Liberty In The Nineteenth Century Part 1

Liberty In The Nineteenth Century.

by Frederic May Holland.

PREFACE

THIS book is a result of having studied the development of political and religious liberty for forty years. How well I have selected my authorities the reader can judge. I will merely say that I have mentioned no writer whom I have not studied carefully. The sun-dial has been so far my model that victories in the cause of freedom are more prominent than defeats in the pages that follow. It did not seem necessary to give much s.p.a.ce to familiar authors, though I should have liked to do justice to Buckle, George Eliot, and Swinburne.

I regret that I have been unable to tell at any adequate length how the Republic which was proclaimed at Paris in 1870 has survived longer than any other government set up in France during the century. Its enemies have been voted down repeatedly everywhere; the schools have been made free from ecclesiastical control; and the hostility of the clergy has been suppressed by the Pope. The French are still too fond of military glory, and too ignorant of the value of personal liberty and local self-government; but rapid advance in freedom is already possible under the Const.i.tution of 1884. Not only France, but also Great Britain, Canada, and Australia, give proof that the time has gone by when Americans had any right to claim, as they did in my boyhood, to be the only people able to govern themselves.

If any nation can maintain a free press, just laws, and elections of local magistrates, it ought to enjoy these rights, however slight may be its fitness for becoming a real republic; and the suppression of such rights by Cromwell and Napoleon cannot be pardoned consistently by any friend to liberty. Napoleon's chief guilt, as I must here mention, was in ordering the expulsion from office by soldiers, in 1797, of representatives of the people who were striving to maintain liberty at home and establish peace abroad. If there were any necessity for his usurpation two years later, it was largely of his own making. Despotism had already been made tolerable, however, even during the first Republic, by the national fondness for war. This is according to a principle which is taught by Herbert Spencer, and which is ill.u.s.trated in the following pages by many instances from the history of France and other nations. The horrors of the Reign of Terror may be explained, though not excused, by the greatness of the danger from invaders as well as rebels. And there were very few cases of punishing differences merely about religion by the guillotine.

I have also tried to show how the centralising tendencies of a government are strengthened by the wish of its citizens to gain private advantages by state aid. John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer have published timely warnings against the danger of checking the development of individual energy and ability by meddlesome laws. Whether the power of the government ought to be reduced to the narrow limits proposed by these great thinkers, is a question which has been discussed at some length in my last chapter. It is there suggested that such a reduction would be much more practicable in the case of national than of local governments. It is not likely to be made anywhere at present; but it might be well for reformers to try to restrict the operations of governments according to the following rule: nothing to be undertaken by a national government which can be done as well by munic.i.p.alities; and nothing to be attempted by either a local or central government which can be done as well by private citizens, acting singly or in voluntary a.s.sociations. This rule would justify towns and cities in taking such care of roads, streets, and schools as is not sanctioned by Spencer; but it would leave munic.i.p.alities free to decide the question whether they ought to carry on gas- and water-works, electric roads, and other enterprises according to the merits of each special case. Here in America internal improvements seem to be the proper charge of the State, rather than of the nation; but whether the former has any right to enforce Sunday laws, and the latter to impose protective tariffs, are questions which I have taken the liberty of discussing thoroughly.

Herbert Spencer should not be held responsible for any opinions not printed plainly as his. Most of the instances of the working of Sunday statutes were taken from a religious newspaper ent.i.tled The American Sentinel. Among very recent cases are these. A Georgian was sentenced on May 16, 1899, to pay a fine of twenty dollars or spend six months in the chain-gang for working on his farm. That same month a clergyman was arrested in Mississippi, merely for taking a little exercise with a hoe in his garden. In 1898, a farmer in the State of New York was arrested for picking a few apples from one of his own trees. The total number of Sabbath-breakers arrested that year in New York City is estimated at a thousand; and there were nearly four thousand arrests for Sunday trading in England and Wales in 1897.

The principle of giving each citizen every opportunity of development compatible with the general welfare, is so plainly irreconcilable with Socialism, that I have thought it well to give several instances of the fact that a man seldom does his best work except for his own benefit and that of his family. Even the exceptionally energetic and conscientious founders of New England did not raise food enough until it was agreed that "They should set corne, every man for his own particular." Another difficulty in the way of state Socialism is that the requisite number of competent managers could not be found after the abolition of the compet.i.tive system. It is that which brings forward men of unusual ability and energy, though scarcely in sufficient numbers. Socialism would increase the demand, but lessen the supply. Spencer calls it "the coming slavery." It might better be called a slavery which is becoming obsolete. Our existing system of industry certainly needs improvement; but this will have to be made by following the laws of social science.

