A Short History of English Liberalism Part 6

but the general state of the country was slovenly. The reform was of the most drastic character. A central body of commissioners was appointed to introduce uniformity. Small parishes were united to form efficient units of administration. Relief was to be granted by elected Boards of Guardians, and not by inexperienced justices of the peace. But for the purposes of this book the most important changes were in the system rather than in the machinery. Every applicant for relief must pa.s.s a test. He was offered relief, but only coupled with the workhouse, where he must make some return in labour for what he received. The workhouse must be of such an unattractive character that none but those who were in actual want would enter it. In short, the poor man must be forced, by this sufficient deterrent, to rely upon his individual strength and skill. The new system met with great apparent success, and much of the success was real. It unquestionably stopped the demoralization of the labourers, and rates {175} were everywhere reduced. The failure was of the sort which was inevitably incident to Benthamism. The law checked pauperism, but it did not abolish poverty. It prevented the abuse of public a.s.sistance, but it did not deal with those causes of poverty which did not depend on the motives of the poor themselves. The idler was driven by the workhouse into work. The honest man who was made dest.i.tute by the bad organization of casual labour, by the periodic fluctuations of trade, by the introduction of machinery, or by the bankruptcy of his employer, could only be driven into the street.

Where independence depended upon the will of the man himself the unpleasant nature of poor relief was beneficial. Where it depended upon causes beyond his control it was actually harmful. The Utilitarian dislike of positive attempts to improve conditions of life and labour thus left their work incomplete.

A second economic reform was the Factory legislation of 1831 and 1833. The object of the Acts, which, owing to inadequate inspection, was only partially attained, was to restrict the hours of labour of children and young persons. Peel's Act of 1825 had prohibited the employment of children under sixteen for more than twelve hours of actual work a day, and it applied only to cotton mills. The Act of 1833 prohibited all night work in all textile mills, prohibited the employment of children under nine except in silk mills, imposed a limit of forty-eight hours a week on children up to thirteen, and a limit of sixty-nine hours on young persons up to eighteen. It also provided for a system of inspection, which unfortunately proved insufficient. This was the first important example of a general State interference in economic conditions, and the campaign for its improvement and extension divided all parties.

The true line of Liberal action was undoubtedly in the direction of restricting the liberty of the individual to exploit those who were unable to protect themselves. But such a course was contrary to the general individualistic current of the time, and a large section of the Whig party was persistently and bitterly hostile. The best of them eventually came to the same conclusions as {176} Macaulay. "I hardly know which is the greater pest to society, a paternal Government, that is to say, a prying, meddlesome Government which intrudes itself into every part of human life, and which thinks that it can do everything for everybody better than anybody can do anything for himself; or a careless, lounging Government which suffers grievances, such as it could at once remove, to grow and multiply, and which to all complaint and remonstrance has only one answer: 'We must let things alone; we must let things find their level.'... I hold that, where public health is concerned, and where public morality is concerned, the State may be justified in regulating even the contracts of adults.... Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger, and healthier, and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorer."[216] But there were few of the Whigs who held these wise opinions immediately after their triumph in 1831, and even Macaulay in 1832 defeated a Tory candidate whose views on Factory legislation were at that time far sounder than his own. Those Whigs who belonged to the middle cla.s.s were generally hostile to the whole movement. Cobden, not yet in Parliament, would have prohibited all employment of children under the age of thirteen.[217] But Brougham, Harriet Martineau, and the type of business man which was best represented by John Bright, were bitter opponents of reform. The utmost which could be got from the middle-cla.s.s Parliaments which followed the Reform Act was a restriction of the work of children. The protection of adults, even by the regulation of machinery, ventilation, and temperature, was always repugnant to their stubborn belief in the power and the duty of the individual to work out his own salvation.

The real impulse to Factory legislation came from two different quarters.

The first was Tory philanthropy. The second was the industrial democracy which had worked for Parliamentary Reform, and had been left out of the Act of 1832. These last acted obviously from interested motives. Their own health and {177} happiness were at stake, and their campaign on behalf of the children was only part of a general campaign for shorter hours and better conditions of labour. The Tory Evangelicals acted as Tory theorists.

Robert Southey, Richard Oastler, Michael Sadler, whom Macaulay beat at Leeds in 1832, and Lord Shaftesbury, who succeeded Oastler as the Parliamentary leader of the movement, were Tories of a p.r.o.nounced type. But they were philanthropists, they had no personal interest as manufacturers, and their Toryism left them logically free to employ the power of the State on behalf of their philanthropy. Their general readiness to dispose of the affairs of others was in this case wholly beneficial. Shaftesbury hated Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, Free Trade, life peerages, the higher criticism, the Oxford movement, everything which during his lifetime tended to free the individual from the control of selfish interests and monopolies. But as he refused to allow a Catholic or a Tractarian religious freedom, or the common people political freedom, so he refused to allow a cotton-spinner economic freedom. To his narrow mind, no less than to his large heart, the legal protection of working people against economic tyranny is due. It must not be supposed that he found more favour with the ordinary Tory than with the ordinary Whig or Benthamite. It was only where philosophic Toryism was combined with the philanthropic instincts of Evangelical Christianity that there was any marked superiority in one party over another. Shaftesbury had to fight every step of his way, and he encountered indifference, if not opposition, wherever he turned.[218]

Apart from this lamentable neglect of economic reforms the Whigs of the Reform Bill made valuable contributions to the work of Liberalism.

