounced
as traitors, as abettors of the Roman Church. And
on the other hand, the political and philosophic
forces of rationalism turned against this alarming
revival of religious mysticism.

From 1839, tne standpoints of the conflicting
parties grew better defined. A series of incidents
brought to light the increasing antagonism be-

DOCTRINES 127

tween the' average Protestant feeling and the
doctrines of the Puseyites. The last of the Tracts
gave to the new Anglicanism a more and more
pronounced bent towards the Catholic tradition. A
long moral crisis, meanwhile, was destroying New-
man's faith in the compromises by which he had
hoped to find peace, and the logic of both his
mind and his heart was driving him Romeward.
During the following years, his disciples struck out
two different courses; the more numerous, the
moderates, drew nearer Anglicanism, and managed
to make themselves acceptable to it; the others
completed the evolution they had begun, and
most of them went over to Catholicism. New-
man led the way in 1845, wnen the scheme of a
Protestant bishopric at Jerusalem, in open defiance
to the claims of Rome, wrecked the pious endeav-
ours by which he had tried to demonstrate the
Catholicity of Anglicanism.

With Newman's conversion the Oxford Move-
ment properly so called ended, and the religious
revival which continued it opened. Two cur-
rents appeared, seemingly diverging, but really
parallel, which the turn events are taking pro-
mises some day to reunite. On the one hand, the
Neo-Anglican party, benefited by the very calamity
which had seemed likely to crush it, freed from a
dangerous suspected vanguard, rallied, organized
itself within the pale of the national Church, and
pursued its thenceforth regular expansion. No
doubt the opposition it had raised did not subside;
the Protestant instinct still reawoke threateningly,
whenever some Puseyite went over to Rome,

128 MODERN ENGLAND

whenever some incident revealed the advance of
the new spirit; but neither criticism nor ridicule
could check this progress. For many a moral
force, many an influence did favour its course.
In all quarters, such souls as were attached to a
symbolical order, to the traditional hierarchy, to
the consecrated forms, or desired solemnity in
worship and a powerful clergy; the disciples of the
aesthetic movement, which was even then develop-
ing into a doctrine and a party; those whose hearts
were attracted by the ideal of collective charity
and the programme of Christian Socialism, united
their efforts to restore, along with the pomp and
beauty, the strength of religion. A number of
edifying books came out, written with the purpose
of reviving the poetry of the mediaeval Church, of
quickening long-blunted sensibilities to the magic
of the ritual pomp in which the divine service was
performed of yore.

The object of the ritualist movement, indeed,
was to re-establish that pomp by slow, prudent
stages. It found its main support in the official
Prayer-book, and claimed to derive from it the
Protestant worship in its undiminished beauty,
such as it was practised before the iconoclastic rule
of the Puritans. Sacred music, ornaments, ecclesi-
astical vestments, by degrees thus resumed in the
English Church the function and importance
Roman Catholicism had left them. Free from all
necessary connection with the Universities, diffused
like a new ferment over the English soil, the
ritualist spirit, whose focus was in the High
Church party, pursued its action through the

DOCTRINES 129

middle Victorian period, and later. And not
only was its influence perceptible in the greater
solemnity of public worship and in the increased
authority of the clergy, but it roused a more
charitable zeal, a more strenuous realization of
their duty among pastors. The tendency to
Christian interventionism, on the whole, has
harmonized with the active renovating soul of the
religious revival.

On the other hand, Roman Catholicism itself
was indebted to the illustrious converts who joined
it, to the humbler ones who followed their example,
and to the leaning which bent devout imagina-
tions towards ritualistic ceremonies, for a fresh
outburst of vitality in contemporary England. The
causes of the Catholic renaissance, and of its pro-
gress down to our very day, are too much mixed
up with the moral and social life of our time to
be sketched here beforehand; they will be ex-
plained further on. But as early as the middle of
the Victorian era, this awakening was conspicu-
ous. Instead of remaining in England a small
sect, held in suspicion, still excluded — but a few
years before — from the enjoyment of full civil
rights, Catholicism appeared already as a living,
prosperous and developing religious organization.
Its converts were many, especially in the highest
or lowest orders, in the nobility or the people;
the puritanic middle classes looked less favour-
ably upon it. The future Cardinal Manning was
one of these converts, in 1 8 5 1 . In 1 8 50, Pius IX
considered that the times were ripe for a solemn
consecration of that progress; he re-established the

K

i3o MODERN ENGLAND

ancient Roman hierarchy in England, and placed
an Archbishop of Westminster at its head. The
attempt was premature; spurred on by public
indignation, Parliament laid this decree under a
legal interdict. But twenty years later, in 1871,
the prohibition was withdrawn. Like surplices or
tapers in Anglican churches, the Catholic organ-
ization has fought its way among English sects
by dint of patience and stubbornness; deriving its
strength mainly from the irresistible attraction
which more and more draws the High Church,
frightened at the havoc free criticism is working
in matters of faith, towards the principle of
authority.

Ill

The Oxford Movement was a reawakening of
the religious spirit; the aesthetic movement which
developed parallel to it was not a renaissance, but,
seemingly at least, an essentially new creation, a
positive enrichment of the English mind. Religion
had always been the most living of spiritual
activities in England. On the other hand, the taste
for art, the craving for the beautiful, were not
among the natural spontaneous growths of her soil
or her people. No doubt, modern culture had not
bloomed out, there as everywhere else, without
that flower of beauty which had sprung from the
candid faith and homely life of the Middle Ages,
and to which the light of the antique genius, in
the sixteenth century, had imparted a fresh

DOCTRINES 131

strength and brighter hues. During the luxuriant
spring of English civilization, more particularly
in the time of Elizabeth, the pagan intoxication
of the mind and the senses had for a while exalted
the faculties of a whole race; and the people of
London had risen, for a few years, to a fairly
subtle instinct of aesthetic appreciation. But even
in this glorious period, or during the classical age
of Queen Anne, literature had, among all arts,
almost exclusively enjoyed wide popular favour.
In spite of the endeavours of an always original
and distinguished elite, in spite of the achieve-
ments of composers and architects in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, of admirable painters
in the eighteenth, painting, architecture, sculp-
ture, music, the decorative arts, had never been
practised in England, since the Middle Ages, with
that universal interest, that inborn aptitude of
the many, that assistance of a favourable moral
and social atmosphere, which account for their
fortune with some privileged nations and at cer-
tain epochs of history. Capable of succeeding
honourably in all arts, famous in several, modern
England had never shown herself to be an artistic
nation.

This feature is intimately connected with the
other characteristics of her genius. For the
artist's attention is essentially disinterested; it
stops the working of the instinctive mechanism
which, in ordinary life, makes perception sub-
servient to necessary or useful ends; it thus meets
in England, from the strength of this concatena-
tion more closely knit than elsewhere, unceasingly

K 2

132 MODERN ENGLAND

confirmed by the preferences and wills of new
generations, with a resistance particularly hard to
conquer. Interested motives and the desire for
practical action cannot assume such predominance
with a people, without correspondingly narrowing
the field kept apart for the free play of the mind
and the senses.

No doubt, the idealistic needs, the longing for
intense emotions, for pure vivid imaginings, is
quite as deep in England as the desire for material
utility. But traditional English idealism has not
sought for its satisfaction in art. It has found its
natural vent in religious feelings, in mysticism,
moral heroism, the attainment of puritan godliness;
in an impassioned devotion to the commonwealth,
or in a struggle against the hostile forces of
matter. This is the reason why English art
almost always aims at some end foreign to itself;
it does not exist for its own sake, but as a means;
it must convey a lesson or an emotion, act upon
the mind or the heart. Therefore the most
numerous and the greatest of English artists are
writers; literature, of all arts that in which the
medium of expression is most intellectual, lends
itself most readily to the expression of a non-
artistic ideal. And among those writers, indeed,
the most popular have not won the admiration of
the crowd by the merits of their manner; they
appeal to the many by the emotional character, or
the didactic and improving value of their inven-
tions.

Moreover, if the English were for long, are per-
haps still, the least artistic nation in Western

DOCTRINES 133

Europe, it is because their sensibility, in the
average, is not only guided by the perception of
the useful; it is little gifted, as well, for aesthetic
sensations. Leaving out brilliant exceptions, the
power of spontaneously and strongly enjoying
beautiful things — sounds, shapes, proportions,
colours, images — is not so much developed in
them as in other nations; those of the South for
instance, whose naturally refined senses are better
capable of subtle distinctions. English physical
sensibility is not the delicate harmonious opera-
tion of instruments ever directed by a fine tact;
left to its free impulses, it soon turns into gross
sensualism. So it is constantly kept down by the
exertion of the moral will, and transmutes itself
into glows of imagination or passion. This again
can account for the unparalleled wealth, the
universal success in England of emotional litera-
ture; and for the scarceness, on the contrary, of
the pure artist, whether in images, shapes or
words.

These psychological traits have been more than
once pointed out; they are inseparably associated
with our common notion of England. But we
must not forget that the remarkable strength of
the English will is an element not to be over-
looked, whenever we consider the natural resources
of the British genius or soil. In order to acquire
the economic or spiritual activities which the land
or the race seemed to have denied this people, it
has relied, every time it found them supremely
desirable, upon the strenuous energy by means
of which it every day conquers the world of facts.

134 MODERN ENGLAND

It is well known that it has mastered physical
nature, so far as it could not without perishing
adapt itself to it. Everybody knows, too, that the
English have succeeded in curbing their own inner
nature, sufficiently at least to base on their self-
esteem the notion they have of their moral
individuality, and the image of it which they wish
the world to accept. It is possible to see a similar
effort in the heroic endeavours by which modern
England has decided to conquer the artistic gifts
she lacked by sheer energy of will. This enter-
prise is older than the nineteenth century; as early
as the Renaissance, the pride of English civiliza-
tion, then in its prime, claimed for itself all the
arts which antiquity boasted of, and contemporary
nations were brilliantly reviving. Thenceforth,
all the arts existed indeed in England, if not
always in their fruitful reality, at least in the
patriotic determination which insisted on not
being deprived of them.

The great aesthetic movement, whose leader
Ruskin was, can be connected with that tradition;
it was before all a crusade, an appeal to energy;
it turned for beauty to moral enthusiasm, and
made art into a religion, the principle of a social
and ethical reform. The pursuit of the beautiful
is no longer in this instance, as it is elsewhere,
the expression of a natural sensuousness, follow-
ing the bent of instinct in its cravings; it is the
deliberate, earnest, almost pious action of a soul
performing a duty. We must not, then, wonder
that, failing all inborn faculty of aesthetic sensi-
bility, the means and inner resources required by

DOCTRINES 135

this great enterprise should have been supplied by
the religious energies of the soul; nor that the
artistic revival should have developed by turning
some of the old spiritual springs into new
channels. It was not essentially a deep change,
but rather a superficial and voluntary modifica-
tion. So far, this aspect of the revenge of instinct
reminds one of the artificial activities of rational-
ism and meditated adaptation; but this resem-
blance is misleading; though the aesthetic renais-
sance was not the spontaneous expansion of an
artistic people creating beauty in order to enjoy it,
it was none the less the instinctive manifestation
of a proud religious people, whose life-force
wrested from nature one more greatness, grati-
fication and strength.

About 1840, this initiative was called for by
the dimly felt needs of national health; the social
and moral circumstances demanded it more press-
ingly than ever. We have seen how the hew
society contradicted emotional, philosophic and
religious idealism; how it had diffused the ugli-
ness of industrial utilitarianism over the face of
the earth and the life of man. Vulgarity was the
very characteristic of middle-class civilization;
manners, clothes, language put on a monotonous,
mean, dull colour; huge manufacturing towns
stretched away endlessly and dismally under the
murky sky; the railways cut geometrical gloomy
vistas through the green loveliness of the fields;
the soulless labour of machines turned out pro-
ducts destitute of originality, untouched by the
qreative hand of man; the triumph of the middle

136 MODERN ENGLAND

class darkened the gaiety of public life, and its
puritan spirit impoverished an already cold and
austere worship. An age of ugliness seemed to
open; a physical and moral ugliness, the visible
expression of that inner withering, that universal
materialism which destroyed love, faith and life.
Carlyle's philosophy was a reaction of the moral
life, asserting its deep, primitive and all-import-
ant reality, against the disastrous excesses of
mechanism and logic. The Oxford Movement was
a reaction of the religious life, striving to bloom
out freely and assume the lustre of strength and
magnificence. The aesthetic revival was a reaction
of emotional life, striving to reinspire nature and
familiar sights with the divine Presence, by
creating joy and glory for every one.

Ruskin's artistic teaching was very simple in
its principles, very complex and sometimes con-
tradictory in its deductions. It was not a rational
system; by its inner origins, its development, its
method, it harmonized with the intuitions of a
Carlyle. It belonged to the same current of in-
stincts and ideas, by all its assertions, and by its
mode of asserting. It is primarily a burning
glorification of the poetry of things; an effort to
discover, express and reveal the beautiful. A
torpor made of laziness, ignorance, hardening and
impiousness blinds the eyes of men to the awful
wonder of creation; let them learn to see, and they
will be dazzled by the grand aspects of nature,
and by the tiny miraculous beauties of the
humblest beings. An attentive sympathetic study
will give a voice again to the dumb eloquence of

DOCTRINES 137

cathedrals; the masterpieces of human art will
appeal to our hearts in their language of noble-
ness and sincerity. And from nature and
art will emanate the same mystical message;
the visible universe will appear as a divine
symbolism.

Carlyle's idealism, more metaphysical, aimed at
dispelling all illusory forms, the better to reach
the only reality, mind; Ruskin's idealism, more
poetical, on the contrary throws a light of love
over the visible forms, in which the will and
lessons of the divine soul are enshrined. Its
will, for the hidden force which brings the crystal,
the rock, the flower and the human face to their
intrinsic perfection, is a portion of and directly
issues from the Intention which has created the
world, and preserves it; its lessons, for man's life
and the labour of his hands have no other duty,
no higher ideal, than to realize in themselves the
order God has appointed; and this order is essenti-
ally the same for all creatures. Inferiority always
rests with matter, the body, what appeals to the
senses and only to them; superiority with form,
the idea, what appeals to the soul. Interpreted
as it ought to be, this world is pregnant with a
meaning which the mind only can grasp; and all
its parts are symbols. The artist shall enjoy the
glorious scenery nature displays around him; he
shall drink up the beauty of the fleeting cloud, of
the motionless pure peaks, the endlessly varied
hues of stones and flowers, the gracefulness of
each detail and the harmony of the whole in trees
and animals; but his emotion will not be artistic,

138 MODERN ENGLAND

unless it goes beyond mere sensation, and, imbued
with intelligence and awe, ends in adoration.

To this gospel of Art, the inspired, thrilling
exegesis, the full and biblical eloquence of Ruskin
bring unceasing support and confirmation. The
history of painting and that of architecture abund-
antly teach the same lesson. The painters of the soul
have been the greatest of all; the simple buoyant
faith, the sincere technique of the early Italian
painters were naturally expressed by their fresh,
pure colour, a joy to the eye and to the heart;
on the contrary, the sensuous degeneration and
artificial refinement of their unworthy heirs go
along with a dark, dull colouring. What con-
stitutes Turner's unique greatness, is that he has
painted nature with a more clear-sighted vision,
a deeper and more humble passion than any other;
he has done better because he felt more, he has
felt more because he loved better. In the same
way do buildings contain the worst or the best
elements of the human mind within their fresh
or faded stones; their outlines, their proportions
and ornaments reveal a civilization, express a faith,
and their value is gauged by the generosity of this
faith. No architecture is more beautiful than that
of Gothic churches; for in it bloom out, with the
living belief of a whole people, the absolute devo-
tion and sincerity of artists enamoured of their
work, and the minutely accurate imitation of
patterns supplied by nature. The palaces and
domes of Venice still echo the anthem of the past,
and proclaim, in glorious unison, the courage and
the faith which built up her greatness of yore;

DOCTRINES 139

the downfall of her strength and that of her art
are both written out in the sensuous languidness
of her painters.

What is, then, the necessary condition, that the
English soil may produce an artistic harvest finer,
richer than any other? The laws of art have
taught Ruskin those of life, for life is the very
principle of beauty; his gospel of art widens into
a moral doctrine. Thus the current of his
thoughts retraces the course it had followed; more
deeply than in aesthetic enthusiasm, its source lies
in mystical and puritan fervour.

What must the English people do in order to
feel and to create the beautiful ? It must revive in
itself the religious soul of the beautiful. Let its
national life rise again to the level of Christian
zeal, of public devotion it reached in the Middle
Ages; let art find a firm basis in generous and
widespread collective feelings. Let the artist work
lovingly, and let his hand be guided by an earnest
desire for truth. No lying; each piece must be
fitted for its particular end; each ornament must
have its justification and its use; each detail be as
finished as the whole. The matter must be pre-
cious, not common and vile; the style pure and
not adulterated; the decoration realistic and not
fanciful; the technique bold and sincere rather
than clever. More than anything else the unfeel-
ing, unconscious working of machinery is hateful;
only man's life can impart life to things. In-
dustry, the queen of modern society, has ruined
art; that art may revive, industry must be curbed
and driven back to its own field. And in the

i4o MODERN ENGLAND

same way that a reform of mind and heart was to
precede the renaissance of art, a reform of the
social order and of civilization itself will alone
make possible the regeneration of the heart.

It was shortly after 1850 that the first linea-
ments of Ruskin's social gospel came out through
his artistic preaching. During the quiet years of
the middle Victorian period, the apostle of the
beautiful went on inveighing against the times;
and his growing influence was confronted by the
stubborn resistance of startled optimism and
threatened interests. With an eager eloquence, he
assailed the dogmas of political economy. He
charged this code of the principles of money-
making with the degradation of the capitalist
whom it debased and of the wage-earner whom
it enslaved. The whole system of Ricardo was
based on an over-simplification, an impoverish-
ment of man and of collective life. It was by an
undue abstraction that the conflicting motives and
desires were considered in their stripped naked-
ness; reclothed with flesh and blood, economic
entities no longer comply with the arithmetical
combinations of science; and if, moreover, a soul
is given back to these living bodies, they are
thenceforth raised to a higher and different order,
the order of minds, the awful vital suggestions of
which run counter to the despotic commands of
mere self-seeking. No social science without a
broad, human notion of man. And, passing on
to positive affirmations, Ruskin opposes an intui-
tive theory of value to Ricardo's materialism.

There is no wealth but life. That country is

DOCTRINES 141

most wealthy which supports the greatest number
of happy and noble human beings. The connec-
tion of the doctrine with all the moral and
physical complexity of social life being thus
re-established, it is carried from the rational and
over-simplified plane on which the utilitarian
thinkers had kept it, to a concrete and instinctive
feeling of the living realities with which it must
deal. Thenceforth the ground was cleared for a
truly objective sociology, able to encompass the
problem of social life, with all its elements and
data. And in the English mind which was then
awaking to social compunction, as well as to a
desire for charitable action, Ruskin's influence,
confirming that of Carlyle, helped on the conscious-
ness of solidarity, and that inner detachment from
economic dogmatism whence an interventionist
opinion silently issued.

In the more precise schemes of reform to which
Ruskin devoted himself with impatient eagerness
the deep affinity of his thought with Carlyle's is
more apparent still. His wishes aim at rebuilding
an authoritative hierarchical order, ruled by the
old disciplines, in which the individual only
exists for the sake of the community. Verging on
State Socialism by the supreme and beneficent in-
fluence it grants the central power, his doctrine
preserves its conservative and feudal character by
maintaining the privileged classes and the elite;
in it, an exacting spirit of Christian idealism
enforces the Ten Commandments with a strict-
ness quite savouring of theocracy. The State
shall see to the fairness of the relations between

142 MODERN ENGLAND

captains and soldiers of labour; its control shall
be exercised by inspectors; but its function shall
be mainly moral. Every year, each householder
shall give an account of the events that have
occurred in his home; there shall be for each
hundred families one spiritual overseer, super-
vising the religious discipline and mental hygiene
without which there can be no health for the
individual or the race. The noble families, never-
theless, shall keep their standing and their lands;
but as their patriarchal dignity will not allow
of mercenary pursuits, their lands shall not be
cultivated, and their incomes shall be provided by
the State. In each human aggregate, the leading
functions shall rest with the natural chiefs — those
whom birth, education, an evident superiority,
have fitted for authority. Submitted again, as
far as possible, to the healthy influences of the
country and the open air, industry shall return to
the old type of home work; the family, the true
social unit, shall be the economic cell as well. Man
shall no longer be a machine, his labour shall no
longer partake of the monotonous mind-destroy-
ing rhythm of connecting-rods and cranks; things
shall derive all their value from the amount of
life and soul they imply, and handicrafts, as of
old, shall fashion homely objects and works of art
in an atmosphere of joy and love. The revived
guilds shall jealously uphold the honour of trade
and the pride of traditions; each of them shall
guarantee the wares offered for sale, and set their
prices according to the scale of that real value,
life.

DOCTRINES 143

These mystical dreams and schemes have not
withstood the onslaughts of irony or the protests
of common sense; however, the spirit of these
doctrines has thoroughly permeated the two
generations which have felt their influence; and
contemporary English life is instinct with it.

As early as the middle of the Victorian era, the
reforming impulse given by Ruskin combined
with that of Carlyle, with all the forces of the
instinctive reaction, to repress the vices of in-
dustrial society. But it was chiefly as a prophet
of the beautiful that Ruskin influenced this period.
His aesthetic propaganda fell in with an artistic
and literary movement, Pre-Raphaelitism, the rise
of which his first books, indeed, favoured. A
young active group of poet-painters, about 1850,
undertook to instil a new life into English art;
they looked for their models among those early
Italian painters Ruskin had discovered, and set
the sincere inspiration, the simple technique of
these masters in contrast with the elaborate trite
artificiality of English Academic painting. They
were animated with that same zeal and faith which
had roused Ruskin to write the Stones of Venice;
they wished to root out from art the hypocrisy
which had flourished in it ever since the Renais-
sance; to implant in it, on the contrary, that deep-
felt devotion, that straightforward candour which
bloomed out in the pictures of Fra Angelico or
Luini. And as an earnest idealism will spon-
taneously radiate from a believing soul, and steep
the material aspects of things in spirituality,
they naturally tended to enrich their mystical repre-

i44 MODERN ENGLAND

sentation with that symbolism which Ruskin
regarded as the secret language of the universe.
To this sincerity, lastly, to this Christian humility
and this symbolism, necessarily answered a
scrupulous attention to details ; they fondly painted
those tiny wonders of each plant, each flower, each
petal, which Ruskin's impassioned investigations
had brought to light, and preserved all the specific
particularities of their characters and forms.

Thus rose and grew the school of art to which
we owe the masterpieces of Rossetti, Millais and
Burne-Jones. Various sources of inspiration
swelled or altered in its course that main current
of theory and enthusiasm; especially noteworthy
was the contribution of the mediaeval feeling, of
the chivalrous archaic ideal, as the romantic
imagination had revived it. From this point of
view, whilst the Pre-Raphaelite movement consti-
tuted a realistic reaction, it continued romanticism
in art after it had spent itself in literature. The
same process of development occurred pretty
generally at that time; one might say that in Eng-
land about the middle of the century the seeds
scattered forty years before by the romantic return
to the past had struck root and were flourishing
in the moral, artistic and social fields. This
reactionary bent, as it were, of feeling and imagina-
tion; had first appeared in Scott's novels; it grew
more prominent in the comparison instituted by
Carlyle between the present and the past. It was
no less conspicuous in the doctrines of the
Puseyites, and in their preference for the tradi-
tional rites of worship. It was the very soul of

DOCTRINES 145

Ruskin's aesthetic theory, and gave his social
gospel its special bias. Diffused everywhere,
this spirit of emotional regression permeated also
the paintings of a Burne- Jones; and it seems as
if the mediaeval inspiration, the more or less openly
confessed effort to rebuild on the old basis either
society or art which rationalist individualism had
equally disintegrated, were the most essential
element of that moral synthesis we call here the
revenge of instinct.

It is impossible to pass over in silence the ever-
widening consequences of the aesthetic renaissance
about the end of the century, and its influence over
English art at large, the industrial and decorative
arts, dress, furniture, life itself. But this aspect
of contemporary England centres round the pre-
dominant personality of W. Morris, who will be
mentioned further on. A few words will be said
also, in the following chapter, about literary Pre-
Raphaelitism.

CHAPTER III

LAWS AND MANNERS

I. The amending of industrial anarchy ; factory and labour
legislation ; emotional and rational philanthropy ; the reform of
social abuses. — II. The movement for the organization of
labour ; English Trade-Unionism : its evolution and means of
action. — III. The instinctive and conservative elements of the
new manners ; snobbery ; the Puritan reaction ; social com-
punction.— IV. The literature of feeling and imagination. —
V. The psychological origins of Imperialism. — VI. The social
equilibrium and public optimism about 1870.

The preceding doctrines and movements con-
stituted a wide complex of aspirations and ideas;
these rested in their turn, as has been seen, on a
yet wider basis of interests and instincts. No
wonder, then, that the conservative, organic and
reconstructive influences of all these forces should
have taken effect at the same time as the reform-
ing action of rational individualism, though in-
dependently of it; nor that England, from 1832 to
1884, should have felt the former no less than the
latter. Laws and manners were moulded by the
compensatory sway of the revenge of instinct, and
still bear witness to it.

I

The vital issue around which was waged the
fight of the conflicting social forces was the

146

LAWS AND MANNERS 147

problem of industrial organization. We have seen
what was the anarchy spontaneously developed
and promoted by the economic laisser-faire; the
most ominous symptoms of political disorder and
social degeneration resulted from the overwork
imposed upon the factory hands, and the general
conditions of life they had to bear. State-inter-
vention in its modern form took rise in this
particular and significant province of production
on a large scale; it radiated from this centre over
the other fields of industry and commerce.

