Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman Part 26

But to-day, in arranging to make war or to make peace, it is the Cabinet-- the two or three in the inner Chamber--who take all responsibility upon themselves. As often as not their decision is largely influenced by party questions--and the questions do _not_ depend on the morality of the war, whether the reason for it is a just one or no. "It is the singular disgrace of modern England, [Footnote: _Deliberations before War_, Francis Newman, 1859.] to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers; ... the nation permits war to be made, lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed, provinces to be confiscated, and permanent empire over foreign subjects established, at the secret advice of a Cabinet, _all of one party, acting collectively for party objects_, no one outside knowing how each has voted." Yet "the whole nation is implicated in a war, when once it is undertaken, inasmuch as we all have the same national disgrace, if it is unjust; the same suffering, if it is tedious; the same loss, if it is expensive"; and all the time, "according to the current morality of Christendom, two nations may be engaged in deadly struggle, and _neither be in the wrong_."

Newman attributes this present method of deciding war or peace by means of the Cabinet, rather than the voice of the people as expressed by their representatives in a.s.sembled Parliament, to the "anomaly of the East Indian Empire." Then, when the Board of Control was formed in 1784, "the orders to make, or not to make war, went out direct from the Board of Control; that is, really, from the ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one, resolute man had power to make war without check." The fatal war with Afghanistan in the eighteen-thirties which cost us so dear in the matter of men and fame, was settled in England by "secret orders of two or three _executive_ officers of the Queen, without previous debate in Parliament." It is necessary to remember, when thinking of the barbarisms which war brought in its train, not a hundred years ago, that what Newman calls, very justly, "the atrocious system" of paying our soldiers and sailors _head-money_ for the numbers killed by them, was only done away with about sixty years ago.

But it is impossible even to touch here upon the unthinkable miseries which are inevitably suffered by thousands of innocent men, women, and children whenever that Barbarism of Civilization, War, marches through a land. Apart from all the devastation that marks its advent, no one can know how indescribably far the real moral and industrial progress of civilization is r.e.t.a.r.ded by even what we consider a _small_ war. As Newman says: "No one can wonder at the rise and progress of an opinion that war is essentially an immoral state."

In connection with Punishments as understood in England, and Penal Reformation, [Footnote: _Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation_, Francis Newman, 1865.] he owns that "it has. .h.i.therto been most difficult to discover what due punishment of felony will not demoralize the felon."

And of course, undoubtedly, that _is_ the crux of the whole matter. But there is no one in England to-day but will agree that some change in our prison system is imperatively needed. Only the other day a woman, thoroughly qualified to judge, declared that the inevitable effect of prison life on women was to make them lose their self-respect. It was a degradation and nothing else. Now a punishment practically loses its whole point if it is simply a lowering, without any building up; while apart from any other considerations, to herd, without due specialization, a number of criminals and misdemeanants (for that last is the true description of very many who are punished by this system of incarceration) tends, in many instances, to increase, by "evil communications," the numbers of those who are in for a first offence only, and would not, but for the enforced bad influence of others in prison, offend again. Newman's conclusion of the whole matter as regards prisons is irrefragable: "In order to _prevent_ crime, the inst.i.tutions which generate crime must be remodelled." He urges upon the nation's consideration that for a great many cases which now fill our prisons (thereby adding enormously to the national expenses) there is a very simple punishment, which has been condemned from many modern points of view as being degrading to the sufferers and brutalizing to the inflictors.