Something was done to abolish the c.u.mbrous devices which made legal procedure unintelligible and costly, and the method of conveying land was simplified and {178} cheapened.[219] A Bill to establish local courts for the recovery of small debts was introduced by Brougham, but abandoned. The reform of Parliament was followed by the reform of munic.i.p.al corporations.

The old close corporations were of the same type as the old close House of Commons. All were founded on monopoly, most were corrupt, and hardly any were responsible to the ratepayers whose affairs they administered. By an Act of 1835 the old system was destroyed, and the control of local government in towns was vested in bodies elected by the ratepayers.[220]

The representative principle was thus a.s.serted in local as in national affairs. The domination of the landed interest was further reduced. The old Game Laws had made the killing of game the exclusive privilege of landowners. No one else could kill game legally, and the law, sparing offenders of higher rank, was ruthlessly enforced by landowning magistrates against the poor. Between 1827 and 1830 more than 8,000 persons had been sentenced, some of them to transportation for life, for offences against this law. In 1831, before the pa.s.sing of the Reform Bill, the Whigs altered the savage and partial Game Laws by permitting any one to kill game who obtained a licence from the Inland Revenue authorities.[221] After the election of the first reformed Parliament, a second attack on land was made. In 1807 the land of traders only had been made liable to the payment of his simple contract debts. Romilly had in vain attempted to {179} make this provision impartial. But in 1833 the liability was extended to all cla.s.ses, and the country gentleman was no longer allowed to evade the obligations which were imposed by law upon his social rivals.[222]

In the same year slavery was abolished in the West Indies. The trade had been stopped in 1807. But it was still legal for the planters to own slaves, though they could no longer import them. In 1821 Wilberforce had solemnly confided the leadership of his cause to Thomas Fowell Buxton.

Mackintosh, Brougham, and Lushington had supported him steadily in the Commons, and they had always had the help of Canning. But the planters had succeeded, partly by threats of secession, partly by promises of amendment, in maintaining their abominable system. The decline of the West Indian trade since the peace had reduced their influence, and Parliament, free from unrest at home, could turn its attention more easily to the Colonies.

The planters were presented with twenty millions of public money. The slaves were to be treated as apprentices for seven years and afterwards were to be free labourers. Thus the last trace of acknowledged slavery was removed from the British Empire. It is melancholy to reflect that the men who expended so much honest sympathy and indignation over slavery in the West Indies should have so carefully refrained from using it to abolish the slavery which oppressed their fellow-countrymen. Slavery is not always a matter of buying and selling, of chaining and whipping; and in the sweated labour and prost.i.tution which were rife in England there were things no less horrible than the worst barbarities of the colonial planters.

A Liberal reform no less important than the Factory Act was the establishment of a State department of education. In 1833 Radicals like Roebuck and Grote and Whigs like Brougham persuaded Parliament to grant 20,000 to supplement the private donations which were being administered by the different societies for education. Whitbread had introduced a Bill to establish schools in all poor parishes in 1807. Brougham had obtained {180} returns showing the existing provision for popular education in 1818.

But nothing was done by the State to remedy the deficiencies of private enterprise until 1833, and even what was done then was so unscientific that, the private societies being all Protestant, Roman Catholic children got no benefit from it at all. After further efforts by Brougham and other enthusiasts, the Government in 1839 proposed to appoint a committee of the Privy Council as a central education authority. A training school for teachers was to be established under its supervision, and the State grant was to be increased to 30,000.

These proposals were slight enough in themselves. But they produced one of those ugly conflicts which are inevitable in English politics so long as one religious sect holds a privileged position. Some of the clergy of the Established Church claimed the control of all popular education, religious and secular. The more responsible claimed to control the religious education only. The Archbishop of Canterbury used language which was none the less insolent because it fell from the lips of an amiable and benevolent man. "The moral and religious instruction of the great ma.s.s of the people of this country was a subject peculiarly belonging to the clergy of the Established Church.... In the distribution of the public money for the encouragement of religion, their first object ought to be to maintain and extend the religion of the State."[223] "The State," said the Bishop of London, "has established a great National Church, a great instrument of education, which ought to conduct the whole process as far as religion is concerned. The Church is the only recognized medium of communicating religious knowledge to the people at large; and where there is an Established Church the Legislature ought to embrace every fit opportunity of maintaining and extending the just influence of the clergy, due regard being had to complete toleration."[224] In other words, these ecclesiastics regarded it as perfectly fair that money should be taken from Dissenters to pay for the teaching of doctrines of which they disapproved, while none was expended on the teaching of doctrines of which they {181} did approve. They were answered firmly by Ministers, more bitterly and more effectively by Brougham. "In what does the tolerance consist?" asked Brougham. "Is it in permitting the Dissenting children to be instructed in those schools in which the Church doctrines alone are taught?"[225] The meaning of religious liberty was extended. "Men who value religious liberty do not, in these days, dread anything that can be called persecution, but they do dread privileges and oppressive exclusions, preferences to one sect over another;... they are resolved never to pay to man any tax to support education, if the fruit of the tax does not go to maintain education to which all shall have an equal access."[226] The issue was thus again joined between those who would dispose of the consciences of others and those who would allow every man an equal right with every other for the propagation of his own opinions.

