The American Cecil Chesterton Society

Chesterton in Space

2008-10-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

According to an article that appeared in the Washington Post on May 14, 1973, Dr. Joseph P. Kerwin brought Cecil Chesterton's History of the United States and a collection of Hilaire Belloc's poetry with him during the Skylab 2 mission, which lasted from May 25 to June 22, 1973.

Reason Magazine Mentions the Cecil Chesterton Society

2008-09-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

Today, I attended the much anticipated press conference held by Ron Paul at the National Press Club. To be clear, I am a supporter of Ron Paul. Its my belief that he is a congenial and intelligent man - an opinion confirmed by an encounter I had with him after the press conference.

It may be known by the readers of this blog that Dr. Paul authored the Foreword to Cecil Chesterton's and Belloc's book The Party System for the edition published by the notorious IHS Press. It also may be known by anyone who read the "End-Notes" of that book that some odd comments were made regarding the "true" instigators of the Boer War and the economist David Ricardo. The latter note reads that: "(The Anti-Corn Law League's) arguments were founded on the theories of the Jewish economist, David Ricardo." page 155 note 21

John Sharpe - chairman of IHS Press - related to me in an email that the discussed end-notes were written by IHS Press' in-house editors. It seems calling Ricardo Jewish is gratuitous and inappropriate as Ricardo renounced Judaism and married a Quaker and that the use of the description edges on the pejorative as the discussion of the Corn Laws by the "IHS Press in-house editors" is anti-capitalistic.

Being a supporter of Dr. Paul, I was curious if he had any knowledge of the described "notes." Thus, capitalizing on the occasion, I decided to pose a question to the Congressman. The scene was described by Reason Magazine's David Weigel - whom I met at the press conference - in the following manner:

Max Anthony, the head of the Cecil Chesterton Society, confronted Paul on why he'd written the introduction to a Chesterton anthology that included anti-Semitic footnotes and jokes about Jews. "The best economists are Jewish!" Paul laughed. "Ricardo was Jewish! Von Mises was Jewish!" Anthony pressed the issue. "I'm not familiar with this," Paul said. "I'm not going to get caught in that trap."
http://reason.com/blog/show/128719.html

Far from being "confrontational" I thought my discussion with Dr. Paul was completely civil - why would I want to be rude and "confront" a man for whom I have much admiration and respect? In addition, far from pressing the point to an answer that I felt was totally sufficient, I merely continued the discussion, which, though, did end with Congressman Paul saying he did not want to be caught in the trap of - I presume - guilt by unintentional association.

Was I trying to trap Congressman Paul? Of course not. Did I want to know if there had been any discussion between Congressman Paul and IHS Press regarding the end-notes? Certainly. In fact, that fear of being caught in a guilt by association was the impetus for my wanting to bring the issue of IHS Press' language to Dr. Paul's attention. I assume I am not the only person who purchased The Party System and that I am not the only person who has perused the book's end-notes.

The Reason Magazine article does not discuss the rest of my discussion with Congressman Paul. In a hallway of the National Press Club, I approached Dr. Paul and told him I am a supporter of his and that I was just trying to bring the questionable "end-notes" his attention so that he would not be linked unfairly to the sad language IHS Press chooses to use.

Dr. Paul replied with thanks for "tipping him off", hands were shook and the event - for me - ended on a very positive note. Not quite as truculent an exchange as the Reason Magazine article could cause someone to believe.

Cecil Chesterton's Works on the Web

2008-07-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

Two great internet resources for Cecil Chesterton's works worth advertising are "Archive.org" and Brown University's "Modernist Journals Project." The former provides digitized copies of every book by Chesterton except for "Party and People" as well as many of GKC's writings. The Modernist Journals Project hosts every issue of "The New Age" magazine (a publication to which Cecil Chesterton contributed from 1907 until he left socialism and became assistant editor of Belloc's Eye-Witness newspaper in 1911.)

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=cecil%20chesterton

http://dl.lib.brown.edu:8082/exist/mjp/mjp_new_search.xq?term=chesterton%2C+cecil&field=creator

Gladstonian Ghosts

2008-07-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday's post, "Gladstonian Ghosts - Some Materials and a Possibility", all chapters of Cecil Chesterton's first book "Gladstonian Ghosts" are available on this blog. Soon, I will begin posting Chesterton's 1914 polemic "The Prussian Hath Said in His Heart." Although many scholars, such as Father Brocard Sewell, have dismissed this work as "anti-German propaganda", the arguments employed by Chesterton against Prussia serve as evidence of Chesterton's philosophic maturing from a Socialist who claimed "there are no natural rights of man" (Gladstonian Ghosts - Social Reconstruction) to a Catholic whose introductory argument against Prussia relies on an acceptance of both natural rights and natural law.

Gladstonian Ghosts - Some Materials and a Possibility

2008-07-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

Successive Reform Acts have so widened the basis of the franchise in this country that the working man has now the issue of the great majority of elections in his hands. By the working man I here mean the manual labourer who earns weekly wages; the definition is not scientific, but it is I think effectively descriptive. It is difficult to define a working man, but people know him when they see him, as Mr. Morley said of a Jingo. The manual labourer then is master of the situation; and it becomes a matter of primary importance for any party which wishes for a parliamentary majority to consider what manner of man he is, and what kind of policy is likely to receive his favour.

Now I have no sympathy at all with the contemptuous tone adopted by most Socialists towards the working man. This scorn of the average artisan or labourer may be regarded as the connecting bond between all schools of modern Socialism in this country, the one sentiment common to Mr. Hyndman and to Mr. Bernard Shaw. Were that scorn just, its expression would be imprudent; for John Smith of Oldham, however stupid he may be, is, as Mr. Blatchford has remarked "very numerous," and in a country ruled by the counting of heads it would be good policy to treat him with respect and good humour. But it is not just. As a matter of fact, the working man is by no means the slavish imbecile that some Socialists seem to think him. The fact that he has built up with iron resolution, in the face of stupendous difficulties, and at the cost of terrible sacrifices, the Trade Union system of this country perhaps the noblest monument of the great qualities of the British character that the century has seen might well protect him from the sarcasms of wealthy idealists. If he is not a Socialist, is that altogether his fault? Or is it by any chance partly ours?

The British workman is not, as I have said, by any means a fool. He does not enjoy being sweated; he is not in love with long hours and low wages; he does not clamour for bad housing or dear transit. On the contrary, when sufficiently skilled and educated to be capable of effective organisation, he is a keen trade unionist, ready to stand up promptly and with conspicuous success for the rights and interests of his class; and he has shown himself able and willing to support legislation for his own benefit and that of his fellows. The Socialists have in him excellent raw material of which a most effective fighting force could be made. How do they use him?

The first thing that a Socialist of the old school does, when brought face to face with a working class audience, is deliberately to insult it. I heard of one Socialist orator who began his address to an East End meeting with the sentence "What are you? Dogs!" I suggest that this is not the way to placate the unbeliever or to allay the suspicion with which his conservative instincts lead him to regard a new idea. Moreover it is not true. The working man knows perfectly well that he and his class are not "dogs"; and he rightly concludes that a man so profoundly ignorant of his condition is not the man to improve it. However, having collectively and individually insulted those whom he seeks to convert, the preacher launches joyously into the abysses and whirlpools of German philosophy and economics, calls his hearers "proletarians" (to their intense astonishment), tells them that they are being robbed of "surplus value," discusses abstruse matters concerning the relations between "exchange value" and "labour power," and generally leads them through mazes of foreign scientific jargon from which they eventually emerge gasping for breath. Now I submit that this is an absurd way of going to work. Not so did Cobden and his allies act, when they set out to convert the middle classes to the dogmas of Adam Smith. They had a systematic theory of economics as elaborate as that of the Marxian, but they did not pelt miscellaneous popular gatherings with its technicalities. They crystallised it into one simple, effective and intelligible phrase, "To buy in the cheapest market and to sell in the dearest." I will not disguise my personal conviction that this maxim is of and from the Devil. But (perhaps for that reason) it is lucid and unmistakeable and makes a definite and persuasive appeal to the instincts and prejudices of the commercial classes. I fear I cannot say as much for the crystallizations favoured by Socialist propagandists. "The Abolition of the Wages System" and "Production for Use and not for Profit" convey to the workman, I imagine, no clearer meaning than they convey to me.

I am aware that there has been of late in Socialist circles something of a reaction against this sort of thing, as also against the futile Marxian prophecies to the effect that "economic forces" would produce a "Crisis" which would have the effect of abolishing the capitalist system whether anyone wanted it abolished or no. But the reaction has taken an entirely wrong turn. It has resulted so far in nothing better than an outburst of, sheer sentimentalism as unacceptable to the hard conservative common-sense of the workers as the doctrinaire revolutionism that preceded it. The chief expression of this sentimentalism may be found in the repudiation of the Class War by the leaders of the I.L.P. and the substitution of vague talk about Universal Love and the Brotherhood of Man. Now here the I.L.P. leaders have got hold of quite the wrong end of the stick. The existence of the class war is a fact of common observation. A short walk down any street with your eyes open will show it to you. Indeed it is obvious that there is and must be a permanent antagonism between the buyers and sellers of labour or if our hyper-economic critics prefer it of "labour-power." And moreover this fact of the class war is a fact, which every workman (as also every capitalist) recognises in practice, if not in theory. All trade unionism is built upon his recognition of it; so is the demand for a labour party. The error of the S.D.F. did not lie here.

The Marxians were not wrong in saying that there was a class war; there is a class war. They were not wrong in saying that the worker ought to be educated in class-consciousness; they ought to be so educated for their class-consciousness is the best foundation for our propaganda. Where the Marxians were wrong in regard to the class war was in their tacit assumption that "class-consciousness" was identical with Socialism. It is not. Socialists and Trade Unionists are alike in their recognition of the class war, but they differ widely in their attitude to-wards it. The Socialist wishes so to organise society as to bring the Class War to an end; the Trade Unionist wants the war to go on, but he wants his own class to get better chances in it than they get at present. As regards practical matters the path of the two is for the present largely identical. Extended factory legislation, old age pensions, housing, the municipalisation of monopolies are desired by Socialists and Trade Unionists alike, though not entirely for the same reasons. Here and there, on Trade Union Law, on Compulsory Arbitration in industrial disputes, in some instances on Child Labour, the attitude of the two may appear different, but it only requires the better economic education of the unions to bring them into line with the Socialists on these points. Nevertheless, the distinction as well as the relation between the two must be kept constantly in mind, if the attitude of the typical manual worker towards Socialism is to be understood.

I confess that it strikes me as a little absurd that the very wing of the Socialist army which most enthusiastically defends the obviously sensible policy of forming an alliance with the Unions without asking its allies to swallow imposing Socialist formulae, should be the one to throw over the one effective link between Socialism and Trade Unionism, the recognition of the Class War. The result of this repudiation and of the high-sounding humanitarian rhetoric with which it is accompanied has been to hopelessly estrange the I.L.P. from the Trade Union movement, so that it is now hardly more influential in that direction than the S.D.F. itself. The I.L.P. does indeed to some degree enlarge its boundaries, but the type of man it now principally attracts is not the trade unionist or the labourer. The sort of person who finds the I.L.P. creed as mirrored in the utterance of Messrs. Keir Hardie and Bruce Glasier exactly to his taste is the wavering Nonconformist in process of ceasing to believe in God who is looking about for something "undenominational" to believe in. Universal Love, Brotherhood, Righteousness all that sort of thing suits him down to the ground. The phenomenon is no new one in history.

Just the same kind of sentiment underlays the political propaganda of Isaac Butt, of Vergniaud, of Sir Harry Vane. Its track is across history; its name is Girondism, and its end has always been futility and disaster. The pious Girondins were shocked at Danton's declaration "terror is the order of the day," just as the I.L.P. rhetoricians are shocked at the recognition of the Class War, because it contradicted their sentimental assumptions. But Terror was the order of the day, and it was only because Terror was the order of the day that France was saved from foreign conquerors and the Revolution became an accomplished fact.

But, if the worker really does recognise the class war and if the path of Socialism is for the present along the lines of the class war, why does the worker distrust the Socialist? I have hinted at my answer in a previous chapter, but I will take the present opportunity of elaborating it a little. When Socialists of either of the above types leave German dialect and Girondin declamation, which he does not understand and come to practical business which he does, they give the working man very little that he values and much that is profoundly distasteful to him. When for example they touch on war and foreign politics they give him, under a veil of specious rhetoric which does not convince him, the general impression that they want to see England "licked." He does not like this, and he expresses his dislike vehemently and not always very peaceably. Doubtless he often vents his anger on people whose patriotism is as real as his own, and who merely differ from him as to the merits of some particular war or expedition. But on the whole the astonishingly shrewd instincts of the workers do not mislead them. They are right in feeling that there is in the Socialist movement a strong under-current of unmistakeable anti-patriotism, a genuine hatred and contempt for England and her honour. If anyone doubts this, I do not think he has spent so much time in Socialist clubs as I have.

If all this anti-patriotic sentiment, which disgusts and repels the workers so much, were an essential part of Socialism we might have to accept our unpopularity as the inevitable penalty of our convictions and make the best of it. But, if I have not proved that it is nothing of the sort, this book has been written in vain. Anti-patriotism, anti-imperialism, anti-militarism, these are not Socialist doctrines but the faded relics of a particularly debased form of Liberalism. There is nothing in Socialism to prevent us from appealing to the passionate patriotism of the masses; there is much in it to give point to such an appeal.

The workman is a Tory by instinct and tradition. He is a Jingo a much healthier and more reputable Jingo than his brother of the stock-exchange, but still a Jingo in the most emphatic sense. I am moreover convinced that he is at heart a protectionist. He dislikes the idea of a tax on bread, especially as Mr. Chamberlain gives him no really convincing guarantee of better industrial conditions to follow; but I believe, and I note that I have the support of so irreproachable a Liberal and Free Trader as Mr. Brougham Villiers in this belief, that, if at any time during the last quarter of a century the protection of manufactures alone had been offered to the working classes, they would have accepted it with the utmost eagerness. It is noticeable that as soon as the workman goes to the Colonies he becomes an out and out Protectionist. This would hardly happen if he had imbibed the pure milk of Cobdenism with as much relish as the Liberals would have us believe.

Here then is your Tory Jingo Protectionist working man. What are you going to do with him? It is easy enough to abuse him, but he is your only possible electoral material, he is the man by whose vote you have got to establish Socialism if it is to be established at all. There are much fewer Liberals than Tories among the workers and such as there are will much less readily join you, for they represent generally the un- compromising individualist Radicalism which spread from the middle orders down through the upper ranks of the artizans during the dark days of Manchester ascendancy. It is from the Tory much more than from the Liberal worker that the Labour party gets its votes,* even now, while its still burdened with a dead weight of senseless Liberal traditions. How much greater would its expansive force become if once this burden was removed.

What deduction must we draw from these things? Surely this; that we must appeal to the working classes on a double programme of practical and immediate industrial reform at home and at the same time of imperial federation, a spirited foreign policy and adequate provision for national defence. I believe this experiment would succeed, at any rate it has never yet been effectively tried. When Mr. Bernard Shaw taunts the workers with their steady Tory voting, one feels disposed to ask him what he expects. Surely he would not have them vote Liberal? And if he replies that they should vote Socialist, one may throw down this direct challenge Would Mr. Shaw himself (the most brilliant, the most acute and the most sincere of English Socialists) vote for a good many of the Socialist and "Labour" candidates who have from time to time presented themselves before the British electorate? Would he not himself often prefer a Tory? But is there any reason to suppose that if a leader came to us with the specific talent and temperament of the demagogue (the value of which to a politician Mr. Shaw knows as well and regards as highly as I do) and made his appeal on the Fabian programme plus a vigorous and intelligent Imperialism, the people of England would refuse to return him? I think not.

If the Labour party could only be persuaded to make such an appeal it might yet redeem its mistakes and become a dominant force in politics. If not, if we go on as we have been going on in the past, if the S.D.F. goes on pelting the "class-conscious proletariat" with multi-syllabled German metaphysics, if the I.L.P. continues to give altruistic and humanitarian commonplaces to those who ask for bread, if some of the brilliant intellectuels, of middle class Socialism continue to treat the working classes as if they did not matter and could be trapped into Socialism against their will, if in a word we go on insulting and bewildering those whom we wish to convert, addressing them in all the unintelligible tongues of Babel and forcing down their throats doctrines which they detest, then we shall never lead the workers. And if we do not lead them someone else will. Yes someday we shall be faced in this country by the appearance of a man who understands the working classes and can make them follow him. All parties will look at him askance the Labour party most of all. He will be called "Jingo," "Reactionist," "Taker of Tory Gold," But he will have the people of England behind him, because he will comprehend them and believe in them, desire what they desire, feel as they feel. And if he does what such a man did once in this country, when the "Girondin" Vanes and Sydneys were babbling about "democratic ideals" as we are babbling now, if he drives our talkative and incompetent Commons from their House and establishes a popular Caesarism on the ruins of our polity, the blame will not be his. The blame will be ours. It will be ours because we, whose mission it was to lead the people could only find time to despise the people, because we could not and would not understand!

*A good illustration of this may be obtained by comparing the two by-elections which have taken place since the present parliament was elected, in North-East Lanarkshire. In both cases a typical orthodox Unionist and a typical orthodox Labourite were in the field. But the Liberal candidates were of a very different type in the two cases. In September 1901 (while the South African War was still in progress) the Liberal candidate was Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, of the "Daily Mail," an Imperialist of so pronounced a kind that all the organs of the Anti- Imperialist press and many of the Leaders of Anti-Imperialist Liberalism advised the electors to vote for the Labour candidate. This year on the other hand the Liberal candidate was a strictly orthodox Liberal who succeeded in uniting all sections of the party. I give the figures for both elections.

By-election 26/9/01.

Sir W. Rattigan (U) 5673

Mr. C. Harmsworth (L) 4769

Mr. R. Smillie (Lab) 2900

By-election 10/5/04.

Mr. Finlay (L) 5619

Mr. Touch (U) 4677

Mr. Robertson (Lab) 39&4

The noticeable thing about these figures is the enormous increase in the Labour poll. It may reasonably be supposed that the fulminations of a large section of representative Liberal opinion against Mr. Harmsworth produced some effect on the voting, and one may therefore take it that a fair number of electors, who voted for Mr. Smillie in 1901, voted for Mr. Finlay in 1904. Yet Mr. Robertson's gain is far greater than Mr. Finlay's. This can only mean that a large number of working men. who, in time of war voted for the Tory Imperialist candidate, voted for the Labour candidate in time of peace.

Gladstonian Ghosts - Social Reconstruction

2008-07-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

In previous chapters I have generally begun by criticising the Liberal policy in relation to the matter to be discussed. It would seem natural in this chapter to deal with the Liberal policy in relation to social reform. But in that case the essay would be an exceedingly short one. There is no Liberal policy in relation to social reform.

The nearest thing to a least common denominator which I can find after searching diligently the speeches of the Liberal leaders and their backers is that most of them are in favour of doing something to the "land monopoly." Exactly what they propose to do to it I cannot quite discover. "Over-throwing the land monopoly" may mean Leasehold Enfranchisement; it may mean the Taxation of Land Values; it may mean Small Holdings, Free Sale or the Nationalisation of Land. The last suggestion may be dismissed; we are certainly no more likely to get that from the Liberals than from the Tories. Small Holdings are excellent things, but the principle has been conceded, and we are as likely to get a further extension of it from the Tories as from the Liberals, in any case this policy does not touch the essence of the social question. Leasehold Enfranchisement, Free Sale, etc., are sham reforms of middle-class origin of which we now hear little. There remains the Taxation of Land Values.

The Taxation of Land Values is very popular with the Liberals just now. Whether it would be equally popular with them were they in office is perhaps a matter for legitimate speculation. It will be remembered that it was part of their programme in 1892, and is to this day faintly discernable on the newly cleaned slate of the party. As however it is re-emerging into prominence it may be well to say something in reference to it.

A good deal of confusion is inevitable concerning this particular proposal, arising from the fact that it may be regarded in two entirely different lights. It may be considered simply as one way among many others of raising revenue to meet necessary public expenditure, or it may be regarded as a practical application of the economic doctrines associated with the name of Henry George, who taught that all revenue should be raised by a single tax (or more properly rent) on the site value of land. Now Georgian economics have made practically no headway in this country; their a priori logic their reliance on abstract assumptions rather than on history and practical experiment, their rigidity and inflexibility of application, are exasperating to a people naturally impatient of metaphysics but keenly alive to immediate social needs. People who begin their economic speculations, as the Georgites generally do, by discussing what are the natural rights of man and deducing from this an ideally perfect system of taxation and government put themselves out of court with practical men. There are no natural rights of man; there is no abstractly perfect economic of political system; we are painfully struggling by means of many experiments and many failures towards something like a decently workable one.

But, though Georgism is a horse so dead that to flog it would be profitless malignity, the taxation of land values, conceived not as the only means of raising revenue, but as an additional means of doing so, is very much in favour both with some of the leaders and with the whole rank and file of the Opposition. Nor is the reason far to seek. The misery and waste produced by our present social system are so patent and terrible that a vague feeling that "something must be done" has been spreading rapidly through all classes, and even Liberals have caught the infection. Most drastic reforms however are impossible for them because such reforms would clash with the interests of the capitalists and traders who form the backbone of the party. To them therefore the proposal to tax land values comes as a special inter- position of Providence to succour them in their need. It professes to do something for the poor, exactly what they might find some difficulty in saying. But a certain amount of ill-digested Georgism can be exploited in support of their case, while at the same time a loud and definite appeal can be made to the Liberal capitalists and the Liberal bourgeoise to share in the plunder of the land-owners. Unfortunately the cock will not fight. The working classes, not believing in Georgian economics, are, because of the hardness of their hearts, supremely indifferent to the taxation of land values. Neither the ingenuity of eccentric economists nor the eloquence of Liberal capitalists can induce them to take the slightest interest in the subject. No Trades Union Congress can be persuaded to take it up; no Labour candidate will make it a prominent plank in his platform. The workers may not be expert economists, but they are not quite so easily deluded as the Liberals suppose. They have a very shrewd eye to their own interests, and are quite acute enough to know that it is the capitalist and not the landlord who is the most active and dangerous enemy of the labourer, and to perceive that the talk about "the land monopoly" is merely a clever if somewhat transparent dodge on the part of the former to divert public indignation from himself to his sleeping partner in exploitation.

I am for getting the last farthing of unearned increment wherever it can be got. But I can see no earthly reason for taxing unearned increment from land more than any other kind. What we really want is a heavily graduated income tax with a discrimination against unearned incomes. This would hit the landlord and the capitalist equally hard, and is therefore not likely to find favour with the Liberal party.

But even if the taxation of land values were as perfect a method of raising revenue for public purposes as its advocates assert, it would still be necessary to insist that no alteration in the incidence of taxation will ever solve the problem of poverty. Suppose that you have got every penny of unearned increment into the public treasury, the question then arises: What are you going to do with it? If you keep it locked up in a box, the last state of the people will be worse than the first. If it is to be of benefit to anybody this revenue must be used by the State as industrial capital. That is to say the socialisation of industry must go hand in hand with the reform of taxation.

Now what the Labour party really wants just now is two or three genuine installments of Socialism on which to concentrate its energies. A party without a programme is always an absurdity; a labour party without a programme is an absurdity passing the just limits of farce. It is futile to think that you can keep a party together much less build up a new one, with no common basis save the desire to amend trade union law, which appears to be the only demand on which the L.R.C. is united at present.

And the programme of the Labour party must, for reasons already cited, be a Socialist and not a Liberal programme. I do not mean that the whole party should call itself Socialist or should be committed to Socialism as that term is understood by the S.D.F. We have been surfeited in the past with abstract resolutions in favour of "the socialisation of all the means of production, distribution and exchange." But I do maintain that the programme must be collectivist in tendency and must have the organisation of industry by the state and the abolition of industrial parasitism as its ultimate goal. Also it must as far as possible appeal directly to the interests of the people for with all his great qualities the British workman is constitutionary defective in the capacity for seeing far before his nose, and will not readily grow enthusiastic about the soundest economic measure which does not obviously improve the position of his class. At the same time the labour party would do well to avoid too much narrowness of outlook, since there are, as we shall see, some measures which do not appear at first sight to benefit the worker directly, but which are indispensable conditions of his ultimate emancipation. Such measures should therefore be put along side of the more patently beneficial one and their connection with these as far as possible made plain to the electorate.

