PRACTICAL POLITICS

OR

THE LIBERALISM OF TO-DAY

PRACTICAL POLITICS
or theLiberalism of To-day
BY ALFRED F. ROBBINS

AUTHOR OF

“Five Years of Tory Rule;” “William Edward Forster, the Man and
his Policy;” “The Marquis of Salisbury, a Personal and
Political Sketch,” &c.

REPRINTED FROM THE “HALFPENNY WEEKLY”

London
T. FISHER UNWIN
26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1888

TO
My Father,
WHOSE DEVOTION TO LIBERAL PRINCIPLES
HAS FOR SIXTY YEARS
NEVER WAVERED,
THIS WORK,
THE OUTCOME OF HIS EXCELLENT TEACHING AND
CONSISTENT EXAMPLE,
IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

PREFACE.

The Articles here republished are from the columns of the Halfpenny Weekly, to the Proprietors of which the Author is indebted for much courtesy and consideration. They were written originally in the form of letters to a friend, but, though they stand substantially as first printed, various alterations have been made consequent upon the necessities of a permanent rather than a serial form. The Author does not profess to have exhaustively discussed every political question which is of practical importance to-day—for that, within the limits assigned, would have been impossible; but he has attempted to furnish a body of information regarding the principles and aims of present-day Liberalism, not easily accessible elsewhere, which may be useful to those whose ideas upon public affairs are yet unformed, and helpful to the political cause he holds dear.

May, 1888.

CONTENTS

PRACTICAL POLITICS.

I.—WHAT IS THE USE OF A VOTE?

There are many persons, who, though possessing the suffrage, often put the question, “What is the use of a vote?” Giving small heed to political affairs, the issue of elections has as little interest for them as the debates in Parliament; and they imagine that the process of governing the country is mainly a self-acting one, upon which their individual effort could have the least possible effect.

This idea is wrong at the root, and the cause of much mischief in politics. We are governed by majorities, and every vote counts. Even the heaviest polls are sometimes decided by a majority of a single figure. In the history of English elections, many instances could be found wherein a member was returned by the narrowest majority of all—the majority of one; and when a member so elected has been taunted with its slenderness, he has had a right to reply, as some have replied, in well-known words: “’Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve.” And not only in the constituencies, but in Parliament itself, decisions have been arrived at by a solitary vote. The great principle animating the first Reform Bill was thus adopted by the House of Commons; and the measure shortly afterwards was taken to the country with the advantage thus given it. As, therefore, everything of importance in England is decided first in the constituencies, and then in Parliament, by single votes, it is obvious that in each possessor of the franchise is vested a power which, however apparently small when compared with the enormous number of similar possessors elsewhere, may have a direct bearing in turning an election, the result of which may affect the fate of some important bill.

So far most will doubtless agree without demur; but, in their indifference to political questions, may think that it is only those interested in them who have any real concern with elections. This is another mistake, for political questions are so intimately bound up with the comfort, the fortune, and even the fate of every citizen of a free country, that, although he may shut his eyes to them, they press upon him at every turn. It would be a very good world if each could do as he liked and none be the worse; but the world is not so constituted, and it is politics that lessen the consequent friction. For the whole system of government is covered by the term; and there is not an hour of the day in which one is free from the influence of government.

It is not necessary for one to be conscious of this in order to be certain that it is so. When he is in perfect health he is not conscious that every part of his body is in active exercise, but, if he stumble over a chair, he is made painfully aware of the possession of shins. And so with the actions of government. As long as things work smoothly the majority of people give them little heed, but, if an additional tax be levied, they are immediately interested in politics. And although taxes are not the least unpleasant evidence that there is such a thing as a government, it is far from the most unpleasant that could be afforded. The issues of peace and war lie in the hands of Parliament, although nominally resting with the Executive, for Parliament can speedily end a war by stopping the supplies; and it is not necessary to show how the progress and result of an armed struggle might affect each one of us. The State has a right to call upon every citizen for help in time of need, and that time of need might come very quickly at the heels of a disastrous campaign. It is easy enough in times of peace to imagine that such a call upon every grown man will never be made; but it is a possible call, and one to be taken into account when the value of a vote is considered.

Those who are sent to Parliament have thus the power of embarking in enterprises which may diminish one’s revenue by increased taxation and imperil his life by enforced service. And in matters of less importance, but of considerable effect upon both pocket and comfort, they wield extensive powers. They can extend or they can lessen our liberties; they can interfere largely with our social concerns; their powers are nowhere strictly defined, and are so wide as to be almost illimitable. And for the manner in which they exercise those powers, each man who possesses a vote is in his degree responsible.

There are persons who affect, from the height of a serene indifference, to look down upon all political struggles as the mere diversions of a lower mental order. That kind of being, or any approach to its attitude of mind, should be avoided by all who wish well to the government of the country. To sit on the fence, and rail at the ploughman, because his boots are muddy and his hands unwashed, is at once useless and impertinent; and to stand outside the political field, and endeavour to hinder those who are doing their best within, deserves the same epithets. When it is said that hypocrites, and humbugs, and self-seekers abound in politics, and that there is no place there for honest men, does not the indictment appear too sweeping? Has not the same argument been used against religion; and is it not one of the poorest in the whole armoury of controversy? If there are hypocrites, and humbugs, and self-seekers in politics—and no candid person would deny it, any more than that there are such in religion, in business, in science, and in art—is it not the more necessary that every honest man should try and root them out? If every honest man abstained from politics, with what right could he complain that all politicians were rogues? But no sober person believes that all politicians are rogues, and those superior beings who talk as if they are deserve condemnation for doing nothing to purify the political atmosphere.

Some who would not go so far as those who are thus condemned, still labour under the idea that politics are more or less a game, to the issue of which they can afford to be indifferent. This, it may be feared, is the notion of many, and it is one to be earnestly combatted. Every man owes the duty to the State to assist, as far as he can, those whom he considers the best and wisest of its would-be governors. There is nobility in the idea that every elector can do something for the national welfare by thoughtfully and straightforwardly exercising the franchise, and aiding the cause he deems best. Young men especially should entertain this feeling, for youth is the time for burning thoughts, and it is not until a man is old that he can afford to smoulder. The future is in the hands of the young of to-day; and if these are indifferent to the great issues of State, and are prepared to let things drift, a rude awakening awaits them.

The details of political work need not here be entered upon. All that is now wanted is to show that that work is of very real importance to every one; and that, unless taken in hand by the honest and capable, it will fall to the dishonest and incapable for accomplishment. And as the vote is a right to which every free Englishman is entitled, and a trust each possessor of which should be called upon to exercise, there ought not to remain men on the registers who persistently decline to use it. Absentee landlords have been the curse of Ireland, and they will have to be got rid of. Abstentionist voters might, in easily conceivable circumstances, be the curse of England, and they would have to be got rid of likewise.

The value of a vote may be judged from the fact that it saves the country from a periodical necessity for revolution. Everything in our Constitution that wants altering can be altered at the ballot-box; and whereas the vote-less man has no direct influence upon those affairs of State which affect him as they affect every other citizen, the possessor of the franchise can make his power directly felt. We are within sight of manhood, it may be of adult, suffrage; and if the vote were of no value it would be folly—almost criminal folly—to extend its use. Those who deem it folly are of a practically extinct school in English politics. For better or worse, the few are now governed by the many, and the many will never again be governed by the few.

Those who are of the many may be tempted to urge that that very fact lessens the worth of the vote in that every elector has the same value at the polling booth, and that, however intelligent may be the interest he takes in politics, his ignorant neighbour’s vote counts the same as his own. But that is to forget what every one who mixes with his fellow-men must soon learn—that the intelligent have a weight of legitimate influence upon their less-informed fellows which is exceedingly great. Our vote counts for no more than that of the man who has sold his suffrage for beer; but our influence may have brought twenty waverers to the poll, while that of our beer-drinking acquaintance has brought none.

A cynic has observed that “politics are a salad, in which office is the oil, opposition the vinegar, and the people the thing to be devoured.” But to approach public affairs from that point, and to judge them solely on that principle, is as reasonable as to use green spectacles and complain of the colour of the sky. Politics should be looked at without prejudice, but with the recollection that in them are concerned many of our best and wisest men. If that be done, and the mind kept open for the reception of facts, there is little doubt of the admission that there is a deep reality in politics, and a reality in which every one is concerned.

II.—IS THERE ANYTHING PRACTICAL IN POLITICS?

All will possibly admit that, in conceivable circumstances, a vote may be useful, but many will not be prepared to allow that politics are an important factor in our daily life. War, they would urge, is a remote contingency, and a conscription is, of all unlikely things, the most unlikely; our liberties have been won, and there is no chance of a despot sitting on the throne; and, even if taxes are high, what can any one member of Parliament, much less any one elector, do to bring them down? From which questions, and from the answers they think must be made to them, they would draw the conclusion that, whatever might have been the case formerly, there is nothing practical in the politics of to-day.