On this point the Whigs were successful. Their proposals for distribution between the sects were in the direct line of their removal of ancient political disabilities, and they stood their ground. One concession was made. The inspectors of schools were to present their reports to the Bishop of the diocese as well as to the Committee of Council. But after several close divisions in the Commons and several defeats in the Lords the scheme was established. It must not be supposed that the majority of the Whigs supported these novel proposals in a very Liberal spirit. Brougham was pa.s.sionately Liberal. The Radicals made State education part of their practical philosophy of equality. To men of this type education was a means of increasing the individual's power to develop and express himself. But to very many of the supporters of Government the measure was rather a measure of police than of emanc.i.p.ation. Ignorance meant discontent and danger to society and property. In answering the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Lansdowne said: "In the 80,000 uninstructed children now growing out of infancy your Lordships may see the rising Chartists of the next age."[227]

Eight years later Macaulay {182} declared that "It is the duty of Government to protect our persons and our property from danger. The gross ignorance of the common people is a princ.i.p.al cause of danger to our persons and property. Therefore it is the duty of the Government to take care that the common people shall not be grossly ignorant."[228] This is more in the temper of Wilberforce than in that of Tom Paine. But whatever their motives, the services of the Whigs were great. Their grant was absurdly inadequate. But they had at least begun to enable the common people to think for themselves, and if they had not prevented the disputes of sects, they had at least secured that no sect should have an artificial advantage over another.

The great Whig administration went out of office in 1841. Their foreign policy was the policy of Palmerston, and is perhaps best treated in connection with his conduct of affairs after 1846, when his party returned to power for an almost continuous period of twenty years. Lord Grey retired in 1834, and was succeeded by Lord Melbourne, an easy gentleman, whose only claim to the grat.i.tude of posterity was his careful training of the young Queen Victoria. Under his guidance the country was little troubled by legislation, and the closing years of the Ministry were marked by no important domestic achievement. But the establishment of a new Const.i.tution in Canada marked the beginning of a new and Liberal colonial policy. This was the work of Lord Durham, who had outrun all his colleagues at the time of the Reform Bill, and earned for himself the name of "Radical Jack." He received little support from the Home Government during his service in Canada, and all the credit which it deserves is his alone.[229]

Since the loss of the American Colonies, Canada was the only considerable colony of white men which England possessed. Australia and New Zealand were comparatively recent {183} discoveries, and South Africa, captured from the Dutch during the great war, was only spa.r.s.ely populated. Canada represented a civilization of an older type, and a large portion of its inhabitants was French. In 1791 a Const.i.tution had created two Provinces, Upper and Lower Canada, which corresponded roughly with the distribution of the two nationalities. The arrangement was satisfactory to n.o.body. Upper Canada was dominated by an oligarchy which monopolized public offices, and had acquired the bulk of the public land for its own use. The Governor and his Executive Council habitually rejected the advice of his elected Legislature, and the Province was in practice governed by officials. In Lower Canada the elected House was chiefly French, and the Governor, packing the Upper House with English, managed his Province much as England had managed Ireland. The real Government of both Provinces was in fact the Colonial Office. Parliament generally was indifferent. Many of the Radicals, following Bentham, accepted in full the theory that local affairs must be controlled by local representative a.s.semblies. But they pushed their theory to logical conclusions, and, believing that the complete independence of the Provinces must come, sooner or later, were little inclined to administer the affairs of territories which were only costly burdens upon the British taxpayer. The Whigs, misreading the lesson of the American Rebellion, saw no alternatives but this complete independence and the present difficult and irritating subjection. In this atmosphere the officials had their own way. Bickerings about domestic affairs continued from 1810 to 1837. The Lower Province wanted an elected Upper House and power to dispose of the Crown Lands. The Upper Province wanted responsibility of Ministers and no oligarchy. Commissioners were sent to Canada in 1836 to inquire into complaints, and at once came to grief. In March, 1837, the English House of Commons, in spite of Radical opposition, resolved that it was inexpedient to make the Upper House of Lower Canada elective. In August the a.s.sembly of the Province was dissolved, and rioting began. Troops were called in, and Canadians were {184} killed. In May, 1838, Durham arrived at Quebec on an errand of pacification. Some of his acts were arbitrary, and he was at last forced to resign by a torrent of abuse, which the Home Government did nothing to avert. But his policy was in effect adopted, and his _Report_ contains the statement of the principles which have ever since been the foundation of our colonial system.[230]

The reforms were not until a later date completed by the consolidation of the two Provinces, which directed the energies of the two races into the management of their common affairs, and so ended the discord which had nearly ruined Lower Canada. But both Provinces were separately endowed with responsible government. Full control was given over revenue, Ministers were made responsible to the Legislature, and the nominated Houses were abolished. "Hitherto," said Durham, "the course of policy adopted by the English Government towards the colony has had reference to the state of parties in England, instead of the wants and circ.u.mstances of the Province." In future, other principles were to prevail, and the first step was to equip the colony with the machinery for managing its own business.

