A Short History of English Liberalism Part 1

A Short History of English Liberalism.

by Walter Lyon Blease.

CHAPTER I

LIBERALISM AND TORYISM

This book attempts to trace the varying but persistent course of Liberalism in British politics during the last hundred and fifty years. It is not so much a history of events as a reading of them in the light of a particular political philosophy. In the strict sense a history of Liberalism should cover much more than politics. The same habit of mind is to be discovered everywhere else in the history of thought, most conspicuously in religious history, but not less certainly in the history of science and of art. The general victory in these innumerable conflicts of opinion has been to Liberalism, and the movement of the race, during the period with which the writer is concerned, is precisely measured by the degree in which the Liberal spirit has succeeded in modifying the establishments of the preceding age. The object of this book is to investigate the course of that process of modification in politics.

By Liberalism I mean, not a policy, but a habit of mind. It is the disposition of the man who looks upon each of his fellows as of equal worth with himself. He does not a.s.sume that all men and women are of equal capacity, or equally ent.i.tled to offices and privileges. But he is always inclined to leave and to give them equal opportunity with himself for self-expression and for self-development. He a.s.sumes, as the basis of his activity, that he has no right to interfere with any other person's attempts {8} to employ his natural powers in what he conceives to be the best way. He is unwilling to impose his judgment upon that of others, or to force them to live their lives according to his ideas rather than their own. They are never to be used by him for his own ends, but for theirs.

Each is to be left to himself, to work out his own salvation. The Liberal habit of mind has its positive as well as its negative side. Just as it leads its possessor to refrain from interfering with the development of others, so it leads him to take active steps to remove the artificial barriers which impede that development. Natural obstacles will remain, though even these may be diminished. But the artificial conditions, which prevent or hinder growth, are perpetually obnoxious to the Liberal. Upon cla.s.s distinctions in society, privileges of s.e.x, rank, wealth, and creed, he wages unceasing war. They are, in his eye, weights and impediments. To one of two individuals, not distinguishable in natural capacity, they give an advantage which is denied to the other. It is the object of the Liberal, not to deprive any individual of such opportunities as are required for the exercise of his natural powers, but to prevent the excessive appropriation of such opportunities by members of the privileged cla.s.s. The differences between the practical aims and methods of Liberals at different times are very wide. But the mental habit has always been the same. "The pa.s.sion for improving mankind, in its ultimate object, does not vary. But the immediate object of reformers and the forms of persuasion by which they seek to advance them, vary much in different generations. To a hasty observer they might even seem contradictory, and to justify the notion that nothing better than a desire for change, selfish or perverse, is at the bottom of all reforming movements. Only those who will think a little longer about it can discern the same old cause of social good against cla.s.s interests, for which, under altered names, Liberals are fighting now as they were fifty years ago."[1] The const.i.tutional Liberalism of Fox, the economical Liberalism of Cobden, and the new collectivist Liberalism of Mr. Lloyd {9} George exhibit great differences in comparison. But the three men are alike in their desire to set free the individual from existing social bonds, and to procure him liberty of growth.

The justification for this individual freedom is not that the man is left to his own selfish motives, to develop himself for his own advantage. It is that it is only in this way that he can realize that his own best advantage is only secured by consulting that of his fellows. "The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth ... it is of course possible to reduce a man to order and prevent him from being a nuisance to his neighbours by arbitrary control and harsh punishment.... It is also possible, though it takes a much higher skill, to teach the same man to discipline himself, and this is to foster the development of will, of personality, of self-control, or whatever we please to call that central harmonizing power which makes us capable of directing our own lives. Liberalism is the belief that society can safely be founded on this self-directing power of personality."[2] This Liberalism has nothing to do with anarchy. Coercion may be consistently applied wherever individual liberty is employed for the public injury, and the imprisonment of burglars and the regulation of factories by law are only two aspects of the same thing. But Liberalism restricts freedom only to extend freedom. Where the individual uses his own liberty to restrict that of others he may be coerced. But in spite of the modifications to which all such political principles must be subject, the general rule holds good. The ideal Liberal State is that in which every individual is equally free to work out his own life.

The practical difficulty of working out the relations between the individual and the society in which he is placed is of course very great, and it will probably always be impossible to maintain a perfect equilibrium. No doubt we shall always suffer from one or other of the two unsatisfying conditions--the sacrifice of the individual to what the majority thinks to be the right of the whole society, and the sacrifice of the {10} society to the undue emanc.i.p.ation of the individual. But the necessary imperfection of the result is no argument against this or any other political system of thought. Politics are no more than a means of getting things done, and when we have found a society of perfect human beings, we can fairly complain that their affairs are not perfectly managed. So far as he can, the Liberal aims at securing this balance of social and individual good, remembering that the good of society can only be measured by the good of all its members, and not by the good only of some dominant rank, creed, or cla.s.s. "Rights are relative to the well-being of society, but the converse proposition is equally true, that the well-being of society may be measured by the degree in which their moral rights are secured to its component members.... The moral right of an individual is simply a condition of the full development of his personality as a moral being. Equally, the moral right of any community is the condition of the maintenance of its common life, and since that society is best, happiest, and most progressive which enables its members to make the utmost of themselves, there is no necessary conflict between them. The maintenance of rights is the condition of human progress.... To reconcile the rule of right with the principle of the public welfare is the supreme end of social theory."[3]