It would not be hard to show that a conscription is by no means an impossibility; that our liberties demand constant vigilance; and that individual effort may greatly affect taxation. But even if the answer desired were given to each question, the points raised, except the last, are admittedly remote from daily life; and, if politics are to be considered practical, they must concern affairs nearer to us. This they do; and if they affected only the greater issues of State, they would not be practical in the sense they now are. It is the small troubles, whether public or private, which worry us most. The dust in one’s eye may be only a speck, but, measured by misery, it is colossal.

The law touches us upon every side, and the law is the outcome of politics in having been enacted by Parliament. From the smallest things to the greatest, the Legislature interferes. A man cannot go into a public-house after a certain hour because of one Act of Parliament; he cannot deal with a bank upon specified days because of another. One Act of Parliament orders him, if a householder, to clean his pavement; another prohibits him from building a house above a given height in streets of a certain width. And while the law takes care of one’s neighbour by affixing a well-known penalty to murder, it is so regardful of oneself that it absolutely prohibits suicide. We are surrounded, in fact, by a network of regulations provided by Parliament. We are no sooner born than the law insists upon our being registered; we cannot marry without the interference of the same august power; and when we die, those who are left behind must comply with the formalities the law demands.

It may be answered that this does not sound like politics; that there is nothing of Liberal or Tory in all this; but there is. Liberals, for instance, have been mainly identified with the demand for the better regulation of public-houses; it is to the Liberals that we owe a long-called-for reform in the burial laws; and it is due to the Liberals that a change in the marriage regulations, particularly affecting Nonconformists, is on the eve of being adopted. Social questions are not necessarily divorced from party concerns, and the moment Parliament touches them they become political. If one looks down a list of the measures presented to the House of Commons he will see that from the purity of beer to the protection of trade-marks, from the enactment of a close-time for hares to the provision of harbours of refuge, from a declaration of the size of saleable crabs to the disestablishment of a Church—every subject which concerns a man’s external affairs, political, social, or religious, is dealt with by Parliament.

Even if only those political matters are regarded which have a distinctly partisan aspect, there is more that is practical in them than would at first be perceived. “What,” it may be asked, “is local option, or county councils, or ‘three acres and a cow’ to me? I have no particular liking for drink; I have not the least ambition to become a combination of guardian and town councillor; and I am in no way interested in agricultural concerns. When you require me to take an active part in promoting the measures here indicated, how, I want to know, am I concerned in any one of them?”

The answer is that any and all of them should concern the questioner a great deal. He imagines he is not directly interested because of the reasons put forward. Is he certain those reasons cover the whole case? He has “no particular liking for drink,” and, therefore, would not trouble himself to obtain local option. But has he not been a sufficiently frequent witness of the crime and misery caused by drink to be persuaded that it is the duty of every good citizen to do all that in him lies to lessen the evil effects? And as such good results have flowed from the stricter regulation of the sale of intoxicating liquors, ought it not to be his endeavour to place a further power of regulation in the hands of those most interested—the people themselves?

Establishing county councils may not touch the individual citizen so nearly, though it is in that direction that a solution of the local option problem is being attempted to be found; and the supposed questioner has “not the least ambition to become a combination of guardian and town councillor.” Perhaps not; other people have, and it is a legitimate ambition that does them honour. The work performed by town councillors, and guardians, and members of school boards is excellent service, not only to the locality but the State. The freedom which England enjoys to-day is largely owing to the habits of self-government fostered by local institutions, the origin of which is as old as our civilization, and the roots of which have sunk deeply into the soil. And seeing how our towns have thriven since their government was taken from a privileged few and given to the whole body of their inhabitants, is there not fair reason to hope that the county districts will similarly be benefitted by institutions equally representative and equally free? And, as the improvement of a part has good effect upon the whole, even those who may never have a direct connection with the suggested county councils, will profit by their establishment.

With equal certainty it may be asserted that the condition of the labourer is of practical importance to every citizen. “I am in no way interested in agricultural concerns,” it is said; and if by that is simply meant that the objector does not work upon a farm, has no direct dealings with agricultural produce, and no money invested in land, he, of course, would be right. But even these conditions do not exhaust the possibilities of connection with agriculture, which is the greatest single commercial interest this country possesses; and, so inter-dependent are the various interests, if the largest of all is not in a satisfactory state the others are bound to suffer. It is those others in which most of us may be specially concerned, but we are generally concerned in agriculture; and as the latter cannot be at its best as long as the labourers are in their present condition, is it not obvious that all are interested in every honest endeavour to get that condition improved? This is not the moment to argue the details of any plan; but the principle is plain—the condition of the agricultural labourer has passed into the region of practical politics.

There is a school among us, and perhaps a growing one, which, affecting to despise such matters as these, wishes to make the State a huge wage-settling and food-providing machine. If one talks to its members of public affairs, they reply that the only practical politics is to give bread-and-cheese to the working classes. But fact is wanted instead of theory, demonstration rather than declamation, and, in place of a platitude, a plan. For it is easy to talk of a State, in which there shall be no misery, no poverty, and no crime; but the practical politician will want to know how this is to be secured; and while waiting for a plain answer, will decline to be drawn from the questions of the immediate present.

No one need sigh for other political worlds to conquer while even such problems as have just been noted ask for settlement; and there are further departments of public affairs which demand attention, and which are pressing to the front. Most would admit that a vote may be useful sometimes. I say it is useful always. All would own that the greater matters of law and liberty may fairly be called practical politics. I add that the lesser matters with which Parliament has to deal, and which affect us daily, are equally worthy the name. Let one look around and say if “everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” If he cannot, he ought to strive for the reform of that which is not for the best. And as long as he has to strive for that reform, so long will there be something practical in politics.

III.—WHY NOT LET THINGS ALONE?

“Why can’t you let things alone?” is a question which has often been put by those who either care little for politics or who wish to stave off reform. It was the favourite exclamation of a Whig Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, and it is still used by many worthy persons as if it were really applicable to matters of government. “Things”—that is public affairs—can no more be let alone than one can let himself alone, or his machinery alone, or his business alone. The secret of perpetual motion has not been discovered in the State any more than in science. If one is a workman and leaves things alone, he will be dismissed; if a tradesman or manufacturer, he will become bankrupt; if a property-owner, ruin will equally follow. A man would not leave his face alone because it had been washed yesterday; he would not argue that as a face it was a very good face, and that one thorough cleansing should last it a lifetime. And the Constitution needs as careful looking after as one’s business or his body.

A sound Radical of a couple of centuries ago—and though the name Radical had not then been invented, the man Radical was frequently to the fore—put this point in plain words. “All governments and societies of men,” said Andrew Marvell, “do, in process of time, gather an irregularity and wear away. And, therefore, the true wisdom of all ages hath been to review at fit periods those errors, defects, or excesses that have crept into the public administration; to brush the dust off the wheels and oil them again, or, if it be found necessary, to choose a set of new ones.” And if Marvell be objected to as an authority, one can be given which should satisfy even the staunchest Conservative. “There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised or so sure established which in the continuance of time hath not been corrupted.” That expression of opinion is not taken from any Whig, Liberal, or Radical source, but from the preface to the Book of Common Prayer.

There is an older authority still, and that is the proverb which says “A stitch in time saves nine.” One can scarcely read a page of English constitutional history without seeing the advances made in the comfort, prosperity, and liberty of the people by timely reform; and no man would seriously urge our going back to the old standpoints. Yet every reform, though we may now all agree that it was for the greatest good of the greatest number, was opposed by hosts of people, who talked about “the wisdom of our ancestors,” and asked, “Why can’t you let things alone?” It may be said that the grievances under which men labour to-day are nothing like as great as those against which our fathers fought. Happily—and thanks to the enthusiasts of old—that is so; but if they are grievances, whether small or large, they ought to be removed. There are some who think that a man with a grievance is a man to be pitied—and put on one side. But, even if those so afflicted are apt to prove bores, such complaints as are well founded should be attended to.

It is a fact beyond question that there is no finality in politics, and, to take two examples from the present century—the Reform Act of 1832, which was thought by its authors to be a “final” measure, and at the Act of Union with Ireland, which the first Salisbury Administration described in their Queen’s Speech as “a fundamental law”—it will be seen that the dream of finality in each case has been and is being roughly dispelled. What man has done, man can do—and can undo.

The instances mentioned deserve a closer examination, because they so perfectly show the impossibility of standing still in political affairs. If ever there was a measure which statesmen of both parties held to be final, the Reform Act was that one. During the discussions upon it, the word “finality” was more than once used; Sir Robert Peel two years later declared that he considered it “a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question;” and in 1837, as in 1832, its author, Lord John Russell, spoke of it as “a final measure.” Final it was in the sense that England would never go back to the days of borough-mongering, but there the finality ended. As early as the year after it passed, a Liberal member declared in his place in the House that “he for one had never conceded the monstrous principle that any legislative measure was to be final; still less had he ever conceded the yet more monstrous principle that the members of that House were entitled by any sort of compromise to barter away the rights and privileges of the people.” The views thus plainly laid down have been put in practice by men of both parties; the ten-pound franchise of 1832 gave place in 1867 to household suffrage for the boroughs, and this in 1884 was extended to the counties. So much for the “finality” of the one great Act of this century to which the word has been applied.