"The infliction of flogging," he argues, undeniably answers in these cases, both as a sharp and effectual punishment, and also as a deterrent from future misdoing. "To us it appears an obvious certainty, that whatever punishment is believed to be righteous--whether the whipping of a child, the shooting of a soldier, the constraint of the treadmill, or whatever else--is wholly free from the least tendency to brutalize the officers who inflict it." As to the wisdom of this statement, one would think, there could be no question. He quotes our old laws as regards the practising of public floggings, and adds, "We cannot hesitate to believe that all outrages on women ought to be punished by the severest whippings.... Dastardly offences against the weak and the weaker s.e.x eminently call for this punishment; and in such offences may be included the seduction of a woman." That offences against the body should be visited by punishment _on_ the body is beyond all doubt just. Had we been in the past, or were we at the present moment, as eager as we ought to be for defence, for justice, to be given to the citizeness as equally as to the citizen, there would not be so many wrongs done to the weaker s.e.x as now is the case in England. Newman strongly condemns long sentences and transportation, not so much on account of the prisoner, (though for him the long term of "doing time" with other criminals exercises in most cases a distinct low moral tone upon himself) as on account of his wife and family, if he is married. These people are left without news of him, and without their legal means of subsistence during his absence. His wife often indeed, practically becomes a pauper.

"It is vain to talk of the evil of 'degrading' a criminal by flogging him, if we degrade him by penal labour, subjecting him to a very ignominious and tedious slavery. It is vain to say that whipping demoralizes, until we have a system of effective and severe punishment, clearly free from this danger.... A felon destined to long penal servitude cannot fulfil a father's duties, and no one is so weak as to imagine that his commands concerning his children deserve respect.

Legislation must deliberately study this problem, not wink at it."

[Footnote: _Corporal Punishments and Penal Reformation_.]

Perhaps when it does, something more stringent will be determined on concerning our regulations as regards the marriage of criminals: those with insanity or inherited disease strongly marked on their family records; and those who have shown the tendency to the latter in their own persons.

CHAPTER XIII

SOME LEGISLATIVE REFORMS SUGGESTED BY LECTURE AND ARTICLE

Fifty years ago Newman was cutting and polishing his diamond scheme of legislative decentralization till its facets flashed to the lighted intellects of the world a thousand messages--a thousand clear-cut suggestions for the welfare of his country and the betterment of its legislation, as he firmly believed. He was never tired of urging it on the notice of his fellow men, never tired of pleading for it as a solution of many social difficulties, as a setting of many dislocations of our local systems. Perhaps there was no more earnest apostle of decentralization than was Francis Newman. But at the same time, to be fair to him, it should be said that, first, he threw light upon the old paths, and, secondly, showed where modern obstructions lay which seemed to him to hinder true progress. At all costs the fact must be kept well in view, he believed, that the paths were made for the men, not the men for the paths --a fact which is not always so well remembered as it should be to-day.

Fifty years ago he published an article in _Fraser's Magazine_ on "Functions of an Upper House of Parliament." Eight years later he gave a brilliant lecture [Footnote: In the Athenaeum, Manchester.] on "Reorganizations of English Inst.i.tutions." In this last he touched only briefly upon the former subject because of a notice by the metaphysical railings of his lecture that he was "to keep to the path," and not speak trenchantly on the question of the Upper House, because it would not have found an appreciative audience there!

To begin, however, first upon the article which came out in 1867. He affirmed that the House of Lords does, by its veto, exercise a very powerful, though unseen, influence over the administration of the country.

He insisted on the urgent need of its becoming "a real, supreme, judicial court for maintaining the rights of the princes of India, and an authoritative expounder of the treaties which have pa.s.sed between us and them." It will be seen why this step is called for when we recall the fact that in 1833 the Home Government signed a treaty in which it was definitely agreed that the professions in India should be open to the natives--a promise which has never been kept.

Newman goes on to say, "Until India can have its own Parliament, it needs to find in England such protection as only our own Upper House can give it." He places before us the possibility of economizing the time--to-day so terribly overcrowded--of the House of Commons by letting domestic legislation, "which is in no immediate relation to executive necessities,"

proceed from the Upper House. That in that House it could be so adapted and so regulated, that when it came back finally to the House of Commons no otherwise inevitable delay need occur. Thus "the Commons would have for their chief business Bills connected with immediate administrative exigencies, _and private Bills would be cast upon local legislatures_" (a measure for which he was, as we know, constantly pleading). He reminds us that the Roman executive was successful and prompt in the methods at which they aimed, _because_ "the Senate guided and controlled it, _prescribed the policy and required the execution_."