Their action has done much during the present century to improve the condition of the poor; and we may trust that it will do more hereafter.

The nineteenth might be called the philanthropic century, if that t.i.tle did not belong also to the eighteenth.

The latter has the peculiar merit of doing so much to abolish persecution that there have been comparatively few instances during the period covered by this book. Much more has been done during the last hundred years to extend political than religious liberty; but I have not neglected to mention the most active champions of the great principle, that human rights ought not to be affected by individual differences about theology. If there is too little agitation at present for this principle in the United States, it is largely on account of an unfortunate occurrence of which I have written at some length in the last chapter but one. Here I had the valuable a.s.sistance of Francis E.

Abbot, Ph.D., author of _Scientific Theism_, and Benjamin F. Underwood.

If the words, "militant liberals," had been used in this chapter, they would express my meaning more plainly than the term "aggressive."

The least pleasant part of my work has been the pointing out defects in a system of philosophy, ethics, and theology which I once delighted to honour. As valuable results may have been reached by the metaphysical method as by the scientific; but if the latter is right the former is certainly wrong. When we find so consistent and warmhearted a Transcendentalist as Miss Cobbe placing pantheism and scepticism among "the greatest of sins" (see her _Religious Duty_, pp. 19, 65, and 100), we may suspect that this philosophy aggravated Carlyle's natural bitterness against opponents. There has been comparatively little intolerance among American intuitionalists, thanks to the genial influence of Emerson.

F. M. H.

August, 1899.

LIBERTY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I. NAPOLEON AND HIS WORK

I. France had been freed by the Revolution from many ghosts of kingly, feudal, and priestly privileges; but she was still the prey of the most deadly of vampires,--military glory. The followers of this fatal guide had driven the party of peace and liberty from power by force and fraud, and found a ruler after their own hearts in the conqueror who, in 1804, became the Emperor Napoleon.

Thus was established what some metaphysicians suppose to be the best form of government,--an enlightened despotism. The autocrat knew that he had risen to power as the most popular champion of political equality; and he gave this democratic principle such additional authority that it has continued supreme in France. Her sons are still equals before the law, owners of the land they till, exempt from taxes levied for the benefit of any privileged cla.s.s, and free to choose their own career and mode of worship. This is due in great part to the usurper who reduced representative government to an empty sh.e.l.l, and who centralised the administration of schools, police, streets, roads, and bridges, and all other local concerns even more completely than had ever been done before the Revolution.

He knew the real needs of France well enough to give her peace with all her enemies; but scarcely had he signed the last treaty when he took possession of Switzerland, and continued to annex territory, in defiance of the protests of the British ministers that he was making peace impossible. War was declared by them in 1803 and kept up against him for eleven years continuously, with occasional a.s.sistance from Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, and other countries. This was a period of great glory for France, but also of great suffering. Her boundaries were enlarged; but her most patriotic citizens were slaughtered in foreign lands; her shipping was swept away by British cruisers; her people were hindered in obtaining American grain, British cloth, and other necessaries of life, in exchange for wine, silk, lace, and other luxuries; the Emperor could not supervise the prefects who managed, or mismanaged, all internal interests, and who were responsible to him alone; freedom of the press was prohibited; and all the arts of peace decayed.

This was the price which France paid for Auster-litz, Jena, and other famous victories over Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which in 1807 brought peace with every enemy but England, and made Napoleon master, either directly through his prefects, or indirectly through tributary kings, not only of France but of the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Venice with the rest of Italy, and about three-fourths of Germany, including one-half of what had formerly been Prussian territory. Eight years from the usurpation in 1799 brought him to his zenith: eight years later, he was at Saint Helena.

His German, Swiss, and Italian subjects gained political equality, and also the permanent advantage of the code which bears his name. It had really been made by his lawyers, on foundations laid by the Convention.

Throughout his dominions, Jew, Catholic, and Protestant became equals before the law. The fact that these reforms survived his authority proves that they could have been established without it. They were unavoidable results of the eighteenth century.