The greatest strides which applied Socialism has made during the last twenty years have been made in connection with the municipalities. The best proof that can be given of the immense and salutary growth of municipal activity in recent years is to be found in the angry panic which this growth has produced among the financial exploiters of public needs. The latter, having at their back boundless wealth and influence, a powerful and lavishly endowed organisation, a vast army of lecturers and pamphleteers, and the greatest and most weighty of British newspapers, opened a year or so ago a fierce campaign against what they called "Municipal Socialism." Never did so potent an army suffer so humiliating a reverse. On the progress of municipal trading the attack made no impression whatsoever. The public at large saw through the game and gave the public-spirited authorities their generous and energetic support. The municipal movement has received no check; it has gone on more triumphantly than ever. Energetic local bodies have pushed their activities further and taken the satisfaction of public needs more and more out of the hands of private speculators, vesting it in those of responsible public officials. But the opponents of municipalism are still active, clever and unscrupulous; and we cannot afford to leave the public interest at any disadvantage in dealing with them. It is unquestionably at such a disadvantage at present, partly on account of the inconveniently restricted boundaries of local areas, partly because of the anti-progressive bias of the Local Government Board, and partly because of the state of the law in regard to the powers of local authorities. The first point has been discussed so excellently by Mr. H. G. Wells and others that I need do no more than allude to it here; with the second I shall deal later. But the third is of special importance.

In the present state of the law a private individual or a collection of private individuals may do anything which the law does not expressly forbid; but a municipality or local body of any kind may only do what the law expressly permits. Thus for instance the London County Council has by law the power to run trams, but when it attempted to run an omnibus line to and from its tram terminus, the private omnibus companies successfully invoked the law against it. This is absurd; it is intolerable that a public authority should not be permitted to supply what its constituents definitely demand with- out going to a largely indifferent and largely hostile parliament for permission to do so. Broadly speaking County and Borough Councils at any rate should have power to do anything that the nation through the national legislature does not definitely prohibit. It would be well for the Labour party in Parliament to demand a free hand for progressive municipalities such as can only be secured by legislation on these lines. The Housing Question connects itself closely with this matter, for its only possible solution will be found to be along the lines of municipal activity. But, in addition to a free hand for municipalities to build houses when and where they like, it would be well to consider whether in the face of the present house famine it is wise to raise our local revenues by what is in effect a heavy tax on houses. The payment of say half the rates on well-built and sanitary working-class dwellings out of the proceeds of government grants would give a much needed impetus to both municipal and private enterprise in this direction.

Meanwhile the Labour men on municipal bodies should make the fullest use of such powers as they already possess and push forward vigorously with their campaign of municipal socialism in such a manner that the workman may perceive its direct benefits. His Housing should be visibly cheaper and better, his trams visibly quicker, less expensive and more comfortable, his gas and water supply visibly improved on account of their transfer to a public body. At the same time of course the labour employed by the municipality in conducting these industries should receive what we may call (to borrow a phrase from diplomacy) "most favoured employe" treatment. It may be remarked that it is not desirable that municipal undertakings should aim at large profits. Theoretically this is indefensible for it means that the consumer pays more than his fair share of the rates; practically it is undesirable, since it tends to obscure the real benefits of municipal enterprise.

In national affairs the progress of definite socialism cannot perhaps be so rapid. But the Labour party might well press for the nationalisation of mines, especially of coal fields (already demanded by the Trade Union Congress), the state regulation and ultimate nationalisation of railways, canals and other means of transit, and should insist on government departments doing their own work wherever possible and paying not less than the standard rate of wages.*

But legislation of this kind has only an indirect effect upon the real problem that confronts the people of this country, the people of all countries which have developed along the lines of industrial civilisation. With the appalling evidences of physical degeneration confronting us, we cannot, whether we are Socialists or Labourites or only decently humane and patriotic Englishmen, do without a social policy. In the last resort, all progress, all empire, all efficiency depends upon the kind of race we breed. If we are breeding the people badly neither the most perfect constitution nor the most skilful diplomacy will save us from shipwreck.

What are we to do with the great masses of unskilled, unorganised labour in our big towns? That is the question which intelligent thinkers are now asking themselves; and, as Carlyle said "England will answer it, or on the whole England will perish." We have drained our country side and destroyed our agriculture to a great extent deliberately in order to obtain this vast city proletariat. Its condition is appalling; it is starved at school, over-worked when it is just growing into manhood, and afterwards drifts into the ghastly back-waters of our towns, now sweated, now unemployed, always an open sore, a contamination, a menace to our national life. That is what fifty years of applied Liberalism have made of about a third of the English people.

Well, the first thing we must do is to try to save the next generation if we cannot save this one. The child at any rate must be protected. One of the first and most urgent of the social re- forms needed is the feeding of children in public elementary schools. To teach unfed or underfed children is a sheer piece of profitless brutality. Compulsory and free feeding is as necessary to us as compulsory and free teaching more necessary in fact for more could in the long run be made of an ignorant people that was fit and healthy physically than of a race of white-faced cripples, whom society had crammed with book- learning to satisfy its theories as barbarously as it crams geese with food to satisfy its palate We are entitled therefore to demand the free feeding of all children attending Public Elementary Schools. Of course all sorts of less drastic proposals will be made proposals for feeding destitute children only, or for making a charge, or for recovering the cost of the meals from the parents. Some of these proposals will be better than others, and we must take the best we can get. But none of them will solve the problem. Nor will the problem be solved by any merely permissive legislation, giving local authorities the power to feed children without compelling them to use it. A local authority has no more right to underfeed its children than a parent has. All local authorities must be held responsible for the proper feeding of school children with their areas of administration, as they are already held responsible for their proper instruction.

At the same time another policy might be adopted the results of which would indirectly be of perhaps still greater value. I suggest that while these experiments are proceeding there should be a periodical physical examination of all the children in the elementary schools by duly authorised medical officers. This would be a good test of the success of the new feeding policy and might form the basis for an extension of the principle of grants in aid to encourage those municipalities which were most zealous in looking after the physical well-being of the children. But its usefulness would not end there; it would provide us with what we most want a really reliable collection of socialogical data upon which future reforms could be based.

But when the child leaves school the need of protection by no means ceases. Our factory code already recognises that the setting of children to hard commercial work before their minds and bodies have had time to develope is as wasteful (from a national point of view) as it is inhuman. But the application of the principle is still half-hearted. Children over eleven can in some parts of the Kingdom be employed in factories provided that they put in one school attendance per day; the age at which even this provision ceases to operate is fourteen, after which the children are held to become "young persons," and may work sixty hours or more per week. This is clearly very little security for the physical and moral development of the race. No child should, under any circumstances whatever, be allowed to work for wages until he or she is say fourteen. From fourteen to twenty the "half-time" arrangement might be made to apply, and, as has already been suggested, we could use the time so gained in order to give the young people effective technical, and, in their latter years, also military training, thereby immensely improving their physique and at the same time forming a national reserve of almost invincible strength.

But after all most social problems come back in the end to the wages problem. If the workers received better wages many of the questions which now perplex us would solve themselves. And here we are brought directly to what Mr. Sidney Webb has called "the policy of the National Minimum." The principle of the national minimum has been long ago embodied in legislation, and is in reality the root idea of factory acts, public health acts, restrictions on over-crowding and most other social reforms of the last century. But its possibilities are by no means exhausted. We must develop it further along the same lines until it gives us what we most want, a statutary minimum wage for labour. This has been partially established in a few of the most prosperous of our staple industries by the development of Trade Unionism. Its much needed application to the unskilled trades where the rankest sweating abounds can only be made possible by the exertion of state authority. To those who are soaked in the Liberal tradition of "free contract" of course the legal minimum wage will seem a piece of odious tyranny, but there is, as it seems to me, no essential difference between the fixing of maximum hours by law and the fixing of minimum wages. It is at least as important to the community that its citizens should not be underpaid as that they should not be overworked.

The Trade Unions to which we owe nearly all that betterment of the condition of the workers which Liberals absurdly attribute to Free Trade, cannot possibly be allowed to remain in the impossible position in which recent legal decisions have placed them. But that is no reason for agitating for what is called the status quo ante, which is neither practicable nor desirable. The sound demand is that the law should be made clear; that it should put single employees and combinations of workmen on an equal footing; that legal disabilities of Trade Unions should be removed; and that the liability of Trade Unions should be definitely confined to those authorised acts of its servants or agents for which a corporate body may fairly be held responsible. This on the face of it is reasonable, and should be applicable to employers' associations also, so that when the time comes for the enactment of a Compulsory Arbitration Law (as in Australia) that is when the trade unionists themselves recognise the desirability of such a measure, the machinery for its execution will be available.

Then there is the perennial and apparently impenetrable problem of the Unemployed. This is one of the problems which in all probability cannot be finally solved except by a complete reorganization of society. But, wisely handled, it can be palliated and reduced to more manageable proportions. In discussing this question a distinction must always be made between the temporary unemployment to which all workmen are liable, and the permanent or chronic unemployment of the great masses of the unfit which our social system is always throwing off. These poor wretches are no more to be blamed for their idleness and worthlessness (from the social standpoint) than the rich shareholder is to be blamed for his. But their presence unquestionably complicates the problem and their treatment must inevitably be different. The first thing to do is to get at the facts. For this purpose there should be a Labour Bureau in connection with every considerable local authority which should keep a record of the state of the labour market from time to time. These bureaus should be in constant communication with a Department of Labour at Westminster, which is one of the most pressing needs of the hour. As to relief works, Mr. Long's farm colonies are good so far as they go; schemes for re-afforestation and the reclamation of fore-shores are perhaps even better. But it is well to keep in mind that the great aim of all social reformers should be to eliminate the "unemployable" class altogether. Mr. Webb's "national minimum" policy if carried out in all its branches would practically do this. The question of employment is closely connected with the whole question of our Poor Law, which badly wants re-modelling. Such a process should include the abolition of the Poor Law Guardians (the last relic of the ad hoc principle and a far more indefensible one than the School Boards) and the transfer of their powers to the local authority best fitted to deal with them, probably the County and Borough Councils. It should also of course include the establishment of universal Old Age Pensions, a measure whose popularity is as manifest as its justice, as was proved in 1895, when it contributed enormously to swell the Tory majority. The fact is that our present Poor Law was the first product of middle class Liberalism, flushed with its stupendous victory of 1832. It is founded unmistakeably on the principles of that creed, which, believing in the eternal justice of "economic harmonies," regarded the fact of a poor man being out of work as convincing proof of his worthlessness and criminality. It is as impossible for us, as the old Poor Law was for them.

Less obvious but not less certain is the connection between all these problems and the decline of our agriculture. It is the decline of agriculture which has driven into the towns the masses of unskilled labour with which we have to deal. Indeed the Liberals foresaw and deliberately planned this, when, first by the Poor Law and afterwards by the Repeal of the Corn Laws, they drove labour off the land in order to obtain it cheaply in the great industrial centres. And that is how the situation has worked out, so that it is important, no less in the interest of the town proletariat than in that of the country, that we should re-organise the first and most necessary of our staple industries. The idea apparently entertained in some Liberal circles that this can be done by the taxation of land values is, as Mr. Brougham Villiers has pointed out in "The Opportunity of Liberalism" (not altogether I should suppose to the gratification of his Liberal friends), on the face of it absurd. The end at which we are aiming is not that the state should own the ground rents but that it should own the land and the capital used to develop it, and it is to- wards this end that our policy should be directed. To this end we want an energetic system of state aid to farmers such as that already inaugurated by Sir Horace Plunkett and others in Ireland. We want loans to farmers on state security and experiments in cooperative farming under state supervision and with state encouragement; we want increased powers for local authorities in rural districts to buy and develop land; above all we want light railways, cheap and rapid transit, an agricultural parcels post (as proposed by Mr. Rider Haggard); and finally we want an end put to the monstrous system whereby Railway Companies charge higher rates to British than to foreign producers. When this policy has been fairly tried we shall see whether we also want a protective tariff. We do not want a tariff which will merely raise the landlord's rent, but, as I have already pointed out, Socialists have no theoretic bias against such a tariff if it can be shown to be necessary to the public interest.

But there is one question to which Socialists ought to devote a great deal more attention than they show any signs of devoting at present. Lord Randolph Churchill, the ablest and most far-sighted of modern party leaders, saw its importance twenty years ago, and put it in the fore-front of his programme. That question is the reform of government departments. Until this is honestly faced and dealt with, the Individualist will always have a powerful controversial weapon against Socialist propaganda. When the Socialist demands that the state shall undertake more duties, his opponent has only to point to the duties it has already undertaken and ask if he wants any more duties performed like that! A national system of transit run as the War Office is run would hardly be an unqualified blessing and would probably produce a reaction of the most damaging kind. The only answer is to reform the government departments and make them workmanlike and efficient bodies. Until this is done we shall be checked at every point every time we want a measure involving state ownership carried. Moreover we shall find it impossible to give effect to our policy of state regulation. The War Office has on the whole been most unfairly treated in being gibbetted as the supreme type of red tape and inefficiency. In neither respect is it really worse than most other branches of our administration not so bad for example as the Local Government Board, which is so hopelessly understaffed and so miserably ineffective that it is obliged from mere instinct of self-preservation to oppose every forward movement in municipal politics lest it should be over- burdened still further. It matters little who is its representative in the Cabinet. It is the Board itself and not its President for the time being that obstructs progress. Yet an efficient Local Government Board, encouraging progressive local bodies and harrying up backward ones, is an essential part of the "national minimum" policy. From every point of view therefore it is essential that our departments of state should be put on a new and better footing. A businesslike Home Office and a businesslike Local Government Board would do more for social reform than many acts of Parliament.

* The Labour Party might also take up the question of the development of Crown Lands (especially those containing minerals), to which Mr. Sheridan Jones has lately been drawing public attention.

Gladstonian Ghosts - "Retrenchment and Reform"

2008-07-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

Who could have believed five years ago that we should ever have heard again, from any quarter more deserving of notice than the foolish and impotent Cobden Club, the almost forgotten cry of "Peace, Retrenchment and Reform" That it has become once more the rallying cry of the whole Liberal party is significant, as nothing else could be, of the extent to which that party has moved backwards during the last decade or so. So far from the Liberal party having been "permeated" with Socialism since 1885, everything that has happened since then has tended to weaken the progressive collectivist element in its ranks and to strengthen the reactionary individualist element. We bear nothing now of the well-meant if somewhat amateurish attempts at social reform which were popular with the followers of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain twenty years ago, nothing of "ransom" or of "three acres and a cow." As little do we hear or see of the Collectivist-Radical ideals of the early nineties, of which the Star and the old Daily Chronicle were once such vigorous exponents. Not only do the leaders of Liberalism care for none of these things, but those who professed such enthusiasm for them speak of them less and less. Mr. Massingham now-a-days appears to have eyes and ears for nothing but the diabolical wickedness of Imperialism. Dr. Clifford, once the rising hope of collectivist Dissent, is now too busy promoting sectarian anarchism to pay any perceptible attention to the "condition-of-the-people" question. It used at one time to be said that Mr. Gladstone's stupendous authority made it difficult for the party to become definitely Collectivist while he led it; but when he retired the new era was to begin. Well, Mr. Gladstone is dead; but where is the new era? Mr. Gladstone's place has been taken by men who have inherited all his obsolete prejudices only lacking his abilities; the "left wing" of the Liberal party on which so many hopes were built is weaker and less disposed to a forward movement than ever. The consequence is that since 1895 we have seen nothing but Ghosts ghosts of dead things which everyone thought to have been nicely nailed down and buried long ago. The South African War raised the ghost of Gladstone with his anti- imperial bias and his narrow nationalist philosophy. Then the Education controversy brought up the ghost of Miall with all the Dissidence of Dissent and all the Protestantism of the Protestant Religion. Lastly with the Fiscal Question has come to light the yet older and mouldier ghost of Cobden from whose shadowy lips issue the once famous formula "Peace, Retrenchment and Reform."

Since this dilapidated Manchester sign-post has now become the meeting point of all sections of the Liberal party, Radical and Whig, Imperialist and Little Englander, and since some of the leaders of Labour and even (strange to say) some of the Socialists are taking up their places in the shadow, it becomes imperative to ask what meaning exactly the words are intended to convey. With "Peace" I have dealt fully already, and have endeavoured to define the Socialist attitude towards it. But "Retrenchment and Reform" demand further examination.

No surer proof of the utter emptiness of what is called "Liberal Imperialism" can be advanced than the manner in which its leaders have joined in the demand for retrenchment. I can understand the position of those who manfully opposed the South African War; I can understand the position of those who manfully supported it. Both are honest and consistent and worthy of all respect. But surely there never was a meaner spectacle than this of eminent and influential politicians shouting vigorously with the Mafficking crowd while war is popular, and then, when the brief season of ultra-patriotic excitement is over, grumbling and whining when presented with the inevitable bill of costs. It is equally absurd and unworthy. If we want an Empire, if we want a strong foreign policy, if we want vigour and efficiency we must be prepared to pay for it. If we think the price too high, then, in heaven's name, let us be honest and admit that the Little Englanders were in the right all along. Do not let us court an easy but most contemptible popularity by swaggering as Imperialists, when what we really want is all the sweets of Empire but none of the burdens. That is what "Liberal Imperialism" seems to mean. Indeed Liberal Imperialism has proved nothing better than a fizzle. Three years ago we thought that there might be something in it. So far-sighted a reformer as Mr. Sidney Webb celebrated in a memorable magazine article "Lord Rosebery's Exodus from Houndsditch," expressing the hope then widely entertained that the Liberal Imperialist movement meant the final laying of Gladstonian Ghosts and the creation of a Progressive party alive to the needs of the new time. That hope is at an end. Lord Rosebery and his retainers have re-entered Hounds ditch with triumphal pomp and ceremony, and are now distinguishable from their frankly Gladstonian colleagues only by the greater fluidity of their convictions.

But expenditure on offensive and defensive armaments, though a most necessary item, is by no means the only item in our national accounts. We spend a great deal of money on education; we ought to spend more. We spend a great deal of money on Home Office matters factory inspectors and the like; again we ought to spend more. We want to spend money in a variety of other ways upon the improvement of the condition of the people. We want Old Age Pensions, we want free meals for school-children, we want some sort of provision for the unemployed, we want grants in aid of housing and other forms of local activity. How are we to get these things and yet retrench. Will not better education cost money? Will not more efficient factory inspection cost money? Will not Free Feeding cost money? Does not almost every kind of social reform mean increased expenditure? It is significant that the demand for "retrenchment," which is the Liberal cry in national affairs, is in local affairs the cry of the "Moderates," that is of the magnates and monopolists who wish to exploit the public. But Liberal or Moderate it is always a reactionary cry. If we are to do our duty by the people, we cannot retrench.

And indeed why should we want to retrench we I mean who profess ourselves Socialists? Our complaint is not that too much of the national revenue goes into the coffers of the state, but that too little finds its way thither. Too much of it goes to swell the incomes and maintain the status of a wealthy class of idle parasites. The more we can get hold of and use for public purposes the better. And the more we pile on taxation (always supposing we pile it on in the right place) the nearer we approach to the Socialist ideal. Retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduction of taxation to a minimum is essentially an individualist policy. The socialist policy is to pool the rents and profits of industry and devote the revenue so obtained to useful public work.

But, if retrenchment is an inadmissible policy for Socialists, what about reform? I can only say that I wish all such words as "reform," "progress," "advanced" etc. were at the bottom of the sea. They are mischievous because they lend colour to the vague idea which exists in the minds of so many "moderns" that if we keep on moving fast enough we are sure to be all right. It never seems to occur to people that something depends on the direction. What I want to know about a man is not whether he is "progressive" or "advanced" or "modern" or "a reformer," but whether he wants to do the same things that I want to do. If he wants to do the exact opposite the less "advanced" and "progressive" he is the better. When therefore amiably muddy-minded people talk about "Reform" all we have to ask them is, "What reform?" What did Cobden and Gladstone mean by "reform?" What do the present-day Liberals and Radicals mean by it? One thing is certain; neither has ever meant social reform the only kind that seems to me to matter; or, if the thought of social questions ever crossed their minds at all, at least neither has ever meant collectivist social reform the only kind that in my view can ever be effective. What the Liberals meant and mean, so far as they now mean anything at all, was and is political reform and political reform along certain defined lines.

The old Radical programme of political change is worn so threadbare that it is hardly worth discussing at this time of day. As however, in the general resurrection of Gladstonian Ghosts, which we are now witnessing, a very attentuated spectre of the Old Radical-Republican propaganda of the 'sixties seems disposed to put in an appearance, it may be worth while to say a word or two about it.

As to Republicanism itself it hardly demands attention in the twentieth century. No-one except Mr. John M. Robertson even professes to think it important. The S.D.F., it is true, still puts the abolition of monarchy in its programme of palliatives, but that I imagine is merely a comparatively harmless concession to revolutionary tradition. Doubtless hereditary monarchy is theoretically illogical; but the time has gone by when men deduced perfect theories of government a-priori from the Social Contract or the Natural Rights of Man. What we now ask concerning an institution is does it obstruct the execution of necessary reforms? Now no one can seriously maintain that the British Monarchy obstructs anything. The power of the Crown, such as it is, has, since the accession of the present Sovereign at any rate, been used almost entirely in the interests of genuine progress. Hereditary monarchy supplies us on the whole with a very convenient method of obtaining a representative of the nation who shall not, like a President, be the nominee of a political party. A great deal of national veneration and sentiment has grown up round the Throne, and it would be foolish to waste time in attacking an immensely popular institution which does no harm and has its decided advantages.

The old outcry against Royal Grants so dear to the heart of Mr. Henry Labouchere may be similarly dismissed. It was never likely to be popular with a people averse above all things to the suspicion of meanness ; and it has now become hopelessly obsolete, partly because of the general collapse of republican sentiment, and partly because people have begun to realise that it is a little ridiculous to get violently excited because the King is given a few thousands in return for certain services, some of which are decidedly important and all of which the nation really desires him to perform, while we allow landlords, capitalists and financiers to pocket many hundred times as much in return for no services whatsoever.

The question of the House of Lords appears at first sight a more serious one. But, when examined closely its importance is seen to be much exaggerated. In order to make out a case strong enough to induce us to turn aside from our more urgent tasks and spend weary years in agitating for the disestablishment of the Upper House, Radicals must show that the Lords are in the habit of rejecting measures of great intrinsic importance to the people at large and really demanded by them. Can they show this? I think not. The only measure of importance which the Lords have rejected during the last thirty years has been the Home Rule Bill, and a subsequent appeal to the people proved conclusively that the Lords were right in so rejecting it that the people of Great Britain were not as a whole really in favour of it, in fact that there was no such effective demand as there ought clearly to be before so great a change is made in the constitution of the realm. Even if the Radicals had the solid democracy at their back (as they certainly have not and are not in the least likely to have) it would still take some ten years to disestablish the Lords. On the other hand, if we have the democracy at our back in support of any particular reform that we want, it will not take much more than ten weeks to intimidate or circumvent them. The Lords are too acute and too careful of their own interests to resist for any length of time measures upon which Englishmen have once made up their minds firmly. As a matter of fact the objection to the House of Lords is not a reformer's objection but a Liberal partisan's objection. The existence of the Second Chamber, as at present constituted, undoubtedly hampers the Liberal party in its competition with the Tories, because the Tories can get more drastic measures of reform through the Upper House than they can. But with us to whom it is a matter of supreme indifference by which party reforms are carried this consideration need not weigh. It cannot of course be denied that the present constitution of the Upper House is a flagrant anachronism. The structure of our society is no longer feudal, and government by a hereditary territorial aristocracy is therefore out of date. Moreover there are practical disadvantages in the present system, since, though the Lords do not reject anything which the people really want, they do sometimes mutilate valuable measures in the interest of property owners. If therefore it be found possible without wasting too much valuable energy to introduce new elements into the composition of the Second Chamber, one would not refuse to consider the idea. This is in fact almost certain, to be done some day probably by the Tories anxious to strengthen the Upper House. The inclusion of elected representatives from the Colonies might be a very good way to begin.