"I do not antic.i.p.ate that a Colonial Legislature, thus strong and thus self-governing, would desire to abandon the connection with great Britain.

On the contrary, I believe that the practical relief from undue interference, which would be the result of such a change, would strengthen the present bond of feelings and interests; and that the connection would only become more durable and advantageous, by having more of equality, of freedom, and of local independence. But at any rate, our first duty is to secure the well-being of our colonial countrymen; and if in the hidden decrees of that wisdom by which this world is ruled, it is written that these countries are not for ever to remain portions of the Empire, we owe it to our honour to take good care that, when they separate from us, they should not be the only countries on the American continent in which the Anglo-Saxon race shall be found unfit to govern itself.

"I am, in truth, so far from believing that the increased power {185} and weight that would be given to these Colonies by union would endanger their connection with the Empire, that I look to it as the only means of fostering such a national feeling throughout them as would effectually counterbalance whatever tendencies may now exist towards separation. No large community of free and intelligent men will long feel contented with a political system which places them, because it places their country, in a position of inferiority to their neighbours." The object of the reforms was to give as much freedom to the colonists as was compatible with the sovereignty of the Crown. They would then lose two temptations to rebellion; the interference of foreign officials in the disputes of their own parties, and the contrast which the liberty of Americans as well as of English presented to their own condition. Some points were left open, and were not settled until a later date. But Parliament had at last been brought to recognize that "Englishmen abroad are the same animals as Englishmen at home--energetic, self-relying, capable of managing their own affairs, impatient of needless and domineering interference."[231] The egoistic habit had received a decisive check.

The total contribution of the Whigs to Liberalism was very large. They had declared that government, national and local, was to be no longer the business of a cla.s.s, but the interest of the people as a whole; that no form of religious opinion was to be appreciated at the expense of another; that no man should be allowed to have property in the body of another; that land should not be privileged against goods in relation to legal debts, and that landowners should not be privileged against landless men in relation to the killing of game; that employers and parents should not be allowed to dispose of the health and happiness of children; that the English people should not be permitted to regulate the domestic concerns of one of their colonies. Much remained to be done. The middle cla.s.s was admitted to political power, but the working cla.s.s was not. Catholics and Dissenters were no longer practically disabled by the Church, but both were still depreciated by the establishment of the rival sect, and the Jew {186} was still excluded from Parliament and office by the Christian. Land was still privileged by the Corn Law as against industry, and particular industries as against the public by the protective tariff. The poor working man was still liable to be abused by his wealthy employer. If the Colonies were emanc.i.p.ated, Ireland was not. The condition of women had not been improved, or even considered. Some of these reforms were simply applications of old Whig theories about the responsibility of Government to the people and the toleration of heterodox opinions. A Whig of 1688 would have understood the ideas which lay beneath the Reform Act, the Canadian Const.i.tution, the repeal of the Test Act, and Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, even if he had disliked the particular expression of them. Other reforms were novel not only in themselves, but also as implying a new att.i.tude of mind, a new conception of the relations between the State and society. The education scheme and the Factory Act meant that men were ceasing to look upon the State as something external to the people, a thing which was contrived simply to protect individual human beings from being injured either by foreign invaders or by domestic law-breakers. They were beginning to look upon it as an engine which might be put to positive as well as to negative use, which might be employed to strike off fetters as well as to prevent their imposition, which might be consciously directed towards improving a man's natural capacity as well as towards allowing it free play. It was a long time before these ideas received much fuller expression. Political power remained in the hands of cla.s.ses who required little a.s.sistance of this sort for themselves, and were incapable of seeing how urgently it was needed by others. Until the Reform Act of 1867 had transferred power to the working cla.s.ses the new conception of the State was only rarely and unsystematically expressed in legislation. In the meantime the landed gentry and the manufacturers exaggerated rather than diminished the old idea of individualism, and neglected or resisted every proposal which tended to restrict compet.i.tion.

In 1841 the Tories under Peel came into office. The Toryism {187} of this short administration was very different from that of Pitt, of Castlereagh, and of Liverpool. The Prime Minister was not in the least aggressive in foreign policy, and was far more Liberal in abstaining from interference with other nations than was a Whig like Palmerston. At home he was influenced by the spirit, if not by the direct teaching of Bentham, and the Peelite school of Ministers was a group which for efficiency and economy has never been surpa.s.sed in England. Peel's most conspicuous virtue was perhaps his incapacity to make permanent resistance to sound argument. Men like Liverpool would hold to a bad principle at any cost. Peel was always open to conversion. In 1829 he had, by one of these wise surrenders, saved the country from the maintenance of the Catholic disabilities, and he was now in a similar way to abandon Protection. But the real credit for this Liberal triumph belonged to the Manchester School. In other matters he moved in the same line without outside pressure. The most conspicuous exhibition of Liberalism which was made by Peel of his own initiative was his treatment of Ireland, and his most useful project was frustrated by his own party. He applied himself with his usual disinterested ambition to the government of Ireland. He saw that that country must be treated according to its own nature, and not according to that of England, if it was ever to be prosperous and contented. Its princ.i.p.al grievances were the subjection of Catholicism to Protestantism, and the distortion of a peculiarly Irish system of landholding to the peculiarly English rules of law. Both problems were attacked by Peel in the right spirit, if not in the right way,

