Lecture "of genius was needed to teach one that? To button VII. your pockets and stand still is no complex recipe. ought it not to go on. passer! Whatever "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.' 66 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.1 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 you will find socialism. there 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 com"promise. 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. 66 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. 2 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. Tory Philanthropy and the Factory Movement The age of individualism was emphatically the era of humanitarianism-it was the philanthropy of the day which, in the midst of the agitation for parliamentary reform, would not suffer the wrongs of the negroes to be forgotten. Now at the very time when the country was moved to passionate indignation at the horrors of West Indian slavery, public attention was suddenly directed, by the publication of Richard Oastler's Slavery in Yorkshire, to oppression, not in the West Indies, but in Yorkshireto the bondage, not of negroes, but of English children. The horrors denounced by Oastler were of precisely the kind which most outraged the humanitarianism of the day. His appeal to the English public went home; it was the true beginning of the factory movement.1 That movement was in truth the fruit of humanitarianism. The earliest Factory Act belongs to an age (1802) when English statesmen had hardly heard of socialism. The strength of Oastler's appeal, was public indignation at the physical sufferings brought, as it was believed, by the greed of manufacturers upon helpless infants. That English children were held in bondage, that to perform their task-work they were compelled under cruel punishment to walk as much as twenty miles a day, that their day's work lasted for from twelve to sixteen hours, were the facts or allegations which aroused the pity and the wrath of the nation. The 1 Factory legislation dates from 1802, but the factory movement aroused by Oastler's letters dates from 1830. Lecture VII. Lecture vehemence of popular indignation had in its origin nothing to do with socialistic theories. The factory movement was in full accordance with the traditional principle of the common law that all persons below twenty-one had a claim to special protection. Nor was there anything in the early factory movement which was opposed either to Benthamism or to the doctrines of the most rigid political economy. Individualists of every school were only too keenly alive to the danger that the sinister interest of a class should work evil to the weak and helpless. They almost identified power with despotism. In 1836 Cobden was not only willing, but ready to exclude absolutely from labour in a cotton mill any child below the age of thirteen. 66 66 "As respects the right and justice by which young persons ought to be protected from excessive labour, my mind has ever been decided, and I will "not argue the matter for a moment with political economy; it is a question for the medical and not "the economical profession; I will appeal to 66 66 or Astley Cooper, and not to McCulloch or Martineau. Nor does it require the aid of science "to inform us that the tender germ of childhood "is unfitted for that period of labour which even persons of mature age shrink from as excessive. "In my opinion, and I hope to see the day when 'such a feeling is universal, no child ought to be put "to work in a cotton-mill at all so early as the age of thirteen years; and after that the hours should "be moderate, and the labour light, until such time "as the human frame is rendered by nature capable "of enduring the fatigues of adult labour. With |