In his "Reorganization of English Inst.i.tutions" he insists very strongly on the great need of such a scheme of decentralization as the formation of Provincial Chambers--in other words, the dividing the country into local government centres which should send delegates, chosen delegates of tried men, "virtually its amba.s.sadors to Parliament, with instructions and a proper salary, for a three years' term; but reserving the power to recall any delegate earlier by a two-thirds vote, and to replace him, like an amba.s.sador, by a successor." Now, here comes in Newman's proposed drastic change--a change which, in the opinion of those of us who have seen at close focus the evils of our present system of canva.s.sing for votes, could not be condemned as a change for the worse.

For each delegate sent up to Parliament "would be elected without candidacy and without expense ... confusion and intrigue would be lessened.... There would be no convulsive interruptions of public business." Many questions very naturally rise in our minds when we fairly face this plan. Newman feels so confident, besides, that it would "settle our hara.s.sing Irish difficulties."

The "old inst.i.tutions of the shires are known only to students of ancient law," says Mr. Toulmin Smith, one of the greatest authorities of his country's old records, doc.u.ments, etc. "They have been overridden by justices of the peace, county lieutenants, and other functionaries....

From this general decay of local inst.i.tutions centralization has grown up."

From this "decay of local inst.i.tutions," Newman points to what he designates as the "Trades' Union"--the Cabinet (the "Secret Diplomacy"), which has, he declares, superseded the old Privy Council.

"Since William III became king, parliaments of Scotland and Ireland have been annihilated, and no subsidiary organs have replaced them.... Our population is four times as great as William III knew it; yet the people are more than ever divorced from the soil and cramped into town...." Now, "Parliament is too busy for domestic local reforms; it has to control the action of the whole Executive Government, Central and Local.... It has sole right to direct public taxation.... It has to control the action of the ministry towards foreign Powers.... It has a similar function towards colonies ... and the Army and the Navy.... It is responsible for all India" (population then two hundred and forty millions).... "It is the only court of appeal to Indian princes who believe themselves wronged" (by the king's representatives).... "No other authority can repeal bad laws, or enact new laws for the general public." But were we to _return_ to the "legislative courts of our shires," Newman protests, which existed before our present systems of Parliament, all the inevitable delays and congestions which now occur to prevent the dealing with and pa.s.sing of imperatively necessary reforms would be done away with _in toto_.

Long ago Lord Russell said that for any great measure a ministry needs "a popular gale to carry the ship of State over the bar." "Hence all our reforms, working against a stiff current, sail over the bar fifty or one hundred years too late."

This, then, briefly stated, was Francis Newman's plan of dealing with the acc.u.mulation of business, etc., which beset the House of Commons as matters stand at present.

The whole of Great Britain, he urged, should be divided in provincial chambers for local legislation. He proposed ten for England, four for Ireland, two for Scotland, and one for Wales.

These local powers "must be to the central like planets round a sun....