One of the worst consequences of the religious inequality was the ignorance of the Catholic clergy and population. No honest Catholic would set foot in the Irish Universities, which were exclusively Protestant in temper. A small annual grant of 9,000 had been made to the Catholic College for priests at Maynooth since the beginning of the century. This was all that had been done to carry out the conciliatory policy of Pitt. Peel in 1845 proposed to increase the grant to 26,000. This was not a purely Liberal way of dealing with the difficulty. No {188} system of endowment can establish equality between sects, because no Government is capable either of endowing all sects or of deciding what sects should be selected in preference to the others. Endowment can only create inequalities. The only levelling process is disendowment. But the Maynooth grant was a practical measure, however little it squared with logic. The Whigs supported it, and in the face of a clamour which recalled the days of the Puritan Revolution, Peel had his way.[232] A second Bill established three colleges for laymen, which offered education to all comers irrespective of creed.

The second line of advance was towards the establishment of the tenant's right to compensation for improvements. The Irish land question had at last attracted the earnest attention of an English Government. The particular difficulty with which Peel now endeavoured to grapple was the result of the English legal theory that everything put into the soil was the property of the landlord, and the Irish custom which allowed the tenant to make all the improvements in the holding. A tenant who spent his own money on building, fencing, and ditching found his rent raised on the ground that the land had thereby been made more valuable, and in default of payment, was mercilessly evicted. In England, where the landlord paid for most permanent improvements, this rule was not unjust. In Ireland, where the landlord paid for none of them, it was little better than robbery. Bills ent.i.tling the tenant to compensation for his improvements had been introduced in 1835, 1836, and in 1843. A Royal Commission appointed by Peel presented a favourable report in 1845, and a fourth Bill was brought forward in the Lords. That a.s.sembly, by one of its most fatal displays of Tory spirit, killed the Bill, and it was not introduced again for thirty-six years.

The debate in the Lords presented the Tory theory of Irish government in its crudest form. It was nothing that the history and the economic structure of Irish society were entirely different from those of English society. If Ireland appeared different, it {189} was a reason, not for trying to understand her, but for trying to coerce her. If she would not behave like England, she must be forced. If she would not swallow of her own free will those provisions which formed the ordinary diet of England, they must be rammed down her throat. Thirty-six Peers, owning Irish land, presented a pet.i.tion against the Bill. Lord Clanricarde stated the case with precision. "What," he asked, "had of late years been the drift of their Irish legislation? Had it not been, as far as they could, to a.s.similate the laws of that country to those of Britain? And if they meant to preserve tranquillity--to support the Union--they must persevere steadily in that course of legislation."[233] To this disastrous policy Lord Stanley, for the Government, Lord Devon, the chairman of the Commission, and one or two other Peers, offered a vain resistance. n.o.bleman after n.o.bleman rose to denounce this interference with the rights of property. The Bill was thrown out, and Parliament returned to its dull application of armed force to the management of the affairs of Ireland.

{190}

CHAPTER VII

THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL AND PALMERSTON

While Peel was thus, with the co-operation of the Whigs, making some approach towards Liberalism, the real control of Liberal policy was pa.s.sing out of the hands of the old governing cla.s.s altogether. The active force in the Liberal movement of this period was the Manchester School. The members of this school were not unlike the Philosophic Radicals, and the two were generally found on the same side. But the Manchester men differed in character, if not in opinions, from the philosophers, and as they were more numerous, they were more powerful. Conclusions which in the one case were reached by reasoning from accepted principles of human nature were reached in the other by the ways of practical experience. The manufacturer liked individual liberty, not because he believed that it was only by leaving every man to pursue his own interest that the greatest happiness of the greatest number could be secured, but because he felt that he could manage his business best if no outside person interfered with him, and that in similar circ.u.mstances others could do the same. The Radical was a Free Trader because Protection benefited one cla.s.s at the expense of another.

The manufacturer was a Free Trader because Protection, by raising the price of corn, made his workpeople wretched, lowered the purchasing power of the people, and lessened the demand for his manufactures, or else forced him to pay higher wages and exposed him to foreign compet.i.tion. The Radical suggested that war should be made expensive, in order that human nature {191} might revolt against it. The manufacturer confined himself to the commercial view that, so long as war existed, it was better to make it cheap and to confine it to the smallest possible area. The Radical approved of colonial independence because he believed that the Home Government could not understand the interests of the colonists as well as the colonists themselves. The manufacturer approved of colonial independence because it lessened the expenses and lightened the taxation of the English people. By different roads the two schools generally reached the same end.