How little he was influenced by philanthropy is shown by his driving into exile a statesman named Stein, who had abolished serfdom in Prussia, and made it equally possible for the members of all cla.s.ses to buy land and choose occupations. The establishment of the Empire had been preceded by the revival of slavery in several colonies where it had been abolished by the Convention. It was for helping the Haytians preserve their independence by heroic resistance, that Toussaint was sent by Napoleon to die in prison. The conquered nations in Europe were handed over from one master to another, without being even invited to consent; but what was still more oppressive was inability to exchange their own products for cloth and hardware from England, grain from the United States, coffee and sugar from the West Indies, and many other articles whose lack was keenly felt. This trouble was largely due to the blockade kept up by British Ships; but Napoleon was so ignorant of the advantage of commerce to both parties engaged in it as to suppose he could conquer England by a plan which really injured only himself and his subjects. He forbade all importation from Great Britain and her colonies wherever he had power or even influence; and many of the prohibited goods were taken from merchants and destroyed without compensation. Germany suffered also from having her manufactures forbidden to compete with the French. The latter asked in vain for freer trade, and were told by Napoleon that he understood their business better than they did. Countless outrages on prominent individuals helped the growth of disaffection.

II. The British ministry retaliated against Napoleon's attack on the right to trade freely, with a success which led to a great outrage on individual liberty in the United States. The war with Europe gave much of the world's commerce to American ships; but they were forbidden by Great Britain, in 1806, to trade with some of their best customers unless they stopped to pay tribute in her ports. The seizures for disobedience increased the anger which had been long felt against the British for impressing sailors on board of American ships. Three thousand citizens of the United States had been forced into a hostile navy before the refusal of our frigate, _Chesapeake_, in 1807, to submit to a search brought on a b.l.o.o.d.y contest.

Napoleon was then at the height of his power; and Great Britain was fighting against him single-handed. It was an unusually good time for declaring a war which soon proved inevitable in defence of merchants'

and sailors' rights. Jefferson preferred to violate those rights himself, as had been done by the Federalists in 1794, and Congress aided him in forbidding American ships to sail for foreign ports. This embargo was so plainly unnecessary that every captain who was able to get out of New York harbour did so at once without caring what crew, cargo, or papers he had on board. Fifty million dollars' worth of shipping was kept idle for more than a year; a hundred thousand sailors and mechanics were thrown out of work; farms and plantations ceased to be profitable; clothing and tools became ruinously dear; thirteen hundred New Yorkers, who had been ruined by the embargo, were imprisoned for debt; and laws for protection against creditors were pa.s.sed by the Southern and Western States. No one gained by the embargo except the smugglers; and attempts to suppress them called out dangerous manifestations of popular discontent. No one suffered less than the British merchants.

III. Meantime, Napoleon took the first step towards ruin in placing his brother on the throne of Spain. The Spaniards had borne patiently the loss of ships, commerce, and colonies; but this fresh wrong stirred up insurrection. The new King was brought to Madrid by French troops; but not a single Spaniard would enter his service; and he was soon obliged to leave the city. He said to his brother, "Your glory will be wrecked in Spain"; but Napoleon kept on sending in armies, whose victories made him hated, but not obeyed. He offered to abolish feudal privileges, the inquisition, and the tariffs which separated province from province. The only result was to make reform odious to a people which cared much more for nationality than progress. The clergy encouraged the peasants to keep up a guerilla war, in which his veterans perished ignominiously; and British auxiliaries won victories which made Wellington famous.

Austria took advantage of the situation to try to reconquer the lost provinces. The Tyrolese had been made subjects of the King of Bavaria; but they rose at the call of Hofer, and gained glorious victories over French and Bavarian soldiers. Other defeats were suffered by Napoleon; but he soon succeeded in forcing Austria to grant him, not only much more of her territory, but the hand of a young princess, who had never thought of him but with abhorrence. This involved his divorce from the loving Josephine. He pleaded desire for a son who might succeed him; but he was not likely to live until any child who might be born after this would be old enough to keep together an empire whose basis was conquest.

The Austrian princess had been demanded before Napoleon's application for a Russian one had been answered decisively; his plans for restoring Poland had given additional offence to the Czar; and the welfare of Russia demanded freedom to use the products of her forests, fields, and mines in buying British goods. This right was insisted upon by the Czar; and Napoleon had only abuse for the friends who warned him that defeat in Russia would call all Germany to arms against him. He was already so unpopular at Paris, that he had to remove with his Court.