In the very first years of the century, the State
had foreshadowed its correcting and controlling
action, though but timorously as yet. In 1802,
after some agitatio'n, a regulation was promulgated;
it prescribed measures destined to preserve the
physical and moral health of the children employed
in cotton and wool factories. This decree remained
a dead letter. In 18 19, after an inquiry, a law
prohibited the admission of children under nine
into spinning-mills, and set the maximum working
day for children under sixteen at twelve hours.
This decision was ignored. During the years
1830-32, in that atmosphere of fiery political
vindication, the doctrines and the propaganda of
industrial reformers grew more definite and bolder.
The spirit of religious and philanthropic idealism,
till then bent upon the abolition of slavery or other
humanitarian crusades, more resolutely faced the
pathetic distress England was finding out on her
own soil. Such men as Fielden, Sadler, Lord
Ashley, devoted an indefatigable zeal to the cause,
and before long they were joined by Carlyle,
l 2

148 MODERN ENGLAND

Kingsley, and other advocates of beneficent
authority or Christian Socialism. The Factory Act
of 1 83 1 was not more efficiently put in force than
the preceding ones; but that of 1833, the outcome
of a serious inquiry, constituted the first decisive
step towards interventionism. The age-limit
under which the working people were granted the
protection of the State was raised to eighteen years;
and the prescriptions of the Act were to have force
" in any factory or mill," except silk works. But
the effect of these regulations was again set at
naught by the cunning of the employers; as the
law prescribed a maximum working day, they
devised a system of shifts and relays, so that all
calculations were made impossible; the inspectors
appointed under the Act were powerless, in spite
of the sanctions with which they were armed.

Then it was that mustering their forces, the
leaders of the " new philanthropy " won a victory,
the consequences of which have not yet ceased
developing. In 1840, at the request of Lord
Ashley, Parliament decreed a general inquiry about
labour. The reports published from 1840 to 1845
deeply stirred public opinion. At this critical
moment, when poverty was reaching its climax,
England, roused by the call of prophets and men
of action, awoke to a realization, dim at first,
then clearer and clearer, of the necessary reform.
The Mines Act (1842) swept away the worst evils
in this particularly backward industry; the Factory
Act of 1844, bearing on textile industries, enacted
more drastic regulations; it extended the protec-
tion already enjoyed by children to adult women.

LAWS AND MANNERS 149

In 1845, social legislation overstepped the narrow
bounds within which it had kept so far; print
works were submitted to special prescriptions.
Lastly, in 1847, tne long-wished-for Ten Hours
Bill was passed; it took its full effect in 1850.
This measure reached its end by the indirect means
and the method of compromise typical of the
English statute-book. Economic dogmas were
still so powerful, that the legislator dared not
openly intervene in the normal agreement between
the employer and the workman; adults were not
explicitly included in the provisions of the law;
only weaker beings, in a condition of patent social
inferiority, women and children, were protected
against the consequences of their weakness. But
the mutual dependence of tasks, in that concatena-
tion of parallel activities constituted by the factory,
made it impossible to deprive one class of work-
men of the benefit of the law, whilst others enjoyed
it; and thus the ten hours day became the rule, as
early as the middle of the century, in the most
prosperous and most typical English industries.

The history of factory legislation was thence-
forward less eventful. Though the private
interests threatened by the control of the State still
opposed each new extension of its domain, the
spirit of intervention no longer met with the same
impassioned resistance fro'm the Liberal doctrin-
aires. Public opinion, enlightened by social litera-
ture and the official reports, stirred by the appeals
of the reformers, was all the more readily led to
welcome that widening of the scope of legislation,
as the effects of previous measures in the already

ISO MODERN ENGLAND

conquered provinces of labour were more obviously
successful. The lesson of experience, ever listened
to in England, justified the men of instinct and
feeling in their conflict with the men of principles.
Along with the material and moral standard of the
workmen's life rose the stability of production,
and in most cases the prosperity of industry. The
new system did not bring about the baleful
economic consequences predicted by the advocates
of laisser-faire; and factory inspection did not
prove fatal to that independence which mill-owners
were so anxious to preserve.

So this movement developed steadily and more
peacefully during the second period of the Victorian
era. The advance of legislation mainly consisted
thenceforth in a progress from the main centres
to the minor regions of industrial activity; so that,
through successive assimilations, the advantage of
the provisions first enacted for textile industry
might be extended to analogous or dependent
industries. Before long even these bounds were
set aside; the definition of the factory, implying
the concerted labour of a large number of work-
men, was widened in order to include the work-
shop, in which the operations of minor industries
were carried out; and an inner necessity impelled
legal protection to encompass all the forms of
labour, however distantly akin they might be to
spinning and weaving, the original focus of legis-
lative intervention. The chief stages in this
development were marked by the second general
inquiry on the employment of children (i 861-66),
which brought to light, besides the abuses pre-

LAWS AND MANNERS 151

viously revealed, the unknown hardships and
cruelties of countless small handicrafts; by the two
Acts of 1867, the former of which added iron-
works, paper, glass and tobacco manufactures,
among others, to the domain of legal protection,
whilst the latter (Workshop Regulation Act) dealt
explicitly with workshops, so that the whole field
of industrial production was then encompassed ; by
the 1874 Act, in which the influence of Trade
Unions, taking in hand the cause of labour, was
for the first time discernible ; by the Report which
a new Commission published in 1876, and by the
Act of 1878, which aimed at knitting together and
organizing these diverse previous measures.

Thus, about 1880, the laws for the protection of
labour rose like a stately fabric of social wisdom.
But the stamp of their origin and history, and that
of traditional English empiricism, were printed oh
every aspect of them. Guided by an obscure,
blind instinct of justice or prudence, their growth
had been uninfluenced by any principle or system.
Successive and ever incomplete victories of
emotional perception and concrete imagination over
the resistance of selfishness or abstract logic, they
were in no wise indebted to this logic, and recalled
the older political structures in which England still
sheltered her action and her life. But the definite,
entirely modern objects those laws dealt with
seemed to require a more systematic and conscious
method. Industrial operations, the problems they
implied, all the difficulties raised by the sudden
apparition, in England, of the new world of
factories and the new race of workmen, seemed to

152 MODERN ENGLAND

require of the legislation which concerned them
some of the scientific spirit with which they were
themselves imbued. Precedents, that normal
fountain-head of English law, were wanting here;
and the glaring crude light cast by the red blaze
of furnaces upon the serfdom of the factories
awoke in the hearts of the men they enslaved a
more impatient and eager desire for justice.

Therefore the code of labour, made up piece-
meal, without any preconceived notion, from 1830
to 1880, struck unprejudiced minds as an imper-
fect instrument. Sufficiently developed on some
points, very incdmplete on others; unequally cover-
ing the various provinces of the same industry;
sometimes aggravating the abuses it aimed at
destroying, or giving rise to new ones; rife with
inconsistencies and even contradictions, it might
succeed in correcting the worst excesses of
eco'nomic individualism; it afforded a material
proof of the practical superiority of intervention
over indifference; it failed either to cure all evils,
or to make a uniform standard of humanity and
decency prevail everywhere. The laws relating to
industry did not obviously constitute a definitive
achievement.

Besides these laws, the reform of other social
abuses, the alleviation of suffering, proceeded on
an extensive scale, under the influence of philan-
thropic feelings and of the doctrines o'f collective
action. The humanitarian measures inspired by
the revenge of instinct were thus bound up through
their consequences, and sometimes more directly
through their supporters, with the liberal reforms

LAWS AND MANNERS 153

of society suggested by the philosophic Radicals.
On several points, the two main currents of energy
and ideas whose ebb and flow fill up that period of
English history came in contact with each other.
Ho'wever far apart their sources and directions,
these two streams watered the same ground; and
the same men sometimes drew from both. They
kept none the less distinct; and though their
effects converged or combined as often as they
compensated or destroyed one another, the
measures which originated in one or the other are
almost always recognizable at first sight. The
salient feature of rationalist philanthropy was its
anxious pursuit of logical justice and of a better
organization; the idealist or emotional philanthropy
was characterized by its preference for immediate
and concrete action, for entirely spontaneous pro-
cesses. A type of the former kind of reforms is
to be found in the series of Reform Acts (1832—
67-84), which showed a continuous, regular,
straight advance, and finally, by means of three
stages, established almost universal suffrage. A
type of the latter kind would be afforded by these
very labour laws; they are signs of a groping
progress, towards an uncertain goal, dimly per-
ceived even by those who aimed at it; they were
in perfect agreement with the traditional instincts
of the English mind.

From 1830 to 1880, a great number of blemishes
were blotted out by the latter philanthropy as well
as by the former. In 1845, f°r instance, lunatic
asylums were submitted to the control of the State;
a new and more humane spirit in all dealings with

154 MODERN ENGLAND

the patients replaced the cruelty of former usages.
In 1840, the prolonged agitation in favour of
chimney sweepers resulted in a law; it was thence-
forth forbidden to send up flues those children
black with soot, very often stolen from their
homes, who had supplied middle-class tender-
heartedness with one of its favourite themes.

The " pressing " of sailors was put down in
1835. It was about 1840 that, under the influence
of public opinion, the practice of duelling was
definitively dropped; in 1844, ** was even pro-
hibited among officers. Ever since the eighteenth
century, the Puritan conscience had risen against
that aristocratic tradition, which was no less deeply
rooted in England than in France; it took, to
eradicate it, the advent of the middle class, which
was hostile to the feudal conception of honour, and
the great movement of moral reform which
characterized this critical period. At the same
time, the war waged by English sentiment against
cruelty to animals was rewarded by its first victory;
favoured by the coarseness of old British manners,
such games as cock-fighting and bear-baiting had
always been popular; the Act of 1835 prohibited
them in the streets. Everybody knows what habits
or institutions, such as the Anti-Vivisection
League, this generous feeling of fairness or charity
to animals has since promoted in England.

One may mention as well the reform of the peni-
tentiary system, eagerly pursued by a series of
apostles and philanthropists since the eighteenth
century; in the first twenty years of Queen
Victoria's reign, experiments undertaken in a

LAWS AND MANNERS 155

humanitarian intention, which did not always
prove successful, resulted at last in the erection of
prisons better adapted to physical and moral
hygiene. Again, let us recall what private initia-
tive, and the public authorities, did against the
unhealthy conditions in which the poor lived; these
efforts, spurred on by the smarting stress of events,
and by severe epidemics of cholera or typhus, be-
came prominent about 1848, centring round a
"society against insanitary dwellings"; the same
year, a Permanent Committee of Hygiene was
created; in 1851, a Bill was passed, with a view
to the improvement of working men's houses.
Lastly, the movement for temperance, which as
early as 1842 began to gain ground upon the
scourge of alcoholism. Instinct with a religious
zeal, led in Ireland by a Catholic priest, Father
Matthew, helped on by the taxes Parliament set
upon the sale of spirits, this enterprise of social
regeneration very soon assumed in England the
aspect of a national and mystical crusade; about the
middle of the century, the reputation for drunken-
ness English society had not undeservedly drawn
upon itself began to be belied by a serious reform
of manners. The temperance agitation was thence-
forth one of the focuses of social morals in the
making; one of the tendencies, at the same time
religio'us and practical, with which the new
Liberalism was to try and weave, later on, the web
of a stronger doctrine.

156 MODERN ENGLAND

II

While the reforming action of instinct was
taking effect in the ruling classes, for the benefit
of social conservation and peace, the working
class reacted on its own plane, to its own advan-
tages, against the deadly consequences of economic
anarchy. Leaving aside Chartism, that unsuccess-
ful attempt at a revolutionary organization, Trade
Unionism constituted, from 1830 to' 1880, the
spontaneous reaction of the working masses and
their effort towards organic reconstruction.

This was an effort of instinctive experimental
wisdom, in which theory had no share. On the
contrary, it was by giving up the vague theoretical
ambitions of their youth that the Unions rose on a
firm lasting basis. Everybody knows how they
were born, in the eighteenth century, quite a new
departure in themselves, from the needs of col-
lective action brought about by the industrial revo-
lution. Sternly prohibited by the law under the
name of " combinations," they were granted their
franchise, as has been seen, by the philosophic
Radicals in 1824. At once began, during the
critical years from 1829 to 1848, their revolu-
tionary period. Deeply permeated by Owenism,
caught in a few cases by the Chartist movement,
the working men's associations, which then
assumed for the first time the name of "Trade
Unions," indulged in the dream of a federation
of all trades, in view of a general strike. Violence
was met by violence; this was the time when the

LAWS AND MANNERS 157

government sentenced to transportation the Dor-
chester labourers, guilty of having been sworn in
to a national union; when employers demanded a
written declaration of their men, to the effect that
they did not belong to any association.

After the breakdown of those desperate
attempts, the most famous of which was that of
1834, after spasmodic revivals, relapsing into
depression, the permanent elements of social
organization contained in those confused agitations
disentangled themselves and grew more definite.
Owen's propaganda found its outcome in co-opera-
tion; and enlightened by the failure of the
associations for production, co-operators dis-
covered in associations for consumption the form
of practical solidarity best fitted to prepare the way
for an economic fraternity. In 1844 was founded
the Co-operative Society of the Rochdale Pioneers,
a model to so many others. Meanwhile, in the
province of labour organization, vario'us influences
favoured the constitution of a new type; such were
the attenuation of political differences after 1848,
the progress of trade and of national prosperity,
the conversion of most Trade Unionists to the
Liberal economic ideas, spread far and wide by
Ricardo's disciples; and the increasing ascendency
of the Printers' Unions, won over from an early
date to a peaceful and methodical policy. In 1 8 5 1
was organized the Association of Engineers, which
was to set a pattern to Unionism for forty years.

Trade Unions thenceforth possessed lasting
characteristics, moulded by experience. They set
aside all revolutionary ambitions, and confined

158 MODERN ENGLAND

themselves to immediate precise aims. Limited to
particular trades, and deriving strength from this
very limitation, by degrees they developed more
complex economic or political instruments, cal-
culated to modify their surroundings as suited
their interests. The " Amalgamated " Associa-
tion of Engineers grouped a number of local
Unions, led by a central Committee for the defence
of the trade; and in the same way were created
national federations of the more important crafts.
Thanks to the fruitful training implied in the
financial direction of such associations, they turned
out clear-headed, shrewd, experienced men, an elite
of labour which gradually won the recognition of
middle-class opinion, and eventually got into
Parliament.

After 1 86 1 appeared the Trades' Councils, in
which were represented the various Unions of the
same industrial centre. The " Junto," a group of
secretaries and officials, directed an uninterrupted
political pressure against the prohibitive clauses of
the law which regulated labour agreements; the
yet contested right of workmen to confederate
was at last fully acknowledged. This final victory
of the trade-unionist principle (1875-76) was made
unavoidable by the attitude of the Radicals, but for
a while endangered by the ill-will of the Liberal
party, still bound to economic orthodoxy; it was,
in fact, achieved by the Conservatives, on this
point as on many others better prepared than their
rivals to accept interventionism and the beginnings
of solidarity. Lastly, in 1868 was held the first
Trade Union Congress. The yearly meeting of

LAWS AND MANNERS 159

this Parliament of labour was before long wel-
comed by public opinion and the national author-
ities; and social peace seemed secured, thanks to
the admission of an aristocracy of labour to the
free discussion of their own interests. When in
1872 a Parliamentary Committee was created,
entrusted with the promotion of Bills advantageous
to the working class, the utmost possibilities of
Trade Unionist initiative in legislative matters
might seem pacifically fulfilled.

So this new political activity was fruitful be-
cause of its at once determined and moderate
spirit. In the province of smaller daily cares,
the Unions had pursued their development, still
thwarted at times, but gradually living down all
opposition. Between 1870 and 1875, most
employers, following the example set by the
government, practically accepted the collective
discussion of labour agreements. About that time,
the English working men's association could be
seen in its typical form, with all the originality of
its characteristics. It was not so much a fighting
machine as a mutual relief society. It brought
together in each trade a very strong proportion
of the skilled workmen, excluding the labourers
and helpers, who* constituted socially a lower
stratum. Its members, bearing the strongly
marked stamp of English respectability, partook
of the dignity secured by economic indepen-
dence. They regularly paid high subscriptions,
wanted to support the insurance fund which was
the essential element of the Union — life insurance,
assistance in case of unemployment, and pensions

160 MODERN ENGLAND

for the old and the disabled. Such functions im-
plied a heavy budget, a large reserve fund, and
all the prudence as well as the responsibilities
which attend upon wealth. Therefore the defence
of corporate interests was understood by the
traditional Unions in a spirit of compromise and
conciliation. Strikes were a desperate weapon,
rarely used but in cases of absolute need ; on most
occasions, a settlement was agreed upon before
hostilities began. The first Labour members from
the Unions brought moderate tendencies to the
House of Commons, and worked jointly with the
Radical wing of the Liberal party. This elite of
secretaries and representatives of labour readily
fell in, by their social preferences, their instincts,
their religious and loyal feelings, with the pre-
existing structure of the ruling middle class; and
the prosperity of English Trade Unionism seemed
for a while to herald the definitive mitigation of
revolutionary appetites.

However sincerely men of a rational and dis-
interested turn of mind — like the small group of
the English positivists — may have sympathized
with the movement for the organization of labour,
it belonged yet, by its history and its character-
istics, to the reaction against individualistic
Liberalism. Whether opposed or not by the
moneyed classes, Trade Unionism, like factory
legislation, expressed the spontaneous protest of a
practical feeling of solidarity against economic
anarchy. Thus it was, by its inner meaning,
conservative as much as constructive.

LAWS AND MANNERS 161

III

If one considers not only the working class,
but the whole of society from 1832 to 1884, it is
easy to see that the new manners, the outcome of
all the previously mentioned social and moral
influences, bore witness to the revenge of instinct
no less than to middle class and rationalist tenden-
cies. The conservative forces kept their hold on
English life; and the victory of individualism was
diminished, compensated in every way by organic
growths or the survivals of the past.

A foreign observer visiting England about
i860 might fancy he found again the appearance
and the reality of the old manners, hardly modified.
Gathered in towns or industrial districts, the great
business class did not make its influence felt in
the wide expanse of the agricultural regions.
There, secure in the enjoyment of its immemorial
prestige, the nobility maintained its uncontested
sway over the country people. It justified its
power, besides, by its useful initiative; able to
adapt itself to new needs, it often set the example
of the social philanthropic activity on which men's
minds were now bent. Not only did it intervene
in the industrial strife, to support the cause of
factory legislation, thus finding a weapon against
the rival class of employers in an unexpected
application of its patriarchal ideal; but, as its adver-
saries would ironically invite it to, it looked, near
the very gate of its own castles, at the distress of its
tenants, and sometimes sincerely undertook to

1 62 MODERN ENGLAND

remedy it. If the democratic evolution of the
English constitution has proved reconcilable with
the maintenance of the aristocratic privilege, and
if the influence of landlords has remained almost
unshaken to' our very day, the reason for it must
be sought for not only in the conservative instinct
of the race, or in the backward economic condition
of country districts; the efforts honestly made by
the best landowners to raise their providential
function to the level of a more exacting con-
science, did much to promote this end. In most
cases, the care the master took of the farmer, the
copyholder or even the field-labourer was for these,
to some extent, a moral and material security
against the most serious risks of life; needless to
say, this dependence implied some docility on their
part in political or religious matters.

The country, in England, is still the stronghold
of the Anglican Church, while the sects have
gained ground in the town middle class or among
the industrial masses; and when the Reform Act
of 1884 had given the franchise to peasants, the
Conservative party was the stronger and not
the weaker for this change. Under the shelter
of the stately castle or of the simple and respected
manor-house, close to the ivy-covered walls above
which rises a grey slim tower, the English village
pursued, all through the middle Victorian period,
that calm untroubled life into which it had slowly
fallen after the disturbed years which preceded it.
Resigned to its economic decay as to some natural
fate, no longer contesting the victory of Free
Trade, it then accepted its doom, and drowsed

LAWS AND MANNERS 163

away into that proud torpor or that slackened
activity which to-day impart its character and, so
to speak, its peculiar distinction to the old English
agriculture. The onward progress which drove the
nation as a whole to a more modern and rational
social organization, to a more intense life, was
hardly felt by it; and its political and social will,
collected in the hands of its hereditary masters,
unswervingly supported the instinctive reactions
thanks to which England, for a while carried away
by the industrial fever, readjusted herself to the
inner necessities of her genius and her race.

Meanwhile, in towns also the new manners bore
in many points the impress of the past, or cor-
rected of themselves, by means of spontaneous
growths, the excessive consequences of the forces
from which they had sprung. The triumph of the
middle class did not modify the aspect of English
society so much as it had done in France. One of
the main causes, and at the same time one of the
essential forms of this persistence was snobbery,
a universal phenomenon, but perhaps more
especially British. More than elsewhere, the pres-
tige of the nobility was accepted by the middle
class, which had in part stripped it of its political
power; and from this worship of the ways, the
fashions, the tastes and ideas associated with aristo-
cratic distinction, rose a conservative frame of
mind in all that concerns traditional institutions
and habits.

The upstarts of industry and commerce never
thought of creating a social tone answering to their
own history and to the economic realities from

M2

1 64 MODERN ENGLAND

which their fortune had risen; they strove, on the
contrary, to force their lives into the mould shaped
by other needs and other times. The aristocracy,
as it had always done, opened its ranks to welcome
the wealthiest and the most influential of these self-
made men; but even such as could not aspire to
this supreme reward at least insisted on copying
as closely as possible the pattern of elegance and
dignity which fascinated them; the rich manu-
facturer or merchant hastened to buy an estate,
and his country seat before long grew indistin-
guishable from the older mansions of the gentry.
Already permeated to the marrow of his bones
by the social desire for respectability, obeying a
code of laws set by others, to which he only
added, for his own small share, a stricter and more
puritan moral observance, he proved also a
pious worshipper of blood and titles. Direct rela-
tions with the members of the higher class, those
beings of a different nature, or, failing that,
respectful attention and admiration from a dis-
tance, supplied his life with innocent, conservative
ambitions and joys, the influence of which blunted
in him the edge of individualistic instincts and
radical ideas.

A process of social assimilation and impregna-
tion was thus constantly going on, reducing to the
tone elaborated by the old order the various
elements — classes, interests, appetites, feelings —
which the new order dragged from the depths to
the surface; and through the tone of the old
oligarchic society, it was some of its spirit which
was thus perpetuated, and still active. It is im-

LAWS AND MANNERS 165

possible to understand the half-democratic England
of 1880, unless one sees in her, besides the reform-
ing impulses, originating in the middle classes,
which drove her towards a new life, the powerful
and subtle reactionary influences, originating in
the aristocracy, and grounded in manners, which
acted upon the very classes from which those
impulses issued. And as the lower middle class
shared in the tastes of the higher, as snobbery
afflicted even the people of towns, eager, too, to
gild their narrow circumstances with a reflected
gleam of borrowed dignity, this peculiar product
of the modern conflict of classes may be looked
upon as one of the great moral forces which during
the last century have delayed or modified the evolu-
tion of England.

Other feelings, other characteristics, of longer
standing still and more deeply rooted in the Eng-
lish mind, were brought into play at the same
time, and contributed to strengthen in public
manners the organic conservative tendencies which
were represented, in the intellectual order, by the
doctrines of such thinkers as Carlyle and Ruskin.
The Puritan reaction, a wider movement than the
Oxford revival, was the no less distinct religious
expression of the revenge of instinct. By more
strictly subjecting private conduct and national life
to the teaching of the Bible, it linked the present
to the past, and partly checked the sweeping moral
and social changes which modern industry had
brought about. Nothing indeed could be easier,
more natural than this inhibitory action : the
middle class was imbued with the spirit of puritan-

1 66 MODERN ENGLAND

ism, and its victory, in due course, resulted in the
religious rigour of modern England.

After the Civil War, after the Commonwealth
and the reign of saints, the Restoration and the
eighteenth century had witnessed a revival of the
free joyous tradition of Elizabethan youth; in
spite of the fervour and frequency of religious
feelings in a deeply Christian society, the merry
England of the jolly pleasure-seeking manners
had lived on down to the time of Waterloo,
accepted and encouraged, indirectly at least, by the
aristocratic leading class, whose private lives were
often hardly edifying. The great lesson England
derived from the awe and scandal of the French
Revolution, the reaction of ideas and tastes against
the eighteenth century, the advent of the young
Queen Victoria, all contributed to change, from
1800 to 1840, the moral tone of the Court and of
the whole nation ; but the chief cause of this trans-
formation was the shifting of the social equili-
brium, which resulted in the predominance of the
middle class. Mostly dissenting, partly Metho-
dist, brought up in the stern discipline of sects
laying more stress on conduct than on ritual
observances, this class quenched the frivolous
bright lustre of aristocratic life under the sober
uniformity of its feelings and manners. An exact-
ing public opinion, always on the look-out,
unanimous and all-powerful, was then created,
levelling all individual fancies or liberties under
its relentless judgments and censures. The out-
ward show of religious faith and respectable
behaviour, real or not, was thenceforth imposed

LAWS AND MANNERS 167

upon all; and, as a consequence of this rule, cant,
an already old aspect of puritan hypocrisy, grew, a
brother of snobbery and inseparable from it.
Literature, the Press, the stage, the fine arts, were
subjected to a reserve in striking contrast with the
tone of old England; public and private life were
submitted to the reality or convention of a national
austerity.

This is not the proper place to inquire whether
the English people has gained or lost in self-
mastery, in inner truth and health, by that decision
which its new masters were responsible for, but
towards which its moral destinies had long inclined.
Let us only repeat that this puritanic tide, which
is hardly beginning to ebb away, constituted
during the last century one more aspect of the
deeper reactions of instinctive adaptation, by means
of which England has maintained the cohesion and
organic unity of social life against the disintegrat-
ing effects of individualism.

