The Man versus the State by Herbert Spencer
1884
Preface
The Westminster Review for April 1860,
contained
an article entitled "Parliamentary
Reform:
the Dangers and the Safeguards."
In
that article I ventured to predict
some results
of political changes then proposed.
Reduced
to its simplest expression, the thesis
maintained
was that, unless due precautions were
taken,
increase of freedom in form would be
followed
by decrease of freedom in fact. Nothing
has
occurred to alter the belief I then
expressed.
The drift of legislation since that
time
has been of the kind anticipated. Dictatorial
measures, rapidly multiplied, have
tended
continually to narrow the liberties
of individuals;
and have done this in a double way.
Regulations
have been made in yearly-growing numbers,
restraining the citizen in directions
where
his actions were previously unchecked,
and
compelling actions which previously
he might
perform or not as he liked; and at
the same
time heavier public burdens, chiefly
local,
have further restricted his freedom,
by lessening
that portion of his earnings which
he can
spend as he pleases, and augmenting
the portion
taken from him to be spent as public
agents
please. The causes of these foretold
effects,
then in operation, continue in operation
-- are, indeed, likely to be strengthened;
and finding that the conclusions drawn
respecting
these causes and effects have proved
true,
I have been prompted to set forth and
emphasize
kindred conclusions respecting the
future,
and do what little may be done towards
awakening
attention to threatened evils. For
this purpose
were written the four following articles,
originally published in the Contemporary
Review for February, April, May, June
and
July of this year. To meet certain
criticisms
and to remove some of the objections
likely
to be raised, I have now added a postscript.
Bayswater, July, 1884
THE NEW TORYISM
Most of those who now pass as Liberals,
are
Tories of a new type. This is a paradox
which
I propose to justify. That I may justify
it, I must first point out what the
two political
parties originally were; and I must
then
ask the reader to bear with me while
I remind
him of facts he is familiar with, that
I
may impress on him the intrinsic natures
of Toryism and Liberalism properly
so called.
Dating back to an earlier period than
their
names, the two political parties at
first
stood respectively for two opposed
types
of social organization, broadly distinguishable
as the militant and the industrial
-- types
which are characterized, the one by
the regime
of status, almost universal in ancient
days,
and the other by the regime of contract,
which has become general in modern
days,
chiefly among the Western nations,
and especially
among ourselves and the Americans.
If, instead
of using the word "co-operation"
in a limited sense, we use it in its
widest
sense, as signifying the combined activities
of citizens under whatever system of
regulation;
then these two are definable as the
system
of compulsory co-operation and the
system
of voluntary co-operation. The typical
structure
of the one we see in an army formed
of conscripts,
in which the units in their several
grades
have to fulfil commands under pain
of death,
and receive food and clothing and pay,
arbitrarily
apportioned; while the typical structure
of the other we see in a body of producers
or distributors, who severally agree
to specified
payments in return for specified services,
and may at will, after due notice,
leave
the organization if they do not like
it.
During social evolution in England,
the distinction
between these two fundamentally-opposed
forms
of co-operation, made its appearance
gradually;
but long before the names Tory and
Whig came
into use, the parties were becoming
traceable,
and their connexions with militancy
and industrialism
respectively, were vaguely shown. The
truth
is familiar that, here as elsewhere,
it was
habitually by town-populations, formed
of
workers and traders accustomed to co-operate
under contract, that resistances were
made
to that coercive rule which characterizes
co-operation under status. While, conversely,
cooperation under status, arising from,
and
adjusted to, chronic warfare, was supported
in rural districts, originally peopled
by
military chiefs and their dependents,
where
the primitive ideas and traditions
survived.
Moreover, this contrast in political
leanings,
shown before Whig and Tory principles
became
clearly distinguished, continued to
be shown
afterwards. At the period of the Revolution,
"while the villages and smaller
towns
were monopolized by Tories, the larger
cities,
the manufacturing districts, and the
ports
of commerce, formed the strongholds
of the
Whigs." And that, spite of exceptions,
the like general relation still exists,
needs
no proving. Such were the natures of
the
two parties as indicated by their origins.
Observe, now, how their natures were
indicated
by their early doctrines and deeds.
Whiggism
began with resistance to Charles II
and his
cabal, in their efforts to re-establish
unchecked
monarchical power. The Whigs "regarded
the monarchy as a civil institution,
established
by the nation for the benefit of all
its
members;" while with the Tories
"the
monarch was the delegate of heaven."
And these doctrines involved the beliefs,
the one that subjection of citizen
to ruler
was conditional, and the other that
it was
unconditional. Describing Whig and
Tory as
conceived at the end of the seventeenth
century,
some fifty years before he wrote his
Dissertation
on Parties, Bolingbroke says: --
"The power and majesty of the
people,
an original contract, the authority
and independency
of Parliaments, liberty, resistance,
exclusion,
abdication, deposition; these were
ideas
associated, at that time, to the idea
of
a Whig, and supposed by every Whig
to be
incommunicable, and inconsistent with
the
idea of a Tory.
"Divine, hereditary, indefeasible
right,
lineal succession, passive-obedience,
prerogative,
non-resistance, slavery, nay, and sometimes
popery too, were associated in many
minds
to the idea of a Tory, and deemed incommunicable
and inconsistent, in the same manner,
with
the idea of a Whig." Dissertation
on
Parties, p. 5 [1735, p. 4].
And if we compare these descriptions,
we
see that in the one party there was
a desire
to resist and decrease the coercive
power
of the ruler over the subject, and
in the
other party to maintain or increase
his coercive
power. This distinction in their aims
--
a distinction which transcends in meaning
and importance all other political
distinctions
-- was displayed in their early doings.
Whig
principles were exemplified in the
Habeas
Corpus Act, and in the measure by which
judges
were made independent of the Crown;
in defeat
of the Non-Resisting Test Bill, which
proposed
for legislators and officials a compulsory
oath that they would in no case resist
the
king by arms; and, later, they were
exemplified
in the Bill of rights, framed to secure
subjects
against monarchical aggressions. These
Acts
had the same intrinsic nature. The
principle
of compulsory co-operation throughout
social
life was weakened by them, and the
principle
of voluntary co-operation strengthened.
That
at a subsequent period the policy of
the
party had the same general tendency,
is well
shown by a remark of Mr Green concerning
the period of Whig power after the
death
of Anne: --
"Before the fifty years of their
rule
had passed, Englishmen had forgotten
that
it was possible to persecute for differences
of religion, or to put down the liberty
of
the press, or to tamper with the administration
of justice, or to rule without a Parliament."
Short History, p. 705. [J. R. Green,
Short
History of the English People, London,
1874.
The (later) editions which I have been
able
to consult have 'opinion' in place
of 'religion'.]
And now, passing over the war-period
which
closed the last century and began this,
during
which that extension of individual
freedom
previously gained was lost, and the
retrograde
movement towards the social type proper
to
militancy was shown by all kinds of
coercive
measures, from those which took by
force
the persons and property of citizens
for
war-purposes to those which suppressed
public
meetings and sought to gag the press,
let
us recall the general characters of
those
changes effected by Whigs or Liberals
after
the reestablishment of peace permitted
revival
of the industrial regime and return
to its
appropriate type of structure. Under
growing
Whig influence there came repeal of
the laws
forbidding combinations among artisans,
as
well as of those which interfered with
their
freedom of travelling. There was the
measure
by which, under Whig pressure, Dissenters
were allowed to believe as they pleased
without
suffering certain civil penalties;
and there
was the Whig measure, carried by Tories
under
compulsion, which enabled Catholics
to profess
their religion without losing part
of their
freedom. The area of liberty was extended
by Acts which forbade the buying of
negroes
and the holding of them in bondage.
The East
India Company's monopoly was abolished,
and
trade with the East made open to all.
The
political serfdom of the unrepresented
was
narrowed in area, both by the Reform
Bill
and the Municipal Reform Bill; so that
alike
generally and locally, the many were
less
under the coercion of the few. Dissenters,
no longer obliged to submit to the
ecclesiastical
form of marriage, were made free to
wed by
a purely civil rite. Later came diminution
and removal of restraints on the buying
of
foreign commodities and the employment
of
foreign vessels and foreign sailors;
and
later still the removal of those burdens
on the press which were originally
imposed
to hinder the diffusion of opinion.
And of
all these changes it is unquestionable
that,
whether made or not by Liberals themselves,
they were made in conformity with principles
professed and urged by Liberals. But
why
do I enumerate facts so well known
to all?
Simply because, as intimated at the
outset,
it seems needful to remind everybody
what
Liberalism was in the past, that they
may
perceive its unlikeness to the so-called
Liberalism of the present. It would
be inexcusable
to name these various measures for
the purpose
of pointing out the character common
to them,
were it not that in our day men have
forgotten
their common character. They do not
remember
that, in one or other way, all these
truly
Liberal changes diminished compulsory
co-operation
throughout social life and increased
voluntary
cooperation. They have forgotten that,
in
one direction or other, they diminished
the
range of governmental authority, and
increased
the area within which each citizen
may act
unchecked. They have lost sight of
the truth
that in past times Liberalism habitually
stood for individual freedom versus
State-coercion.
And now comes the inquiry -- How is
it that
Liberals have lost sight of this? How
is
it that Liberalism, getting more and
more
into power, has grown more and more
coercive
in its legislation? How is it that,
either
directly through its own majorities
or indirectly
through aid given in such cases to
the majorities
of its opponents, Liberalism has to
an increasing
extent adopted the policy of dictating
the
actions of citizens, and, by consequence,
diminishing the range throughout which
their
actions remain free? How are we to
explain
this spreading confusion of thought
which
has led it, in pursuit of what appears
to
be public good, to invert the method
by which
in earlier days it achieved public
good?
Unaccountable as at first sight this
unconscious
change of policy seems, we shall find
that
it has arisen quite naturally. Given
the
unanalytical thought ordinarily brought
to
bear on political matters, and, under
existing
conditions, nothing else was to be
expected.
To make this clear some parenthetic
explanations
are needful.
From the lowest to the highest creatures,
intelligence progresses by acts of
discrimination;
and it continues so to progress among
men,
from the most ignorant to the most
cultured.
To class rightly -- to put in the same
group
things which are of essentially the
same
natures, and in other groups things
of natures
essentially different is the fundamental
condition to right guidance of actions.
Beginning
with rudimentary vision, which gives
warning
that some large opaque body is passing
near
(just as closed eyes turned to the
window,
perceiving the shade caused by a hand
put
before them, tells us of something
moving
in front), the advance is to developed
vision,
which, by exactly-appreciated combinations
of forms, colours, and motions, identifies
objects at great distances as prey
or enemies,
and so makes it possible to improve
the adjustments
of conduct for securing food or evading
death.
That progressing perception of differences
and consequent greater correctness
of classing,
constitutes, under one of its chief
aspects,
the growth of intelligence, is equally
seen
when we pass from the relatively simple
physical
vision to the relatively complex intellectual
vision -- the vision through the agency
of
which, things previously grouped by
certain
eternal resemblances or by certain
extrinsic
circumstances, come to be more truly
grouped
in conformity with their intrinsic
structures
or natures. Undeveloped intellectual
vision
is just as indiscriminating and erroneous
in its classings as undeveloped physical
vision. Instance the early arrangement
of
plants into the groups, trees, shrubs,
and
herbs: size, the most conspicuous trait,
being the ground of distinction; and
the
assemblages formed being such as united
many
plants extremely unlike in their natures,
and separated others that are near
akin.
Or still better, take the popular classification
which puts together under the same
general
name, fish and shell-fish, and under
the
sub-name, shell-fish, puts together
crustaceans
and molluscs; nay, which goes further,
and
regards as fish the cetacean mammals.
Partly
because of the likeness in their modes
of
life as inhabiting the water, and partly
because of some general resemblance
in their
flavours, creatures that are in their
essential
natures far more widely separated than
a
fish is from a bird, are associated
in the
same class and in the same sub-class.
Now
the general truth thus exemplified,
holds
throughout those higher ranges of intellectual
vision concerned with things not presentable
to the senses, and, among others, such
things
as political institutions and political
measures.
For when thinking of these, too, the
results
of inadequate intellectual faculty,
or inadequate
culture of it, or both, are erroneous
classings
and consequent erroneous conclusions.
Indeed,
the liability to error is here much
greater;
since the things with which the intellect
is concerned do not admit of examination
in the same easy way. You cannot touch
or
see a political institution: it can
be known
only by an effort of constructive imagination.
Neither can you apprehend by physical
perception
a political measure: this no less requires
a process of mental representation
by which
its elements are put together in thought,
and the essential nature of the combination
conceived. Here, therefore, still more
than
in the cases above named, defective
intellectual
vision is shown in grouping by eternal
characters,
or extrinsic circumstances. How institutions
are wrongly classed from this cause,
we see
in the common notion that the Roman
Republic
was a popular form of government. Look
into
the early ideas of the French revolutionists
who aimed at an ideal state of freedom,
and
you find that the political forms and
deeds
of the Romans were their models; and
even
now a historian might be named who
instances
the corruptions of the Roman Republic
as
showing us what popular government
leads
to. Yet the resemblance between the
institutions
of the Romans and free institutions
properly
so-called, was less than that between
a shark
and a porpoise -- a resemblance of
general
eternal form accompanying widely different
internal structures. For the Roman
Government
was that of a small oligarchy within
a larger
oligarchy: the members of each being
unchecked
autocrats. A society in which the relatively
few men who had political power, and
were
in a qualified sense free, were so
many petty
despots, holding not only slaves and
dependents
but even children in a bondage no less
absolute
than that in which they held their
cattle,
was, by its intrinsic nature, more
nearly
allied to an ordinary despotism than
to a
society of citizens politically equal.
Passing
now to our special question, we may
understand
the kind of confusion in which Liberalism
has lost itself; and the origin of
those
mistaken classings of political measures
which have misled it classings, as
we shall
see, by conspicuous eternal traits
instead
of by internal natures. For what, in
the
popular apprehension and in the apprehension
of those who effected them, were the
changes
made by Liberals in the past? They
were abolitions
of grievances suffered by the people,
or
by portions of them: this was the common
trait they had which most impressed
itself
on men's minds. They were mitigations
of
evils which had directly or indirectly
been
felt by large classes of citizens,
as causes
of misery or as hindrances to happiness.
And since, in the minds of most, a
rectified
evil is equivalent to an achieved good,
these
measures came to be thought of as so
many
positive benefits; and the welfare
of the
many came to be conceived alike by
Liberal
statesmen and Liberal voters as the
aim of
Liberalism. Hence the confusion. The
gaining
of a popular good, being the eternal
conspicuous
trait common to Liberal measures in
earlier
days (then in each case gained by a
relaxation
of restraints), it has happened that
popular
good has come to be sought by Liberals,
not
as an end to be indirectly gained by
relaxations
of restraints, but as the end to be
directly
gained. And seeking to gain it directly,
they have used methods intrinsically
opposed
to those originally used. And now,
having
seen how this reversal of policy has
arisen
(or partial reversal, I should say,
for the
recent Burials Act and the efforts
to remove
all remaining religious inequalities,
show
continuance of the original policy
in certain
directions), let us proceed to contemplate
the extent to which it has been carried
during
recent times, and the still greater
extent
to which the future will see it carried
if
current ideas and feelings continue
to predominate.