With the Disestablishment of the Church the case is rather different. The abolition of hereditary aristocracy, though difficult and not particularly urgent, might be a good thing in itself. Church Disestablishment on the other hand would, I am convinced, be not only a waste of time and energy, but a most undesirable and retrograde step. Surely it is not for us Socialists to agitate for the desocialisation of national religion and for the transfer of what is now in effect national property to private and irresponsible hands. Moreover the denationalisation of the Church would be from a tactical point of view a most fatal step. I say this without reference to the question (upon which Socialists will hold all sorts of divergent opinions) of the truth of the doctrines of the Church of England or indeed of any form of Christianity or Theism. It has been often pointed out that the Church has shown itself more easily permeable by the Socialist movement than have any of the Dissenting bodies. Many reasons have been suggested to account for this, and no doubt there is an element of truth in all of them. Without doubt the Catholic and Sacramental system of theology blends more easily with Socialism than the Evangelical theology does. It is also unquestionably true that the feudal traditions which still linger in the English Church are more akin to the ideas of Socialism than are the Liberal and Individualist traditions of Dissent. But one of the most important causes of the more sympathetic attitude of the clergy of the Established Church is surely this, that the Church, being established and endowed, is responsible to the people and to the people alone, while the "Free" Churches are bound hand and foot to the wealthy deacons and elders on whose subscription they are forced to rely. Disestablish the Church and the rich subscriber will rule her with a rod of iron. Democratic priests will be hampered and harassed as democratic ministers are now. This, it seems to me, is not a result to which (whatever our religious views) we can look forward without anxiety. Whether "priestcraft" be a good or a bad force, it is without doubt an extremely powerful one ; and it is clearly the business of Socialists, whether Christian or Secularist, to see that, so far as is possible, it shall be exercised on their side. The sound Socialist policy is not to disestablish the Church of England, but to establish concurrently all religious bodies of sufficient magnitude and importance to count. Had this been done in Ireland thirty years ago, as Matthew Arnold recommended, had we, instead of disestablishing the Anglican Church there, established and endowed the Roman Catholic Church along side of her, how much less serious might our difficulties in that country have been!

As to the elective franchise and kindred questions they can hardly be regarded as any longer pressing. It would be a good thing, I do not deny, if our conditions of registration were simplified, but that is not a question upon which the people feel or can be expected to feel very keenly. No class is now intentionally disfranchised, it is only a matter of individuals. In other words, though there are anomalies and inconveniences in our electoral system, there is no longer any specific grievance. Women might perhaps have a grievance if any large number of them demanded the right to vote, but until this is so politicians cannot be expected to pay much attention to the matter. There is a stronger case for redistribution, but this (owing to the gross over-representation of Ireland) is generally regarded as a Conservative rather than a Liberal measure.

The only political reform that seems at all worth fighting for is the payment of members. This is really desirable and important, and should be pushed to the front when political questions are under discussion. For not only would it open Parliament more freely to the representatives of the workers, but it would also make the position of an M.P., a more responsible one. A paid representative, it may reasonably be supposed, would take his profession more seriously, and would at the same time be looked after more sharply by his constituents. We have on the whole quite enough gentlemanly and well-meaning amateurs in politics to whom legislation is a harmless hobby, and who are readily enough outwitted and captured by the keen and energetic representatives of finance who do take their business seriously and mean to win. Therefore if we are to have any political changes at all let us go straight for payment of members.

Chesterton's Pamphlets

2008-06-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

In addition to eight books, Cecil Chesterton authored a number of pamphlets. I am aware of four of these pamphlets:

Co-operative production an outline of the principles sought to be applied to the granite industry – 1900

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/38483390&referer=brief_results

The Basis of Socialism – ca 1905/10

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/54912216&referer=brief_results

The People’s Drink: a Consumers View of the Drink Problem – 1909

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/69921704&referer=brief_results

An Englishman’s Experience with Temperance Reform – 1915

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/39393234&referer=brief_results

Also, a transcript of a debate between Chesterton and George Sylvester Viereck (publisher of the Fatherland newspaper and author of some interesting books such as The House of the Vampire) on “Whether the Cause of Germany or that of the Allied Powers is Just” was published in pamphlet form by Viereck in 1915.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/80273771&referer=brief_results

Cecil Chesterton's Grave Site

2008-06-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

Since Cecil Chesterton died during military service, his grave site is recorded in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission's "Debt of Honour Register." Chesterton's casualty details are available at:
http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?casualty=4024807

Gladstonian Ghosts - Our British Moslems

2008-06-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

I have no wish to say anything disrespectful of the religion of Islam. In many respects it is a very good religion; without doubt it is a great one and one of the most vigorous in the world. It is said still to make more converts annually than any other. It reigns unchallenged from Morocco to Persia, it is dominant throughout a large part of India, and is spreading more and more every year amongst the wild tribes of Central Africa and the islanders of the Malay Peninsular. In this country the orthodox Mohammedan creed has made but little headway; nevertheless a number of more or less heretical Moslem sects, among which the Wesleyans, the Baptists, and the
Congregationalists are perhaps the most important, flourish there exceedingly and, if not on the increase, are at least fairly holding their ground.

One of the basic moral tenets of the Moslem faith is, as everyone knows, the prohibition of alcohol, and this tenet, despite doctrinal variations, is held with equal firmness by the English sects above mentioned. The analogy is not a fanciful one; I express it in this way because I wish to emphasize the fact that the objection of the Daily News and of those whose views it represents to beer and spirit drinking is an objection not to the social evils inseparable from alcoholic excess, nor to the many corruptions connected with the private drink trade, but simply and emphatically to the thing, itself. It is, in fact, a religious tapu. I can respect it as such, and I can respect the Samoan tapus described by Stevenson, but it is necessary to recognise its nature, if we wish to understand its relation to what plain men mean by the temperance problem.

It may reasonably be deduced that the demand so constantly made that temperance reformers of all schools should unite on a common programme is utterly impracticable. They cannot unite, because they do not want the same things. There is no point of contact possible between those who think beer so bad a thing that they are angry that anyone shold be supplied with it and those that think it so good a thing that they are angry that it should not be supplied in a pure state and under decent conditions; between those who object to the modern public house because they think it at once evil and seductive and those who object to it because they think it demoralisingly ugly and uncomfortable. In short there is no possible community of interest between those for whom the liquour problem is how to supply alcoholic liquors with the greatest social profit and the least social damage and those lor whom the problem is how to prevent such liquours from being supplied at all. "The average man" says Mr. Edward R. Pease "wants beer." This remarkable discovery is alone sufficient to place Mr. Pease at the head of all our temperance reformers, for he is the only one of them who seems to have realised its incontestable truth and importance. His admirable book "The Case for Municipal Drink"* which I strongly advise all my readers interested in the question to obtain and study, is the most perfect presentation I know of the position of those who wish to know how best to supply drink, not how best not to supply it. Contrast it with the views constantly set forth in the Daily News views which may be taken to represent those espoused by at least a large section of the Liberal Party and you have something like a clear issue.

Now if we could only get these two contradictory conceptions of temperance reform clearly defined and separated, the drink question would be a much easier thing to discuss than it is.. Un- fortunately they have got almost indissoiubly tangled by reason of the fact that so many who secretly hold the dogmatic teetotal view will not avow it frankly, while many others (practically the whole Liberal and Progressive parties for example) hastily adopt measures which have no raison d'etre save in this view without thinking seriously about their nature. If the teetotal enthusiasts would say frankly (as some but by no means all of them do) that they want absolute and unqualified. Prohibition and only support Local Veto and the much-vaunted Temperance Policy of the London County Council as steps towards Prohibition then at least we should know where we were. But when the Daily News itself was plainly and publicly challenged by the Rev. Stewart Headlam to say whether it meant that or not, it pointedly evaded the question. The fact is, of course that if this policy were frankly explained its supporters would be snowed under at the next election even more finally than the supporters of Local Veto were in 1895. So they do not avow it, but try to get essentially prohibitionist legislation through under cover of vague phrases like "temperance reform" to which we are all urged to rally.

Take Local Veto for example. What was the main proposal involved in Sir William Harcourt's famous measure. It proposed that every ward (the smallest area known to English local government) should have the right by a two-thirds majority to veto all licenses within its area or by a bare majority to reduce them by one fourth. Now was this measure intended to lead to Prohibition or was it not? If it was, then the English people who did not want Prohibition did well to reject it ; but if it was not, and its supporters generally insist that it was not, whither was it intended to lead. Its obvious effect in practice, as Mr. Pease has justly pointed out, would be that the rich districts, where public houses are few and cannot in any sense be regarded as a social evil, would probably expel them as derogatory to the interests of property and the "character of the neighbourhood," while all the drinking would be concentrated in the worst slum areas, where public houses, not of the best type, are already dangerously numerous and crowded, and where prohibition would have no chance whatever. This is clearly not a temperance reform in any sense of the word. It could have been framed only in the interests of men who regard alcohol as so positively a devilish thing that they rejoice at the destruction of any place defiled by its presence regardless of the ulterior consequences to temperance itself.

The Temperance Policy of the London County Council is at least as strong a case in point. What is this much-trumpetted policy? It is this; that when the County Council has to acquire the license of a public house in the course of making some street improvement, it first pays huge compensation to the publican and then abandon the the license, thus practically throwing the ratepayer's money into the sea. That is all. In the course of its distinguished career the L.C.C. has spent more than 300,000 in this wise and beneficent manner.

Now what does the County Council suppose that it is doing? For a systematic reduction of drink licenses in certain districts there is doubtless much to be said, though I am inclined to think that the importance of this as a factor in the temperance problem is grossly exaggerated. But, if that is to be effected, the whole licensing system must be brought under review and houses suppressed according to a well-considered plan. Care would for example be taken that the worse kind of houses were suppressed and the better retained. The Council suppresses them on no plan whatever simply where it happens to be making a street improvement. The result is, of course, that the gain to temperance is absolutely nil. A street is to be widened; the public houses on one side of the street are pulled down, their licenses purchased and abandoned; those on the other side remain. The people who used to drink on the one side go over and drink on the other. The suppressed publican (or the brewer he represents) gets ample compensation; the unsuppressed publican gets his neighbour's trade in addition to his own without paying one farthing for it And the public ? What does the public get? The satisfaction of knowing that the workman may have to cross the road in order to refresh himself.

The fact is that the Progressive party, dangerously subject to intimidation by the Nonconformist chapels, has adopted a policy entirely meaningless from the standpoint of enlightened temperance, in obedience to the irrational demands of those who think that the destruction of any public house must be a righteous act.

Now the same spirit which revealed in the Local Veto Bill and still shows itself in the County Council policy has been to a great extent responsible for the opposition encountered by the government's Licensing Act. I do not say that this Act could not be fairly criticised upon other grounds. The terms accorded to the Trade are certainly high in my view too high and of the compensation granted too much seems likely (in the case of a tied house) to go to the brewer and too little to the publican. But that is not the ground chosen by the most vehement enemies of the measure. The ground explicitly chosen by them is that the publican is an enemy, a wicked man, whom we ought to punish for his misdeeds. If it were the case of any other trade, would anybody venture to deny that a man whose livelihood is taken away by the arbitrary act of the governing powers through no fault of his own is entitled, whatever be his strict legal position, to some measure of relief. To which the only answer vouchsafed by the teetotal faction consists in windy abuse of the publican as a "vampire." I think that private monopoly in the Drink Trade is a great evil; so is private monopoly everywhere else. But to abuse the man who merely sells what the public demands and the community, instructs him to supply is fanaticism and not statesmanship

Now if, leaving this foolish cult, whose voting power is by no means in proportion to the noise it makes, we ask ourselves what kind of temperance reform sensible reformers really want, we shall not find it difficult to answer.

First and foremost then we want good liquour and especially good beer. Every- one who frequents public houses knows how hard this often is to obtain. Yet beer is our national drink, of which we ought to be proud. Properly manufactured it does no one any harm, though when made of chemical " substitutes " instead of sound malt and hops it is as noxious as any other adulterated concoction. Beer-drinking, within reasonable limits, and provided the beer be sound liquour, is a national habit which no wise ruler would attempt to suppress. For it is the best prophylactic against the inordinate consumption of cheap and bad spirits which really is a national curse in Scotland and elsewhere.

Secondly we want decent surroundings. It is a most unfortunate thing that few temperance reformers have any personal acquaintance with public houses or with alcoholic drinking. For if they had they would know that a man is much more likely to brutalise himself if he is compelled to drink "perpendicularly" in a dirty, ugly, and gloomy bar than if he can sit down comfortably, talk to his friends, play cards and listen, perhaps, to a little music. That is why another phase of the L.C.C. "temperance" policy, the refusal of drink licenses to music halls, is so manifestly absurd. A man who drinks at a music hall, where he is being amused in other ways, is much less likely to get drunk than one who drinks in a public house bar (as such bars are now conducted) where there is nothing to do but to go on drinking. As Mr. Headlam has excellently expressed it, it would be a great deal better policy to turn every public house into a music hall than to turn every music hall into a teetotal institution. The second thing we want then is a humanised public house.

Thirdly we want to get rid of the private commercial monopoly which exploits the drink trade, whereby vast fortunes are made at the expense of the community. These immense profits are the direct result of the monopoly granted by the community to private traders in return for a nominal fee. To grant away what is practically public money in this way is monstrous. It is satisfactory to find that something like High License is foreshadowed in this year's Licensing Act. But High License is not enough.

The sensible remedy is the municipalization of the liquour traffic which would fulfil all the above conditions. The municipal public house would refuse to sell any but the best liquors, and it would supply these with humanising instead of demoralising surroundings. The profits which the public are entitled to the public would receive. And let me say here that there is no reason whatever why we should wait for a municipal monopoly which means waiting till Doomsday. The idea that municipal houses must not compete with privately owned ones rests ultimately upon the mischievous notion already examined that the drinking of alcohol is in itself an evil thing upon which the state ought to frown if it cannot actually suppress it. The typical British workman (whatever "democratic" politicians may say) does not go into the public house in order to get drunk but in order to refresh himself. If the municipality gives him better drink under more pleasant conditions than the publican he will frequent its houses without demanding that drunkenness shall be either encouraged or connived at. And the competition of the municipal house will infallibly raise the standard of those houses that remain in private hands.

Why does not the London County Council abandon its "Settled Temperance Policy" and go as straight for municipal public houses as it has gone for municipal trams? The common answer is that the Council has no power to run public houses; but this is no answer at all. Till this year it had no power to run steamers on the Thames. But it wanted the power, it agitated for it, embodied it in its Bills and eventually forced a Tory House of Commons to concede it. Has it ever asked for power to run public houses? Not once. Moreover, even as things stand, it could if it pleased get to work on the right lines instead of on the wrong ones. Instead of abandoning licenses it could retain them and lease the new houses to publicans at pretty high ground rents and on stringent conditions such as would insure that the house should be of the best type possible under private management. Besides there is Earl Grey's Trust, an organisation founded expressly to anticipate most of the results of municipalism. They could easily have let the Trust take over the licenses, but they have persistently refused to do so. The fact is that the London Progressives do not want to municipalise the retail liquour trade. They do not want to do it, because they dread the power of the Nonconformist chapel and the forces which find their political rallying ground in the local P.S.A., forces of which the guiding principle is not temperance, but a hatred of alcohol per se. But surely it is possible to make a last appeal to the Progressive leaders. After all they have pricked that bubble once. To their eternal credit they have defied and bitterly offended the chapels over the education question, and no very dire consequences have followed. Will they not take their courage in their hands and defy them on the drink question also?

*"The Case for Municipal Drink" by E. R. Pease King & Son.

A History of the United States

2008-06-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

It is good to note that Cecil Chesterton's A History of the United States in currently in print and being published by both Hamlin Press and Kessinger Publishing Company.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-History-Of-The-United-States/Cecil-Chesterton/e/9781408633724/?itm=3&bnit=H
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/A-History-Of-The-United-States/Cecil-Chesterton/e/9780548736791/?itm=4&bnit=H

Gladstonian Ghosts - Towards Anarchism

2008-06-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

There is an entertaining story told (I know not with exactly how much accuracy) of a well-known Liberal trade unionist, who has recently become a Member of Parliament. He is a typical labour leader of the last generation, a Liberal in politics, a Nonconformist in religion, a deacon (I understand) of his native chapel, a veritable pillar of proletarian respectability, and an unflinching opponent of Socialism in every shape and form. Once it was his duty to attend an international congress of the representatives of his trade, where he found, I should suppose, the revolutionary trade unionism of the Continent little to his taste. However, that may have been, a resolution was proposed at the congress in question demanding a statutary eight hours day.

This reputable and independent Briton rose to oppose it, and in so doing made a characteristic Liberal speech, recommending the workmen to rely on themselves, not to appeal to governments, to win what they desired by their own efforts, and so on. Somewhat to his own surprise, the speech on being translated was greeted with no inconsiderable applause applause which at the conclusion of his fine peroration became thunderous, and was mingled with enthusiastic shouts of "Vive J --- et l’ Anarchie!" He had unfortunately succeeded in conveying the impression that by such phrases as "rely upon your own efforts" he meant to indicate the throwing of bombs!

This story gains considerably in point by the events of the last two years. For, during that period, the kinship (always innate) between Liberalism and Anarchism has been made apparent to the whole world in a most startling manner; and we have seen the Nonconformist section of the Liberal party, a section which above all others has always claimed an almost hypochondriac tenderness of conscience, trying to affect the repeal of a measure to which it takes exception, by means of a campaign which involves nothing less than a cynical repudiation of the duties of citizenship and an anarchic war against human society.

Anyone who possesses a temperament sardonic enough to enable him to take pleasure in tracing the moral debacle of what was once a great party can hardly amuse himself better than by following the history of the campaign against the Education Acts both before and after they became law. No one burdened with much moral or social enthusiasm will be able to do so with sufficient calm, for I venture to assert that a more disgraceful debauch of cant, hypocrisy, flagrant misrepresentation amounting sometimes to flat lying, sectarian venom, the prostitution of religious excitement to base ends, all exploited with an utterly shameless disregard of the public interest, cannot be found in the records of English politics for the last century or more.

That is a strong statement; to support it let me recall the facts of the ease. First I would ask a fair-minded man to glance through some of the innumerable letters and articles which have flooded the Nonconformist and Radical press from the first introduction of the Education Bill down to the present time, and I would ask such a man to say what, taking his impressions from this source alone, he would have supposed the purport of that Bill to be.

I think I may say without the slightest exaggeration that he would imagine that its effect must be (i) to hand over all elementary schools to the Church of England to be disposed of at her pleasure, (2) to impose on all teachers in such schools a new and stringent religious test, whose effect would be to prevent any but Anglican (and perhaps Roman Catholic) teachers from obtaining employment. I do not think there is any exaggeration in the above plain summary. On every side one still hears phrases like "handing over the schools of the nation to the Church," "imposing a religious test on teachers," "giving the People's property to the Priest," "establishing clericalism in the public schools," etc., which can have no other rational meaning than that stated above. Now it is not a matter of argument but one of simple fact that the Education Act did nothing of the kind, that nothing of the kind has ever been proposed in the whole course of the controversy. What the Act did do was (i) to give effect in denominational schools (already mainly supported out of public funds) to an enormously increased measure of public control, where before clerical control had been unbridled (2) to mitigate largely the effect of such religious "tests" as can in any sense be said to have existed in such schools. No new "test" of any sort or kind was imposed, and the Provided or Board Schools remain of course entirely unaffected except as to their transference from one publicly elected and unsectarian body to another and far more efficient one.

Consider for one moment the state of affairs which prevailed before the passing of the Act. There were then two kinds of public elementary school recognised by the State the Board School and the Voluntary School Schools of the former type were under the control of School Boards, bodies of irregular distribution and greatly varying importance. It must always be remembered that throughout more than half of England there were no School Boards at all. In the big towns you had doubtless often enough large and efficient Boards administering elementary education over the areas of great cities like London, Glasgow and Birmingham. In the country districts when they existed at all, the Boards were often elected to govern ridiculously small areas (sometimes with only one school in a whole district) and were most commonly inefficient and reactionary.

Such was the situation of the Board Schools: that of the Voluntary Schools was still more impossible. These schools, founded originally on denominational lines, were controlled despotically by a private board of clerical or clerically-minded managers. No effective public control was insisted upon. Even where a voluntary school was situated within a school board area, the School Board had no shadow of authority over it. And, as I have already mentioned, rather less than half of England possessed School Boards at all. The only pretence of public supervision then existing in the case of voluntary schools was to be found in the infrequent visits of notoriously complacent inspectors from Whitehall. Indeed the inspectors had to be complacent, for few voluntary schools had the means to make themselves educationally efficient even though they might wish to do so. Though more than two thirds of the money spent on their upkeep came out of the public exchequer in the form of government grants, the remaining third had to be raised by private subscription, that is to say had to be begged vigorously from the most incongruous people, from Churchmen anxious to preserve definite theological teaching and from rich ratepayers and even Railway Companies anxious to avoid the incidence of a School Board rate. As a natural consequence the schools which, be it remembered, were reckoned as part of the national machinery for education, were counted in the statistics of school accommodation, and were indeed the only schools available for a considerable part of the child population, were in a state of chronic and hopeless beggary, and dragged on a miserable existence, starved, irresponsible, notoriously inefficient, yet practically safe from public intervention.

Meanwhile technical education, unnaturally divorced from elementary, was confided to the care of the County and Borough Councils. Secondary education was nobody's business. It would have been entirely neglected had not some progressive School Boards stretched the term " elementary " to cover as much as they could until sharply pulled up by the Cockerton judgment, while some of the more progressive Councils stretched the term " technical " in much the same way, and would probably, but for the intervention of the Act, have met with the same fate.

Now what did the Education Acts do? The first and by far the most important change which they made was to transfer all education to the County and Borough Councils.* The effect of this was to provide that in future there should be everywhere throughout England one popularly elected local authority responsible for every kind and grade of education within its administrative area, and that this body should be that responsible for local government as a whole. Thus they made possible for the first time the co- ordination of all forms of education and the co-ordination of education with other municipal and local services.

*I omit mention of the proviso whereby certain Non-County Boroughs and Urban District Councils have authority over Elementary but not over Higher Education. The concession was a most unfortunate one, but it does not affect the general drift of my argument.

This change had of course the effect of sweeping away the old system of electing educational authorities ad hoc This seems to have struck many people as a flagrant piece of injustice, an impudent repudiation of democracy, and a shameless invasion of popular rights. It is difficult to understand why. A County or Borough Council is fully as democratic a body as a School Board, if democratic be taken to mean elected by popular suffrages. And if it is seriously contended that a body ought to be specially elected to deal with education alone, because the issues at a general municipal election may be confused, why not carry the principle further and have ad hoc bodies for each branch of local activity? Indeed why should the principle be applied only to local affairs? Why not elect a separate Parliament to deal with foreign affairs another to deal with Colonial matters, another to deal with social reform and so on? The fact is that the much Taunted ad hoc principle never had any real existence. It is not contained, as Nonconformists and Radicals seem to imagine either in the Bible or in Magna Charta; it is no part of the Natural Rights of Man or the Social Contract or even of the British Constitution. It is nothing but the last relic of a thoroughly discredited system of local government. The framers of the Education Act of 1870 themselves knew of no such principle. They created ad hoc bodies to deal with education, simply because government was then so undeveloped in this country that there was no other body to which it could be entrusted.

