VIII.

again are, we have observed, among the most potent Lecture of the many causes which create legislative opinion; the legislation of collectivism has continued now for some twenty-five or thirty years, and has itself contributed to produce the moral and intellectual atmosphere in which socialistic ideas flourish and abound. So true is this that modern individualists are themselves generally on some points socialists. The inner logic of events leads, then, to the extension and the development of legislation which bears the impress of collectivism.1

1 On a movement which has not yet reached its close, it is impossible to pronounce anything like a final judgment. It may be allowable to conjecture that, if the progress of socialistic legislation be arrested, the check will be due, not so much to the influence of any thinker as to some patent fact which shall command public attention; such, for instance, as that increase in the weight of taxation which is apparently the usual, if not the invariable, concomitant of a socialistic policy.

LECTURE IX

IX.

THE DEBT OF COLLECTIVISM TO BENTHAMISM

Lecture THE patent opposition between the individualistic liberalism of 1830 and the democratic socialism of 1905 conceals the heavy debt owed by English collectivists to the utilitarian reformers. From Benthamism the socialists of to-day have inherited a legislative dogma, a legislative instrument, and a legislative tendency.

The dogma is the celebrated principle of utility.

In 17761 Bentham published his Fragment on Government. The shrewdness or the selfishness of Wedderburn at once scented the revolutionary tendency of utilitarian reform.

2

"This principle of utility," he said, " is a dangerous principle." On this dictum Bentham has thus commented :

"Saying so, he [Wedderburn] said that which, to a certain extent, is strictly true; a principle which "lays down, as the only right and justifiable end "of Government, the greatest happiness of the

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greatest number-how can it be denied to be a

1 In the same year was published Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. 2 Afterwards Lord Chancellor, under the title of Baron Loughborough, and created in 1801 Earl of Rosslyn.

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IX.

"dangerous one? Dangerous it unquestionably is to Lecture every Government which has for its actual end or object the greatest happiness of a certain one, with "or without the addition of some comparatively "small number of others, whom it is a matter of pleasure or accommodation to him to admit, each "of them, to a share in the concern on the footing "of so many junior partners. Dangerous it there"fore really was to the interest-the sinister interest "-of all those functionaries, himself included, whose "interest it was to maximise delay, vexation, and expense in judicial and other modes of procedure "for the sake of the profit extractible out of the 66 expense. In a Government which had for its end "in view the greatest happiness of the greatest "number, Alexander Wedderburn might have been Attorney-General and then Chancellor; but he would "not have been Attorney-General with £15,000 a year, nor Chancellor, with a peerage with a veto upon all justice, with £25,000 a year, and with 500 "sinecures at his disposal, under the name of Ecclesi"astical Benefices, besides et ceteras.

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" 1

In 1905 we are less surprised at Bentham's retort, which betrays a youthful philosopher's enthusiastic faith in a favourite doctrine, than at Wedderburn's alarm, which seems to savour of needless panic. What is there, we ask, in the greatest happiness principlea truism now accepted by conservatives no less than by democrats that could disturb the equanimity of a shrewd man of the world well started on the path to high office? Yet Wedderburn, from his own point of view, formed a just estimate of the

1 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. i. p. 5 (n).

IX.

Lecture principle of utility. It was a principle big with revolution; it involved the abolition of every office or institution which could not be defended on the ground of calculable benefit to the public; it struck at the root of all the abuses, such as highly-paid sinecures, which in 1776 abounded in every branch of the civil and of the ecclesiastical establishment; it aimed a deadly blow, not only at the optimism of Blackstone, but also at the historical conservatism of Burke. It went, indeed, much farther than this, for, as in any State the poor and the needy always constitute the majority of the nation, the favourite dogma of Benthamism pointed to the conclusion-utterly foreign to the English statesmanship of the eighteenth century-that the whole aim of legislation should be to promote the happiness, not of the nobility or the gentry, or even of shopkeepers, but of artisans and other wage-earners.

The legislative instrument was the active use of parliamentary sovereignty.1

The omnipotence of Parliament, which Bentham learned from Blackstone, might well, considered as an abstract doctrine, command the acquiescent admiration of the commentator. But the omnipotence of Parliament―turned into a reality, and directed by bold reformers towards the removal of all actual or apparent abuses-might well alarm, not only adventurers who found in public life a lucrative as well as an honourable profession, but also statesmen, such as Pitt or Wilberforce, uninfluenced by any sinister interest. Parliamentary sovereignty, in short, taught as a theory by Blackstone and treated as a reality 1 See p. 164, ante.

IX.

by Bentham, was an instrument well adapted for the Lecture establishment of democratic despotism.

The legislative tendency was the constant extension and improvement of the mechanism of government.

1

The guides of English legislation during the era of individualism, by whatever party name they were known, accepted the fundamental ideas of Benthamism. The ultimate end, therefore, of these men. was to promote legislation in accordance with the principle of utility; but their immediate and practical object was the extension of individual liberty as the proper means for ensuring the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Their policy, however, was at every turn thwarted by the opposition or inertness of classes biassed by some sinister interest. Hence sincere believers in laissez faire found that for the attainment of their ends the improvement and the strengthening of governmental machinery was an absolute necessity. In this work they were seconded by practical men who, though utterly indifferent to any political theory, saw the need of administrative changes suited to meet the multifarious and complex requirements of a modern and industrial community. The formation of an effective police force for London (1829)-the rigorous and scientific administration of the Poor Law (1834) under the control of the central government-the creation of authorities for the enforcement of laws to promote the public health and the increasing application of a new system of centralisation,2 the 1 See p. 135, ante.

2 The English Government, even during the supremacy of reactionary toryism, did not attempt to build up a stronger