We must not forget either another feeling, a
new one, the rise of which might be called the
most indisputable moral gain of the nineteenth
century : the anxious consciousness, in the ruling
classes, of a social solidarity insufficiently recog-
nized by laws. We have seen how active, particu-
larly from 1840 to i860, was legislative and
philanthropic intervention; among the causes of
this development, we must number, no doubt, the
conservative instinct, the intuition of a national
peril, and the measures of defence spontaneously
decided upon by political wisdom; and no less, the
effects of the idealistic and emotional doctrines, of

1 68 MODERN ENGLAND

the philosophic, aesthetic and religious revivals,
combining to make up a socially active frame of
mind. But in the manners themselves, some
general moral changes must be pointed out which
gave this frame of mind its full reality. English
society as a whole may be said to have accepted,
about 1850, the notion of a necessary control of
the State over the economic initiative of citizens
and the interrelations of individuals, even beyond
the limits of the legally acknowledged cases; to
have admitted that the higher classes ought to
take some charitable care of the destitute.
Diffused through all consciences, touched with a
tinge of Christian interventionism, this new feel-
ing, this " social remorse," was at once an effect
and a cause of the theoretic movement and
practical decisions which gave the revenge of
instinct its social expression.

IV

It was no less clearly expressed by the disin-
terested activities of the mind. Art was renewed,
as has been seen, by the Pre-Raphaelite movement;
painting first, later on architecture and the decor-
ative arts, assumed a new character of refinement
and at the same time of sincerity. About the end
of that period, the influence of W. Morris added
itself to that of Ruskin, and the impulse given by
these two rich personalities can be felt in the all-
round effort English aestheticism is making to adorn
with beauty the surroundings of life and life itself.

LAWS AND MANNERS 169

Literature, however, afforded the apostles of
idealism the most direct means of expression.
Carlyle, Ruskin and Newman rank among the
greatest English writers; the first eager and in-
tense, massive and compact, loading with Saxon
energy the most Germanic of styles; the second
coloured, sonorous, delicate and gorgeous, carry-
ing along mystical ecstasy or bitter satire in the
majestic sweep of his period; the third, firm and
plastic, Attic and subtle, fraught with sober
emotion and restrained ardour. By them, already,
the intellectual and emotional contribution of the
instinctive reaction had been cast into literary form.
But beside these, there were many others who, less
original than the great innovators, used poetry or
prose as means to convey analogous tendencies.
The literature of imagination and intuition, the
new romanticism, transformed by an artistic or
social inspiration, stood then in contrast with the
rationalistic and realistic literature which we con-
sidered above as one of the aspects of the demo-
cratic and scientific movement. But it is essential
to lay stress on the fact that this antithesis is to
a large extent artificial; English writers, we have
said, are not so much engrossed as those of
Germany by the intellectual conflict of economic
forces or ideas; and in their more independent
sensibilities, the tendencies and currents of their
times are more often mingled into wholly personal
associations; clear-cut oppositions are with them
less legitimate though no less necessary than with
others. A novelist like Dickens, for instance, may
have belonged by one aspect of his temperament to

170 MODERN ENGLAND

the liberal middle-class army which cleared the
ground for the new order; by his heart-felt religion
of human suffering, by his warm plea in favour
of the poor, he shared in the social charity of
1840, and his influence was one of the moral
factors of that more organic conception of col-
lective life, the rise of which we tried to account
for above.

The novel of the time, indeed, was thoroughly
permeated with social meaning; and even in
Thackeray or Eliot, it is difficult to tell whether
the realistic objective spirit succeeded in keeping
down a surging rebellion against injustice and an
involuntary thrill of pity. But with Mrs. Gaskell,
who tried to bring all classes together in a common
zeal of Christian charity; with Kingsley, the leader,
next to Maurice, of the Christian socialists of
1848, whose works breathe an ardent spirit of
human fraternity; with Disraeli, the inventor of
social Toryism, one can more clearly discern the
characteristic attitude of the revenge of instinct:
an open hostility to the systematic application of
cold reason to material or moral relations between
men. Disraeli, besides, was more than a writer; he
was among the first in England to disentangle the
complex political tendencies of the instinctive
reaction, and organize them into a strong body.
The bold synthesis of conservative traditionalism,
of religious and aesthetical mysticism, and of the
new feeling of social charity, which he tried to
realize about 1845 m ms n°vels, was one of the
most original contributions that were added to
English thought in the nineteenth century. In

LAWS AND MANNERS 171

him grew to clearer consciousness the secret effort
of the aristocracy and of the instinct of historical
continuity, to destroy the work of revolutionary
individualism, by confronting democracy with
State Socialism. Destined to a glorious course,
Tory democracy was to come to the front in
political life at the end of the century; it will be
dealt with further on.

The two greatest poets of the age, Tennyson
and Browning, belonged to neither of these two
conflicting attitudes exclusively; they might serve
to illustrate the reconciliation English sensibility
can effect between them, and to point out the way
in which the most richly gifted and most represen-
tative of English minds have since tried to accom-
plish it. Tennyson carried within himself some
germs of the modern democratic Liberalism; his
intelligence welcomed the prospects of national and
human progress, under the action of reason and
science. At the same time his instincts connected
him with the politicians of the Young England
group who, about 1845, accepted Disraeli's social
gospel; and his poems, with significant stress and
sincerity, gave vent to all the traditional feelings
on which rested the older order in England : the
religion of the past, the worship of ancestors and
of the old families, the appealing beauty of
the scenery and manners to which the patriarchal
authority of the nobility was naturally attuned.
No poet better knew how to to'uch with life the
imponderable elements, images and emotions
which feed the instinctive conservatism of the
English race.

172 MODERN ENGLAND

Browning, by his artistic manner and some
aspects of his thought, bore witness to the victory
of philosophic and scientific objectivity over
romanticism on the wane; he illustrated, like George
Eliot, the inner preference which led writers to
perceive all things and men as supreme realities;
and his illuminating discussion of ideas makes his
poetry a radiating source of intelligence. But
though he was much of a rationalist, he was no
less of a mystic; his vigorous and ample moral
faith transfigured all the aspects of life; his deep
sense of the events and growth of the soul did
not stop short of intuitions and the subconscious;
he diffused a generous fervour of pity and love
through the impassioned analysis of characters and
acts; the spirit of Christian charity which lies
dormant at the bottom of almost all religious
hearts in England was one of the suggestions
emanating from his works, which countless readers
devoutly study to find in them moral lessons and
motives for edification. One might with good
reason rank him with the literary representatives
of the mystical reaction.

With them should be indisputably ranked the
Pre-Raphaelite poets — the Rossettis, W. Morris,
and, to some extent at least, Swinburne himself,
whose inspiration and expression, about i860, were
derived from the same principle which had just
renovated English painting. This school of poets
transposed to another plane the intentions and the
programme of the Ruskinian revival; its aesthetic
aspirations went back to the very springs of
romantic imagination, called up the prestige of the

LAWS AND MANNERS 173

past, pursued a subtler refinement through
elaborate simplicity, and liked to clothe thoughts
at once mysterious and rich in the uncertain con-
tours of symbols. By its exclusive, sectarian
characteristics, by its dogmatism, it throws light
on the reaction of aesthetic needs against the
vulgarity and meanness of middle-class life; it
confronted modern rationalism with the living
contradiction of dreams, of history and beauty.

Lastly, in public opinion, in the waves of sensi-
bility and imagination in which moral changes are
elaborated, was born at that time, from all those
instinctive reactions, the psychological attitude
and the doctrine of national action now called
Imperialism.

The British Empire, in fact, dates from the
eighteenth century; older still, the expansion of
England over the world, her peaceful search for
markets or warlike hunger for new dominions,
have characterized English history, as everybody
knows, ever since its origin. But prepared by
Elizabeth and Cromwell, realized under the
Georges by the stubborn energy or the genius of
their ministers, governors or captains, the Empire
grew clearly conscious of itself only in the
nineteenth century. This awakening was made
possible by the exaltation of race-feeling and col-
lective imagination, under the stimulus of the
same rousing influences which were starting in

174 MODERN ENGLAND

England a moral, religious, aesthetic and social
renaissance. The beginnings of contemporary
imperialism indisputably belonged to the revenge
of instinct.

From 1820 to 1850, philosophic Radicalism
had expressed itself in foreign affairs by the theory
of " peace," as it claimed "retrenchment and
reform " at home. The Manchester school, as has
been seen, carried its humanitarian hopes of com-
mercial harmony and freedom so far as to show
a systematically pacific disposition. Self-centred,
besides, engrossed by the serious preoccupation of
her constitutional evolution, England after Water-
loo had entered upon the least disturbed period in
her international relations. The colonial empire
constituted during the preceding centuries had
not been materially increased since 18 15, when
the Indian Mutiny, in 1857, struck public opinion,
forgetful of those far-away difficulties, as an
ominous warning.

America not long before had won her indepen-
dence; was Asia to do the same? There was no
lack of politicians or thinkers to accept future
separations, or even wish for them. The bond of
interest or right linking the colonies to the mother-
country was not clearly perceptible to the logicians
of Liberalism; their individualistic principles led
them, on the contrary, to dissociate those human
aggregates scattered through space, so different in
most respects, and joined together only by a fiction
directly derived from the antiquated notion of
mediaeval sovereignty. Would not England's free
advance towards a better, juster and more rational

LAWS AND MANNERS 175

organization, be hampered by the heavy care of
those nations still young or half-barbarian, less
developed than herself, over whose destinies she
must watch? Under all those influences had
been formed, in the middle Victorian period, a
current of opinion indifferent or hostile to the
tightening of the imperial bonds; the advent of
democracy seemed to herald, at no distant date,
the disruption of the imperfect and chaotic world-
wide association into which England, now con-
scious and mistress of her fate, had formerly been
driven by the fortune of war and commerce.

Then it was that, in the province of foreign
relations as well as in all others, the tendencies
of the instinctive reaction were set in opposition
to those of utilitarian rationalism; and that an
exalted, strenuous feeling of the British nation-
ality, an imaginative conception of its greatness
and providential task, a respect and a desire for
the struggles in which energy asserts itself and
characters are shaped, and a more concrete percep-
tion of material and moral realities, were roused
into being, at the call of such men as Carlyle and
Kingsley.

The prophet of duty and of the will extolled
the holy effort of conquest, the victory of the
Christian over the barbarian being that of good
over evil; he directed the starving crowds of the
industrial centres to the virgin soil of the colonies,
and saw in emigration a cure for the social disease;
his imagination imparted an organic substantial
value to the relations, till then abstract, that linked
the mother-country to her daughters; he hailed

1 76 MODERN ENGLAND

between old Britain and the new greater England
a close kinship, as they were of one blood, and
had one soul. As in the divine right of heroes,
he believed in the moral superiority of strong
peoples; his teaching tended to stimulate in the
Anglo-Saxon race the consciousness of its destiny,
and an aggressive scorn for rival civilizations.
His disciple Kingsley preached a manly, combative
and " muscular" Christianity; with him the prac-
tice of physical exercises, the best hygiene for body
and soul, found its crowning completion in the
worship of war, the most elating and noblest
school of courage and sacrifice. The Crimean
War (1854-55) and the Indian Mutiny, following
close one upon the other, awoke England from her
pacific torpor; if the latter afforded the pessi-
mists an argument, it roused the imperialistic instinct
and the national pride of the masses; if the former
brought to light the disorder and the deficiency
of the English military organization, it shook the
country with a warlike excitement, and stirred in
the veins of the young the old craving for heroism
and victory. On all sides, meanwhile, the apostles
of idealism proclaimed the new chivalry, the
crusade of good- will against evil; naturally ex-
panded, this imperative and instinctive dogmatism
came to include the struggles of nations and races;
and what Ruskin wrote to rouse social feeling and
the pride of being English was easily turned by
his readers into a narrow faith in the efficiency of
English discipline applied td the corruption and
scandals of the universe. When a problem of
political justice (the case of Governor Eyre, in

LAWS AND MANNERS 177

1868), set the disciples of humanitarianism and the
partisans of strenuous action in colonial matters
face to face, with the former sided the men led
by principles, the rationalists and " intellectuals,"
with the latter, the most illustrious champions of
religious and social mysticism.

The ingenious theorist of democratic Toryism,
Disraeli, has perhaps the best claim to the inven-
tion of Imperialism. Before 1850, in one of his
novels, he invested the Asiatic mission of England
with an Oriental halo; he tried to restore the
monarchy and the national cohesion through the
efficiency of new feelings, and looked upon the
recognition of the Empire as the best fuel for the
enthusiasm of English loyalty. Having risen to
the post of Prime Minister, he methodically pur-
sued the realization of his dreams, and conducted
the foreign policy of England in a firmly imperial
spirit. The proclamation of Queen Victoria as
Empress of India at Delhi (1877) illustrated the
triumph of the new idea.

VI

Thus the revenge of instinct resulted, like
rationalist Liberalism, in political and social opti-
mism. From i860 to 1880, while the industrial
and commercial prosperity of England expanded
triumphantly through the world, her peaceful
evolution towards forms of life at once freer and
no less organic seemed warranted by the alternative
or simultaneous play of instinctive and meditated
adaptation. A temporary, perhaps even a defini-

178 MODERN ENGLAND

tive equilibrium, appeared, at that time, to have
been established between those tendencies, as be-
tween the conflicting exigencies of individualism
and national solidarity. Though the readjustment
of the English constitution, or public administra-
tion, ideas, laws and manners, to the economic
and moral consequences of modern industry had
endangered for a while the stability and continuity
of the existing order, the compensatory changes
produced by the intuitive activities and spiritual
needs in souls, laws and manners were sufficient, to
all appearances, to ward off the peril, and to
restore, in England, the moral unity and the social
peace necessary to life.

No doubt the idealistic critics of English civi-
lization and culture did not abate anything from
their vehement censure; Carlyle went on denounc-
ing the materialistic corruption of middle-class
society; Ruskin still lamented over the drowsiness
of souls and the squalid harshness of the economic
system; as for Matthew Arnold, he demanded
more intellectual freedom and moral refinement of
the Philistines or Barbarians who shared social
power between them. But whatever applause
might welcome their eloquent complaints, the deep,
hidden genius which watches over the destinies of
England did not listen to them; the anonymous
will of the multitude was quietly asleep; it knew
all dangers were avoided and thought all problems
solved.

Were they so, however? The idealism of the
prophets had only infused into the hearts of men
and diffused through social life a small share of

LAWS AND MANNERS 179

spiritual enthusiasm and active solidarity; the
efforts of the doctrinaires and thinkers had only
imparted to the average English temperament, to
its mental operations and spontaneous methods, a
weak wavering aspiration towards intelligence.
Meditated adaptation, in the drama just enacted,
had been defeated by instinctive adaptation; not
only had it failed to assert itself, but its action
had been surpassed by the reaction it had brought
about. Therefore, when new problems dawned
upon England, the deficiency of her method and
of her inner light again appeared as the main source
of her difficulties and crises.

N 2

BOOK III

THE NEW PROBLEMS (1884-1910)

INTRODUCTION

The evolution of modern England has assumed
a new character during the last thirty years. The
temporary equilibrium into which it had settled
for a time being destroyed, it resumed its progress
more quickly and extensively than before; and
whilst it had till then obeyed exclusively native
necessities, it is shaped to-day chiefly by foreign
influences. It is no longer to her own self, but
to the whole world as well, that England now
aspires to be readapted.

And it is, in fact, this exterior cause of the
adaptation which quickens its pace and widens its
scope. So long as the British nation found in
itself the decisive reasons of change which started,
between 1832 and 1880, two complementary and
parallel movements of political and social reform,
England was free to choose, not only the direc-
tion, but the speed of her onward steps; and as
the complaints which urged her on were hardly
ever uttered by all her citizens, but usually by
one class, the opposition or indifference of the
other classes acted upon that innovating impulse
like a powerful check. Therefore, both instinctive

180

INTRODUCTION 181

and meditated adaptations were, all through that
long period, dominated, restrained and retarded by
the unconquerable and supreme sense of traditional
wisdom which instilled into the very core of
English reforms an abiding need of conservative
moderation.

But from the day when the whole nation felt
its vitality imperilled by foreign competition,
when even social oppositions merged into the
general anxiety that had seized upon all classes,
when peace at home became a condition of success
in the international struggle, then the unity of
interests increased and enlarged that of ideas and
feelings; and with a more homogeneous and
clearer will, at a pace quickened by an impending
common danger, England sought how to react
against the weaknesses of every description — lack
of organization, deficiencies in science and method
— she was growing conscious of. Thus was com-
menced that active transition which she is at
present undergoing, and which leads her to un-
known destinies; in the course of which the great
historic parties, modified and renovated, have
both adopted positive programmes of action; in
which Liberalism has been impregnated with
Radicalism, and Conservative prudence carried
away, as it were, by the spirit of the time, has bor-
rowed something of its method from Radical
daring. For the last ten years there have no
longer been in England a party of advance and a
party of stagnation; there are only forces of pro-
gress, confronting one another, various and con-
flicting; and the nation, almost unanimously,

1 82 MODERN ENGLAND

though more or less consciously, more or less
resolutely, accepts an unavoidable transformation.

As immediate or indirect consequences of the
resistance English prosperity was meeting with
abroad, a series of problems demanded attention,
for which solutions had to be found. To this
common search, some brought the taste and habit
of instinctive adaptation; others a preference for
meditated readjustments. The two tidal waves
which have been seen since 1832 rising and pur-
suing each other did not thus vanish away, but
joined and mingled, though they are still dis-
tinguishable; and in the turmoil of an age more
complex than all those that came before, men and
minds grouped themselves as best they could,
according to their several natures and affinities.
One may however say that, roughly speaking, the
moral and social antithesis the first period of
English democracy had raised is preserved in both
its terms; for each of the new problems with which
England is confronted, a solution of a rational
order and another somewhat empirical have been
proposed; and the former answers to the trend of
thought and influence which Liberalism, by the
light of science and reflection, still follows towards
a more logical and better organization; the other
continues, with a view to an organic restoration
of the threatened balance and health, the gestures
of protection begun by the revenge of instinct.

On the whole, then, the two attitudes have not
changed. But, upon closer examination, one is
bound to conclude that the difference between
them has somewhat decreased. Not only have

INTRODUCTION 183

the conservative and empirical reactions become
bolder, they have, as well, grown more conscious.
It looks as if the pressure of reality, and the effect
of the opposed tendencies, had succeeded in in-
stilling some of the contrary spirit into proceed-
ings till then subjected to the obstinate preference
of traditional England for instinctive solutions.
The desire for intelligence; the suspicion of some
weakness implied in the haughty contempt for
clear thinking which had ever characterized Eng-
lish action; the anxious fear of some foreign superi-
ority, bound up with surer methods and a more
modern organization, have to-day invaded the
very stronghold of British pride, and destroyed
the assurance of a providential accord between
mental habits essentially bent upon giving facts
their due, and the prosperous condition which facts
seemed to have for ever established.

So the desire for intelligence tends to grow
predominant in contemporary England; and it
seems that the psychological and social rhythm
is raising and driving onward a new all-powerful
tide of rationalism and meditated adaptation. But
here again the secret adhesion of the average
minds to exterior necessities is neither spontane-
ous nor gratuitous; it is facts they still obey when
learning how to look beyond and above them. The
limit of the intellectual evolution which goes along
with the recent transformation of England is fixed
by a scarcely broadened utilitarianism; it entirely
depends on ever-varying conditions. That higher
degree of consciousness does not grow of itself;
changes produce it; and in its turn it produces

184 MODERN ENGLAND

new changes; the reforms, arid the moral disposi-
tions which answer to them, are causes and effects
of one another. And at the very fountain-head
we find foreign influences : the will to keep one's
rank and strength, the dread of decay, main factors
of that always-shifting equilibrium.

CHAPTER I

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM

I. The flagging of English prosperity ; foreign competition ;
the anxiety of public opinion. — II. The proposed remedies :
the Free Trade Radical solution ; the Protectionist cure.

The last twenty-five years of the nineteenth cen-
tury witnessed the gradual disappearance of the
accidental conditions which had for a long time
favoured England in the international economic
struggle. The decay of her agriculture had been
accelerated; the progress of her industry and com-
merce had been slackened; for the first time in
several generations her supremacy in this field
might seem endangered. Awakened from her
proud optimism, she anxiously sought for the
causes of this peril; and she realized the weak-
nesses of her material organization, the faults of
her technique. The question of foreign com-
petition, the measures necessary to overcome it,
on all sides took hold of public attention, and
various solutions were put forth. Some wanted
to stimulate English production, to supply it with
better instruments of science and method, to make
its processes more easily adaptable; to modify,
if need were, the very structure of society, and

185

1 86 MODERN ENGLAND

readjust it to the new exigencies of a market in
which victory rested with the most up-to-date
forms of commercial competition. Others, carried
away by the concrete perception of facts and more
directly following the suggestions of instinct,
wished to elude the risk of a defeat by eluding
the fight, and to erect a barrier of tariffs all round
the British land, round the united Empire. The
economic crisis is the focus whence radiate, on their
several planes, all the new problems England has
to solve; and the Protectionist agitation is but the
most immediate of these consequences.

English agriculture, as has been seen, had long
ago lost its prosperity; during the industrial
revolution life had ebbed away from the country.
The Corn Laws had at first secured artificial profits
to landowners; the triumph of Free Trade in
1846 had deprived them of such gains. Till about
1875 the consequences of this defeat were not too
crushingly felt by English farmers; they still
remained the almost undisputed masters of the
national market. But as years passed the im-
provements in land and sea traffic reduced more
and more the ratio of distance in the determination
of prices. Before long American corn competed
successfully, even in England, with home-grown
wheat. The unrestrained use of capital and
machinery in production, a fresher and bolder
spirit of enterprise, the endless resources of a
virgin soil gave American farmers an increasing
advantage over those of old Europe. But even in
Europe, the English peasant found successful
rivals among his neighbours, more industrious

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 187

or more favoured by circumstances. The farm
produce of Normandy, Holland, Denmark;
Continental fruits, vegetables, eggs, butter, milk,
contributed more and more to the daily food of
England. From 1875 to 1888, several bad har-
vests suddenly brought about an acute crisis; the
agrarian problem at once forced itself on public
attention. Modern England seemed to have
passed through the same economic stages as
ancient Rome; in her wide estates, submitted to
the authority "of noble families, man no longer
knew how to raise from the land the bread of
the country; and already the anxious moralist and
sociologist fancied they saw, in the swarming
centres of industrial activity, a parasitic mob, fed
on foreign corn, increasing and multiplying.

But the depression of agriculture was already
known, had been foreseen by many, accepted by
some with a light heart. The interruption of the
wonderful development of industry and commerce
from which England, for a century, had drawn
her strength, wealth and pride, dealt a heavier
blow to the whole nation; the effects of this
startling discovery are unfolding before our eyes.
Here again America was the first dangerous
competitor. She possessed incomparable natural
advantages — abundant ore, coal-fields, navigable
streams; the ground gained by English industry,
thanks to its priority in the use of machinery, to
its treasure of experience, to its practical genius,
to its monopoly over the markets of the world, was
regained by the United States, thanks to their
faculty of assimilation, the very newness of their

1 88 MODERN ENGLAND

undertakings, an at least equal power of energy
in the victorious struggle with matter, a more
methodical empiricism, a more adaptable and
active business instinct. Relieved by the Civil
War from the painful difficulty which hampered
their growth, they entered about 1870 upon that
period of intense uninterrupted economic expan-
sion which has characterized them ever since.
Their produce soon closed the new world to Eng-
lish commerce, then threatened it in the British
colonies, attacked it in Europe and even in its
native land. But before this attack had been
realized, another more dangerous rival had come
to the front.

The German Empire, moulded by war, brought
to the industrial strife its well- trained will,
scientific intelligence, still untouched resources.
From 1880 its industries struggled with those of
England against heavy odds ; from 1890 they won
successive victories. Metallurgy was one of the
main provinces of England's industrial suprem-
acy : Germany came up with her rival, and now
already leaves her behind. Her chemical products
enjoy an uncontested superiority over English
manufactures; her woollen or cotton goods are
beginning to supplant those of Yorkshire and
Lancashire on foreign markets. German coal-pits
supply some regions of Europe with fuel. At the
same time, the colonial ambition of the German
Empire expands with systematic and meditated
energy; and its merchant fleet, protected by im-
posing squadrons, sails over the oceans where the
English flag no longer waves in undisputed sway.

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 189

The more modern implements, more scientific
proceedings, more patient ingenuity of German
production, its habits of thrift and cheapness, the
democratic character of its wares, the shrewd
methods, the clever and stubborn energy of its
representatives abroad secure for it advantages the
extent of which English trade, for the last twenty
years, has been bitterly gauging. Contemporary
political writings repeatedly bear witness to this
haunting preoccupation.

From all these causes sprang the economic crisis,
the first symptoms of which appeared as early as
1875, and which is the predominant fact in the
present evolution of England. About that time
the almost unbroken course of prosperity which
English industry had so long enjoyed suddenly
came to an end; depression now fell upon one
branch and then upon another; a series of painful
occasions on which workmen were thrown out of
work, and of disastrous strikes, awoke employers
from their optimism, and workmen from the social
inaction in which trade-unionism, grown wiser
through experience, had kept them. Since then,
in spite of spells of glorious weather, the same
sun has no longer shone upon England. Frequent
ups and downs, bright fits of prosperity, periods
of feverish activity, long intervals of stagnation,
a general but slower progression in the statistics
of trade, such was, briefly put, during the years
that followed, the state of English production; it
called, if not for pessimism, at least for thought
and anxious watchfulness. One fact especially
strikes all minds to-day : the figures of imports,

1 9o MODERN ENGLAND

in the commerce of England, more and more
exceed those of exports. She sells less than she
purchases. A land of vast long-hoarded wealth,
of thriving but threatened industry, of lethargic
agriculture, she seems to bend her course towards
the dangerous destiny of an aristocratic aged
people, fed by the world, finding strength in its
treasures and in the bulwark of young nations it
has raised round itself, but no longer deriving the
elements of an ever-renewed material and moral
power from hard-fought economic victories. In
the garden of her verdant fields, whose quiet the
extinct furnaces no longer will disturb with fire
and smoke, resigned or alarmed prophets already
imagine the meditative sweet peace of her coming
decay.