County Councils did not then exist; the Local Government Act of 1889, which like the Education Act of 1902 we owe to a Tory government, had not yet been passed. Over the greater part of Eng- land there was no democratic local government at all. Therefore it was necessary to create a stop-gap authority to deal with education. Similarly there were in the earlier part of the century innumerable other ad hoc bodies, entrusted with the duties of lighting the streets, making public improvements, etc., but they have all been swept away and their powers absorbed by county, borough, town, district or parish council. In course of time it was inevitable that the obsolete School Boards should follow them into the limbo of rejected experiments. It now only remains for Parliament to complete its work by abolishing our hopeless and discredited Boards of Guardians.

I suppose I ought in passing to refer to the contention that the administrative machinery of the Acts is undemocratic because the Councils are to govern through Committees. The absurdity of such a view will be obvious to anyone acquainted with the machinery of local government. All local bodies act through committees in educational and other matters. The Committee is a purely executive body, absolutely subject to the authority which creates it; and in this respect there is no essential difference between the Education Committee and that which controls the trams, the parks or the music halls.

To return to the other provisions of the Acts of 1902-3. The second effect which they have is to give to the local authority complete control over the "Voluntary" Schools now called Non-Provided Schools in all matters relating to secular education. This, I know well, will sound an audacious statement in the ears of those who have taken their views from the declarations of the Liberal press. I can only re- commend such people to buy a copy of the Act and read it for themselves. They will find that the managers of the non- provided schools are expressly compelled to carry out any instructions of the local education authority in regard to secular education, that in the event of failure to do so they can by a single stroke be deprived of all the benefits of the Act, and that the authority has two nominated representatives on the board of managers who are responsible to the public alone and can at once appeal to the public authority should their denominational colleagues show symptoms of recalcitrance.

Lastly all the cost of maintaining these schools (except for the upkeep of the buildings) is to come from public funds, the balance once borne by private subscriptions now coming out of the rates (bear in mind that already two thirds of their income was derived from taxes) so that a great nation is no longer placed in the humiliating position of having to rely on private charity in order to meet its educational needs, while denominational schools will no longer be able to plead beggary as an excuse for inefficiency.

That in plain English is what the Education Act of 1902 and the London Education Act of 1903 have effected. I defy any Liberal or Nonconformist opponent of the measure to show that I have misrepresented their purport in any particular.

But no sooner was the first draft of the Bill before the country than the campaign of unscrupulous misstatement began. The loudest and most popular cry was that the Bill "imposed" a religious test on teachers. I remember once at a public debate asking a gentle- man who urged this with great rhetorical effect to point out to me the

Clause of the Bill which imposed such a test. There upon I experienced the keen pleasure of watching my antagonists struggle through a copy of the Bill in the hopeless endeavour to find such a clause. Of course he did not find it for the same reason which prevented Tilburina from seeing the Spanish Fleet. There is no religious test imposed by the Act. Its sole effect in this respect is firstly to introduce an elective and non- sectarian element into the body which appoints the teacher and secondly to allow that body to over-ride any religious test imposed upon assistant teachers by the Trust-deeds of the school.

Then came the cry that the "People's Schools" were being "handed over to the Priest." What this meant I cannot conceive. The reference could hardly be to the denominational schools which before the passing of the Act were absolutely under the control of the " Priest " while under the Act his control is to say the least of a very shadowy and much mitigated character. I am therefore forced to the conclusion that those who used the phrase really supposed or at any rate wished others to suppose that the Board Schools were handed over to the Church, which is of course so monstrously untrue_ so devoid of even the faintest shadow of foundation in fact, that it is difficult to put it on paper without laughing.

There is, so far as I can see, no escape from one of these conclusions. Either the Nonconformists who made use of these catch-words and of many others like them had never read the Education Acts, or they were incapable of understanding the plainest English, or, having read the Acts and knowing their purport they deliberately misrepresented them. Take which ever explanation you choose: are they men whom we can safely trust with political power?

Later the agitation passed through another phase. After flagrant misrepresentation came nausious cant and fantastic casuistry. I believe that the English Nonconformists profess a great horror of Jesuits. But nothing attributed to the latter in the fiercest of Pascal's satires can equal the extraordinary casuistical tour de force whereby the former tried to find a distinction between the payment of rates and the payment of taxes. With one voice the Nonconformists declared that it would sear their consciences as with a hot iron if they had to pay a penny towards the support of schools where "Romanising" teaching was given. Whereto sensible men replied by pointing out that for years the Nonconformists had been paying for the cost of such schools out of the taxes. Then it was that the new ethical principle was discovered. It appears to be as follows: It is not wrong to pay money to a national body to meet the cost of supporting Denominational Schools but it is wrong to pay money to a local body for the same purpose, I will not attempt to follow the various lines of argument by which this remarkable conclusion is reached. I merely set down the conclusion itself for the amusement of my readers.

It should be remembered moreover that all the time that they were ranting about " Rome on the Rates " and the wickedness of compelling Dissenters to pay for teaching in which they did not believe the Nonconformists were themselves forcing on the provided schools and endeavouring to force on all schools a form of religious instruction notoriously abhorrent to Anglicans (at any rate of the Catholic type), Romanists, Agnostics and Jews. Could sanctified hypocrisy go further?

Yes, it could and did! No sooner was the Education Bill law than the leaders of Nonconformity with Dr. Clifford at their head entered upon the Opera Boujfe rebellion (mischievous enough despite its silliness) known as "Passive Resistance" That is to say that, fortified by the magnificent ethical principle italicised above, they considered themselves justified in repudiating their plain duties as citizens in the hope that by so doing they might injure the educational machinery of the country. The form which their very prudent insurrection took was that of refusing to pay their rates and compelling the community to distrain on their goods.

With the manifold humours of the movement, with the sale of Dr. Clifford's trowels and the sad fate of his bust of Cromwell, with the evident eagerness of our Nonconformist martyrs to part with their Bibles at the earliest possible moment, with the diurnal letters of Dr. Clifford to the Daily News, with his just anger against the brutal authorities who let a "resister" out of prison, with the even more delicious letters of minor lights of Dissent, with the fear expressed by one of these lest his heroic action should be supposed by the cold world to be merely an economic distraint for rent,* with the olympian wrath of those aspirants for the martyr's crown who found their hopes blighted by the baseness of some unknown person who had cruelly paid their rates for them with none of these do I propose to deal. Doubtless the proceedings of these brave martyr-rebels, whose motto, like that of the conspirators in one of Mr. Gilbert's operas, "is Revenge without Anxiety that is without unnecessary Risk," are delightful, if regarded from the standpoint of humour. It is to be regretted that we cannot altogether afford so to regard them. No Christian can free himself from a sense of shame at seeing Christian bodies sink so low, nor can any patriotic Englishman, whatever his creed, watch the signs of the times without anxiety when he sees what was once a great English party flatter such men and condone such a policy.

*The gentleman in question announced, if I remember rightly that he proposed to avoid this misunderstanding by showing in his front garden a placard with the inscription "MY GOODS ARE BEING SOLD TO PROMOTE RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE." a remarkably candid confession!

Seriously considered the "Passive Resistance" campaign proved two things. The immense impetus which it has gained among the Nonconformists is a symptom of that utter disregard of the public interest which has in all ages been characteristic of political sectaries. The toleration, if not encouragement, of it by the bulk of the Liberal party shows how superficial is the conversion of Liberals from their former anarchic view of civic duty. For "Passive Resistance" cannot be justified except the philosophic doctrines and assumptions of Anarchism be first accepted. Mr. Auberon Herbert might be a passive resister without inconsistency, for he regards taxation as a mere subscription sent by the subscriber to an organisation of his own choice and to be used only for such purposes as he may approve. He therefore maintains that all taxes should be voluntary and, were he to " resist " at all, would doubtless resist in the case of all state expenditure which he may think undesirable, armaments, wars, state ceremonial, and even municipal enterprise. Now this theory, if once accepted, will tell much more against the progressive side than against the reactionaries. The Nonconformists are as likely as not, I imagine, to "resist" the payment of money required to start a municipal public house; taking example from them, other persons may resist payment of taxes needed to furnish old age pensions on the ground that their con- sciences forbid them to allow their money to be used for the discouragement of the virtue of thrift. In a word the only logical conclusion of the "passive resistance" policy is complete Anarchism - Anarchism from which the Liberal ideal sprang and in which it will end. For us Collectivists, of course, the problem does not arise at all. From our point of view it is not Dr. Clifford's money that is going to support Roman Catholic schools, but some of the money which the community allows Dr. Clifford to handle subject to certain conditions, one of which is that he should pay his contribution towards the general expenses of government. If he does not like the use made of it, he has his vote as a citizen and such influence as his abilities may command, and that is all he is entitled to. That is the case against Passive Resistance, and I can only say that, if it is invalid, the whole case for taxation is invalid also.

Finally what strikes one most about this propaganda is its utterly cruel and cynical carelessness of the interests of the children. At a time, when education is so necessary to our national existence, it is no light thing when a deliberate attempt is made by responsible citizens to wreck our educational machinery in the interest of a group of sects. This is no exaggeration. We are told explicitly that the object of the agitation is to make the Education Act unworkable, that is to say to make it impossible to educate the children properly. How far in this direction the leaders of the movement are prepared to go may be seen from the case of Wales, where they are dominant and can act as they please. There they have formulated a policy whereby the deliberate ruin of Welsh education will be brought about by Welsh "patriots," the object being to defeat what they are pleased to call the "Welsh Coercion Act," which of course is not a Coercion Act at all, but merely an Act making provision for the upkeep of the children's schools in cases where local authorities neglect their duties and leave the unfortunate children fireless and bookless. I could wish that the Non- conformist leaders, who are so fond of the "Open Bible" would devote a little attention to Matthew XVIII 6.

Where it will all end no-one can say. Given favourable circumstances and a fair and firm administration of the law, I believe "Passive Resistance" in all its forms would soon die of its own inanity. The Dissenting Anarchists failed to capture the L.C.C. thanks to the patriotism and good sense of the Progressives at whom they have been snarling ever since ; and it hardly seems as if, outside Wales, they would achieve much in the arena of municipal politics. In Wales, where they have perhaps a slightly stronger case, some compromise might be effective, the proposals of the Bishop of St. Asaphs might form a basis for discussion. But, of course, the whole situation would be profoundly changed, were a Parliament dominated by Dissent to be returned at the General Election. In that case the settlement of 1902 would be upset, whole question would be flung once more into the melting pot, and our educational system would be fought for by Churchmen and Dissenters, as two ill-tempered dogs fight for a bone. That is what is quite likely to happen if we are not very careful, and serious educationalists can only look to the future with anxiety and disquiet. Though perhaps in the last resort we can rely on the House of Lords!

Gladstonian Ghosts - The Fetish of Free Trade

2008-05-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Let it not be supposed that I propose to argue the eternal Fiscal Question here. For the last twelve-month and more we have had quite enough flinging backward and forward of childish platitudes, scraps of obsolete economics, and masses of irrelevant and ill-digested figures by both parties to the controversy. You are quite safe from figure-shuffling as far as I am concerned, and you are equally safe from bodiless a priori economics. For me, indeed, the question is not one that can ever be decided on general principles.' To ask whether nations ought to adopt Protection is exactly like asking whether men ought to wear over-coats. Obviously in both instances the answer depends on a number of attendant facts not stated on the weather, the constitution of the men, and the thickness of the coats in the one case, on the character of the people, the distribution of their wealth, the state of their commerce, and the character of the proposed tariff in the other. Tell me that you wish in certain specified circumstances to impose protective duties on certain specified imports, and I am willing to examine the evidence and express an opinion. But so long as you put the issue as one of abstract principle, I must ask to be excused from indulging in what seems to me an utterly barren and profitless exercise in immaterial logic.

Of course, as I have already insisted, there is a sense in which every Socialist is of necessity a Protectionist and Preferentialist. As Mr. Bernard Shaw once expressed it, (I quote from memory) he believes that the highest wisdom of governments is to know "what to protect and what to prefer." For him the Utopia of "economic harmonies" is a foolish and mischievous dream. He knows that the commercial instinct unless subjected to energetic and un- sparing state supervision, is certain to become a cause of ruinous social disorder. His whole mind will be set to the task of regulating it, directing it, curbing its excesses, and protecting the public interest against it. In a word the advanced social reformer of the new school is necessarily an emphatic Protectionist, only differing from Mr. Chamberlain and his supporters in that he gives to the word "Protection" a wider scope and a fuller meaning than they.

Now it inevitably follows that there is not and cannot be any kind of objection from his point of view to a protective tariff on grounds of principle. The theoretic objection which used to be urged against such a tariff was founded on the assumption that Adam Smith, Bastiat and others had demonstrated the futility and peril of all legislative interference with commerce. Cobden put the whole case as he and his party saw it in one phrase of one of his ablest speeches, when he declared that you could not by legislation add anything to the wealth of a nation. That is a doctrine which no one (save perhaps Mr. Auberon Herbert) now holds; which no one who approves for instance of any kind of factory legislation can possibly hold. And that doctrine once fairly out of the way, the question becomes simply one of expediency and the balance of utilities.

But, when we come to the balancing, another point of divergence instantly arises. The Socialists' conception of utilities differs in essence from that of Free Traders and Protectionists alike. For Mr. Chamberlain, for Mr. Morley, for the Tariff Reform League and for the Cobden Club, the aim of commercial statesmanship is simply and solely to increase the aggregate commercial wealth of the country. But this is by no means what the Socialist is mainly concerned about. His object is not so much to increase the sum total of such wealth as to secure its better distribution and more socially profitable use. He sees that the economic struggle between nations is by comparison a matter of surface fluctuations, while the economic struggle between classes is an enduring and essential feature of our social system. And whether or no he likes the old Marxian phrase "Class War," he is bound to recognise the existence of a class antagonism cutting right across society as a fact without the understanding of which the structure of capitalist civilisation is unintelligible. This implies that the Socialist, whether he be a "Free Trader" or no, has to dismiss as untenable practically the whole of the old economic case for Free Trade. Adam Smith did doubtless prove that under a system of absolutely free exchange, every country would tend to engage in those trades which were (for the moment at any rate) most commercially profitable to it ; but he never proved or attempted to prove that these would be the trades which were most socially beneficent. It might, for example, happen that the White Lead trade proved the most commercially advantageous industry in which English- men could engage. But would any modern reformer say that in that case it would be well for us to abandon all our other industries and take to the manufacture of white lead with all its inevitable concomitants. It may be urged that such a case is not likely to occur. But cases differing from it only in degree may very well occur have indeed occurred already. Such a case is the decline of our agriculture and the consequent flooding of the towns with cheap unskilled labour; such also is the tendency already more than faintly visible for small trades, largely unskilled and often sweated, to supplant our staple industries. And these things, though they are the inevitable consequence of unrestricted competition and though Cobden would have regarded them with complete equanimity, are the very things against which social reformers have for years been fighting a long and apparently a hopeless battle. No Socialist can give them a moment's toleration. Whether Socialists will think Mr. Chamberlain's remedy adequate is another thing. For Mr. Chamberlain's point of view a purely commercial one is at bottom identical with that of his Cobdenite opponents.

And it is just this that makes mere statistics of trade and comparisons between imports and exports so barren and misleading. What we want to know is not how much tribute the capitalist gets out of our foreign trade, but what wages the labourer gets, what are the conditions under which he works, and what is the amount of employment available. Thus for instance foreign investments pay the capitalist as well as British investments and are accordingly highly esteemed by the Cobdenites as "invisible exports." But they are not equally satisfactory to the workman who loses his job and drifts into the ranks of the unemployed. From this point of view Protection if it kept capital in the country and even attracted foreign capital might be eminently beneficial to the workers, even though the aggregate of national wealth were thereby diminished.

Now we have reached two conclusions. Firstly that Socialists will approach the tariff question with an open mind; secondly that they will approach it mainly from the standpoint of its effect upon the social condition of the people and upon the distribution of wealth. That, I say, is what one would naturally expect Socialists to do. What the English Socialists and the leaders of organised labour in this country have actually done is to fling their Socialism and their "class-consciousness " to the winds, to stampede once more into the Liberal camp (as they did before over South African affairs), to sing pious hymns in honour of the memories of Bright and Cobden, oblivious of the former's opposition to factory legislation and the latter's freely expressed detestation of trade unionism, to trot out for the confusion of Mr. Chamberlain the very doctrines which Socialist economists have spent the last fifty years in riddling with destructive criticism, and generally to devote their energies to the hopeless task of strengthening the ruined fortifications which protect Liberalism from the attacks of the time-spirit.

When the Fiscal Question first began to agitate the minds of Englishmen the new-born Labour Party was in an unusually strong position. It was as yet uncommitted on the subject, and both sides would willingly have paid a high price for its support. Nothing strikes one more in Mr. Chamberlain's early speeches than his evident anxiety to gain at all costs the sympathy of Labour. And the Liberals were at that time equally anxious. Had the leaders of British Trade Unionism followed the excellent example set them by Mr. Redmond and the Irish Nationalists, had they held their hands and said frankly to both combatants " What social reforms will you give us as the price of our support ? " what unprecedented pressure might they not have been able to exert ! To Mr. Chamberlain they might quite fairly have said "You say that all is not well with British Trade": we agree with you, we have been saying so for years. But before we accept your proposed remedies we want reliable guarantees that the working classes shall not be the sufferers. Tack on to your programme a maximum price for bread (or some system of municipal bakeries which would achieve the same object) and a minimum wage for labour, and we will consider them." To the Liberals again they could have said "You tell us that Mr. Chamberlain's policy will not remedy the evils to which he rightly draws attention; granted, but what is your remedy? If we help you to resist these proposals what drastic measures are you ready to pro- pose for dealing with the unemployed and kindred problems?" Had they taken this line, they might have achieved much. But, having the game in their hands, the labour leaders deliberately threw all their cards away. Directly the question of fiscal reform was mooted, without waiting for any pledge from either party, they began to violently espouse one side and violently denounce the other. By this they fruitlessly abandoned their excellent strategic position. Mr. Chamberlain, seeing that he had nothing to hope from them, treated them as enemies and organised the Tariff Reform movement frankly as a purely capitalist affair, leaving Labour out of account in the formation of his celebrated Commission as completely as Cobden himself left it out of account in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League. The Liberals on the other hand are not so foolish as to give pledges to those who do not ask for them, so that the opposition to Mr. Chamberlain is as completely capitalist- ridden as is his own propaganda. Thus, instead of standing to win either way, Labour now stands to lose either way. Should Mr. Chamberlain succeed, as he very well may, if not at this election at the one after it, his tariff will be framed by powerful organisations representing capital and finance, who will naturally follow their own pecuniary interests. Should the Opposition triumph they will come into power quite unpledged, save to Lord Rosebery's programme of "commercial repose" which is the newest name for our old friend "laissez faire." And we shall be unable to make use of the stir made by Mr. Chamberlain's agitation, as we might well have done had we acted wisely, in order to get measures which we really do want and which are in some sense of the nature of counter-remedies the nationalisation of railways, an imperial shipping fleet with preferential rates, and the re-organisation of our agriculture by state aid and state supervision.

But there are reasons other than tactical ones why Labour should have refused to adopt the Liberal attitude of non-possumus in regard to fiscal reform. Whether or no Mr. Chamberlain's tariff scheme would have been favourable to the interests of labour,* there are a great many proposals which are clearly and unmistakeably in its interests which are yet in their nature protectionist even in the narrow sense in which that word is ordinarily used.

*Lest I should be accused of "sitting on the fence" (a phrase much beloved by those who always want to have judgment first and evidence afterwards) I may as well state definitely that in my opinion a protective tariff, if framed by genuine reformers solely in the public interest, would be decidedly advantageous to Labour.

It is characteristic of the Liberal party that even when it has dropped accidentally across a right conclusion it invariably seizes with great eagerness upon the wrong reasons for supporting it. The most striking example of this is to be found in the case of Chinese Labour. For myself, I detest Chinese Labour, and am prepared to go, I fancy, a good deal further than the Liberal front bench in fighting it. But then I am a Protectionist; and I believe that a plentiful supply of cheap labour is the worst curse with which a nation can be visited. The Liberals and their Labour henchmen, precluded by reason of their Free Trade orthodoxies from taking up this sane and tenable position, have to devote their energies to denouncing the "slavery" involved in the conditions of the Ordinance. Now no Socialist can be expected to get very excited on this point. He hates slavery, but he recognises that in one form or another it is an inherent part of the capitalist system, and the difference between telling a man that he must work for his master or be imprisoned and telling him that he must work for his master or be starved, can hardly seem to him important enough to make all this fuss about. Moreover "forced labour" is implicit in the Socialist ideal, though most of us would prefer to begin by applying it to the Rand shareholders. As a matter of fact the conditions of the Ordinance are a mitigation of the evils resulting from Chinese Labour, not an aggravation of them. They serve to circumscribe to some extent the limits of the damage which the imported Chinaman can do. My objection to them is that I do not for one moment believe that they can be made effective. But the danger of denouncing the conditions of importation instead of denouncing the importation itself, is that one of these days our Hebrew masters will say to us: "Very well. You object to conditions; you shall have none. We will import Chinamen freely and without restriction, and they shall supplant white men, not in the mines only, but in every industry throughout South Africa. We shall reap still larger dividends, and the danger of a white proletariat will be still more remote. Now we hope you are satisfied." What will our Free Trade Labourites say then?

A less serious but more amusing example of the shifts to which trade union leaders are sometimes reduced in their efforts to reconcile the obvious interests of the workers with their holy and sacred "Free Trade Principles" was afforded by an episode which took place at the Leeds Trade Union Congress last year. It appears that in certain mines in these islands the capitalists have taken to employing foreign un- skilled labour. Their motives are doubtless the same as those of the Rand magnates, namely to bring down the price of labour all round by the competition of indigent Poles and Italians with the fairly well-paid workers of this country. It was a very natural thing for capitalists to do; it was an equally natural thing for workmen to resist. They are resisting and a resolution was proposed at the Congress condemning the employment of foreign unskilled labour in the mines. So far so good; but now comes the comedy of the situation. To exclude the foreigner as a foreigner is clearly protection of the most barefaced kind; and the proposal had to be recommended to a body which had just declared in favour of unmitigated Free Trade. Then some genius had an almost miraculous inspiration. It was suggested that the foreigner ought to be excluded, not because he was a foreigner, not even because his labour was cheap, but because he could not read the Home Office regulations which are hung up in the mines. The plea was eagerly clutched at, and seems to have been received with all solemnity. The correspondent of the Daily News who had at first regarded the resolution with natural suspicion felt all his scruples vanish, and actually hailed the declaration as proof of the unflinching Cobdenism of the workers. Now what I want to know is does anyone, does the Daily News correspondent himself really believe in the sincerity of this ridiculous excuse? Would the British miners have been satisfied if the regulations were printed in Polish or Italian? Or, supposing this to be impossible, would they be satisfied if the immigrants learnt enough English to read them? Of course they would not. The objection to foreign unskilled labour is a purely protectionist objection, as inconsistent with Free Trade as anything proposed by Mr. Chamberlain. I may add that it has my entire sympathy.

Very soon, much sooner I think than they suppose, the leaders of organised labour will be forced by the sheer pressure of events to throw "free trade principles " over-board and find another foundation for their economic faith. For buying in the cheapest market clearly implies buying labour in the cheapest market; and the capitalists will not be slow to grasp its consequencesat a time when the expansion of European civilisation is every day throwing new drafts of cheap labour on the market. Less developed races with a lower standard of life are exceedingly useful weapons to the hand of the capitalist eager to force down wages. Already the appearance of the Chinaman in South Africa is parallelled on the other side of the Atlantic by the employment of negro blacklegs to defeat the Colorado strikers. What has happened in Africa and America may happen is indeed beginning to happen here. Are the labour leaders prepared to go on defending Free Trade, if Free Trade should prove to mean the free importation of great masses of cheap blackleg labour from Poland, Italy and China? And, if they so far abandon Free Trade as to shut out such labour, what about the goods which it produces? Suppose the capitalist, forbidden to bring the Chinaman here, take to exploiting him in his own country, relying on our policy of free imports to secure the admission of his sweated goods. Will not the champions of labour begin to regard the question of free imports in a different light? The slope is steep and slippery and the end is Protection!