Before proceeding, it may be well to
say
that no reflections are intended on
the motives
which prompted one after another of
these
various restraints and dictations.
These
motives were doubtless in nearly all
cases
good. It must be admitted that the
restrictions
placed by an Act of 1870, on the employment
of women and children in Turkey-red
dyeing
works, were, in intention, no less
philanthropic
than those of Edward VI, which prescribed
the minimum time for which a journeyman
should
be retained. Without question, the
Seed Supply
(Ireland) Act of 1880, which empowered
guardians
to buy seed for poor tenants, and then
to
see it properly planted, was moved
by a desire
for public welfare no less great than
that
which in 1533 prescribed the number
of sheep
a tenant might keep, or that of 1597,
which
commanded that decayed houses of husbandry
should be rebuilt. Nobody will dispute
that
the various measures of late years
taken
for restricting the sale of intoxicating
liquors, have been taken as much with
a view
to public morals as were the measures
taken
of old for checking the evils of luxury;
as, for instance, in the fourteenth
century,
when diet as well as dress was restricted.
Everyone must see that the edicts issued
by Henry VIII to prevent the lower
classes
from playing dice, cards, bowls, etc.,
were
not more prompted by desire for popular
welfare
than were the Acts passed of late to
check
gambling. Further, I do not intend
here to
question the wisdom of these modern
interferences,
which Conservatives and Liberals vie
with
one another in multiplying, any more
than
to question the wisdom of those ancient
ones
which they in many cases resemble.
We will
not now consider whether the plans
of late
adopted for preserving the lives of
sailors,
are or are not more judicious than
that sweeping
Scotch measure which, in the middle
of the
fifteenth century, prohibited captains
from
leaving harbour during the winter.
For the
present, it shall remain undebated
whether
there is a better warrant for giving
sanitary
officers powers to search certain premises
for unfit food, than there was for
the law
of Edward III, under which innkeepers
at
seaports were sworn to search their
guests
to prevent the exportation of money
or plate.
We will assume that there is no less
sense
in that clause of the Canal-boat Act,
which
forbids an owner to board gratuitously
the
children of the boatmen, than there
was in
the Spitalfields Acts, which, up to
1824,
for the benefit of the artisans, forbade
the manufacturers to fix their factories
more than ten miles from the Royal
Exchange.
We exclude, then, these questions of
philanthropic
motive and wise judgement, taking both
of
them for granted; and have here to
concern
ourselves solely with the compulsory
nature
of the measures which, for good or
evil as
the case may be, have been put in force
during
periods of Liberal ascendancy. To bring
the
illustrations within compass, let us
commence
with 1860, under the second administration
of Lord Palmerston. In that year, the
restrictions
of the Factories Act were extended
to bleaching
and dyeing works; authority was given
to
provide analysts of food and drink,
to be
paid out of local rates; there was
an Act
providing for inspection of gas-works,
as
well as for fixing quality of gas and
limiting
price; there was the Act which, in
addition
to further mine inspection, made it
penal
to employ boys under twelve not attending
school and unable to read and write.
In 1861
occurred an extension of the compulsory
provisions
of the Factories Act to lace-works;
power
was given to poor-law guardians, etc.,
to
enforce vaccination; local boards were
authorized
to fix rates of hire for horses, ponies,
mules, asses, and boats; and certain
locally-formed
bodies had given to them powers of
taxing
the locality for rural drainage and
irrigation
works, and for supplying water to cattle.
In 1862 an Act was passed for restricting
the employment of women and children
in open-air
bleaching; and an Act for making illegal
a coal-mine with a single shaft, or
with
shafts separated by less than a specified
space; as well as an Act giving the
Council
of Medical Education the exclusive
right
to publish a Pharmacopoeia, the price
of
which is to be fixed by the Treasury.
In
1863 came the extension of compulsory
vaccination
to Scotland, and also to Ireland; there
came
the empowering of certain boards to
borrow
money repayable from the local rates,
to
employ and pay those out of work; there
came
the authorizing of town authorities
to take
possession of neglected ornamental
spaces,
and rate the inhabitants for their
support;
there came the Bakehouses Regulation
Act,
which, besides specifying minimum age
of
employees occupied between certain
hours,
prescribed periodical lime-washing,
three
coats of paint when painted, and cleaning
with hot water and soap at least once
in
six months; and there came also an
Act giving
a magistrate authority to decide on
the wholesomeness
or unwholesomeness of food brought
before
him by an inspector. Of compulsory
legislation
dating from 1864, may be named an extension
of the Factories Act to various additional
trades, including regulations for cleansing
and ventilation, and specifying of
certain
employees in match-works, that they
might
not take meals on the premises except
in
the wood-cutting places. Also there
were
passed a Chimney-Sweepers Act, an Act
for
further regulating the sale of beer
in Ireland,
an Act for compulsory testing of cables
and
anchors, an Act extending the Public
Works
Act of 1863, and the Contagious Diseases
Act: which last gave the police, in
specified
places, powers which, in respect of
certain
classes of women, abolished sundry
of those
safeguards to individual freedom established
in past times. The year 1865 witnessed
further
provision for the reception and temporary
relief of wanderers at the cost of
ratepayers;
another public-house closing Act; and
an
Act making compulsory regulations for
extinguishing
fires in London. Then, under the Ministry
of Lord John Russell, in 1866, have
to be
named an Act to regulate cattle-sheds,
etc.,
in Scotland, giving local authorities
powers
to inspect sanitary conditions and
fix the
numbers of cattle; an Act forcing hop-growers
to label their bags with the year and
place
of growth and the true weight, and
giving
police powers of search; an Act to
facilitate
the building of lodging-houses in Ireland,
and providing for regulation of the
inmates;
a Public Health Act, under which there
is
registration of lodging-houses and
Station
of occupants, with inspection and directions
for lime-washing, etc.; and a Public
Libraries
Act, giving local powers by which a
majority
can tax a minority for their books.
Passing
now to the legislation under the first
Ministry
of Mr Gladstone, we have, in 1869,
the establishment
of State-telegraphy, with the accompanying
interdict on telegraphing through any
other
agency; we have the empowering a Secretary
of State to regulate hired conveyances
in
London; we have further and more stringent
regulations to prevent cattle-diseases
from
spreading, another Beerhouse Regulation
Act,
and a Sea-birds Preservation Act (ensuring
greater mortality of fish). In 1870
we have
a law authorizing the Board of Public
Works
to make advances for landlords' improvements
and for purchase by tenants; we have
the
Act which enables the Education Department
to form school-boards which shall purchase
sites for schools, and may provide
free schools
supported by local rates, and enabling
school-boards
to pay a child's fees, to compel parents
to send their children, etc., etc.;
we have
a further Factories and Workshops Act,
making,
among other restrictions, some on the
employment
of women and children in fruit-preserving
and fishcuring works. In 1871 we meet
with
an amended Merchant Shipping Act, directing
officers of the Board of Trade to record
the draught of sea-going vessels leaving
port; there is another Factory and
Workshops
Act, making further restrictions; there
is
a Pedlar's Act, inflicting penalties
for
hawking without a certificate, and
limiting
the district within which the certificate
holds, as well as giving the police
power
to search pedlars' packs; and there
are further
measures for enforcing vaccination.
The year
1872 had, among other Acts, one which
makes
it illegal to take for hire more than
one
child to nurse, unless in a house registered
by the authorities, who prescribe the
number
of infants to be received; it had a
Licensing
Act, interdicting sale of spirits to
those
apparently under sixteen; and it had
another
Merchant Shipping Act, establishing
an annual
survey of passenger steamers. Then
in 1873
was passed the Agricultural Children's
Act,
which makes it penal for a farmer to
employ
a child who has neither certificate
of elementary
education nor of certain prescribed
school
attendances; and there was passed a
Merchant
Shipping Act, requiring on each vessel
a
scale showing draught and giving the
Board
of Trade power to fix the numbers of
boats
and life-saving appliances to be carried.
Turn now to Liberal law-making under
the
present Ministry. We have, in 1880,
a law
which forbids conditional advance-notes
in
payment of sailors' wages; also a law
which
dictates certain arrangements for the
safe
carriage of grain-cargoes; also a law
increasing
local coercion over parents to send
their
children to school. In 1881 comes legislation
to prevent trawling over clam-beds
and bait-beds,
and an interdict making it impossible
to
buy a glass of beer on Sunday in Wales.
In
1882 the Board of Trade was authorized
to
grant licences to generate and sell
electricity,
and municipal bodies were enabled to
levy
rates for electric-lighting; further
exactions
from ratepayers were authorized for
facilitating
more accessible baths and washhouses;
and
local authorities were empowered to
make
bye-laws for securing the decent lodging
of persons engaged in picking fruit
and vegetables.
Of such legislation during 1883 may
be named
the Cheap Trains Act, which, partly
by taxing
the nation to the extent of £400,000
a year
(in the shape of relinquished passenger
duty),
and partly at the cost of railway-proprietors,
still further cheapens travelling for
workmen:
the Board of Trade, through the Railway
Commissioners,
being empowered to ensure sufficiently
good
and frequent accommodation. Again,
there
is the Act which, under penalty of
£10 for
disobedience, forbids the payment of
wages
to workmen at or within public-houses;
there
is another Factory and Workshops Act,
commanding
inspection of white lead works (to
see that
there are provided overalls, respirators,
baths, acidulated drinks, etc.) and
of bake-houses,
regulating times of employment in both,
and
prescribing in detail some constructions
for the last, which are to be kept
in a condition
satisfactory to the inspectors. But
we are
far from forming an adequate conception
if
we look only at the compulsory legislation
which has actually been established
of late
years. We must look also at that which
is
advocated, and which threatens to be
far
more sweeping in range and stringent
in character.
We have lately had a Cabinet Minister,
one
of the most advanced Liberals, so-called,
who pooh-poohs the plans of the late
Government
for improving industrial dwellings
as so
much "tinkering;" and contends
for effectual coercion to be exercised
over
owners of small houses, over land-owners,
and over rate-payers. Here is another
Cabinet
Minister who, addressing his constituents,
speaks slightingly of the doings of
philanthropic
societies and religious bodies to help
the
poor, and says that "the whole
of the
people of this country ought to look
upon
this work as being their own work:"
that is to say, some extensive Government
measure is called for. Again, we have
a Radical
member of Parliament who leads a large
and
powerful body, aiming with annually-increasing
promise of success, to enforce sobriety
by
giving to local majorities powers to
prevent
freedom of exchange in respect of certain
commodities. Regulation of the hours
of labour
for certain classes, which has been
made
more and more general by successive
extensions
of the Factories Acts, is likely now
to be
made still more general: a measure
is to
be proposed bringing the employees
in all
shops under such regulation. There
is a rising
demand, too, that education shall be
made
gratis for all. The payment of school-fees
is beginning to be denounced as a wrong:
the State must take the whole burden.
Moreover,
it is proposed by many that the State,
regarded
as an undoubtedly competent judge of
what
constitutes good education for the
poor,
shall undertake also to prescribe good
education
for the middle classes -- shall stamp
the
children of these, too, after a State
pattern,
concerning the goodness of which they
have
no more doubt than the Chinese had
when they
fixed theirs. Then there is the "endowment
of research," of late energetically
urged. Already the Government gives
every
year the sum of £4,000 for this purpose,
to be distributed through the Royal
Society;
and in the absence of those who have
strong
motives for resisting the pressure
of the
interested backed by those they easily
persuade,
it may by-and-by establish that paid
"priesthood
of science" long ago advocated
by Sir
David Brewster. Once more, plausible
proposals
are made that there should be organized
a
system of compulsory insurance, by
which
men during their early lives shall
be forced
to provide for the time when they will
be
incapacitated. Nor does enumeration
of these
further measures of coercive rule,
looming
on us near at hand or in the distance,
complete
the account. Nothing more than cursory
allusion
has yet been made to that accompanying
compulsion
which takes the form of increased taxation,
general and local. Partly for defraying
the
costs of caring out these ever-multiplying
coercive measures, each of which requires
an additional staff of officers, and
partly
to meet the outlay for new public institutions,
such as board-schools, free libraries,
public
museums, baths and wash-houses, recreation
grounds, etc., etc., local rates are
year
after year increased; as the general
taxation
is increased by grants for education
and
to the departments of science and art,
etc.
Every one of these involves further
coercion
-- restricts still more the freedom
of the
citizen. For the implied address accompanying
every additional exaction is -- "Hitherto
you have been free to spend this portion
of your earnings in any way which pleased
you; hereafter you shall not be free
so to
spend it, but we will spend it for
the general
benefit." Thus, either directly
or indirectly,
and in most cases both at once, the
citizen
is at each further stage in the growth
of
this compulsory legislation, deprived
of
some liberty which he previously had.
Such,
then, are the doings of the party which
claims
the name of Liberal; and which calls
itself
Liberal as being the advocate of extended
freedom.
I doubt not that many a member of the
party
has read the preceding section with
impatience;
wanting, as he does, to point out an
immense
oversight which he thinks destroys
the validity
of the argument. "You forget,"
he wishes to say, "the fundamental
difference
between the power which, in the past,
established
those restraints that Liberalism abolished,
and the power which, in the present,
establishes
the restraints you call anti-Liberal.
You
forget that the one was an irresponsible
power, while the other is a responsible
power.
You forget that if by the recent legislation
of Liberals, people are variously regulated,
the body which regulates them is of
their
own creating, and has their warrant
for its
acts." My answer is, that I have
not
forgotten this difference, but am prepared
to contend that the difference is in
large
measure irrelevant to the issue. In
the first
place, the real issue is whether the
lives
of citizens are more interfered with
than
they were; not the nature of the agency
which
interferes with them. Take a simpler
case.
A member of a trades' union has joined
others
in establishing an organization of
a purely
representative character. By it he
is compelled
to strike if a majority so decide;
he is
forbidden to accept work save under
the conditions
they dictate; he is prevented from
profiting
by his superior ability or energy to
the
extent he might do were it not for
their
interdict. He cannot disobey without
abandoning
those pecuniary benefits of the organization
for which he has subscribed, and bringing
on himself the persecution, and perhaps
violence,
of his fellows. Is he any the less
coerced
because the body coercing him is one
which
he had an equal voice with the rest
in forming?
In the second place, if it be objected
that
the analogy is faulty, since the governing
body of a nation, to which, as protector
of the national life and interests,
all must
submit under penalty of social disorganization,
has a far higher authority over citizens
than the government of any private
organization
can have over its members; then the
reply
is that, granting the difference, the
answer
made continues valid. If men use their
liberty
in such a way as to surrender their
liberty,
are they thereafter any the less slaves?
If people by a plebiscite elect a man
despot
over them, do they remain free because
the
despotism was of their own making?
Are the
coercive edicts issued by him to be
regarded
as legitimate because they are the
ultimate
outcome of their own votes? As well
might
it be argued that the East African,
who breaks
a spear in another's presence that
he may
so become bondsman to him, still retains
his liberty because he freely chose
his master.
Finally if any, not without marks of
irritation
as I can imagine, repudiate this reasoning,
and say that there is no true parallelism
between the relation of people to government
where an Responsible single ruler has
been
permanently elected, and the relation
where
a responsible representative body is
maintained,
and from time to time re-elected; then
there
comes the ultimate reply -- an altogether
heterodox reply -- by which most will
be
greatly astonished. This reply is,
that these
multitudinous restraining acts are
not defensible
on the ground that they proceed from
a popularly-chosen
body; for that the authority of a popularly-chosen
body is no more to be regarded as an
unlimited
authority than the authority of a monarch;
and that as true Liberalism in the
past disputed
the assumption of a monarch's unlimited
authority,
so true Liberalism in the present will
dispute
the assumption of unlimited parliamentary
authority. Of this, however, more anon.