In practical politics the work of modern Liberalism has been to alter the conditions of society so that this freedom of growth may be secured for each member of it. The old conception of society was a conception of cla.s.ses. Human beings were graded and standardized. Certain privileges were reserved for certain groups. Society looked, for its estimate of a man, not to his natural powers, not to what he might make of himself, but to his brand or mark. If within a certain degree, he had a free choice of his mode of life; if without it, he found his condition prescribed, sometimes so rigorously that he could hardly ever improve it. Liberalism has endeavoured to go deeper into the man, to get beneath the outward complexion, {11} to find out his intrinsic worth, and to give him that place in the social estimate which his natural powers deserve. Arbitrary distinctions are abhorrent to it. It is incapable of thinking in terms of cla.s.s. Every cla.s.s is, in its eyes, only an aggregate of individuals, and to exalt one cla.s.s above another is to appreciate some individuals at the expense of others, to place marks of comparative social worth upon the members of different groups which do not correspond to the relative values of their natural qualities. Against a privileged race, rank, creed, or s.e.x Liberalism must fight continually. By the artificial elevation of one above another, it is made to count for more in society, its members are aggrandized and those of its rivals are depreciated; and while the first are encouraged to abuse, the second are hampered and fettered in their growth. The Liberal a.s.serts that no man, because he happens to be of a particular sect, or to be born of a particular family, or to possess a particular form of property, or to hold particular opinions, shall be invested by Society with privileges which give him an advantage in social intercourse over his fellows. He does not a.s.sert that all human beings are equal in capacity, but he demands that their natural inequalities shall not be aggravated by artificial conditions. For what he is worth, each shall be free to realize his highest capacity.

The Liberal conception of equality as between individuals is extended to the case of Churches, of nations, and of s.e.xes. These cla.s.ses are indeed not regarded by the Liberal as cla.s.ses, but simply as a.s.sociations, for limited purposes, of individuals, who are, in all essential respects, separate and distinct. To confer a privilege upon one Church or nation or s.e.x is simply to confer a privilege upon the individuals who compose it, and whether the privilege is the monopoly of political power or the sole right to take part in a public ceremony, it does in greater or less degree affect the relative social values of the members of the two groups, and places the members of the inferior at the disposition of those of the superior. To give the Established Church the sole right to take part in the coronation of the King is a violation {12} of Liberal principle of the same kind, though not of the same degree, as to exclude Dissenters or Catholics from Parliament, and if men were content to exclude women only from the legal profession, they would be arrogating to themselves a superior value no less clearly than when they refuse to them the right to control their own government.

The same general habit of mind is applied to foreign policy. The acknowledgment of the equal worth of individuals within the nation becomes the acknowledgment of the equal worth of nations among themselves.

"Nationalism has stood for liberty, not only in the sense that it has resisted tyrannous encroachment, but also in the sense that it has maintained the right of a community to work out its own salvation in its own way. A nation has an individuality, and the doctrine that individuality is an element in well-being is rightly applied to it. The world advances by the free, vigorous growth of divergent types, and is stunted when all the fresh bursting shoots are planed off close to the heavy, solid stem."[4]

The interference of one with another, attempts to prescribe the limits or the cause of development, are as obnoxious in international as in intra-national relations. It was in fact in connection with this idea of nationality that the words "Liberal" and "Liberalism" came into use. The first English Liberals were those statesmen who followed Canning in his championship of Greece and the South American Republics, and some of them were very far from being Liberals within the borders of their own State.[5]

This extension of Liberalism from individuals to nations is easy as a mental process, but very far from easy as a matter of practical politics.

Nationality is not difficult to define in general terms. It is sometimes infinitely difficult to decide in a particular case whether the general definition applies. John Stuart Mill has perhaps given as much precision to the Liberal conception of nationality as it can bear. "A portion of mankind may be said {13} to const.i.tute a nation if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and others. This feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. Sometimes it is the effect of ident.i.ty of race and descent. Community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it. Geographical limits are one of the causes. But the strongest of all is ident.i.ty of political antecedents, the possession of a national history and consequent community of recollections, collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret, connected with the same incidents in the past."[6] Nationality is not a thing of sharp outline, any more than any other political conception, and community of interest, the management of common concerns over a long period of time, has triumphed over differences so potent as those of race and creed. Such has been the fortune of Switzerland, of Canada, and of white South Africa, and it is the hope of Liberalism that such will also be the fortune of Ireland. Without attempting to draw hard lines between communities, the Liberal sees in them distinctions of worth and capacity such as he sees in individuals, and he would give the same freedom of self-development to a nation as to a human being.

The idea that nations are to be bound by moral rules as much as individuals is only another application of the general rule that one man is to be treated as equally ent.i.tled with every other to the development of his own faculties. The same rule is extended to nations as to single persons. No one people has the right to interfere with the free development of another, until it is clearly and unmistakably proved that that free development will be generally injurious. Once this principle is accepted, it becomes impossible, as in the case of single persons, for one nation to decline to recognize moral rules in its dealings with others. Morality is nothing but the subjection of individual wills to the common will, as expressed in defined rules. Immorality is only the arrogance of the individual will, refusing to submit itself to general rules, while it endeavours to enforce general rules upon {14} others. The Liberal State is that which recognizes the universal application of its own principles of conduct, declines to thrust its own ideas upon unwilling a.s.sociates, and works in harmony with other races instead of in opposition to them.