All unforeseen business would fall to the central power, which in all cases would undertake: public defence, communications with foreign Powers, princ.i.p.al highways, sh.o.r.es and harbours, Crown lands, national money and weights, and national taxes.... Our impending Church and State question will be solved in this island, with least convulsion, if local variety of sentiment be allowed free play." [Footnote: Perhaps then we should be rid of the anomaly which allows a Prime Minister, of whatever religious denomination, to choose Bishops for the Anglican Church.] Newman proceeds thus to describe further his suggestions with regard to the working of the provincial courts: "Each electoral district to send one member to the Provincial Chamber; household franchise, of course, would be the rule, and I trust women householders would not be arbitrarily excluded." They would deal directly, and on the spot, with local pauperism in the provincial courts. That, in itself, would be one great gain. For pauperism cannot effectively be dealt with except by local legislation. Some system such as Ruskin's, with powerful local legislation, could not fail to end the trouble which is at the present moment making a tremendous drain on the pockets of the law-abiding citizen of this country, in that system of workhouses, which besides being subversive of the very idea of home-life amongst our poor, degrades the non-worker, and rankles as a lasting shame in the hearts of those whom misfortune alone has driven to that last resource of the unfortunate. Were one able to follow the example set us, among cities, by Leipsic (where the word pauperism is absolutely non- existent), we should have effectually turned the corner out of the ill- kept vagrant road into which Henry VIII first led us, when "pauperism"

began to be a sore in the midst of England's healthy body of citizens.

Now, it is a self-evident fact that "pauperism," which is a living drag on our social wheel, can _not_ be dealt with other than by rigorous local government. Cases could then be dealt with personally; the whole area would not be too gigantic for this; but, of course, it is a moral impossibility to generalize in dealing with this subject.

After all, this is not, as Francis Newman insists, a new departure in any way. He points to other countries to show that as a fact, centralization has been gradually establishing itself in England, though in other times decentralization was a very potent force in our midst, and a success.

In 1875, Newman quotes the following countries as regards their local legislatures: "Look ... at Switzerland. Environed by ambitious neighbours far superior in power, her inst.i.tutions have well stood the severe trial of time. She has her Central Diet and Ministry, vigorous enough; but also in her several cantons she has local legislatures, each with well-trained soldiers, simply because every man is bound to learn the use of arms, as Englishmen used to be; therefore they need no standing army.... Italy also has local legislatures which belonged to independent States--Sicily, Naples, Piedmont, Tuscany, and so on--besides her National Parliament....

In Hungary notoriously the national spirit has been maintained for three centuries and a half ... solely by the independent energy of the local inst.i.tutions.... The seven united provinces of Holland similarly prove the vitality of freedom and good order when free local power is combined with a strong centre.... And on a far greater scale we have... an ill.u.s.trious example in the United States--a mighty monarchy and a mighty republic....

The American Union started in that advanced stage. It is a cl.u.s.ter of some thirty-seven States, each with its own legislature, for all which, and for the outlying territories, the Federal Parliament also legislates. Contrast their condition with ours. Only of late has their population outrun ours.

They have thirty-eight legislative systems: we have one only. Surely our system is a barbarous simplicity. France ... goes beyond us. Nay, our Indian centralization is worse still. No virtue, no wisdom in rulers can make up when the defect of organs lays on them enormous duties."

Finally, Newman urges for provincial chambers that they should be on the "scale of petty kingdoms," and not of mere town populations. "All parts and ranks of the local community are then forced to take interest in local concerns. Each province becomes a normal school for Parliament, and a ladder by which all high talent of poor men may rise."

SHOULD NOT THE CONSENT OF THE NATION BE OBTAINED BEFORE MAKING WAR?

This was a question constantly in Newman's mind. That, and the answer.

Everyone is doubtless aware that he wrote a very great deal upon the subject, and spoke a great deal also. In the third volume of the _Miscellanies_ he has four or five articles on this great question. The first was printed in 1859, the second in 1860, the third 1871, and the fourth 1877. Then in "Europe of the Near Future" (1871) he treats it at greater scope, chiefly in regard to the Franco-German War. In "Deliberations before War" (1859) Newman takes the two points of view from which the question of war is as a rule regarded--the Moral and the International. The first considers if a war is a just one or no, and considers the prosecutor of an unjust war as neither more nor less than a robber. The International (or second) "looks only to the ostensible marks which make a war 'lawful'--that is to say, 'regular.'" As Newman very rightly says, however, there is a third point of view, which he calls the "National." I shall quote his words regarding this third view. "Inasmuch as the whole nation is implicated in a war, when once it is undertaken-- inasmuch as we all have the same national disgrace if it is unjust, the same suffering if it is tedious, the same loss if it is expensive--it is an obvious principle of justice ... that every side of the nation should be heard to plead against it by its legitimate representatives."