Here
I merely indicate it as an ultimate
answer.
Meanwhile it suffices to point out
that until
recently, just as of old, true Liberalism
was shown by its acts to be moving
towards
the theory of a limited parliamentary
authority.
All these abolitions of restraints
over religious
beliefs and observances, over exchange
and
transit, over trade-combinations and
the
traveling of artisans, over the publication
of opinions, theological or political,
etc.,
etc., were tacit assertions of the
desirableness
of limitation. In the same way that
the abandonment
of sumptuary laws, of laws forbidding
this
or that kind of amusement, of laws
dictating
modes of farming, and many others of
like
meddling nature, which took place in
early
days, was an implied admission that
the State
ought not to interfere in such matters;
so
those removals of hindrances to individual
activities of one or other kind, which
the
Liberalism of the last generation effected,
were practical confessions that in
these
directions, too, the sphere of governmental
action should be narrowed. And this
recognition
of the propriety of restricting governmental
action was a preparation for restricting
it in theory. One of the most familiar
political
truths is that, in the course of social
evolution,
usage precedes law; and that when usage
has
been well established it becomes law
by receiving
authoritative endorsement and defined
form.
Manifestly then, Liberalism in the
past,
by its practice of limitation, was
preparing
the way for the principle of limitation.
But returning from these more general
considerations
to the special question, I emphasize
the
reply that the liberty which a citizen
enjoys
is to be measured, not by the nature
of the
governmental machinery he lives under,
whether
representative or other, but by the
relative
paucity of the restraints it imposes
on him;
and that, whether this machinery is
or is
not one that he has shared in making,
its
actions are not of the kind proper
to Liberalism
if they increase such restraints beyond
those
which are needful for preventing him
from
directly or indirectly aggressing on
his
fellows -- needful, that is, for maintaining
the liberties of his fellows against
his
invasions of them: restraints which
are,
therefore, to be distinguished as negatively
coercive, not positively coercive.
Probably, however, the Liberal, and
still
more the sub-species Radical, who more
than
any other in these latter days seems
under
the impression that so long as he has
a good
end in view he is warranted in exercising
over men all the coercion he is able,
will
continue to protest; knowing that his
aim
is popular benefit of some kind, to
be achieved
in some way, and believing that the
Tory
is, contrariwise, prompted by class-interest
and the desire to maintain class-power,
he
will regard it as palpably absurd to
group
him as one of the same genus, and will
scorn
the reasoning used to prove that he
belongs
to it. Perhaps an analogy will help
him to
see its validity. If, away in the far
East,
where personal government is the only
form
of government known, he heard from
the inhabitants
an account of a struggle by which they
had
deposed a cruel and vicious despot,
and put
in his place one whose acts proved
his desire
for their welfare -- if, after listening
to their self-gratulations, he told
them
that they had not essentially changed
the
nature of their government, he would
greatly
astonish them; and probably he would
have
difficulty in making them understand
that
the substitution of a benevolent despot
for
a malevolent despot, still left the
government
a despotism. Similarly with Toryism
as rightly
conceived. Standing as it does for
coercion
by the State versus the freedom of
the individual,
Toryism remains Toryism, whether it
extends
this coercion for selfish or unselfish
reasons.
As certainly as the despot is still
a despot,
whether his motives for arbitrary rule
are
good or bad; so certainly is the Tory
still
a Tory, whether he has egoistic or
altruistic
motives for using State-power to restrict
the liberty of the citizen, beyond
the degree
required for maintaining the liberties
of
other citizens. The altruistic Tory
as well
as the egoistic Tory belongs to the
genus
Tory; though he forms a new species
of the
genus. And both stand in distinct contrast
with the Liberal as defined in the
days when
Liberals were rightly so called, and
when
the definition was -- "one who
advocates
greater freedom from restraint, especially
in political institutions." Thus,
then,
is justified the paradox I set out
with.
As we have seen, Toryism and Liberalism
originally
emerged, the one from militancy and
the other
from industrialism. The one stood for
the
regime of status and the other for
the regime
of contract -- the one for that system
of
compulsory co-operation which accompanies
the legal inequality of classes, and
the
other for that voluntary co-operation
which
accompanies their legal equality; and
beyond
all question the early acts of the
two parties
were respectively for the maintenance
of
agencies which effect this compulsory
co-operation,
and for the weakening or curbing of
them.
Manifestly the implication is that,
in so
far as it has been extending the system
of
compulsion, what is now called Liberalism
is a new form of Toryism. How truly
this
is so, we shall see still more clearly
on
looking at the facts the other side
upwards,
which we will presently do.
NOTE -- By sundry newspapers which
noticed
this article when it was originally
published,
the meaning of the above paragraphs
was supposed
to be that Liberals and Tories have
changed
places. This, however, is by no means
the
implication. A new species of Tory
may arise
without disappearance of the original
species.
When saying, as on page 70, that in
our days
"Conservatives and Liberals vie
with
one another in multiplying" interferences,
I clearly implied the belief that while
Liberals
have taken to coercive legislation,
Conservatives
have not abandoned it. Nevertheless,
it is
true that the laws made by Liberals
are so
greatly increasing the compulsions
and restraints
exercised over citizens, that among
Conservatives
who suffer from this aggressiveness
there
is growing up a tendency to resist
it. Proof
is furnished by the fact that the "Liberty
and Property Defence League,"
largely
consisting of Conservatives, has taken
for
its motto "Individualism versus
Socialism."
So that if the present drift of things
continues,
it may by and by really happen that
the Tories
will be defenders of liberties which
the
Liberals, in pursuit of what they think
popular
welfare, trample under foot.
THE COMING SLAVERY
The kinship of pity to love is shown
among
other ways in this, that it idealizes
its
object. Sympathy with one in suffering
suppresses,
for the time being, remembrance of
his transgressions.
The feeling which vents itself in "poor
fellow!" on seeing one in agony,
excludes
the thought of "bad fellow,"
which
might at another time arise. Naturally,
then,
if the wretched are unknown or but
vaguely
known, all the demerits they may have
are
ignored; and thus it happens that when,
as
just now, the miseries of the poor
are depicted,
they are thought of as the miseries
of the
deserving poor, instead of being thought
of, as in large measure they should
be, as
the miseries of the undeserving poor.
Those
whose hardships are set forth in pamphlets
and proclaimed in sermons and speeches
which
echo throughout society, are assumed
to be
all worthy souls, grievously wronged;
and
none of them are thought of as bearing
the
penalties of their own misdeeds. On
hailing
a cab in a London street, it is surprising
how frequently the door is officiously
opened
by one who expects to get something
for his
trouble. The surprise lessens after
counting
the many loungers about tavern-doors,
or
after observing the quickness with
which
a street-performance, or procession,
draws
from neighbouring slums and stable-yards
a group of idlers. Seeing how numerous
they
are in every small area, it becomes
manifest
that tens of thousands of such swarm
through
London. "They have no work,"
you
say. Say rather that they either refuse
work
or quickly turn themselves out of it.
They
are simply good-for-nothings, who in
one
way or other live on the good-for-somethings
-- vagrants and sots, criminals and
those
on the way to crime, youths who are
burdens
on hard-worked parents, men who appropriate
the wages of their wives, fellows who
share
the gains of prostitutes; and then,
less
visible and less numerous, there is
a corresponding
class of women. Is it natural that
happiness
should be the lot of such? or is it
natural
that they should bring unhappiness
on themselves
and those connected with them? Is it
not
manifest that there must exist in our
midst
an immense amount of misery which is
a normal
result of misconduct, and ought not
to be
dissociated from it? There is a notion,
always
more or less prevalent and just now
vociferously
expressed, that all social suffering
is removable,
and that it is the duty of somebody
or other
to remove it. Both these beliefs are
false.
To separate pain from ill-doing is
to fight
against the constitution of things,
and will
be followed by far more pain. Saving
men
from the natural penalties of dissolute
living,
eventually necessitates the infliction
of
artificial penalties in solitary cells,
on
tread-wheels, and by the lash. I suppose
a dictum, on which the current creed
and
the creed of science are at one, may
be considered
to have as high an authority as can
be found.
Well, the command "if any would
not
work neither should he eat," is
simply
a Christian enunciation of that universal
law of Nature under which life has
reached
its present height -- the law that
a creature
not energetic enough to maintain itself
must
die: the sole difference being that
the law
which in the one case is to be artificially
enforced, is, in the other case, a
natural
necessity. And yet this particular
tenet
of their religion which science so
manifestly
justifies, is the one which Christians
seem
least inclined to accept. The current
assumption
is that there should be no suffering,
and
that society is to blame for that which
exists.
"But surely we are not without
responsibilities,
even when the suffering is that of
the unworthy?"
If the meaning of the word "we"
be so expanded as to include with ourselves
our ancestors, and especially our ancestral
legislators, I agree. I admit that
those
who made, and modified, and administered,
the old Poor Law, were responsible
for producing
an appalling amount of demoralization,
which
it will take more than one generation
to
remove. I admit, too, the partial responsibility
of recent and present law-makers for
relations
which have brought into being a permanent
body of tramps, who ramble from union
to
union; and also their responsibility
for
maintaining a constant supply of felons
by
sending back convicts into society
under
such conditions that they are almost
compelled
again to commit crimes. Moreover, I
admit
that the philanthropic are not without
their
share of responsibility; since, that
they
may aid the offspring of the unworthy,
they
disadvantage the offspring of the worthy
through burdening their parents by
increased
local rates. Nay, I even admit that
these
swarms of good-for-nothings, fostered
and
multiplied by public and private agencies,
have, by sundry mischievous meddlings,
been
made to suffer more than they would
otherwise
have suffered. Are these the responsibilities
meant? I suspect not. But now, leaving
the
question of responsibilities, however
conceived,
and considering only the evil itself,
what
shall we say of its treatment? Let
me begin
with a fact.
A late uncle of nine, the Rev Thomas
Spencer,
for some twenty years incumbent of
Hinton
Charterhouse, near Bath, no sooner
entered
on his parish duties than he proved
himself
anxious for the welfare of the poor,
by establishing
a school, a library, a clothing club
and
land-allotments, besides building some
model
cottages. Moreover, up to 1833 he was
a pauper's
friend -- always for the pauper against
the
overseer. There presently came, however,
the debates on the Poor Law, which
impressed
him with the evils of the system then
in
force. Though an ardent philanthropist
he
was not a timid sentimentalist. The
result
was that, immediately the new Poor
Law was
passed, he proceeded to carry out its
provisions
in his parish. Almost universal opposition
was encountered by him: not the poor
only
being his opponents, but even the farmers
on whom came the burden of heavy poor-rates.
For, strange to say, their interests
had
become apparently identified with the
maintenance
of this system which taxed them so
largely.
The explanation is that there had grown
up
the practice of paying out of the rates
a
part of the wages of each farm-servant
--
"make-wages," as the sum
was called.
And though the farmers contributed
most of
the fund from which "make-wages"
were paid, yet, since all other ratepayers
contributed, the farmers seemed to
gain by
the arrangement. My uncle, however,
not easily
deterred, faced all this opposition
and enforced
the law. The result was that in two
years
the rates were reduced from £700 a
year to
£200 a year; while the condition of
the parish
was greatly improved. "Those who
had
hitherto loitered at the corners of
the streets,
or at the doors of the beer-shops,
had something
else to do, and one after another they
obtained
employment;" so that out of a
population
of 800, only 15 had to be sent as incapable
paupers to the Bath Union (when that
was
formed), in place of the 100 who received
out-door relief a short time before.
If it
be said that the £20 telescope which,
a few
years after, his parishioners presented
to
my uncle, marked only the gratitude
of the
ratepayers; then my reply is the fact
that
when, some years later still, having
killed
himself by overwork in pursuit of popular
welfare, he was taken to Hinton to
be buried,
the procession which followed him to
the
grave included not the well-to-do only
but
the poor. Several motives have prompted
this
brief narrative. One is the wish to
prove
that sympathy with the people and self-sacrificing
efforts on their behalf, do not necessarily
imply approval of gratuitous aids.
Another
is the desire to show that benefit
may result,
not from multiplication of artificial
appliances
to mitigate distress, but, contrariwise,
from diminution of them. And a further
purpose
I have in view is that of preparing
the way
for an analogy. Under another form
and in
a different sphere, we are now yearly
extending
a system which is identical in nature
with
the system of "make-wages"
under
the old Poor Law. Little as politicians
recognize
the fact, it is nevertheless demonstrable
that these various public appliances
for
working-class comfort, which they are
supplying
at the cost of ratepayers, are intrinsically
of the same nature as those which,
in past
times, treated the farmer's man as
half-labourer
and half-pauper. In either case the
worker
receives in return for what he does,
money
wherewith to buy certain of the things
he
wants; while, to procure the rest of
them
for him, money is furnished out of
a common
fund raised by taxes. What matters
it whether
the things supplied by ratepayers for
nothing,
instead of by the employer in payment,
are
of this kind or that kind? The principle
is the same. For sums received let
us substitute
the commodities and benefits purchased;
and
then see how the matter stands. In
old Poor-Law
times, the farmer gave for work done
the
equivalent, say of house-rent, bread,
clothes,
and fire; while the ratepayers practically
supplied the man and his family with
their
shoes, tea, sugar, candles, a little
bacon,
etc. The division is, of course, arbitrary;
but unquestionably the farmer and the
ratepayers
furnished these things between them.
At the
present time the artisan receives from
his
employer in wages, the equivalent of
the
consumable commodities he wants; while
from
the public comes satisfaction for others
of his needs and desires. At the cost
of
ratepayers he has in some cases, and
will
presently have in more, a house at
less than
its commercial value; for of course
when,
as in Liverpool, a municipality spends
nearly
£200,000 in pulling down and reconstructing
low-class dwellings, and is about to
spend
as much again, the implication is that
in
some way the ratepayers supply the
poor with
more accommodation than the rents they
pay
would otherwise have brought. The artisan
further receives from them, in schooling
for his children, much more than he
pays
for; and there is every probability
that
he will presently receive it from them
gratis.
The ratepayers also satisfy what desire
he
may have for books and newspapers,
and comfortable
places to read them in. In some cases
too,
as in Manchester, gymnasia for his
children
of both sexes, as well as recreation
grounds,
are provided. That is to say, he obtains
from a fund raised by local taxes,
certain
benefits beyond those which the sum
received
for his labour enables him to purchase.
The
sole difference, then, between this
system
and the old system of "make-wages,"
is between the kinds of satisfactions
obtained;
and this difference does not in the
least
affect the nature of the arrangement.
Moreover,
the two are pervaded by substantially
the
same illusion. In the one case, as
in the
other, what looks like a gratis benefit
is
not a gratis benefit. The amount which,
under
the old Poor Law, the half-pauperized
labourer
received from the parish to eke out
his weekly
income, was not really, as it appeared,
a
bonus; for it was accompanied by a
substantially-equivalent
decrease in his wages, as was quickly
proved
when the system was abolished and the
wages
rose. Just so is it with these seeming
boons
received by working people in towns.
