VII.

Lecture of three men of genius who agreed in nothing but in their common distrust of laissez faire, and in their conviction that some great exertion of the authority of the State was needed for the cure of the diseases which afflicted the commonwealth.

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"Moral evils," writes Southey (1829), 66 are of "[man's] own making; and undoubtedly the greater part of them may be prevented, though it is only in Paraguay (the most imperfect of Utopias) that any "attempt at prevention has been carried into effect." 1

1 Southey's Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, i p. 110.

"If there be," writes Macaulay, " in [Mr. Southey's] political system any leading principle, any one error which diverges more widely "and variously than any other, it is that of which his theory about "national works is a ramification. He conceives that the business of "the magistrate is not merely to see that the persons and property of "the people are secure from attack, but that he ought to be a jack-of"all-trades, architect, engineer, schoolmaster, merchant, theologian, a 'Lady Bountiful in every parish, a Paul Pry in every house, spying, eaves-dropping, relieving, admonishing, spending our money for us, "and choosing our opinions for us. His principle is, if we understand "it rightly, that no man can do anything so well for himself as his "rulers, be they who they may, can do it for him, and that a govern"ment approaches nearer and nearer to perfection, in proportion as it "interferes more and more with the habits and notions of individuals.

"He seems to be fully convinced that it is in the power of govern"ment to relieve all the distresses under which the lower orders "labour."-Macaulay, Critical, etc. Essays (1870 ed.), p. 110.

A reader of to-day finds it difficult to justify fully the strength of Macaulay's attack by citations from the Colloquies. But the Whig critic, who had the whole of Southey's writings before his mind, instinctively felt the opposition between Southey's whole view of society and the liberalism of 1832. This opposition is admitted by Southey's modern admirers, and by them considered his title to fame as a social reformer. "He looked forward to a time when, the great struggle respecting property over-for this struggle he saw looming "not far off-public opinion will no more tolerate the extreme of poverty in a large class of the people than it now tolerates slavery "in Europe; when the aggregation of land in the hands of great owners must cease, when that community of lands, which Owen of "Lanark would too soon anticipate, might actually be realised.”— Dowden, Southey, p. 154.

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VII.

And this prevention was, in Southey's judgment, Lecture to be effected by the moral authority of the Church and the action of the State.

"This neglect," writes Dr. Arnold (1838), namely, to provide a proper position in the State for the manufacturing population, "is encouraged by one of "the falsest maxims which ever pandered to human "selfishness under the name of political wisdom-I mean the maxim that civil society ought to leave "its members alone, each to look after their several "interests, provided they do not employ direct fraud

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or force against their neighbour. That is, knowing "full well that these are not equal in natural powers, "-and that still less have they ever within historical memory started with equal artificial advantages; knowing, also, that power of every sort has a tendency to increase itself, we stand by and let this most unequal race take its own course, forgetting “that the very name of society implies that it shall "not be a mere race, but that its object is to provide for the common good of all, by restraining the power of the strong and protecting the helplessness "of the weak." 1

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"That the arrangements," writes Carlyle in 1839, of good and ill success in this perplexed scramble of a world, which a blind goddess was always thought "to preside over, are in fact the work of a seeing goddess or god, and require only not to be meddled with what stretch of heroic faculty or inspiration

...

"The view of social evils to which Southey. gave expression, "often in anticipation of Mr. Ruskin, was in many respects deeper and "truer than that of his optimistic critic."-Dictionary of National Biography, vol. liii. p. 288.

1 Arnold, Miscellaneous Works, pp. 453, 454.

Lecture

VII.

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"of genius was needed to teach one that? To button your pockets and stand still is no complex recipe. Laissez faire, laissez passer! Whatever goes on, ought it not to go on. . . . Such at bottom seems "to be the chief social principle, if principle it have, which the Poor Law Amendment Act has the merit "of courageously asserting, in opposition to many things. A chief social principle which this present "writer, for one, will by no manner of means believe "in, but pronounce at all fit times to be false, heretical, "and damnable, if ever aught was." 1

between

Between 1830 and 1840 the issue individualists and collectivists was fairly joined. Can the systematic extension of individual freedom and the removal of every kind of oppression so stimulate individual energy and self-help as to cure (in so far as they are curable by legislation) the evils which bring ruin on a commonwealth?