I cannot forbear saying that at the present moment of writing this last is impossible, for those who often suffer most from a war--at any rate longest--are the women, and there is no legitimate representation for this large body of the community. Thus, even if the men of the nation could "plead against" a war, the women would have no voice.

Newman urges that there are many among us who firmly believe that a time is coming when no destructive weapons will be made, and "universal peace shall reign." He believes himself, he says, that "a time will come when men will look back in wonder and pity on our present barbarism, a time at which to begin a war--unless previously justified by the verdict of an impartial tribunal, bound in honour to overlook what is partially expedient to their own nation or party--will be esteemed a high and dreadful crime." These are strong words, but they are not too strong, for, looked at by any thoughtful man or woman, war is an anomaly. It proves nothing by reason; it simply acts by brute force, and by sheer superior strength the victor, at the sword's point, drives defeat down the throat of the defeated. But the arbitrary destruction of thousands of men on each side who slay each other at the word of command (often for no reason that concerns their own welfare, but only on account of some political quarrel), is, from the point of view of civilization, of morality, of humanity, without reasonable defence. It throws civilization, land development, education back incalculably. Indeed, when one regards the matter _au fond_, one sees that nothing could hinder the _true_ civilization, the _true_ humanity, more than does war. It _is_ barbaric; there is no other word for it. It _is_ the great flaw that runs throughout the whole garment of humanity.

Newman reminds us that it is only within very recent years "that the atrocious system of paying _head money_ to soldiers and sailors for the numbers they kill, was abolished by us."

John Stuart Mill very rightly said "that our force ought to be as strong as possible for defence and as weak as might be for offence," only that it is so very difficult sometimes to tell which is which.

In the _Ethics of War_, Newman argues that "there is nothing more fundamental to civilized warfare than that no war shall be commenced without a previous statement of grievances, and demand of redress--a demand made to the Sovereign himself; and that _only after_ he has refused redress, and when in consequence war has been solemnly declared, with its motives and aim, shall hostilities be begun. In dealing with great Powers we anxiously observe these forms.... But it is our Asiatic wars which have brought out the formidable fact that the Cabinets claim to discard the authority of Parliament altogether.... There is no more fundamental principle of freedom ... than that no nation shall be dragged into a war by its executive, against its will and judgment.... Nay, if even a majority of every cla.s.s in the nation desired war, yet they have no right to enter into it without first hearing what the minority has to say on the other side. This is the essential meaning of deliberative inst.i.tutions."

Mr. Toulmin Smith, whose weighty words bring to bear on the subject the witness of an England of medieval days, says that in the fourteenth century it was a positive rule that "_consent_ of the Great Council, and afterwards _of the Parliament_, _was necessary_ to a war or to a treaty."

In his _Parliamentary Remembrances_ he gives many precedents, both from the histories of England and Scotland, showing that no peace was made, no war was made, without Parliament being summoned. Henry V, he says, would not enter "matters of foreign embroilment" (war with France, for instance) without the consent of Parliament; and when the French king wished for peace, Henry replied that peace needed to "be allowed, accepted, and approved by the three Estates of each kingdom." The same process was gone through with regard to the French king and his Estates of France. Newman quotes Rome, whose citizens went through a long formality before making any war, the King and Senate "consulting the College of Heralds for erudite instructions as to minute ceremonies. For perhaps four centuries the discipline of the army was admirable; its decline began from the day when a general (Gen. Manlius) first took upon himself to make war at his own judgment, trusting to obtain a bill of indemnity."