Meanwhile public opinion investigates the
hidden sources of this crisis, looks for the causes
of the peril in order to discover its remedies. No
influence has done so much for the last twenty-five
years to promote the psychological evolution of
England towards increased deliberation and con-
sciousness, as that of economic anxieties. Natur-
ally inclined to exaggerate in such matters, always
liable to panics, for the frequency of which
her political destiny and "temperament account,
she even goes beyond the precise data of facts,
magnifies the advantages secured by her adver-
saries, accepts too easily and too soon the notion
of her defeat. One of the themes most often
developed by recent literature is that of the
foreign invasion of the English market. Since
the cheap wares of German industry have entered

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 191

it, the scared imaginations of many writers have
denounced them wherever they are to be found,
and even elsewhere. And on all sides recrimina-
tions, criticisms or distressing interpretations were
to be heard. Thus was stamped on the public
mind the idea of a natural inferiority in the
industrial or commercial habits of the English
producer or tradesman. The reports of the British
consuls abroad have supplied this frame of mind
with particularly substantial elements.

By the light of this anxious inquiry, the em-
piricism through which England had so long
triumphed appeared singularly depreciated in its
native country, whilst other nations, from a dis-
tance, felt more than ever the radiating influence
of its ancient prestige. It was made responsible
for the technical inferiorities, the deficiencies in
method which the contact with German competi-
tion was bringing out. If English supremacy is
threatened, people said, it is because it no longer
answers to the new requirements of production
and exchange. The manufacturer is satisfied with
out-of-date machinery, he adapts himself too
slowly to the changing preferences of his cus-
tomers; he does not early enough apply the latest
discoveries of physics or chemistry to industrial
processes. As for the tradesman, he still relies on
the former superiority of English commerce; his
initiative is no longer quick or supple enough;
he no longer strives to win new markets or retain
the old ones by unceasing exertions. On the
contrary, America, Germany, daily infuse more
science and intelligence into industry, more

1 92 MODERN ENGLAND

method and energy into commerce. Compared
with the German clerk, insinuating and tenacious,
an untiring observer of wants and preferences,
constantly adjusting the supply to the demand,
the English agent is handicapped by his slowness,
by his traditional and aristocratic conception of
business, his tendency to require that the demand
should be fitted to the supply. Compared with
the German engineer, turned out by modern and
" realistic" schools, able to enlighten practice by
theory, the English manufacturer brought up on
classical culture or only provided with a utilitarian
training must too often be satisfied with following
the routine of his father's factory, without being
able to understand or modify it.

In a word, what this trial seemed to reveal was
a check in the growth, perhaps the exhaustion
and decay of English vitality; it revealed, too, the
failure of the principles, or of the lack of principles,
which had long secured its victory. Capable of
a passive and fruitful subservience to realities,
capable, too, of creative intuitions in the domain
of experience, ceaselessly enriched by concrete
perceptions, the English genius proved unfit for
systematic and concerted operations, for synthetic
organization, innovating activity. It no longer
wrested their secrets from things, and could no
longer subjugate nature, now that those secrets,
better hidden, and those natural forces, less com-
pliant, demanded other gifts than patience and
common sense. Scientists in the English labora-
tories still kept the fire of invention alight; but
their individual originality could not counter-

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 193

balance, in the international struggle, the hosts
of professors, engineers and overseers who dif-
fused a spirit of scientific discipline throughout
German or American economic life.

II

Under the influence of that national anxiety>
two bodies of defensive forces have been spon-
taneously constituted. They answer to the two
general directions between which the social and
political evolution of England is at present hesi-
tating.

On the purely economic plane, the battle is
fought around freedom of trade. But the con-
sequences of the industrial and commercial crisis
embrace far more than the question of tariffs; they
underlie all the problems or the present; and both
the Free Trade and the Protectionist solutions
belong to wider systems of interests and doctrines,
within which they must be replaced to be well
understood. The order followed in this study aims
at complying, as far as possible, with this necessity.
A necessity which chiefly asserts itself indeed
in the case of the Free Trade solution. For this
is not in itself a positive remedy; it implies here
less than ever an active intervention of political
will; it is but a persistence in a state of things
already realized, and a vindication of previously
established dogmas. After having formerly con-
stituted a bold instance of logical and meditated
adaptation, it only expresses to-day, in most cases,

i94 MODERN ENGLAND

an intellectual routine; its supporters should not
be chosen to illustrate the spirit of systematic
reform which even now, under the name of
Radicalism, opposes the spirit of empirical and con-
servative adaptation. In order to gauge the real
extent of the effect of the economic problem upon
ideas and feelings, and to comprehend the tendency
to meditated adaptation, in its vigorous and active
reality, as it is now to be found, one must leave
the narrow field of commercial traffic. The
genuine answer of English Liberalism to revived
Protectionism will be found in the more pro-
nounced bent of its doctrines and methods towards
the redress of social injustice, and towards the
systematic recasting of antiquated political and
administrative traditions.

To fight with the most efficient weapons against
foreign competition, to stop the alarming decrease
in English prosperity, the new Liberals, imbued
with an active sense of necessary intervention, no
doubt still repeat the old reasoning of Cobden;
it is, they say, by Free Trade that the most favour-
able conditions will yet be secured for British
industry; it is thanks to it that, at all events, the
cost of life will be kept as low as possible and
free from the unfair taxes levied on the consumer.
And, indeed, it is a fact that since the repeal of
tariffs, about 1850, the necessaries of life have
become more accessible to all, and that the standard
of comfort has risen among the working masses.

Meanwhile, however, poverty is undiminished;
unemployment grows more frequent. Therefore
a regeneration of national activity, a reform of the

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 195

social organization, will be necessary to cure them.
In contrast with the general lowering of prices,
for example, only house-rents have risen. It is
because an idle class, that of landlords, unduly
reap the benefit of urban concentration and of the
increase in population; the law, by laying heavier
taxes on them, must restore the lost balance.
Above all, an effort of will and science will endow
England with the coherent and modern system of
education, the scientific formation, the technical
training, which alone can enable her to compete
with her rivals. Thus the Radical programme,
this new and more thorough application of utili-
tarian logic to social facts, appears as the corollary
of the Free Trade solution in the wider field of
general politics; and it is to the economic crisis
that we shall have to return again and again to
understand the present position of doctrines and
parties in England.

Protectionism, on the contrary, is self-sufficient;
or rather, it constitutes in the economic domain
a direct and complete solution of the industrial
and commercial crisis; and if this solution has been
incorporated at once, through natural affinities,
with the body of conservative interests, yet had
this fusion not taken place, Protectionism would
still have remained essentially the same. Springing
from facts, it manifests the attempt at instinc-
tive readjustment by which English supremacy
hopes to defend itself; but it represents, in
that order of spontaneous reactions, a bolder and
more conscious initiative than those through
which English empiricism had till now found
o 2

196 MODERN ENGLAND

expression; and it clearly bears witness to that
systematic spirit which to-day extends its sway
even over the conservative decisions of England.
Compared with the Liberal logic, stiffened on this
point and grown almost mechanical, it is the Pro-
tectionist faith which stands, one might say, in a
manner, for meditated adaptation. In order to
assert itself, it must overcome the force of a recent
but firmly established tradition; it must overthrow
a dogmatic assurance so entirely confirmed by
experience and deeply rooted in it, that only with
the greatest reluctance is a contrary experience
allowed to tell against it. The conservative
instincts, once injured by the repeal of tariffs,
have begun living again on Free Trade itself; have
grown all round it, and to-day identify them-
selves with it. The return to Protectionism, an
old and traditional doctrine, is effected now by
the same means of propaganda and theoretic
discussion its adversaries had formerly used.

However, though the new English Protection-
ism is logically self-sufficient, it is in fact insepar-
able from another great contemporary movement,
Imperialism. The tariff reform agitation has been,
from the first, intimately connected with the
public expressions and political demands of the
imperialist feeling; and thus it is that the scheme
of commercial protection is most narrowly bound
up with the body of imaginative or social forces
which make up instinctive conservatism. The
defensive reaction of economic England, to answer
the menaces of foreign industry, naturally agrees
with the measures tending to a closer material and

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 197

moral union, by which she intends to avert the
peril of a colonial dismemberment possibly
expected by a hostile universe. This is why Pro-
tectionism, however imbued it may be with the
new spirit of meditated initiative, still indisputably
belongs by its psychological character and ten-
dencies to instinctive adaptation; it must be ranked
with the doctrines and bodies of interests which in
all fields oppose the attempts of Radical logic.

Coldly listened to during the years of pros-
perity, from 1850 to 1880, the criticisms levelled
at Free Trade by a few irreconcilable opponents
have assumed, since the beginning of the economic
crisis, a new strength, wideness of range, and
authority. The man who embodied active Im-
perialism, Mr. Chamberlain, has given them a
prominent place in public attention; at his in-
stigation, indefatigable efforts have been made to
win opinion over to the cause of tariffs; and urged
on by its inner logic, the Unionist party, a
synthesis of conservative interests and imperialist
feelings, has adopted Protectionism as an essential
part of its programme. Since the long-delayed
adhesion of its leader, Mr. Balfour, England is
directly called upon to decide, in every Parlia-
mentary election, for or against tariff reform.
Leaving aside the many points of contact by which
Protectionism is bound up with the other tenets of
the Unionist creed, one can easily enough describe
the arguments it emphasizes and the instincts to
which it appeals. From the intellectual point of
view, it lays stress on the decay which has struck
economic orthodoxy; it points out, in social life, the

198 MODERN ENGLAND

unceasing advance of interventionism, the develop-
ment of the functions of the State, and refuses to
find in the Liberal dogmas any theoretic difficulty
in extending to commercial relations the methods
of positive action and legal redress which experi-
ence has confirmed elsewhere. Morover, it sets
forth, with a view to the creation of a moral
solidarity between the various parts of the Empire,
the necessity of uniting them strongly by common
interests; whatever draws the colonies nearer to
the mother-country, whatever facilitates com-
munications from the heart to the extremities of
the imperial organism, and conduces to isolate it
in its material independence from the outside
world, will the more strengthen its unity and
power.

In what concerns more concrete realities, Pro-
tectionism offers to win back or secure for English
industry the command of the national market, and
that of the colonies — for Australia, Canada, South
Africa, have lowered, or will lower, it holds, in
favour of the mother-country, the tariffs with which
they defended their young industry, in the same
way that England will favour them at the expense
of foreign countries. To agriculture it promises
the possibility of reviving under the shelter of the
tariff. To the budget which the military, naval and
social expenses burden more and more heavily, it
holds out the income afforded by protective duties.
There lies the very core, the vital and critical
point of the problem; at a quicker rate still than
Germany, England must build huge men-of-war,
SO as not to lose the margin of superiority indis-

THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM 199

pensable to the safety of the Empire; and in order
to bear that heavy load, what resource could be
more tempting and natural than the taxation of
foreign goods? Already duties are levied on a
few exotic imports: tea, coffee, tobacco, sugar;
extended to food and drink, to industrial wares,
those duties will not materially increase the cost
of life for the working man; and their produce will
make it possible to find new resources, without
laying any new burden on capital, already sur-
charged by the income tax and the death duties.
Thus the revival of Protectionism in contempor-
ary England can be accounted for, first, by foreign
influences — the rise of a harsher international
competition, the development of great industrial
states, formidably equipped, for political struggles,
with regiments and navies, and for commercial
fights with their customs and duties. It results
from an economic contagion, which the pressure of
the universe forces on the proud exception of Free
Trade, so far triumphant. But other causes, moral
and social, have sprung from the very course of
English evolution. The body of instincts and
interests which supports, at the present time,
Unionist conservatism against Radical liberalism,
has incorporated with itself the protective system,
with its appeal and attraction, as a congenial force
making for the same end. The protectionist
reform would serve the destinies of the Empire;
it would as well serve the moneyed classes, alarmed
by an everyday bolder legislation, in their natural
resistance to the advance of levelling democracy.
It is from these expected advantages that the

200 MODERN ENGLAND

apostles of this crusade derive the energy neces-
sary to eradicate deep-rooted mental and practical
habits from a collective mind always slow in its
changes; and it is the acute and quick sense of
realities that here supports their bold undertaking.
A measure of conscious logic eagerly called for by
instinct, this reform may be carried out or rejected,
during the coming years, without, in either case,
necessarily influencing the general choice England
has to make between two doctrines and two
policies; it can as well claim the support of State
intervention as of conservatism, and belongs to
empiricism as much as to meditated adaptation.

CHAPTER II

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM

I. New appearance and greater urgency of the problem. —
II. Contemporary English Socialism ; the Marxists ; the
Fabians; municipal Socialism. — III. The formation of the
Labour Party ; the new Trade-Unionism ; the Labour Party
in the House of Commons.

The nineteenth century has witnessed every-
where the awakening of the social question. But
in England, after the disturbed years from 1830
to 1850, the instinctive reaction of conservative
prudence seemed to have, if not solved the
problem, at least blunted its acute and threatening
urgency. Chartism had been defeated; the first
Socialist theorists had found no disciples; the trade-
unions, satisfied with their incomplete victory, had
confined themselves to the limited forms of action
they had achieved; and a great effort of philan-
thropy or legislative intervention had restored, in
laws, manners and the conditions of life, the
standard of decency and order indispensable to the
preservation of the social body. From 1850 to
1880, the ruling classes in England might believe
they had evaded, through timely sacrifices, the
social claims which had scared them for a while;

201

202 MODERN ENGLAND

they might believe, too, that they had followed far
enough the idealists — such as Carlyle and Ruskin
— to find in the satisfaction of their consciences
a sufficient ground not to follow them to the bitter
end.

The destruction of that equilibrium, about
1880, put an end to all such hopes; and the re-
awakening of the social problem was one of the
immediate consequences of the economic unrest.
The industrial depression and unemployment were
crushingly felt by the unsettled masses of un-
skilled labourers, among whom the sweating
system found its victims; and even the aristocracy
of labour, the elite who belonged to trade-unions,
heavily suffered from that sudden flagging of the
prosperity which had created a favourable atmo-
sphere round those associations. The crises of
1878-79, 1883-87, caused many disasters and
much distress. Seen in that lurid light, the showy
front of peace and comfort erected by the social
good-will of two generations appeared frail and
deceiving; behind it, poverty spread to hidden
depths, still present, though concealed; an obscure
realm, which widened or narrowed according to
exterior influences, but never entirely disappeared.
The inquiry of Charles Booth, undertaken in
1886, revealed that, in London alone, 1,250,000
persons lived below the minimum standard of
human health and self-respect. Since then,
statistics have not brought forth more optimistic
figures; in spite of successive revivals in trade,
the army of the unemployed has never substan-
tially diminished on English ground; the number

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 203

of heartless, hopeless beings, maintained by public
relief in the dismal workhouses, is no smaller; the
big towns and the country, despite the zeal of
public or private charity, still present the most
glaring contrast to be found in modern Europe
between extreme wealth and extreme poverty.
The rise in wages, the fall in the price of some
goods, have been counterbalanced by the general
increase in the cost of life, the higher rents, and,
above all, the new needs, sprung from the very
improvement of comfort and culture. The
average condition of the town or country wage-
earner, about 1890 or 1900, was far superior to
what it was about 1840; and yet the social pheno-
menon of poverty still appears to-day in England
in the acute form it owed, from the first, to the
influence of modern industry. And new circum-
stances, the decline of commercial expansion, the
chronic stagnation of business, the successes of
foreign competition, told painfully, though more
or less directly, upon a class to which its own
efforts, or the interested help of the other classes,
have not yet secured independence and safety from
the risks of daily life.

Thus does economic suffering quicken in con-
temporary English society that obscure unrest or
that open crisis which, at the same time, endangers
the stability of the established order in the
advanced nations of Europe and the world; and
the social problem, in its turn, reverberates in ever-
widening echoes through all the provinces of life
and thought. Political England, for the last
twenty years, has been greatly modified by the

2o4 MODERN ENGLAND

deep, powerful influences of class struggles and
class claims.

All the elements of the complex web of national
evolution are closely interwoven, and none of
them can be conceived apart from the others.
But, without destroying those intimate connec-
tions, one may consider the whole successively
from different points of view. The difficulties of a
particularly social order which have risen and
assumed a more urgent -character in contemporary
England have brought about two principal
reactions in doctrines and parties. On the one hand,
the conservative tendencies and empirical tradi-
tions have tried to solve them, as of yore, by
the mitigating action and the compromises of
feudal intervention ; on the other, the Radical
politicians and the several Socialist sects have
carried into practice the reforming principles of
a rigorous theoretic logic. Thus, leaving out a
few belated partisans of orthodox laisser-faire,
indifference in social matters has no longer any
representatives on English ground; the leading
motives and ideas are divided between two equally
active groups, one of which is rather guided by
instinctive, and the other by meditated adaptation.

In the Conservative or Unionist party, and in
the Liberal-Radical one, the schemes and initiatives
of social reform are inseparably bound up with
the larger political systems of interests and ten-
dencies which support these two parties in their
conflict. This aspect of their fundamental opposi-
tion, on which the fate of the England of to-day
mainly depends, will be studied further on. More

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 205

distantly concerned with the political fight, and
influencing it chiefly in indirect ways, contempor-
ary English Socialism can be considered in itself.

II

About thirty years ago the originality of English
Socialism could still be found in its not only
realistic, but conservative character. All revolu-
tionary propaganda had failed to get the better of
the working classes' robust political instinct; and
the only effect of the huge effort of Chartism had
been to create in them a tenacious desire for trade
organization. Marxism had not gained much
ground with them, in spite of the long stay Marx
had made in England. The Christian Socialism
of 1850 was very widely diffused through feelings
and manners; but its power had only concentrated
in the co-operative movement, constantly on the
increase, and in groups, all of them deprived of
active energy; it contributed to make up a moral
atmosphere favourable to the now-accepted notion
of national solidarity, rather than added its own
impulse to the reforming movement in politics.
During the more recent years, on the contrary,
we have witnessed the development of English
Socialism properly so called, and seen it assume a
new character of systematic firmness.

This evolution was furthered by diverse sects
and tendencies. The distress of the agricultural
proletariat roused a movement of agrarian vin-
dication, led by the disciples of Henry George,

206 MODERN ENGLAND

among country labourers, from 1880 to 1900.
Adopting, as Marx had done, Ricardo's theory of
value, they accepted all property derived from
work, but denied that the ownership of land could
be thus justified. Society then would claim for
itself the automatic rise in the value of land,
caused by social progress as a whole. And above
all, by means of a single tax, equal to the income
of landowners, society would expropriate them
without compensation. In this over-simplified
doctrine, and in the Biblical arguments it readily
called upon, in the religious and mystical tone of
the propaganda instituted through country dis-
tricts by the "Land Restoration League" and
the " Land Nationalization Society," one can feel,
along with the new eagerness of social vindication,
the old spirit of Puritan communism. Therefore,
the doctrine of Henry George, ill fitted to the
more scientific conditions in which all problems
must henceforth be discussed, has ceased to be a
conspicuous force in the recent political conflicts;
but its influence can still be felt, everywhere
diffused, in the contemporary unrest. It is an
element of that democratic hostility to unproduc-
tive estates, and their privileged owners, on which
the Liberal party relies in its struggle against the
landlords; it contributes to maintain, in the hearts
of the destitute, the religious hope of a fairer
justice, based on God's will, according to which
each man shall reap his bread from the land his
hands have ploughed.

So, in these aspirations and dreams revive the
mysticism and the emotionalism which had, during

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 207

the preceding period, secured the success of
interventionist Conservatism, and on which is
grounded, to-day, the attempt of Tory democracy
to restore national cohesion through beneficent
authority. But other movements, besides, mani-
fest the advance of intellectual and scientific
Socialism. The " Social Democratic Federation "
is the English branch of the International
Labourers' Association; it still adheres to the
doctrine of Marx, to which its leaders try to win
over new disciples. The psychological reasons
for the comparative ill-success of orthodox collectiv-
ism in England in contrast to Germany or France
have often been pointed out; this foreign dis-
cipline and frame of mind meet in the English
temperament with obstacles, considered as insur-
mountable; the strictness and abstraction of its
formulae, its strongly centralized organization, the
stress it lays on general and distant ends, at the
expense of incomplete and immediate realizations,
clash in British minds with the instinct of positive
action, of necessary compromise and individual
initiative.

Therefore English Marxism has attracted, since
1 88 1, only a small number of disciples; ready to
emphasize the differences which set it apart from
the other Socialist sects, abating nothing of its
uncompromising formulae, considering the war of
classes as the real basis of the working men's
political action, expecting from a final revolution
" the communistic organization of property, means
of production, distribution and exchange," it does
not constitute the main line along which is being

208 MODERN ENGLAND

gradually effected the increasing socialization of
English national life. It rather plays the part of
an outside minority, constantly reminding the
labour associations, bent on a policy of com-
promise, of the great ends to be reached ulti-
mately. That part, though a secondary one, is not
devoid of efficiency; the collectivist candidates,
though none of them has yet forced his way into
Parliament, have not all met with overwhelming
defeats in recent elections; and in the unsettled
atmosphere of the last years, under the pressure
of the economic and moral influences which urge
England on towards bolder and more conscious
adaptations, the small Marxist sect has somewhat
increased in numbers, whilst its radiating power
has been spreading more widely over the working
class.

But far more significant is another form of
intellectual Socialism, which spontaneously agrees,
this time, with the political temperament of Eng-
land : Fabianism. Clear-sighted and thoroughly
objective in spirit, broadly tolerant besides, readily
combining with the Christian Socialists or the
Marxists, the Fabian Society might be accur-
ately defined as a reconciliation or the practical
opportunism to which the old English empiricism
owed its strength, with a decided exigency of
coherent reasoning and logic, in which the new
tendencies that modify or correct that empiricism
are revealed. It gathers together a small elite of
independent minds, which found their way to
Socialism through reflection and the study of
economic facts, and which, admitting of no

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 209

dogma, only submit, in their action and thought,
to a very pliant organization and discipline.
Fabianism is thus a variable and individual doc-
trine; taken as a whole, it is rather derived from
John Stuart Mill than from Marx; it rejects the
war of classes; it demands precise and feasible
measures, and seeks, through gradual stages, the
suppression of private ownership of land and
capital. In their tactics lies the main originality
of the Fabians; their method consists in permeat-
ing public opinion, by an increasing propaganda,
with socialistic views, in pointing out detailed
particular solutions for the problems of the day,
without scaring people by the prospect of final
realizations; to put it briefly, in introducing an
increasing amount of such moral preferences and
material conditions into the processes of common
sense and the facts themselves, as can prepare the
way for the gradual advent of collectivism.

This permeation of the various political
spheres, and chiefly of the Liberal party, by the
spirit of Socialism, is one of the main factors which
have caused the evolution of this party, taken as
a whole, towards a more markedly and boldly
democratic policy. But in spite of its influence,
both widespread and deep, the Fabian Society
carries in itself too many seeds of discord to be
well fitted for political struggles; unable, for
instance, to decide in the abstract for or against
militant imperialism, it was split into two unequal
fractions at the time of the Boer War. Its proper
course of action is in abeyance, and it tends to
dissolve into the diffused aspiration after reform

210 MODERN ENGLAND

and resolutely modern intelligence which it has
itself created. Its spirit at least, should the society-
disappear, would certainly survive it; it admirably
answers to the ways of thinking and acting which
attract the new generations, bent on progress,
whilst still aware of the necessary transitions.

The Fabian ideas have chiefly come into contact
with the practical policy of the Radicals in the
administrative councils of large towns; and their
influence has been particularly felt in the province
of municipal Socialism. Since 1832, as has been
seen, the organization of public functions, either
national or local, had been deeply altered by the
successive Parliaments, in which liberal ideas
generally prevailed ; from the older empirical
traditions, according to which ill-defined functions
were concentrated in the hands of a few irrespons-
ible authorities, had gradually been evolved a
better-ordered system, in which functionaries,
often recruited by competition, performed care-
fully limited tasks, under the control of competent
chiefs or elected boards. This readjustment of
English administration to modern wants had
naturally imparted more extensive powers to the
State, and to local assemblies, the most important
of which, the county councils, were organized by
the Act of 1888.

The movement thus begun fell in with the j
reforming tendencies of the Fabians, and their
Socialism, at once logical and practical. They
devoted their efforts to promoting it, and carried
it further. If they have, to a large extent, suc-
ceeded in so doing, it is because experience has

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 211

confirmed their doctrine; it is to the teaching of
facts that the municipalization of public services
in England owes its remarkable development. In
London, Manchester, Glasgow, in almost all very
large towns, water, gas, means of conveyance,
baths, markets, hospitals, docks, burial grounds,
are no longer distributed or taken on lease by
private companies. It cannot be denied that these
attempts have been successful as a rule; they have
in most cases served the interests of the consumers,
and those of the municipal budgets. Against this
increasing hold taken by Socialism on collective
life rose, along with the interests it endangered,
the theoretic preferences of individualists and
Conservatives for laisser-faire. At a recent date,
a reaction of the popular feeling checked this
development for a while in London. It none the
less constitutes one of the main forces which
quietly effect the necessary transition leading to a
more scientific and more democratic organization of
public services; and municipal Socialism educates,
if not revolutionary fanatics, at least staunch
defenders of that efficient Radicalism in which, at
the present day, are combined the most active ten-
dencies of old Liberalism with the most practical
aspirations of the associations for social reform.