I do
not refer only to the fact that they
unawares
pay in part through the raised rents
of their
dwellings (when they are not actual
ratepayers);
but I refer to the fact that the wages
received
by them are, like the wages of the
farm-labourer,
diminished by these public burdens
falling
on employers. Read the accounts coming
of
late from Lancashire concerning the
cotton
strike, containing proofs, given by
artisans
themselves, that the margin of profit
is
so narrow that the less skilful manufacturers,
as well as those with deficient capital,
fail, and that the companies of co-operators
who compete with them can rarely hold
their
own; and then consider what is the
implication
respecting wages. Among the costs of
production
have to be reckoned taxes, general
and local.
If, as in our large towns, the local
rates
now amount to one-third of the rental
or
more -- if the employer has to pay
this,
not on his private dwelling only, but
on
his business-premises, factories, warehouses,
or the like; it results that the interest
on his capital must be diminished by
that
amount, or the amount must be taken
from
the wages-fund, or partly one and partly
the other. And if competition among
capitalists
in the same business and in other businesses,
has the effect of so keeping down interest
that while some gain others lose, and
not
a few are ruined -- if capital, not
getting
adequate interest, flows elsewhere
and leaves
labour unemployed; then it is manifest
that
the choice for the artisan under such
conditions,
lies between diminished amount of work
or
diminished rate of payment for it.
Moreover,
for kindred reasons these local burdens
raise
the costs of the things he consumes.
The
charges made by distributors are, on
the
average, determined by the current
rates
of interest on capital used in distributing
businesses; and the extra costs of
caring
on such businesses have to be paid
for by
extra prices. So that as in the past
the
rural worker lost in one way what he
gained
in another, so in the present does
the urban
worker: there being too, in both cases,
the
loss entailed on him by the cost of
administration
and the waste accompanying it. "But
what has all this to do with 'the coming
slavery'?" will perhaps be asked.
Nothing
directly, but a good deal indirectly,
as
we shall see after yet another preliminary
section.
It is said that when railways were
first
opened in Spain, peasants standing
on the
tracks were not unfrequently run over;
and
that the blame fell on the engine-drivers
for not stopping: rural experiences
having
yielded no conception of the momentum
of
a large mass moving at a high velocity.
The
incident is recalled to me on contemplating
the ideas of the so-called "practical"
politician, into whose mind there enters
no thought of such a thing as political
momentum,
still less of a political momentum
which,
instead of diminishing or remaining
constant,
increases. The theory on which he daily
proceeds
is that the change caused by his measure
will stop where he intends it to stop.
He
contemplates intently the things his
act
will achieve, but thinks little of
the remoter
issues of the movement his act sets
up, and
still less of its collateral issues.
When,
in war-time, "food for powder"
was to be provided by encouraging population
-- when Mr Pitt said, "Let us
make relief
in cases where there are a number of
children
a matter of right and honour, instead
of
a ground for opprobrium and contempt;"(1*)
it was not expected that the poor-rates
would
be quadrupled in fifty years, that
women
with many bastards would be preferred
as
wives to modest women, because of their
incomes
from the parish, and that hosts of
ratepayers
would be pulled down into the ranks
of pauperism.
Legislators who in 1833 voted £20,000
a year
to aid in building school-houses, never
supposed
that the step they then took would
lead to
forced contributions, local and general,
now amounting to £6,000,000; they did
not
intend to establish the principle that
A
should be made responsible for educating
B's offspring; they did not dream of
a compulsion
which would deprive poor widows of
the help
of their elder children; and still
less did
they dream that their successors, by
requiring
impoverished parents to apply to Boards
of
Guardians to pay the fees which School
Boards
would not remit, would initiate a habit
of
applying to Boards of Guardians and
so cause
pauperization.(2*) Neither did those
who
in 1834 passed an Act regulating the
labour
of women and children in certain factories,
imagine that the system they were beginning
would end in the restriction and inspection
of labour in all kinds of producing
establishments
where more than fifty people are employed;
nor did they conceive that the inspection
provided would grow to the extent of
requiring
that before a "young person"
is
employed in a factory, authority must
be
given by a certifying surgeon, who,
by personal
examination (to which no limit is placed)
has satisfied himself that there is
no incapacitating
disease or bodily infirmity: his verdict
determining whether the "young
person"
shall earn wages or not.(3*) Even less,
as
I say, does the politician who plumes
himself
on the practicalness of his aims, conceive
the indirect results which will follow
the
direct results of his measures. Thus,
to
take a case connected with one named
above,
it was not intended through the system
of
"payment by results," to
do anything
more than give teachers an efficient
stimulus:
it was not supposed that in numerous
cases
their health would give way under the
stimulus;
it was not expected that they would
be led
to adopt a cramming system and to put
undue
pressure on dull and weak children,
often
to their great injury; it was not foreseen
that in many cases a bodily enfeeblement
would be caused which no amount of
grammar
and geography can compensate for. The
licensing
of public houses was simply for maintaining
public order: those who devised it
never
imagined that there would result an
organized
interest powerfully influencing elections
in an unwholesome way. Nor did it occur
to
the "practical" politicians
who
provided a compulsory load-line for
merchant
vessels, that the pressure of shipowners'
interests would habitually cause the
putting
of the load-line at the very highest
limit,
and that from precedent to precedent,
tending
ever in the same direction, the load-line
would gradually rise in the better
class
of ships; as from good authority I
learn
that it has already done. Legislators
who,
some forty years ago, by Act of Parliament
compelled railway companies to supply
cheap
locomotion, would have ridiculed the
belief,
had it been expressed, that eventually
their
Act would punish the companies which
improved
the supply; and yet this was the result
to
compares which began to carry third-class
passengers by fast trains; since a
penalty
to the amount of the passenger-duty
was inflicted
on them for every third-class passenger
so
carried. To which instance concerning
railways,
add a far more striking one disclosed
by
comparing the railway policies of England
and France. The lawmakers who provided
for
the ultimate lapsing of French railways
to
the State, never conceived the possibility
that inferior travelling facilities
would
result -- did not foresee that reluctance
to depreciate the value of property
eventually
coming to the State, would negative
the authorization
of competing lines and that in the
absence
of competing lines locomotion would
be relatively
costly, slow, and infrequent; for,
as Sir
Thomas Farrer has lately shown, the
traveller
in England has great advantages over
the
French traveller in the economy, swiftness,
and frequency with which his journeys
can
be made. But the "practical"
politician
who, in spite of such experiences repeated
generation after generation, goes on
thinking
only of proximate results, naturally
never
thinks of results still more remote,
still
more general, and still more important
than
those just exemplified. To repeat the
metaphor
used above -- he never asks whether
the political
momentum set up by his measure, in
some cases
decreasing but in other cases greatly
increasing,
will or will not have the same general
direction
with other like momenta; and whether
it may
not join them in presently producing
an aggregate
energy working changes never thought
of.
Dwelling only on the effects of his
particular
stream of legislation, and not observing
how other such streams already existing,
and still other streams which will
follow
his initiative, pursue the same average
course,
it never occurs to him that they may
presently
unite into a voluminous flood utterly
changing
the face of things. Or to leave figures
for
a more literal statement, he is unconscious
of the truth that he is helping to
form a
certain type of social organization,
and
that kindred measures, effecting kindred
changes of organization, tend with
ever-increasing
force to make that type general; until,
passing
a certain point, the proclivity towards
it
becomes irresistible. Just as each
society,
aims when possible to produce in other
societies
a structure akin to its own -- just
as among
the Greeks, the Spartans and the Athenians
struggled to spread their respective
political
institutions, or as, at the time of
the French
Revolution, the European absolute monarchies
aimed to re-establish absolute monarchy
in
France while the Republic encouraged
the
formation of other republics; so within
every
society, each species of structure
tends
to propagate itself. Just as the system
of
voluntary co-operation by companies,
associations,
unions, to achieve business ends and
other
ends, spreads throughout a community;
so
does the antagonistic system of compulsory
co-operation under State-agencies spread;
and the larger becomes its extension
the
more power of spreading it gets. The
question
of questions for the politician should
ever
be -- "What type of social structure
am I tending to produce?" But
this is
a question he never entertains. Here
we will
entertain it for him. Let us now observe
the general course of recent changes,
with
the accompanying current of ideas,
and see
whither they are carrying us.
The blank form of a question daily
asked
is -- "We have already done this;
why
should we not do that?" And the
regard
for precedent suggested by it, is ever
pushing
on regulative legislation. Having had
brought
within their sphere of operation more
and
more numerous businesses, the Acts
restricting
hours of employment and dictating the
treatment
of workers are now to be made applicable
to shops. From inspecting lodging-houses
to limit the number of occupants and
enforce
sanitary conditions, we have passed
to inspecting
all houses below a certain rent in
which
there are members of more than one
family,
and are now passing to a kindred inspection
of all small houses.(4*) The buying
and working
of telegraphs by the State is made
a reason
for urging that the State should buy
and
work the railways. Supplying children
with
food for their minds by public agency
is
being followed in some cases by supplying
food for their bodies; and after the
practice
has been made gradually more general,
we
may anticipate that the supply, now
proposed
to be made gratis in the one case,
will eventually
be proposed to be made gratis in the
other:
the argument that good bodies as well
as
good minds are needful to make good
citizens,
being logically urged as a reason for
the
extension.(5*) And then, avowedly proceeding
on the precedents furnished by the
church,
the school, and the reading-room, all
publicly
provided, it is contended that "pleasure,
in the sense it is now generally admitted,
needs legislating for and organizing
at least
as much as work."(6*) Not precedent
only prompts this spread, but also
the necessity
which arises for supplementing ineffective
measures, and for dealing with the
artificial
evils continually caused. Failure does
not
destroy faith in the agencies employed,
but
merely suggests more stringent use
of such
agencies or wider ramifications of
them.
Laws to check intemperance, beginning
in
early times and coming down to our
own times,
when further restraints on the sale
of intoxicating
liquors occupy nights every session,
not
having done what was expected, there
come
demands for more thorough-going laws,
locally
preventing the sale altogether; and
here,
as in America, these will doubtless
be followed
by demands that prevention shall be
made
universal. All the many appliances
for "stamping
out" epidemic diseases not having
succeeded
in preventing outbreaks of small-pox,
fevers,
and the like, a further remedy is applied
for in the shape of police-power, to
search
houses for diseased persons, and authority
for medical officers to examine any
one they
think fit, to see whether he or she
is suffering
from an infectious or contagious malady.
Habits of improvidence having for generations
been cultivated by the Poor Law, and
the
improvident enabled to multiply, the
evils
produced by compulsory charity are
now proposed
to be met by compulsory insurance.
The extension
of this policy, causing extension of
corresponding
ideas, fosters everywhere the tacit
assumption
that Government should step in whenever
anything
is not going right. "Surely you
would
not have this misery continue!"
exclaims
someone, if you hint a demurrer to
much that
is now being said and done. Observe
what
is implied by this exclamation. It
takes
for granted, first, that all suffering
ought
to be prevented, which is not true:
much
suffering is curative, and prevention
of
it is prevention of a remedy. In the
second
place, it takes for granted that every
evil
can be removed: the truth being that
with
the existing defects of human nature,
many
evils can only be thrust out of one
place
or form into another place or form
often
being increased by the change. The
exclamation
also implies the unhesitating belief,
here
especially concerning us, that evils
of all
kinds should be dealt with by the State.
There does not occur the inquiry whether
there are at work other agencies capable
of dealing with evils, and whether
the evils
in question may not be among those
which
are best dealt with by these other
agencies.
And obviously, the more numerous governmental
interventions become, the more confirmed
does this habit of thought grow, and
the
more loud and perpetual the demands
for intervention.
Every extension of the relative policy
involves
an addition to the regulative agents
-- a
further growth of officialism and an
increasing
power of the organization formed of
officials.
Take a pair of scales with many shot
in the
one and a few in the other. Lift shot
after
shot out of the loaded scale and put
it into
the unloaded scale. Presently you will
produce
a balance; and if you go on, the position
of the scales will be reversed. Suppose
the
beam to be unequally divided, and let
the
lightly loaded scale be at the end
of a very
long arm; then the transfer of each
shot,
producing a much greater effect, will
far
sooner bring about a change of position.
I use the figure to illustrate what
results
from transferring one individual after
another
from the regulated mass of the community
to the regulating structures. The transfer
weakens the one and strengthens the
other
in a far greater degree than is implied
by
the relative change of numbers. A comparatively
small body of officials, coherent,
having
common interests, and acting under
central
authority, has an immense advantage
over
an incoherent public which has no settled
policy, and can be brought to act unitedly
only under strong provocation. Hence
an organization
of officials, once passing a certain
stage
of growth, becomes less and less resistible;
as we see in the bureaucracies of the
Continent.
Not only does the power of resistance
of
the regulated part decrease in a geometrical
ratio as the regulating part increases,
but
the private interests of many in the
regulated
part itself, make the change of ratio
still
more rapid. In every circle conversations
show that now, when the passing of
competitive
examinations renders them eligible
for the
public service, youths are being educated
in such ways that they may pass them
and
get employment under Government. One
consequence
is that men who might otherwise reprobate
some further growth of officialism,
are led
to look on it with tolerance, if not
favourably,
as offering possible careers for those
dependent
on them and those related to them.
Any one
who remembers the numbers of upper-class
and midd1e-class families anxious to
place
their children, will see that no small
encouragement
to the spread of legislative control
is now
coming from those who, but for the
personal
interests thus arising, would be hostile
to it. This pressing desire for careers
is
enforced by the preference for careers
which
are thought respectable. "Even
if his
salary is small, his occupation will
be that
of a gentleman," thinks the father,
who wants to get a Government-clerkship
for
his son. And this relative dignity
of State-servants
as compared with those occupied in
business,
increases as the administrative organization
becomes a larger and more powerful
element
in society, and tends more and more
to fix
the standard of honour. The prevalent
ambition
with a young Frenchman is to get some
small
official post in his locality, to rise
thence
to a place in the local centre of government,
and finally to reach some head office
in
Paris. And in Russia, where that universality
of State-regulation which characterizes
the
militant type of society has been carried
furthest, we see this ambition pushed
to
its extreme. Says Mr Wallace, quoting
a passage
from a play: -- "All men, even
shopkeepers
and cobblers, aim at becoming officers,
and
the man who has passed his whole life
without
official rank seems to be not a human
being."(7*)
These various influences working from
above
downwards meet with an increasing response
of expectations and solicitations proceeding
from below upwards. The hard-worked
and over-burdened
who form the great majority, and still
more
the incapables perpetually helped who
are
ever led to look for more help, are
ready
supporters of schemes which promise
them
this or the other benefit by State
agency,
and ready believers of those who tell
them
that such benefits can be given, and
ought
to be given. They listen with eager
faith
to all builders of political air-castles,
from Oxford graduates down to Irish
irreconcilables;
and every additional tax-supported
appliance
for their welfare raises hopes of further
ones. Indeed the more numerous public
instrumentalities
become, the more is there generated
in citizens
the notion that everything is to be
done
for them, and nothing by them. Each
generation
is made less familiar with the attainment
of desired ends by individual actions
or
private combinations, and more familiar
with
the attainment of them by governmental
agencies;
until, eventually, governmental agencies
come to be thought of as the only available
agencies. This result was well shown
in the
recent Trades-Unions Congress at Paris.