Yes the Labour party will have in the end to become protectionist. Already progressive municipalities do not buy in the cheapest market but in the best market, regard being had to the remote social consequences of the purchase. And since the home market is the only one where they can exercise any real or effective supervision over the conditions of production, we have the curious spectacle of local bodies with a big Liberal majority forced into what is in effect a policy of Protection by the protests of unimpeachable Free Trade Labourites such as Mr. Steadman. Of course the new Protectionism will not be that of Lord George Bentinck or even of Mr. Chamberlain. It will "protect" not the landlord or the capitalist but the labourer and if to this end import duties are found useful it will make no more fuss about imposing them than any other necessary piece of state intervention.

Gladstonian Ghosts - "Militarism and Aggression"

2008-05-31T09:26:00.000-07:00

We are continually being told by Socialists of the hazier sort that Labour has no concern with the question of national defence. We have had recently a considerable ebulition of this particular form of imbecility provoked by the efforts of one who has always seemed to me quite the sanest and most far- sighted of English Socialists, Mr. Robert Blatchford, to draw general attention to the importance of the subject. Mr. Blatchford is in controversy very well able to take care of himself, and in this instance he has overwhelmed his critics with such a cannonade of satire, eloquence, indisputable logic and inspired common-sense that it would be quite impertinent of me to offer him my support. But the episode is so very typical of the ineffable silliness of "advanced" persons that I cannot pass it by without comment.

As to the contention so much favoured by those who have been assailing Mr. Blatchford's "militarism" that England is not worth defending and that a foreign invasion would be no evil to the bulk of the people, the position has been so thoroughly dismantled by "Nunquam's" heavy artillery that I need hardly trouble about it here. As Mr. Blatchford says, a few weeks of Prussian or Muscovite rule would probably be the best cure for reformers of this type. But the whole argument is on the face of it absurd. That your country is badly governed is an excellent reason for changing your present rulers. But it is no reason at all for welcoming (patriotism being for the moment set on one side) a cataclysm which would destroy good and bad alike the good more completely than the bad and would inevitably throw back all hope of reform for at least a century. As well might a man say that, since London was admittedly in many ways an ugly and horrible place, he proposed to vote for the abolition of the fire-brigade.

So also with the very popular platitude which asserts that a peaceful and unaggressive people need not fear attack, and that, if we refrain from injuring our neighbours they will refrain from injuring us, (unless presumably we happen to be North Sea fishermen). The obvious controversial retort is that the people who maintain this doctrine are for the most part the very same who a little while ago were never tired of maintaining that the Boers were peaceful and unaggressive and lamenting that in spite of this their country was attacked conquered and annexed by a powerful neighbour. Of course I do not accept this account of the Boers, whom indeed I respect far too much to accuse of Tolstoian proclivities. But the point is plainly unanswerable for those who do accept it. In any case the whole of the above lofty generalization is flatly contradicted by history and experience. Indeed, if the strong will not wantonly attack the weak, then is our preaching vain! Why are we Socialists? What is the good of Trade Unionism? The humane capitalists will not attack us if we remain "peaceful and unaggressive" Perhaps not. As Mr. Hyndman (I think) once said: One does not muzzle sheep! But, if there is anything which the whole history of human institutions proves, it is this, that the people that does not know how to defend its liberties will lose them, and that it is not the strong and aggressive nation but the weak and defenceless nation that has cause to dread aggression from its neighbours.

In a word the doctrine of non-resistance and its consequence, the abolition of armaments, is good Anarchism and may therefore in a sense be called good Liberalism. But Socialism it is not and cannot be.

There is however, a position sometimes maintained by controversialists rather saner than those dealt with above. It is suggested that, while it may be admitted that an army of some sort is necessary, there are plenty of people already concerned with the promotion of its efficiency, and that Socialists, having other and more important work to do, had much better leave the question alone, intervening only to restrain the militarists when their demands become excessive.

Now to this contention there are as it seems to me three complete answers. By far the most important objection to such a policy is that it would make it permanently impossible for us to gain the confidence of the electorate. The people of Great Britain (especially the working classes) will always demand as the first condition of supporting any government that it shall be able and willing to defend the country against foreign aggression. No party which was not thought to fulfill this condition would find it possible to achieve or retain administrative power. And those of us whose desire is not to sit in arm chairs and read Tolstoi and congratulate ourselves on the non-conformity of our consciences, but to get some sort of socialism put into bricks and mortar, must feel the urgent necessity of convincing the voters that we are trust- worthy in this respect.

Moreover if you leave the discussion of army reform to the representatives of the landed and capitalist classes, such reforms as we get will be carried out exclusively in the interests of those classes. At present our military and naval forces are officered and controlled by one class; they are an appendage of that class and will always, so long as this is so, be employed successfully to protect its interests. So long as the English people are asked to choose between such class army and the risk of a German invasion, they will choose the former, but it by no means follows that they would do so were a practicable alternative placed before them.

And this brings me to my third point. It so happens that for the purpose of formulating an alternative. Socialists are in an exceptionally favoured position. Our army has by common consent broken down. It is not even effective for the purposes for which the capitalist classes want it. It is not only, as foolish people suppose, the War Office that is decadent and inefficient; the army is decadent and inefficient. Our soldiers are perhaps the best raw material in the world, but the whole machinery of war and defence is eaten up by a corruption which is all the worse for being largely careless and unconscious The two worst enemies of the British Army are the power of money and the power of caste. These are our enemies also. We Socialists alone are in a position to see what is really wrong. Would it not be worth our while to bring our best brains to bear upon the subject and see whether our Socialism cannot provide us with a remedy.

In spite of the unfortunate prevalence of the sort of sentimentalism referred to above, there have always been in the socialist movement witnesses to the common-sense view of militarism. Here and there throughout this volume I have been obliged to criticize the attitude of the Social Democratic Federation; I therefore admit the more gladly that on this question that body has indubitably led the way. Its views are obtainable in the form of a remarkably able pamphlet* from the pen of Mr. Quelch, wherein the old Liberal Quakerism is thrown completely overboard and the institution of universal citizen service on something like the Swiss model put forward as the socialist solution of the problem of national defence. The Fabians followed in "Fabianism and the Empire," adopting a suggestion of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's that the half-time age in factories and workshops should be raised to 21 and the time thus gained devoted to training in the use of modern weapons. Finally there is Mr. Robert Blatchford, whose plan is too elaborate to be detailed here I refer my readers to his articles in the Clarion during July, August and September last year and to his forth- coming book on the subject but whose cardinal demand is for an immense increase in the numbers and efficiency of the volunteers, who are to form a citizen force of almost national dimensions. Of course the Fabian programme and, I gather, Mr. Blatchford's also imply the existence of at any rate a small professional army in addition.

Now it seems to me that the one defect of the S.D.F. plan is that, if I understand Mr. Quelch's pamphlet rightly, it professes only to provide a militia for the defence of these islands. That is to say it does not provide for the defence of our possessions in different parts of the world nor for any aggressive movement against the territory of the power with which we chance to be at war; while even for purely defensive purposes it is open to the grave military objections which can always be urged against relying solely on irregular troops.

I have already discussed the question of Imperialism and I need not go into it again. But I suppose that all but the most fanatical Little-Englanders, whatever their views on expansion, would admit that it is both our right and our duty to assist in the protection of our fellow-citizens in other parts of the world against unprovoked attack. If, for example, Germany were to make a wanton attack on Australia, or Russia on India, or the United States on Canada, I suppose that every sensible Englishman would admit that we ought to come to the assistance of our fellow-countrymen. But in that case we shall want an army for foreign service as well as for home defence.

The other point needs rather more explanation because it is constantly misunderstood by people who will not try to comprehend the nature of war. Such persons are always confusing aggresssion in the political sense as the cause of war with aggression in the strategic sense as a method of conducting it. A war may be waged solely for defensive purposes, yet it may be the right course from a military point of view to take the offensive. France found this in the wars of the revolution; and Japan fighting (as I believe) for no other purpose than the protection of her own independence against the lies of Russian diplomacy and the brutalities of Russian power, has yet been obliged to conquer Korea, invade Manchuria, and lay siege to Port Arthur. Similarly we might easily find ourselves engaged in a purely defensive war with France or Germany, in which it might be still the only safe policy to raid the territory and seize the over-sea possessions and especially the coaling-stations of our enemies.

As a matter of fact the distinction so often made between offensive and defensive war is more theoretic than practical. It is seldom possible to say in the case of a modern war that either side is unmistakably attacking or defending. Which side was the aggressor in the Crimean or Franco-German wars? Are the Japs aggressors because it was they who actually declared war or are they only defending their country? The real question to be asked is not which side is the aggressor, but which nation is so situated that its triumph will be beneficial to mankind as a whole.

Lastly there are the serious disadvantages from a military standpoint of trusting to a citizen force alone. Experience seems to prove that such a force is suitable only to a certain kind of warfare. The example of the Boers to which Mr. Quelch appeals so confidently tells directly against him. The Boers doubtless did wonders in the way of guerrilla fighting and in the defence of strong positions, but they never followed up their successes effectively, and they had to waste a great deal of time, when time was of the utmost value to them, in sitting down before Ladysmith, Kimberley and Mafeking when a professional army of the same size would have taken all three by assault.

It seems to me that we can get an excellent military policy for Socialists by a judicious combination of the three suggestions to which I have referred. Taking Mr. Webb's plan first, let us by all means by a modification of the Factory Acts (much needed for its own sake) train the whole youthful population in the use of modern weapons and not in the use of modern weapons alone but in the best physical exercises available and above all in discipline, endurance and the military virtues. Then, following Mr. Quelch and the S.D.F. we might keep them in training by periodic mobilizations on the Swiss pattern without subjecting them to long periods of barrack life. From the large citizen force so formed we ought to be able to pick by voluntary enlistment a professional army which need not be very large, but which should be well-paid, efficiently organised and prepared for any emergency. Another and larger professional army would be needed for the defence of distant dependencies such as India.

These forces must, of course, be constituted on a basis of equality of opportunity, efficiency and reliability and capacity to command being the only passports to promotion and no bar being placed between the most capable soldier, whatever his origin and the highest posts in the army. From the purely military point of view this would be an enormous improvement on the present system, It is worth noting that the two armies which, organised in an incredibly short space of time out of the rawest of materials, broke in pieces every force which could be put into the field against them, the army of Cromwell and the army of the First Republic, were alike based on the principle of the "career open to talent." So the policy which I suggest would, I sincerely believe, convert our impossible army into one of the best fighting machines in the world. Not only would the officers under such a system be more capable than some of the fashionable commanders, whose glorious defeats and magnificent surrenders we were all eulogising five years ago, but better chances and a higher rate of pay would attract to the ranks of the professional army the very best type of man for the purpose, which the present system can hardly be said to do.

Beyond this we want an effective General Staff and an Intelligence Department not only alert but strong enough to enforce its demands on the government, as well as a complete overhauling of our war-machine both on its civil and military side. But there is no space for details here ; Socialists could hardly do better than leave them to Mr. Blatchford to work out*

* There is one of Mr. Blatchford's proposals to which I feel the strongest possible objection; that is the suggestion that those who do not volunteer for his citizen force should pay extra taxation. This sounds fair enough, no doubt, but its effect would clearly be that the rich could escape service and the poor could not which is hardly a Socialist ideal. Surely 'it is sounder policy to make such citizen training as you give compulsory for all able-bodied citizens.

No one who thinks seriously of the consequences of such a policy can doubt that, if it could be carried out, it would effect a greater transference of real power to the democracy than any Reform Bill. The objection which most reformers instinctively feel to any proposal to increase military establishments rests, I fancy, at bottom on their sense that such establishments are organized by a class to protect its narrow class interests. So it is that British troops are found useful to British governments not only in Egypt and South Africa but also at Featherstone and Bethesda. With such a military organisation as I have suggested this menace would disappear. Nay, the weights would be transferred to the other scale. Nothing, I conceive, is so likely to put a little of the fear of God into the hearts of our Liberal and Conservative rulers as the knowledge that they have to deal with a democratic army and a democracy trained in arms. This, I know, will sound shockingly heterodox to idealistic persons who are fond of repeating (in defiance of universal human experience) the foolish maxim of John Bright, the Quaker apologist for plutocratic Anarchism, that "force is no remedy," and the equally unhistorical statement that "violence always injures the cause of those who use it." But practical men pay little attention to such talk, knowing that nothing helps a strike so much as a little timely rioting and that the most important reforms of the late century were only carried when it was known that the mob of the great towns was "up." As a matter of fact, force is the only remedy. If Socialism comes about, as I think it probably will in this country, in the constitutional Fabian way, this will only mean that the Socialists will themselves have captured the control of the army and the police and will then use them against the possessing classes, forcing them to disgorge at the bayonet's point. And, if it does not superficially wear this aspect, that will merely be because the latter, seeing how invincible is the physical force arrayed against them, may very likely surrender position after position at discretion until they find that they have no longer anything to defend.*

*Since these pages were sent to the press a striking confirmation of my view has been furnished by recent occurrences in Russia. There, it will be remembered, the populace (acting on strictly Tolstoian principles) marched unarmed to lay their grievances before their Sovereign. We all know what happened. They were shot down and cut to pieces by Cossacks. One hopes that the survivors will be less faithful to Count Tolstoi's gospel in the future, and will perhaps realise that "moral force" is an exceedingly poor protection against bullets and bayonets.

It may be remarked incidentally that social reform would receive a considerable impetus from such a policy.

Not only would periodic mobilizations take the workers for a time out of the foetid atmosphere of their slums and factories and perhaps make them less contented to return, but the heads of the army would themselves be compelled to become social reformers and insist on some decent minimum of housing and factory conditions in order to keep up the physical efficiency of the material of which they would have to make soldiers. Herr Molkenbuhr the German Social- Democrat pointed out to the Socialist Congress at Amsterdam this year that this had happened in Germany even under an undemocratic and often really oppressive form of conscription. An immense impetus given to housing and factory legislation would be among the by-products of Army Reform, if carried out on the right lines.

I have left myself no space here to deal adequately with the Navy. I will therefore pass it by here with the remark that an invincible navy is absolutely essential to the welfare of the workers of this country, whose food comes almost entirely from overseas, and that the navy has never been like the Army a menace to popular liberties. It is generally thought that our navy is in a much more efficient state than our army is known to be in ; but a thorough overhauling would do it no harm and might expose weaknesses which we do not suspect. At any rate any attempt to weaken our naval predominance should be resolutely opposed by all Socialists as by all sensible men.

Of course an effective army and navy will cost money. But the Socialist will be by no means so frightened of high estimates as the old Radical who regarded all taxation as being of the nature of a compromise with Satan. The Socialist knows that at least 600,000,000 a year goes at present into the pockets of landlords and capitalists and shareholders generally, and, until this is absorbed, the cry of "ruinous expenditure" cannot be expected to appall him.

Works Cited by Chesterton:

Social Democracy and the Armed Nation
Twentieth Century Press, 373 Clerkenwell Green,
E.C. id.

Fabianism and the Empire,
edited by Bernard Shaw, the Fabian Society, 3, Clements Inn, W.C. 3d.

Gladstonian Ghosts - National Penrhynism

2008-05-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

As I have already suggested the subservience of Socialists and Labourites to the traditions of Liberalism, so far from showing any signs of abating gets worse every day. It has been getting markedly worse since the beginning of the new century. It was the South African War more than anything else which captured the English Socialists and swept them into the most reactionary wing of the broken forces of Liberalism. Since then the Radicals have always been able by raising the cry of "No Imperialism!" to bend the Socialists to their will. Hence Mr. MacDonald's amazing indiscretion quoted in my last chapter.

I think it was Mr. Ben Tillet who alluded to the owner of the Bethesda Slate Quarries as "Kruger-Penrhyn."

I am not sure that Mr. Tillet or indeed anyone else realised the full accuracy of this description. For not only was there a very striking resemblance between the virtues and faults of Mr. Kruger and those of Lord Penrhyn but there was an even more remarkable analogy between the claims which the two men put forward and the arguments by which those claims were attacked and upheld.

The friends of the Welsh quarrymen said in effect to Lord Penrhyn: "You are conducting your business improperly; your narrow obstinacy is dangerous to the community and an obstacle to progress; your conduct towards your employees is unfair and oppressive. We demand that you either mend your ways or go." Similarly the British government said in effect to Mr. Kruger "You are conducting the government of your country badly; your narrow obstinacy is an obstacle to progress and is creating a situation dangerous to the peace of the world; your conduct towards your subjects is unfair and oppressive. We demand that you either mend your ways or go."

And the answer is in each case the same "Shall I not do what I will with my own?" "Are not the quarries mine?" asks Lord Penrhyn: "Is not the Transvaal ours?" demanded Mr. Kruger. "If my workmen do not like my management they can leave" said Lord Penrhyn; "If the Outlanders do not like my government they need not come," said Mr. Kruger.

Now, granting the premises of these two eminent men their conclusions certainly follow. Indeed the popular case against both was clearly untenable. From the Liberal point of view Lord Penrhyn was as right as Mr. Kruger ; from the Conservative point of view Mr. Kruger was as right as Lord Penrhyn. It is only by assailing the fundamental assumptions of both that we can make out any fair case against either. The only possible answer to the positions stated above is the Socialist answer: "No; the quarries do not really belong to Lord Penrhyn; the Transvaal does not really belong to Mr. Kruger or to the Boers. Their title depends on the use they make of them. Private property, whether of individuals or of nations is subject ultimately to the claims of public necessity."

I have dwelt on this point at some length because, as I have already said, it was unquestionably the South African War which more than anything else rivetted on our Socialist and Labour parties the chains of Liberalism. It is perfectly natural that Liberals should champion the " rights of nationalities,' since they are the chosen champions of the rights of property. But what have Socialists to do with either except to challenge them whenever they conflict with the general well-being? How can Socialists accept the claim of a handful of settlers to set up a ring-fence round a certain portion of the earth's surface and declare it their property any more than the claim of a landlord to enclose commons?

Note that I am not by any means saying that no Socialist could consistently oppose the South African War. There are many plausible grounds upon which he could oppose it. He could oppose it for example on the ground that the two Republics would in course of time have been peaceably absorbed into the Empire, and that the attempt to hurry the process by war was in every way a disastrous blunder. Or again he could take the ground that the war dangerously strengthened the already too powerful financial interests of the Rand and paved the way for such reactionary measures as the introduction of Chinese labour. I will not discuss here whether such arguments are sound or unsound. I only say that the particular ground of debate chosen, the inalienable "right" of a people to do what it likes with its own, is one that no Socialist can take without self-stultification.

The manner in which the leaders of the English Labour movement with a few exceptions flung themselves recklessly into the most unintelligent sort of pro-Krugerism is one example and one very disastrous in its consequences of the extent to which they have allowed themselves to be saturated with the Liberal theory of wholly irresponsible Nationalism. But it is by no means the only one. The parallel case of Ireland is in many ways even more curious.

In considering the eternal Irish question from a Socialist standpoint there are four dominant facts to be kept always in mind. The first is that Nationalism in the Irish sense is not a Socialist ideal in any sense, but is merely a kind of very narrow parochial Jingoism, The second that the Irish Nationalist party is preeminently a Parti bourgeois drawing its main strength from the middle orders small tradesmen, tenant farmers and publicans, and that its political and economic ideas are those generally characteristic of that class rigid individualism, peasant proprietorship and the like. The third that it is a clericalist Party, representing not the enlightened Catholicism of the Continent but the narrowest kind of political Ultramonanism* The fourth that Mr. Gladstone's adoption of the Home Rule cause was a deliberate move on his part intended to stave off economic reforms in this country.

*Note for example the action of the Irish Members in securing the exclusion of Convent Laundries from the operation of the Factory Acts action of which every enlightened Roman Catholic, to whom I have spoken of it, has expressed strong disapproval.

Now in these circumstances it would seem almost incredible that Socialists should feel any kind of sympathy with Irish Nationalism. Yet apparently they do feel such sympathy. Mr. Gladstone indeed builded better than he knew. He doubtless believed that by espousing Home Rule he could "dish" Mr. Chamberlain and draw the attention of young Liberals and Radicals away from social questions in which they were beginning to take a languid interest; but he could hardly have expected to effect this in the case of the Socialists and Labour leaders themselves. Yet to a great extent his policy has achieved this, and we actually find Socialists clamouring for the retention of Home Rule in the Liberal programme, though they must know perfectly well that its retention means the indefinite postponement of industrial matters.

There is no kind of excuse for the Nationalist partialities of Socialists because they know or ought to know that the theory that England oppresses Ireland is a radically false and untenable one. That Ireland is oppressed one need not deny; but it is not England that oppresses her. It is capitalism and landlordism that oppress Ireland as they oppress England. If the S.D.F. means anything at all by its "recognition of the Class War" it ought to recognise this. And recognising it, it ought to set its face like flint against a policy of disunion and racial antagonism and teach the proletarians of Ireland and England to "unite" (that is to be Unionists) according to the old Socialist formula instead of encouraging the proletarians of Ireland to regard those of England as aliens and tyrants.

To say the truth I am a little tired of the wrongs of Ireland. I am quite willing to admit that she is an "oppressed nationality" with the proviso that this phrase is equally applicable to England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. But one is tempted to point out that concessions have been made to the Irish peasantry such as no one dreams of making to the workers of Great Britain. How much "fixity of tenure" has the English labourer in the wretched hole which his masters provide for him? Do we sign away millions of British money and British credit to save him from the oppression of his landlord? Not at all. But then he does not shoot from behind hedges; nor has he as yet had even the wisdom to organize a strong and independent political party whose support is to be obtained for value received.

In a word I contend that the association of English Socialism and Labourism with the aspirations of Irish Chauvinists is theoretically meaningless and practically suicidal. It is our business to meet the old Gladstonian cry that everything else must wait because "Ireland blocks the way" with a counter-cry, "It is Ireland's turn to wait; Labour blocks the way."

All this does not of course mean that no kind of devolution is practicable or desirable. There is a sense in which I am myself a convinced "Home Ruler." I believe that a number of causes (quite independent of Irish Jingoism) are combining to make a vast extension of our system of local government imperative. Mr. H. G. Wells has shown that the administrative areas of our local authorities are at present much too small, and the authorities themselves are quickly rinding this out from practical experience. Parliament is overwhelmed with business which intelligent local bodies could transact much better. Imperial Federation, when it comes, will of necessity entail a large measure of local autonomy. Altogether some scheme of provincial councils seems less fantastic to-day than it did when Mr. Chamberlain outlined it in the 'eighties. But there is no earthly reason for conceding to the least trustworthy and most militantly provincial part of the United Kingdom anything more than you give to the rest. Ireland should get such autonomy as we might give to the north of England and no more. Ireland is no more a Nation than Yorkshire, but there is every reason why both Ireland and Yorkshire should be taught to manage their purely internal affairs to the best of their ability.

But, if exclusive Nationalism is essentially unsocialistic, what are we to say of Imperialism? The answer is that there is nothing wrong with Imperialism except the name which suggests Louis Bonaparte and the dragooning of subject peoples. With the thing, in its British sense, Socialists have no kind of quarrel. Indeed if Socialists would only give up their vague invectives against " Empire," which lead in the long run to nothing more than the unmeaning backing of the effete anti-imperialist, anti-socialist, anti- Church-and-State Radicalism current fifty years ago, and seriously face the problems raised by British expansion from an unswervingly Socialist stand- point, we might get on a good deal faster. The problem of Imperialism (" Federationism " would be a better word) may be briefly stated thus : How can we consolidate the widely scattered and variegated dominions which fly the British flag into one vast Commonwealth of practically inter- national extent ? Have Socialists any answer to this question? Or are they to be content with the old Radical answer that this cannot or should not be done?

That any Socialist should return such answer is to me I confess astounding. To say that such a practically international commonwealth is impossible is to say that a fortiori the international commonwealth of which Marx and Lassalles dreamed is impossible. If the proletarians of England and Ireland, Australia and South Africa, India and Canada cannot unite, what hope is there that those of France and Germany, Russia and Japan will do so. Surely it is a curious way of showing your enthusiasm for the Federation of the World to break up all existing federations into smaller and smaller divisions The practical Socialist policy in relation to the Empire is clearly not to destroy it, but to socialize it that is to prevent its exploitation by capitalist cliques and financial conspiracies, to organise it in the interests of its inhabitants as a whole, and to use its power to check the evil force and cunning of cosmopolitan finance.