The enormous army with which he invaded Russia might easily have taken possession of her Polish provinces, where the people were friendly.

He preferred to march a thousand miles, through a hostile and barren country, to Moscow. The city was set on fire at his arrival; but he wasted so much time there, that winter helped the Russians turn his retreat into a rout. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers perished miserably.

The Prussians flew to arms; and Austria demanded restoration of her provinces. He replied that he should not yield an inch, and cared nothing for the loss of a million lives. He was driven out of Germany by "the Battle of the Nations," which was won at Leipsic, in October, 1813, by zealous cooperation of the Russians with Prussians, Austrians, Bavarians, and other Germans.

One result was described by saying that "The Dutch have taken Holland."

Need of a strong government in time of war had given a power almost monarchical to the successors of that Prince of Orange who had saved his republic from Philip II. One of these princes was driven out by a democratic rebellion in 1787, but restored by a Prussian army. The French Revolution enabled Holland to return to republicanism; but alliance with the Directory meant continual spoliation; and there were grievous conscriptions under Napoleon, whose rule was extremely unpopular in a nation which lived by commerce. When the Dutch heard of his defeat at Leipsic, they rose against him without waiting for auxiliaries; and the French garrisons were soon driven out by the help of soldiers from Russia, Prussia, and England. The rulers of these countries sanctioned the desire of the Orange faction to make the prince a king. The people were not consulted, but were reconciled by a const.i.tution, under which there was a legislature with some power, local self-government, freedom of worship, political equality, and liberty in commerce.

Napoleon might have remained emperor; but he refused to make any concessions, and kept on fighting until his generals abandoned him, and his deposition was voted by the Senate. The people would not rise for him, as they had done for the Republic; and the Parisians refused to cry "Vive l'Empereur" as he returned from Elba, to be overthrown at Waterloo. Three million Frenchmen perished in his wars; and he left France smaller than he found her. His restrictions on commerce were removed so suddenly as to destroy the industries which he had tried to foster; and the proportion of paupers to the population was three times as great as in 1880.

France was still desirous that the press should be free, and that taxation should be controlled by representatives of the people. Louis XVIII. had to promise that he would respect these rights which his predecessors had violated. Toleration continued; and the peasants kept the property and equality which the Revolution had given them, and which no sovereign could take away.

Napoleon is the most famous of generals; but his greatness as a statesman would have been plainer if he had not undertaken so many showy enterprises which had little chance of success. He failed signally in founding a dynasty, in making France the greatest of manufacturers, and in giving her an invincible navy, though he might have gained the first of these objects by peace, and the last by free trade. He could not even leave to his successor the territory which had been conquered by the Revolution. Yet these were his dearest purposes, except the wild dream of humbling England. Was he the greatest of architects, every one of whose colossal structures fell under their own weight before they could be used? Greater is he who builds what lasts for ages.

Napoleon made the twenty years ending with 1815 more glorious than any later period, and much more wretched. Western Europe was afflicted by b.l.o.o.d.y wars, and impoverished by restrictions on commerce. If his reign had been peaceable, he might have deprived France much more completely of what liberty she had enjoyed under the Directory. Every despot, however enlightened and benevolent, must necessarily interfere so much with the liberty of his subjects as to hinder their making themselves happy. France and Germany lost nothing in freedom and gained much in prosperity by his defeat; for it gave the world many years of peace.

What he brought of political and religious equality to Prussia, Western Germany, and Switzerland survived him; for it was part of his inheritance from the Revolution which he closed treacherously. France had received her legacy without his help; and she retained much of it in spite of his interference. His victories over hereditary monarchs were so suggestive that books about him are still prohibited in Russia; but no people lost much by his overthrow except the Italians.

IV. Waterloo might have been called a "of the Nations" as well as Leipsic; but the best fighting was under the British flag. The English had suffered much from Napoleon, in spite of his never succeeding in making an invasion. The worst injury he did was in forcing them to remain in that absorption in war which had checked the growth of toleration, democracy, and prosperity in 1793. George III. was personally popular; but his weak, unprincipled successor was merely a figurehead. Two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons in 1815 had been appointed by the Ministry, or by some n.o.bleman, and most of the others owned or rented some pocket-borough almost dest.i.tute of inhabitants. The House of Lords was overwhelmingly opposed to government by the people; and no Tories were more consistent than those sons or proteges of n.o.blemen, the bishops. The successors of the apostles had no sympathy with the struggle of the Cross against the Crescent in lands where Paul had preached. They helped to vote down propagation of the Gospel in India, as well as enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Roman Catholics, and mitigation of laws which punished pilfering with death. They tried in vain to save the slave-trade from prohibition; and most of the clerical and lay members of both Houses were in league to keep the tax on importation of wheat heavy enough to give them large incomes from their real estate.