The
English delegates, reporting to their
constituents,
said that between themselves and their
foreign
colleagues "the point of difference
was the extent to which the State should
be asked to protect labour:" reference
being thus made to the fact, conspicuous
in the reports of the proceedings,
that the
French delegates always invoked governmental
power as the only means of satisfying
their
wishes. The diffusion of education
has worked,
and will work still more, in the same
direction.
"We must educate our masters,"
is the well-known saying of a Liberal
who
opposed the last extension of the franchise.
Yes, if the education were worthy to
be so
called, and were relevant to the political
enlightenment needed, much might be
hoped
from it. But knowing rules of syntax,
being
able to add up correctly, having geographical
information, and a memory stocked with
the
dates of kings' accessions and generals'
victories, no more implies fitness
to form
political conclusions than acquirement
of
skill in drawing implies expertness
in telegraphing,
or than ability to play cricket implies
proficiency
on the violin. "Surely,"
rejoins
some one, "facility in reading
opens
the way to political knowledge."
Doubtless;
but will the way be followed? Table-talk
proves that nine out of ten people
read what
amuses them or interests them rather
than
what instructs them; and that the last
thing
they read is something which tells
them disagreeable
truths or dispels groundless hopes.
That
popular education results in an extensive
reading of publications which foster
pleasant
illusions rather than of those which
insist
on hard realities, is beyond question.
Says
"A Mechanic," writing in
the Pall
Mall Gazette of December 3, 1883:
--
"Improved education instills the
desire
for culture -- culture instills the
desire
for many things as yet quite beyond
working
men's reach... in the furious competition
to which the present age is given up
they
are utterly impossible to the poorer
classes;
hence they are discontented with things
as
they are, and the more educated the
more
discontented. Hence, too, Mr Ruskin
and Mr
Morris are regarded as true prophets
by many
of us."
And that the connexion of cause and
effect
here alleged is a real one, we may
see clearly
enough in the present state of Germany.
Being
possessed of electoral power, as are
now
the mass of those who are thus led
to nurture
sanguine anticipations of benefits
to be
obtained by social reorganization,
it results
that whoever seeks their votes must
at least
refrain from exposing their mistaken
beliefs;
even if he does not yield to the temptation
to express agreement with them. Every
candidate
for Parliament is prompted to propose
or
support some new piece of ad captandum
legislation.
Nay, even the chiefs of parties --
these
anxious to retain office and those
to wrest
it from them -- severally aim to get
adherents
by outbidding one another. Each seeks
popularity
by promising more than his opponent
has promised,
as we have lately seen. And then, as
divisions
in Parliament show us, the traditional
loyalty
to leaders overrides questions concerning
the intrinsic propriety of proposed
measures.
Representatives are unconscientious
enough
to vote for Bills which they believe
to be
wrong in principle, because party-needs
and
regard for the net election demand
it. And
thus a vicious policy is strengthened
even
by those who see its viciousness. Meanwhile
there goes on out-of-doors an active
propaganda
to which all these influences are ancillary.
Communistic theories, partially indorsed
by one Act of Parliament after another,
and
tacitly if not avowedly favoured by
numerous
public men seeking supporters, are
being
advocated more and more vociferously
under
one or other form by popular leaders,
and
urged on by organized societies. There
is
the movement for land-nationalization
which,
aiming at a system of land-tenure equitable
in the abstract, is, as all the world
knows,
pressed by Mr George and his friends
with
avowed disregard for the just claims
of existing
owners, and as the basis of a scheme
going
more than half-way to State-socialism.
And
then there is the thorough-going Democratic
Federation of Mr Hyndman and his adherents.
We are told by them that "the
handful
of marauders who now hold possession
[of
the land] have and can have no right
save
brute force against the tens of millions
whom they wrong." They exclaim
against
"the shareholders who have been
allowed
to lay hands upon (!) our great railway
communications."
They condemn "above all, the active
capitalist class, the loan-mongers,
the farmers,
the mine exploiters, the contractors,
the
middle-men, the factory lords -- these,
the
modern slave drivers" who exact
"more
and yet more surplus value out of the
wage-slaves
whom they employ." And they think
it
"high time" that trade should
be
"removed from the control of individual
greed."(8*) It remains to point
out
that the tendencies thus variously
displayed,
are being strengthened by press-advocacy,
daily more pronounced. Journalists,
always
chary of saying that which is distasteful
to their readers, are some of them
going
with the stream and adding to its force.
Legislative meddlings which they would
once
have condemned they now pass in silence,
if they do not advocate them; and they
speak
of laissez-faire as an exploded doctrine.
"People are no longer frightened
at
the thought of socialism," is
the statement
which meets us one day. On another
day, a
town which does not adopt the Free
Libraries
Act is sneered at as being alarmed
by a measure
so moderately communistic. And then,
along
with editorial assertions that this
economic
evolution is coming and must be accepted,
there is prominence given to the contributions
of its advocates. Meanwhile those who
regard
the recent course of legislation as
disastrous,
and see that its future course is likely
to be still more disastrous, are being
reduced
to silence by the belief that it is
useless
to reason with people in a state of
political
intoxication. See, then, the many concurrent
causes which threaten continually to
accelerate
the transformation now going on. There
is
that spread of regulation caused by
following
precedents, which become the more authoritative
the further the policy is carried.
There
is that increasing need for administrative
compulsions and restraints, which results
from the unforeseen evils and shortcomings
of preceding compulsions and restraints.
Moreover, every additional State-interference
strengthens the tacit assumption that
it
is the duty of the State to deal with
all
evils and secure all benefits. Increasing
power of a growing administrative organization
is accompanied by decreasing power
of the
rest of the society to resist its further
growth and control. The multiplication
of
careers opened by a developing bureaucracy,
tempts members of the classes regulated
by
it to favour its extension, as adding
to
the chances of safe and respectable
places
for their relatives. The people at
large,
led to look on benefits received through
public agencies as gratis benefits,
have
their hopes continually excited by
the prospects
of more. A spreading education, furthering
the diffusion of pleasing errors rather
than
of stern truths, renders such hopes
both
stronger and more general. Worse still,
such
hopes are ministered to by candidates
for
public choice, to augment their chances
of
success; and leading statesmen, in
pursuit
of party ends, bid for popular favour
by
countenancing them. Getting repeated
justifications
from new laws harmonizing with their
doctrines,
political enthusiasts and unwise philanthropists
push their agitations with growing
confidence
and success. Journalism, ever responsive
to popular opinion, daily strengthens
it
by giving it voice; while counter-opinion,
more and more discouraged, finds little
utterance.
Thus influences of various kinds conspire
to increase corporate action and decrease
individual action. And the change is
being
on all sides aided by schemers, each
of whom
thinks only of his pet project and
not at
all of the general re-organization
which
his, joined with others such, are working
out. It is said that the French Revolution
devoured its own children. Here an
analogous
catastrophe seems not unlikely. The
numerous
socialistic changes made by Act of
Parliament,
joined with the numerous others presently
to be made, will by-and-by be all merged
in State-Socialism -- swallowed in
the vast
wave which they have little by little
raised.
"But why is this change described
as
'the coming slavery'?" is a question
which many will still ask. The reply
is simple.
All socialism involves slavery. What
is essential
to the idea of a slave? We primarily
think
of him as one who is owned by another.
To
be more than nominal, however, the
ownership
must be shown by control of the slave's
actions
-- a control which is habitually for
the
benefit of the controller. That which
fundamentally
distinguishes the slave is that he
labours
under coercion to satisfy another's
desires.
The relation admits of sundry gradations.
Remembering that originally the slave
is
a prisoner whose life is at the mercy
of
his captor, it suffices here to note
that
there is a harsh form of slavery in
which,
treated as an animal, he has to expend
his
entire effort for his owner's advantage.
Under a system less harsh, though occupied
chiefly in working for his owner, he
is allowed
a short time in which to work for himself,
and some ground on which to grow extra
food.
A further amelioration gives him power
to
sell the produce of his plot and keep
the
proceeds. Then we come to the still
more
moderated form which commonly arises
where,
having been a free man working on his
own
land, conquest turns him into what
we distinguish
as a serf; and he has to give to his
owner
each year a fixed amount of labour
or produce,
or both: retaining the rest himself.
Finally,
in some cases, as in Russia until recently,
he is allowed to leave his owner's
estate
and work or trade for himself elsewhere,
under the condition that he shall pay
an
annual sum. What is it which, in these
cases,
leads us to qualify our conception
of the
slavery as more or less severe? Evidently
the greater or smaller extent to which
effort
is compulsorily expended for the benefit
of another instead of for self-benefit.
If
all the slave's labour is for his owner
the
slavery is heavy, and if but little
it is
light. Take now a further step. Suppose
an
owner dies, and his estate with its
slaves
comes into the hands of trustees; or
suppose
the estate and everything on it to
be bought
by a company; is the condition of the
slave
any the better if the amount of his
compulsory
labour remains the same? Suppose that
for
a company we substitute the community;
does
it make any difference to the slave
if the
time he has to work for others is as
great,
and the time left for himself is as
small,
as before? The essential question is
-- How
much is he compelled to labour for
other
benefit than his own, and how much
can he
labour for his own benefit? The degree
of
his slavery varies according to the
ratio
between that which he is forced to
yield
up and that which he is allowed to
retain;
and it matters not whether his master
is
a single person or a society. If, without
option, he has to labour for the society,
and receives from the general stock
such
portion as the society awards him,
he becomes
a slave to the society. Socialistic
arrangements
necessitate an enslavement of this
kind;
and towards such an enslavement many
recent
measures, and still more the measures
advocated,
are carrying us. Let us observe, first,
their
proximate effects, and then their ultimate
effects. The policy initiated by the
Industrial
Dwellings Acts admits of development,
and
will develop. Where municipal bodies
turn
housebuilders, they inevitably lower
the
values of houses otherwise built, and
check
the supply of more. Every dictation
respecting
modes of building and conveniences
to be
provided, diminishes the builder's
profit,
and prompts him to use his capital
where
the profit is not thus diminished.
So, too,
the owner, already finding that small
houses
entail much labour and many losses
-- already
subject to troubles of inspection and
interference,
and to consequent costs, and having
his property
daily rendered a more undesirable investment,
is prompted to sell; and as buyers
are for
like reasons deterred, he has to sell
at
a loss. And now these still-multiplying
regulations,
ending, it may be, as Lord Grey proposes,
in one requiring the owner to maintain
the
salubrity of his houses by evicting
dirty
tenants, and thus adding to his other
responsibilities
that of inspector of nuisances, must
further
prompt sales and further deter purchasers:
so necessitating greater depreciation.
What
must happen? The multiplication of
houses,
and especially small houses, being
increasingly
checked, there must come an increasing
demand
upon the local authority to make up
for the
deficient supply. More and more the
municipal
or kindred body will have to build
houses,
or to purchase houses rendered unsaleable
to private persons in the way shown
-- houses
which, greatly lowered in value as
they must
become, it will, in many cases, pay
to buy
rather than to build new ones. Nay,
this
process must work in a double way;
since
every entailed increase of local taxation
still further depreciates property.(9*)
And
then, when in towns this process has
gone
so far as to make the local authority
the
chief owner of houses, there will be
a good
precedent for publicly providing houses
for
the rural population, as proposed in
the
Radical programme,(10*) and as urged
by the
Democratic Federation; which insists
on "the
compulsory construction of healthy
artisans'
and agricultural labourers' dwellings
in
proportion to the population."
Manifestly,
the tendency of that which has been
done,
is being done, and is presently to
be done,
is to approach the socialistic ideal
in which
the community is sole house-proprietor.
Such,
too, must be the effect of the daily-growing
policy on the tenure and utilization
of the
land. More numerous public benefits,
to be
achieved by more numerous public agencies,
at the cost of augmented public burdens,
must increasingly deduct from the returns
on land; until, as the depreciation
in value
becomes greater and greater, the resistance
to change of tenure becomes less and
less.
Already, as every one knows, there
is in
many places difficulty in obtaining
tenants,
even at greatly reduced rents; and
land of
inferior fertility in some cases lies
idle,
or when farmed by the owner is often
farmed
at a loss. Clearly the profit on capital
invested in land is not such that taxes,
local and general, can be greatly raised
to support extended public administrations,
without an absorption of it which will
prompt
owners to sell, and make the best of
what
reduced price they can get by emigrating
and buying land not subject to heavy
burdens;
as, indeed, some are now doing. This
process,
carried far, must have the result of
throwing
inferior land out of cultivation; after
which
there will be raised more generally
the demand
made by Mr Arch, who, addressing the
Radical
Association of Brighton lately, and
contending
that existing landlords do not make
their
land adequately productive for the
public
benefit, said "he should like
the present
Government to pass a Compulsory Cultivation
Bill:" an applauded proposal which
he
justified by instancing compulsory
vaccination
(thus frustrating the influence of
precedent).
And this demand will be pressed, not
only
by the need for making the land productive,
but also by the need for employing
the rural
population. After the Government has
extended
the practice of hiring the unemployed
to
work on deserted lands, or lands acquired
at nominal prices, there will be reached
a stage whence there is but a small
further
step to that arrangement which, in
the programme
of the Democratic Federation, is to
follow
nationalization of the land -- the
"organization
of agricultural and industrial armies
under
State control on cooperative principles."
To one who doubts whether such a revolution
may be so reached, facts may be cited
showing
its likelihood. In Gaul, during the
decline
of the Roman Empire, "so numerous
were
the receivers in comparison with the
payers,
and so enormous the weight of taxation,
that
the labourer broke down, the plains
became
deserts, and woods grew where the plough
had been."(11*) In like manner,
when
the French Revolution was approaching,
the
public burdens had become such, that
many
farms remained uncultivated and many
were
deserted: one-quarter of the soil was
absolutely
lying waste; and in some provinces
one-half
was in health.(12*) Nor have we been
without
incidents of a kindred nature at home.
Besides
the facts that under the old Poor Law
the
rates had in some parishes risen to
half
the rental, and that in various places
farms
were lying idle, there is the fact
that in
one case the rates had absorbed the
whole
proceeds of the soil.
At Cholesbury, in Buckinghamshire,
in 1832,
the poor-rate "suddenly ceased
in consequence
of the impossibility to continue its
collection,
the landlords having given up their
rents,
the farmers their tenancies, and the
clergyman
his glebe and his tithes. The clergyman,
Mr Jeston, states that in October,
1832,
the parish officers threw up their
books,
and the poor assembled in a body before
his
door while he was in bed, asking for
advice
and food. Partly from his own small
means,
partly from the charity of neighbours,
and
partly by rates in aid, imposed on
the neighbouring
parishes, they were for some time supported."(13*)
And the Commissioners add that "the
benevolent rector recommends that the
whole
of the land should be divided among
the able-bodied
paupers:" hoping that after help
afforded
for two years, they might be able to
maintain
themselves. These facts, giving colour
to
the prophecy made in Parliament that
continuance
of the old Poor Law for another thirty
years
would throw the land out of cultivation,
clearly show that increase of public
burdens
may end in forced cultivation under
public
control. Then, again, comes State-ownership
of railways. Already this exists to
a large
extent on the Continent. Already we
have
had here a few years ago loud advocacy
of
it. And now the cry, which was raised
by
sundry politicians and publicists,
is taken
up afresh by the Democratic Federation;
which
proposes "State-appropriation
of railways,
with or without compensation."