The so-called “fundamental law” of the Union with Ireland is threatened with alteration and amendment in the same fashion as the “final” Reform Act. Already, by the disestablishment of the Irish Church, a large hole has been made in it; and a larger will be made when Home Rule is gained. There is in England no law of so “fundamental” a nature that it cannot be mended or ended just as the people wish. No generation has power to bind its successors; and if the Parliament of 1800 was able to make the Legislative Union, the Parliament of to-day is able to unmake it. Upon this point—and it affects not only the general question now being argued, but a particular question yet to be discussed—one of the most distinguished “Liberal Unionists” may be quoted. Mr. Bright, speaking at Liverpool in the summer of 1868, observed—“I have never said that Irishmen are not at liberty to ask for and, if they could accomplish it, to obtain the repeal of the Union. I say that we have no right whatever to insist upon a union between Ireland and Great Britain upon our terms only.... I am one of those who admit—as every sensible man must admit—that an Act which the Parliament of the United Kingdom has passed, the Parliament of the United Kingdom can repeal. And further, I am willing to admit what everybody in England allows with regard to every foreign country, that any nation, believing it to be its interest, has a right both to ask for and to strive for national independence.” If, then, even a “fundamental law” can be got rid of, if occasion demands and the people wish, what hope can the most lukewarm have that things will be let alone?

Politics, in fact, may fairly be called a sort of see-saw: we are constantly going up and down, and can never be still. As long as a public grievance remains unremedied, so long will there be a call for reform; and one may be sure that, though he may come to a ripe old age, he will not live enough years to see every wrong made right. Some may hide behind the question put and answered eighteen centuries ago; may ask, as was then asked, “Who is my neighbour?” and may seek to avoid doing as they would be done by. But, as citizens of a free State, they have no right to shirk their duty to those around them. No man who looks at society with open eyes can doubt that much can be done by the Legislature to better the conditions of daily life. We do wrong if we allow others to suffer when efforts of ours can remove at least some of their pain.

Therefore, things cannot be let alone in politics any more than in daily life; and even if they could, it would not be right to let them. It does not need that one should give all his leisure moments to politics, and all the energies he can spare from business to public life. But it does need that he should pay some heed to that which concerns his fellow-man and the society in which he lives; and all should be politicians in their degree, not for love of place, or power, or excitement, but because politics really mean much to the happiness and welfare of the State.

IV.—OUGHT ONE TO BE A PARTISAN?

When we come from “first principles” to the more immediate topics of the day, party considerations at once enter in; and to the question, “Ought one to be a partisan?” I answer “Certainly.” On the political barometer a man ought distinctly to indicate the side he takes—not stand in the middle and point to “change.”

There is a great deal talked of the beauty of non-partisanship, of the necessity for looking at public matters in a clear white light, and of the exceeding glory of those who put country before party. Such of this as is not commonplace is cant, and in politics Johnson’s advice to “clear your mind of cant” is especially to be taken. When a public man talks of putting his country before his party, he surely implies that he has been in the habit of putting his party before his country, and that man’s record should be carefully scanned. For it will very often be found that those who boast of placing country before party place themselves before either.

“Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular in which they are all agreed.” That is Burke’s definition, and it holds good to-day. Superfine folk speak as if there were something derogatory in the fact of belonging to a party, some lessening of liberty of judgment, some forfeiting of conscience. That need not be. There must be give-and-take among members of the same party, just as there must be among those of the same household, of the same religious connection, and often of the same business concern. The necessity to bear and to forbear is as obvious in politics as in other matters of daily life, which is only saying in a different fashion that in politics, as in everything, a man’s angles have to be rubbed off if he is to work in company with anybody else. But he gives up a portion of his opinions only to retain or strengthen those he considers essential. A Churchman is still a Churchman whether he is labelled High, Low, or Broad; he may believe with Canon Knox-Little, with Bishop Ryle, or with Archdeacon Farrar, and continue a member of the Established Church; and it is only when conscience compels him to differ from them all upon some essential point of doctrine or practice that he becomes a Protestant Dissenter, a Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, or, it may be, an Atheist.

As with religion, so with politics. A Conservative is still a Conservative, whether he be called a Constitutionalist, a Tory Democrat, a Tory, or, as Mr. William Henry Smith was accustomed to describe himself, an Independent-Liberal-Conservative. He may be of the school of the late Mr. Newdegate, of Lord Salisbury, or of Lord Randolph Churchill, and the party bond is elastic enough to embrace him. And when it is remembered that the name “Liberal” covers all sorts and conditions of friends of progress, from Lord Hartington to Mr. Labouchere, it will be seen that a man must be querulous indeed who cannot find rest for the sole of his foot in one or other of the great parties of the State.

No doubt it is easy to quote opinions from some eminent persons in condemnation of the party system. There is a saying of Dr. Arnold that a Liberal is “one who gets up every morning in the full belief that everything is an open question;” and with this may be coupled a chance expression of Carlyle, that “an English Whig politician means generally a man of altogether mechanical intellect, looking to Elegance, Excitement, and a certain refined Utility as the Highest; a man halting between two Opinions, and calling it Tolerance;” while there may be added the quotation, better known than either, “Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for Antiquity, it offers no redress for the Present, and makes no preparation for the Future.” It was the author of these last words who uttered also the caustic remark, “It seems to me a barren thing, this Conservatism, an unhappy cross-breed; the mule of politics, that engenders nothing.” And that author was Benjamin Disraeli, afterwards Earl of Beaconsfield.

Of course, this merely shows that hard things have been and can be said of all parties, but if they have been as bad as thus represented, is it not strange that England has done so well under their rule? It may be replied that, whatever has been the case, the fact now is that the old parties are dead, and the idea may be echoed of those who wish to keep the Tories in power, that only “Unionists” and “Separatists” are left; but, setting aside the circumstance that the Liberals emphatically disclaim the latter title, the facts are against the original assumption.

The history of our Constitution will show that parties bring the best men to the front, groups the worst—the most pushing, pertinacious, and impudent of those among them. And when men talk, as some are talking to-day, of new combinations—combinations of persons rather than of principles—to take the place of the old parties, they should be watched carefully to see whether they do not degenerate, as other men in similar circumstances have done, into mere hungry scramblers for place.

Much of the flabby feeling which pervades some minds in antagonism to partisanship has been nourished by the cry of “measures, not men.” “To attack vices in the abstract, without touching persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with shadows.” These words of Pope were taken by Junius to enforce his opinion that “‘measures and not men’ is the common cant of affected moderation—a base counterfeit language, fabricated by knaves and made current among fools.” “What does it avail,” he asked, “to expose the absurd contrivance or pernicious tendency of measures if the man who advises or executes shall be suffered not only to escape with impunity, but even to preserve his power?” If this opinion be put aside as being only that of a clever but venomous pamphleteer, an equally strong condemnation of the old cuckoo-cry can be quoted from the greatest philosopher who ever practically dealt with English politics. “It is an advantage,” said Burke, “to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals, that their maxims have a plausible air, and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin, and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are at least as useful to the worst men as the best. Of this stamp is the cant of ‘not men, but measures’; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.” And, if we go to the gaiety of Goldsmith from the gravity of Burke, it is significant that the author of “The Good-Natured Man” puts in the mouth of a bragging political liar and cheat the expression, “Measures, not men, have always been my mark.”

But, it is sometimes said, the very fact of not being a partisan argues freedom from prejudice. Does it not equally argue freedom from principle? If a man holds a principle strongly, he can hardly avoid being what the unthinking call prejudiced. It is surely better to be fast anchored to a principle, even at the risk of being called prejudiced, than to be swayed hither and thither by every passing breeze, like the “independent” politician—defined by the late Lord Derby as “a politician not to be depended upon”—with the liability of being wrecked by some more than usually stirring gust.

We have only to look at the political history of the past half-century to find that it is the “prejudiced” men who have done good work, and the “independent” politicians who have made shipwreck of their public lives. The former held their principles firmly; they lost no opportunity of pushing them to the front; and success attended their efforts. As for the politicians who were too proud, or too unstable, or too quarrelsome to work in harness with their fellows, the shores of our public life have been strewn with their wrecks. The glorious opportunities for good that were missed by Lord Brougham, the wasted career of the once popular Roebuck are matters of history. And in our own day we can point to Earl Grey and Mr. Cowen—and the narrow escape from a similar fate of Mr. Goschen—as striking instances of the fact that no good thing in politics can be done by men who cannot or will not join with a great party to secure the ends for which they strive. The independent politician, in fact, must of necessity appear an incomplete sort of man—always leading up to something and never getting it; everlastingly striking the quarters, but never quite reaching the finished hour.

