VIII. Lecture merely transitory stage in the effort of the State to act as arbitrator. The attempt, if not given up, must be carried out to its logical conclusion, and assume the shape of that compulsory arbitration which is a mere euphemism for the regulation of labour by the State, acting probably through the Courts.1 Equalisation of Advantages The extension given by collectivists to the idea of protection makes easy the transition from that idea to the different notion of equalisation of advantages. Of the members of every community the greater number cannot obtain the comforts or the enjoyments which fall to the lot of their richer and more fortunate neighbours. Against this evil of poverty the State ought, it is felt by collectivists, to protect the wageearning class, and in order to give this protection must go a good way towards securing for every citizen something like the same advantages, in the form of education, or of physical well-being, as the rich can 1 Compulsory arbitration must be carried through either by the Courts or by the Executive, but it may be doubted whether either of these bodies is fit for the work. (1) The judges are not by nature qualified for real arbitration, as regards matters of which they can have no special knowledge; and the Courts possess no proper machinery for enforcing their awards against the parties to a trade dispute. To put the judges, it may be added, to do work which is not judicial, is certain to deprive them of that repute for perfect impartiality which is in England their special glory. (2) The Executive is a more appropriate body than the Courts for the enforcement of an award, but a Parliamentary Cabinet does not and cannot possess that impartiality, which is the primary requisite for the performance of his duties by an arbitrator. A ministry called upon to adjudicate upon a dispute between an employer and his workmen will inevitably, in giving judgment, think a good deal of the effect which the judgment may produce at the next general election. VIII. obtain by their own efforts. This extension of the Lecture idea and practice of protection by the State has not, it is true, in England led as yet to anything like that enforced equality popularly known as communism, but, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it has produced much legislation tending towards that equalisation of advantages among all classes which, in practice, means the conferring of benefits upon the wage-earners at the expense of the whole body of the tax-payers. This tendency is traceable in the development of the law with reference to elementary education, to an employer's liability for injuries received by workmen in the course of their employment, and to municipal trading.1 As to Elementary Education.-Up to 1832 the State recognised no national responsibility and incurred no expense for the elementary education of the people of England; nor did it impose upon parents any legal obligation to provide for the education of their children.2 1 No attempt is here made to give, even in outline, a history or a full statement of the law on these topics; they are dealt with only in so far as they illustrate the tendency towards the equalisation of advantages. 2 See Balfour, Educational Systems of Great Britain and Ireland (2nd ed.) The statements made here as to education do not refer to Scotland or Ireland. In 1807 Whitbread introduced a Bill, which passed the House of Commons, for the foundation of a school in every parish, with power to employ local rates. In 1816 Brougham obtained a Select Committee to Inquire into the Education of the Lower Orders. In 1820 he brought in an Education Bill which did not pass into law. In 1811 was founded the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, and in 1808 the British and Foreign School Society, which in effect represented Dissenters. These Lecture From 1833 onwards, the State made grants, the earliest of which amounted to not quite £20,000, for the indirect promotion of the education of the English people, and thereby to a certain extent admitted its duty as a national educator, but the assumption of this duty was delayed by the distrust of State intervention which characterised the Benthamite era.1 1 In 1870 the education of the English poor became for the first time the direct concern of the nation, and the State attempted to enforce upon parents, though to a very limited extent, the obligation of providing their children with elementary knowledge, and in so far at the parents' own expense, that they were compellable to pay school fees. In 1876 this duty of the parents received distinct legal recognition, and in 1880 the compulsory attendance of facts, as also the foundation of Sunday Schools, show the gradual growth, since at any rate the beginning of the nineteenth century, of the conviction that it was the duty of the State or the public to provide education for the poor. The mere fact that a country maintains a national system of education does not of itself necessarily prove the prevalence of socialistic ideas, as witness the history of popular education in Scotland and in New England. But it is true that the gradual development of the conviction that the nation must provide for the education of the people, and make such provision at the expense of the nation, may be, and certainly has been in England, connected with the development of collectivism. 1 Even as late as 1859, John Mill deprecated the direct assumption by the State of educational functions, and contended that it ought to do no more than compel parents to provide for the elementary education of their children.—Mill, On Liberty, pp. 188-194. 2 "It shall be the duty of the parent of every child to cause such "child to receive efficient elementary instruction in reading, writing, "and arithmetic, and if such parent fail to perform such duty, he "shall be liable to such orders and penalties as are provided by the "Act."-Elementary Education Act, 1876, 39 & 40 Vict. c. 79, & 4. See Balfour, Educational Systems, 2nd ed. p. 24 children at school was for the first time made Lecture universal1 In 1891 parents of children compelled to attend school were freed from the duty of paying school fees, and elementary education became what is called free. 2 This last change completely harmonises with the ideas of collectivism. It means, in the first place, that A, who educates his children at his own expense, or has no children to educate, is compelled to pay for the education of the children of B, who, though, it may be, having means to pay for it, prefers that the payment should come from the pockets of his neighbours. It tends, in the second place, as far as merely elementary education goes, to place the children of the rich and of the poor, of the provident and the improvident, on something like an equal footing. It aims, in short, at the equalisation of advantages. The establishment of free education is conclusive proof that, in one sphere of social life, the old arguments of individualism have lost their practical cogency. Here and there you may still hear it argued that a father is as much bound in duty to provide his own children at his own expense with necessary knowledge as with necessary food and clothing, whilst the duty of the tax-payers to pay for the education is no greater than the obligation to pay for the feeding of children whose parents are not paupers. But this line of reasoning meets with no response except, indeed, either from some rigid economist who adheres to doctrines which, whether true or 1 The Elementary Education Act, 1880, 43 & 44 Vict. c. 23. VIII. VIII. Lecture false, are derided as obsolete shibboleths; or from philanthropists who, entertaining, whether consciously or not, ideas belonging to socialism, accept the premises pressed upon them by individualists, but draw the inference that the State is bound to give the children, for whose education it is responsible, the breakfasts or dinners which will enable them to profit by instruction. The State, moreover, which provides for the elementary education of the people, has now, in more directions than one, advanced far on the path towards the provision of teaching which can in no sense be called elementary.' If a student once realises that the education of the English people was, during the earlier part of the nineteenth century, in no sense a national concern, he will see that our present system is a monument to the increasing predominance of collectivism. For elementary education is now controlled and guided by a central body directly representing the State; it is administered by representative local authorities, it is based on the compulsory attendance of children at school, it is supported partly by parliamentary grants and partly by local rates.2 1 See Balfour, pp. xxi.-xxiii.; Stephen, Comm. iii. (14th ed.) 132, and compare generally as to the present state of the law relating to education, ibid. 127-144. The chapter on this subject has had the advantage of revision by F. W. Hirst. 2 I have no wish to overlook the extent to which voluntary contributions, made by the members of different religious bodies, supply in part the means of national education, but it cannot be disputed that the education of the people is now in the main paid for by the nation. The cost of elementary education to the Imperial Exchequer, as provided for in the Estimates, is for the financial year 1904-5, £10,998,000. This is made up as follows: : |