Evidently,
pressure from above joined by pressure
from
below, is likely to effect this change
dictated
by the policy everywhere spreading;
and with
it must come many attendant changes.
For
railway-proprietors, at first owners
and
workers of railways only, have become
masters
of numerous businesses directly or
indirectly
connected with railways; and these
will have
to be purchased by Government when
the railways
are purchased. Already exclusive letter-carrier,
exclusive transmitter of telegrams,
and on
the way to become exclusive carrier
of parcels,
the State will not only be exclusive
carrier
of passengers, goods, and minerals,
but will
add to its present various trades many
other
trades. Even now, besides erecting
its naval
and military establishments and building
harbours, docks, breakwaters, etc.,
it does
the work of shipbuilder, cannonfounder,
small-arms
maker, manufacturer of ammunition,
army-clothier
and bootmaker; and when the railways
have
been appropriated "with or without
compensation,"
as the Democratic Federationists say,
it
will have to become locomotive-engine-builder,
carriage-maker, tarpaulin and grease
manufacturer,
passenger-vessel owner, coal-miner,
stone-quarrier,
omnibus proprietor, etc. Meanwhile
its local
lieutenants, the municipal governments,
already
in many places suppliers of water,
gas-makers,
owners and workers of tramways, proprietors
of baths, will doubtless have undertaken
various other businesses. And when
the State,
directly or by proxy, has thus come
into
possession of, or has established,
numerous
concerns for wholesale production and
for
wholesale distribution, there will
be good
precedents for extending its function
to
retail distribution: following such
an example,
say, as is offered by the French Government,
which has long been a retail tobacconist.
Evidently then, the changes made, the
changes
in progress, and the changes urged,
will
carry us not only towards State-ownership
of land and dwellings and means of
communication,
all to be administered and worked by
State-agents,
but towards State-usurpation of all
industries:
the private forms of which, disadvantaged
more and more in competition with the
State,
which can arrange everything for its
own
convenience, will more and more die
away;
just as many voluntary schools have,
in presence
of Board-schools. And so will be brought
about the desired ideal of the Socialists.
And now when there has been compassed
this
desired ideal, which "practical"
politicians are helping Socialists
to reach,
and which is so tempting on that bright
side
which Socialists contemplate, what
must be
the accompanying shady side which they
do
not contemplate? It is a matter of
common
remark, often made when a marriage
is impending,
that those possessed by strong hopes
habitually
dwell on the promised pleasures and
think
nothing of the accompanying pains.
A further
exemplification of this truth is supplied
by these political enthusiasts and
fanatical
revolutionists. Impressed with the
miseries
existing under our present social arrangements,
and not regarding these miseries as
caused
by the ill-working of a human nature
but
partially adapted to the social state,
they
imagine them to be forthwith curable
by this
or that re-arrangement. Yet, even did
their
plans succeed it could only be by substituting
one kind of evil for another. A little
deliberate
thought would show that under their
proposed
arrangements, their liberties must
be surrendered
in proportion as their material welfares
were cared for. For no form of co-operation,
small or great, can be carried on without
regulation, and an implied submission
to
the regulating agencies. Even one of
their
own organizations for effecting social
changes
yields them proof. It is compelled
to have
its councils, its local and general
officers,
its authoritative leaders, who must
be obeyed
under penalty of confusion and failure.
And
the experience of those who are loudest
in
their advocacy of a new social order
under
the paternal control of a Government,
shows
that even in private voluntarily-formed
societies,
the power of the regulative organization
becomes great, if not irresistible;
often,
indeed, causing grumbling and restiveness
among those controlled. Trades Unions
which
carry on a kind of industrial war in
defence
of workers' interests versus employers'
interests,
find that subordination almost military
in
its strictness is needful to secure
efficient
action; for divided councils prove
fatal
to success. And even in bodies of co-operators,
formed for caring on manufacturing
or distributing
businesses, and not needing that obedience
to leaders which is required where
the aims
are offensive or defensive, it is still
found
that the administrative agency gains
such
supremacy that there arise complaints
about
"the tyranny of organization."
Judge then what must happen when, instead
of relatively small combinations, to
which
men may belong or not as they please,
we
have a national combination in which
each
citizen finds himself incorporated,
and from
which he cannot separate himself without
leaving the country. Judge what must
under
such conditions become the despotism
of a
graduated and centralized officialism,
holding
in its hands the resources of the community,
and having behind it whatever amount
of force
it finds requisite to carry out its
decrees
and maintain what it calls order. Well
may
Prince Bismarck display leanings towards
State-socialism. And then after recognizing,
as they must if they think out their
scheme,
the power possessed by the regulative
agency
in the new social system so temptingly
pictured,
let its advocates ask themselves to
what
end this power must be used. Not dwelling
exclusively, as they habitually do,
on the
material well-being and the mental
gratifications
to be provided for them by a beneficent
administration,
let them dwell a little on the price
to be
paid. The officials cannot create the
needful
supplies: they can but distribute among
individuals
that which the individuals have joined
to
produce. If the public agency is required
to provide for them, it must reciprocally
require them to furnish the means.
There
cannot be, as under our existing system,
agreement between employer and employed
--
this the scheme excludes. There must
in place
of it be command by local authorities
over
workers, and acceptance by the workers
of
that which the authorities assign to
them.
And this, indeed, is the arrangement
distinctly,
but as it would seem inadvertently,
pointed
to by the members of the Democratic
Federation.
For they propose that production should
be
carried on by "agricultural and
industrial
armies under State-control:" apparently
not remembering that armies pre-suppose
grades
of officers, by whom obedience would
have
to be insisted upon; since otherwise
neither
order nor efficient work could be ensured.
So that each would stand toward the
governing
agency in the relation of slave to
master.
"But the governing agency would
be a
master which he and others made and
kept
constantly in check; and one which
therefore
would not control him or others more
than
was needful for the benefit of each
and all."
To which reply the first rejoinder
is that,
even if so, each member of the community
as an individual would be a slave to
the
community as a whole. Such a relation
has
habitually existed in militant communities,
even under quasi-popular forms of government.
In ancient Greece the accepted principle
was that the citizen belonged neither
to
himself nor to his family, but belonged
to
his city -- the city being with the
Greek
equivalent to the community. And this
doctrine,
proper to a state of constant warfare,
is
a doctrine which socialism unawares
re-introduces
into a state intended to be purely
industrial.
The services of each will belong to
the aggregate
of all; and for these services, such
returns
will be given as the authorities think
proper.
So that even if the administration
is of
the beneficent kind intended to be
secured,
slavery, however mild, must be the
outcome
of the arrangement. A second rejoinder
is
that the administration will presently
become
not of the intended kind, and that
the slavery
will not be mild. The socialist speculation
is vitiated by an assumption like that
which
vitiates the speculations of the "practical"
politician. It is assumed that officialism
will work as it is intended to work,
which
it never does. The machinery of Communism,
like existing social machinery, has
to be
framed out of existing human nature;
and
the defects of existing human nature
will
generate in the one the same evils
as in
the other. The love of power, the selfishness,
the injustice, the untruthfulness,
which
often in comparatively short times
bring
private organizations to disaster,
will inevitably,
where their effects accumulate from
generation
to generation, work evils far greater
and
less remediable; since, vast and complex
and possessed of all the resources,
the administrative
organization once developed and consolidated,
must become irresistible. And if there
needs
proof that the periodic exercise of
electoral
power would fail to prevent this, it
suffices
to instance the French Government,
which,
purely popular in origin, and subject
at
short intervals to popular judgment,
nevertheless
tramples on the freedom of citizens
to an
extent which the English delegates
to the
late Trades Unions Congress say "is
a disgrace to, and an anomaly in, a
Republican
nation." The final result would
be a
revival of despotism. A disciplined
army
of civil officials, like an army of
military
officials, gives supreme power to its
head
-- a power which has often led to usurpation,
as in medieval Europe and still more
in Japan
-- nay, has thus so led among our neighbours,
within our own times. The recent confessions
of M. de Maupas have shown how readily
a
constitutional head, elected and trusted
by the whole people, may, with the
aid of
a few unscrupulous confederates, paralyse
the representative body and make himself
autocrat. That those who rose to power
in
a socialistic organization would not
scruple
to carry out their aims at all costs,
we
have good reason for concluding. When
we
find that shareholders who, sometimes
gaining
but often losing, have made that railway
system by which national prosperity
has been
so greatly increased, are spoken of
by the
council of the Democratic Federation
as having
"laid hands" on the means
of communication,
we may infer that those who directed
a socialistic
administration might interpret with
extreme
perversity the claims of individuals
and
classes under their control. And when,
further,
we find members of this same council
urging
that the State should take possession
of
the railways, "with or without
compensation,"
we may suspect that the heads of the
ideal
society desired, would be but little
deterred
by considerations of equity from pursuing
whatever policy they thought needful:
a policy
which would always be one identified
with
their own supremacy. It would need
but a
war with an adjacent society, or some
internal
discontent demanding forcible suppression,
to at once transform a socialistic
administration
into a grinding tyranny like that of
ancient
Peru; under which the mass of the people,
controlled by grades of officials,
and leading
lives that were inspected out-of-doors
and
indoors, laboured for the support of
the
organization which regulated them,
and were
left with but a bare subsistence for
themselves.
And then would be completely revived,
under
a different form, that regime of status
--
that system of compulsory co-operation,
the
decaying tradition of which is represented
by the old Toryism, and towards which
the
new Toryism is caring us back. "But
we shall be on our guard against all
that
-- we shall take precautions to ward
off
such disasters," will doubtless
say
the enthusiasts. Be they "practical"
politicians with their new regulative
measures,
or communists with their schemes for
re-organizing
labour, their reply is ever the same:
--
"It is true that plans of kindred
nature
have, from unforeseen causes or adverse
accidents,
or the misdeeds of those concerned,
been
brought to failure; but this time we
shall
profit by past experiences and succeed."
There seems no getting people to accept
the
truth, which nevertheless is conspicuous
enough, that the welfare of a society
and
the justice of its arrangements are
at bottom
dependent on the characters of its
members;
and that improvement in neither can
take
place without that improvement in character
which results from caring on peaceful
industry
under the restraints imposed by an
orderly
social life. The belief, not only of
the
socialists but also of those so-called
Liberals
who are diligently preparing the way
for
them, is that by due skill an ill-working
humanity may be framed into well-working
institutions. It is a delusion. The
defective
natures of citizens will show themselves
in the bad acting of whatever social
structure
they are arranged into. There is no
political
alchemy by which you can get golden
conduct
out of leaden instincts.
NOTE -- Two replies by socialists to
the
foregoing article have appeared since
its
publication -- Socialism and Slavery
by H.
M. Hyndman and Herbert Spencer on Socialism
by Frank Fairman. Notice of them here
must
be limited to saying that, as usual
with
antagonists, they ascribe to me opinions
which I do not hold. Disapproval of
Socialism
does not, as Mr Hyndman assumes, necessitate
approval of existing arrangements.
Many things
he reprobates I reprobate quite as
much;
but I dissent from his remedy. The
gentleman
who writes under the pseudonym of "Frank
Fairman," reproaches me with having
receded from that sympathetic defence
of
the labouring classes which he finds
in Social
Statics; but I am quite unconscious
of any
such change as he alleges. Looking
with a
lenient eye upon the irregularities
of those
whose lives are hard, by no means involves
tolerance of good-for-nothings.
NOTES:
1. Hansard's Parliamentary History,
32. p.
710.
2. Fortnightly Review, January, 1884,
p.
17.
3. Factories and Workshops Act, 41
and 42
Vic., cap. 16.
4. See letter of Local Government,
Times,
January 2, 1884.
5. Verification comes more promptly
than
I expected. This article has been standing
intype since January 30, and in the
interval,
namely on March 13, the London School
Board
resolved to apply for authority to
use local
charitable funds for supplying gratis
meals
and clothing to indigent children.
Presently
the definition of "indigent"
will
be widened, more children will be included
and more funds aked for.
6. Fortnightly Review, January, 1884.
7. Russia, I. 422.
8. Socialism made Plain, Review, 185,
Fleet
Street.
9. If any one thinks such fears are
groundless,
let him contemplate the fact that from
1867-8
to 1880-1, our annual local expenditure
for
the United Kingdom has grown from £36,132,834
to £63,276,283; and that during the
same
13 years, the municipal expenditure
in England
and Wales alone, has grown from 13
millions
to 30 millions a year! How the increase
of
public burdens will join with othe
causes
in bringing about public ownership,
is shown
by a statement made by Mr W. Rathbone,
M.
P., to which any attention has been
drawn
since the above paragraph was in type.
He
says, "within my own experience,
local
taxation in New York has risen from
12s 6d
per cent to £2 12s 6d per cent on the
capital
of its citizens -- a charge which would
more
than absorb the whole income of an
average
English landlord." Nineteenth
Century,
February, 1883.
10. Fortnightly Review, November, 1883,
pp.
619-20.
11. Lactant. De M. Persecut, cc. 7,
23.
12. Taine, L'Ancien Regime, pp. 337-8
(in
the English translation).
13. Report of Commissioners for Inquiry
into
the Admistration and Practical Operation
of the Poor Laws, p. 37. February 20,
1834.
THE SINS OF LEGISLATORS
Be it or be it not true that Man is
shapen
in iniquity and conceived in sin, it
is unquestionably
true that Government is begotten of
aggression
and by aggression. In small undeveloped
societies
where for ages complete peace has continued,
there exists nothing like what we call
Government:
no coercive agency, but mere honorary
headship,
if any headship at all. In these exceptional
communities, unaggressive and from
special
causes unaggressed upon, there is so
little
deviation from the virtues of truthfulness,
honesty, justice, and generosity, that
nothing
beyond an occasional expression of
public
opinion by informally-assembled elders
is
needful.(1*) Conversely, we find proofs
that,
at first recognized but temporarily
during
leadership in war, the authority of
a chief
is permanently established by continuity
of war; and grows strong where successful
aggression ends in subjection of neighbouring
tribes. And thence onwards, examples
furnished
by all races put beyond doubt the truth,
that the coercive power of the chief,
developing
into king, and king of kings (a frequent
title in the ancient East), becomes
great
in proportion as conquest becomes habitual
and the union of subdued nations extensive.(2*)
Comparisons disclose a further truth
which
should be ever present to us -- the
truth
that the aggressiveness of the ruling
power
inside a society increases with its
aggressiveness
outside the society. As, to make an
efficient
army, the soldiers in their several
grades
must be subordinate to the commander;
so,
to make an efficient fighting community,
must the citizens be subordinate to
the ruling
power. They must furnish recruits to
the
extent demanded, and yield up whatever
property
is required. An obvious implication
is that
the ethics of Government, originally
identical
with the ethics of war, must long remain
akin to them; and can diverge from
them only
as warlike activities and preparations
become
less. Current evidence shows this.
At present
on the Continent, the citizen is free
only
when his services as a soldier are
not demanded;
and during the rest of his life he
is largely
enslaved in supporting the military
organization.
Even among ourselves, a serious war
would,
by the necessitated conscription, suspend
the liberties of large numbers and
trench
on the liberties of the rest, by taking
from
them through taxes whatever supplies
were
needed -- that is, forcing them to
labour
so many days more for the State. Inevitably
the established code of conduct in
the dealings
of Governments with citizens, must
be allied
to their code of conduct in their dealings
with one another. I am not, under the
title
of this article, about to treat of
the trespasses
and the revenges for trespasses, accounts
of which constitute the great mass
of history;
nor to trace the internal inequities
which
have ever accompanied the eternal inequities.