The Manchester School was essentially a middle-cla.s.s school. The Radicals had nothing in common but their Radicalism. The Manchester men were almost all of that sober, clear-headed, independent cla.s.s, often sadly wanting in gracefulness and culture, but always amply endowed with courage, enterprise, and common sense, which has built up the cotton industry of East Lancashire. They were not democratic in any theoretical sense.[234]

They cared nothing either for aristocracy or democracy. They were accustomed to mix on terms of equality with men of all cla.s.ses, and their estimate of a man's worth was always their own, and depended on nothing but his capacity. So far as personal intercourse is concerned, there is no part of the world where the social estimate of a man depends less upon the accidents of birth than that part of England where the Manchester School flourished. The manufacturers were not proof against the attacks of interest, and their opposition to factory legislation is a serious blot on their political character. They believed as firmly as the Whigs in the virtues of property, and most of them had no liking for such things as universal suffrage. But in other respects they had an influence upon the progress of Liberalism which was profound and continuous. They made Parliament think highly of the common people.

Their general principles were best stated by Fox, of Oldham. "I have gone into politics," he said, "with this question constantly in my mind, What will your theories, your forms, your {192} propositions, do for human nature? Will they make man more manly? Will they raise men and women in the scale of creation? Will they lift them above the brutes? Will they call forth their thoughts, their feelings, their actions? Will they make them more moral beings? Will they be worthy to tread the earth as children of the common Parent, and to look forward, not only for His blessing here, but for His benignant bestowment of happiness hereafter? If inst.i.tutions do this, I applaud them; if they have lower aims, I despise them; and if they have antagonistic aims, I counteract them with all my might and main."[235]

The language is more florid than that of Bentham would have been. But the principles are Bentham's, and they are purely Liberal.

The policy thus expounded by Fox was not a mere creed of pounds, shillings, and pence. The Manchester School is often denounced alternately as cold-hearted and material and as warmhearted and sentimental, of sacrificing at one time humanity to trade and at another national interests to a feeble love of peace. It in fact combined an intense moral earnestness with a degree of plain good sense which has never been surpa.s.sed. It is, on the one hand, largely due to the efforts of the School that ideas of international unity have supplanted the old ideas of the balance of international hostilities. But their whole programme--Free Trade, peace, non-intervention, reduction of armaments, retrenchment, arbitration, and colonial self-government--might have been, and in suitable circ.u.mstances always was, urged on grounds of convenience and interest. Both the Peace Society and Mr. Norman Angell are descended politically from the Manchester School, and without the union of the two forces, moral and economic, the School would have effected little. No popular agitation can ever succeed without an appeal to a moral sense, good or bad. Cobden and Bright and the other Manchester men saw, what the men of the world who differ from them never see, that in politics, as in all life, your ultimate interest coincides with morality. Honesty, if it had no virtue in itself, would still be the best policy. It is as {193} true among nations as among individuals that material good is achieved most easily and maintained most securely by treating your neighbour as you would have him treat you.

Interference, boasting, hostile tariffs, regulating the affairs of a nation without regard to the feelings of its members, all mean unrest, expense, heavy taxation, and perhaps war. Order and peace are essential to prosperity, and order and peace can only be secured by moral conduct. Even the dullest economic programmes were thus touched by the Manchester men with moral fire. "I see in the Free Trade policy," said Cobden, "that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe--drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace."[236]

The hope was sanguine, and its realization will not come yet. But it is only by hopes like this that the world has ever been moved. We advance by the labours of those who identify interest with morality, and not of those who calculate morality in terms of interest. To domestic and foreign policy alike the Manchester School gave a tone which they had never possessed before. The international ideas of the French Revolution, thus identified with national interest, were by them made part of the inheritance of Liberalism.

The School naturally subordinated foreign and colonial policy to domestic policy. Foreign affairs were bluntly described by one of them as a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy, and they resented the use of the common people for the dynastic aims of diplomatists. "Crowns, coronets, mitres," said Bright, "military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people."[237] "It was with that view," said Cobden, "that I preferred my budget, and advocated the reduction of our armaments; it is with that view, coupled with higher motives, that I have recommended arbitration treaties, to render unnecessary {194} the vast amount of armaments which are kept up between civilized countries. It is with that view--the view of largely reducing the expenditure of the State, and giving relief, especially for the agricultural cla.s.ses--that I have made myself the object of the sarcasms of those very parties, by going to Paris to attend peace meetings.

It is with that view that I have directed attention to our Colonies, showing how you might be carrying out the principle of Free Trade, give to the Colonies self-government, and charge them, at the same time, with the expense of their own government."[238] "The condition of England question,"

wrote Cobden to Peel, after the repeal of the Corn Laws, "there is your mission!"[239] It was certainly the mission of Cobden and his a.s.sociates.

This insistence upon the paramount importance of domestic policy led the Manchester men into an exaggerated contempt for foreign policy. Their patriotism was not wanting in st.u.r.diness, but it was of that n.o.ble and rare variety which is not afraid to rebuke national insolence and oppression.