It is not suggested here that it is any part of the Liberal doctrine to seek peace at any price, or to turn the other cheek to the smiter. A vital condition of the existence of morality is that moral persons shall be ready at all times to defend it. To suffer wanton aggression is as fatal to a nation as to an individual. It is a mere encouragement to the general infringement of rights which means the dissolution of international morality. Liberal patriotism exists, though it is of a different kind from that patriotism which is so conspicuous a feature of our modern Imperialism. Imperialist patriotism is often a vulgar a.s.sertion of selfish power. Liberal patriotism is a means of diminishing national selfishness.

Just as the Liberal believes that the best life within the nation is produced by the growth of free individuality, so he believes that the best life in the race at large is produced by the growth of free nationality.

"If there is one condition precedent to effective internationalism or to the establishment of any reliable relations between States, it is the existence of strong, secure, well-developed, and responsible nations.

Internationalism can never be subserved by the suppression or forcible absorption of nations; for these practices react disastrously upon the springs of internationalism, on the one hand setting nations on their armed defence and stifling the amicable approaches between them, on the other debilitating the larger nations through excessive corpulence and indigestion. The hope of a coming internationalism enjoins above all else the maintenance and natural growth of independent nationalities, for without such there could be no gradual evolution of internationalism, but only a series of unsuccessful attempts at a chaotic and unstable cosmopolitanism. As individualism is essential to any sane form of national socialism, so nationalism is essential to internationalism."[7]

{15}

By far the most difficult of all the tasks which Liberalism has to perform is in its conduct of foreign policy. Even in domestic affairs it is often not easy to calculate the effects of particular proposals, how far they can be pressed towards the ideal, in what temper they will be received by the people, with what smoothness they will operate when they have been expressed in an Act of Parliament. It is a matter of accommodating ourselves to somewhat intractable material, and of managing, persuading, and guiding human beings whose motives we cannot directly control. But the facts are at least fairly within reach. The Liberal statesman has as much opportunity as anybody can have of knowing the mental habit and disposition of those whom his legislation will affect. He is acquainted with their history. He is guided by previous successes or failures. In the last resort, he knows that the great bulk of the people concerned will respect the law even if they dislike it, and will express their dissent no more dangerously than by turning him out of office. In foreign affairs his difficulties are infinitely greater, and the consequences of failure may be disastrous. He is dealing, not with subjects, but with independent persons, who, except in a few points settled by agreement, observe no common law with himself. Their objects are obscure, and may only temporarily coincide with his own. They may have private arrangements among themselves of which he knows little or nothing, and if they cheat him in their own interest he has no remedy except one which is so violent as to be worse almost than any disease. Finally, even if his knowledge of the facts were more accurate, and his confidence in his a.s.sociates more complete, he would still be baffled by the hostility to Liberal ideas which animates some, if not all, of the foreign diplomatists.

These are obstacles to direct action which it would be folly not to take into consideration, and in the case of the present Foreign Secretary they seem to have proved insuperable. But in some directions it is obvious that the Liberal statesman can pursue his course without fear. Where no powerful opponent or a.s.sociate is concerned, he is as free as within his own country, and he is bound to act on purely Liberal principles. He must act always {16} according to moral rules, even in dealing with weak peoples. He is bound to do nothing which would help to maintain a vicious system or government. He is bound not to interfere in the domestic affairs of another nation, save where the fundamental liberties of his own countrymen are in danger. It is equally his duty to refrain from arrogance towards distracted China and towards united Germany. It is not his business to lecture the Russian Government for its vile domestic policy or the Spanish Government for the atrocious murder of Ferrer. But it is no more his business to strengthen these Governments, either by his alliance or otherwise, in thus acting towards their subjects. It is no doubt the duty of Liberals who are private persons to protest against cruelty and oppression, wherever it may be found. Public opinion counts for something, even in a foreign country, and if we cannot prevent evil abroad, we can at least keep alive the hatred of it in our own country. The Englishman who is indifferent to the sufferings of Finland is in danger of becoming insensitive to his own. But whatever may be the duty of private persons, official representations to a foreign State are always useless, and often exaggerate the evils to which they refer. In the face of foreign dictation, domestic tyranny becomes a patriotic duty. Whatever a Liberal Foreign Secretary may think, he must not dictate to any established Government. But his duty on the other side is equally clear, and he must do nothing to strengthen such a Government against its subjects. Palmerston's expressed approval of Napoleon III's _coup d'etat_ and Sir Edward Grey's more indirect support of the present Russian tyranny are equally illiberal. If a Government which violates every Liberal principle in its domestic policy is not to be treated as an enemy, it is no more to be treated as a friend. It is ent.i.tled to the honourable observance of all agreements for the joint management of joint concerns, and to perfect freedom in its own domestic administration. It is not ent.i.tled to anything which will enhance its power. To a.s.sist it directly or indirectly is to partic.i.p.ate in its wrongdoing, and no Liberal can safely do that without impairing his own character. {17}

These are elementary rules which the Liberal must observe in all cases where his conduct is to be determined by nothing out of his own control. In other cases he can often do very little, and is compelled to acquiesce in conduct of which he would never himself be guilty. Here it is his duty to do as much as he can, to avoid the offensive imposition of his own ideas upon his fellows, to avoid arrangements which dispose of the fortunes of weak peoples irrespective of their wishes, to work in concert, not with one Power or group of Powers, but with all who are interested, and, in case of difficulty, to throw his weight into the scale with those whose aims most resemble his own. Generally, it is his duty to subst.i.tute the expression of moral rules by arbitration for the brutal a.s.sertion of national egoism in war. But there is no general presumption against war. It is always an evil.