I do not propose here to catalogue
the crimes
of irresponsible legislators; beginning
with
that of King Khufu, the stones of whose
vast
tomb were laid in the bloody sweat
of tens
of thousands of slaves toiling through
long
years under the lash; going on to those
committed
by conquerors, Egyptian, Assyrian,
Persian,
Macedonian, Roman, and the rest; and
ending
with those of Napoleon, whose ambition
to
set his foot on the neck of the civilized
world, cost not less than two million
lives.(3*)
Nor do I propose here to enumerate
those
sins of responsible legislators seen
in the
long list of laws made in the interests
of
dominant classes -- a list coming down
in
our own country to those under which
there
were long maintained slavery and the
slave-trade,
torturing nearly 40,000 negroes annually
by close packing during a tropical
voyage,
and killing a large percentage of them,
and
ending with that of the corn-laws,
by which,
says Sir Erskine May, "to ensure
high
rents, it had been decreed that multitudes
should hunger."(4*) Not, indeed,
that
a presentation of the conspicuous misdeeds
of legislators, responsible and irresponsible,
would be useless. It would have several
uses
-- one of them relevant to the truth
above
pointed out. Such a presentation would
make
clear how that identity of governmental
ethics
with military ethics which necessarily
exists
during primitive times, when the army
is
simply the mobilized society and the
society
is the quiescent army, continues through
long stages, and even now affects in
great
degrees our law-proceedings and our
daily
lives. Having, for instance, shown
that in
numerous savage tribes the judicial
function
of the chief does not exist, or is
nominal,
and that very generally during early
stages
of European civilization, each man
had to
defend himself and rectify his private
wrongs
as best he might -- having shown that
in
medieval times the right of private
war among
members of the military order was brought
to an end, not because the head ruler
thought
it his duty to arbitrate, but because
private
wars interfered with the efficiency
of his
army in public wars having shown that
the
administration of justice displayed
through
subsequent ages a large amount of its
primitive
nature, in trial by battle carried
on before
the king or his deputy as umpire, and
which,
among ourselves, continued nominally
to be
an alternative form of trial down to
1819;
it might then be pointed out that even
now
there survives trial by battle under
another
form: counsel being the champions and
purses
the weapons. In civil cases, the ruling
agency
cares scarcely more than of old about
rectifying
the wrongs of the injured; but, practically,
its deputy does little else than to
enforce
the rules of the fight: the result
being
less a question of equity than a question
of pecuniary ability and forensic skill.
Nay, so little concern for the administration
of justice is shown by the ruling agency,
that when, by legal conflict carried
on in
the presence of its deputy, the combatants
have been pecuniarily bled even to
the extent
of producing prostration, and when
an appeal
being made by one of them the decision
is
reversed, the beaten combatant is made
to
pay for the blunders of the deputy,
or of
a preceding deputy; and not unfrequently
the wronged man, who sought protection
or
restitution, is taken out of court
pecuniarily
dead. Adequately done, such a portrayal
of
governmental misdeeds of commission
and omission,
proving that the partially-surviving
code
of ethics arising in, and proper to,
a state
of war, still vitiates governmental
action,
might greatly moderate the hopes of
those
who are anxious to extend governmental
control.
After observing that along with the
still-manifest
traits of that primitive political
structure
which chronic militancy produces, there
goes
a still-manifest survival of its primitive
principles; the reformer and the philanthropist
might be less sanguine in their anticipations
of good from its all-pervading agency,
and
might be more inclined to trust agencies
of a non-governmental kind. But leaving
out
the greater part of the large topic
comprehended
under the title of this article, I
propose
here to deal only with a comparatively
small
remaining part -- those sins of legislators
which are not generated by their personal
ambitions or class interests, but result
from a lack of the study by which they
are
morally bound to prepare themselves.
A druggist's assistant who, after listening
to the description of pains which he
mistakes
for those of colic, but which are really
caused by inflammation of the cecum,
prescribes
a sharp purgative and kills the patient,
is found guilty of manslaughter. He
is not
allowed to excuse himself on the ground
that
he did not intend harm but hoped for
good.
The plea that he simply made a mistake
in
his diagnosis is not entertained. He
is told
that he had no right to risk disastrous
consequences
by meddling in a matter concerning
which
his knowledge was so inadequate. The
fact
that he was ignorant how great was
his ignorance
is not accepted in bar of judgment.
It is
tacitly assumed that the experience
common
to all should have taught him that
even the
skilled, and much more the unskilled,
make
mistakes in the identification of disorders
and in the appropriate treatment; and
that
having disregarded the warning derivable
from common experience, he was answerable
for the consequences. We measure the
responsibilities
of legislators for mischiefs they may
do,
in a much more lenient fashion. In
most cases,
so far from thinking of them as deserving
punishment for causing disasters by
laws
ignorantly enacted, we scarcely think
of
them as deserving reprobation. It is
held
that common experience should have
taught
the druggist's assistant, untrained
as he
is, not to interfere; but it is not
held
that common experience should have
taught
the legislator not to interfere til1
he has
trained himself Though multitudinous
facts
are before him in the recorded legislation
of our own country and of other countries,
which should impress on him the immense
evils
caused by wrong treatment, he is not
condemned
for disregarding these warnings against
rash
meddling. Contrariwise, it is thought
meritorious
in him when -- perhaps lately from
college,
perhaps fresh from keeping a pack of
hounds
which made him popular in his county,
perhaps
emerging from a provincial town where
he
acquired a fortune, perhaps rising
from the
bar at which he has gained a name as
an advocate
-- he enters Parliament; and forthwith,
in
quite a light-hearted way, begins to
aid
or hinder this or that means of operating
on the body politic. In this case there
is
no occasion even to make for him the
excuse
that he does not know how little he
knows;
for the public at large agrees with
him in
thinking it needless that he should
know
anything more than what the debates
on the
proposed measures tell him. And yet
the mischiefs
wrought by uninstructed law-making,
enormous
in their amount as compared with those
caused
by uninstructed medical treatment,
are conspicuous
to all who do but glance over its history.
The reader must pardon me while I recall
a few familiar instances. Century after
century,
statesmen went on enacting usury laws
which
made worse the condition of the debtor
--
raising the rate of interest "from
five
to six when intending to reduce it
to four,"(5*)
as under Louis XV and indirectly producing
undreamt of evils of many kinds, such
as
preventing the reproductive use of
spare
capital, and "burdening the small
proprietors
with a multitude of perpetual services."(6*)
So, too, the endeavours which in England
continued through five hundred years
to stop
forestalling, and which in France,
as Arthur
Young witnessed, prevented any one
from buying
"more than two bushels of wheat
at market,"(7*)
went on generation after generation
increasing
the miseries and mortality due to dearth;
for, as everybody now knows, the wholesale
dealer, who was in the statute "De
Pistoribus"
vituperated as "an open oppressor
of
poor people,"(8*) is simply one
whose
function it is to equalize the supply
of
a commodity by checking unduly rapid
consumption.
Of kindred nature was the measure which,
in 1315, to diminish the pressure of
famine,
prescribed the prices of foods, but
which
was hastily repealed after it had caused
entire disappearance of various foods
from
the markets; and also such measures,
more
continuously operating, as those which
settled
by magisterial order "the reasonable
gains" of victuallers.(9*) Of
like spirit
and followed by allied mischiefs have
been
the many endeavours to fix wages, which
began
with the Statute of Labourers under
Edward
III, and ceased only sixty years ago;
when,
having long galvanized in Spitalfields
a
decaying industry, and fostered there
a miserable
population, Lords and Commons finally
gave
up fixing silk-weavers' earnings by
the decisions
of magistrates. Here I imagine an impatient
interruption. "We know all that;
the
story is stale. The mischiefs of interfering
with trade have been dinned in our
ears till
we are weary; and no one needs to be
taught
the lesson afresh." My first reply
is
that by the great majority the lesson
was
never properly learnt at all, and that
many
of those who did learn it have forgotten
it. For just the same pleas which of
old
were put in for these dictations, are
again
put in. In the statute 35 of Edward
III,
which aimed to keep down the price
of herrings
(but was soon repealed because it raised
the price), it was complained that
people
"coming to the fair... do bargain
for
herring, and every of them, by malice
and
envy, increase upon other, and, if
one proffer
forty shillings, another will proffer
ten
shillings more, and the third sixty
shillings,
and so every one surmounteth other
in the
bargain."(10*) And now the "higgling
of the market," here condemned
and ascribed
to "malice and envy," is
being
again condemned. The evils of competition
have all along been the stock cry of
the
Socialists; and the council of the
Democratic
Federation denounces the carrying on
of exchange
under "the control of individual
greed
and profit." My second reply is
that
interferences with the law of supply
and
demand, which a generation ago were
admitted
to be habitually mischievous, are now
being
daily made by Acts of Parliament in
new fields;
and that, as I shall presently show,
they
are in these fields increasing the
evils
to be cured and producing fresh ones,
as
of old they did in fields no longer
intruded
upon. Returning from this parenthesis,
I
go on to explain that the above Acts
are
named to remind the reader that uninstructed
legislators have in past times continually
increased human suffering in their
endeavours
to mitigate it; and I have now to add
that
if these evils, shown to be legislatively
intensified or produced, be multiplied
by
ten or more, a conception will be formed
of the aggregate evils caused by law-making
unguided by social science. In a paper
read
to the Statistical Society in May,
1873,
Mr Janson, vice-president of the Law
Society,
stated that from the Statute of Merton
(20
Henry III) to the end of
1872, there had been passed 18,110
public
Acts; of which he estimated that four-fifths
had been wholly or partially repealed.
He
also stated that the number of public
Acts
repealed wholly or in part, or amended,
during
the three years 1870-71-72 had been
3,532, of which 2,759 had been totally
repealed.
To see whether this rate of repeal
has continued,
I have referred to the annually-issued
volumes
of "The Public General Statutes"
for the last three sessions. Saying
nothing
of the numerous amended Acts, the result
is that in the last three sessions
there
have been totally repealed, separately
or
in groups, 650 Acts, belonging to the
present
reign, besides many of preceding reigns.
This, of course, is greatly above the
average
rate; for there has of late been an
active
purgation of the statute-book. But
making
every allowance, we must infer that
within
our own times, repeals have mounted
some
distance into the thousands. Doubtless
a
number of them have been of laws that
were
obsolete; others have been demanded
by changes
of circumstances (though seeing how
many
of them are of quite recent Acts, this
has
not been a large cause); others simply
because
they were inoperative; and others have
been
consequent on the consolidations of
numerous
Acts into single Acts. But unquestionably
in multitudinous cases, repeals came
because
the Acts had proved injurious. We talk
glibly
of such changes -- we think of cancelled
legislation with indifference. We forget
that before laws are abolished they
have
generally been inflicting evils more
or less
serious; some for a few years, some
for tens
of years, some for centuries. Change
your
vague idea of a bad law into a definite
idea
of it as an agency operating on people's
lives, and you see that it means so
much
of pain, so much of illness, so much
of mortality.
A vicious form of legal procedure,
for example,
either enacted or tolerated, entails
on suitors,
costs, or delays, or defeats. What
do these
imply? Loss of money, often ill-spared;
great
and prolonged anxiety; frequently consequent
illness; unhappiness of family and
dependents;
children stinted in food and clothing
--
all of them miseries which bring after
them
multiplied remoter miseries. Add to
which
there are the far more numerous cases
of
those who, lacking the means or the
courage
to enter on law-suits, and therefore
submitting
to frauds, are impoverished; and have
similarly
to bear the pains of body and mind
which
ensue. Even to say that a law has been
simply
a hindrance, is to say that it has
caused
needless loss of time, extra trouble,
and
additional worry; and among over-burdened
people extra trouble and worry imply,
here
and there, break-downs in health with
their
entailed direct and indirect sufferings.
Seeing, then, that bad legislation
means
injury to men's lives, judge what must
be
the total amount of mental distress,
physical
pain, and raised mortality, which these
thousands
of repealed Acts of Parliament represent!
Fully to bring home the truth that
law-making
unguided by adequate knowledge brings
immense
evils, let me take a special case which
a
question of the day recalls.
Already I have hinted that interferences
with the connexion between supply and
demand,
given up in certain fields after immense
mischiefs had been done during many
centuries,
are now taking place in other fields.
This
connexion is supposed to hold only
where
it has been proved to hold by the evils
of
disregarding it: so feeble is men's
belief
in it. There seems no suspicion that
in cases
where it seems to fail, natural causation
has been traversed by artificial hindrances.
And yet in the case to which I now
refer
-- that of the supply of houses for
the poor
-- it needs but to ask what laws have
been
doing for a long time past, to see
that the
terrible evils complained of are mostly
law-made.
A generation ago discussion was taking
place
concerning the inadequacy and badness
of
industrial dwellings, and I had occasion
to deal with the question. Here is
a passage
then written: --
"An architect and surveyor describes
it [the Building Act] as having worked
after
the following manner. In those districts
of London consisting of inferior houses
built
in that unsubstantial fashion which
the New
Building Act was to mend, there obtains
an
average rent, sufficiently remunerative
to
landlords whose houses were run up
economically
before the New Building Act was passed.
This
existing average rent fixes the rent
that
must be charged in these districts
for new
houses of the same accommodation --
that
is the same number of rooms, for the
people
they are built for do not appreciate
the
extra safety of living within walls
strengthened
with hoop-iron bond. Now it turns out
upon
trial, that houses built in accordance
with
the present regulations, and let at
this
established rate, bring in nothing
like a
reasonable return. Builders have consequently
confined themselves to erecting houses
in
better districts (where the possibility
of
a profitable competition with pre-existing
houses shows that those pre-existing
houses
were tolerably substantial), and have
ceased
to erect dwellings for the masses,
except
in the suburbs where no pressing sanitary
evils exist. Meanwhile, in the inferior
districts
above described, has resulted an increase
of overcrowding -- half-a-dozen families
in a house, a score of lodgers to a
room.
Nay, more than this has resulted. That
state
of miserable dilapidation into which
these
abodes of the poor are allowed to fall,
is
due to the absence of competition from
new
houses. Landlords do not find their
tenants
tempted away by the offer of better
accommodation.
Repairs, being unnecessary for securing
the
largest amount of profit, are not made...
In fact for a large percentage of the
very
horrors which our sanitary agitators
are
trying to cure by law, we have to thank
previous
agitators of the same school!"
Social
Statics, p. 384 (edition of 1851)
These were not the only law-made causes
of
such evils. As shown in the following
further
passage, sundry others were recognized:
--
"Writing before the repeal of
the brick-duty,
the Builder says: -- 'It is supposed
that
one-fourth of the cost of a dwelling
which
lets for 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week is caused
by the expense of the title-deeds and
the
tax on wood and bricks used in its
construction.
Of course, the owner of such property
must
be remunerated, and he therefore charges
7 1/2d. or 9d. a week to cover these
burdens.'
Mr C. Gatliff, secretary to the Society
for
Improving the Dwellings of the Working
Classes,
describing the effect of the window-tax,
says: -- 'They are now paying upon
their
institution in St. Pancras the sum
of £162
16s. in window-duties, or 1 per cent.
per
annum upon the original outlay. The
average
rental paid by the Society's tenants
is 5s.