It is not only, however, the crotchety man, or the quarrelsome man, or the tactless man, who, because he cannot work with anybody else, poses as “independent.” There are also “men of no decided character, without judgment to choose, and without courage to profess any principle whatever—such men can serve no cause for this plain reason, they have no cause at heart.” Burke here clearly describes a large section of “armchair politicians,” who turn many an election without a distinct idea of what will be the ultimate result of their action. They are of the kind even more forcibly characterized by Dryden a century before—

Damn’d neuters, in their middle way of steering,

Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring;

Nor Whigs, nor Tories they; nor this, nor that;

Nor birds, nor beasts; but just a kind of bat;

A twilight animal; true to neither cause,

With Tory wings, but Whiggish teeth and claws.

Trimmers of this type live and flourish to-day as they lived and flourished in the age of Dryden and of Burke, and the airs they give themselves of superiority over the ordinary run of politicians deserve all the ridicule men of more practical tendencies can pour upon them. One would fancy that it must sometimes occur even to them that, as in warfare the efforts of two opposing mobs, led by generals who perpetually differed among themselves, would cause more rapine and confusion, and ensure an even less satisfactory result, than those of two armies captained by men accustomed to discipline, and striking blows only where blows could be effective; so in the constant movement of public affairs a multitude of wrangling counsellors would bring ruin upon the State, where a struggle between two opposing parties, representing distinct principles, would clear a path in which it could safely tread.

No one, therefore, should be frightened out of taking part in politics by the idea that there is anything wrong in being a partisan. A working man joins a trade union, in order that by strengthening his fellows he may strengthen himself; a religious man becomes a member of a Christian church, so as to assist in spreading the truth he cherishes; and any one who dearly holds a political principle ought to attach himself to a party, that he may secure for that principle the success which, if it is worth believing in, is worth striving for.

V.—WHY NOT HAVE A “NATIONAL” PARTY?

It is sometimes asked, even by those who would agree generally that partisanship is not unworthy, whether all the old distinctions of Liberal and Conservative, Tory and Radical, are not out of date, and whether it is not possible to form a “National” party. The idea of such a formation has been “in the air” for a long time, and has been put forward with more frequency since the breach in the Liberal ranks upon the Irish question. But although politicians as eminent as Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Randolph Churchill have given countenance to the idea, it has as yet resulted in nothing of practical value.

Mr. Chamberlain has argued that “our old party names have lost their force and meaning,” but, even if they had, the suggested appellation must be held to be a misnomer. It is a contradiction in terms. If the whole nation be agreed upon a certain course, it is not a national “party” which advocates it; if it be not agreed, no section, no half-plus-one, has the right to arrogate to itself the adjective. The last time any faction did so was at the general election of 1880, when the supporters of Lord Beaconsfield attempted to claim the title even when they were being swept out of their seats wholesale by the flowing tide of national indignation. All honest politicians work for what they consider the benefit of the nation, and no portion of them has a title to assume that it alone is righteous.

The inappropriateness of the name, moreover, is not only general but particular. The proposed combination, according to the statesman already quoted, is to “exclude only the extreme sections of the party of reaction on the one hand, and the party of anarchy on the other.” But who is to define how far a reactionary may go without being considered “extreme,” and who in the English Parliament is “an anarchist”?

Further, a “national party” must be presumed to represent the nation—that is the whole of the United Kingdom. But the projected body, if it opposed Home Rule, would ignore the wishes of 85 out of the 101 popularly elected representatives of Ireland; 44 out of the 70 popularly elected representatives of Scotland; and 26 out of the 30 popularly elected representatives of Wales; as well as the whole body of the Gladstonian Liberals in England. At the last general election, 1,423,765 persons in this kingdom cast their votes on the “Unionist,” and 1,341,131 on the Liberal side; and the latter number could scarcely be ignored when a “national” party is being formed.

In accordance with the words of the immortal Mr. Taper—“A sound Conservative Government, I understand; Tory men and Whig measures”—the Tories have promised to bring in Liberal Bills; but the process will be regarded by many with the same feelings as those of Mr. Disraeli when he charged Sir Robert Peel with the petty larceny of Whig ideas, as did Lord Cranborne (now Lord Salisbury) when he denounced Mr. Disraeli’s political legerdemain in perpetrating a similar offence, and as did another prominent politician when he said, “The consistency of our public life, the honour of political controversy, the patriotism of statesmen, which should be set above all party considerations—these are things which have been profaned, desecrated, and trampled in the mire by this crowd of hungry office-seekers who are now doing Radical work in the uniform of Tory Ministers.... I will say frankly that I do not like to win with such instruments as these. A democratic revolution is not to be accomplished by aristocratic perverts; and I believe that what the people desire will be best carried into effect by those who can do so conscientiously and honestly, and not by those who yield their assent from purely personal or party motives.” These words were spoken in 1885; and the speaker was Mr. Chamberlain.

The new party to exist must have organization, and as by its very constitution all Liberal and Radical associations would have to be excluded, the Primrose League alone would be ready to hand. But he who pays the piper calls the tune, and what that tune would be can easily be guessed. Liberals and Radicals would necessarily be kept out of the combination, for men who consider themselves entitled to twenty shillings in the pound, and who might be content to accept ten as an instalment, would not take ten as payment in full of some of their bills, and a “first and final dividend” of nothing on others they hold of value. And the Radicals and other Gladstonian Liberals being left out, the remaining party must be overwhelmingly Conservative, and the fighting opinion of a party is that of its majority.

It is thus not an enticing prospect for any thoroughgoing lover of progress. What hope is there of a sound reform of the House of Lords from a party closely wedded to the aristocracy? Of disestablishment in Scotland and Wales, to say nothing of England, from a party relying for much of its power upon the clergy? Of a drastic change in the land or the game laws from a party propped up by landlords and game preservers? Of an improved magistracy from a party deriving great influence from the country squires? Of a popular veto upon licensing from a party to which belong nine-tenths of the publicans? Of a progressive income tax or the more equitable arrangement of the death duties from a party which has become increasingly attractive to the large capitalists? Of, in fact, any great reform whatsoever from a party which places “vested interests” in the forefront to the frequent exclusion of justice?

A party formed in the fashion thus projected would be simply a house of cards, carefully built, as such houses usually are, by those who have nothing better to do—pretty to look at, but turned over by the first breeze. Lobby combinations such as this are hothouse plants; brought into the open they die. In Carlyle’s “French Revolution,” much ridicule is poured upon the wondrous paper constitutions of the Abbé Siéyes, which somehow would not “march.” Within the last few years the Duc de Broglie was famous throughout Europe for the clockwork arrangements he made for France, and the constant failure that awaited them. The “national party” recalls the works of both duke and abbé, and, like them, would resemble nothing so much as a flying machine, constructed upon the most approved principles by really skilled workmen, and scientifically certain to succeed, but having, when tested, only one defect—it will not fly.

VI.—IS ONE PARTY BETTER THAN THE OTHER?

It is perfectly natural to be asked, after trying to prove that partisanship is praiseworthy, and that a “national” party is out of the question, whether one party is so much better than the other that it deserves strenuous and continued support. For the purposes of the argument, it is necessary to consider only the two great parties in the State—the Liberal and the Tory. These represent the main tendencies which actuate mankind in public affairs—the go-ahead and the stand-still. Differences in the expression of these tendencies there are bound to be, according as circumstances vary; but, generally speaking, the Tory is the party of those who, being satisfied with things as they are, are content to stand still, while the Liberal is the party of those who, thinking there is ample room for improvement, desire to go ahead.

The recent history of our country is all in favour of the Liberal contention. If two men ride on a horse one must ride behind, and if two parties take opposite views of the same measure one must be wrong. The best testimony to the fact that, as a whole, the Liberal policy pursued by this country for more than half a century has been right, is, therefore, that even when the Tories have been in the majority they have not attempted to reverse it. Every great question that has been agitated for by the Liberals as a body, except Home Rule, which has yet to be settled, has been settled in the way they wished; and has more than once been carried to the last point of success by the Tories themselves. Not even the staunchest Conservative would urge a return to the system of rotten boroughs, would repeal the Education Act, re-establish the Irish Church, or renew open voting; and the Tories who would re-enact the Corn Laws continue few.

