socialistic development of the country. These are specially four: (1) Large tracts of land going out of cultivation and the consequent perpetual decline in agricultural rent; (2) the rehousing of the great mass of the unskilled working classes; (3) the revelations as to the sweating system recently made before the special committee of the House of Lords; and (4) the question of the permanently unemployed. It is difficult to see how these questions are to be solved on individualistic lines. Even that optimist statistician, Mr. Giffen, after attempting to prove that the people are better off than they ever were, expresses his conviction that "something like a revolution" in the condition of the people is desirable. But such a revolution can be brought about only by the State, i.e. by the people in their corporate capacity. Individual effort cannot rebuild East London and house a million working people as they ought to be housed. Individual effort cannot prevent overtime work in government establishments, on railways, in street cars, and omnibuses, and so give occupation to the unemployed. Individual effort cannot take hold of and cultivate the land of England, nor can it prevent the ground landlord from absorbing his "unearned increment" out of the industry and enterprise of the people. It is perfectly obvious that all these problems will demand the aid of the State in their solution, and it is equally obvious that such state action will bring society a very long way on in the socialist direction.

89. Tendency of Political Programmes

And now let us look for a moment to the attitude of the political parties with regard to the social problem and to their probable respective programmes, and we shall see, I think, that both parties, while repudiating socialism, yet advocate such measures as will lead on to socialism and can be logically defended on something like socialistic grounds. The Conservative party will rely in the main on schemes of state-assisted immigration, on protection, on the exclusion of foreign labor, and probably on some compulsory insurance scheme borrowed from the Bismarckian system. Although the Conservative leaders fight shy of protection, nearly every one of their followers is a protectionist at heart; and the recent sugar bounties convention is a sign that even the timid leaders of the party will go some way to gratify their followers. To the exclusion of foreign labor nearly every Conservative candidate in London and the large towns will be committed at the next election.

As for the immigration scheme, the people do not take very kindly to it, and all acute politicians will be careful not to commit themselves too far in that direction, and the same may be said of any state insurance scheme. But to these things in some form, the majority of Conservatives will adhere. And be it observed that each and all of these schemes involved collective action for the supposed benefit of the people. The State will do something that the masses may have work to do and bread to eat. In other words, it is the collective, the socialist, not the individualist, method which Conservatism will adopt.

Much more decidedly socialistic will be the radical programme. Radicals will not send the people out of the country at the public expense, but will supply public money to settle them on the land. They will propose to tax ground rents and mineral royalties with a view to their absorption by the community. They will municipalize land and nationalize railways. As soon as the organized working-class vote demands it, they will shorten the hours of labor and interfere further with the capitalist in the working of his business. And it is probable that, under the new and almost revolutionary extension of local self-government, they will start public works for the relief of the unemployed. It need not be pointed out that every one of these measures would involve a vast increase of collective authority and would be an immense step in the socialist direction.

The conclusion, then, to which the logic of facts drives any competent and well-informed investigator into English affairs is that in no country, probably, is progress being made more rapidly and more certainly in the socialist direction. When one compares the labor legislation of Great Britain, passed even under middle-class rule, with that of France or Belgium, one feels that the former country is in these matters half a century ahead of the two latter. It is so because the industrial development of England is half a century ahead of that of either France or Belgium, and the great lesson of politics is that legislation is determined by the social and economic conditions of the time. The economic development of Great Britain is further advanced than that of any other country, and therefore it is that Great Britain leads the world in socialist legislation. And if it be not a paradox to say so, it is that very socialistic legislation which prevents in England the wilder developments of revolutionary socialism with which the world is familiar in the case of France and Germany. It is rather the orderly evolutionary socialism of Rodbertus than the more revolutionary

socialism of Marx (identical as the doctrines of each may be at the bottom) which has a fair prospect of development in England.

§ 10. Socialism and Local Autonomy

One other matter needs to be dwelt upon. Englishmen are rightly supposed all the world over to be devoted to individual liberty, and the superficial student of socialism supposes that under it all individual liberty is lost and that every one is merely the agent of a huge central bureau. If this were the only kind of socialism possible, it might be freely admitted that it would have no chance in England. But he is blind to signs of the times who does not perceive that a vast movement of decentralization is going on in England. The Irish demand for home rule, the cries from Scotland and Wales for some reasonable autonomy, the concessions made even by a Conservative ministry in the local government bill, and the certain extension of that measure which the next Radical government will make all these are indications that Great Britain is being prepared for a kind of socialism wholly different from the authoritative centralizing methods of Marx, socialism consistent with and in fact dependent on an energetic local life and compatible with all kinds of local form and coloring. If, for example, the land in England is made public property, it will not be through a great central rent-receiving machine at Whitehall, but rather through the localities, each of which will be as free as is consistent with the union of the whole. Some kind of centralizing there must indeed be; some kind of uniformity is inseparable from the modern industrial system so far as one can see. And there is no greater monotony or uniformity or absence of individual free play than in the modern factories with which industrial England is crowded. It may well be indeed that under some rational socialistic system individual liberty may actually extend in various important directions, even if it should be contracted in others.

The immediate political future is exceedingly problematical. It is a period of chaos and bewilderment. The old parties are undergoing vast changes, fundamental questions are being asked, and probably the next few years will exhibit rapid, shifting scenes of a kaleidoscopic character. During this time of change the labor party will, unless I am greatly mistaken, take form and develop itself, make and unmake ministries, and gradually acquire more and more control over the springs of government and the sources

of national power, The politicians will bid for the labor vote as they have bid for the Irish vote; indeed, it is the startling success of Mr. Parnell which has so profoundly influenced the leading workers and thinkers in the labor ranks. Mr. Parnell has made Parnellites of the Liberal party; we shall see the leaders of both parties before long anxious to do whatever the labor leaders may require.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Webb, Industrial Democracy, Introduction to the 1902 edition; History of Trade Unionism; Problems of Modern Industry; Socialism in England. Gammage, History of the Chartist Movement. Ensor, Modern Socialism, especially valuable for the programmes of the various English labor parties and leaders. Mackay (editor), A Plea for Liberty, a protest and argument against state interference. Porritt, Party Conditions in England, in the Political Science Quarterly, June, 1906.

PART IX

THE EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I

THE ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS OF IMPERIALISM

IN every European country domestic politics is complicated by questions involved in securing new markets for manufactures and new areas for the profitable investment of capital. Though these great motives are supplemented by religious sentiments and by philosophic conceptions concerning the world's civilization, they are without doubt the great impelling forces in what is called "imperialism." The problem of how far domestic prosperity and true civilization are connected with the free outlet of these forces, and the military and naval support of mercantile operations, is one of the gravest and most important that has ever confronted Western nations. In Great Britain the opinion of statesmen and publicists has passed through many phases. For a time during the middle of the nineteenth century many of the leading thinkers were dominated by a belief that colonies would in time become independent States, and that additional imperial complications should not be undertaken. Since 1870, however, under the steady pressure of the forces mentioned above, the borders of the British empire have been steadily advanced, and there has been a strongly growing sentiment that the empire should be bound more and more closely together and that opportunities for new additions should not be allowed to escape. A very thorough analysis of the inner character of imperialism and its many problems is to be found in Mr. Hobson's Imperialism: a Study. It is not without its con