For indeed the dark of deeds such finance can only, as we Socialists believe, be checked by the political force of the community. And in order to check it at all effectively the community must be operative on a scale as large as its own. That is why the older Socialists were internationalists; that is why so many of the more thoughtful of modern Socialists are imperialists. Mr. Wells has pointed out at what a serious disadvantage municipalities find themselves in dealing with private monopolies since the latter can operate over any area that is convenient to them, while the operations of the former are confined within the narrow and arbitrary frontiers drawn by Acts of Parliament. Exactly the same is true in international affairs. Mr. Beit and Mr. Eckstein can safely snap their fingers at small nationalities, however progressive. Against a Socialistic British Empire they would be utterly powerless.

And as the organization of the Empire can be made the most powerful of Socialist weapons if we can once get control of it, so the popular sentiment of Imperialism can be used for the purposes of Socialist propaganda if we know how to turn it to account. For we Socialists alone possess the key to the problem the key for which non- socialist Imperialists are looking. It is to be noted that as soon as the ordinary Imperialist gets anywhere near the solution of an imperial question he gets unconsciously on to the Socialist track, as for instance in the growing demand for the imperialisation of our great carrying lines. Even Mr. Chamberlain's propaganda, though Socialists can- not think it sufficient, is a sort of groping after the socialist solution, an admission of the necessity of intervention by the united British Commonwealth to check and regulate the disintegrating anarchy of commercial competition. In fact our word to the stupid and thoughtless Imperialism of the streets is in reality the word of St. Paul to the Athenians: "What ye ignorantly worship that declare we unto you!"

The same general line of thought has its application to the problems of foreign policy. The old Cobdenite doctrine of non-intervention in the affairs of other nations had its origin in Cobden's general view of diplomacy as existing only to promote the interests of trade by which of course he meant the interests of the merchant, manufacturer and capitalist. That cannot possibly be our view. For Socialists to accept the Liberal doctrine of non-intervention would amount to a denial of that human solidarity of which they have always considered themselves the especial champions. In point of fact Palmerston is a much better model for Socialists in regard to continental affairs than Cobden or Bright or even Gladstone. For, though Gladstone was certainly not a non-interventionist, his anti-Turkish monomania made him blind to the evil power of Russia, whose existence is a standing menace to liberty and progress, and whose power and vast resources make her a more formidable enemy of all that we value than Turkey could ever be if she tried. Socialists should press not merely for the protection of our "proletarian" fishermen against the freaks of tipsy or panic-stricken Russian admirals, but for a steady policy of opposition to Russia all over the world and the support of any or every nation, Japs, Finns, Poles, Afghans and even the "unspeakable" Turk against her. During the perilous days through which we have recently passed, it must have occurred to many that our position would have been much stronger if we could have counted on the support of Turkey, as we could have done had we never abandoned, in deference to Mr. Gladstone's theological animosities, the policy of Palmerston and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe the policy of first reforming Turkish rule and then guaranteeing it against Muscovite aggression. The only difference between our policy and Palmerston's should be this, that while Palmerston confined himself to the encouragement of political liberty, we ought to aim at the promotion of economic liberty also. We should in fact try to put England at the head of the Labour interest throughout the world as Cromwell put her at the head of the Protestant interest, and Palmerston of the Liberal interest. And in doing this we should be prepared to make full use of those weapons which neither Cromwell nor Palmerston would ever have hesitated to employ.

Gladstonian Ghosts - "What Portion Have We In David?"

2008-05-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

The ordinary man conceives of a Socialist as a kind of very extreme Liberal or Radical, a man who pushes Radical doctrines further than most Radicals dare push them. Indeed many Socialists conceive so of themselves. Yet it is obvious that, if there is any truth at all in what I have just written, this must be regarded as a complete misconception.

Socialism and Collectivism are names which we give to the extreme development of that tendency in political thought which has proved so fatal to Liberalism, which is indeed a reaction against Liberalism. Karl Marx himself, revolutionary though he was, admitted that the English Factory Acts were the first political expression of Socialism; we have already seen that they were the death warrant of consistent and philosophic Liberalism. Every piece of Socialistic legislation is in its nature anti-Liberal. There is no getting away from the truth of Herbert Spencer's taunt when he called Socialism "The New Toryism." Epigrammatically ex- pressed, that is an excellent and most complimentary description of it. Socialism is an attempt to adapt the old Tory conceptions of national unity, solidarity and order to new conditions. Our case against Toryism is that its economic and political synthesis is no longer possible for us. But we can have no kind of sympathy with Liberalism which is the negation of all synthesis, the proclamation of universal disruption.

It is therefore particularly disheartening to find that "Liberal principles" are apparently as sacrosanct in the eyes of many Socialists as in those of the Liberals themselves. That Socialists also denounce the idea of a State Church, that Socialists also rail at Imperialism and condemn " bloated armaments," that Socialists also proclaim the universal holiness and perfection of Free Trade this is the really extraordinary and disturbing fact.

This, though none seems to see it, is the real root of the difficulties which be- set every attempt to form an independent Socialist or Labour Party. You cannot have an independent party with any real backbone in it without independent thinking. And, omitting pious platitudes about " the socialization of all the means of production, distribution and exchange" there does not seem to me any perceptible difference between the way in which the Independent Labour Party (for example) thinks about current problems and the way in which the Liberals think about them. They may think differently about economic abstractions, but they do not think differently when it comes to practical politics. Consequently when- ever a question divides the Liberals and the Tories, the I.L.P. always dashes into the Liberal camp at the firing of the first shot without apparently waiting to consider for one moment whether perhaps Socialism may not have an answer of its own to give which will in the nature of things be neither the Liberal nor the Tory answer. And then the I.L.P. and their allies of the Labour Representation Committee boast proudly of their "independence" because they are not allowed to speak on Liberal plat- forms. Of what avail is that prohibition if the platform on which they themselves stand is in its essence a Liberal platform. A little while ago the leaders of the I.L.P. were extremely indignant because three L.R.C. representatives were said to have spoken at a by-election in support of Liberal candidates. The defence was that the three leaders in question spoke, not in support of the Liberal candidate, but in opposition to the Licensing Bill and other measures of the Conservative Government. Now it seems to me that this puts the whole question of Socialist and Labour independence in a nutshell. If Socialists and other champions of labour have really nothing to say on the Licensing Bill, Education, Tariff Reform, Chinese Labour and other topics of the hour other than what all the Liberals are saying it seems very difficult to understand why it is so very wicked of them to support Liberal candidates. If on every question which is really before the country they agree with the said Liberal candidates it would seem the obvious thing to do. At any rate I feel quite certain that they will go on doing it, directly or indirectly, in spite of all the waste paper pledges and resolutions in the world, until they get a political philosophy of their own, when they will realize that the Socialist (or if you prefer it the "Labour") view of the licensing question, the fiscal question and the South African labour question is and must be fundamentally different from the Liberal and Radical view.

And indeed for want of such realisation the rush of the Labour men into the Liberal camp becomes more headlong every day. It began with Radical Trade Unionists newly converted to the idea of independent labour re- presentation. But the Socialist wing has not shown itself a whit steadier in its allegiance to the doctrine of real independence. If you doubt this charge, turn to an article contributed by Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald to the Speaker on the subject of the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam. The Speaker if one of the ablest is one of the most thoroughly obscurantist of Liberal papers, holding fast and without shame by the traditions of Cobden and Gladstone. Mr. MacDonald has been in the past one of the most uncompromising of the leaders of the I.L.P. and is at this moment Secretary of the Labour Representation Committee. He seems to claim, in the passage I am going to quote, to speak for his party, and, as far as I am aware, none of the leaders of that party have ventured to repudiate him.

This is what he says: "If, for instance, in the next Liberal Cabinet the Rosebery faction were strongly represented, and if no satis- factory pledges were given upon the Government's intentions regarding Trade Union legislation, the Labour Party would be perfectly justified in supporting a vote of censure or what would amount to that on the first King's Speech; but on the other hand, if the Cabinet were anti- Imperialist, and were sound on Trade Union legislation, the Labour Party would be justified in giving it general support and in protecting it from defeat."

It is hardly necessary to point out that here Mr. MacDonald gives the whole I.L.P. case hopelessly away. None reading the above passage could suppose for a moment that it was written by a Socialist. Observe that the writer does not ask for a single item of socialist or semi-socialist legislation. He is silent about Old Age Pensions, about an Eight Hours Day or a Minimum Wage, about a Graduated Income Tax, about Housing or Factory legislation in a word about everything that could by any possibility be called Socialistic. For what does he ask? Firstly for anti-Imperialism? Now is anti-Imperialism the same as Socialism? Is there any reason for supposing that the anti-Imperialist wing of the Liberal party will do more for labour than the Imperialist wing? Is Sir Henry Camp- bell-Bannerman a Socialist or a Labourite? Is Mr. John Morley, who for years has absolutely blocked the way in regard to social reform, a Socialist or a Labourite? Why should the Labour Party support the hopelessly outmoded rump of Little- England Radicalism without at any rate making a very stringent bargain with them? As to trade union legislation, every Socialist would doubtless support it, but it is not in itself a Socialist measure; it is merely what everyone supposed that the Unions had obtained thirty years ago with the assent of Liberals and Tories alike. It therefore comes to this that Mr. Mac- Donald has declared himself as regards practical issues not a Socialist at all, but an anti-Imperialist Radical who is in favour of improving the legal position of trades unions. Then why, in the name of heaven form an independent party at all? He and those who follow him are clearly in their right place as an insignificant section of the Radical "tail." And that is how both Tories and Radicals will in future regard them.

But there is one Socialist sect in England from which we might at least expect freedom from Liberal tradition. The Social Democratic Federation is never tired of boasting of its independence, its "class-consciousness," its stern Marxian inflexibility of purpose. Yet, when it comes to practice, it is only a trifle less enslaved by Liberal ideas than the I.L.P. itself. During the South African War the S.D.F. went one better than the Liberals in its narrow pro-Boerism. Its members rallied to the support of the late Mr. Kruger (surely the strangest leader that Social Democracy ever boasted!) and backed up the Radical Krugerites without apparently asking any questions as to their policy on labour matters. Later, on the education question, they again rallied to the Radical standard (the standard of 1870!) and, like so many Liberal Nonconformists, broke into ecstatic worship of the "ad hoc" principle, denouncing as "undemocratic" the socialistic policy of municipalized education which the Tory government had borrowed from the Fabian Society. Moreover, glancing at the S.D.F. programme I find among the "palliatives" disestablishment of the church and abolition of hereditary monarchy. How the economic condition of the people is going to be "palliated" by these measures I do not profess to know; I will only remark that the " palliation " does not seem very visible in the United States at the present time. But what I want to insist upon is the utter futility of playing thus into the hands of the champions of capitalism by helping to impress workmen with the idea that their misfortunes are wholly or in part due to those purely constitutional causes concerning which Radicals and Conservatives are at war, while all the time we at least know that they are due to the economic structure of society which Radicals and Conservatives alike support.

I agree with the S.D.F. in thinking that a Labour party must have some sort of doctrinal basis. An old party can live for a long while on catchwords and prejudices, but you cannot build a new party up without some definite political ideas. But these doctrines and ideas must not be a mere re-hash of exploded Liberal doctrines and ideas plus a theoretic belief in "the socialization of all the means, etc." The new party need not call itself Socialist, perhaps had better not do so, but its attitude to- wards practical matters must be effectively socialistic. It must stand for the rights of the community as emphatically as the older Liberalism stood for the rights of the individual. It must work for the state control and regulation of industry as Liberalism worked for its liberation from state interference. In a word, it must be Protectionist in a more far-reaching sense than that in which the word is applicable to Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. Chaplin. So that its political philosophy will be emphatically anti- Liberal and may sometimes (though but accidentally) have to be pro-Tory.

Moreover, even if a Labour party could be a Labour party and nothing more, there would always be a tactical as well as a philosophic reason for clearing our movement of all complicity with the ideas of Liberalism. During the first half of the nineteenth century it was always supposed that the working classes of this country were generally, if not exclusively Radical. Possibly at that time they were, but since their enfranchisement in 1867 they have proved themselves overwhelmingly and unrepentantly Tory. The history of the decades which have intervened since then has been the history of the gradual capture by the Tories of all the great industrial districts where the working-class vote is most powerful. Politicians of the 'forties spoke of the "Conservative Working Man" as incredulously as men would speak of a white negro. Yet events have proved not only that such a person exists, but that he can by his vote control the politics of nearly every great manufacturing town in England.

Now the Conservative working man has no fundamental objection to Socialism. The word no doubt displeases him, partly because of its foreign origin partly from its vaguely revolutionary associations, but on the practical application of Socialism he looks with very decided favour. In fact it is not im- probable that the conversion of the labouring classes to Toryism was in part at least due to the fact that during the sixties and seventies the Tories had for a leader Mr. Disraeli, whose quick Hebraic imagination and insight made him perceive the significance of the social problem, while the Liberals were led by Mr. Gladstone, who regarded all social reform from the first with supreme indifference which in his later days deepened into a hostility so intense and deep-rooted that he was ready to shatter his party and his own career over Home Rule, if by so doing he could stave off economic questions. But to return to the Tory workman. I have said he has no objection to applied Socialism. It would be a comparatively easy matter to secure his support for a programme of advanced industrial re- form, were he not required to swallow first a number of Liberal doctrines which have no relation to his class interests and to which he really has a strong objection anti-Imperialism, the reduction of armaments, doctrinaire republicanism and Irish Home Rule. Once cut the Labour party free from these things and the increase of its electoral power will be enormous.

Before proceeding to a more detailed examination of the Liberal attitude towards current problems and its relation to the genuinely progressive attitude, let me sum up the conclusions already reached.

There is no philosophic ground for identifying Socialism with extreme Liberalism or Radicalism. The philosophies of Liberalism and Socialism are not merely different but directly antagonistic.

There is no historical ground for regarding the Liberal party as the friend of the working classes. The Liberal party is historically an essentially capitalist party; as a matter of fact the Tory party has carried more drastic and valuable social reforms than its rival.

There is no tactical advantage to be gained by committing the new-born Labour party to the specific doctrines of Liberalism. The working classes of this country have no enthusiasm forany of these doctrines and have a marked dislike for some of them.

Therefore the Labour party or Socialist party or whatever the new movement cares to call itself must if it is to succeed fling all its Liberal lumber overboard and start afresh. It is not enough that it should be independent of Liberal money and Liberal organisation. All this matters little. What is essential is that it should be independent of Liberal ideas.

Glastonian Ghosts - Liberalism and the Zeitgeist

2008-05-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

It was the custom of Macaulay and other representative writers of the Dark Ages to speak of the mediaeval era in Europe as one of savage and unenlightened barbarism. There is something particularly amusing to the twentieth century observer in the patronizing tone adopted by men, who lived in what could hardly be called a community at all, in writing of the splendid civilization which flourished under Frederick II. and St. Louis. For it is becoming obvious to us all now that the great movement of the world from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century was not a movement towards civilization but a movement away from it. Civilization does not imply a collection of mechanical contrivances brought to a high state of perfection it may or may not possess such contrivances. But it does imply a Civitas, a commonwealth, a conscious organization of society for certain ends. This the age of St. Louis had, and the age of Cobden had not. The great movement which we roughly call "Liberalism" may therefore be very properly described as a reaction against civilization. I do not say it was wrong. Let none suppose that I have any share in the factitious dreams of the "Young England"enthusiasts or their con- temporary imitators. I know that Feudalism died in the fifteenth century of its own rottenness, and that its revival is as hopeless and undesirable as the revival of Druidism (much favoured I believe in some literary quarters just now) would be. I recognise that Liberalism in getting rid of its obsolete relics did good and necessary work and cleared the way for better. I merely state the case historically because it is impossible to understand the present position and prospects of Liberalism without realizing that Liberalism is in its essence destructive and in the strict sense of the word anti-social.

Look at the track of Liberalism across English history. It begins practically with the Reformation and the Great Pillage, wherein it showed its true character very vividly in the combination of a strictly individualistic religion with the conversion of communal property into private property for the benefit of the new "Reforming" oligarchs. Then it appears in the Civil War, which we are beginning to under- stand better than the Whig historians of the late century understood it. On its economic side Puritanism was the seventeenth century counterpart of Cobdenism a middle-class movement striking at once at the old aristocracy, whose lands it confiscated and divided, and at the proletariat, whom it robbed of what was left of their common heritage and to whom it denied their traditional holidays, avowedly on religious grounds but pratically in the interests of the employing class. One could continue the story further if it were necessary. But all that need be said is that in the middle of the nineteenth century we find Liberalism everywhere dominant and victorious with the result that Englishmen had practically ceased to form a community at all.

It is a common taunt in the mouths of Tariff Reformers just now that Cobden and Bright opposed the Factory Acts; and Liberals, driven into a corner on the subject, generally affect to regard this as an unfortunate and unaccountable lapse from grace on the part of the two Free Trade Apostles. Of course it was nothing of the sort: it was the only possible line for them to take as honest men and consistent political thinkers. The matter of the Factory Acts does not stand alone: state education, when first proposed was met with Radical opposition of a very similar kind. If anyone will look through the speeches of the opponents of the early Factory Bills he will find that they were attacked, just as the present government's Education Bill was attacked, not as revolutionary but as reactionary measures. They were constantly compared to the Sumptuary Laws and to the statutes regulating the position of apprentices which figure in mediaeval legislation. And the comparison is a perfectly fair one. Cobden and Bright were fundamentally right in their contention that Factory Acts were contrary to the first principles of Liberalism. Such acts were only passed, because the application of Liberal principles to the questions involved had resulted in a welter of brutality, child torture and racial deterioration, so horrible that no decently humane man, no reasonable enlightened citizen could think of Lancashire and its cotton trade without a shudder. When the Sovereign gave her assent to the first effective Factory Bill she passed a prophetic sentence of death on Liberalism and the Liberal Party.

Doubtless the execution of the sentence has been long deferred and may yet be deferred longer. But the backbone had been taken out of Liberalism as soon as that concession had been made. It could not claim any longer to have a coherent or intelligible political philosophy. For the arguments used by the Manchester School against import duties were precisely the same as those used against factory legislation. The two propositions were based upon the same axioms and postulates; if one was wrong, why not the other? And if the worship of "doing as one likes" were unsound in the region of economics what reason was there for supposing it to be sound in the region of politics?

If Free Contract were an untenable foundation for society, what became of Free Trade? And, if Free Trade were to go, might not the demand for a Free Church have to follow? The fortress of Liberalism still looked imposing enough, but the foundations were sapped and there were ominous cracks and fissures in the walls.

Indeed the passing of the great Factory Acts marks the turning of the tide. It was the public confession of the English nation that Cobden's and Bastiat's Utopia of 'economic harmonies ' was a foolish and impossible one, based on bad economics and worse history. It was the beginning of the reaction in favour of what I have called civilization, that is of the conscious and deliberate regulation and control of commerce in the public interest. Everything that has been done since in the way of industrial reform Housing Acts, Public Health Acts, compulsory and free education, municipal ownership and municipal trading has proceeded in this direction. We are working towards what Herbert Spencer called "The New Toryism," that is back to civilization.

It is no matter for surprise that most of the measures mentioned above have been the work of Tory governments. Doubtless the Tories are stupid and ineffectual enough, doubtless they are too much controlled by landed interests and capitalist rings, to deal with social evils very courageously. But at least they have this great advantage over their enemies, that they are not obliged to reconcile everything they do with the exploded economic dogmas of Benthamism, so that the insight and progressive instincts of their abler leaders have been able to force them farther along the path of progress than the sheer pressure of political necessity has been able to force the equally reluctant Liberals. So long as social reform remains a matter of pickings, we shall get the best pickings from the Tories.

But if, as I have suggested all meaning has long ago gone out of Liberalism, how does it come about that Liberalism insists on surviving? Are we not all expecting a big Liberal majority at the next General Election, and would not such a majority prove that Liberalism was very much alive? My answer is that it would not. Doubtless the Liberals will win at the polls next year; probably they will get a good majority. But this will prove nothing as to the spiritual vitality of the thing they represent. It will prove that the people of this country are annoyed with the present government and want a change. It will not prove that they are in any real sense of the word Liberals; still less that Liberalism has anything vital or valuable to say in relation to current problems.

The fact is that a party which has parted with its convictions may continue to exist for a long time by living on its prejudices. This is the ordinary history of movements, whether political, social or religious, during the period of their decadence, and it is briefly the history of Liberalism during the last fifty years. The Factory Acts, by their obvious necessity and their equally obvious indefensibility from the Liberal stand- point, knocked the bottom out of Liberalism and made a consistent Liberal philosophy impossible for the future. But only new and growing movements require a philosophy. When a movement has been going long enough to accumulate a fair number of catch-words and a collection of common likes and dislikes, it can make enormous use of these and even win great electoral triumphs on the strength of them long after they have become completely separated from the doctrines from which they originally sprang, and indeed long after these doctrines have become so obsolete as to be universally incredible. An almost exact parallel may be drawn between the recent history of Liberalism and the recent history of Nonconformity. English Nonconformity was founded on the doctrines of Calvin as English Liberalism was on those of Lock and Adam Smith. Where are the doctrines of Calvin now ? I do not suppose there is one chapel in London perhaps in England where the doctrine of Reprobation is taught in all its infamous completeness. The ordinary London Nonconformist minister at any rate is the mildest and vaguest of theologians, and talks like the member of an Ethical Society about little but "Truth and Righteousness." So far from preaching Calvinism with its iron and inflexible logic and its uncompromising cry of " Come out and be ye separate! " he is the first to tell you that the age of dogma is gone by and that modern religion must be " undenominational." Yet, in spite of the complete disappearance of its intellectual basis, Dissent remains powerful enough to thwart the execution of great reforms and wreck the careers of great statesmen. And if you ask what (if not a common theology) holds the Nonconformists together and makes. them so potent a force, the answer will be a common stock of prejudices a prejudice against Catholic ritual, a prejudice against horse-racing, a prejudice against established churches, a prejudice against public houses and music halls, a prejudice in favour of Sunday observance. All these (except in the case of church establishment where the prejudice is the result of a political accident erected into a religious dogma) are natural consequences of the Calvinist theology, but in that theology the modern Dissenter does not believe. Nevertheless, the foundation gone, the prejudice remains, and may be found strong enough among other things to destroy the value of one of the most beneficent reforms which the last thirty years have seen.

Now what has happened in the case of Nonconformity has happened also in the case of Liberalism. The philosophy of Bastiat has followed the philosophy of Calvin into the shades of incredibility. Yet the prejudices born of that philosophy remain and can still be played upon with considerable effect.

They may briefly be summarized as follows : A prejudice against peers (though not against capitalists), a prejudice against religious establishments, a prejudice against state interference with foreign trade (the case of home industry having been conceded), a prejudice against Imperialism, a prejudice against what is vaguely called "militarism" that is to say against provision for national defence. Add prejudices borrowed from the Nonconformists against publicans and priests and you have the sum total of modern Liberalism.

Now I regard all these prejudices as mere hindrances to progress. I wish to show in the pages which are to follow that they are not, as the enthusiastic Radical imagines, the very latest manifestations of " progressive thought," but that on the contrary they are the refuse of a dead epoch and an exploded theory of politics, that considered as a message for our age they are barren and impossible, that a party dominated by them is unfitted for public trust, and that, unless newer and more promising movements can emancipate themselves from their influence, they are likely to share the same ultimate fate.

Peel is said to have caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes. But the present apparel of the Liberals is not such as to tempt any self-respecting party to theft.