But it may be the least of possible evils. War for the independence of his own nation requires no justification. War for the independence of another nation or for the defence of some rule of international morality is to be judged by its expediency. "It seems to be impossible to state the principle of non-intervention in rational and statesmanlike terms, if it is under all circ.u.mstances, and without qualification or limit, to preclude an armed protest against intervention by other foreign Powers. There may happen to be good reasons why we should on a given occasion pa.s.sively watch a foreign Government interfering by violence in the affairs of another country. Our own Government may have its hands full; or it may have no military means of intervening to good purpose; or its intervention might in the long run do more harm than good to the object of its solicitude. But there can be no general prohibitory rule. When a military despot interferes to crush the men of another country while struggling for their national rights, no principle can make it wrong for a free nation to interfere by force against him. It can only be a question of expediency and prudence."[8] In other words, the importance of the moral rule involved must be weighed with the chances {18} of success, the cost of war, the waste of life and wealth, and the sufferings of the poorer cla.s.ses, which are the inevitable consequences of war. In the face of a universal enemy like Napoleon a war on behalf of Spain and Portugal was just. The Crimean War and the Boer Wars were unjust.

Wars on behalf of Poles or Finns against Russia or Hungarians against Austrians would have been just, but not expedient, because no maritime power could have waged them with any chance of permanent success. It is a matter of calculation, and there are few wars, other than wars for the independence of their own country, which Liberals would not hold to cost more in blood and treasure than the principle for which they were undertaken.

It is obvious that this reasoning is entirely inconsistent with the theory of the balance of power. That theory, unhappily revived in recent years, requires not merely the subordination of morality to expediency in particular cases, but the complete abandonment of morality as a condition of international politics. Its essence is not international agreement and the rule of right, but international hostility and the rule of force. It sets the States into two groups, one of which must always act against the other. England's policy is no longer decided by herself, but by herself in consultation with allies, whose character and objects may be purely selfish. If one of her a.s.sociates is guilty of immoral aggression against one of the opposing group, or a.s.serts some right which ought only to be conferred upon her by international agreement, she is dragged into a quarrel in defence of wrong against right, and not only violates moral rules in the particular case, but weakens her own ability to observe them in every other. Her honour and her interest alike are placed in the hands of others. She accepts a bill in blank, which the holder may fill in with any amount he pleases. In cases of extreme necessity this may be inevitable. When all are threatened by an enemy of the type of Napoleon, England cannot dissociate herself from the rest on account of their want of scruple. But as a settled and habitual policy the maintenance of the balance of power must be abhorrent to every {19} man who is not ready to put his conscience into the keeping of others.

An examination of the opposing mode of thought will make clearer the essential nature of Liberalism. This opposite may fairly be called Toryism, if that term is used, like the other, to describe a persisting habit of mind and not a policy, which varies from generation to generation.

Conservatism and Unionism are not satisfactory equivalents. The latter, especially, expresses only opposition to a particular project of Liberalism, and is itself, like its object, of a temporary nature.

Conservatism on the other hand, though a permanent force, is not essentially opposed to Liberalism. It is indeed often allied with Toryism, and so long as Liberalism continues to do positive and reconstructive work the strength of Toryism must generally lie in this negative and preserving instinct. When the two opponents exchange their usual parts, the Conservative ma.s.s swings over to the Liberal side. It is to Conservatism, as well as to Liberalism, that Free Trade owes its present security. In the face of active retrogression, the true Conservative, without becoming a Liberal, ranges himself with Liberals. But this sort of temporary alliance is rare. Until very recent years Liberalism has been the active and changing force, and has accordingly always found Conservatism its enemy.

A very good ill.u.s.tration of this working agreement between the positive dislike of individual emanc.i.p.ation and the negative reluctance to modify an inst.i.tution which prevents it was furnished a short time ago by the Dean of Canterbury. The Convocation of the Diocese was considering whether the wife's pledge to obey her husband should be struck out of the marriage service. To the Liberal, this pledge, purporting to invest the subjection of the female s.e.x to the male with a divine sanction, is one of the most obnoxious of all the fetters upon the freedom of women. Regarding the woman as of equal worth with the man, he has no doubt that this inst.i.tution must be modified in her interest. On the occasion in question, the proposal for her {20} relief was successfully opposed by the Dean. He said that when they were asked to say that the views of the Apostles regarding the position of the two s.e.xes were wrong, that was a somewhat alarming and distressing principle to introduce into their deliberations. They were bound, not only by the ancient traditions of their Church, but by their vows, to submit their judgment absolutely to the statements of the Apostles on matters of that kind.[9] This is a clear case of Conservatism defending Toryism. The subjection of the wife enjoined by the marriage service dates from a period long preceding even that of apostolic barbarism, when women were regarded as absolutely at the disposition of their male a.s.sociates. In origin it was a crude a.s.sertion of the male ego at the expense of the female. The modern Church makes no such naked requisition, and defends the selfish establishment, not because it is selfish, but because it is an establishment.

