A Short History of English Liberalism Part 22

[323] _Ibid._, 66.

[324] _Ibid._, 131.

[325] _The Midlothian Campaign_, 58.

[326] _The Midlothian Campaign_, 63.

[327] Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and Sir Henry Drummond Wolff.

[328] _Hansard_, III. cclxxviii. 1174. Bright's best speech is at cclx.

1199.

[329] _Times_, 21st November, 1883; _Nineteenth Century_, January and February, 1884. Miss Octavia Hill, who knew more about the subject than anybody else, was not appointed a member of the Commission, though she gave evidence. Twenty years elapsed before a woman sat on a Royal Commission.

[330] _Report_ of Lord Bessborough's Commission (1881), 21.

[331] Lord Morley's _Miscellanies_, iv. 306.

[332] _Midlothian Campaign_, 44.

[333] See _Hansard_, III. ccxcviii. 1659; ccxcix. 1085, 1098, 1119. Lord Salisbury spoke at Newport on the 7th October, 1885, three months after Lord Carnarvon had, with his knowledge, communicated with Parnell.

[334] _Hansard_, III. ccciv. 1050.

[335] _Ibid._, 1372.

[336] At Nottingham, 31st January, 1913.

[337] _Hansard_, III. ccciv. 1268.

[338] At Bristol, 17th January, 1888.

[339] _Aspects of Home Rule_ (speech of 22nd April, 1893), 170. Mr. Balfour succeeded Sir Michael as Irish Secretary on the 7th March, 1887.

[340] _Hansard_, III. ccccix. 66, 1191; cccxii. 183; cccxiii. 1608.

[341] Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord St. Aldwyn, and Mr. Bonar Law have recently suggested that the Crown itself should once more take an active and open part in politics and veto legislation.

[342] See his _Popular Government_.

[343] J. A. Hobson's _Imperialism_, chap. i.; Meredith Townsend in _Liberalism and the Empire_, 341.

[344] Lord Wolseley's _Soldier's Pocket Book_. His lordship would probably not poison his enemy's wells, or burn him alive, or kill him with explosive bullets, or ma.s.sacre his women and children. But why not?

[345] See, for instance, L. T. Hobhouse's _Democracy and Reaction_; J. A.

Hobson's _Imperialism_; and Norman Angell's _Great Illusion_.

[346] See Fitzpatrick's _Transvaal from Within_; Sir E. T. Cook's _Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War_; Mr. Bryce's _Impressions of South Africa_; and Sir Francis Younghusband's _South Africa of To-day_ (1897), 246, 250.

[347] Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's _Speeches reprinted from the Times_, 167.

[348] It has been suggested that without the war this would have been impossible. Even if this were true, the case against the war would still stand. Material success cannot be balanced against morality. It might similarly be argued that an eruption on the skin is a good thing, because it rids the body of poisonous matter. Clean living would have prevented the acc.u.mulation of the poison, and made the violent means of discharge unnecessary.

[349] The questions of limiting the number of "pickets," and of making Unions liable for the wrongful acts of their central executive committees are not yet finally settled. The Acts of 1871 and 1874 did not, I think contemplate an absolute immunity.

[350] Lord Morley's _Miscellanies_, iv. 311. The same principles are of course being applied in all civilized countries. See Mr. Jethro Brown's _Underlying Principles of Modern Legislation_.

[351] In a very remarkable article in the _Edinburgh Review_ for January, 1912, an anonymous writer declares that the better sort of workmen are now not merely politically, but actually, in character and ability, the superiors of the middle cla.s.s. The shameless ignorance and hostility to ideas, which he discovers in the latter, are due partly to the increase of luxury and partly to the public-school system. The reform of the latter, which is now in progress, is probably as urgent a need of the middle, as industrial insurance is of the working cla.s.s.

[352] Herbert Samuel's _Liberalism_, 8, 11.

[353] The Labour Exchange at Liverpool has actually decasualized the whole of the system of dock labour in that port. Credit for this is due to Mr.

Rowland Williams, of the Exchange, and Mr. Lawrence D. Holt, a local shipowner. The machinery established by the Act has done what private effort had for a generation found beyond its strength.

[354] _Liberalism and the Social Problem_, 316. These speeches are by far the best expression of the philosophy of the new Liberalism.

[355] Churchill, _op. cit._, 82.

[356] Mr. Harold Spender, in Mr. Philip Snowden's _Living Wage_, x.