This tariff and the depreciation of currency made food excessively dear.

The country labourer was often unable to earn more than the price of a loaf a day. Employers agreed on wages so low that the peasants had to ask continually for parochial relief, and could not afford to go out of the parish to seek higher pay. Their degradation was increased by their almost universal illiteracy; and their misdemeanours, especially poaching, were punished cruelly; for the rural magistrate was either the squire or his ally, the parson. There was little chance of justice for the poor against the rich; the rural labourer could seldom improve his position; and the bad harvests of 1816, 1817, and 1818 helped to make him worse off than ever before or since.

The operatives had higher wages, but suffered under the friction of an industrial revolution, which has done more than any political convulsion for human happiness. The factory had been enabled by the invention of the steam-engine and other machines, shortly before 1800, to take the place of the cottages in making cloth. British goods were in great demand abroad during the war, and had to be carried in British ships.

Improved roads and ca.n.a.ls led merchants and manufacturers to opulence.

The rich grew richer, as has usually been the case; but there were some exceptional years during which the poor really grew poorer. One man could make as much cotton cloth in a day as two hundred could have done before; but what was to become of the one hundred and ninety-nine?

Demand for factory labour kept increasing until 1815; but population grew faster still. Wages were already falling; the return of peace lessened the demand abroad; and hundreds of thousands of discharged soldiers and sailors were added to the mult.i.tude of unemployed.

Labourers were forbidden either to emigrate or to combine in order to keep up wages; and their earnings were lowest at the time when bread was the highest. Meat, sugar, foreign fruit, and many other articles now in common use were almost unattainable by the poor until late in the century. There was much more intelligence in the towns than in the country; but there were no opportunities of education in 1818 in England for one-half of the children.

Boys and girls entered the factory at the age of six, and often from the poor-house, where they had been sold into slavery. The regular time was fourteen hours a day; sitting down was seldom permitted; food was scanty and bad; punishment was constant and cruel; deformity and disease were frequent; and the death-rate was unusually high. Terrible cases occurred of pauper children, kept sixteen hours at a stretch without rest or food, driven by hunger to rob the troughs in the pig-sty, tortured merely for amus.e.m.e.nt by the overseer, and even advertised for sale with the mill.

The middle cla.s.s differed much more widely than at present, both from the ma.s.ses on one hand and from the aristocracy on the other, as regards food, dress, culture, amus.e.m.e.nts, and political liberty. Taxation was heavy and vexatious; representation in Parliament was notoriously inadequate; and honest men and women were still liable to imprisonment for debt. No one but an Episcopalian had a right to study at a university, enter Parliament, or hold any civil, naval, or military office in England; and neither Dissenters nor Catholics could marry without going through ceremonies which conscience forbade. The press was fettered by laws which kept Leigh Hunt imprisoned for two years, on account of an article acknowledging the unpopularity of the Prince Regent. Cobbett underwent an equally long imprisonment in Newgate for blaming the cruelty of sentencing insubordinate militiamen to be flogged five hundred lashes. No plays could be performed in London in 1814 until they had been read and licensed by the Lord Chamberlain's deputy.

As soon as a strong government ceased to be needed for protection against Napoleon, there broke out much agitation for relief of the disfranchised as well as of the dest.i.tute. There was an unprecedented circulation of the cheap pamphlets in which Cobbett advised the discontented to abstain from lawless violence, which could only give them another Robespierre, and devote themselves to striving peaceably for their political rights. Among these he a.s.serted that of every man who paid taxes to vote for members of Parliament. The serious riots which took place in many parts of Great Britain, even London, made the aristocracy consider all opportunities of addressing the people dangerous. The ministry were empowered in 1817 to arrest speakers and authors without any warrant, and keep them in prison without a trial.

Prohibition of public meetings was made possible by an act which extended to reading-rooms, debating societies, even among students at Cambridge, and scientific lectures.