Gladstonian Ghosts - Dedication

2008-05-28T12:52:00.000-07:00

My dear Jepson,

If (with your permission) I dedicate this essay in political criticism to you, it is because I know that, though you parade it less, your interest in the science of politics is fully as keen as my own. In point of fact there is no- one whose judgment in these matters I would trust more readily than yours. You are a philosopher; and the philosopher's outlook in politics is always clear, practical and realistic as contrasted with the thoroughly romantic illusions of the typical party man. That, by the way, is why Mr. Balfour, the philosopher, has in the domain of parliamentary and electoral strategy hopelessly outwitted Mr. Chamberlain, the "man of business and busy man" to quote his own characteristically poetic phrase.

As a philosopher you are able to see what no "practical statesman" on either side of the House seems likely to perceive that social and economic politics are the only kind of politics that really matter, and that the "chicken- in- the-pot " ideal of Henri Quatre is after all the primary aim of all statesmanship. Three centuries of anarchic commercialism have left us a legacy of pauperism, disease, famine, physical degeneracy and spiritual demoralization, which in another century will infallibly destroy us altogether if we cannot in the mean time destroy them. And I think you share my impatience when our Radical friends insist on discussing Irish Home Rule, Church Disestablishment and the abolition of the House of Lords, as if such frivolities could really satisfy the human conscience faced with the appalling realities of the slums.

When therefore I speak of your interest in politics I am not thinking of that rather exciting parlour game which they play at Westminster during the spring months. In this you probably take less interest than I ; for I must confess (not altogether without shame) that the sporting aspect of politics has always fascinated me. You, on the other hand, have Bridge to amuse you; and, when you are brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Con- science on this count, you may fairly plead that any man who played Bridge with the peculiar mixture of ignorance, stupidity, criminal laziness and flagrant dishonesty with which the Front Benches play the game of politics, would infallibly be turned out of his club and probably cut by all his acquaintances.

It may seem surprising that, taking this view of contemporary party warfare, I should have troubled to write a book in criticism of it. To which I can only reply that the parliamentary bridge- players are unfortunately staking on their pastime not their own money but my country's interests; so that the incidents of the game become important despite the frivolity of the players, and it seems to me that we are on the eve of a turn of luck which may prove not only important but disastrous.

I suppose that we are not unlikely to have a General Election within the forthcoming year; and many indications appear to point to the probability of a sweeping Liberal victory. I want you to consider carefully what a Liberal victory means for us and for all serious reformers.

A Liberal victory means one of two things; either six years of government by the Whigs or six years of government by the Nonconformists. There is no third alternative, for neither the old destructive Free-thinking Radicalism of the late Charles Bradlaugh and the al- most extinct Secular Society, nor the new sentimental High Church Radicalism of my excellent friend C. F. G. Masterman and his associates of the Common- wealth has the slightest hold on any section of the electorate that counts politically. If you doubt this, it is because you did not follow Masterman's campaign at Dulwich as closely as I did. Vehement Catholic though he was, he was forced to accept all the political shibboleths of Nonconformity on pain of certain annihilation ; yet, even after he had gone to the very verge of what his conscience would permit to conciliate his sectarian masters, this did not save him from a crushing defeat. An excellent candidate, an eloquent and effective speaker with real civic enthusiasm, he met the same fate which overtook Bernard Shaw at St. Pancras, when he stood for the L.C.C. And that fate will continue to overtake all who rely on Radical support without first making their full submission political, theological and moral to the Vatican of Dissent.

The Radical wing of the Liberal Party has degenerated into a political committee of the Free Church Councils; even the Liberal League cannot get on without making some acknowledgement of Nonconformist authority. But the "Imperialist" section is of course less absolutely under the control of Salem Chapel than its rival; is it fundamentally any more progressive?

It is pathetic in the light of subsequent events to read again the admirable article (to which by the way I am indebted for the title of this book) contributed by Mr. Webb to the Nineteenth Century three years ago. Mr. Webb was so simple-minded as to suppose that Lord Rosebery's talk about "national efficiency" really meant something, and that "Liberal Imperialism" was a genuine attempt to form a party of progress free of Gladstonian tradition. Sancta simplicitas! We can see now clearly enough that the Liberal Imperialists were for the most part mere squeezable opportunists with all the effete prejudices of the Pro-Boers minus their sturdiness of conviction, men who wished to snatch a share in the popularity of the South African War, but had not the slightest intention of abandoning a single Mid-Victorian nostrum, which could still be used to catch a few votes. On the Education Bills, Tariff Reform and Licensing, they have Gladstonised, Miallised, Cobdenised and Wilfred- Lawsonised with the best. And now that the Fiscal Question seems likely to drive back into the ranks of the Liberal Right " such men as Lord Goschen and the Duke of Devonshire the very men who were frightened to death of Mr. Chamberlain's " Socialism " as far back as 1885 all hope of reform from that quarter is at an end. A " Liberal Imperialist " government means Lord Rosebery orating nobly about nothing in particular, Lord Goschen and the Duke of Devonshire acting up to their self-constituted function of " drags upon the wheel," and Sir Henry Fowler once more sitting heavily on all enlightened municipal enterprise in the interests of piratical monopolists. I see that the Whigs are already crying out for " Free Trade concentration," which will I imagine prove an excellent excuse for doing nothing for the next half decade. And yet, I fear, we shall have to accept the Whigs as the lesser of two evils. At least their offences will in the main be negative, while the victory of the Nonconformists means a period of legislation so disastrous that you and I and all advanced reformers will be obliged to cling to the House of Lords as our only bulwark against the appalling flood of reaction. For some time the Nonconformists have been clamouring for the repeal of the admirable Education Acts of 1902-3. They have now begun to clamour for the repeal of the Licensing Act as well. Now, quite apart from the merits of these measures, it is as clear as daylight that all progress will be impossible if every government devotes its time and energies to repealing the measures of its predecessor. This disastrous precedent will be but the first-fruit of a Dissent-driven ministry. Meanwhile our refreshments, our amusements, even our religious observances will be subjected to silly sectarian taboos. Social reform will be hopelessly neglected, while we may have to face a revival of the foolish agitation in favour of Church Disestablishment which even Mr. Chamberlain's marvelous genius for electioneering could not persuade the country to take very seriously in the eighties.

"The Whigs are a class with all the selfish prejudices and all the vices of a class ; the Radicals are a sect with all the grinding tyranny and all the debasing fanaticism of a sect." Those words are as true to-day as they were when Lord Randolph Churchill spoke them nearly twenty years ago. Indeed all that has happened since has tended to make the Whigs more selfishly "class-conscious" and the Radicals more debasingly sectarian.

It may be retorted that the Tories are no better equipped for the art of statesmanship. I assent; but I say that on the whole they are less positively dangerous. For one thing the very cloudiness of their political outlook renders them to a great extent amenable to skilful and systematic pressure from genuine reformers. It is often possible to get them to pass good measures without knowing it, as Mr. Webb and Mr. Morant are supposed to have induced them to pass an Education Bill which would have been rejected with unanimity by the Cabinet, the Conservative Party, the House of Lords and all three Houses of Convocation, had its real excellence been perceived by those bodies. Also the Tories have not always in their pockets that dilapidated bundle of red herrings (the Church, the Lords, etc), which the Radicals produce periodically whenever the electorate has to be deluded. But, when all has been said, it must be confessed that there is little to be hoped from the Tories just now. They had their chance in 1895, when they came into power on the cry of "Social Reform." Had they fulfilled their pledges then, we should never have had to face the terror of a Gladstonian resurrection. But they failed ; and the great Tory revival which Randolph Churchill inaugurated has ended in a pageant of fashionable incompetence above, and frivolous Jingoism (inexpressibly disquieting to serious Imperialists) below, the wires being pulled vigorously meanwhile by the unclean hands of Hebrew Finance a sight that would have made Churchill sick at heart.

There remains the Labour Party which I discuss fully elsewhere. Here I will only say that, while I believe that the only hope for England and the Empire is in Socialism, I confess that, if I am to trust to Socialists as I see them at present (outside our own Fabian Society) I feel the hope to be a slender one.

To conclude: if you and I vote (as I expect we shall) for Tory candidates at the next election, it will not be from any admiration for the present government, rather it will be from a very natural fear lest a worse thing befall us. I have written this book for the same reason; it may be taken among other things as a word of advise to my fellow- citizens to weigh carefully, before re- cording their verdict on their present rulers, the respective merits of the frying pan and the fire.

The warning, I think you at least will agree with me, is by no means superfluous.

Yours sincerely,

CECIL CHESTERTON.

How It Would Strike a Martian

2007-10-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

If we were to study the literature of some unknown country and were to discover that all the characters were described as possessing three legs and as preferring the happiness of the uncles to every other consideration, we should be decidedly interested: but if, on subsequently visiting the country in question, we found the inhabitants bipeds like any others, and their feelings towards their uncles quite normal and unimpassioned, our interest would be changed to bewilderment. It would seem to us incredible that a sane people should read vast masses of fiction which showed them as possessing qualities and feelings which they could not help knowing that they never had possessed, and should praise it for so misrepresenting them. We should simply consider those who tolerated such books stark mad. Yet we should but be looking at our own situation as it would appear to an intelligent Martian visiting this extraordinary planet. Take any normal English novel at random, and you will find that it misrepresents life nor merely incidentally, but as systematically as if it assumed that men had three legs. The actions of its characters proceed unvaryingly on certain fixed axioms about human nature, of which no man can live in the world for ten days without discovering the entire falsehood. And yet those who read these novels seem never for an instant to feel the incongruity, though they know perfectly well that these axioms are nonsense, and would generally no more think of acting upon them, or expecting anyone else to act upon them, than they would think of flying. Let me take an obvious example. There is no subject so constantly dealt with in novels as love. How do they treat of it? In nine-tenths of them it is tacitly or explicitly assumed that a man’s whole future invariably depends on whether his love for a particular woman is returned or no. If it is, he lives happily ever after; if it is not, his life is lasted for all time. Yet those who read such tragedies and weep copiously over them would be puzzled to find one single example in real life where an unsuccessful love affair had meant more than about six month’s depression to the sufferer.

Published in The New York Times on Dec. 12, 1903 as taken from The Outlook

G. K. Chesterton, a Criticism

2007-09-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

Cecil Chesterton's literary criticism of his brother, G.K., is now available from Inkling Books and can be purchased from Barnes and Noble.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781587420597&itm=1

A Plea For Literary Popery: Concerning Him Whose Name and Faith Were Papal and Who Attained Papal Authority in the Domain of Letters

2007-08-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

It has often been remarked as a queer coincidence that Alexander Pope was by profession a Papist. But this is only the beginning of the historical punning that can be made upon his name. For while in private he accepted Papal authority, in faith and morals, in public he was, in the latter part of his life and for nearly a hundred years after his death, invested with almost Papal authority in the domain of letters. That authority was broken by the great outburst of Romanticism in English poetry which marked the close of the eighteenth century, the true author of which was, perhaps, Rousseau. Since the overwhelming triumph of that Reformation, the name of Pope has hardly been mentioned in literary criticism except with a veiled sneer or, at best, a “damning with faint praise” such as he himself complained of in Addison.

It is the continual plea of Bossuet and Newman and other defenders of authority in matters of religion that while the reformer or heretic might seem at first sight nobler, more full of conviction and enthusiasm, more humane and of more prophetic quality than the Church he was attacking, you must await developments before judging of the quarrel, you must wait till this heresy has worked itself out, and watch the frantic credulities, and more frantic incredulities, the welter of mad sects and the denial of necessary things, which are the ultimate fruit of the gospel that looked so pure and persuasive. Whether such an argument be sound or unsound I am not concerned here to inquire, but I am very sure that it has its analogy in literature. And just as in the anarchy of modern speculation many just and clear minds have turned once more to the Pope of Rome so in the anarchy of modern art such minds will turn increasingly to Mr. Pope of Twickenham. And when this happens a very great poet will be rediscovered for the admiration of men.

For Pope was a great poet. His own generation and those immediately succeeding it may have overrated him, but this is by no means so certain as that the nineteenth century has culpably underrated him. To speak of him, as a little while ago it was the custom to speak of him, as a cold formalist is simply to write yourself down insensible to the grand style. Read some of the speeches in his “Homer.” I am not here concerned with whether they are good renderings of Homer; I say that they are magnificent poetry, full of life and energy. Read, above all, his invectives. Read the “Atticus.” You may call it cold, if you like. But I’d bet my boots that Addison found it warm enough. The heat is the greater for being held in, so to speak, by the unbroken walls of the classical tradition.

It is quite true that, after Pope, English poetry began to freeze into too narrow a traditionalism. It is emphatically not true that that age produced no poetry of the highest rank. If it had only produced Gray it would have only produced enough for one century. It also produced Goldsmith, whom the criticism of what may be called the Shelleyan era has abominably neglected. Even Dr. Johnson has not, since the literary revolution, received his fair due for the one or two really great things he achieved in poetry- the description of Charles XII, for instance, in “The Vanity of Human Wishes.” Still, it is broadly true that English poetry was at a low ebb when Wordsworth and his companions began to write, and for the galaxy of great men who heralded the new age there are no words that do not minimize.

Nevertheless, among these very men there was one- and he among the greatest-who saw the danger. He threw his whole power into the effort to avert it: he failed, and he ahs paid for his failure in the comparative neglect of half a century. But the event has proved him right. The poetry of the age did want reinvigorating by the inspiration of stronger passion, by the freer expression of individuality, and by a closer contact with nature. Byron saw all this, and no one was better qualified than he to supply what was needed. He had, to use the vigorous metaphor of another writer, more fire in the belly than all the Lake School put together; and at vivid natural description there is, I think, no English poet (except perhaps Tennyson) to touch him. But Byron saw something else. As there was a point at which he withdrew from Shelley in politics, so there was a point at which he withdrew from him in aesthetics. He saw that Shelley’s aesthetics and Shelley’s’ politics would ultimately mean anarchy, and he was a republican, not an Anarchist. The event has justified him on both points.

The matter may be put thus: It is true, I think, that Shelley was a greater poet than Pope. It may be true- though it is not quite the same thing- that it is more difficult to write like Shelley than to write like Pope. But it is certainly immeasurably easier to pretend to write like Shelley than to pretend to write like Pope. And Byron had the vision to foresee a whole world of men pretending to write like Shelley, or to be more Shelleyan than Shelley. That is, he foresaw our time.

Romanticism is a splendid thing. It is impossible not to sympathize with its vigor and even with its anarchy in the inspiration of its first youth. But a stale anarchy is the most intolerable thing in the world, and it is a stale anarchy that we see all around us in the intellectual world today. In philosophy the clear and lucid rationalism of men like Huxley has given place to a thing called Pragmatism, which, as far as I can make head or tail of its babble of meaningless phrases, seems to deny to men altogether the use of their reason. “Bears,” said Burke “are not philosophers,” but bears are excellent Pragmatists. In painting, the very genuine cleverness and insight of Whistler have given place to a school of “artists” who impudently parade the sort of thing a baby would paint after a long, wet day, when it was tired of “drawing things” and found it a pleasant recreation to mix up all the colors in a paint box. In poetry, we find people producing “Canzoni,” or some such stuff, the two qualifications of which are that it shall neither scan nor mean anything.

We have seen the end of the great romantic revolt, and we necessarily look at it with different eyes from those of the men who saw only its beginning. And as we watch in bewilderment the crashing fall of al the traditions that are the defense not of art only, but of sanity, there sounds suddenly in our ears a ringing voice- a voice that we had forgotten for nearly a hundred years- foretelling the end.

She comes! she comes! the sable throne behold

Of Night primeval, and of Chaos old!

Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay,

And all its varying rainbows die away.

Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires,

The meteor drops, and in a flash expires.

As one by one, at dread Medea's strain,

The sickening stars fade off the ethereal plain;

As Argus' eyes by Hermes' wand oppressed,

Closed one by one to everlasting rest;

Thus at her felt approach, and secret might,

Art after Art goes out, and all is night.

See sulking Truth to her old cavern fled,

Mountains of casuistry heaped o'er her head!

Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before,

Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more.

Physic of Metaphysic begs defense,

And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!

See Mystery to Mathematics fly!

In vain! they gaze, turn giddy, rave, and die.

Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,

And unawares Morality expires.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;

Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!

Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos is restored;

Light dies before thy uncreating word:

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;

And universal darkness buries all.

Who will deny that the man who wrote those lines was a poet? Who will deny that he was also something of a prophet?

From the New York Times June 23, 1912

Romance and Realism: The Exaggeration in Romances the Result of the Great Romanticists’ Frantic Desire to Capture All Types

2007-08-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

When I was a boy the literary world was convulsed be a controversy as to whether literature ought to be realistic; and the two writers always chosen as types of the Realist were Zola and Ibsen. Being in the most voracious stage of youthful curiosity, I read them both, or, rather, I read Ibsen, and as much of Zola as I could get through. I will not pretend that there was nothing that I enjoy in Zola, but it was not a type of enjoyment which I feel particularly proud to remember, or on which I care to dwell in this place. Even this kind of gratification was so diluted be the mountainous dullness of all that was not offensive in his books that I preferred to obtain it where I could get it in smaller compass and to some extent disinfected by fun. Small and cackling and unworthy, as such fun usually was, there was yet something in it that recalled the great cleansing wind of laughter that blows from the turrets of Theleme. There was no breath of this in Zola: his work reminded me only of a stretch of soft mud diversified by a few dead dogs and decaying vegetables- as depressing as it was noxious.

Ibsen was another matter altogether. Ibsen was a great genius; and I read him with a delight of which I have no reason to feel ashamed. But it puzzled me then, and it puzzles me now, what people can possibly have meant by calling him a realist. Of course no art can really be realistic in the sense of copying life. But if ever there was a great artist who defiantly flung away al decent pretenses of such copying, that artist was Ibsen. Assuredly the most reckless writer of melodrama that ever made his hero leap over Niagara on horseback, or his villainess coerce his heroine be threatening to cut out portions of her brain, would never have dared to present the public with such a plot as that of “The Lady from the sea” or “The Master Builder” as a probable story of contemporary middle-class life. Nor can it be said that such fantasies are the blots on Ibsen’s art; they are the triumphs of his art. Cut them out, cut out the wild Duck and the Rat Wife, the frantic imaginings of Ellida, and the black cloud of supernatural doom that broods over Borkman and you have plays like “The Doll’s House” and “Hedda Gabler”- plays saved from stupidity only by that perfect stagecraft, the sense of which was sure and unfalling instinct with Ibsen as it was with Shakespeare. Cut out everything else- especially everything that the Ibsenites used to praise in him- and you have “Peter Gynt,” his unapproachable and unforgettable masterpiece.

It always seemed pretty clear, and it seems clearer still now that the dust of it has settled, that the parties to rather futile controversy of which I have spoken attached no clear or defining meaning to the word “Realist.” A man was so-called sometimes because he dealt with topics generally excluded from literature, which is a mere matter of local and temporal custom: sometimes because he took a rather gloomy view of the life he described, which is a matter of temperament or philosophy: sometimes because he was rather dull, which is a matter of taste. Let us see if we cannot draw some broad lien of artistic cleavage which may separate the Realist from the- Romanticist- or whatever you like to call his antithesis.

It is clear that you cannot distinguish them by saying that the Realist draws on his observations and the romanticist on his imagination. The Realist who put down all that he had observed, exactly as he had observed it, would be unreadable, and the Romanticist, whose imagination bore no relation to anything that he or anyone else had observed, would be unintelligible. We have examples on both sides approximating nearly enough to these two extremes to enable us to form some estimate of their appalling nature. But all good artistic work consists in the application of invention, selection, and arrangement to the raw material of observation.

Nevertheless it seems to me that a real distinction is possible which you may call a distinction between Realism and Romance if you like, though it is not a good name for it.

Take, at the one extreme, Jane Austen. That remarkable young woman applied a perfectly astounding acuteness of observation and the most delicate powers of character-draughtmanship, criticism, and humor to the painting of a particular kind of life that she had herself experienced. She did not, of course, “transcribe life:” she was an artist. She selected, arranged, invented. But she gave us in the end what convinces us as a very exact picture of a tiny section of English society in the dawn of the nineteenth century. Beyond that section she never wandered. There is not, so far as I remember, a single character of the smallest importance in any of her novels that does not enjoy the income of an ordinary member of the professional classes. And the very wealthy are almost as completely left out as the populace. The years during which Jane Austen was writing were the very years during which the English aristocracy was enjoying that last great riot of extravagance that we call the Regency. But that riot leaves her work as untouched as does the riot of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. It is hardly possible to convince one’s self that some of the naval officers of whom she wrote must actually have served under Nelson. It is almost as difficult to recall the fact that the Bath which she describes is the Bath of Brummell and Sheridan. So little does she seem to see anything outside the little world she has set herself to paint.

Now in Jane Austen this limitation of subject is association with a temperament and talent peculiarly quiet, critical, and averse to sensationalism. But that association is not of the essence of her artistic method. That method can be and has been used by men passionately romantic, lovers of the startling and even incredible. Mr. Kipling, for example, fills his Indian tales with portents and catastrophes, madmen who see blind faces in their dreams, lepers who turn men into beasts by witchcraft. Yet his method is, at root, Jane Austen’s method. He takes a slice of life that he knows and paints it, paints it perhaps with violence and exaggeration, but paints it in such a way that for the moment we believe it. Whenever Mr. Kipling has tried to work in any other fashion I think he has failed.

Now, just as the temper and the taste of the writer may be altered without fundamentally changing the method, so may the range of the writer’s observations. Thackeray, for example, had a far wider range than Jane Austen. He presents his readers with social types as far apart as Lord Kew and Capt. Costigan. But it is still the description from the inside of social circles with which the artist was familiar. Thackeray describes more than Jane Austen because he knows more. But he is still describing the life he knows best.

If this method be called Realism, then Realism as full possession of Anglo-American fiction to-day. From Mr. Henry James’s studies of rich Americans to Mr. Zangwill’s studies of poor Jews, from the epigrammatic novel of the smart set to the pessimistic novel of the mean street, practically all the fiction that is now being produced is an attempt, successful or unsuccessful, to describe some particular word.

So much is this that it may be difficult to make modern people realize that a totally different kind of novel once existed in England. It has behind it the tradition of many- Fielding, Smollett-nay, Shakespeare himself. The last great name, with which it may be said to have died, is Dickens.

This kind of novel begins with a man going out into the street and shutting his door. It may not actually begin that way, but that is the essence of it. A man does not come in to tell us about his world. A man goes out to see the world- the varieties of human experience- and tells us about them as he comes across them. The difference does not lie in the relation of the narrative to observation. No novels give one a sharper impression of having been based on transfigured experiences than those of Dickens- except, perhaps, those of Fielding, who belongs to the same school. The wanderer is as much an observer as the inhabitant, perhaps more so; though he observes different things.

Nevertheless the second type of novelist will always give, as compared with the first, a certain impression of extravagance and exaggeration: and that for the very good reason that it is the exaggeration and extravagance that strikes the attention of the wanderer as a mountain or a high tower strikes the attention of a man surveying a vast landscape. He strays through section after section of society, picking up here a preposterous peer, there a preposterous plumber. These people exist all right-not of course in the exact shape into which the creative imagination of the artist transforms them- but the fantastic Dickens character, the incredible dickens remark are there for those who have eyes to see and ears o hear. A man did say to a friend of mine whom he met for the first time and on a purely business footing: “All my family are so inferior to me.” These things happen. But it requires the Dickens eye and the Dickens ear to catch them: and in the eagerness they trouble not to catch anything else, but hurry on to the next impossible fact.

For instance, Jane Austen describes in her novels a number of clergymen, and one of them is an absurd clergyman. In that there is nothing extravagant: Jane Austen would naturally have met absurd clergymen in her social circle. But Dickens, looking in at the window, so to speak, would have culled Mr. Collins like a flower of spring, and, neglecting the many comparatively sensible clergymen whom Jane Austen so carefully and accurately characterized, would have gone on along the open road in search of an absurd rat-catcher.

That is the whole difference. You may call it the difference between Realism and Romance. You may call it the difference between Intensive and Extensive Fiction. I would rather cal the second the Novel of the Open Road.

I am not saying that this form of art is of its nature better or greater than the other. Both have their great names and their well-earned immortalities. But I say that of these two kinds of fiction we have forgotten one, and that in consequence we misunderstand its masterpieces.

It will return.