To this inquiry the enlightened opinion of 1832, which for some thirty or forty years, if not for more, governed the action of Parliament, gave, in spite of protests from a small body of thinkers backed more or less by the sympathy of the working classes, an unhesitating and affirmative answer. To the same inquiry English legislative opinion has from about 1870 onwards given a doubtful, if not a negative, reply.

My purpose in this lecture is to explain a revolution of social or political belief which forms a remarkable phenomenon in the annals of opinion. This explanation in reality is nothing else than an

1 Carlyle's Works, x. p. 340, "Chartism." See also ibid, chap. vi.

p. 368.

VII.

attempt at analysis of the conditions or causes which Lecture have favoured the growth of collectivism, or, if the matter be looked at from the other side, have undermined the authority of Benthamite liberalism.'

A current explanation lies ready to hand. Under the Parliamentary Reform Acts 1867-1884 the constitution of England has been transformed into a democracy, and this revolution, it is argued, completely explains the increasing influence of socialism. The many must always be the poor, and the poor are by nature socialists. Where you have democracy there you will find socialism.

1 Benthamite reformers have never had a perfectly fair chance of bringing their policy to a successful issue. Some of their proposals have never been carried into effect; outdoor relief, for example, has never been abolished. The realisation of some of them has been so delayed as to lose more than half its beneficial effect. If the first reformed Parliament had been able to establish free trade simultaneously with the enactment of the new poor law, and given to Dissenters in 1832 as complete political equality as they possess at the present day; if it had in reality opened to Roman Catholics in 1832 all careers as completely as they are open to them in 1905; if O'Connell had been first made Irish Attorney-General and then placed on the Bench; if the tithe war which harassed Ireland till 1838 had been terminated in 1834—is it not at least possible that a rapid increase in material prosperity and a sense of relief from oppression might have produced a general sentiment of social unity, which would have shown that the principles of individualism fitly met the wants of the time? Our habit of delaying reforms has its occasional advantages; these advantages are, however, much exaggerated. Sir Thomas Snagge, in his admirable Evolution of the County Court, thus writes of the County Court Act, 1846: "Its provisions were the outcome of nearly twenty years of resolute parliamentary effort, met by opposition no less persistent. Such struggles are wont to end, as this did, in a compromise. It was the old story of all sound English reform: hasty change was successfully withstood, and gradual evolution was happily accomplished." Can our esteemed author seriously maintain that opposition generated by partisanship brought a single compensation for the practical denial of justice to the poor for a period of twenty years? However this may be, the disadvantages of delay are often tremendous. It keeps alive irritation which constantly robs improvement itself of almost the whole of its legitimate benefit.

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Lecture

VII.

This reasoning, as already pointed out,' is essentially fallacious. Democracy cannot be identified with any one kind of legislative opinion. The government of England is far less democratic than is the government of the United States, but the legislation of Congress is less socialistic than the legislation of the Imperial Parliament. Nor in England are laws tending towards socialism due to the political downfall of the wealthy classes. Under a democratic constitution they retain much substantial power-they determine in many ways the policy of the country. The rich have but feebly resisted, even if they have not furthered, collectivist legislation. The advance of democracy cannot afford the main explanation of the predominance of legislative collectivism.

The true explanation is to be found, not in the changed form of the constitution, but in conditions of which the advance of democracy is indeed one, but whereof the most important had been in operation before the Reform Act of 1867 came into force.

These conditions, which constantly co-operated, may be conveniently brought under the following heads Tory Philanthropy and the Factory Movement-the Changed Attitude after 1848 of the Working Classes - the Modification of Economic Beliefs the Characteristics of Modern Commercethe Introduction of Household Suffrage.

1 See Lect. III. ante.

2 The expression is obviously inaccurate, but I use it as a convenient and accepted name for the movement in favour of the regulation by law of labour in factories.