XII. Lecture it might well seem that the Oxford movement would not tell upon the course of social reforms, but, as the century wore on, it became apparent that the new prominence given to the idea of churchmanship would directly, and still more indirectly, affect the course of philanthropic efforts. It may without unfairness be asserted, that partly under the influence of the High Church movement, zeal for the promotion of that personal humanitarianism-if the expression may be allowed -which meant so much to the reformers (whether Benthamites or Evangelicals) of an earlier generation has declined, but, on the other hand, men and especially ecclesiastics, anxious to promote the physical, as well as the moral welfare of the people, have of recent years exhibited a sympathy with the socialism of the wage-earners as unknown to Bentham as to Wilberforce. This difference is one easier to perceive than to define. It is a change of moral attitude which is very closely connected with the reaction against individualism, and if stimulated by the High Church movement, is not confined to teachers of any one school or creed. Westcott,' an Anglican bishop, and Manning, an English cardinal,2 have each composed, or attempted to compose, conflicts between the parties to a strike, and have been actuated therein by admitted sympathy with "Fowell Buxton at their head."-Sir J. Stephen, Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, ii. pp. 188, 189. 66 1 Life and Letters of B. Foss Westcott, ii. p. 115. 2 See Dict. National Biography, xxxvi. pp. 66, 67. "On "occasion of the strike of the London dock labourers in August 1889 [Manning] warmly espoused their cause, and materially "contributed to bring about an adjustment of the dispute.”—Ibid. XII. wage-earners. Nor is it a far-fetched idea that in Lecture certain circles, at least, the attacks made by Professor T. H. Green and other impressive teachers on the assumptions of utilitarianism and individualism may have facilitated the combination, not unnatural in itself, of church doctrine with socialistic sympathies.1 The attack on individualism, then, in any sphere means the promotion of a state of public feeling which fosters the growth of collectivism in the province of law. 2 Politics are not the same thing as law, but in modern England any revolution in political ideas is certain to correspond with alterations in legislative opinion. If then we take care not to confound the accidental division of parties with essential differences of political faith, we discover a change in the world of politics which closely resembles, if it be not rather a part of, the transition, with which these lectures have been occupied, from individualism to collectivism. One example of this change in political opinion is to be found in the altered attitude of the public towards peace and economy. economy. During the era of Benthamism "peace and retrenchment" were the watchwords of all serious statesmen. This formula 3 1 For the inclination of the Church party in France to favour a certain kind of socialism, see Pic, Traité Élémentaire de Législation Industrielle, ss. 354, 355. 2 See p. 176, ante. 3 Compare for the tone of English public life from 1830-1850, Martineau's History of the Thirty Years' Peace, and Walpole's History of England, published 1878-1886, which embodies the sentiment of the era of reform, though the book is written rather from the Whig than from the Radical point of view. XII. Lecture has now fallen out of remembrance. The point to be noted is that this fact is significant of a very profound revolution in political belief. The demand for peace abroad and economy at home stood in very close connection with the passion for individual freedom of action which was a leading characteristic of Benthamite liberalism. Peace ought to mean light, and war certainly does mean heavy taxation, but heavy taxation whether justifiable, as it often is, or not, always must be a curtailment of each citizen's power to employ his property in the way he himself chooses. It is an interference, though in many cases a quite justifiable interference, with his liberty. The augmentation, moreover, of the public revenue by means of taxation is not only a diminution of each taxpayer's private income and of his power within a certain sphere to do as he likes, but also an increase in the resources and the power of the State; but to curtail the free action of individuals, and to increase the authority of the Government, was to pursue a policy opposed to the doctrine, and still more to the sentiment of Benthamite Liberals. Indifference to the mere lightening of taxation, as an end absolutely desirable in itself, is assuredly characteristic of a state of opinion under which men expect far more benefit for the mass of the people from the extension of the power of the State than from the energy of individual action. No doubt collectivists may hold that the proceeds of heavy taxes are wasted or are spent on the effort to attain objects in themselves undesirable; but the mere transference of the wealth of individuals to the coffers of the State cannot appear to a col XII. lectivist,' as it did to the individualistic Radicals of Lecture 1830, to be in itself a gigantic evil. We may put side by side with the decline of the economic radicalism represented in the last generation by Joseph Hume,2 both the growth of imperialism, and the discredit which has fallen upon the colonial policy of laissez faire connected with the name of Cobden. For imperialism, whatever its merits and demerits, bears witness to a new-born sense among Englishmen of their membership in a great imperial State. From whichever side the matter be looked at, the changes of political show a close correspondence with the alterations of legislative opinion. Political economy and jurisprudence were between 1830 and 1850 little more than branches of utilitarianism. The dismal science denounced by Carlyle seemed to him and his disciples simply the extreme expression of a philosophy which in their eyes was based on selfishness. The notion, indeed, that enthusiastic philanthropists were guided by nothing but the dictates of self-interest, now needs no confutation. 1 A sagacious collectivist may, indeed, look to some system of taxation as the best means for achieving that gradual transfer to the community of the wealth of individuals which, though it involves an immense inroad on personal freedom, might realise the ideals of socialism. 2 No politician was a more typical representative of his time than Joseph Hume. He was a utilitarian of a narrow type; he devoted the whole of his energy to the keeping down or paring down of public expenditure. Even at the period of his greatest influence (1820-1850) his passion for economy met with as much derision as admiration. Still in his day, though he was never a popular hero, he commanded some real and more nominal support. He has left no successor; no member of Parliament has taken up Hume's work. Could a politician who avowedly wished to follow in Hume's steps now obtain a seat in the House of Commons? XII. Lecture What is worth attention is that Malthus, Senior, and M'Culloch, and the so-called orthodox economists, were in popular imagination, and not without reason, identified with the philosophic Radicals; whilst the dogmas of political economy were considered to be articles of the utilitarian creed. The economists were in truth strenuous individualists. A statement somewhere to be found in Bagehot's works, that every treatise on political economy which he read in his youth began with the supposition that two men were cast on an uninhabited island, means, in reality, that economical doctrines were then inferences drawn from the way in which the supposed "economical man would act, if he and others were left each of them free to pursue his own interest. Economics were based on individualism. Whatever may be the soundness of deductions drawn from the possible conduct of imagined human beings placed, for the sake of argument, in an imaginary state of freedom, two things are pretty clear: the one (which has already been dwelt upon), that the habit of regarding men as isolated individuals was characteristic of the period of Benthamism; the other, that this mode of considering human beings apart from their relation to society has, in economics as elsewhere, gone more or less out of fashion. In economics, as in other spheres of thought, our tendency now is to regard human beings as members of society or persons who are by nature citizens. Jurisprudence was in the hands of Austin, as of James Mill and of Bentham, the application to existing legal conceptions of that analysis of current ideas to which Benthamites devoted their powers. The object |