Lord Salisbury has contended that, even if the Liberals have always been right and the Tories wrong, it should make no difference to the present-day voter; and, speaking at Reading in the autumn of 1883, he asked—“Would any of you go to an apothecary’s shop because the previous tenant was a very good man at curing rheumatism? You would say, ‘It matters little to me whether the former tenant was a skilful man or not; all that concerns me is the skill of the present tenant of the establishment.’” But supposing, to carry on Lord Salisbury’s illustration, this new tenant could say, “I have in my possession a recipe of my predecessor which proved itself an infallible cure for rheumatism; I prepare it in the same fashion; it will have the same result.” Would one not reply, “I will rather trust the recipe which has always done good, even though in the course of nature it has changed owners, than put myself in the hands of the opposition chemist, who, though exceedingly old and eminently respectable, never effects a cure, but whenever he is called in leaves the patient worse than he finds him?”

And when Lord Salisbury strove to make his point more clear, he did not mend matters much. “It is only the existing party, whether Liberal or Conservative,” he said, “that really concerns you; success, wisdom, and justice do not stick to organizations or buildings—they are the attributes of men. It is by their present acts and their present principles that the two parties must be judged.” Even if this be allowed—and, carried to its logical extent, it would justify every piece of “political legerdemain” (the phrase applied by Lord Salisbury himself to Mr. Disraeli’s Reform Bill) the Tory party has ever perpetrated, or may ever attempt—Liberals need not shrink from the test. For the Tories, as they have ever done, are now shrinkingly and fearsomely following in the paths the Liberals years ago laid down, with just sufficient deviation to prove that the old Adam of reaction is not dead. Whether it be free trade, or parliamentary reform, or the closure, they initiate nothing; but when the Liberals have cleared the way, they are eager to adopt all that they have previously denounced, and to claim as their own principles they have throughout professed to abhor. Seeing that the Liberals borrow nothing from the Tories, while the Tories borrow a very great deal from the Liberals, we can judge the two parties, as Lord Salisbury wished, by their present acts and their present principles, and show that the Liberal is the more worthy of popular support.

It is, of course, not to be wondered at that such a desire to ignore the past should be expressed by a politician who, from his maiden speech to his most recent efforts, has denounced Liberal ideas; who, at various stages of his parliamentary career, has opposed the spread of popular education, the extension of the suffrage, the creation of the ballot, the emancipation of the Jews, the extinction of Church rates, the full admission of Dissenters to the Universities, the abolition of purchase in the army, the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, the throwing open of the Civil Service to the people, the right of Nonconformists to be buried in their parish churchyard, the remission of long-standing and obviously unpayable Irish arrears, and the destruction of the property qualification for members of Parliament; whose sympathy for his fellows may be gathered from his insinuated comparison of the Irish to Hottentots, and his declaration that it is “just” that the children of those who have contracted marriage with their deceased wife’s sister should be bastardized; whose taste for diplomacy was shown by his direction to a Viceroy to “create” a pretext for forcing a quarrel upon Afghanistan; whose regard for the strictness of truth was displayed in his denial of the authenticity of a well-remembered secret memorandum; whose love for liberty was evidenced by the lukewarmness with which he watched the struggles for freedom in Italy and Bulgaria, and the hearty and continuous support he gave to the slave-holding faction in America; and whose affection for the people may be judged from the fact that, throughout his political life, his name has never been identified with a single piece of constructive legislation for their welfare. “By their fruits shall ye know them” is applicable to politics, therefore; as Lord Salisbury, by so strenuously endeavouring to ignore the maxim, practically admits; and at the risk of putting aside the canon of criticism adopted by the noble marquis, let me show some of the fruits of modern Liberal policy.

I rise in the morning and go to my breakfast; my tea, my coffee, my sugar, and my ham are all of easy price because of the reductions in import duties made by Liberal Governments. I take up my newspaper, and I have it so cheaply because Mr. Gladstone, despite the utmost efforts of the Conservatives, secured the repeal of the paper duty. I go to business, and, as I write my letter or my postcard, I cannot but reflect that a Liberal Ministry in 1840 allowed me to send the one for a penny, and a Liberal Ministry in 1870 to send the other for half that sum. I proceed to dinner, and find that bread, cheese, and much of my dessert are the more available because of Liberal remissions. And as in the evening I visit the theatre, the very opera glasses I hold in my hand are the cheaper because, in one of his Budgets, Mr. Gladstone included these among the hundreds of other articles from which he removed a small but galling tax.

These are some, and only some, of the material benefits resulting from the Liberal policy. What of the political, what of the social, what of the moral benefits? If I am an Englishman, I am proud of the fact that no longer is the national flag allowed to float over a slave; if I am a Scotchman, I rejoice that my country has been freed from the extraordinary system of mis-representation which weighed upon it like a nightmare before 1832; if I am an Irishman, I am not forced at the point of the bayonet to pay tithes to an alien Church, to liquidate arrears for rack-rents owing from the time of the famine, or to give an exorbitant rent for the result of my own improvements; if I am a Churchman, my Church has been strengthened by the repeal of enactments which provoked opposition, while providing no good for the Establishment they professed to serve; if I am a Nonconformist, I am no longer liable to have my goods seized in support of a Church in which I do not believe, I have the right to be married in my own place of worship, and to be buried by my own minister by the side of my fathers; if I am a Catholic, I have been liberated from certain restrictions upon my religion, which I resented as an insult and a wrong; if I am a Jew, I can sit with the peers, in the Commons, or on the judicial bench; if I belong to the army, and am an officer, my rise is made easy—if I am a private, my rise is made possible, by the abolition of purchase; if I am either soldier or sailor, I owe it mainly to Liberal exertions that discipline is no longer maintained by the lash; if I am a merchant seaman, my life is the better protected because of the efforts of a Liberal member of Parliament; if I am in the Civil Service, I have the greater chance of success because of the destruction of that system of nomination, which, however advantageous to the aristocracy, was fatal to modest merit; if I am a student, I can go to a University with the certainty that not now shall I be deprived of the reward of my exertions because my conscience prevents me from subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles; if I am a tradesman, my goods are freed from many a customs duty which formerly restricted their sale; if I am a farmer, I can vote without fear of my landlord, my lands have been to some extent saved from the depredations of hares and rabbits, and my tenure has been rendered more certain than ever before; if I am an artisan, the fruits of combination have been secured to me, my employer has been made liable for accidents arising from either his carelessness or his greed, my vote has been obtained, and by the ballot has been protected; if I am the child of the poorest, a school has been opened for me where a sound education can be procured at a small cost; in fact, in whatever station I may chance to be placed, I cannot but feel in my every-day life the beneficent influences of the policy advocated by leaders of advanced thought, and adopted by Liberal Ministries during the past fifty years.

If, then, I am asked to justify the Liberal party by showing what it has done, I answer that, by timely reform, it has saved England from the continental curse of frequent revolution; that, in striving for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, it has in especial elevated and educated the masses, for whom it has provided cheap food for both body and mind; and that it has struggled, and in the main successfully struggled, to secure civil and religious equality for all. And in the future as in the past, with perfect liberty as its fixed ideal, and with peace, retrenchment, and reform as the methods by which it wishes that ideal to be obtained, it will press onward and upward, and ever onward and upward, until England, now regarded as the mother of free nations, shall be but one of a gigantic brotherhood of freedom, embracing every civilized people that may then inhabit the globe.

VII.—WHAT ARE LIBERAL PRINCIPLES?

After this recital of Liberal deeds, it may fairly be asked, “What are Liberal principles?” and these it is not easy to define off-hand. There are certain general truths which are the commonplaces of both parties, and no serious attempt has yet been made to lay down a system of principles with which none except Liberals can agree. But there are differences that underlie the action of the two parties which are unmistakable, and are worth finding out.

If one were to ask the first half-dozen Liberals he met for a definition of their principles, varying and perhaps vague replies would be received. For in politics, as in other matters that combine speculation with practical action, it is only the few who speculate, while the many are content to act. And even most of those who tried to answer would be apt to reply that Liberal principles could be summed up in the old party watch-word—“Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform,” thus confounding Liberal principles with Liberal aims.

That these aims are well worth striving for has long been an accepted doctrine of the party; but, in trying to gain them, we have to adapt them to circumstances, and are not called upon in every single emergency to push them to their logical extent. Logic, after all, is only a pair of spectacles, not eyesight itself; and attempts to arrange human affairs upon too precise a basis frequently end, as France so often has shown, in failure. We long for peace, but not for peace at any price; we ask for retrenchment, but not an indiscriminate paring down of expenditure for the sake of showing a saving; and we struggle for reform, but not to cut all the branches off the trees on the chance of improving their appearance.

Before, in fact, we have been able to struggle at all for these or any other points in politics, certain principles have had to be acted upon by generations of progressive thinkers, which have developed and strengthened our liberties. It is, perhaps, presumptuous to attempt to lay down in a few words a basis of Liberal principle, but I would submit that that basis may be found in the contention that

All men should be equal before the law;

that, as a consequence,

All should have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of action;

and that, in order to secure and retain these liberties,

The people should govern themselves.