This is the usual method of Conservatism. The position was fixed by the remote ancestors of the present garrison, and they are content to defend it even though they would never have themselves taken it up. But pure Toryism lives to-day, and reproduces the thoughts, the arguments, and often the very words, of the Toryism of a century ago. Opponents of Disestablishment repeat the language of the supporters of the Test Act. Opponents of Woman Suffrage, even those who call themselves Liberals, argue as Eldon and Peel argued against Parliamentary Reform. Ulster preserves the atmosphere of the struggle for Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation. Mr. Lloyd George, like Mr. Joseph Chamberlain thirty years ago, excites the same fury as was produced by Tom Paine's _Rights of Man_. The same principles contend on different stages, and through the mouths of different actors. Though the cries of the unending warfare change, the parties are always the same. Liberty is like the books of the Roman Sybil. As each instalment is wrested from the grasp of the monopolists, the remainder becomes at once as precious as was previously the whole: loss of one privilege never prepares them for the surrender of another. The admission of Dissenters {21} to public office involved no adoption of the general principle that all sects should be treated equally by the State. The abandonment of rotten boroughs was no acknowledgment that every individual subject to government had the right to control government. The innumerable concessions made by Toryism to Irish nationality have involved no general recognition. The old arguments have been shattered and dissipated in more than one contest. But when the forces of Liberalism advance against the next line of defence, the ancient retainers of monopoly are dragged from the hospitals and galvanized into new activity, to be routed again after a struggle almost as bitter and as long as the first. Toryism is beaten. It is never converted.

This Toryism is the habit of mind which refuses to concede to others that right of free expression which it requires for itself. It is the egoistic mind which regards all others as at its disposition. Its opinions are of superior worth, and others must give way. As the Liberal temper is extended, so is the Tory. The ego includes the Church, the occupation, the nation, and the s.e.x of the individual. It thinks of human beings in cla.s.ses, as distinguished from itself. They are Dissenters, or "people who do not agree with my religious opinions"; tenants, or "people who pay money to me or my cla.s.s for the privilege of working or living on our land"; foreigners, or "people who happen to be born in countries other than my own"; wives, widows, and spinsters, or "persons who are, or have been, or will be connected with my s.e.x." The Tory habitually thinks of his fellow-creatures not according to their individuality, but according to their cla.s.s, the face value which, regardless of their intrinsic worth, either ent.i.tles or disent.i.tles them to his favour. They either belong to his own cla.s.s or they do not. The real worth of each is not the standard by which he forms his judgment of them. Every act and utterance, every request and protest of another person is referred to the artificial connection, or distinction, instead of being judged for itself. The prime condition is that the other should keep in his place. By the Liberal the other is considered as an isolated object, an end in {22} himself, to be treated without regard to any artificial a.s.sociation between them. The accidental is distinguished from the essential, and the creed, nationality, occupation, or s.e.x is not allowed to interrupt the clear view of the human being who is enclosed in it. The Tory deals with his object as invested with a status. The Liberal deals with the man in himself.

These different points of view determine the different att.i.tudes of the two parties to political problems as they arise. The pure Tory is of course as rare as the pure Liberal, and neither of the two groups, which are at any particular time described as Liberal and Tory, corresponds exactly with the habit of mind a.s.sociated with its name.[10] Self-styled Tories are occasionally strongly Liberal in particular cases. Windham, who thought that the abolition of bull-baiting was a dangerous revolution, voted against the Slave Trade. Peel, the greatest man whom the old Tory party ever produced, was Liberal in finance, in legislation about crime and factories, and in foreign policy. In the same way, men who are Liberal in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred show {23} themselves to be Tory in the last. Robert Lowe, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the great Liberal Ministry of 1868, had as fierce a contempt for the working cla.s.ses as Lord Salisbury himself. The question of Woman Suffrage, appearing unexpectedly on the surface of politics in 1906, has divided both parties, though in different proportions. The true Liberal supports the demand for enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. The true Tory opposes it. But the agitation has discovered some of the most bitter of s.e.xual egoists on the Radical benches of the House of Commons, and champions of the individual's right to control her own government even among the Cecils.[11] The division between the members of the schools is thus not sharply defined. But the schools always exist, and it is in the perpetual conflict between them that the progress of the nation takes place.

Every political problem involves a conflict between an existing inst.i.tution and the interest of individuals. The two parties thus approach it from different sides. The Tory looks down from the inst.i.tution to the man, the Liberal up from the man to the inst.i.tution. To the Liberal, the State and all other inst.i.tutions within it are things of flesh and blood, they are so many expressions of human society, a.s.sociations of human beings for their own human purposes. To the Tory, the inst.i.tution is a machine, its efficient working is everything, and it is the duty of the individual to subordinate himself to that object whether his own interest is served by it or not. The Liberal says, "The State is made for man, and not man for the State." The Tory reverses the dogma, and even when he pursues the good of individuals, he pursues it rather in order to make them better soldiers or workers, that is to say, better servants of the State, than to make them better in themselves. Democratic government to the Liberal is an essential condition of the free growth of the individual soul. To the Tory, if he believes in it at all, it is a piece of efficient political machinery.