Their opposition to the Crimean War and the support which most of them gave to the North during the American Civil War are among the best things which the School ever did for England. Bright spoke of "the high example of a Christian nation, free in its inst.i.tutions, courteous and just in its conduct towards all foreign States, and resting its policy on the unchangeable foundation of Christian morality.... I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it is based upon morality.... The moral law was not written for men alone in their individual character, but that it was written as well for nations."[240] The patriotism of a man like this may have been mistaken, but it was never mean. The t.i.tle of a "Peace at any price man" was never deserved by any member of the School. It opposed only the aggressive and risky policy, which in Palmerston's day pa.s.sed for the maintenance of national dignity and influence, and wasted the wealth of the people in quarrels with which they had no real {195} concern. "The middle and industrious cla.s.s of England can have no interest apart from the preservation of peace. The honour, the fame, the emoluments of war belong not to them; the battle-plain is the harvest-field of the aristocracy, watered with the blood of the people.... It is only when at peace with other States that a nation finds the leisure for looking within itself, and discovering the means to accomplish great domestic ameliorations."[241] So they suspected British rule in India, partly because it involved wars, partly because its temper reacted upon free government at home. So they maintained that England should never interfere in the quarrels of other peoples. The Balance of Power was to them a mere phrase, and unless the interests of England were directly involved, the Government had no right to inflict upon her common people the miseries even of a successful war. If Russia abused the Poles, or invaded Hungary to reduce it into the power of Austria, that was their affair, and not ours.

"We are no more called upon," said Cobden, "to wrest the attribute of vengeance from the Deity, and deal it forth upon the Northern aggressor, than we are to preserve the peace and good behaviour of Mexico, or to chastise the wickedness of the Ashantees."[242] "It is not our duty," said Bright, "to make this country the knight-errant of the human race."[243]

This was a rule of good sense. The breach of it was not only costly, but a bad precedent. "If you claim the right of intervention in your Government you must tolerate it in other nations also.... I say, if you want to benefit nations struggling for their freedom, establish as one of the maxims of international law the principle of non-intervention."[244] Cobden once went so far as to say that "at some future election we may probably see the test of 'no foreign politics' applied to those who offer to become the representatives of free const.i.tuencies."[245] But he was never opposed to a policy which protected our own {196} interests, and he approved of offers to mediate between two contending foreign nations.[246] This dislike of armed force went much farther than the old Whig principle. The Whigs denounced active interference in the domestic affairs of other peoples. The Manchester School would have prevented interference for the protection of one nation against another. Let the Continent settle its own quarrels, and however much we may abhor particular acts of immorality, let us confine ourselves to cases where we are ourselves concerned. This marked the extreme of the reaction against the policy of aggression, and it went farther than a Liberal ought to go. The Manchester men were probably driven to exaggerate their principles by the excesses of Palmerston. Canning, who was a true Liberal, interfered in defence of national rights, but only when he had a good chance of success. Palmerston often interfered when he had no chance of success, and irritated to no purpose. The reaction against Palmerston's ill-judged activity brought the Manchester School to the point of justifying inactivity even where activity would have been safe for England and of benefit to a foreign people. But however ill-judged it may have been in particulars, the general effect of this depreciation of foreign affairs was beneficial. The condition of England has ever since remained the first care of English Governments.

The domestic policy which the Manchester School made the first object of government was in the direct course of Liberalism. As has already been stated, they agreed generally with the individualist proposals of the Philosophic Radicals. "I do not partake," said Cobden, "of that spurious humanity which would indulge in an unreasoning kind of philanthropy at the expense of the great bulk of the community. Mine is that masculine species of charity which would lead me to inculcate in the minds of the labouring cla.s.s the love of independence, the privilege of self-respect, the disdain of being patronized or petted, the desire to acc.u.mulate, and the ambition to rise.... Whilst I will not be the sycophant of the great, I cannot become the parasite of the {197} poor."[247] This habit of mind was expressed in a general opposition to inst.i.tutions and policies which interfered with individual freedom. The School gave no a.s.sistance to proposals for economic regulation, and opposed Factory Bills in the same spirit as they opposed Protection.

The greatest practical service which they rendered was the emanc.i.p.ation of industry from the system of Protection. Import duties were an interference by Government with the freedom of the individual to use his capital and his intelligence as he thought best, and they gave advantages to certain cla.s.ses and interests over other cla.s.ses and interests and over the community at large. An import duty raised the price of the taxed article for the benefit of the industry which produced the same article in England.

Two consequences followed. The industries which used the taxed article paid an artificially high price for the benefit of the industries which made it, and the tax might be so high that they would be unable to continue in the face of foreign compet.i.tion. Government was incapable of selecting what industries might be taxed in this way without injury. It made an arbitrary selection without regard to the general interest, or at the instigation of cla.s.ses which desired to be benefited at the expense of the community. Some industries were maintained by this artificial system which could not have maintained themselves by their own efficiency. Other industries were crippled which, in a freer system, could develop themselves to an indefinitely greater extent. Protection was vicious precisely as government by a cla.s.s was vicious or as a system of religious disabilities was vicious. It established an aristocracy of industry, which was as bad as an aristocracy of birth or of creed. Every industry should have an equal chance with every other, and no industry should be given the chance of exploiting the common people.