With regard to the first point, I do not contend that all men are, or ever can be, equal. Differences of mental and physical strength, of energy and temperament, and of will to work, there must always be; and in the struggle for existence, which is likely to grow even keener as the world becomes more filled, the fittest must continue to come to the top, as they have done and deserve to do. A law-made equality would not last a week, but much law-made inequality has lasted for centuries, and it is against this that Liberals as Liberals must protest. We object to all law-made privilege, and we ask that men gifted with equal capacities shall have equal chances. We do not claim any new privilege for the poor, but we demand the abolition of the old privileges, express and un-express, of the rich. Something was done in the latter direction when the system of nomination in most departments of the civil service and that of purchase in the army were got rid of. But as long as in the higher departments of public affairs a man has a place in the legislature merely because he is the son of his father; as long as in the humbler branches no one unpossessed of a property qualification can sit on certain local boards; and as long as in daily life the facilities for frequent appeal, devised by lawyers within the House for the benefit of lawyers without, provide a power for wealth that is often used to defeat the ends of justice, so long, to take these alone out of many instances, shall we lack that equality of opportunity which we demand not as a favour but a right.

But if every man is to be equal before the law, he must have the right to think as his reason directs; to discuss as freely as he thinks; and to act as he pleases, so long as his neighbour is not injured in the honest discharge of his duties, or the common weal put in jeopardy. “Give me,” said Milton, “the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue according to conscience, above all liberties”—for it is certain that with freedom of thought and discussion all other liberties will follow. John Mill carried this principle to the fullest extent when he argued that “if all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” To all such sweeping generalizations there are, however, possible exceptions. No man would be much inclined to blame Cromwell for suppressing the pamphlet “Killing no Murder,” which directly advocated his own assassination; even the strongest lover of free discussion would not be prepared to allow the systematic circulation of exhortations to blow up our public buildings, and directions as to the best way of doing it; and instances may conceivably arise—and an invasion one of them—where absolute freedom of publication and debate would form a national danger. Our liberties, therefore, would be sufficiently protected if we recognized the right of every man to speak and to act as he pleases, “so long as his neighbour is not injured in the honest discharge of his duties, or the common weal put in jeopardy.”

In order, however, that men may be able to think, speak, and do as they deem right, it is necessary that the people shall rule, and that the majority, when it has made up its mind, shall have the power to carry out its decree. Even the Tories of these days will not dispute this principle, and, therefore, Liberals cannot claim it as at this moment their own; and yet, broadly speaking, the root idea of the Tory party is the aristocratic theory that the few ought to govern the many, while that of the Liberal party is the democratic, that the many ought to govern the few.

In the days before the mass of the people were a real power in the affairs of the State, this difference was very clearly marked, for the Tories then were under no necessity to conceal their belief that the “common herd” were not to be trusted in political concerns. And it is useful, as showing what the high Tory doctrine on this point really was, to recall the fact that a judge on the bench, less than a century ago, in summing up at a political trial, laid it down as a doctrine not to be questioned that “a government in every country should be just like a corporation; and in this country it is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented. As for rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation of them? What security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkle of an eye; but landed property cannot be removed.” And another judge at a political trial within the present century went even further in denying to the people not merely the right of interference with public affairs, but even of comment upon them. “It is said,” he observed, “that we have a right to discuss the acts of our legislature. This would be a large permission indeed. Is there to be a power in the people to counteract the acts of the Parliament; and is the libeller to come and make the people dissatisfied with the Government under which he lives? This is not to be permitted to any man,—it is unconstitutional and seditious.” We have outgrown such doctrines as these; and, thanks to the efforts of generations of Liberals who have passed to their rest, the right of the “rabble who have nothing but personal property”—or, for the matter of that, no property at all—to take part in settling the affairs of the State, whether by criticism or active interference, is solidly established.

It may be argued that as the Tories of to-day have accepted democracy, the Liberals have no right to claim the principles here laid down as if they were without exception their own. But this Tory acceptance of democratic ideas is only partial, and a party which mainly depends upon the aristocracy for support can never adopt them with consistency and enthusiasm. The very existence of an hereditary legislature violates the principle that all men should be equal before the law; the theory upon which a State-established Church rests is equally a violation of the right of every one to think, speak, and act as he chooses; and the continuous efforts of the Tories to limit the franchise, and to erect barriers against the majority having their will, are utterly opposed to the view that the people should govern, and harmonize with the old idea that the people should be governed.

It must not be imagined that these differences between the parties mean nothing, or that we are beyond all danger of losing the advance we have made. The ease with which we might slip back into despotism is shown by the manner in which the Tories resort to coercion—or, as they prefer to term it, “exceptional legislation”—when a majority of the Irish people has to be cowed. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the abolition of trial by jury, the extinction of liberty of the press, and the denial of the right of public meeting have been frequently enacted against the majority of the people of Ireland, because their views on the political situation have not accorded with those of the majority of the people of England. And though they have all failed, and repeatedly failed, a variation of the same old plan is put in operation to-day as if it were a newly-discovered and infallible remedy for every popular ill.

Easy-going folk are apt to reply that, as these things concern only Ireland, it is of no special moment to ourselves, and that England is safe from any revival of a despotic system. Even if this were true it would be false morality, and false morality makes bad politics. But it is not true. Despotism is a disease which spreads, and any development of it applied to one part of the body politic might, in conceivable circumstances, be used as a precedent to apply it to the whole. And if it be said that in these happy days the men of England have the undisputed right to think as they like and talk as they will, it can be answered that not one of the shackles upon freedom of thought and freedom of action has been voluntarily struck off by the Tories, and that it is only lately that they prevented a member of Parliament for years from taking the seat to which he had been four times elected, because he avowed what he believed upon theological questions.

The difference between the two parties, even in the present general acceptance of a democratic system, may be put in words once used by Mr. Chamberlain—“It is the essential condition, the cardinal principle of Liberalism, that we should recognize rights, and not merely confer favours.” With us, the suffrage is the right of every free citizen; with the Tories, it is a favour conferred upon the working by the moneyed classes. We demand religious equality; the Tories are willing to give toleration. But favours we do not ask, and toleration we will not have.

Liberals, in fact, are prepared substantially to subscribe to the principles laid down more than a century since in the American Declaration of Independence—a document which sounded the knell of despotism on its own side of the Atlantic, and awoke echoes which shook down another despotism on ours. “We hold,” said that document, “these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

These, broadly speaking, are Liberal principles; and when one has absorbed them thoroughly, there comes to him that Liberal sentiment, that enthusiasm for his fellows, which feels a blow struck at any man’s freedom, in any part of the whole world, as keenly as if it were struck at his own.

VIII.—ARE LIBERALS AND RADICALS AGREED?

It may be thought that by dealing only with “the fundamental principles of the Liberal party,” the Radicals were put aside as if they had no separate existence; and to a large extent this is true, for Radicals are simply advanced Liberals. The principles just asserted are common to all members of the progressive party. There are differences as to the time at which certain measures directly flowing from them shall become a portion of the party’s platform; and that is all.

A great deal of the prejudice which used to exist against those called “Radicals” has died away, but traces of it linger still; and it will be well to see what Radicalism, as a phase of Liberalism, really is. It may sound strange to be told that the Whigs were the Radicals of an earlier day, and that they sometimes carried their Radicalism to the point of revolution. In these times it is becoming increasingly doubtful whether those who call themselves by what was once the honourable title of “Whig” have any claim to be considered members of the Liberal party; and there are many who consider that they are now more truly conservative than the Conservatives themselves. The Whigs tell us that they are only acting as the drag on the wheel; but this implies that we are always going down hill. That we do not believe. We hold that we are progressing; and a drag which would act upon the coach as it climbs the hill is a product neither of prudence nor common sense.

The bulk of the party of progress in these days may be said to combine Liberal traditions with Radical instincts. The two can mingle with the utmost ease, and, though they may run side by side for some time before they join, the steady stream of the one and the rapid rush of the other always unite at last in one broad river of liberalizing sentiment, which fertilizes as it flows.

From the time when Bolingbroke wrote of some measure that “such a remedy might have wrought a radical cure of the evil that threatens our constitution” to the date, a century later, when those who wished to introduce a “radical reform” into our representative system were called by the name, there were many Whigs who talked Radicalism without being aware of it; but when the title had been given to a section of the Liberal party, it became for a long period a term of reproach. Mr. Gladstone, once speaking at Birmingham, quoted a definition of the early Radicals which described them as men “whose temper had been soured against the laws and institutions of their country;” and he admitted that there was much justification for their having been so. But one can quite understand that men of a soured temper were not likely to be popular with the placid politician who stayed at home, or the place-hunter who went to the House of Commons; and the bad meaning, once attached to the name, remained affixed to it for a very long time.

Mr. Gladstone, in the speech referred to, was the first great English statesman to try and remove the reproach; and this he did by defining a Radical as “a man who is in earnest.” This was flattering, but as a definition lacked precision, for Tories are often in desperate earnest. Many Radicals would assert that the very name—coming, as it of course does, from the Latin word for “root”—tells everything; that it signifies that they go to the root of all matters with which they deal, and that, where reform is needed, it is a root and branch reform they advocate.