"What use can the State make of this man?" asks the Tory. "What {24} use can this man make of himself?" asks the Liberal. The Tory theory is expressed in terms of duties, the Liberal in terms of rights. The disposing mind is at the back of the one, the encouraging mind at the back of the other. The Tory finds the good of the individual in the strength of the State. The Liberal finds the strength of the State in the good of the individual. Where the one seeks to maintain and use, the other seeks to ease, to alter, and to readjust, binding himself to no particular scheme of political or economic construction, but ready to apply to each case of individual hardship, as it arises, such devices as he can invent.

Practical Toryism, the theory as it has been expressed in actual politics, has been until recent years the Toryism of a governing cla.s.s. But no cla.s.s has a monopoly of it. The same habit of mind exists everywhere. There is nothing so universal as the aristocratic temper, which disposes of the fortunes of others according to its own sense of what is fitting. The Tory statesman of a hundred and fifty years ago was a landowner, a Churchman, and a man of wealth. But his view of life would have been much the same if he had been a tinker, an atheist, and in daily expectation of the workhouse. He might, in pursuit of his own cla.s.s interest, have rebelled against the Toryism of the governing cla.s.s, without abating any of his own.

To such persons as came within his disposition he would display the same zeal for the a.s.sertion of his own ego at the expense of theirs, as that which he resented in his own superiors. Even the poorest man has generally a wife, and even the meanest of Englishmen can always speak contemptuously of foreigners. Toryism is a habit of mind, which is often modified by circ.u.mstances, but can and does exist in men and women of all cla.s.ses, irrespective of wealth, creed, or occupation.

It is true that this Tory doctrine is not always crudely stated. The formula is more often that of identification than that of disposition. If the inferior cla.s.s is so placed that the superior cla.s.s may dispose of it, it suffers no hardship, because the interest of both is the same. The people are identified with the State, {25} the workmen are identified with the employer, the wife is identified with the husband. Make the State strong, and you make the people happy. Give the employer higher profits, and the workmen get higher wages out of those profits. Give the husband security and freedom, and the wife will partake of them both. But whatever the form of argument may be, the result is the same. There is an inevitable tendency in human nature to deteriorate in the enjoyment of absolute power.

Some governing cla.s.ses may use the strength of the State to make the people happy. Some employers may cheerfully share their increased gains with their workpeople. Some husbands may concede to their wives that complete freedom of occupation, expression of opinion, and control of property which they themselves possess. But history and contemporary experience alike afford innumerable examples of governing cla.s.ses oppressing or keeping down their subjects, of employers giving higher wages only in response to strong or even violent pressure from their workmen, and of husbands depriving their wives of independence of thought and action, and even of the control of their own bodies. There is no security for the individual in the generosity of superiors. It is only when all are recognized by the State as having equal worth in their relations with each other that individual liberty can be enjoyed by all.

The essential differences between Liberalism and Toryism are revealed in their disputes about the larger political topics. The franchise never fails to draw clear expressions of character from both sides. To the Liberal, the right of a man to control his own government is only one of the many rights which go to make up his right to control his own life. His freedom of life cannot be complete if, without his consent, his earnings may be diminished by taxation, his business ruined by a commercial treaty, the education of his children prescribed by legislation, and his whole fortune impaired by a declaration of war. There can be no real freedom of growth without control of government. But the argument for enfranchis.e.m.e.nt is based on more than the {26} direct consequences of it. That the man who is taxed against his will enjoys only an imperfect freedom is obvious. What is not so readily perceived is that he is indirectly affected in a much more serious way. It is axiomatic that a governing cla.s.s will, sooner or later, abuse its absolute power. Landowners use the tariff to increase their rents, and so impose burdens upon the poor. The middle cla.s.s prohibits the combination of workmen in trade disputes, or resists the regulation of factories by law.

Working-men exclude working-women from trades which they wish to preserve for their own s.e.x. Men erect a system of marriage law which places the wife in the power of the husband. All this is written in history, and cannot be disputed. But the unseen consequences of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt are not so often realized. There is constant action and reaction between political inst.i.tutions and social estimates. If disfranchis.e.m.e.nt springs from depreciation, it also encourages it. To confine the control of government to one cla.s.s is to appreciate that cla.s.s at the expense of others, and to encourage its members to abuse their disfranchised a.s.sociates whenever they are brought into contact with them. So long as the big business of politics is reserved for them, so long are they compelled to believe that the monopoly is the reward of their superior worth. Their ego is exalted, and that of their subjects is depressed. Private insolence is the inevitable consequence of public privilege. Government by landlords means interference with the political and religious opinions of tenants. Government by Protestants means the exclusion of Catholics from offices of dignity and profit. Government by masters means bad conditions of labour and fettered powers of combination among workmen. Government by men means the exclusion of women from professions and the maintenance of a double standard of morality. It is not suggested here that disfranchis.e.m.e.nt does more than affect tendencies. The political thinker who values his reputation will always write in terms of tendencies rather than in terms of states. But disfranchis.e.m.e.nt at least tends to produce, if it does not actually produce, the consequences of social depreciation. In some countries, or in {27} some states of society, these may be less dangerous than the consequences of general enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. But they always exist.