6d. per week, and the window-duty deducts
from this 71/4d. per week.'" Times,
January 31, 1850. Social Statics, p.
385
(edition of 1851).
Neither is this all the evidence which
the
press of those days afforded. There
was published
in the Times of December 7,
1850 (too late to be used in the above-named
work, which I issued in the last week
of
1850), a letter dated from the Reform
Club,
and signed "Architect," which
contained
the following passages:
--
"Lord Kinnaird recommends in your
paper
of yesterday the construction of model
lodging-houses
by throwing two or three houses into
one.
"Allow me to suggest to his Lordship,
and to his friend Lord Ashley to whom
he
refers, that if, --
1. The window-tax were repealed,
2. The building Act repealed (excepting
the
clauses enacting that party and eternal
walls
shall be fireproof),
3. The timber duties either equalized
or
repealed, and,
4. An Act passed to facilitate the
transfer
of property,
"There would be no more necessity
for
model lodging-houses than there is
for model
ships, model cotton-mills, or model
steam-engines.
"The first limits the poor man's
house
to seven windows, "The second
limits
the size of the poor man's house to
25 feet
by 18 (about the size of a gentleman's
dining-room),
into which space the builder has to
cram
a staircase, an entrance-passage, a
parlour,
and a kitchen (walls and partitions
included).
"The third induces the builder
to erect
the poor man's house of timber unfit
for
building purposes, the duty on the
good material
(Baltic) being fifteen times more than
the
duty on the bad or injurious article
(Canadian).
The Government, even, exclude the latter
from all their contractors. "The
fourth
would have considerable influence upon
the
present miserable state of the dwellings
of the poor. Small freeholds might
then be
transferred as easily as leaseholds.
The
effect of building leases has been
a direct
inducement to bad building."
To guard against mis-statement or over-statement,
I have taken the precaution to consult
a
large East-end builder and contractor
of
forty years' experience, Mr C. Forrest,
Museum
Works, 17, Victoria Park Square, Bethnal
Green, who, being churchwarden, member
of
the vestry, and of the board of guardians,
adds extensive knowledge of local public
affairs to his extensive knowledge
of the
building business. Mr Forrest, who
authorizes
me to give his name, verifies the foregoing
statements with the exception of one
which
he strengthens. He says that "Architect"
understates the evil entailed by the
definition
of a "fourth-rate house;"
since
the dimensions are much less than those
he
gives perhaps in conformity with the
provisions
of a more recent Building Act). Mr
Forrest
has done more than this. Besides illustrating
the bad effects of great increase in
ground-rents
(in sixty years from £1 to £8 10s.
for a
fourth-rate house) which, joined with
other
causes, had obliged him to abandon
plans
for industrial dwellings he had intended
to build
-- besides agreeing with "Architect"
that this evil has been greatly increased
by the difficulties of land-transfer
due
to the law-established system of trusts
and
entails; he pointed out that a further
penalty
on the building of small houses is
inflicted
by additions to local burdens ("prohibitory
imposts" he called them): one
of the
instances he named being that to the
cost
of each new house has to be added the
cost
of pavement, roadway and sewerage,
which
is charged according to length of frontage,
and which, consequently, bears a far
larger
ratio to the value of a small house
than
to the value of a large one. From these
law-produced
mischiefs, which were great a generation
ago and have since been increasing,
let us
pass to more recent law-produced mischiefs.
The misery, the disease, the mortality
in
"rookeries," made continually
worse
by artificial impediments to the increase
of fourth-rate houses, and by the necessitated
greater crowding of those which existed,
having become a scandal, Government
was invoked
to remove the evil. It responded by
Artisans'
Dwellings Acts; giving to local authorities
powers to pull down bad houses and
provide
for the building of good ones. What
have
been the results? A summary of the
operations
of the Metropolitan Board of Works,
dated
December
21, 1883, shows that up to last September
it had, at a cost of a million and
a quarter
to ratepayers, unhoused 21,000 persons
and
provided houses for 12,000 -- the remaining
9,000 to be hereafter provided for,
being,
meanwhile, left houseless. This is
not all.
Another local lieutenant of the Government,
the Commission of Sewers for the City,
working
on the same lines, has, under legislative
compulsion, pulled down in Golden Lane
and
Petticoat Square, masses of condemned
small
houses, which, together, accommodated
1,734
poor people; and of the spaces thus
cleared
five years ago, one has, by State-authority,
been sold for a railway station, and
the
other is only now being covered with
industrial
dwellings which will eventually accommodate
one-half of the expelled population:
the
result up to the present time being
that,
added to those displaced by the Metropolitan
Board of Works, these 1,734 displaced
five
years ago, form a total of nearly 11,000
artificially made homeless, who have
had
to find corners for themselves in miserable
places that were already overflowing!
See
then what legislation has done. By
ill-imposed
taxes, raising the prices of bricks
and timber,
it added to the costs of houses; and
prompted,
for economy's sake, the use of bad
materials
in scanty quantities. To check the
consequent
production of wretched dwellings, it
established
regulations which, in medieval fashion,
dictated
the quality of the commodity produced:
there
being no perception that by insisting
on
a higher quality and therefore higher
price,
it would limit the demand and eventually
diminish the supply. By additional
local
burdens, legislation has of late still
further
hindered the building of small houses.
Finally,
having, by successive measures, produced
first bad houses and then a deficiency
of
better ones, it has at length provided
for
the artificially-increased overflow
of poor
people by diminishing the house-capacity
which already could not contain them!
Where
then lies the blame for the miseries
of the
East-end? Against whom should be raised
"the
bitter cry of outcast London?"
The German anthropologist Bastian,
tells
us that a sick native of Guinea who
causes
the fetish to lie by not recovering,
is strangled;(11*)
and we may reasonably suppose that
among
the Guinea people, any one audacious
enough
to call in question the power of the
fetish
would be promptly sacrificed. In days
when
governmental authority was enforced
by strong
measures, there was a kindred danger
in saying
anything disrespectful of the political
fetish.
Nowadays, however, the worst punishment
to
be looked for by one who questions
its omnipotence,
is that he will be reviled as a reactionary
who talks laissez-faire. That any facts
he
may bring forward will appreciably
decrease
the established faith is not to be
expected;
for we are daily shown that this faith
is
proof against all adverse evidence.
Let us
contemplate a small part of that vast
mass
of it which passes unheeded. "A
Government-office
is like an inverted filter: you send
in accounts
clear and they come out muddy."
Such
was the comparison I heard made many
years
ago by the late Sir Charles Fox, who,
in
the conduct of his business, had considerable
experience of public departments. That
his
opinion was not a singular one, though
his
comparison was, all men know. Exposures
by
the press and criticisms in Parliament,
leave
no one in ignorance of the vices of
red-tape
routine. Its delays, perpetually complained
of, and which in the time of Mr Fox
Maule
went to the extent that "the commissions
of officers in the army" were
generally
"about two years in arrear,"
is
afresh illustrated by the issue of
the first
volume of the detailed census of 1881,
more
than two years after the information
was
collected. If we seek explanations
of such
delays, we find one origin to be a
scarcely
credible confusion. In the case of
the census
returns, the Registrar-General tells
us that
"the difficulty consists not merely
in the vast multitude of different
areas
that have to be taken into account,
but still
more in the bewildering complexity
of their
boundaries:" there being 39,000
administrative
areas of twenty-two different kinds
which
overlap one another -- hundreds, parishes,
boroughs, wards, petty sessional divisions,
lieutenancy divisions, urban and rural
sanitary
districts, dioceses, registration districts,
etc. And then, as Mr Rathbone, M. P.,
points
out,(12*) these many superposed sets
of areas
with intersecting boundaries, have
their
respective governing bodies with authorities
running into one another's districts.
Does
any one ask why for each additional
administration
Parliament has established a fresh
set of
divisions? The reply which suggests
itself
is -- To preserve consistency of method.
For this organized confusion corresponds
completely with that organized confusion
which Parliament each year increases
by throwing
on to the heap of its old Acts a hundred
new Acts, the provisions of which traverse
and qualify in all kinds of ways the
provisions
of multitudinous Acts on to which they
are
thrown: the onus of settling what is
the
law being left to private persons,
who lose
their property in getting judges' interpretations.
And again, this system of putting networks
of districts over other networks, with
their
conflicting authorities, is quite consistent
with the method under which the reader
of
the Public Health Act of 1872, who
wishes
to know what are the powers exercised
over
him, is referred to 26 preceding Acts
of
several classes and numerous dates.(13*)
So, too, with administrative inertia.
Continually
there occur cases showing the resistance
of officialism to improvements; as
by the
Admiralty when use of the electric
telegraph
was proposed, and the reply was --
"We
have a very good semaphore system;"
or as by the Post Office, which the
late
Sir Charles Siemens years ago said
had obstructed
the employment of improved methods
of telegraphing,
and which since then has impeded the
use
of the telephone. Other cases akin
to the
case of industrial dwellings, now and
then
show how the State with one hand increases
evils which with the other hand it
tries
to diminish; as when it puts a duty
on fire-insurances
and then makes regulations for the
better
putting out of fires: dictating, too,
certain
modes of construction, which, as Captain
Shaw shows, entail additional dangers.(14*)
Again, the absurdities of official
routine,
rigid where it need not be and lax
where
it should be rigid, occasionally become
glaring
enough to cause scandals; as when a
secret
State-document of importance, put into
the
hands of an ill-paid copying clerk
who was
not even in permanent Government employ,
was made public by him; or as when
the mode
of making the Moorsom fuse, which was
kept
secret even from our highest artillery
officers,
was taught to them by the Russians,
who had
been allowed to learn it; or as when
a diagram
showing the "distances at which
British
and foreign iron-clads could be perforated
by our large guns," communicated
by
an enterprising attache to his own
Government,
then became known "to all the
Governments
of Europe," while English officers
remained
ignorant of the facts.(15*) So, too,
with
State-supervision. Guaranteeing of
quality
by inspection has been shown, in the
hall-marking
of silver, to be superfluous, while
the silver
trade has been decreased by it;(16*)
and
in other cases it has lowered the quality
by establishing a standard which it
is useless
to exceed: instance the case of the
Cork
butter-market, where the higher kinds
are
disadvantaged in not adequately profiting
by their better repute;(17*) or, instance
the case of herring-branding (now optional)
the effect of which is to put the many
inferior
curers who just reach the level of
official
approval, on a par with the few better
ones
who rise above it, and so to discourage
these.
But such lessons pass unlearned. Even
where
the failure of inspection is most glaring,
no notice is taken of it; as instance
the
terrible catastrophe by which a train
full
of people was destroyed along with
the Tay
bridge. Countless denunciations, loud
and
unsparing, were vented against engineer
and
contractor; but little, if anything,
was
said about the Government officer from
whom
the bridge received State-approval.
So, too,
with prevention of disease. It matters
not
that under the management or dictation
of
State-agents some of the worst evils
occur;
as when the lives of 87 wives and children
of soldiers are sacrificed in the ship
Accrington,(18*)
or as when typhoid fever and diphtheria
are
diffused by a State-ordered drainage
system,
as in Edinburgh;(19*) or as when officially-enforced
sanitary appliances, ever getting out
of
order, increase the evils they were
to decrease.(20*)
Masses of such evidence leave unabated
the
confidence with which sanitary inspection
is invoked -- invoked, indeed, more
than
ever; as is shown in the recent suggestion
that all public schools should be under
the
supervision of health-officers. Nay,
even
when the State has manifestly caused
the
mischief complained of, faith in its
beneficent
agency is not at all diminished; as
we see
in the fact that, having a generation
ago
authorized, or rather required, towns
to
establish drainage systems which delivered
sewage into the rivers, and having
thus polluted
the sources of water-supply, an outcry
was
raised against the water-companies
for the
impurities of their water -- an outcry
which
continued after these towns had been
compelled,
at vast extra cost, to revolutionize
their
drainage systems. And now, as the only
remedy,
there follows the demand that the State,
by its local proxies, shall undertake
the
whole business. The State's misdoings
become,
as in the case of industrial dwellings,
reasons
for praying it to do more. This worship
of
the legislature is, in one respect,
indeed,
less excusable than the fetish-worship
to
which I have tacitly compared it. The
savage
has the defence that his fetish is
silent
-- does not confess its inability.
But the
civilized man persists in ascribing
to this
idol made with his own hands, powers
which
in one way or other it confesses it
has not
got. I do not mean merely that the
debates
daily tell us of legislative measures
which
have done evil instead of good; nor
do I
mean merely that the thousands of Acts
of
Parliament which repeal preceding Acts,
are
so many tacit admissions of failure.
Neither
do I refer only to such quasi-governmental
confessions as that contained in the
report
of the Poor Law Commissioners, who
said that
-- "We find, on the one hand,
that there
is scarcely one statute connected with
the
administration of public relief which
has
produced the effect designed by the
legislature,
and that the majority of them have
created
new evils, and aggravated those which
they
were intended to prevent."(21*)
I refer
rather to confessions made by statesmen,
and by State-departments. Here, for
example,
in a memorial addressed to Mr Gladstone,
and adopted by a highly influential
meeting
held under the chairmanship of the
late Lord
Lyttelton, I read: --
"We, the undersigned, Peers, Members
of the House of Commons, Ratepayers,
and
Inhabitants of the Metropolis, feeling
strongly
the truth and force of your statement
made
in the House of Commons, in 1866, that,
'there
is still a lamentable and deplorable
state
of our whole arrangements, with regard
to
public works -- vacillation, uncertainty,
costliness, extravagance, meanness,
and all
the conflicting vices that could be
enumerated,
are united in our present system,'"
etc., etc.(22*)
Here, again, is an example furnished
by a
recent minute of the Board of Trade
(November,
1883), in which it is said that since
"the
Shipwreck Committee of 1836 scarcely
a session
has passed without some Act being passed
or some step being taken by the legislature
or the Government with this object"
[prevention of ship-wrecks]; and that
"the
multiplicity of statutes, which were
all
consolidated into one Act in 1854,
has again
become a scandal and a reproach:"
each
measure being passed because previous
ones
had failed. And then comes presently
the
confession that "the loss of life
and
of ships has been greater since 1876
than
it ever was before." Meanwhile,
the
cost of administration has been raised
from
£17,000 a year to £73,000 a year.(23*)
It
is surprising how, spite of better
knowledge,
the imagination is excited by artificial
appliances used in particular ways.
We see
it all through human history, from
the war-paint
with which the savage frightens his
adversary,
down through religious ceremonies and
regal
processions, to the robes of a Speaker
and
the wand of an officially dressed usher.
I remember a child who, able to look
with
tolerable composure on a horrible cadaverous
mask while it was held in the hand,
ran away
shrieking when his father put it on.
A kindred
change of feeling comes over constituencies
when, from boroughs and counties, their
members
pass to the Legislative Chamber. While
before
them as candidates, they are, by one
or other
party, jeered at, lampooned, "heckled,"
and in all ways treated with utter
disrespect.
But as soon as they assemble at Westminster,
those against whom taunts and invectives,
charges of incompetence and folly,
had been
showered from press and platform, excite
unlimited faith. Judging from the prayers
made to them, there is nothing which
their
wisdom and their power cannot compass.
|
Evans Experientialism 