[357] It should be remembered that in the peculiar case of women Trade Unionism is almost impossible. Without the State, they have no means of raising their wages as men have raised theirs by combination.

[358] _Social Statics_ (1851), 325.

[359] A great proportion of this surplus wealth is spent on giving fict.i.tious values to works of art and curiosities. A china jar which cost 500 fifty years ago may be bought for 5,000 to-day. The increase represents no real increase in value, but simply an increased capacity of millionaires to bid against each other. The price will again fall, as incomes are reduced.

[360] Accusations of moral corruption are most rarely made by those who are best acquainted with political history. But what other term is to be applied to this action, of which I am informed on the best possible authority? For several days before the day on which the Woman Suffrage amendment was moved to the Franchise Bill, a Liberal Member, who had refused to pledge himself to either side, was "bombarded" with requests from pledged Suffragist Members that he would vote against them and defeat the amendment. We hang soldiers who commit this offence in military warfare.

[361] Sir Almroth Wright's notorious pamphlet has of course been repudiated by the saner women Anti-Suffragists. But it certainly represents the opinions of the average man Anti-Suffragist.

[362] I cannot deal seriously with the argument that the vote is merely an expression of physical force, that a minority only yields to a majority because it would be beaten in a civil war, that substantially all women might vote on one side at an election and substantially all men on the other, that the women outnumber the men and would therefore be able to procure the legislation which they wanted, that the men would refuse to obey the law, that civil war would follow, that the women would be beaten, and that society would be dissolved. Those politicians who believe in the possibility of such a succession of miracles had better retire each to a separate desert island. They will not find in any society of human beings a const.i.tution which does not admit, on similarly logical grounds, of the same dreadful disasters. Such an absurd and pedantic example of reasoning away from human nature has not been seriously maintained in England since the time of Cartwright.

[363] I use these terms as a convenient way of referring to the general movements for and against emanc.i.p.ation. They may mean anything in themselves. So far as I am concerned, I believe neither in that s.e.xual promiscuity which some Anti-Suffragists charge against their opponents, nor on the other hand in that theory of a primitive matriarchate upon which some Suffragists base their claims.

[364] For the history of the agitation see Mrs. Fawcett's _Women's Suffrage_ ("The People's Books" series); and for its philosophical basis, Mrs. Olive Schreiner's _Women and Labour_, and my own _Emanc.i.p.ation of English Women_.

[365] I refer those who believe that the militant women were suffering from hysteria or other s.e.xual disorder to the deliberate contradiction of Mr.

H. L. Carre-Smith, in the _Standard_ of the 9th April, 1912. Mr. Smith is a competent physician, and an Anti-Suffragist, and he has made a careful study of the militant type. "As a rule," he says, "I have been struck by their normal demeanour."

[366] The only Government department which acted wisely in dealing with the women was the Irish Office. The first offenders against the law in Dublin were promptly placed in the first division. Unhappily, this was after Mr.

McKenna had revived forcible feeding, and too late to produce any effect.

The next Irish offences were attempts at arson and murder, committed by one of Mr. McKenna's prisoners. Had Mr. Birrell been at the Home Office in 1906, we should still be far from arson and explosives.

[367] I received a letter from a Cabinet Minister in 1909, in which he said that he expected vitriol-throwing at any moment. Vitriol is, of course, the weapon of an outraged s.e.x instinct, the injured wife or discarded mistress.

[368] I refer my readers to the grave and responsible report of Sir Victor Horsley, Dr. Mansell Moulin, and Dr. Agnes Saville, three physicians of unquestioned competence and probity, which appeared in the _Lancet_ of the 24th August, 1912.

[369] One of the charges, that a large number of plain-clothes policemen had mingled with the crowd for the purpose of attacking the women, was no more a subject for investigation in a court of law than the subject of the Parnell Commission. On this point Mr. Churchill denied the charges without inquiring of anybody but police officers, whose evidence, even if it was perfectly honest, was of little value. For a police officer to say that he did not see a fact, one of a large number of facts, is not sufficient proof that a private person is lying when he states that he did see it. Two gentlemen known to me say that they saw a large number (one says "more than a hundred") of plain-clothes men march back into Scotland Yard after the disturbance. Mr. Churchill says that there were "not more than a dozen" on duty. My informants may be lying or mistaken. But Mr. Churchill is not in a position to say so, because he never attempted to cross-examine them. Both appear to me to be honest witnesses.