Ill

But the chief reason why the social problem
has come to the front in contemporary England
lies in the fact that the working class, of late, has
p 2

212 MODERN ENGLAND

learnt how to strike a middle course between the
violent tactics of Chartism, which had been con-
demned by experience, and the strictly limited
outlook to which trade-unions, in their riper
wisdom, had afterwards confined themselves. This
class to-day makes its proper strength felt in the
political struggle, and the "Labour Party" has
forced its way into the House of Commons. That
event put an end to the traditional system according
to which a yielding Conservatism and a moderate
Liberalism endlessly succeeded each other, both
equally bent on a policy of prudence. So, the
simple equilibrium which the spontaneous in-
stincts of English empiricism had created and,
for centuries, maintained, was modified with the
coming of a new age and became more complex.
The Labour Party is not a gathering of " intel-
lectuals," like the Fabian Society, neither is it
an organization copied from a foreign pattern,
like the Social Democratic Federation; it is a
movement sprung from the working class itself,
from its temperament and its practical sense. Its
future development was first foreshadowed by an
association called the Independent Labour Party;
this was an uncertain attempt of trade-unions feel-
ing their way towards political action. Founded in
1893, it brought together men of widely different
opinions, equally bent upon action; it put forth
limited social schemes; but they were precise
and susceptible of being immediately carried out.
Its broad spirit, free from any dogmatic formula,
well agreed with the average preferences of the
British workman, who, though driven by material

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 213

necessities to assume a more active attitude, had
lost none of his likings or habits. However, the
rise of a wider, better-disciplined organization,
the Parliamentary " Labour Party," has left the
Independent Labour Party but the value of a
symbolic phrase; it expresses the opposition to
dogmatism which still separates the matter-of-fact
Socialism of trade-unions from orthodox collectiv-
ism; preserving a nominal existence by the side
of the new Labour Party, it has supplied the
latter with most of its members, in default of
the definite principles it had proved unable to
evolve.

This transformation was a process of growth.
For around the Independent Labour Party, and
enriching it with fresh vigour, had developed the
movement called "New Unionism." Whilst in
the older and more powerful trade-unions was to
be found an aristocracy of the working class, thriv-
ing, and mostly conservative, the economic unrest
signalized by several violent strikes gave rise after
1889 to new associations among the unsettled
masses of unskilled labourers — dockers, porters,
stokers, etc. Organized after a very different
pattern, these unions required but very low sub-
scriptions of their members; their purpose was
not to ward off economic accidents; they were
meant for war and levelled against the supremacy
of capital. Instinct with the feeling of class
hostility, the younger unions turned to Socialism;
they accepted its doctrines in a large measure or
entirely. This spirit was soon to radiate over
their forerunners; and the trade-union congresses

2i4 MODERN ENGLAND

passed motions more and more akin to collectivist
formulae.

At that very time, the scared associations of
employers and the Conservative party, alarmed by
the threatening attitude of the working class,
waged war upon trade-union agitation. A series
of judgments passed by the courts of justice or
the House of Lords did away with the privileges
the unions had won, like picketing; and allowed
such employers as were wronged by the deliberate
action of trade-unionists to sue the unions for
compensation in money. Realizing then the
danger that beset them, the unions organized
themselves, and seeing it was necessary to carry
the struggle into the open field of politics, decided
to force their way into Parliament. Thus New
Unionism sprang from the economic and social
circumstances, the general effect of which was to
give all conflicts a more definite and more acute
aspect; from New Unionism rose the Labour Party.

This association which brings together the
various sections and the diverse opinions of the
conscious working class, partakes both of the
empirical English traditions it continues, and of
the more energetic spirit of meditated action, one
of the chief expressions of which it constitutes.
Its dim, ill-defined beginnings remind one of the
obscure growths of all British institutions. The
"Labour Representation Committee " (1899) was
joined by an increasing number of trade-unions,
and by such Socialist organizations as the Fabian
Society; its purpose was to prepare the way for
trade-union ca\didates in Parliamentary elections,

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 215

and to secure a yearly stipend for elected candidates,
the payment of members having not yet been
accepted by Parliament. It had no theoretic
programme; but soon the pressure of events and
its inner logic drove it to adopt Socialist formulae.
It was only after the 1906 election had brought
thirty Labour members and a score of Labour-
Liberals to the House of Commons, along with
a very large Liberal majority, that the name of
Labour Party, first proposed at the Newcastle Con-
ference in 1903, was proclaimed before the nation.

Nor did the new party, when engaged in the
political struggle, show the strict discipline or the
unity of belief which are, for instance, character-
istic of the German Social Democrats. It remains,
upon the whole, impervious to the notion of class
war; its members easily reconcile their demands
with loyalty to the Crown, to the Established
Church, to the necessities of national defence; free
from all Marxist irreconcilability, and therefore
denounced by the leaders of the Social Democratic
Federation, they pursue an opportunist policy with
a view to material results.

However, when one takes a general view of the
Labour Party, one cannot but detect in it a more
and more clearly perceptible approximation
towards the Continental aspects of the working
class agitation; the social problem, since the rise
of the party, has assumed a more pressing and
acute character. Adhesions to socialistic principles
are daily more numerous among its members; at
the Hull Congress, in 1908, a collectivist motion
was passed by a majority of the delegates. Inde-

216 MODERN ENGLAND

pendent, and in no way tied down to any of the
traditional parties, it does not sacrifice its freedom
of action to the Liberals; and though it ungrudg-
ingly grants them its support on many an occasion,
its representatives sit, to whatever party the
ministry may belong, on the opposition benches.
Its successes can but encourage it to adhere to that
policy; as early as 1906, Parliament acknowledged
the financial irresponsibility of trade-unions in
cases of strikes, and settled their legal status; in
1908, most of the "Labour-Liberals," yielding
to a superior power of attraction, joined their
Labour colleagues. In spite of its relative failure
in the first 19 10 election, the party issued from
it in a more homogeneous and united condition;
its moral influence is in no way weakened, and
it plays the part of a first-rate force in the present
great constitutional crisis.

Against the hereditary Chamber, the focus of
the opposition to social progress, it not only nurses
the natural grudge of the democracy of labour;
it must also defend its own still threatened exist-
ence; a judgment of the Lords, by making illegal
the subscriptions of trade-unions to the fund of the
Labour Party, forced it to press energetically its
claim to the official acknowledgment of that right.
Demanding as preliminary reforms effective
universal suffrage, the nationalization of land and
railways, free meals for school children, a Work-
men's Compensation Act; numbering in 19 10
nearly 1,500,000 members; loyal to Free Trade,
and denouncing Protectionism as the doctrine of
dear bread; reaping, in a word, the advantages of

THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 217

a definite programme and a firm though not
revolutionary action, the Labour Party seems
destined to wield the influence of an energetic
compact minority over the ruling majority. In
it are best focused the tendencies making for
systematic progress whose impulse modern Eng-
land is inevitably bound to follow, being awakened
by the new difficulties from her slow habits of
spontaneous adaptation.

CHAPTER III

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM

I. The contemporary evolution of parties ; Home Rule and
the dissenting Liberals ; the rise of the Unionist party ; its ten-
dencies.— II. The crisis of Liberalism and its new awakening ;
the Radical elements of the Liberal party ; the heterogeneous
character of its tendencies. — III. The recent political conflict;
tis causes and possible consequences.

The growth of the Labour Party meant for
England a deep modification of her political life.
But even before it appeared there had begun, in
the old traditional parties, and within the scope of
their regular alternation, a crisis which fully echoed
the economic conflicts and the wide problems of
the new age. Once already, the 1830 Whigs and
Tories had been rejuvenated, after the first Reform
Act, as Liberals and Conservatives; about the end
of the century, after the complete advent of
democracy, Conservatism and Liberalism in their
turn underwent necessary transformations. The
former grew better defined, organized itself round
particular standpoints as centres of defence
or political action, and became Unionism; the
latter, though it kept its name, assimilated new
tendencies, borrowed from more precise doctrines;
weakened by an inner process of decay, it regener-
ated itself through the efficient virtue of principles

218

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 219

of positive action, and adopted the social pro-
gramme of Radicalism. Lastly, the unavoidable
conflict between the conservative tradition of Eng-
lish empiricism, and the need of more sweeping
reforms awakened by the conscious democracy, set
the hereditary Chamber in opposition to the elected
House. The very soundness of the English con-
stitution was questioned. Henceforth the political
drama developed on the English stage; and what-
ever may be its temporary issue, a period of rapid
and critical evolution has doubtlessly begun.

The Irish question was the starting-point of
the first political change which brought to light
the inner transformation of the old parties. By
causing the scission of the " Liberal Unionists," it
freed Liberalism from its most moderate elements,
and prepared the way for its evolution towards
Radicalism; on the other hand, it created a new
situation, from which a new principle clearly
resulted; and round this principle the conservative
tendencies crystallized.

The chapter of Irish sufferings, of their causes,
of their consequences in England, of the efforts
made to allay them, has been for three centuries
one of the most distressing in history; it should
be studied apart. One should inquire also by
what stages, under what influences the Home Rule
scheme took shape in Gladstone's mind. Tradi-
tionally inclined to conceive in a broader and more

220 MODERN ENGLAND

tolerant spirit the relations of the central power
with the local authorities or the colonies, the
Liberal party had chosen a leader in whom burned
a generous zeal for justice. Along with the bold
plan of granting Ireland an almost independent
Parliament, was brought forth quite as bold an
agricultural scheme, meant to transfer ownership
from the landlords to the tenants with the help of
the Imperial government. Thus Liberalism, whose
proper doctrine had been exhausted by its victory,
was reinvigorated by a programme of positive
action due to Gladstone; it extended the benefit
of its political principles to Ireland, and came into
close contact with the economic necessities it had
always too much ignored.

But at the same time, Conservatism too was
recovering a doctrine and a precise object for its
action and strength. In the course of the century
it had exhausted itself quite as much as its rival.
Wholly taken up by the task of checking the
democratic evolution, of securing the necessary
transitions, it found itself purposeless, that evolu-
tion once achieved; nor was the alternative of
again questioning the final issue open to it; for it
had from the beginning accepted it. Surviving
only as a vague instinct, or a diffused tendency,
separated from Liberalism only by shades of feel-
ings and family traditions, it owed its regeneration
to the two new predominant facts in the contem-
porary history of England : to the Home Rule
scheme, which helped the Imperialist formulae to
reach a definite conscious form, and made the
unity of the Empire into a national article of

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 221

faith; to the progress of the working class move-
ment, which transferred the Conservative defence
from the political to the social domain.

The scheme granting political autonomy to
Ireland met, as everybody knows, with much
opposition even within the Liberal party; it
seemed to endanger that Imperial unity, the power-
ful feeling for which by that time had come to be
clearly realized. Nothing can be more suggestive
than to follow the course of the dissenting group
which broke away from Gladstone and caused the
failure of Home Rule. The " Liberal Unionists "
did not at first officially belong to the Conserva-
tive majority, though they voted with it; but,
before long, they completely merged into it, and
their leaders were admitted, in 1895, into the
Salisbury Ministry. Thenceforth, the new element
of strenuous national resistance they brought with
themselves quickly won a predominant influence
over the hesitating passiveness which characterized
most Conservatives; a few years later, the name
" Unionist" became that of the whole party.

Under this flag, from that time, this party faced
the electoral fights. No symbol, indeed, could
better stand for the synthesis of manifold
tendencies, the coalition of which opposed the
renewed vigour of Liberalism; to the richer blood
infused by the " Liberal Unionists," was due the
greater vitality, the radiating and assimilating
power of that composite doctrine. Asserting the
integrity of the national bond in the case of
Ireland, Unionism naturally claimed for itself
the popularity of new-born imperialism; it made

222 MODERN ENGLAND

military and commercial defence against the enter-
prises of foreign nations its privilege and special
care; and Protectionism, too, became part and
parcel of the system. So, Conservatism, renewed
under the name of Unionism, is a body of political
feelings centring round the cause of social resist-
ance; one may say that in it is focused, at the
present time, the preference of traditional England
for instinctive readjustments.

The Unionist party, no doubt, has retained
much of the old Conservative spirit. In religious
and ecclesiastical matters, it stands for the privi-
leges of the Establishment. Like the Tories of
old, it favours the claims of the " High Church " ;
and in the confused struggle, brought about by
the attempt of England to organize a system of
public education, it throws all its weight on the
side of Anglicanism, helping it to secure its hold
upon the State-aided schools. Like the Tories,
it is as loyal to the Crown as to the Church; the
authority of the King finds in it even stauncher
supporters than in the Liberal party. Though no
longer contesting democracy, now a fact, it opposes
the measures meant to make it more real and
efficient; the payment of members has long been
rejected owing to its uncompromising resistance;
it maintains plural voting, and the clauses of
exception which still limit the franchise in Eng-
land. The interests of the wealthy classes are
respected by it all the more for the threatening
onslaughts of the Liberal party. When the
Puritan tendencies often predominant among its
adversaries bring them to wage war upon alcohol-

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 223

ism, it takes up the cause of the vexed publicans;
when the financial policy of a Radical minister leads
him to shift the balance of taxation to the benefit
of the people, it defends the traditional immunities
of capital.

The new party of social resistance, with regard
to the historic objects to which loyalty is tradition-
ally due — the Crown, the Church, private property
— thus continues in the attitude Conservatism has
bequeathed to it. But on essential points, it yields
to the spirit of efficient reform and of initiative
called forth by the complexity of modern circum-
stances and problems; demanding a closer union
of the Empire, a better adaptation of imperial
strength to diplomatic or military action, it per-
meates the instinctive elements of Imperialism with
conscious reasoning will; challenging the prestige
of Free Trade, and proclaiming the necessity of a
return to Protectionism, it proves revolutionary
in its way. During the present constitutional
crisis, schemes of political reform have sprung
from this very party. Unionism, therefore, may
be regarded as a more energetic combination of
Conservative empiricism with strenuous initiative,
due to the irresistible influence of the new needs.

In social matters, lastly, it prolongs the inter-
ventionist tradition of the Tories, and improves
upon it. Feudal socialism is not extinct in Eng-
land; many still turn to it in the hope of either
alleviating the religious and human compunction
awakened by poverty, or checking the advance of
collectivism. That providential notion of the
duty of the ruling classes, as has been seen, was

224 MODERN ENGLAND

yet rooted in the patriarchal country manners, in
the beneficent authority of the noble families and
the gentry; it was accepted by the docile peasantry;
it is now being extended to all the provinces of
national life. In Ireland the Conservative party,
in spite of its opposition to Home Rule, has
effected agricultural reforms, sought to allay the
distress of tenants, and created administrative in-
stitutions to promote local self-government. In
England, it has decided that primary instruction
should be free, and organized the county councils;
it is ready to favour social hygiene and moral
regeneration in every way, provided the chosen
means keep within the bounds of its instincts, and
comply with its inner clinging to moderation.

The expropriation of large estates in the interest
of the public, with compensation to the owners,
the reviving of small holdings, are among the
reforms accepted or demanded by the Unionist
party, though its connections with the landlord
class prevent it from carrying them out syste-
matically. By advocating tariff reform, it pretends
to cope with unemployment and poverty, the main
cause of which it finds in Free Trade. The limita-
tions of that social activity are easily discernible;
still one should not forget that it exists, and con-
stitutes the effort of a great party, always ready
for plastic adaptations, in order to meet the require-
ments of the present by the aid of the formulae of
the past.

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 225

II

About the end of the nineteenth century, Eng-
lish Liberalism was undergoing a severe crisis. It
had reached that hour, fraught with danger to all
parties, when, their principles being exhausted,
they must either be rejuvenated or perish. On
the chief points of its programme, the democratic
evolution of England and Free Trade had brought
its wishes full realization. On others, experience
had contradicted its doctrine, or imposed upon it
the acknowledgment of contrary facts. Ireland
did not enjoy the self-government it had, for a
while, tried to give her, without devoting its
whole strength to the purpose. The Empire,
whose ever more pressing claims and growth it
had ignored, was coming to the front in political
life, and demanded new formulae, answering the
necessities of its incipient organization. In the
province of social problems, meanwhile, and in the
mutual relations of economic forces and of classes,
a moral solidarity had asserted itself, in harmony
with the narrow interdependence of units and
groups in national life, and State intervention had
gained more and more ground, whilst the Liberal
orthodoxy found itself powerless. On all sides,
needs had been discovered which it could not
satisfy, or solutions had been accepted with which
its own principles could not be reconciled.

The reason was that these principles were the
merely negative expression of the obscure striving
after freedom, thanks to which a modern nation
Q

226 MODERN ENGLAND

had been evolved out of the England of yore.
The individualistic philosophy of the Utilitarians,
and the impatient efforts of the middle class, had
successively overthrown all the barriers with which
the old society checked the free expansion of in-
dustry and trade; the shifting of balance thus
effected had exceeded the desires of the middle
class, according to the usual law of loosened
forces; and democracy had spread its level far and
wide over the still visible remnants of the
oligarchic constitution. But, wholly bent on the
criticism of the past, Liberalism proved unable to
shape the future it had made unavoidable. To
meet the needs of a reconstructive age, it lacked
organic ideas. Already contained within political
democracy, the rough outlines of social democracy
came out through it; and, hostile to this new
development, Liberalism lacked the necessary
authority to stop it. Therefore it seemed doomed
to immediate decay; by its side Conservatism was
holding its own, still vigorous, fostered by eternal
instincts, for it is its privilege to undergo a con-
tinual process of change without ever changing;
while Socialism on the increase threatened to take
its own place before long.

A complexity of causes and influences have dur-
ing the last ten years restored to Liberalism much
of the strength it had lost. As a party, at least,
it has known how to modify itself in order to live;
and thanks to the happy indetermination which
has ever been a characteristic of English political
tenets, it has, too, succeeded in realizing such a
temporary synthesis as that which the Unionist

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 227

party was setting as an example to it. First it
availed itself of its opponents' faults; the mistakes
they made during the South African War made it
reap the benefit of that tendency to regular oscilla-
tions which, in the normal course of things, brings
back the opposition to power almost necessarily.
Then, the tariff reform agitation imparted an actual
fecundity to its economic principles, which their
triumph, now old, had deprived of their former
vigour; identifying itself with the reaction of
public opinion against the initiative of tariff
reformers, it has undertaken the defence of Free
Trade, on behalf of the interests of the people.

But chiefly, the Liberal party has been borne
onward by the wave of social progress and reform
which has risen from the depths of national life.
From democracy that still grows and better realizes
its own powers, from the economic crisis and the
awakening of the Labour Party, from the psycho-
logical rhythm which, in England, called for a
new period of national criticism, from all the causes,
in short, which, at the same time, opened the new
problems and, to some extent, predetermined their
solutions, an irresistible impulse sprang which
revived decaying Liberalism. The tendencies
which this impulse brought with it, proved to be
alien enough to those which had made up the
Liberal doctrine during the last century. Whilst
this doctrine had remained individualistic, the
spirit which emanated from the working class was
one of closer and more interdependent social
organization; whilst the old Liberalism above all
submitted to the established order and kept, in its
Q 2

228 MODERN ENGLAND

political action, within the bounds of constitutional
precedents, in its new form it boldly opposed the
mediaeval fabric of English tradition, by proclaim-
ing the need for intelligence, method, and superior
efficiency.

The intermediaries, through which that fresh
vigour permeated the old Liberal party, were first
the influential group of the Radicals, a minority
of energetic, thoroughgoing democrats, whose
number the recent elections have increased, and
who keep in close touch with the aspirations of
labour; it was, next, the diffusion of Fabian ideas,
and the gradual conversion of opinion, in advanced
circles, to an opportunist and practical Socialism;
it was as well the influence of thinkers, who, from
the general circumstances in which England finds
herself, infer the necessity of a systematic and
meditated readaptation to modern life; one should
mention lastly the opposition of dissenters, who
have been traditionally staunch supporters of
Liberalism, against the encroachments of the Estab-
lished Church and her attempt at monopolizing
public education. All these causes contributed to
bring about the triumph of the Liberals in the
1 906 election ; they created that powerful coalition
of interests and forces to which are due such bold
innovations in the financial and political domains,
and which all the gathered strength of the Unionist
party has not yet proved able to overcome.

If English Liberalism has been revived, it is
because a profound desire for progress and change
rose from the very conditions of the time, and
because, the Labour Party being still looked upon

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 229

as politically inferior, an ancient tradition con-
ferred upon the descendants of the Whigs the
privilege of acting as interpreters and champions
of those desires. Their inconsistent principles
could not withstand that influx of new tendencies;
and so, individualist and moderate Liberalism
found itself saturated with a reforming Radicalism,
ready to advocate the intervention of the State.

And the inner weakness of both the party and
its doctrine is perhaps due precisely to this com-
posite character; to the incomplete conciliation of
the old and the new elements. The attitude of
contemporary Liberalism is approximately consist-
ent only in political warfare, under the rule of the
discipline enforced by the chiefs. In the abstract,
nothing can be more unsettled than its general
directions. It has yielded to the spirit of social
solidarity, but has not officially given over
economic orthodoxy, and State interference is still
opposed by many of its representatives. Goaded
on by circumstances, it has boldly attacked some
privileges of the wealthy classes, and, on a few
occasions, the very principle of the existing order;
but the traditional preference of Liberalism for
compromises and empirical solutions is denounced
by the Radicals only; theoretically, there is among
the Liberals, in Parliament or in the country, no
unanimous adhesion to such ideas or beliefs as
would, of necessity, unite them in a common
opposition to the Conservative solutions of the new
difficulties. The unflinching strength of Liberal
action is derived from external conditions, from
the pressure of popular enthusiasm, rather than

23o MODERN ENGLAND

from its own guiding principles; and this will be
the case until the day comes, if it is to come, when
intellectual Radicalism succeeds in effecting the
moral unity of the party.

In the same way, when confronted with the
other problems now pending, Liberalism is apt to
waver and adopt contradictory views. In what
concerns education, it is divided between the unde-
nominational idea, in which the Radicals are ready
to find the guiding principle of primary instruc-
tion, and the system of equal advantages to all
denominational schools, which many others con-
sider as the only kind of neutrality compatible
with the present state of public opinion. About
the Empire and national defence also the Liberals
do not agree. Among them are found the
last of the " Little Englanders," the theorists
opposed to colonial expansion, the disciples of the
Manchester school, clinging to the dream of peace-
ful international competition, and the humanitarian
advocates of peace and disarmament; but on the
other hand, the Liberal party in its official policy
has shown itself anxious to maintain the naval
supremacy of Britain; it has taken its share in the
great work of military reform; and many of its
members not only acknowledge those necessities
of international politics, but feel at one with the
combative Imperialists.

Therefore the general impression one gathers
from present Liberalism is that of an imperfect and
confused synthesis, whose unity is preserved only
by the eagerness of the struggle, and the pressure
of the opposed synthesis; of a traditional, individu-

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 231

alistic and moderate background of ideas, not
opposed to the slow advent of political democracy,
but deeply hostile to all abstract doctrines and sud-
den changes, from which there stands out in strong
relief a Radicalism of the French type, vigorous,
socialistic, and not adverse to systems. It is the
chief characteristic of the present time that cir-
cumstances should have endowed the latter ten-
dency with a remarkable power of attraction, so far
unparalleled in the history of England; and that
the inert mass of the Liberal party as a whole
should have been sufficiently permeated by that
spirit to be carried away by it.

Ill

The acute political crisis which began in 1909
is the outcome of those general conditions. On
the one hand, the democratic and reforming im-
pulse which the Liberal party had brought with it
on its return to power was bound to result in ever
bolder encroachments upon traditional privileges;
on the other hand, Conservatism renewed and
reinvigorated as " Unionism " was bound to infuse
greater strength for resistance and even for attack
into the institutions whose part it is to defend those
privileges. The conflict of Lords and Commons
was the consequence and striking symbol of that
opposition between two aspects of England.

The clash might long have been foreseen.
When making the political equilibrium depend
on the concerted working of the hereditary and

23 2 MODERN ENGLAND

the elected Chambers, the English constitution,
that organic growth of ancient experience, had not
foreseen the modern rise of industrial democracy.
From the day when the will of the people was
freely expressed and directly felt through the
Commons, the germ of a conflict threatened the
smooth functioning of the venerable constitutional
machine. No doubt, the faculty of spontaneous
adaptation which characterizes English empiricism
proved efficient in this instance as in others, by
realizing the necessary compromises; gradually,
in the course of the century, the democratic evolu-
tion took place, without any serious shock; the
Crown, superior to all parties, and the supreme
arbiter of desperate conflicts, intervened at the
most critical time, in 1832, to impose the first
Reform Bill upon the Lords. Entitled to create
new peers freely, and so to displace the majority,
it could alone soften down the jarring contrast
between the conservative interest of the oligarchy
and the impatient will of the people; and about
the end of the century there were some grounds
for hoping that, thanks to the pacifying action of
the Crown, the hereditary Chamber resigned to
unavoidable sacrifices had outlived a dangerous
period of constitutional change unharmed.

But the growing demands of the democratic
spirit, and the daring of the new Liberalism, were
to ruin that optimistic trust in the future. Already
the " Home Rule " quarrel had stirred and em-
bittered the hostility of the two Chambers. In
spite of the patriarchal tendencies of the Conserva-
tive policy, and of the active part often played by

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 233

the Lords in social legislation, they were bound
to stand in an attitude of more and more irrecon-
cilable opposition to the reforms demanded by the
majority of the nation. Content with simply pass-
ing the bills brought in by a Conservative ministry,
ready to rest satisfied, in such a case, with merely
honorary functions, they would resume their active
part as soon as their adversaries came again into
power. Since the 1906 election, more especially,
their veto had thrown out almost all the reforms
proposed by the Commons. The uneasiness pre-
vailing in Parliament, the anger of Liberals and
Radicals pointed to a crisis; the Budget of Mr.
Lloyd George was but the occasion which hastened
the course of events.