An admirable statement of this part of the case for enfranchis.e.m.e.nt has been recently made by an opponent of Woman Suffrage. "If you enfranchise women," he said, "you cannot deprive them of the powers and privileges which accompany it. If they are to share men's political duties they must enjoy his rights, they must be eligible for the Bar, the Bench, for the Civil Service, and for election to Parliament. Once in Parliament you cannot brand them as a cla.s.s or s.e.x apart, to be deprived of any of the high offices open to men. If they are not to attain these offices, it cannot be by the avowal of s.e.x, but by an admission of incapacity."[12]

This is absolute Toryism. Disfranchis.e.m.e.nt is a convenient means of depreciating women in private life, and the main bulwark of the male ego.

It disables every woman in advance, and deprives her of private rights without the trouble of testing her capacity. Her political disability marks her with a brand wherever she goes, and the person who disposes of her politics, disposes also, in proportion to his own selfishness, of her occupation, of her marital rights, and of her honour. Mr. Harcourt is content to exclude her from Parliament and the legal profession. Baser men display the same male egoism in depriving her of education, in enfeebling her body and mind by excessive child-bearing, and in taking advantage of her poverty to use her as a prost.i.tute for the gratification of their vilest pa.s.sions. This confession by an opponent of Woman Suffrage ill.u.s.trates the temper of Toryism in all controversies about the franchise.

Acknowledge the right to control government, and you acknowledge the right to control life. So long as it lies in the power of one cla.s.s to impose taxes, to regulate the hours of labour, to admit and to exclude from occupations, and generally to control the political organization of society, so long will its members be tempted to dispose of the members of the subject cla.s.s in every part of life. When the equality of both cla.s.ses in the State is admitted, the admission of their equal worth in all their private {28} relations inevitably follows. There is no essential difference between public and private rights.

But the reaction of political status upon the individual has another aspect no less important than this. Partic.i.p.ation in the organized life of the community is a necessary part of that education which modern opinion requires for every human being. There are now living very few of those frantic Tories who believe that it is harmful to develop the minds of the poor, and every civilized State regards public education as one of its ordinary duties. But once the right of individuals to a good education is admitted, the extent of the right can hardly be limited to the provision of elementary or secondary schools. There is no education to be compared with the experience of organized life. Trade Unionism and Co-operation, political a.s.sociations outside Parliament, the management of charities, all these are valuable not only for their immediate results, but for the way in which they train the people concerned. Incomparably the best school of the kind is politics. Nothing so broadens the mind and so disciplines the temper as being engaged, even in a humble capacity, in the management of political affairs. But the connection between the individual and the State must be direct, if it is to produce its full benefit. The vague and irresponsible interest of the disfranchised is a poor subst.i.tute for the definite obligation to apply one's own strength to the machine itself, which is the privilege of the enfranchised. The extension of the suffrage to all individuals in the State is thus an essential part of the Liberal faith, not only because it prevents direct and indirect abuse, but because it is a means of education without which few individuals can ever develop their natural powers to the full. "We, who were reformers from the beginning, always said that the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the people was an end in itself. We said, and we were much derided for saying so, that citizenship only gives that self-respect which is the true basis of respect of others, and without which there is no lasting social order or real morality."[13]

"If the individual is {29} to have a higher feeling of public duty, he must take part in the work of the State.... That active interest in the service of the State, which makes patriotism in the better sense, can hardly arise while the individual's relation to the State is that of a pa.s.sive recipient of protection in the exercise of his rights of person and property."[14] It is this conception of the exercise of the franchise which leads to the apparent paradox that the people are never fit for the suffrage until they possess it. In practice these logical difficulties have little weight. It is true that the only real test of political capacity is politics. But it is no hard task to detect in a person's management of other affairs how he is likely to conduct himself as a voter. Plain good sense is the only essential quality. It is got by living, not by learning, and where conditions of life are reasonably good, political capacity will not be wanting. The franchise completes, it does not make, education. It may thus be fairly extended to all ordinary persons as part of the Liberal method of equipping the individual for the fullest life of which he is capable.

Influenced by these considerations, the Liberal a.s.serts that the franchise is a right which exists in the individual subject. To the Tory, accustomed to the idea of disposition, the subject is under and not above the State.

Where the Liberal emphasizes the responsibility of the State to the subject, and requires that every act of its ministers shall be done in the interest of the subject, the Tory emphasizes the duty of the subject to submit to the State, and by a process of argument which is as illogical as it is politically vicious, leaves it to the State to decide even to what persons it shall be responsible. Thus Sir Robert Inglis, opposing in 1853 a Bill for permitting Jews to sit in Parliament, contended "that power was a trust which the State might delegate to those whom it thought fit to exercise it--the exercise of the suffrage, for example--but it was the inherent right of no man. If it were, then indeed had they destroyed the value of the principle by all the restrictions imposed with respect to property, {30} to age, and to s.e.x."[15] The allusion to s.e.x was prophetic.