To this it may be replied that to go to the root of everything is not always practicable and is not necessarily judicious. If a tree be thoroughly rotten, if it be liable to be shaken to the ground by the first blast, and thereby to injure all its surroundings, it should certainly be cut down, and as soon as it conveniently can be. But if the tree has only two or three rotten branches, there is no necessity to go to its root. If one does, it will very probably kill a good tree which, with only the decayed portions removed, might bear valuable fruit. As with trees, so with institutions; and what seems to be forgotten by many who call themselves Radical is that, in a highly-complex civilization such as ours, we have to bear with some things that are far from ideal, simply because of that force of do-nothingness which, powerful in mechanics, is as great in political life.

A friend who has long worked in the Liberal cause once observed: “The misfortune is that it is difficult to tell what a man’s ideas of public policy are from the mere fact of his calling himself a Radical. If by Radical is meant Advanced Liberal—a Liberal determined to push forward with all practicable speed, a Liberal who is in earnest—then I can understand it, and I will readily take the name. But if by Radical is meant a somewhat hysterical creature, who is ready to fight for every fad that tickles his fancy, as he seems to be in some cases, or a cantankerous being whose crotchets compel him to sever himself from all other workers, as he is in others; if he is of the extreme Spencerian school, and demurs to most legislation on the ground that it is over-legislation, or of the extreme Socialist school, and demands that Government shall do everything, and individual effort be practically strangled by force of law, I am not a Radical, and hope never to be called one.”

But the practical Radicalism which is one of the greatest factors in Liberal policy at the present day, is far removed from the schools just depicted. The reasonable Radical is not a believer in any of the schemes—as old as the hills and yet unblushingly preached to-day—which, by some legislative hocus-pocus, some supreme stroke of statecraft, will “put a pot on every fire and a fowl in every pot;” will endow each widow and give a portion to all unmarried girls; will feed the poor without burdening the community; and will make all the crooked paths straight without undue trouble to ourselves. He holds that

Diseases desperate grown

By desperate remedies are removed,

Or not at all;

but he does not consider all diseases to be of the character described; he does not refuse the half-loaf because for the moment the whole one is impossible of attainment; and he does not repudiate other honest workers in the cause of progress because their pace is not quite so swift, and their point of view somewhat different.

In the constant striving after a high ideal, there is in the Radical’s heart a resolute desire to emerge from any rut into which politics may have degenerated. For the very reason of his existence is that, if there be an abuse in Church or State which agitation and argument can remove, all honest endeavours must be made to remove it. He cannot forget that many abuses have been got rid of by these means, and he profits by the lesson to attack those which remain. It is their extinction at which he aims. Earnestness, enthusiasm, and devotion to principle are his weapons, and these he will not waste in fruitless longings after a perfect State, but will use them to make the State we possess as perfect as is possible. In all things he will aim at the practical; he will remember that compromise is not necessarily cowardly, and that it is possible for those who disagree with him to be as honest in their views and as pure in their aims as himself. And in striving for the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he will never forget that the greatest number is all.

The answer may be made that this is an ideal Radical, and that the real article is very different. So many have been taught to think, but they are wrong. There are some rough diamonds in the Radical party, it is true; but, so long as they be diamonds, we can afford to wait a little for the polish. They are bigoted it may be said, and bigotry is hateful. But bigots are just as useful to a reform as backwoodsmen to a new community; they clear away obstacles from which gentler men would shrink; rough and occasionally awkward to deal with, they make the pathways along which others can move.

But, it is sometimes asked, where are the old philosophical Radicals—men of the stamp of Bentham, and Grote, and James Mill? Dead, all of them, having done their life’s work faithfully and well; and their successors have to look at politics from the standpoint of to-day, and not of half a century ago. And when the Tories say that these were especially admirable men, it must not be forgotten that their ideas were as strongly opposed and their persons as bitterly assailed by the Tories of their own day as are the ideas and the persons of the unphilosophical Radicals—if they are to be called so—of this present year of grace.

The Radicals of to-day have their faults, and there shall be no attempt to conceal them. Many who call themselves by the name discredit it by impatience of opposition, readiness to attribute interested motives to those differing from them, and intolerance towards those who exercise in another direction what they emphatically claim for themselves—absolute freedom of thought, speech, and action. Some among them also are prone to be led aside by a catching phrase, without troubling to ask what it really means; and, in order to strengthen their forces, allow themselves to be connected with any movement that may for the moment be popular. And even more, but these of a much higher stamp, are carried away by the dangerous delusion that in any political system can be found perfect happiness.

No honest Radical will deny the existence of these faults or be offended that they should be pointed out. But the essential purity of aim and depth of honest fervour possessed by the Radicals of this country deserves all recognition. At heavy sacrifice to themselves they have led the van in every great political movement, and their instinct has been proved to be right. They have held aloft the lamp of liberty in times of depression when Liberals of feebler soul would have hidden it beneath a bushel in the hope of brighter days. And, even were their failings more far-reaching than any that can be urged against them, their services as pioneers of freedom would entitle them to the heartiest thanks of all who have entered into their heritage because of the efforts the Radicals have made.

Radicals and Liberals, then, are agreed as to principle though they differ in methods, for the Liberal is a very good lantern, but a lantern which requires lighting; and it is the Radical who strikes the match.

IX.—WHAT ARE THE LIBERALS DOING?

There has now been told a great deal about the principles which the Liberals entertain, and a list has been given of the many glorious things the Liberals have done; but the question of greatest immediate interest is what the Liberals are doing, for we cannot live upon the exploits of the past, but upon the performances of the present and the promises of the future.

Although the Liberals at this moment are concentrating their main attention upon the question of self-government for Ireland, there are other important matters affecting the remainder of the United Kingdom which occupy a place in their thoughts, and which will form their future party “cry.”

It has, of course, often been remarked that men when in Opposition call out for a great deal which they fail to accomplish when in office; but discredit does not of necessity ensue. It certainly shows that in certain instances men do not come up to their ideal, but does that prove the ideal to be wrong? Does it not rather prove that those who adopted it, like mortal men everywhere and in all ages, were fallible? Despite every drawback and every backsliding—and such drawbacks and backslidings are admittedly many—it is better to have a high ideal and fail frequently to attain it, than to have no definiteness of purpose and take the chance of blundering into the right.

None should think lightly of the power of a popular cry. It was with the shout of the leading tenet of their new creed that the Arabs fought their way from Mecca to Madrid; it was with the exclamation “Jerusalem is lost!” that the Crusaders marched across Europe to battle with the Saracen; it was with the device “For God and the Protestant Religion” that William of Orange swept the Stuarts out of Britain; and it was with the burning words of the “Marseillaise” that the raw levies of France defied and defeated the trained armies of Europe. For the popular cry voices the popular emotion, and when the popular emotion is at its height its force is irresistible.

To touch the heart of the people must, therefore, be one aim of any democratic party; and that is why the politician who makes no allowance for human passion, prejudice, or prepossession is a mere dreamer, who deserves and is bound to fail. The fashion of the German philosopher who, on being asked to describe a camel, evolved the animal from his inner consciousness, is that in which some of our political guides create their ideas of the world around them. They sit in the same armchair as of old, and do not perceive how the conditions have changed. They continue to imagine that the clique of some club-house controls public events, and that the whisper of the party whip is all-powerful with the constituencies. They do not recognize that voters are not now an appanage of the Reform or the Carlton, because the groove they have hollowed out for themselves is too deep to allow them to look over the edge. But in nothing more than in politics is it true that the proper study of mankind is man.

And, if one moves among the masses of his fellows, he will find a growing desire to put to practical use the tools the State has given them. Household suffrage and the ballot were not an end but a means, and the question which politicians should ask themselves in this day of comparative quiet is to what end these means shall be put. Those who talk with working men know that there is a vague discontent with things as they are, which, if not directed into proper channels, may become dangerous, for in many quarters the old ignorant impatience of taxation is giving place to an ignorant impatience of the rich. No good will come of shutting our eyes to the existence of this feeling; the question is how in the fairest and fittest manner it can be eradicated.

It must not be forgotten that the working classes have only recently obtained direct political power, and that there is still much uncertainty among them as to the best uses to which it can be put. There would be nothing immoral in their using that power to better their own interests. Men, after all, are but mortal; and, just as the upper classes before 1832 used the power of Parliament to further their own ends, and just as later the middle classes, when they were uppermost, attended carefully to themselves, so the working classes will do when they recognize their strength. And this is only saying that men being as they are, “Number One” will be the most prominent figure in their political calculations, whether that number represents a peer of the realm or a labourer on the roads.