The conflict was thus a natural outcome of all
the internal causes which have reawakened in con-
temporary England the political problem like all
others. But, as has been seen, the characteristic trait
of recent English evolution lies in its being
quickened by external influences. In this case,
again, the foreign factor was felt; international
competition, either economic or military, was the
immediate cause of the crisis. If the Liberal
government has laid new taxes on capital, it is not
only to meet the social expenses required for old
age pensions, it is chiefly to bear the very heavy
burden of national defence. Challenged by the
constant increase of the German navy, England
spends more and more on new ships; spurred on
by public opinion, astir with the sensational warn-
ings of the Press, the Liberal party must give up
its traditions of retrenchment, the pacific dreams

234 MODERN ENGLAND

of some of its leaders; bent upon maintaining, as
the famous phrase has it, the two-power standard
of superiority, the British Admiralty gives orders
for ever more numerous men-of-war.

And on the other hand, the peril of a German
invasion, complacently pictured in dismal colours
by many writers; the possibility of intervention
in a Continental war; and all the dangers and com-
petitions with which combative Imperialism has
clogged the " splendid isolation " England was
once proud of, compel her to give herself a stand-
ing army. Conscription, yesterday distasteful to
all, is gaining ground every day; the regular
troops are kept in thorough training; the territorial
army, completely reorganized, constitutes a defen-
sive force by no means to be despised. It was to
meet these heavy financial needs that, for the first
time, a Chancellor of the Exchequer carried Radical
notions into practice on a large scale, and levied
twenty millions sterling on capital and land.

It would be out of place here to sum up the
events which followed the bringing in of the 1909
Budget. Everybody still remembers how the
opposition of the Lords decided the obscure ques-
tion of their rights in money matters, and wrested
from the Commons the privilege they had, so they
thought, securely held for forty years. This initia-
tive of the conservative interests, opposed to that
of the reforming forces, clearly reveals the acute,
violent nature of the present crisis; it shows as
well how much contemporary influences have
roused the spirit of action in the two conflicting
parties. Whilst the Unionists denounced socia-

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 235

listic articles in the Budget, the Liberals had some
grounds to charge the Lords with a revolutionary
proceeding.

Thenceforth the struggle had begun. It went
on and is still going on, without its being possible
at the present time to foresee its final solution.
The first 19 10 election marked a pause in the
advance of Liberalism, but did not result in a
victory for the other side; the two bodies of
opposed forces counterbalanced each other for a
while, and the Liberal party remained in power.
The accession of a new king still hampered the
logical development of the consequences implied
in the initial conditions. The constitutional con-
ference met in vain; Parliament was dissolved,
and a new election left Liberalism again uncon-
quered. After the truce of the Coronation, the
Parliament Bill is now fighting its way through
the Lords. The next months will probably witness
the victory of the democratic principle in matters
of taxation. However widespread and deep the
feelings and instincts, however vigorous the social
elements of all kinds may be which stand for the
present order, in spite of the possible success of
Protectionism, the benefit of which would no doubt
accrue to the Conservative party, one can but ex-
pect that the popular wave will overthrow the
barriers raised by the Lords. Whatever the com-
promise agreed upon, and the degree of indepen-
dence left to the Upper House, it can hardly
preserve any effective political power unless it
undergoes serious changes in its composition or
spirit. Let us not forget, moreover, that in face

236 MODERN ENGLAND

of the measures pressed for by the Liberals — the
financial privileges of the Commons, the limited
veto of the Lords, the restriction of Parliament to
five years — schemes of self-reform, making some
allowance for the elective principle, have come to
light within the hereditary Chamber. The Eng-
lish instinct for necessary compromise seems to
point to an incomplete victory of the Commons;
but after the momentous innovation by which the
Lords opened the fight, even a mitigated defeat
will be for them a disaster in principle. The only
uncertainty the future still holds in store is that
of the form which the democratic and logical pro-
gress required by the conditions of modern life
will assume, when the constitution has been
modernized and made more precise.

For such is, to the impartial observer, the
meaning of the present crisis. It brings into broad
daylight the hidden discrepancy between contem-
porary England and her traditional empiricism.
Unheard-of words have been uttered on both
sides; whilst it used to be a commonplace to extol
the happy pliancy the English constitution owed
to its vague outline; whilst the political pride
of the British was fond of setting their " un-
written " constitution in contrast with the syste-
matic fabrics raised by the delusive Continental
reason, they have been heard to regret that very
vagueness and uncertainty, the source of insoluble
conflicts; a general desire for clearness and scientific
efficiency, the outcome of the industrial civiliza-
tion, has conquered the devout respect which
screened the time-honoured edifice. When looked

THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 237

at in the light of an all-important contest, its
plan was found to be chaotic, intricate and anti-
quated. However living may still be the faith of
the British people in that political shrine, their
shrewd sense has perceived the decaying state of at
least some of its parts; the reconstruction of those
parts has been at once decided upon. For the
law of adaptation, the very condition of life, is
even superior to that of conservation ; if life
requires that conscious reflection should more and
more take the place of instinctive spontaneity in
the process of adjustment, empiricism will know
how to remain true to itself, were it by surrender-
ing its stubbornly fought for and most essential
position.

CHAPTER IV

THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM

I. The intellectual and emotional elements of the Imperialist
doctrine. — II. The programme of action; the ends, the means,
and the difficulties met with.

1

We have seen under what influence the im-
perialist feeling awoke between 1850 and 1880.
Growing since the sixteenth century, without any
clear-sighted will or preconceived method, a mere
outcome of the aggressive vigour and the com-
mercial genius of the race, the Empire became
conscious of itself during the nineteenth century.
Its emergence into the inner light is an aspect
of the general psychological development which
characterizes modern England ; and Imperialism,
the doctrine and the religion of the Empire, is an
expression of the impassioned desire for efficiency
which is the salient feature of the contemporary
period.

But no sooner had the imperialist feeling be-
come an element of the general consciousness,
than its realization met with unforeseen difficul-
ties. For the problem of imperial organization is
bound up with other problems, both internal and
foreign; and the interests of England must in this
instance be yielding enough to harmonize with
those of young and lusty colonies, endowed with a

238

THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM 239

robustly realistic spirit. By formulating itself, the
imperialist tendency entered the political arena.
Diffused through all doctrines and parties, it is
yet more narrowly associated with Unionism,
whose inner connection with it has been pointed
out above. It belongs consequently to the body
of forces which includes social and religious Con-
servatism, militarism and Protectionism. There-
fore its complete triumph depends to some extent
on the success of the Unionist coalition; and the
Liberal party, in spite of the sacrifices it has made
to national defence and the unity of the Empire, is
suspected not to desire this unity with the same
combative zeal as the adverse party.

Accepted to-day by the majority of the nation,
imperialism is not officially in power. It has none
the less for the last thirty years presided over the
foreign policy of England and her relations with
her colonies.

Around the feeling which is the soul of im-
perialism, a body of ideas and a programme of
action are aggregated. These ideas are mainly
derived from the vague evolutionism from which
all strong nations, since the time of Darwin, have
deduced the theory of the survival of the fittest.
The notion of races, widely spread in England as
elsewhere, has supplied the instinctive belief in
the natural superiority of the Anglo-Saxon with
a scientific basis. Nothing more was needed to
found the doctrine; its starting-point was the exist-
ence of the Empire, created beyond the seas by
the swarming of British vitality. It found in it
sufficient proof of the expansive, assimilative and

24o MODERN ENGLAND

commanding virtue of the English race, and in-
ferred from those premises the necessity of helping
on, by means of a conscious policy, the full
development of that spontaneously commenced
process. Other elements came into play : the
belief in an imperialist tendency at work through
history; the assertion that our era must carry
further the political centralization from which
modern nations have issued; a conception of the
world according to which, whilst the peoples
deprived of radiating power must dwindle away,
a few gigantic federations — the Russian, the
American, the German, the British Empires — will
struggle for the sovereignty of the earth.

In a word, notions borrowed from biology,
sociology, history, are combined by the presiding
impulse of a powerful feeling, which is the
common link between them; imperialism partakes
both of science and of religion. To religion, again,
it is indebted for the mystical idea of the divinely
appointed mission of the chosen races — the British
race more especially — which sets before them the
duty of extending as far as possible a Christian and
civilizing order. Lastly, side by side with those
idealistic elements, utilitarian aspirations are to be
found; the expansion of the Empire opens a larger
field for the imperial people td rule and to exploit;
and chiefly, industry hopes to find, in the
Dominions or Crown colonies, free markets, the
access of which will never be barred by prohibitive
tariffs. " Trade follows the flag " is the watch-
word which has brought over most British
merchants to the religion of the Empire.

THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM 241

Thus the doctrine is very similar to those which
a wave of conscious and clear-sighted ambition,
of passionate and mystical pride, has brought forth
at the same time in other nations, throughout
Europe and the world. It is fraught with the
same worship of strength, the same contempt for
humanitarian sentimentalism, the same desire to
ascribe the victories of races to the inner will of
the universe, which have fostered the reaction
of the declining century against the romanticism
of its early years. It manifests, besides the natural
growth of the seeds sown by Carry le's doctrine
of energy, the effect of the deep-seated decay under
which traditional Liberalism is labouring. The
critical formulae on which the individualistic move-
ment of the nineteenth century was based being
exhausted, all the minds craving for organic
notions turned to' the doctrine of imperial unity
and political greatness, as well as to the idea of
social solidarity. One can trace, too, in the most
subtle prophets of imperialism that vein of prag-
matism which to-day runs through English
thought, that weariness of futile pursuits, that new
indifference to any scientific creed, that preference
for a conservative and nationalist realism, which
brings together the scepticism of a Balfour and
that of a Biilow in a common feeling of respect
for the hard solid imperial fact.

As for the particular character of British im-
perialism, it lies in the programme of action by
which its adherents seek to carry it out. In
contrast to Germany, England must consider the
imperial problem as mainly bearing on an incom-

242 MODERN ENGLAND

plete unity, which has yet to be achieved, and on
the institution through common interests and feel-
ings of a closer union between the very distant,
very diverse parts of a single whole. The British
Empire is essentially an aggregate of colonies.

ii

The first and chief aim of imperialism is to
avert all risks of dissension and separation. It
strives before all to organize the colonies, amongst
themselves and with the mother-country. Federa-
tions or homogeneous states, united to Great
Britain by an ever stronger and more elastic bond,
would best serve its purpose. This bond should
be a sentimental one, because the instinctive
acknowledgment of a common blood is at the
very core of imperial consciousness; it should be
political, because unity of will and action can alone
secure the cohesion of the Empire under the
jealous scrutiny of its foes; being political, it
should be commercial, for common interests must
cement even the strongest friendships; and it
should be military too, for the cause of national
defence cannot be ignored by the far-away
Dominions which English squadrons may be called
upon to protect.

That programme has already been to some
extent carried out. First, the idea of the Empire
is officially associated with all the public utterances,
and all the important steps of the central govern-
ment. Speeches from the throne, ministerial
declarations emphasize the imperial character of the

THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM 243

British Crown. It is the Imperial Parliament that
sits at Westminster, and the chief instruments of
general administration are invested, too, with this
title. The Press and literature endeavour to revive
and foster the sentiment of the Empire, that in-
heritance of the race, the pride and care of every
citizen, a glorious brotherhood spreading over the
face of the earth. The greater speed of communi-
cation, the improvement in the means of convey-
ance, the immediate echo of all national emotions
in the universe roused to a homogeneous life,
endow the various parts of the Empire with a
common and constantly thrilling sensibility. On
striking occasions, the tangible image of the
imperial unity has been displayed in London, as a
manifold variegated pageant; jubilees, coronations,
anniversaries or ceremonies, public joys or griefs
for all Englishmen and subject races, have shown
to all eyes the invisible bond which links together
so many lands, climates, civilizations and customs.
England had never ceased td keep fastened upon
herself the gaze of all her overseas children; but
her own sons, once pent up in their insular pride,
have now enlarged their prospects and their souls
to the magnitude of the destiny of which they are
no longer ignorant.

Meanwhile the Empire is undergoing an un-
interrupted process of unification. Its main
provinces, made up of scattered elements, the
natural and spontaneous growths of British in-
dividualism, are brought, of their own accord and
through the cautious intervention of the mother-
country, to more centralized forms. Rejecting
r 2

244 MODERN ENGLAND

nothing of the Liberalism which was the main
principle of colonial policy in the nineteenth
century, leaving her Dominions their political
autonomy and representative institutions, England
takes care that this freedom shall strengthen the
national or federal bond, instead of destroying it.
Australia, Canada thus constitute organic aggre-
gates of districts unequal in population, in wealth,
but gradually rising to more perfect homogeneity.
Newly conquered from a rival race, South Africa
is already united into one State in which provincial
grudges will be softened down and the memories
of the War will lose their sting, without destroying
the local feeling which the public spirit of both
Englishmen and Boers is equally bent upon pre-
serving. And with strenuous energy, the British
government tries to create an instrument and a
symbol for the supreme federation in the very
centre of the Empire : the " Colonial Confer-
ences,55 meeting in London, are regular Parlia-
ments of the Empire, in which are discussed the
best means to further the common interests, to
make more efficient the solidarity of the sister-
nations, called upon to reinforce natural affinities
by their conscious will.

Among the problems the Colonial Conferences
have to solve, the most important ones concern the
tariffs and the military organization of the Empire.
The idea of an English Zollverein has become an
article of the immediate prdgramme of imperial-
ism; the agitation for Tariff Reform, in England,
lays stress on the possibility and expediency of
an economic federation entirely self-sufficient,

THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM 245

closed to the rest of the world, within which the
diverging interests of the mother-country and the
colonies would be reconciled through a series of
compromises. Though the young countries which
Anglo-Saxon energy is calling to new wealth want
protective tariffs to shelter their growth, they
might at least — and several already do — grant a
preference to Great Britain. As for England, she
would offer them, should she give up Free Trade,
an open market or commercial privileges.

On the other hand, the participation of the
colonies in the defence of the Empire is contem-
plated in various ways. In some cases, subsidies
granted by colonial parliaments wduld be added
to the military or naval resources of England; an
ironclad here, a cruiser there would be thus pre-
sented to the mother-country. As an alternative,
colonial forces would join English armies on
prearranged occasions. During the South African
War, this military solidarity of the Empire was
partly realized. In most cases, the colonies will
themselves provide for their own squadrons and
troops, and will be entrusted with their own
defence, thus alleviating the burden of the imperial
diplomacy and navy. This last solution seems best
suited to the particularist spirit, and the often
susceptible independence, of the new nations
created by British expansion.

For thorough imperialism finds many obstacles
in its path, and it is not yet possible to say whether
they will be overcome. The great Dominions,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
are united to old England by reverent feelings of

246 MODERN ENGLAND

filial devotion; however diverse may be the races
which make up those nations, they all own them-
selves indebted to the historic centre and chief
focus of the energy which created them; the more
sincerely as their representative institutions have
endowed them with full civil and political individu-
ality. But the very vitality of those new peoples
tends to weaken the radiating influence of England
over them; either because they fret under it, and
claim to be themselves centres of influence; or
because they yield to the stronger attraction of
human aggregates nearer to them and connected
with them by greater natural affinities. Australia
and New Zealand are so necessarily destined to
rule over the new civilization of Oceania that their
relations with an island in old Europe cannot long
remain essential to them; the economic, political,
intellectual intercourse of Canada with the United
States binds her every day more closely to the
destinies of America.

And, conscious of their strength, of their future,
these young nations stand for their rights with all
the vigorous individualism and all the utilitarian
spirit their Anglo-Saxon forefathers have taught
them. The Colonial Conferences have not proved
so far very successful. The contributions for the
imperial navy have not been very willingly
granted; and the colonies do not readily renounce
their Protectionist policy. As for England, she
cannot possibly sacrifice the needs of her industry
or agriculture; it cannot fairly be expected that
colonial wheat should, under the contemplated
tariff system, be spared the duty levied on foreign

THE IMPERIAL PROBLEM 247

corn. And in the conflict of interests, aggravated
by the extreme diversity of local conditions, the
supreme principle of the unity of the Empire is
not easily enforced.

On the other hand, some Crown colonies seri-
ously imperil this very principle. India and Egypt
are seething with the agitation for rebellion and
independence which the Asiatic awakening and the
Islamic propaganda have stirred during the last ten
years. Egyptian or Indian nationalists secretly or
publicly demand that English domination should
come to an end.

Meeting with these difficulties, the imperialist
doctrine to which in fact all English political
parties, except the majority of the Labour Party,
adhere, admits of two main attitudes, which on the
whole correspond severally to the Liberal and the
Unionist tendencies. The Liberal government
sets forth a broader ideal, in which the autdnomy
of both Dominions and colonies may some day
find place; in which the civilizing mission of Eng-
land is given the predominant importance in her
imperial destiny. In India, the nationalist aspira-
tions are firmly kept down, but some satisfaction
is granted to the desire for independence and
initiative of the natives. In Egypt, the measures
of repression are still softened by some respect for
the liberty of local opinion. The accession of the
Conservatives to power would no doubt be fol-
lowed by more energetic coercive measures. For
with the Unionist party is more especially asso-
ciated the other ideal of imperialism — the ideal
both defensive and offensive of a fighting military

248 MODERN ENGLAND

organization, forcibly maintaining the subjection
of conquered peoples, and raising round the heart
of the Empire a shield of young and warlike
nations. A natural corollary of this ambition, con-
scription is demanded in England, as everybody
knows, by more and more numerous competent
authorities.

Thus the imperial problem first consists in
imparting to the incomplete fact of the Empire a
more perfect and more solid reality; it consists as
well in breathing into that body, once shaped, a
soul of peaceful freedom or of pro'ud and martial
energy. The latter, needless to say, is better fitted
than the former to dwell in it; and will probably
prevail, should it definitively be brought to full
life. The imperial question is a more thorny
difficulty for the rationalists and Radicals than for
the disciples of instinct and empiricism. So far
as England still demurs at giving herself up to
imperialism, one may say that, in this field as in
all others, the rational forces are waging the same
fight against the same adverse forces, with a more
uncertain issue.

CHAPTER V

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM

The leading ideas of contemporary England. — I. Traditional-
ism in the religious movement, in education, public life, collective
feelings, artistic tastes. — II. Pragmatism ; its relation to English
utilitarianism. The pragmatic theory of truth. Analogous
tendencies : moral hygiene, the craving for energy, the return
to Nature. — III. Rationalism and the new conditions of life.
Religious criticism ; the modes of unbelief. The criticism of the
political and social order ; the " intellectuals " and English
culture ; the influence of rationalism upon education, manners,
the psychological temperament, the artistic and literary evolution.

Contemporary England has to face the last,
highest and most comprehensive of all problems,
that of general ideas and intellectual tendencies.
However small may still relatively be the active
part played by pure speculation on English ground,
modern life is everywhere, as is well known, more
and more intimately connected with the principles
of action and thought — whether these principles
be only the outcome of facts, or really direct them.
Still usually as little addicted to philosophizing as
ever, but more anxious to acquire this faculty, the
British people experience the searchings of the mind
at the present time more than ever before; and an
increasing portion of it has recourse to intelligence
to explain the course of events, or to guide it.
Therefore the unrest which characterized the
economic, social and political activity of England,

249

25o MODERN ENGLAND

is to be found again in her literary, artistic and
philosophic activities. In this field, as in all
others, one witnesses a transition and a crisis. For
the old order new tendencies demand to be sub-
stituted; and even traditional ideas must assume
bold, unexpected shapes, the better to resist the
attack. The conflict is obscure and manifold; con-
servatives and revolutionaries oppose one another,
and do not always fully grasp the grounds of their
opposition. One gathers the vague impression of
a moral division from that confused struggle of
opinions and parties; and it is in a common desire
for active energy, for practical efficiency, that the
conciliation of those warring forces tends to be
least imperfectly effected.

Ceasing to consider only the systems of
thinkers, one may say that life and manners are
ever pregnant with a potential philosophy. From
this point of view, the general or directing ideas of
contemporary England seem to fall under three
main tendencies : they are either traditionalistic, or
pragmatic, or rationalistic. The second category
may easily be traced back to the first; it represents
its modernized form, adapted, so to speak, to the
needs of the time. It is still distinct enough from
it to deserve separate consideration.

English traditionalism is in its essence em-
pirical; it chiefly consists in obeying the decisions
of instinct; it is thus much more akin to practice

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 251

than to theory. Public and private life alike bear
witness to the unshaken hold which that spirit,
inherited from the past, retains on the realities
of the present. On the other hand, the various
activities of England afford us more definite, more
conscious expressions of the same spirit, which by
degrees rise to the level of real doctrines. The
same decided preference for the traditional deter-
minations of feeling and the results of experience
rules over the hereditary manners, preserved in
far-off country districts, as well as over the subtle
disquisitions of the pragmatist and humanist
philosophers.

The characteristic trait of this preference, at
the present time, is that it has to defend itself.
The offensive taken by the new manners and
ideas is no less pronounced in England than in
the other civilized countries; a wave of rational
criticism has once more swelled in the nation which
the revenge of instinct had won back, while demo-
cracy and industry are on all sides threatening
the balance they seemed to have consented to
support. Therefore a defensive attitude is im-
posed upon all the habits, emotions, beliefs, in-
stitutions and doctrines which are based on the
ancient foundations of England — the aristocratic
and patriarchal organization, religious faith and
public worship, the respect of experience, and
loyalty to the existing order. Ruling classes,
Churches, traditions and routines feel equally
imperilled; their authority is alarmed; they are
fighting, or preparing for the struggle.

The conflict of dogmatic religion with the

252 MODERN ENGLAND

various forms of unbelief is carried on in England
with an eagerness heightened by the now wide-
spread notion of the utilitarian value of faith,
regarded as the mainspring of individual energy
or collective will. For a time discouraged by the
destructive advance of Biblical criticism, Christian
apologetics have mustered new strength since a
reaction has set in against the excesses of rational-
ist exegesis. The authority, the supernatural
origin of the holy books, the mission and the
divine inspiration of Christ, are emphasized and
demonstrated every year by an abundant sacred
literature; apparently at least, the theological
positions of the Established Church are unshaken,
whilst dissenting sects still easily gather the
elements of an unsettled subjective orthodoxy
from the free interpretation of Scripture.

But leaving out religious congresses, such as
the Pan- Anglican conference; or the revivals,
those popular movements of mystical enthusiasm,
recurrent fires which will blaze in some part of
England and burn out, leaving only the ashes
of indifference, the most striking phenomenon of
the present time is the slow and secret drifting
of the English Church towards the Catholic prin-
ciple of authority. The prestige of the Roman
persuasion is undoubtedly greater; the diffusion
of tolerance and culture more and more allays
the old Protestant hostility, tenacious still and
deep-rooted in public feelings; and the recent
suppression of the traditional words by which
the King, on his coronation day, used to
condemn the Roman error, points to some change

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 253

in the mind of the nation. Conversions to
Catholicism are pretty frequent, but for all that,
they do not give any ground for regarding as any-
thing more than a dream the hope that the English
people may one day return to the faith of their
forefathers.

More significant are the slow transitions by
means of which Anglicanism seems to open the
way for an implicit or public agreement with
the Church which, in the universal disintegration
of beliefs, makes the strongest stand for the
forces of social and theological coherence and
conservation — hierarchy, infallibility, rites and
dogmas. Ritualism has continued its advance
within the High Church; its influence has even
spread over the whole of the clergy; the current
opinions, the observances accepted at the present
time in the English Church, tend to distinguish
the priest from the congregation by a more sacred
character, to enhance the beauty of the divine
service by more august gestures and a more visible
sublimity, to trace back the historical links by
which Anglicanism is connected with Christian
origins, to forbid the primary and mysterious
truths of Revelation to private interpretations.
Though tapers, incense, the confessional itself,
admitted into a few churches, are an occasion for
scandal and rouse bitter hostility, public opinion
on the whole seems resigned to that necessary
evolution; for the classes to which the established
religion appears as an element of order and of the
national equilibrium are warned, by an obscure
intuition, of the vital necessity which drives all

254 MODERN ENGLAND

ecclesiastical organizations, in a sceptical age, to
a firmer and more lasting basis than the free
examination of Scripture.

The spirit of political authority is grounded on
these strong foundations : the prestige of the old
families ; the aristocratic traditions of country
districts; popular preferences, wherever the new
impulse of aggressive democracy has not yet made
itself felt; and middle-class snobbishness, now
one of the main supports of moral and political
conservatism. That spirit asserts itself in electoral
fights and the daily conflict of opinions, as well
as in the silent pressure of the corporate bodies
and institutions which cast the future of mankind
in the mould of the past. The Universities and
public schools, the army and navy, the Church
and the patriarchal manners of the provinces, most
efficiently contribute to that transmission of un-
conscious energy, through which the vanished
generations still impose their own discipline upon
those that follow them. In the public schools,
instruction and education aim at the formation
of character and class-feeling; in these schools
self-respect, the sense of historical continuity and
of the national inheritance, submission to the
social hierarchy, and the desire for energy, are
based on the clear and ever-present notion of
a natural insuperable difference between men,
according as they are above' or beneath a certain
standard of birth, wealth and manners. The
students' life in the old Universities, proudly
closed against democracy, against the utilitarian
application of sciences and, one might almost say,

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 255

against modern culture, is entirely organized so
as to make them the leaders and supporters of a
traditional, undisputed order. The old ideal of
the gentleman, the religious and faultless cham-
pion of middle-class chivalry, the heir of the feudal
baron, of the Renaissance courtier, and of the
puritan citizen, is no doubt somewhat undermined
at the present time; yet this ideal still prevails
in the governing classes and in the main centres
of social education, from which its widely and
deeply conservative influence radiates over the
civil service, the law, Parliament, business, and the
very tone of public life.