From the New York Times November 3, 1912

Democracy and the Great State

2007-08-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

All free men feel that the only tolerable condition of Government is Democracy. No such man will tolerate the compulsory direction of his actions by any temporal authority save the general will of his fellow-citizens. This great truism I shall assume as the foundation of all that I have to say in this essay. With those who do not feel its truth, with those who regard a Hereditary Aristocracy or merely the Rich or Experts or Men in Advance of their Age as the proper repositories of political power I shall not here argue. I will argue with them when they have answered the plain question of the Jesuit Suarez, "If sovereignty is not in the People, where is it?"

Democracy, then, we assume as the fundamental condition of the state of society which we desire to create; but it is of vital importance to have in our minds a clear and unalterable idea of what Democracy means. Democracy means Government by the General Will. That is to say, it means that such laws as the mass of the population approves are passed and enforced, while such laws as are obnoxious to the mass of the population are rejected. It is clear that this has on the face of it nothing to do with special devices such as representation, by which modern men have attempted to achieve the end of Democracy. Despotic institutions, hereditary rulers, and representative bodies must alike be judged from the democratic standpoint by whether they do or do not result in a system of Government which accords with the general will of the people. Democracy, considered in this sense, is not a new thing (as our Moderns suppose), but just about the oldest thing in the world. In what Mr. Wells has christened "The Normal Social Life" practical Democracy has always prevailed in the matters which most deeply affect the ordinary existence of the common man. Now and then, no doubt, a far-off ruler not chosen by him might force the common man to take part in a war which was not of his making. Taxes not levied with his consent would occasionally be imposed upon him. But in the matters that concern his daily life, in his sowing and reaping, in his buying and selling, in his marrying, in the bearing and upbringing of his children, in his religion, and in all other things for which such a man normally cares, his actions would be regulated by the customs of his tribe or commune, and any disputes would be settled by a council of his neighbors. That is to say, these matters would be settled by the general will. He would be living, whether he knew it or not, under the conditions of Democracy.

Now in this, as in other matters, what we must seek to effect is a return to what is wholesome and natural to Man in the Normal Social Life while availing ourselves of the advantages which a more elaborate system of society affords us. We must seek under the conditions imposed by the growth of larger States and the consequent necessity of a more extensive political organisation to obtain that which is obtained so easily in a simple society by the meeting of villagers under a tree. The matter is the more urgent because so long as our system of government remains essentially undemocratic every step in the direction of Collectivism will be a step away from Democracy. It is no use denying that the "permeation" of our politicians and others with what are called "Socialist" ideas has tended, up to the present, rather to diminish than to increase the power of the General Will. Not only have measures directed towards the regimentation of the poor and tending, not to Collectivism, but to the Servile State been rushed through under the inspiring title of "Social Reform," but even where the direct Nationalisation of capital was involved the rich have known how to turn the Collectivist philosophy to their use. An example at once deplorable and farcical may be found in the extraordinary history of the National Telephone Company, whose monopoly was first secretly created and then ostentatiously bought (at an exorbitant price) by "the Nation"—that is, by the politicians, some of whom had also been directors. I can conceive no state of society—not even a frank plutocracy —more odious than one in which the governing class held all the economic power and administrated everything, nominally on behalf of the public, really on their own. And that plutocratic Collectivism is an extremely likely end to the efforts of a generation of Socialists, unless the machinery of the State can be made really to reflect the General Will. The method by which most modern societies have attempted to solve the problem of Democracy is the method of Representation. Since it is obviously impossible that all the members of a great modern Nation, still more of the larger federations of men which the future will probably see, to meet together in one place, and there to discuss all the details of political administration, it is thought that the same end might be achieved if certain groups of such men delegated their power to some person chosen by them who should have their authority to speak in their name.

Now it is clear that the success of this experiment depends essentially upon the exact correspondence between the actions of the delegate and the wishes of those from whom his authority is derived. I say this is clear to any one who has attempted to think out the problem of representation. It is apparently by no means clear to a great many writers in the press or to a great many speakers on political platforms. These people are forever drawing an entirely meaningless distinction between "a Delegate" and what they call "a Representative." What this distinction means I have never been able to conceive. A man must vote either according to the wishes of his constituents or against those wishes. If he does the former he is acting as a faithful delegate would act. If he does the latter, he is neither a delegate nor a representative. He is an Oligarch. For how can we say that a man "represents" Slocum when he is in the habit of saying "Aye" where the inhabitants of Slocum would, if consulted, say "No"?

Now it is pretty obvious to most of us that, in England at any rate, there is absolutely no such relation as I have predicated as essential between the "Representative" and the people he is supposed to "represent." With the special causes which make this divorce more complete in England than elsewhere I shall have to deal in a moment. But apart from those special causes there is that in the very nature of the Representative System which tends to render it unrepresentative. In England to-day the Member of Parliament is not really in any sense chosen by his constituents. But even if he were so chosen it would still be true that the very fact of his having been marked out from his fellow-citizens for special governmental functions would give him a point of view which would not be quite an accurate mirror of the mind of those fellow-citizens. Put him in a room with several hundred other men similarly marked out from their fellow-citizens, and this psychological result is indefinitely intensified. It has always been so with political assemblies, however democratic their constitution, and in all probability it always will be so with them. The divorce between the Politician and the Citizen is, of course, enormously increased when the former takes to politics as a profession. The Professional Politician is the dominant figure in the Government of all civilised countries to-day, and nowhere is he more dominant than in England, where a large number of innocent persons refuse to believe in his existence. That Politics should become a profession was perhaps inevitable so soon as the government of the country was no longer the affair of the citizens themselves. At any rate, in all known periods after politics had emerged from the primitive condition of the village community the Professional Politician has existed. I shall discuss later how far he can be eliminated, but while he exists the important thing is to recognise that he does exist, to recognise that in all Nations which have developed to the point to which England has developed a class has appeared of men who make the government of the people their ordinary means of livelihood. In moments of high civic excitement it has sometimes been possible to conduct the affairs of state without the payment of Politicians. This was so, for example, in the high hope and anger of the French Revolution. Then men entered politics urged by a passionate desire for social justice and a passionate patriotism, and left Politics (sometimes by the Tumbrils) poorer than they were in the first instance. It is doubtful whether, in any case, such self-devotion could be made permanent in times of comparative quiescence. But one thing is certain: with this intense self-devotion to the common weal inevitably goes an instinct that Politicians should be poor men. The great and determining characters in the revolutionary drama of France boasted that while they administered millions they themselves lodged in the cheapest lodgings and dined
at the cheapest restaurants.

Nothing could be more absurd than the present practice in England, the practice, I mean, of rewarding success in politics with salaries varying from £ i, 200 to £10,000 a year, and then pretending that these sums are of no account at all to the persons who receive them. Such a practice directly tends to produce corruption of the worst kind. A Professional Politician may be, like a Professional House-Agent, a perfectly honest man—that is, he may endeavour to give in return for his salary honest and efficient service to the State. But we all know what would happen if it were a general assumption, which it was "in bad taste" to challenge, that House- Agents were entirely indifferent to their fees and were actuated solely by compassion for persons whofound themselves for the moment homeless and by a desire to see them adequately housed. Such a general assumption would be used by really dishonest house-agents to cover their offences, while the honest house-agent, working, no doubt, for money but fairly earning it, would find himself handicapped. And that is exactly the condition of English Politics to-day. Politics in England, and largely throughout the civilised world, are for the most part a means of livelihood for those who concern themselves with them. No doubt it is true that a large number of men enter the House of Commons without any intention of increasing their income, some from vanity and the desire for an honorary distinction, some (very few) with a desire to express their personal views, and here and there (the rarest thing of all) .a man determined to voice the opinions of his constituency. But these are not the men who direct Parliament or really determine the Government of the County. The men who do this are the Professional Politicians. These may be broadly divided into two classes. There are the men who belong by birth to what we may call the governing class. These are considered to have a right to co-option into salaried political posts. It is to them that Mr. Belloc's amusing poem refers:

“It happened to Lord Lundy then,
As happens to so many men,
About the age of twenty-six
They shoved him into Politics.
In which profession he commanded
The salaries his rank demanded."

This is on the whole the most harmless and least corrupt kind of professionalism in politics. Such men are apprenticed to politics as a profession (that is, as a means of making money) just as men of humbler rank are apprenticed to be Solicitors, Greengrocers, or Compositors, because their parents happen to be able to command for them an opening in these trades. Such men, if they happen to be honest men, often try to do their best to earn their money by serving the community to the best of their ability. This method of choosing governors is repugnant to Democracy, but is not clearly reignant to plain morals or to the national interest. is the method by which all oligarchical States are governed. It was the method by which England was governed during the eighteenth and the greater of the nineteenth century. A much worse form of Political Professionalism has arisen of late years. Young men, conscious perhaps of some talent, enter Parliament with the deliberate intention of getting a salaried place from those at whose disposal such places and salaries are placed. Such a man violates, of course, the essential idea of representation as it has been outlined above. His intention is not to serve his constituency, but to serve those from whom he expects his pecuniary reward—that is, the very Executive which he is supposed to check and criticise. If a sufficient number of such men are returned to the representative assembly, it is obvious that such an assembly will exist only to ratify the decisions of the Executive; that is to say, from the democratic point of view, it will not exist at all. And that practically is the state of the case at the present time. Men—that is, the men that count—enter Parliament with an eye to a professional career. This career can only be obtained by leave of the small co-opted group which constitutes " the Government" and "the Official Opposition"—that is, those who, though not at the moment in receipt of public money, expect to receive it when a change of government shall take place. He knows very well that certain votes and speeches will hurt his chances of ever making any money in politics, while certain other votes and speeches will help him to do so. Naturally, like any other man pursuing his trade, he desires to ingratiate himself with his customer; and he speaks and votes accordingly. Add to this the fact that in England the Executive has the power at any moment of ordering a dissolution of Parliament, that Elections are very expensive, that only very rich men can afford to finance their own candidatures, that a vast secret fund exists to finance such candidatures, and that this fund is readily placed at the disposal of those—and of those only— who are ready to act as the subservient retainers of the successful professionals, and you have an adequate explanation of the undemocratic character of English politics to-day. I have already said that it is dubious whether we can ever dispense altogether with the Professional Politicians under ordinary conditions. But one thing is clear. If Politics are to remain a profession, that profession must in the public interest be most strictly safeguarded. That is to say, every temptation to which the politician may be subjected to act against the interest of those who employ him must be most carefully provided against; and any disposition on his part to prefer his private interests to his duty of obedience to the general will must be immediately and rigorously punished. It is to this end that I now propose to devote some consideration.

One necessity stands out manifest and incontrovertible. If politics are to be an Profession, the profession of Executive Administrator must be kept strictly separate from the profession of Delegate to the Legislature. If this is not so, the Legislature can never in the nature of things be really independent of the Executive, and can, therefore, never really act as an effective check upon it. Every member of the Legislature body will be on the lookout for the more profitable administrative posts. These posts will of necessity be in the gift of the Executive. They will necessarily be bestowed upon those of whose conduct the Executive approves. The Executive will naturally approve of the conduct of those who do not oppose or even criticise it. Therefore there will be (as in fact there is to-day) an immense pressure upon members of the Representative Body not to act in a representative fashion, but rather to use all the power and influence they possess to support, not those who have elected them, but those from whom they expect benefits.

It is obvious that in any state of society some one or other must be intrusted with the business of practical executive administration. It is equally obvious that no man can reasonably be expected to take on such a task as a mere hobby. He must be paid for it; it must be his means of livelihood, in a word, his profession. To that there is, in the abstract, no more objection than there is to the profession of Doctor, House-Agent, or Butcher, provided always that the employer of such a man— i.e., the Community—has as full a control over him as a man has over the tradesmen he employs. A butcher does not supply you with such meat as he may think will suit your health or personal efficiency, but with such meat as you demand. So long as the expert administrator confines himself to endeavouring to satisfy his clients as the butcher does and makes no pretence to an authority superior to that of his clients, he is harmless and may be exceedingly useful. It is impossible to deny that the details of administration in a modern state are so complex that the sheer routine work of administration does, and must, involve a degree of special knowledge to which the ordinary citizen cannot and would not choose to attain. So does the trade of a bootmaker. I cannot make a pair of boots. I have to ask a bootmaker to make them for me. But—and this is the essential point—I am the judge of the pair of boots when made: if they do not fit me I reject them and dismiss my bootmaker. I am in no way deterred from following this course by the assurance that the bootmaker is "an expert" or that he is "more advanced" than I, or by any other of the pretences by which oligarchy is being once more foisted upon the people.

The great problem, then, is that of the control of the necessary professional administrator by the General Will. It is, I admit, an exceedingly difficult problem, and for the present I can see no solution save the old expedient of a representative assembly- defective as I know that expedient to be. I have often wondered whether some one would not one day hit upon a method of extending to general politics the much more really democratic method of the Common Jury. I have often had a fancy, for example, for a Second Chamber constituted upon that principle—a name chosen by lot from the voting list of every constituency, attendance to be compulsory, and a reasonable and equal remuneration to be granted to every person compelled to attend. I am quite confident that such a chamber would represent the General Will a great deal better than either the House of Lords or the House of Commons has1 done in the past, and would make very short work (to the great satisfaction of the mass of the population) of much legislation that has passed with ease and with "the consent of all parties" through our present Parliament.

But I do not pretend to have any such scheme ready for practical advocacy; and so for the present we must rest content with the representative system, doing, at the same time, all that we can to prevent its abuse, to mitigate its inevitable failings, and, above all, to keep it continually controlled by the direct expression of the General Will. Let us first draw as clear a distinction as we can between the inevitable defects of representation and the accidental evils to which it does make it quite intolerable in this country. Take the latter first.

In England to-day representative government suffers from two prime evils. First, the representative assembly is not independent of the executive, and therefore cannot control it. Secondly, it is not freely chosen by the people, nor does it derive its effective mandate from the people; but its composition is selected and its programme devised by those very professional politicians upon whose actions it is supposed to exist as a check. I have already adumbrated my view of the first necessary step in dealing with the former of the two evils. The members of the representative assembly should in no case whatsoever be allowed to become administrators paid by the Executive. Let them be paid, by all means, for the services they render as representatives to the people by the people whom they represent, and let the people who pay them see that they are really represented. But let them all be paid exactly alike, whether they support or oppose the Executive, and let there be a strict rule that no one shall within, say, ten years of sitting in the legislature receive public money in any form from the Executive. In that case, if commercial motives enter in any way into their calculations, they will find that their interest lies primarily in standing well with their constituents.

Their constituents can deprive them of their salaries; the "Government" cannot. On the lowest motive, therefore, it will be better for them to please those who elect them than those whom they are elected to control. What, then, will become of "the Ministry"? It will disappear. The professional head of a department—strictly excluded from the assembly—will remain. The popular assembly elected to control that permanent head will remain. Probably the assembly will find it convenient to divide itself into Committees for this purpose, though such Committees should have no more than investigatory and advisory powers. The decision must rest with the assembly itself. But the "Minister"—that is, the Professional Politician who has entered Parliament by pretending to represent some body of electors and has consented for a salary not to represent them, but to represent instead the Caucus that pays him— for him the new Democracy will have no use. But when you have liberated the Representative Assembly from the control of that little group of Professional Politicians which is commonly called "The Government," but which I have always preferred to designate more accurately as "The Two Front Benches," you have not, therefore, necessarily made it really responsible to the people. That is, you have not achieved Democracy. It must be insisted upon again that, though the present political regime in England intensifies all the evils and dangers of Representative Government while depriving it of all its uses, yet there are evils, there are dangers which are not created by the regime, and which would not necessarily cease with the overthrow of that regime. They are found in America and elsewhere where that particular regime is unknown. They are inherent in the nature of Representative Institutions themselves. Every body of men cut off from the ordinary life of their fellow-citizens and vested with special powers tends, unless popularly controlled, to become an Oligarchy. We can see both in history and at the present time examples of assemblies internally free but irresponsible, and governing according to their own interests or prejudices, without regard to popular mandate. The Grand Council of Venice was such an assembly, and the English House of Commons in the eighteenth century; to a certain extent the French Chamber is such to-day.

Against this peril the only real security is a vigilant and instructed popular opinion. With such an opinion always goes an extreme distrust of the representative, a feeling that he will always cheat you if he can, and a determination that he shall not be allowed to do so. Walt Whitman saw very far indeed into the truth when he set down as one of the conditions of his ideal State that the people should be "always ready to rise up against the never-ending audacity of Elected Persons." The chief change needed, then, is, it must be admitted, a change in the popular psychology. Nevertheless, there are changes in machinery which would be the necessary accompaniments of such a change, and which may do a great deal to make it easier. And here I come to methods which the peculiar independence of the several States of the Union has already enabled America to put to the test, in certain cases, upon which an American writer may be better qualified to write than myself. Chief among these is the re-creation of the electoral unit as a thing capable of political initiative. What I mean is this We say that Slocum sent Sir Josiah Gudge to Parliament to carry out a certain "programme." As a matter of fact, Slocum had nothing to do either with choosing Sir Josiah or with framing his programme. It could have nothing to do with either as things stand even if the special corruption incidental to the English political system was removed, for Slocum has no organised and articulate political existence. In a word, it has no initiative, and has to take its programme from Sir Josiah, and Sir Josiah from whatever Unknown Powers may have decreed his candidature. It is obvious that if we are to have democracy this state of things must be ended. Whatever body of men elect, our representatives must be organised for collective action, must be articulate, must be capable of framing their own demands, of choosing, controlling, and, if need be, punishing their servants. I am inclined to think that it will eventually be found that a better system of representation can be obtained by representing men by their guilds or trades rather than by their localities. The geographical method of election really dates back to a time when small local units, still essentially in the phase of the Normal Social Life, had a natural homogeneity. They have no such homogeneity to-day. The State no longer consists of a collection of village communes; nor is the type of State the government of which we are here discussing conceived as being organised in such a fashion. But the State must always consist of groups of citizens co-operating for certain necessary social purposes, and it is to the Guilds, which will naturally, under a system of co-operative production, spring up throughout industrial worlds, that I should look to find the Electoral Unit of the future. I do not wish to trespass upon the subject of industrial organisation, which is dealt with in this volume by other and abler pens; but it is so essential to Democracy that the Electing Body should be one with large powers of control over its own affairs that I should be very glad to see these Guilds invested with considerable powers of self-government under the general supervision of the National Executive.

Of course, it would not do to give the coal-miners, for example, irresponsible control of the coal-fields. The coal-fields must be national property; on that we agree. But I do not see why all details of management, such matters as the hours of labour, provision against accident, and the like, should not be settled directly by the organised workers concerned. If such powers were vested in these Guilds, you would start with the immense advantage, from the democratic point of view, of an electing body accustomed to debate, to decisive action, and to the control of its own affairs, which would be able to thrash out the instructions to be given to its delegate, and to send him to the representative assembly with a real mandate derived from themselves. Incidentally it should be remarked that such an infusion of reality into the operations of the electoral unit would go far to meet such cases as that of the United States, where the evils arise, not from the oligarchical control of a small clique, but rather from the omnipotence of a political Machine subject to no real popular control. And a further check upon the development of a two-party system in which there is no wider alternative than the chances of two candidates may, perhaps, be found in some such method of voting as Proportional Representation affords. Of course it is essential that the control of the Electing Body over the delegates should be absolute. Two checks on their action would greatly help to accomplish this. The first check is the Recall. Not only should elections be reasonably frequent, but a certain proportion of the Electors should at any time have the right to demand a general poll on the question of whether the delegate was or was not carrying out the mandate of his constituents. Should the vote go against him, the delegate would have to resign, and another would be elected in his place. The mere threat of this action would probably be enough in most cases to prevent the delegate from shamelessly and continually violating his trust, as is so often done to-day.

The second check is the Referendum accompanied by the Initiative. How powerful a weapon even under the present degrading political conditions is the popular plebiscite may be perceived by noting the horror with which the Professional Politicians regard it, and the panic which seized them when one of their own number was imprudent enough to mention it a couple of years ago. But for the Referendum to be a really effective democratic weapon it must be capable of being put into force, not merely on the initiative of the legislature itself or on any section of it, but on the initiative of a fixed proportion of the Electors. Indeed, for my part, I am disposed to think that under the freer political system such as I have sketched no substantial alteration of the laws should be passed without a direct appeal to the popular will. To those who are incapable of looking beyond the corruptions and futilities of modern politics such a pronouncement will doubtless seem absurd. But we are presupposing that those corruptions and futilities are at an end; and when they are at an end there will be no need whatsoever for all this plethora of legislation which we have come to think of as something inevitable. When one comes to consider it in the abstract it is really rather absurd that a nation should have to keep some six hundred men busy for nine months in the year at the interminable task of continually altering its laws. If just laws can once be established, it is reasonable to suppose that for some considerable time at any rate they will prove adequate Doubtless from time to time some unforeseen change in economic or other conditions may necessitate modifications, but I do not look forward in the Great State to the unending legislation of our own time—a legislation which owes its necessity at best to the need for patching up a system in process of active decay, and at worst to the requirements of the Party "Programme" and, what is much more important, the Party War Chest No doubt the change from the present basis of society to a juster and healthier one will mean a good deal of drastic law-making—and I suspect a good deal of law-breaking also—but, once the change accomplished, I should expect a vital alteration of the laws under which citizens are to live to be almost as rare a thing in the State of the Future as it was in the settled and happy communities of the past. Such are a few of the comparatively rough and crude suggestions that I would make for the democratic organisation of the State of the future.

They pretend to be nothing more than an outline, and even as an outline they will doubtless require much modification. Every democrat must feel a certain disinclination to lay down hard-and-fast conditions for the future, if only for this reason, that, if his democratic faith be genuine, he desires that the people should have, not the form of government he likes, but the form of government they themselves like. That is what has always made me dislike answering detailed questions as to how this or that would be done "under Socialism." I may have thought of a very ingenious answer, but it does not follow that it is the answer that my fellow-citizens will give. And it is for them, not for me, to pronounce the ultimate decision. Securus judicat orbis terrarum.

From the book "Socialism and the Great State" published in 1912 by Harper & Brothers

IHS Press Publishes The Party System

2007-08-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

Cecil Chesterton's and Hilaire Belloc's classic 1911 expose "The Party System" will be available from IHS on September 1 with a foreword by Presidential Candidate Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781932528114&itm=1

To The Jews

2007-06-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

Oh people bespitten and rifled

Of the fruits that were gone by toil

Have revenge upon those who have trifled

With you, come down to your spoil

Ye are firm in your faith that we scoff at

Ye are strong in your hope that we scorn

While our angels are cast into Tophet

Our creed is outworn

Ye have conquered the night of your longing,

Ye have conquered and shown yourself brave,

Ye have risen in multitudes thronging

When we though you pressed down to the grave.

The hands of Christ’s people shall stab us,

Support his pale godhead who can.

O Caiaphas, Annas, Barabbas,

Behold ye the man

The hands of the lord may quicken

New creeds, but one thing shall be sure,

When the God of the Christians is stricken,

The God of the Jew shall endure.

When Christ shall be dead as Apollo,

Buried in aeons in mouldering sod,

The children of Jacob shall follow

The children of God.

The above poem was written by Chesterton in pencil on lined school book paper during his schooling at St. Paul’s.

France

2007-06-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Because for once the sword broke in her hand,

  The words she spoke seemed perished for a space;

All wrong was brazen, and in every land

  The tyrants walked abroad with naked face.

The waters turned to blood, as rose the Star

  Of evil Fate denying all release.

The rulers smote, the feeble crying "War!"

  The usurers robbed, the naked crying "Peace!"

And her own feet were caught in nets of gold,

  And her own soul profaned by sects that squirm,

And little men climbed her high seats and sold

  Her honour to the vulture and the worm.

And she seemed broken and they thought her dead,

  The Overmen, so brave against the weak.

Has your last word of sophistry been said,

  O cult of slaves? Then it is hers to speak.

Clear the slow mists from her half-darkened eyes,

  As slow mists parted over Valmy fell,

As once again her hands in high surprise

  Take hold upon the battlements of Hell.