The Free Trade movement had begun with Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. But little progress had been made in practical politics before the Reform Act. A {198} few economists like Ricardo and Joseph Hume argued the case in the Commons with as much persistency as Cobden and Bright. But the country gentry were not economists, and their main practical object had been the maintenance of their rents by import duties on corn. The common people, without any direct voice in politics, had been stung by their own sufferings into a vision of the truth, and resolutions in favour of free imports of corn had been pa.s.sed at some of the Radical meetings after the French War.[248] In 1820 a number of London merchants presented a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons which covered import duties of every kind, and stated "That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country."[249] Huskisson, who was President of the Board of Trade from 1826 to 1828, had done something to readjust some of the import duties as between raw materials and partly or wholly manufactured goods.

The Whig victory took the matter no farther. The Whigs were at first occupied with const.i.tutional changes, and after Melbourne had succeeded Grey, they ceased to apply themselves to reform of any kind. Immediately before their defeat in 1841 they made one or two vague proposals, but were beaten before they could carry them into effect. The arrival of Peel, a Utilitarian Tory, decided the fate of the old system.

Peel, with Gladstone at the Board of Trade, carried on Huskisson's policy with vigour and success. The tariff in 1842 included no less than 1,200 separate articles. On 750 of these the duties were cut down, and a general rule was established that duties on raw materials should never exceed 5 per cent. of their value. Though this was not Free Trade, it was a great departure from the existing system of regulating trade by taxes. But the corner-stone of Protection was the Corn Law, and this remained in force, modified, but in principle untouched. Whigs and Tories alike believed in the supremacy of land, and nothing {199} but a revolt of the manufacturers could break it down. The revolt was led by the Manchester School.

The details of this famous struggle are not to be stated here. One or two quotations will indicate the Liberal temper of the Free Traders. The Radicals attacked the Corn Law in Radical language. "It is the duty of Parliament," said Hume, "equally to protect all the different interests in the country.... Are we warranted in giving to one particular interest a monopoly against the other interests? I see no reason for giving the capital employed in agriculture greater protection than the capital vested in other branches of trade, manufacture, or commerce."[250] The manufacturers hated the landowners with a more personal hatred. They had little respect for these ignorant country gentlemen who maintained their own dignity at the expense of the manufacturer's capital and the workman's life. "The sooner the power in this country is transferred from the landed oligarchy, which has so misused it, and is placed absolutely in the hands of the intelligent middle and industrious cla.s.ses, the better for the condition and destinies of this country."[251] The Corn Law was described as saying to the people, "Scramble for what there is, and if the poorest and the weakest starve, foreign supplies shall not come in for fear some injury should be done to the mortgaged landowners."[252] "The labourer's bones and muscles are his own property, and not the landlord's. We claim for ourselves that which we concede to him--the fair produce of whatever power, privileges, or advantages we possess. Here our principle claims the same respect, the same sacred veneration, for the rights of property of the man who has nothing in the world but the physical strength with which he goes forth in the morning to earn his dinner at noon, and that of the inheritor of the widest and most princely domain which can be boasted of in this country of Great Britain.... There is no doubt that any duty on the importation of corn must enhance the price of food; and whatever enhances the price of food takes away from the fair earnings {200} of the industrious."[253] The victory of the Anti-Corn Law League meant the victory of the people over the landowners.

But that victory was emphasized not only by the triumph of principle, but by the triumph of organization. The fighting was done almost entirely by Cobden and Bright outside Parliament. Both of the leaders, with Hume, Villiers, and other members, made speeches in Parliament. But the real work was done by the League, which was founded in 1838, and for eight years carried on an indefatigable but orderly campaign in the country. It bore some resemblance to the Political Unions which had supported the great Reform Bill. But those Unions had been ma.s.sed behind the official Whig Opposition. The League had very few Members of Parliament at its head, and not one of those was within the circle of Whig favour. The Unions had forced their policy upon the Tory party. The League forced its policy upon Parliament. So far as active a.s.sistance was concerned the Opposition was no more to the Free Traders than the Government. Both official parties looked upon it with suspicion, and the old jealousy of popular organization which had faced the Corresponding Society and the Catholic a.s.sociation was displayed by Whig as well as by Tory landlords. The lecturers of the League were denounced, not only as "commercial swindlers," but as "the paid hirelings of a disloyal faction," and "revolutionary emissaries," who inflamed the public mind "with sentiments destructive of all moral right and order."[254] In 1843 the League was accused of promoting a strike of factory hands in the North, and of rick-burning by agricultural labourers in the South, and it was rumoured that the Government intended to suppress it, as it suppressed the Catholic a.s.sociation. It was not until Lord John Russell published his manifesto in favour of repeal in 1845 that a Member of Parliament of official rank openly allied himself with the League. Once the leaders of Opposition had given way the work was easy. The political centre of gravity was thus shifted from Westminster to the {201} country.