The official proceedings of England are indeed
instinct with the spirit of the past. Nothing
savours of the modern notion of a State totally
independent of religion; every detail in the rites
of the Court, of Parliament, of the law, is archaic,
antiquated, fraught with historic associations;
everything suggests to the eye and the thought
an ancient greatness, and loyalty to time-conse-
crated customs. Attire, words, habits, pomp,
ceremonies and functions; the impressive display
with which, in London and other large towns,
imperial or municipal authorities are surrounded;
the Guildhall, the Houses of Lords and Commons,
Windsor and the great processions of joy or grief
which issue from the castle or end there; every-
thing bears the deep-set stamp of religious faith,
of respect for the Crown, of the worship of the
Fatherland. The prayers with which the sittings
of Parliament begin and end, the earnest, almost
devout strains of the national anthem, the litanies

256 MODERN ENGLAND

which in the divine service call down the ex-
clusive protection of the British God upon the
country, the King and his people — everything
impresses on the festivals and the daily occurrences
of English life a traditional character which the
anonymous will of the multitude demands, and
which in its turn reacts on the public sensibility
as a conservative influence.

But perhaps the most efficient shape which Eng-
lish traditionalism, at the present time, assumes
to defend itself, is Imperialism, which boldly meets
the attacks of foreign and home foes by taking
the offensive. As its foreign foes it reckons all
the nations whose open competition or secret envy
endangers the greatness, the supremacy, the irre-
sistible expansion of the Empire; against them,
against the German gift of hard work and petty
commercial intelligence; against the futile brag-
ging and corrupt subtlety of the Latin races;
against Russian treachery, the barbarousness of
heathens and of yellow peoples, against American
boasting, should it forget blood-relationship, the
imperialist religion extols the divinely appointed
mission of England; and it calls up the sacred
guard of British energies, to defend the national
idea and the institutions which are incorporated
with it. Its foes at home are the humanitarian
democrats, the Radical talkers, the pacific dreamers,
the men of analytical and critical reason. To resist
them, the patriotism of the Empire makes it a
duty, for all genuine British souls, to adhere un-
restrictedly and at once to the beliefs and hierarchy
which have till now supported English greatness,

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 257

and whose ruin would instantly cause its over-
throw.

The imperialist literature advocates the moral
and intellectual discipline, without which there
can be no individual worth or collective health.
The writings of Kipling eloquently and crudely
appeal to the feelings, passions, and instincts,
the germs of which, innate in English hearts,
Carlyle had already developed; but with Kipling,
idealism has vanished away, or dwindled into the
outward show of a pharisaic Christianity. The
revenge of instinct has been stripped of the bright
halo of generosity which had shone upon its
mystical youth; seen in its bare realism, it is now
only the still heart-stirring worship of righting
energy, hardened against itself as well as against
the universe, seeking no other beauty than
courage, no other justice than strength.

As in religion, politics, education, manners and
literature, one might easily find the expression
of traditionalism in the arts. In spite of the
aesthetic movement started by Ruskin and Morris,
in spite of the curious and diverging attempts of
impressionism and symbolism, the art which comes
nearest to the average sensibility of the race is
that which simply serves a moral purpose and
rouses the emotions; and the preferences of the
English people are still governed by the dear old
habits, the tastes inherited from the bygone
generations. From Christmas cards, with their
artless display of sweet hues and mottoes, there
breathes a powerful pervading atmosphere of con-
servatism. In the yearly exhibitions, the most

258 MODERN ENGLAND

popular pictures are still those with a sentimental
subject, the religious and Academic paintings;
together with sacred music, with Handel's
oratorios, it is the pathos of drawing-room songs
which best moves all hearts; and English music
is still a sapless growth with colourless, scentless
blossoms. No doubt the influences of modern
style and of the new hygiene are modifying the
architecture and decoration of the home; but one
still commonly finds in wealthy mansions or in
cottages the same dulness which reveals cheaply
satisfied artistic instincts, the same craving for
mere unrefined comfort, the same lack of graceful-
ness, redeemed by the fresh cleanliness of grass-
plots, creepers and flower-beds. Blindly following
the suggestions of its life-force, the nation, in spite
of all, clings to the main modes of eye and feeling
which it owes to the past; and it still finds beauty
as well as truth within the limits laid down for
ever by a docile sensibility.

II

The pragmatist philosophy can be traced to two
sources; on one hand, it represents an attempt of
instinctive traditionalism to express and justify
itself no longer in the sphere of feeling only, but
in that of reason as well. It thus agrees with the
general tendency we have pointed out above in
contemporary England, which leads even the con-
servative doctrines and preferences to assume more
conscious and rational forms. Pragmatism may be

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 259

described as a refined theory of empiricism. On
the other hand, it is derived from the anti-rational
and mystical reaction which outlived the latter
half of the nineteenth century, and to which the
twentieth seems to have imparted greater vitality.
During the last fifteen years, as everybody knows,
a more marked movement of opposition to the
supreme requirements of reason has begun at the
same time in all the countries of advanced civi-
lization; religious souls, tender hearts, poetical
imaginations, tempers craving for faith and anxious
to preserve their cherished or sacred illusions,
minds tired out or repelled by the stern discipline
of thought, have proclaimed the futility of science,
and disowned the delusive worship of a distressing,
baleful or ever inaccessible truth.

The pragmatist philosophy, properly so called,
is an element of that revival of intuition which
blooms in all countries, a rich complex mysticism
in which prevails the haunting intoxication of life.
It appeared first in America, before it developed
in England, where it was known as " humanism ";
but previously, on English ground, between
Spencer's evolutionism and the contemporary
reaction, one might have found a transition and
a sign of the coming change in T. H. Green's
works. The Oxford philosopher had vigorously
criticized the sceptical rationalism of Hume and
of his successors, and had thus opened the way
for the return to idealism. His apostolic zeal,
his broad, devout Christian faith can be traced
in the social movement of the University Settle-
ments; and this practical active tendency of his
s 2

260 MODERN ENGLAND

doctrine affords sufficient proof of its harmony
with the essential aims of pragmatism.

Indeed, pragmatism, all things considered, is
quite as old as English thought; it gives expres-
sion to its most characteristic and most ancient
preferences, and naturally springs from its inner
growth towards the full light of consciousness.
Utilitarianism may be regarded as the chief ten-
dency of that thought; but the so-called utilitarian
philosophy impoverished and distorted its real
complexity; so that the no less primitive needs
of feeling, imagination and faith rebelled against
this philosophy. Pragmatism attempts to connect
closely, if not to reconcile, the utilitarianism and
the idealism between which the English mind had
been fluctuating for a century; on a utilitarian
basis it builds up idealistic conclusions; or rather,
it turns idealistic observances into the means of
a higher utilitarianism.

The obstinate search after an indefinable, abso-
lute scientific truth is as absurd as it is futile; for
the universe cannot be known by the intelligence
only; it refuses to comply with the ready-made
outlines drawn by our logic, and cannot be reduced
to simple laws. Through the shifting ocean of the
approximate, the uncertain and the provisional,
the necessities of action alone lay out safe, lasting
paths; it is the network of these paths which con-
stitutes the intellectual geography of the world;
and the task of human wisdom is to explore and
follow them all. Science is no doubt one of these
rough charts allowing us to foresee natural
sequences. But, though it owes its value to its

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 261

everyday verified applications, it cannot hold good
outside the field of these particular applications;
other domains are not ruled by it, lie beyond it.
Confronting it, in opposition to it, the intuitions
of the soul remain no less valuable and precious;
they too are verified every day by facts; and against
this verification the hostility of logic, ill qualified
to attack them, is powerless.

Moreover, had we to make a choice, the method
of the heart would be the more truly philosophic
one. The substantial satisfaction afforded by the
beliefs which give us the greatest power over
Nature, is more fruitful than the proud enjoyment
of a would-be harmony between our mind and
things; and as the most fruitful idea is that which
serves best the needs of action, it is the truest as
well : what other criterion of truth is there for
man, than that which he derives from the con-
firmations of experience ? Thirsting thenceforward
for realities and no longer for illusions, philosophy
shall examine by what incentives the unknowable
universe meets the gropings of our will to live;
and each of us shall find truth in the rules, the
maxims, the faith which can sustain his life. Thus
sheltered from the withering destructive analyses
of tyrannous reason, the salutary images of the
world we owe to tradition, to experience, to old
moral notions and tried religions, resume all their
value and their strength; and the philosopher finds
himself at one with the artless common sense of
popular conservatism in its instinctive preferences
and stubborn prepossessions.

To care only for those truths which derive their

262 MODERN ENGLAND

reality from facts themselves, such is the method
of pragmatism; to care only for the human truths,
the measure of which is man, such is that of
humanism; it is easy to recognize in both doctrines
the same sceptical giving up of the hopes of
abstract reason, the same utilitarian and realistic
assertion of the rights of concrete experience.
These ideas are even more significant than one
might gather from the way they fare with philo-
sophers; for they give definite shape to tendencies
no less widely diffused in England than in
America. From all intellectual quarters are con-
verging the elements of a moral atmosphere which
agrees with them; a synthesis centres round them,
as round a focus of opposition to the still threaten-
ing rationalism. If political men, such as Mr.
Balfour or Mr. Haldane, take to philosophizing,
their thoughts prove singularly akin to those of
James and Schiller. If one opens a treatise of
Christian apologetics or questions an average cul-
tivated man about his beliefs, one discovers that
the foundations of faith are to-day in almost every
case consciously or unconsciously pragmatic argu-
ments. The explicitly utilitarian table of intel-
lectual values is now widely accepted; and more
deeply than exterior influences, it results from
the spontaneous instinct of temperaments.

One may say that at the present time most
Anglo-Saxon minds begin to be chiefly concerned
with energetics and efficiency. Shrewder, more
supple and subtle than the old form, this new
utilitarianism annexes the inner province of feel-
ings and ideas to the previously conquered

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 263

domains of industry, commerce, politics and com-
fort; and to the self-interested rules of conduct is
added a moral hygiene, which aims at discovering
and replenishing the sources of spiritual energy.
How to govern one's thoughts in order to enjoy
moral health; what bent to give one's mental life
in order to increase its unity, stability, consistency;
by what means to revive in oneself that wholesome
joy in the daily work and in its monotony, from
which optimism and success naturally spring, such
are the new therapeutics with which physicians,
pastors, moralists, faith-healers and Christian
Scientists have enriched the practical thirst for
knowledge of the modern man.

The power of influencing oneself is easily
widened into that of influencing other people; and
the cultivation of personal magnetism, of char-
acter and will as weapons in the struggle for life,
is now part and parcel of practical education.
Widening still, moral hygiene passes on from an
individual to a social standpoint; and the sociolo-
gist, the theologian, the critic, on all occasions
sacrifice the desire for truth at any price to the
search after useful untruths, collective illusions
and salutary fictions. The preference for intel-
lectual sincerity, and its very notion, are thus
getting blunted in many minds, whilst an un-
avowed renunciation of inner candour becomes
the rule. One easily perceives the connection
between this universal craving for efficient energy
and the already mentioned movement which is
bringing many Englishmen to the search for
national efficiency. And thus the pragmatist qx

264 MODERN ENGLAND

neo-utilitarian tendencies harmonize with the
rationalist and reforming tendencies opposed to
them in so many respects.

But next to that moral hygiene, one may con-
sider the kindred manifestations of the same intel-
lectual and active impulse in other provinces of
national life. The pursuit of health and joy, under
the guiding influence of feeling and instinct, such
is the object of the artistic and social currents
through which Ruskin's aesthetic mysticism still
diffuses itself. The regeneration of English art
by a refreshed inspiration and a renewed technique,
such is the aim of the "Arts' and Crafts" move-
ment, in which the disciples of Morris earnestly
devote themselves to adorn with beauty the daily
surroundings of life; their endeavours have
already imparted to many English homes a tasteful
simplicity, an ingenious and sober adjustment of
ornamental devices to the practical uses of things.
The "modern" style is a composite and cosmo-
politan product in which an English origin is yet
discernible. In sometimes unexpected shapes, a
return to nature can be traced in it; and this very
return is the main influence perceptible in many
other phenomena of collective psychology.

The development of open-air exercises in Eng-
land preceded their favour on the Continent; but
it was a more modern growth than is generally
believed, and assumed the importance or a social
feature only in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. The recent years have witnessed its
further advance, promoted by the infinitely
greater facilities of touring. The pursuit of

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 265

physical energy through athletics and fresh air,
the training of the will through self-imposed
exertions, are to-day practised by almost all young
people, in nearly all classes of society. Open-air
exercises have increased the taste for travelling,
already encouraged by so many material circum-
stances and moral influences; and both travelling
and field diversions have considerably multiplied
the points of contact between man and wild nature.
Now, this contact had long been sought for by
some, pointed out and recommended by others,
as the necessary means of a social cure, the in-
strument of an equilibrium that industrial civi-
lization had destroyed. For a century, the feeling
of natural scenery had resumed, in English art
and literature, the place of which it had been, for
a time, deprived by the rationalism of the classical
ideal; for half a century, Ruskin's teaching had
extolled nature as a source of beauty, health and
happiness. Later on, W. Morris, drawing a
sketch of the brotherly society of the future, set
it in the lovely quiet green scenery of the English
country, restored to its primeval freshness and
purity. On the other hand, under the influence
of scientific monism, and religious scepticism, in
most souls surged the wave of the vague pan-
theism, at the same time instinctive and meditated,
in which meet to-day the intelligences and the
sensibilities of both the Old World and the New.
Lastly, the boundless extension of towns, the decay
of agriculture, the regeneration of the race under
urban conditions, and the painful acuteness of
labour problems in congested districts, again drew

266 MODERN ENGLAND

the attention of all to the agrarian question, and
directed the hopes of reformers towards the saving
possibilities held in store by health-giving Mother
Earth.

All these causes have brought about in Eng-
land, during the last twenty years, a powerful
widespread reaction against the estrangement
between nature and the sensitive life of man which
civilization, ever since the Middle Ages, had
caused to deepen more and more. Various are
the aspects of that movement; one might point
out, for instance, the migration of citizens to
suburban villas, the central districts being entirely
left to daily business and trade, whilst financiers,
merchants, mill-owners choose to live out of the
towns; the "week-ends," which place the country,
the sea, fresh air within the reach of all; the open-
ing of " garden cities," with their groves, lawns,
flower-beds, sheltered from industrial ugliness and
dirt, which seem to foreshadow the human aggre-
gates of the future; all the social charities which
take sickly children away from the towns, give
them for a while the life of the fields or the moun-
tain air; and all that " back-to-the-land move-
ment," the influence of which is felt in municipal
or national councils.

Wide avenues are laid out through the old
quarters, new parks are opened, the planning of
future towns is supervised by a special law; the
reviving of agriculture and the reconstitution of
small holdings are indefatigably pursued; in Eng-
land and Ireland, farmers are unsparingly granted
the support of the State to allow them to acquire

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 267

the ownership of their land; loans are made to
them for long periods; in some cases the expropria-
tion of absentee or idle landlords is promoted by
Act of Parliament; and a series of measures, about
which Liberals and Conservatives find themselves
at one, have striven, so far not very successfully,
to call to life again the vanished race of yeomen.

Pragmatism, a broader and more flexible form
of utilitarianism, illustrates with remarkable clear-
ness the direction and nature of a far-reaching
psychological and social movement, aiming at an
increase of life by means of energy. As this
energy in which the vital instinct hopes to find
health and joy is that of the body, of sensibility,
of intuition, of faith, one may say that through
moral hygiene and the return to nature, English
traditionalism, more conscious and meditated, is
still expressing itself. On the contrary, it is chiefly
from the intelligence that rationalism expects
greater efficiency for the individual or the nation.

Ill

The chief movements of contemporary English
thought are connected together, as is always
the case, by numberless intermediate shades and
degrees. The doctrines, the ideas and tendencies
which are more especially derived from rational
principles are not necessarily hostile to tradition;
and even less are they necessarily averse to prac-
tical ends. It is easy to find a conservative and

268 MODERN ENGLAND

traditional element in almost all English rational-
ists; and the utilitarian tendency, the pursuit of
efficiency, is essential with almost all of them.
Thus are determined the individual species of
those general and abstract types, rarely to be
found in their unadulterated state. More par-
ticularly, pragmatism, though it rebels against
science and reason, is rational, and in some way
affords a justification of experience; it is recon-
ciled, it goes without saying, in many minds, with
vigorous powers of reasoning and an entire sin-
cerity of thought; and so far as English traditional-
ism assumes this new shape, it approaches the
intellectual ideal of definiteness and consistency
which it had always eagerly opposed.

It is yet necessary to draw a line between the
various forms which the traditional spirit may
assume at the present time and, on the other
hand, those which are taken by the free search for
truth or efficiency through a meditated adjustment
of man to things and things to man. For the
predominant characteristic of this search is the
criticism of existing opinions, beliefs and institu-
tions. Now, the critical mood is essentially repug-
nant to English conservatism, however willingly
it may have often consented to correct itself. Ever
since Burke, the advocates of historical continuity
have denounced pure rationalism of the French
type as a tool of destruction and ruin; and even
more than the clinging to what is, the fear of
what might be, the dread of a void into which
society would be hurled body and soul by the
downfall of order, lies at the root of the hatred

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 269

the average British instinct still feels against
political, moral and social ideology.

Therefore rationalism in England, for the last
three centuries, has had an eventful course, often
checked, constantly threatened by the aggressive
reaction of feeling and instinct. In order to live,
it was obliged to adapt itself to its surroundings;
and it was for practical ends, on the firm English
basis of utility, that the greatest movement of
rational thought, the so-called utilitarian philo-
sophy, developed in the nineteenth century. In
the same way, evolutionism is not a metaphysical
construction, but a hypothesis, grounded on the
data of science; positivism partly owed its success
in England to its practical and realistic intentions.
Leaving out those general doctrines, and such
foreign influences — German or French — as may
have been felt, the spontaneous growth of many
minds, chiefly among the intellectual elite, has led
them to adopt the logical agreement of thought
with things or with itself as a criterion of truth
more or less systematically adhered to. That
strange effervescence of the mind which wants to
understand even before it wants to live, or in
order to live better, and which submits all ideas,
institutions and men to a close scientific scrutiny,
has been aroused in some English brains. One
might even say that at the present time it is being
aroused, or tending to be, in an increasing number
of brains; though the day is yet far off when, as
Meredith wished, every Englishman will know
how to chew his provision of ideas. The usual
course of nature, which introduces variety every-

270 MODERN ENGLAND

where, and invalidates the rule by the exception,
must be held responsible for that differentiation
of the race; to it must be attributed too, as has
been seen, the general circumstances of the pre-
sent, under the influence of which English idio-
syncrasies come ever nearer the common type of
industrial and modern civilization.

The conflict of the critical spirit against religious
dogmatism is going on in England, as on the
Continent; it is hardly possible clearly to mark its
phases. For the exception taken yet by public
opinion to the open confession of infidelity con-
ceals the fact that many consciences are silently
drifting away from their old moorings. Still, in
spite of the official loyalty of the State, of civil
life, and literature, to the Christian religion, one
can perceive a wavering of beliefs, shaken by
scientific culture, by the new independence of
thought, by the wish for moral sincerity, and, no
less, by the eager craving for social justice. The
close alliance of the forces making for political
conservation with the Established Church is
rousing against her the hostility of the democratic
working class, though English Socialism as a whole
is far from openly breaking with Christianity; on
the contrary, everybody knows how frequently the
Christian Socialist tendency is still to be met with.

Going by the name of " secularism," free
thinking progresses among all classes; it possesses
its own associations and regular means of expres-
sion. Its real strength, however, dwells in the
secret adhesion of minds, and in the seeds of
tolerance, of agnosticism, which the very atmo-

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 271

sphere of modern civilization is laying deep in
the least conscious intelligences. Prepared by the
numberless shades and degrees of the Protestant
religion, already instinct with a spirit of free
criticism; retarded and allayed by the habits of
public life and the temper of the race, the evolu-
tion of the English mind towards purely human
beliefs promises to be — if it is to be at all — an
insensible and very slow transition.

On the other hand, the various mental attitudes
which may be the outcome of the rational criticism
of dogmas are represented in England, though
not so profusely, perhaps, or so freely as in Ger-
many and in France. Liberal protestantism has
many disciples there, and its extreme varieties
constitute, as elsewhere, a form of religion hardly
distinguishable from mere morals. A faith in the
saving virtue of the example set to men by the
remarkable personality of Christ is the strongest
and most general element of those now widely
diffused beliefs; they easily shade off into the
diverse forms of humanitarianism which in many
minds has replaced all more definite religion. One
of the most famous attempts to clear Christianity
of the charge of irrationality was that of Matthew
Arnold; the formulae in which his criticism results
rebuild on the ruins of traditional dogma a kind
of moral pantheism, according to which the stream
of tendency making for righteousness in the
universe and in man's heart becomes the very
substance of the Divine. More original is George
Meredith's naturalistic and idealistic pantheism;
from the cosmic laws embraced by our own mind,

272 MODERN ENGLAND

from our contact with Mother Earth, which
fosters our energy and health, and from the broad
culture of the most human elements in our beings,
emanates an ennobling influence through which
the will of the universe radiates down to us. A
feeling of respect touched with emotion for
humanity, for nature, and for duty, either singly
or combined, such are, then, the chief sources of
spiritual elevation from which English rationalism
is willing to draw.

Lastly, in its most uncompromising shape, it
rests satisfied with the mere denial of the super-
natural, and does not indulge in any measure of
idealistic faith, however guarded. Modern pessi-
mism, which owes much to the cold vision of a
world deprived of all finality and justice, has found
disciples in the traditional home of active opti-
mism. James Thomson and Thomas Hardy, for
instance, have expressed in their poems or their
novels the tragic or calm despair of a mind
detached from all soothing fiction. This attitude
is still exceptional; such men are generally, in
England, characterized by an unshaken equi-
librium of thought and emotion, to which contri-
bute their instinctive adaptation to daily life, their
share of the robust will of the race, and their
practical devotion to scientific, humane or social
objects; and yet, such is the resistance of the very
homogeneous moral atmosphere in opposition to
which they live and think, that they might have
been expected to feel very strongly indeed the
anxiety of intellectual loneliness.

The rational criticism of the political and social

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 273

order is made, as has been seen, by the various
Socialist sects and the Radicals; but outside public
and parliamentary life, there are many thinkers
who find fault with the ancient foundations of
modern England. The divorce between the intel-
ligence and reality is doubtless widening and
deepening in England; and though there is no
ground to foresee that a revolution may be its
final outcome, this separation still can account for
the quick transition and the crisis the country is
now undergoing. Needless to say, the reformers
do not agree in their reconstructive plans; but the
main lines of their criticisms undeniably converge.
These fall under three heads : either they
denounce the unequal distribution of wealth, and
the unfair social organization; or they take excep-
tion to this same organization from the point of
view of its working, and of national efficiency; or
then, going up to the very source of institutions
and manners, they point out the weaknesses of
the traditional English mind, and its imperfect
adjustment to contemporary civilization. Thus
the criticism of society finds its necessary com-
pletion in a criticism of thought and culture.

Already, with W. Morris, Ruskin's mystical
Socialism had been strengthened by a more direct
perception of realities, a more precise economic
reflection; his Utopia bears the stamp of his rich
original imagination; his analysis of present con-
ditions is a relatively objective study. George
Meredith's acutely penetrating irony criticized the
hierarchy of classes, the alternate play of the two
great political parties, the prestige of the aris-

274 MODERN ENGLAND

tocracy, the action of public opinion and of the
Press, the influences which mould public opinion,
and the general organization of political and social
justice in England; on the one hand, too much of a
democrat to accept the existing order, he was on
the other too much preoccupied with the necessity
of educating the democracy to expect an immediate
salvation from the overthrow of that order. The
intellectual and Fabian Socialism of H. G. Wells
analyses with unsparing clearness the incurably
composite character of English society; its ad-
vanced economic evolution, its half-feudal struc-
ture ; the power still wielded by the landed
nobility, the concentration of industrial and com-
mercial capital in the hands of a plutocracy, and
the haphazard swarming of the multitudes below
the standard of human dignity, doomed to an
incomplete and precarious life. His reforming
zeal chiefly attacks the conservative and empirical
routine which interferes with the working of
nearly all administrative organs ; his scientific
intelligence perceives the imperfect adaptation of
institutions to their ends.

Bernard Shaw's aggressive and uncompromising
rationalism not only dispels the economic mysteries
or conventions by which capitalism tries to justify
itself; it destroys the illusions or fallacies on which
are based the historical forms of collective life and
thought — property, the family, marriage, patriot-
ism, the established religion, and morals. Never
before had the exclusive rights of instinct, experi-
ence and feeling, affirmed and illustrated by all the
development of the English people, been denied

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 275

or derided with harsher critical vigour. Coming
to no precise conclusions, exerting no precise in-
fluence, for that pitiless dry logic too violently
clashes with the average requirements of the
British heart, Shaw's writings do away with all
the accepted values, if they do not clearly set up
a table of new values. His fame is chiefly due
to the exterior merits of his manner; his fortune
with the elite might be taken as a sign that the
philosophic, social, moral uncertainties of contem-
porary thought have more than superficially pene-
trated into the land of intellectual discipline and
hereditary beliefs.

Matthew Arnold had once called on England
to choose between "anarchy" and " culture";
and nicknaming the nobility Barbarians, the
middle class Philistines, the people a populace,
he could point no other way to salvation than the
meditated search after sweetness and light; so the
more recent critics of English irrationality aim at
reaching the lasting core of the common psycho-
logical tendencies, through the external institu-
tions. Meredith, Wells and Shaw do not stop
short of criticizing the national culture itself. They
charge it with granting the intelligence too small
a share, with clinging to traditional solutions and
conservative routine, with weakening the critical
faculties, and encouraging submission to received
formulae and established untruths. More pre-
cisely, they seem to perceive an alarming opposi-
tion between the English mind and the contempor-
ary exigencies of moral sincerity, of individual and
collective efficiency.