Livy tries to force on us the belief that the Romans were never aggressive; that they only conquered the world in self-defence. And it is true that here would come in difficulties in the way of carrying out John Stuart Mill's _obiter dictum_ as regards wars of defence and of offence, for many plausible reasons have been constantly brought forward for aggressive wars: to take one only, it is not always easy to say what is "defence" and what "offence." One may see some other country a.s.suming a warlike att.i.tude towards ourselves, and it might very possibly be allowed to come within the bounds of the word "defence" if we were prepared to strike the initial blow before our enemy--to all intents and purposes, save for the actual throwing of the glove--were fully prepared as to armaments, etc. It is well known how earnestly Richard Cobden, the Manchester Apostle of Free Trade, was one of the most prominent champions of peace; he who, for championing the cause of the Abolition of corn duties for the sake of his poorer countrymen, when he and others pushed forward the "Anti-Corn Law League" (which was pa.s.sed in 1846), lost all his own private funds, and his business was ruined, simply because his time was _all_ given not to his own affairs, but to the service of his country. Mr. Cobden, as Newman reminds us, "was entirely convinced that European wars could be stopped by a general agreement to abide by arbitration." Indeed, he prevailed on the Ministers of his day so far that, when the Russian War ended in 1856, "Lord Clarendon, in the name of England, initiated some important clauses, of which one avowed that the Powers who signed the treaty would never thenceforward undertake war without first attempting to stay and supersede it by arbitration. England, France, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey all signed this treaty, yet in a very few years the solemn promise proved itself to be mere wind." He goes on say, "When pa.s.sions are at work, superior might, not unarmed arbitration, is needed to control them."

Cobden always declared that no one need fear Russia's strength because of her climate, her vast wildernesses, her frozen seas, her great unwieldiness. It is seen, therefore, that the sort of arbitration planned out by Cobden did not work. It must, according to Newman, be an armed one.

It is clear that it is not possible to agree _in toto_ with the Quaker method of opposing war, and the most thoughtful Quakers will hardly urge it perhaps to-day. War, for defence of one's country, is a present necessity. What, then, are Francis Newman's proposed remedies? For in the beginning of this chapter I stated that he, very definitely, had his answer to the great question as regards the nation: its veto or agreement, whenever war is proposed. First of all, before giving these however, let us look for a moment at the plan pursued in such case in modern England.

This plan he always set himself against with all the force of personal conviction: "It is the singular disgrace of modern England to have allowed the solemn responsibility of war to be tampered with by the arbitrary judgment of executive officers: ... this same nation permits war to be made; lives by the twenty thousand or fifty thousand to be sacrificed ...

at the secret advice of a Cabinet, _all of one party, acting collectively for party objects_, no one outside knowing how each has voted.... The orders to make or not to make war went out direct from the Board of Control--that is, really from the Ministry in Downing Street. Two, or even one resolute man had power to make war without check.... If Earl Grey is right, and a Cabinet must be a _party_, this is a decisive, irrefragable reason why a Cabinet must _never_ exercise the function of deciding on Peace or War. The recent [Footnote: He is writing in 1859.] overthrow of the East India Company has swept away all the shams which have hidden from England that the Ministry in Downing Street worked the Indian puppet....

Parliament should claim that public debate shall precede all voluntary hostilities, small or great ... to protest in the most solemn way that henceforth no blow in war shall be struck until the voice of Parliament has permitted and commanded it."

Then, in Newman's article "On the War Power," he goes on to say: "In regard to the difficulties as regards arbitration, and also as regards the voice of the people being made a _sine qua non_, whenever a proposal for war emanates from the powers that be: When an evil is undeniable, serious, unjust in principle ... (referring to secret diplomacy), a remedy must exist. Where there is a will there is a way: nay, many ways."

Then he declares that these (following) measures have commended themselves to him. The full discussion in Parliament by representatives of the people; the determination that nothing shall be settled by secret diplomacy as regards war until the whole matter has been thoroughly threshed out. In more than a few ways, _Vox populi, vox Dei_ is still true.