More than half a century later, Professor Dicey uses precisely the same argument against the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. "The rights of an individual with regard to matters which primarily concern the State are public or political rights, or, in other words, duties or functions to be exercised by the possessor not in accordance with his own wish or interest, but primarily at least with a view to the interest of the State, and therefore may be limited or extended in any way which conduces to the welfare of the community."[16]

The confusion of thought in both these pa.s.sages is the same. What is the State? Who are the community? How is the State to know what conduces to the welfare of the community? Both these Tory thinkers reason as if the State were some concrete thing, some piece of machinery, existing out of and independent of the society of human beings, managing their affairs, allotting them their rights, and a.s.sociating with itself in their government such of them as it was pleased to select. Their argument is based upon this fundamental absurdity. The State has in fact no existence apart from human beings; it is not external to society, but a growth out of it, and its own form and const.i.tution are determined in all cases by the creatures whom the Tory theorists treat as subjected to its absolute discretion. The Liberal declares that human beings exist before the State, and control it, that their opinion determines in what way the State, like the Church, the industrial system, and the home, shall be constructed, that opinion varies in different countries and in different ages, and will at one time and in one place acquiesce in despotism and at another time and in another place require adult suffrage, but that always, first and last, the subjects are masters of the State.

What is actually at the back of the Tory mind, when it reasons in this fashion, is that the State, as conceived by them, is not external to all society, but only to a part of it. In other words, {31} when it says "the State," it means "the governing cla.s.s for the time being." It is always thinking of a privileged cla.s.s disposing of the fortunes of another cla.s.s.

To Sir Robert Inglis "the State" meant "men of twenty-one years of age, who are landowners and Christians." To Windham, fifty years before, it meant "men of twenty-one years of age, who are landowners and Churchmen." To Professor Dicey, fifty years later, it meant "men of twenty-one years of age." The cla.s.s varies, and its boundaries extend. But it is always of a cla.s.s of some dimensions that the Tory thinks when he speaks of "the State." In effect he argues that the general body of men and women have no right to control their own government, except when the cla.s.s into whose hands government has fallen sees fit to give it them. By the same process of reasoning the most b.l.o.o.d.y despot who ever usurped a throne could exclude aristocracy itself, and keep the control of government in the hands of the meanest of his parasites. This conflict between the individual right of the subject and the absolute discretion of the governing cla.s.s has been repeated at every proposal to extend the franchise in Great Britain. The work of Liberalism has been, and is still, to extend the limits of the governing cla.s.s, and to make State and subjects, government and governed, co-extensive.

The same characteristic difference between the desire to adapt an inst.i.tution to the encouragement of individual growth and the desire to compel individual growth to the efficient working of an inst.i.tution peeps out, even where the practical proposals of the two parties appear to be identical. A Liberal supports State education because it puts the poor man into fuller possession of himself. A Tory supports it because an ignorant poor man is likely to be turbulent and to make attacks upon the inst.i.tution of property. A Liberal supports a Mental Deficiency Bill because it protects feeble-minded persons against their neighbours and against themselves. A Tory supports it because it discourages the breeding of types which he regards as useless to the State. While the general att.i.tude of Toryism to the economic reforms of modern Liberalism has been hostile, a small {32} section of the Tory party has shown itself ready enough to support, and even to originate schemes which interfere with economic freedom and the rights of property. But the motives of the Liberal and the Tory social reformers are not the same. The one aims at private happiness, the other at public utility. "We would endeavour," said Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, "to secure to every man the best conditions of living, and so far as can be done by laws and customs, to secure him also an equal chance with others of a useful and happy life."[17] "The essence of our policy," says Lord Willoughby de Broke, "is to give each individual the elements that will afford him an opportunity of at least living a free and a decorous existence, and the opportunity to raise himself or herself to the highest point of moral and material efficiency."[18] The emphasis on happiness in the one pa.s.sage and on efficiency in the other shows precisely the difference in the objects of the two men. The first is personal, the second instrumental. The Liberal conception of the State makes the development of the individual an end in itself. The Tory conception makes it a means of public advantage, of obtaining workers for national industries and soldiers for national armies, and it is accompanied by proposals for conscription, protection, and the maintenance of popular education at a low level, which are redolent of restriction and subordination. A Tory journalist puts the matter more precisely: "If Unionism is to recover the confidence of the ma.s.ses it must recognize their claim to a fuller and a happier life. Only in this way can it serve the great causes which it has at heart. We stand for the Empire. An Imperial people cannot be built up in squalor and poverty, when every thought is absorbed by the provision of the daily bread. We cannot get a hearing for Imperial causes until we have brought happiness into the homes of the people."[19] The Tory makes its inhabitants happy for the sake of the Empire. The Liberal has no use for the Empire unless it makes its inhabitants happy.

{33}

Modern Toryism is identified with Imperialism, and, except for the relics of old controversies between sects, most of the antagonism of Liberal and Tory centres to-day about the Empire. The most definite opposition is to be observed in original conceptions. To the Tory, the Empire seems to be something in itself; he is impressed with its size, its wealth, its population; the mere existence of such a huge fabric, efficiently maintained, under the national flag, satisfies him. The Liberal is more concerned with what the Empire represents, with its maintenance of individual liberty, with its development of the subject peoples which it contains, with its encouragement to exploitation, with its implied antagonism to foreign peoples, with its increase of the cost of armaments, and with its effect upon the temper of domestic government. He is not, as a practical statesman, concerned to evacuate any part of this vast inheritance. "The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty." But he looks with suspicion upon any attempt to increase it, he encourages every transfer of control to local authorities, he insists that where races of an inferior civilization are incorporated their affairs shall be managed in their interest and not in that of the conquering race, and he views with constant apprehension the inclusion of such races because he knows that their despotic government must threaten the existence of his own free inst.i.tutions. If the Empire is justified at all, it is justified by the ideals which it expresses, and by nothing else.