T 2

276 MODERN ENGLAND

Meredith longed for the day when a versatile
and free thought would play round those im-
movable bare pillars, John Bull's beliefs, feelings
and prejudices. Wells emphasizes the scientific
character of modern civilization; he foresees the
peril of a new international competition in which
the intellectual faculties will play an ever more
important part; he sketches the picture of the
society of the future, directed by engineers, elec-
tricians, chemists, and concludes that English
empiricism must adapt itself or perish. Shaw
indefatigably lashes the ruminating self-satisfac-
tion which British " stupidity " opposes to all
moral progress; his stinging paradoxes goad the
robust slow beast, trying to awake, in its lumpish
body, consciousness through anger.

What influence have those advocates of intel-
ligence ? Their action must obviously be limited.
But it agrees too well with the very conditions
of contemporary life, and the general evolution of
modern England, not to be accompanied, if not
followed, by a pretty wide and deep psychological
change. The disciples of the " intellectuals " are
many among the young generation of politicians,
of administrators, of writers, who give its com-
posite aspect to the England of to-day; their
number is likely to increase still further in the
future. For already education has partly received
the stamp of the new spirit; it communicates it
in its turn. The board-schools have been created
after an almost undenominational and decidedly
modern pattern; the concentration of powers, the
unification of methods in secondary schools are
carried on everywhere; a clear systematic will pre-

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 277

sides over the reform of the inorganic empiricism
which characterized English public education.
Technical studies are developed, more attention is
paid to living languages; the formal classicism
and the low utilitarianism which shared the domain
of education between them, are correcting and
completing each other, and by means of each
other. The old Universities seem to open more
widely to the breath of scientific life, and the
recently created Universities are not loaded with
the crushing weight of a glorious tradition.

Above all, industrial operations, the concentra-
tion of life in towns, the vividness of sensations,
the eagerness of the struggle, and the diffusion of
culture, are changing the very temper of the race,
making it more refined and nervous. The young
Englishman of the ruling classes, however
strongly marked he may still be with the here-
ditary stamp, on many points shares in the in-
creasing internationalism of ideas and tastes. The
young workman of the skilled trades, the engineer,
the constructor of bicycles or motor-cars, the man
who supervises the machines which spin, weave,
cut or shape cloths and metals, is naturally en-
dowed with nervous, intellectual, moral disposi-
tions different from those of the farmer or field-
labourer. The " coming man " of Mr. Wells and
of the Fabians will be less of an Englishman than
his forefathers were; already at the present time,
the first appearance of this type is rousing an
obscure feeling of unlikeness and distrust in the
instinctive and routine-ridden masses. Whether
the historic metal of the race proves able to
abide that unavoidable evolution, or breaks under

T 3

278 MODERN ENGLAND

that unavoidable evolution, or breaks under the
strain before its completion, the very metal of the
English race seems to be undergoing a process
of transformation.

Meanwhile, the disinterested activities of the
mind bear witness, too, to that inner change. To
the critical and rationalist tendencies one can trace
back the artistic and literary attempts which
deviate from the traditional preferences of the
English taste, i. e. sentimentalism, an edifying
purpose, the predominance of matter over manner.
Roughly speaking, one might say that French
influence always answered in England to a swing-
ing of the national temper towards the intellectual-
ist pole; more particularly, the influence of French
art tends to bend English art towards another ideal
than that which resulted from the spontaneous
faculties of the race. Now, the literature of Eng-
land, for about thirty years, seems to have fol-
lowed closely enough the main phases of that of
France. The " Parnassian" school of " art for
art's sake " and objectivity, the Symbolist, the
decadent and the neo-romantic school, have had
in England their periods of favour and their repre-
sentatives in the same order as in France, and,
as it were, conforming to her example. Such a
coincidence can as well be accounted for by the
independent development of the national taste,
and by the countless European interactions which
weave the web of artistic life, as by the influence
of a single country; nevertheless it throws light
on the psychological evolution of English sensi-
bility towards new longings, cravings, curiosities
and needs.

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 279

The publication of Swinburne's first poems
came as a shock on the British readers; to the
open admission of sensuous love among the sub-
jects for analytic poetry, the author added a spirited
rationalistic inspiration. In spite of all the pro-
tests of the public taste, one may assert that this
bold naturalism and this contempt for the religi-
ous, moral and social conventions which fettered
art on all sides, have been constantly perceptible
like a revolutionary vein running through the
English literature of the last thirty years. The
mind and the senses are thus, so to speak, slowly
freeing themselves, encouraged by an awakening
of the critical spirit and by modern daring. Round
Swinburne had gathered the "fleshly school" of
poetry, so called by the reprobation of traditional
England. The harmless perversity of a Dante
Gabriel Rossetti was continued and improved upon
by the aesthetic sect, with whom Ruskin's devout
worship of the beautiful was mixed with the
subtle refinements of a decadent morbidity.

Any one who has been following the subsequent
course of English literature must needs see that it
is labouring under the same restlessness as that
of France; and its various attempts in the direction
of symbols and the incommunicable, of delicate
impressions and exquisite sensations, express an
evolution of taste analogous to that which prevails
in Germany and France. In the same way, the
impressionist school of painting points to an
education of the eye and a progress in nervous
complexity, on this side of the Channel, which
are not easily reconcilable with the simple whole-
some tradition of the great landscape and portrait

280 MODERN ENGLAND

painters of the English school. Everything tends
to suggest that the artistic sensibility of the British
people is growing more complex, and, at the same
time, less narrowly national in character.

It thus shares in the general advance of con-
sciousness, of analysis and critical reflection.
For if one goes deeper than the particular traits
of some rare or audacious endeavours, one finds
that the very conception of the function of art
and of its relation to life is growing more com-
prehensive in those various movements. The
national tradition considered the beautiful as a
means for useful emotions; the subordination of
aesthetics to ethics, the utilitarian notion of art,
had characterized English literature, painting and
architecture, since the time of the Puritans.
Ruskin's doctrine, whilst reviving the worship of
beauty, had not essentially modified that relation;
the foundations of his aesthetic creed lie outside
the domain of art itself.

On the contrary, the modern idea of the com-
plete independence of the artist has recently
gained much ground in England. The writings
of Meredith, though rife with a manly and noble
philosophy of life, freely appeal to the investiga-
tions of thought, like a wide-reaching and subtle
pursuit of the beautiful through sincerity. Those
of Hardy constitute an artistic and moral inquiry
into the picturesque aspects and the psychological
intricacies of a transitional age, and this inquiry
dares pursue no other end than itself. Even more
significant is the admirable and multiform effort
of R. L. Stevenson, a pure artist, creating

THE INTELLECTUAL PROBLEM 281

emotions for the sake of their intrinsic beauty,
earnestly devoting his powers to style as to the
wonderful instrument of an intellectual activity
the virtue of which is inferior to none. So far
as the present generation is following the example
of these masters, one may say that the conscious-
ness of artistic liberty dawns upon modern Eng-
land as a surer and freer consciousness of herself.
So the contemporary evolution of English
thought seems to follow diverging courses; on
one side, conservatism prepares for a defensive
fight, and seeks more strength in a reasoned-out
contempt for reason; on the other side, critical
rationalism, aided by the needs of the time, slowly
diffuses itself through facts and ideas. If both are
progressing, it is because their converts are made
among the party of mere numbers and over-intel-
lectual passiveness. It is less and less easy for
an Englishman to remain unaware of the grounds
on which he shows hostility or favour to the
modern spirit of democratic reform and moral
freedom. Thus it is perhaps possible to perceive
a general feature in that complex situation; the
common aspiration after efficient energy unites the
two great conflicting syntheses in a common effort
of greater self-knowledge and surer self-posses-
sion. And thus, too, the social evolution perhaps
tends to promote the doctrines of rational clear-
sightedness more than the others; for whatever is
lost by the unconscious is lost for instinct; and
whatever consciousness wins is half-won for
reason.

CONCLUSION

THE PRESENT TIME
DECADENCE OR EVOLUTION

Such, then, seems to be the condition of con-
temporary England: that of a nation perhaps
unimpaired in its greatness, but alarmed, and
anxiously interrogating itself; of an Empire which
is being organized after having slowly developed,
and which progresses from actual existence to self-
consciousness, whilst the German Empire followed
a contrary cdurse, from consciousness and desire
to actual existence.

No doubt the path England is to follow is not
so arduous; but dangers of its own beset it. And
first, will this progress from instinct to intelligence
be effected ? Will the supple faculty of adaptation
the race has always displayed prove sufficient when
the very mode of adaptation must be altered?
Must an archaic constitution, traditional manners,
a conservative temperament, be thoroughly modern-
ized, and will they allow of such a change ? And
on the other hand, during that necessary transi-
tion, that prolonged crisis in which the country
seems now involved, will it, without serious injury,
resist the agitations of home politics, as well as
the aggressive competition and hostility of foreign
countries? Do not ten centuries of a glorious
history, filled with the triumphs of empiricism,
forbid to English hopes the era of intense and

282

CONCLUSION 283

scientific civilization into which mankind is rush-
ing in its now world-wide domain ? Will the fund
of vitality, of moral and physical strength, the
English people still can find in itself, allow it to
vie with younger, better-equipped nations, in the
very field of industrial and economic activity in
which its robust genius once ruled supreme?

Belonging, like France, to the class of the old
nations which are bent on maintaining their rank,
and not to that of the new nations which want to
assert their rights, England has to face the question
of her decadence. Her own alarms have opened
it. Behind a front of admirable prosperity, some
fissures have not escaped the watchful eyes of
English patriots. The commercial expansion
brought to a standstill, the compared figures of
imports and exports, a few defeats in production
or exchange, the necessity of ever more strenuous
exertions to keep the positions already won, and
all such particular facts, may not be of decisive
importance; the essential point is the loss of that
industrial supremacy, to which British pride had
become accustomed ; there again, as in inter-
national politics, the conception of an equilibrium
seems to replace that of the ruling power. In the
division of labour which tends to prevail, English
workshops seem destined to preserve no other
advantage in the market of the world than that
of their geographical situation in Europe, and of
coal and iron fields so far inexhaustible. But no
unique gift in her children, no inimitable superior-
ity in art, or practical cleverness, promises England
a privileged situation in the economic develop-
ment of the future against the merciless laws of

284 MODERN ENGLAND

competition. And the rise of new Imperialisms,
hostile to her own, the advance of German ambi-
tion, the inevitable pressure which drives the flood
of German strength, dammed up in Europe, to-
wards the outlet of the sea and the colonies, the
duel fought with millions between the navies of
the two countries, have shifted the maritime
supremacy of the British people, from the range
of unquestioned commonplaces, to that of dis-
puted facts, which cannot hold their ground with-
out a contest.

Liberals as well as Unionists give orders for the
construction of formidable " Dreadnoughts," and
the English navy will probably keep, for a few
more years, the margin of superiority considered
indispensable for the safety of the Empire.
Courageously, the burden of militarism is accepted
by a nation formerly averse to it; conscription
is among the possibilities of the near future. The
territorial forces are reorganized and undergo
serious training ; whatever in recent inventions
may be turned to use for national defence — sub-
marines, airships, flying machines — is being
eagerly studied, tried, utilized; quickly and eagerly
alive to any danger threatening her safety, Eng-
land stands and will stand in an ever more energetic
attitude of combative defence against possible
attacks, by many deemed probable, by many un-
avoidable. But the dire dream of an Anglo-
German war, in which naval supremacy and the
fate of the Empire would be at stake, broods only
like an impending shadow over the confines of the
future; that incalculable issue cannot be taken into
account in an estimate of the present.

CONCLUSION 285

Meanwhile, a political crisis only too real has
begun, the final dutcome of which remains doubt-
ful. After the 19 10 elections, and the incomplete
victory of the Liberals, a temporary settlement of
the constitutional difficulties will, no doubt, be
effected; but will the problem raised be thus
solved ? If the democracy, conscious of its greater
strength and putting forth new claims, comes into
collision with the very fabric of the English con-
stitution, if the forms of the past can no longer
comply with its wishes, it is the era of radical re-
casting which will perhaps begin, after that of
readjustments. The threats of the Liberals against
the House of Lords are met by the bold tactics of
the Unionist party; on one side, the supremacy of
the Commons; on the other, the referendum.
Like Ireland, Scotland and Wales are now demand-
ing some degree of self-government; the tendency
to separation lies dormant at the core of British
unity; will the federative ideal which radiates from
the heart to the extremities of the Empire ebb
back innocuously from the extremities to the heart ?
In the old " United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland," will the Home Rule of each portion, if it
is ever realized, be compatible with the harmony
of the whole ? Moreover, will not a social organ-
ization in which the property of land is concen-
trated among a few thousand owners, in which
extreme wealth and extreme poverty everywhere
confront each other, ultimately prove less stable,
in spite of appearances, than that of a country like
France, in which riches are better distributed, and
where agriculture is still the most important
industry ?

286 MODERN ENGLAND

And the sociologist, the moralist, scrutinizing
national life, discern in it symptoms of decay and
fatigue. The birth-rate, for instance, formerly
very high, is now slowly but regularly falling;
England must face the decline of that source of
strength which lies in numbers, whilst the enjoy-
ment of a recently acquired wealth has not yet
impaired German fecundity. Then, in the urban
centres where everything degenerates, signs are
perceptible which point to some weakening of the
race : such are the lowering of the average height
among the London-born recruits; the stunted,
wasted appearance of young people in the East-
end and in many industrial towns; the new ner-
vousness preying upon that famous stolid stub-
bornness, an essential trait in John Bull's moral
physiognomy; have not the English mobs, the
audiences of music halls, the crowds of Mafeking
day and night, lost the dignity of an Imperial
people by becoming an Imperialist one? Whilst
the teaching of defeat, and the desire for energy,
have instilled a temper of cool calculation into so
many Frenchmen, does it not look as if French
excitability had now crossed the Channel? And
that indefatigable initiative, that conquering
ardour, that intoxicating life and activity and
pride, which have won half the world for the
fleets and the merchants of England, are they not
seen to flag, to degenerate into a preference for
cheaply bought successes, for self-indulgence, for
the routine of mechanical effort, for the slow
methods of administrative inertia? How can it
be that English trade, in its conflict with German
competition, should bear the burden of the same

CONCLUSION 287

faults which, for a long time, caused the inferiority
of French as compared with British trade ?

Such are the painful questions consciousness will
naturally ask itself, at the pessimistic hour when
it takes the place of instinct. These symptoms
are certainly not to be overlooked; but what nation
with a long civilized past does not offer signs of
a similar or even worse kind? And is not the
increasing strain of modern life obviously level-
ling, as under the same weight of fatigue, all
nations, both young and old? As a counterpart,
how could we forget the manifold universal effort
of English energy to assert itself again, and not to
decay r In the task of military defence, there are
very few who refuse to co-operate; to the task of
economic defence, all unanimously bend their wills.
Either by traditional instruments, the instinctive
disciplines, the hierarchies of the past, the historic
authorities, or by the new means, the fresh
resources which science and intelligence can supply,
conservatives, pragmatists and rationalists jointly
work to maintain, to strengthen the body of moral
forces on which the greatness of England rests.

In all orders of collective activity, the social
fruits of that solidarity, which the diversity of
opinions and beliefs is powerless to destroy, are
still among the finest, the most hopeful this earth
can show. Such are an unrivalled system of
philanthropic laws, the recently instituted old age
pensions, the war resolutely waged against un-
employment, the laws relating to agriculture, the
experiments of municipal Socialism, the extension
of some political rights to women, perhaps at no
distant date their final enfranchisement. Such are,

288 MODERN ENGLAND

again, the feeling of duty, the everyday courage,
the public spirit, the devotion to all glorious or
obscure tasks, which still make up, at home or
under distant skies, the proud and stoical virtue,
the physical stamina and moral fibre of so many
servants of the Empire. If the will to live is the
safest source of life, English vitality does not seem
seriously undermined.

Will England consent, will she be able, to
undergo without injury the social and psycho-
logical transformations which seem to be demanded
by international competition? Will her empiri-
cism know how to rise above itself, and fearlessly
to enter the higher sphere of meditated readjust-
ments, without losing the benefit of its blind and
groping infallibility? Or, stiffening in the rigid
mould of her hereditary genius, will she, in spite
of all, perpetuate in our old Europe the belated
but achieved type of pre-scientific civilization?
Between these two extremes, no doubt the wisdom
of England will strike a middle course. The
necessity of modernizing her institutions and her
mind does not press upon her like a simple and
immediate force; it is one of those slow, continu-
ous, undefined, diffused pressures, with which life
and history are familiar, whose countless com-
posing forces allow of countless diverse reactions.
England will succeed, no doubt, in yielding to it
enough, without yielding to it always, to remain
herself, and to open for herself new destinies.

GENERAL INDEX

America, 174, 187, 240, 259,

262
Angelico, Fra, 143
Anne, Queen, 131
Apprentices, Statute of, 47
Arnold, Matthew, 80, 178,271,

275
Ashley, Lord, 147, 148
Asia, 174

Asquith Ministry, 15
Australia, 198, 244, 245, 246

Bacon, 35, 36

Balfour, Mr., 197, 262

Ballot Act (1872), 77

Baur, 60

Bentham, 35, 37, 38, 39, 4©, 43,

100
Birmingham, 30
Boers, 244

Boer War, 209, 227, 245
Booth, Charles, 202
Boulton, 21
Bright, 48, 49
Bristol Riots (1 831), 67
Browning, II, 171, 172
Budget of 1909, 15
Burke, 19, 52, 118, 268
Burne-Jones, 144
Butler, 59

Cambridge, 80

Canada, 198, 244, 245

Carlyle, II, 84,85,91, 109, no,
in, 112, 113, 115, 118, 119,
120, 136, 137, 14I1 H3, 144,
147, 165, 168, 175, 178, 257

Chamberlain, Mr., 197
Christ, Life of 61
Civil War, The, 166
Cobden, 48, 49, 79
Colenso, Bishop, 63
Coleridge, no
Combination Laws, 47
Commons, House of, 1 5, 66, 70,

71, 212, 215, 219, 231, 234,

255, 285
Commonwealth, The, 58, 166
Comte, Auguste, 42, 61
Co-operative Society of the

Rochdale Pioneers, 157
Corn Laws, 49

Crimean War (1854-5), 88, 176
Crompton, 21
Cromwell, 173

Darwin, 51, 52,53,55,56,239

Denmark, 187

Descartes, 36

Dickens, Charles, 73, 85, 86, 87

Disraeli, 70,71,72,78, 170, 177

Dorchester Labourers, 157

Education, Board of, 80
Edward VII, 10, 72
Egypt, 247
Eliot, George, 61, 85, 86, 170,

172
Elizabeth, Queen, 76, 130, 173
Engineers, Association of, 157
Essays and Reviews, 63
Eyre, Governor, 177

Fabian Society, 208

289

290

GENERAL INDEX

Factory Acts, The, 148

Fichte, no

Fielden, 147

Fielding, 73

Fox, 71

France, 2, 36, 54, 63, 207, 271,

279, 283, 285
Froude, 123

Gaskell, Mrs., 170
George I, 173
George II, 173
George III, 173
George IV, 173
George, Henry, 205, 206
George, Lloyd, Mr., 233
Germany, 12, 58, 63, 79, 84,

187, 198, 279, 282
Gladstone, 71, 79, 219, 220, 221
Glasgow, 2 1 1
Godwin, 37
Green, T. H., 259
Guildhall, 255

Haldane, Lord, 262

Handel, 258

Hardy, 74

Harrison, Frederic, 61

Hodgskin, 108

Holland, 187

Hull Congress (1908), 215

Hume, 36, 39, 259

Huskisson, jy

Huxley, 61

India, 247

Indian Mutiny (1857), 174, 176
International Labourers' Asso-
ciation, 207
Ireland, 3, 224, 285

James, 262
Jean-Paul, no
Jowett, 62

Kant, no, 117
Keble, John, 123

Kingsley, 62, 63, 118, 147, 170,

175, 176
Kipling, 257

Labour Representation Com-
mittee, 214

Lamarck, 53 1

Lancashire, 23, 188

Land Nationalization League,
602

Land Restoration League, 206

Leeds, 30

Lewes, 61

Liverpool, 30

Locke, 35, 36

London, 26, 30, 107, 131, 211,

255
London, University of, 80
Lords, House of, 15,66,71,94,

124, 143, 214, 219, 231, 232,

234, 255, 285

MacCulloch, 44

Malthus, 44, 46, 51, 76, 101

Manchester, 30, 41, 43, 47, 4&,

49, 5o, 57, 107, 174,211,230
Manning, Cardinal, 129
Marx, 45, 205, 206, 207, 209
Matthew, Father, 155
Maurice, F. D., 62, 63, 118, 170
Melbourne Ministry, 71
Meredith, George, 74, 270, 272,

274, 275, 276, 280
Millais, 144
Mill, James, 39, 41, 44
Mill, John Stuart, 1 1, 41, 42, 44,

61, 119, 120, 209
Mines Act, The, 148
Morris, W., 145, 168, 172, 257,

265, 273
Municipal Corporations Act,

(i835), 76

Napoleon, 49
Navigation Act, 78
Newcastle, 30

GENERAL INDEX

291

Newman, 11, 84, 124, 125, 126,

127, 169
New Zealand, 245, 246
Normandy, 187

Oxford, 59, 60, 80, 121, 122,
123, 126, 130, 136, 165

Oxford, St. Mary's Church,
126

Owen, 108, 157

Paine, 37

Paley, 59

Palmer, 123

Parliamentary Bill, 15

Peel, 78

Percival, 123

Permanent Committee of Hy-
giene, 155

Pitt, 71

Pius IX, Pope, 129

Poor Law, 47

Poor Law, The New (1834), 76,
106

Priestley, 36, 39

Principles of Political Econ-
omy, 119

Printers' Unions, 157

Pusey, 123

Renaissance, The, 36
Reform Act (1832), 65, 66, 73,

74, 76, 218, 232
Reform Act (1867), 65, 66
Reform Act (1884), 65, 66, 72,

77, in
Revolution, French, 37, 166
Ricardo, 43, 51, 120, 140, 157,

206
Rose, 123
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 144,

172, 279
Ruskin, 1 1, 84, 85, 91, 134, 136,

139, 140, 141, 143, 144, 165,

168, 169, 176, 178, 251, 264,

265, 273
Russia, 240

Sadler, 147

Salisbury Ministry, 221

Sartor Resartus, 1 1 1

Schiller, 262

Scotland, 3, 285

Scott, 144

Senior, Nassau, 44

Settlement, Law of, 47

Shaw, Bernard, 274, 275, 276

Smith, Adam, 36, 42, 44

Social Democratic Federation,

207,212,215
South Africa, 198, 244, 245
Spencer, Herbert, 54, 55, 56,

57, 58, 61
Staffordshire, 23
Stanley, 62
Stevenson, R. L., 281
Stones of Venice, 143
Strauss, 60
Swinburne, 172, 279

Taine, 81

Ten Hours Bill, 149

Tennyson, 85, 171

Thackeray, 73, 85, 86, 87, 170

Thompson, 108

Trades' Councils, 158

Turner, J. M. W., 138

United States of America, 12
University Settlements, 260

Venice, 138

Victoria, Queen, 9, 13, 47, 72,
73, 155, 166, 177

Wales, 3, 285

Waterloo, Battle of, 9, 37, 74,

166, 174
Watt, 21

Wells, H. G., 274, 275, 276, 277
Wesley, 121
William IV, 71
Windsor, 255
Workshop Regulation Act, 151

Yorkshire, 23, 188

INDEX TO DATES

1 8 19. Law prohibiting admission of Children under nine into

Spinning Mills, 147
1828. Abolition of Test Act, 75
1 83 1. Bristol Riots, 67

1 83 1. Factory Act, 148

1832. First Reform Act, 65, 66, 67 •

1833. Factory Act, 148

1833. First Grant of Money for Schools, 79

1833. Ten Anglican Sees suppressed in Ireland, 80

1834. Dismissal of Melbourne Ministry by William IV, 71

1834. The New Poor Law, 76, 106

1835. Cock-fighting and Bear-baiting prohibited in the streets, 154
1835. Municipal Corporations Act, 76

1835. "Pressing" of Sailors abolished, 154

1839. Grant of Money for Schools increased, 79

1840. Duelling dropped, 154

1840-5. General Inquiry about Labour, 148

1842. The Mines Act, 148

1844. Co-operative Society of the Rochdale Pioneers founded, 1 57

1844. Duelling prohibited amongst Officers, 154

1844. Factory Act, 148

1845. Lunatic Asylums submitted to control of the State, 153

1846. Abolition of Corn Laws, 78

1847. Ten Hours Bill passed, 149

1848. Permanent Committee of Hygiene created, 155

1849. Abolition of Navigation Act, 78

1 85 1. Association of Engineers founded, 157

185 1. Bill Passed for Improvement of Working-men's Houses, 1 55

1854-5. Crimean War, 88, 176

1857. Indian Mutiny, 174, 176

i860. Lords attempted to modify a Finance Bill, 71

1 86 1. Trades' Councils, 158

1 86 1 -6. Second General Inquiry on Employment of Children, 150

1867. Second Reform Act, 65, 66, 69

1867. Workshop Regulation Act, 151

1868. The Case of Governor Eyre, 177

1868. First Trade Union Congress held, 158

1869. Irish Branch of English Church disestablished, 80

1 87 1. Abolition of Purchase of Military Commissions, 77

1872. Ballot Act, 77

1876. Report Published by New Commission, 151

1877. Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India at Delhi, 177
1884. Third Reform Act, 65, 66

1886. Inquiry of Charles Booth undertaken, 202
1888. Creation of County Councils, 77
1908, Hull Congress, 215

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