This is not the place to enter into the question of how far the State ought to interfere with social problems. The fact to be emphasized is that there is an increasing body of opinion, especially among the working classes, that certain social problems will have to be attended to. Any politician who attempts to forecast the future—more especially any Liberal who wishes to draw up a party programme—must recognize this, and act according to his convictions after fully considering it.

The politics of the future will, therefore, have a distinctly social tinge, but they must include also many questions which are regarded to-day, and will continue to be regarded, as of a partisan character. It is requisite, then, to the right understanding of Liberal policy that a broad view should be taken of the matters which are likely within no distant date to become planks of the party platform. Calm discussion now may save misapprehension then, and if we can see exactly whither we are going, we shall be able with the more certainty to pursue our journey. And if, in the course of the discussion, what at the first blush appears an extreme view is taken, remember always the old truth that half a loaf is better than no bread—that is, if the half-loaf be good bread and honestly earned, and not to be accepted as an equivalent for the whole, if that be wished for and attainable.

Subject to this condition, the Liberal party can do no better than consider what is likely to come within the scope of its future exertions; and although it is right to take up one thing at a time in order that that one thing may be done well, good will be effected by at once endeavouring to answer the main questions now before us. Upon the spirit in which these are discussed, and the manner in which they are replied to, much of the future of popular government in England will depend. The scientific naturalist of to-day tells us that it is an idle fable which states that the ostrich hides its head in the sand with the idea of escaping observation; but really so many of our leading politicians execute a variation of this man[oe]uvre in regard to the questions of the future, that the ostrich need not be ashamed to be stupid in such eminent company.

A preliminary to the discussion in detail of questions which go to the root of many of the most important matters in politics is a resolution not to be led aside from any course one may think right by the fear of being called hard names, or by the use of certain venerable but weather-worn phrases. It is so easy to endeavour to damage political opponents by applying to them such names as Separatists or Socialists, Atheists or Revolutionaries, that one cannot wonder that the practice is frequently adopted by the Tory party. But hard words break no bones, and the politician who is frightened by a nickname may be a very estimable person, but he is no good in a fight.

Similarly we can afford to despise certain of the phrases which with some politicians do duty for argument. No one should be turned back from doing what he thought to be right in the circumstances of to-day by being reminded of that mysterious entity “the wisdom of our ancestors.” What sane man would conduct a shop as it was conducted 500 years since? And where would science be if we still swore by the skill of the alchemists? Accumulated experience in the varied transactions of life is held to improve man’s judgment and capacity; why should it not be similarly held to improve the judgment and capacity of States? Let any one who sighs after the wisdom of our ancestors apply in imagination the political maxims in vogue even a hundred years ago to the affairs of this present, and then let him say honestly whether he would wish by them to be governed.

Another fine-crusted example of a worn-out phrase is that in praise of “the good old times.” We are invited to believe that in some unnamed age, England was better and brighter, and her people happier and richer, than to-day, and mainly because rulers were obeyed in all things and no questions asked. But particulars are lacking; and these sketches of the glories of “the good old times” are like nothing so much as Chinese pictures, displaying an abundance of colour but no perspective, an amazing imagination but an absence of exact likeness to anything ever seen by mortal man.

“Dangerous innovations” also is a phrase at which no one should be alarmed. No great good has ever been accomplished without many excellent persons considering it a “dangerous innovation.” The Scribes and the Pharisees, and, after them, the Roman Empire, denounced and persecuted the Christian religion upon this ground; the most powerful Church in Christendom, with similar belief and similar lack of success, used every engine at its command to suppress the Reformation. As in religious so in political affairs. King John would doubtless have described Magna Charta in just such terms; the partisans of Charles the First certainly held that opinion concerning the demand of Parliament to control the Church, the army, and the monarchy itself; the opponents of every measure of reform—political, social, or religious—have used the phrase. From the greatest to the smallest reform it has been the same. In the early years of this century a Parochial Schools Bill, because it did not give all power to the clergy, was opposed by the then Archbishop of Canterbury with the words, “Their lordships’ prudence would, and must, guard against innovations that might shake the foundations of religion.” When, in later times, gas was introduced, the aristocratic dwellers in western London protested with equal force against such an innovation as the new illuminant; and Lord Beaconsfield, in the opening chapters of the last of his novels, sketched with ironic pen the attempts of high-born ladies to prevent the spread of light. Thus, in things sublime and in things ridiculous, the cry of “dangerous innovation” has been raised until it has been rendered contemptible.

Equally futile is the fear that the Liberals are about to propose “the impossible.” There is nothing in politics to which that word can be applied, as even the most cursory study of our history will show. When men say that certain measures can “never” be carried, they are more likely to be wrong than right. In 1687 it would have been deemed impossible to place the Crown upon a strictly parliamentary basis; in 1689 this was accomplished. In 1830 the most sanguine reformer scarcely dared hope that borough-mongering would in his lifetime be destroyed, and the first popularly elected Parliament was chosen in 1832. In 1865, none could have dreamed that household suffrage in the boroughs was near; in 1867 it was adopted by a Tory Government. In 1867 he would have been a hardy prophet who would have foretold the speedy downfall of the Irish Episcopal Establishment; and the Act of Disestablishment was placed upon the statute book in 1869. Such instances should of a surety teach men to be modest in their forecasts of what is possible in politics.

In, therefore, pursuing our search into the why and the wherefore of the politics of the future, we must put aside phrases and come to facts. The phrases will die, but the facts will remain; and the more closely we grasp these latter the more certain will those Liberal principles which have done so much for the past, do even more for the future.

And, when we come to the facts, we must not forget that a political question is not necessarily unpractical because it cannot be immediately dealt with; for good is accomplished by the calm discussion of points which are bound some time to be raised, and which, if undebated now, may be settled in a gust of popular passion. As Mr. John Morley has well observed—“The fact that leading statesmen are of necessity so absorbed in the tasks of the hour furnishes all the better reason why as many other people as possible should busy themselves in helping to prepare opinion for the practical application of unfamiliar but weighty and promising suggestions, by constant and ready discussion of them upon their merits.”

X.—SHOULD HOME RULE BE GRANTED TO IRELAND?

The question of Irish self-government is for the present the greatest that concerns the Liberal party, and in current politics, as Mr. Gladstone has truly and tersely put it, Ireland blocks the way. This, of course, is not so simply because Mr. Gladstone said it, and even less is it so because he wished it. The question stands in the path of all other great measures of legislative reform, for the sufficient reason that, at the first opportunity after the franchise was enjoyed by every householder, Ireland declared emphatically, and by a majority unparalleled in modern political history, in favour of freedom to manage her own domestic affairs.

It must be obvious that, when all the popularly-elected members for three out of four provinces into which one of the countries which form this kingdom is divided, pronounce against the existing system of government, and when a majority of those for the other province side with them, that that system cannot continue to exist with the good will of those whom it most intimately affects, and can only be maintained by force. Such as have followed Mr. Gladstone in this matter do not believe in the maintenance of a government against the constitutionally declared will of the governed, and are agreed that the Irish demand for the management of purely domestic affairs ought to be granted on the grounds of justice, expediency, and sound Liberal principles.

They hold that to grant the demand would be just, because under the present system the vast majority of Irishmen have no practical control over those by whom they are governed; that it would be expedient, because the kingdom is weakened by the continual disaffection of one of its component parts; and that it would accord with sound Liberal principles, in that the overwhelming majority of the Irish electorate have asked for Home Rule through the constitutional medium of the ballot-box.

“The liberty of a people,” says Cowley, “consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatever form it be of government.” This definition, which applies strictly to England, applies not at all to Ireland. The English system of government has broken down there so completely that all parties profess to be agreed that something must be devised in its place. Liberals have always held that a people or a class knows better what is good for it than any other people or any other class, however enlightened or well-meaning. That has been one of the main reasons for giving the suffrage to the poor, the ignorant, and the helpless, because the experience of ages has taught that the rich, the educated, and the powerful, while well able to take care of themselves, are either too careless or have too little knowledge to take the same care of others. And as with the suffrage, so with self-government. Any extension must be granted upon broad principles: small concessions grudgingly given are always accepted without gratitude, and used to extort greater.

“Well,” it may be said, “I am willing to give Ireland a large measure of self-government, but I won’t yield to agitators.” This is one of the oldest of all replies to demands for reform. How could anything be gained in politics without agitation? The Tories swear they will yield nothing until agitation has ceased; and if it ceases, if only for a moment, they declare it is evident there is no popular wish for reform. “Proceed, my lords,” said Lord Mansfield, when the American colonies revolted—“proceed, my lords, with spirit and firmness; and when you shall have established your authority, it will then be time to show lenity.” And their lordships proceeded; but the “time to show lenity” never came, for it was such counsels which lost the American colonies to the British Crown.

“But,” it will be added, “this is not an ordinary agitation; it is a revolutionary one.” In some of its phases that is true, and it is all the more reason why its cause should be closely examined. It is the English themselves who have taught the Irish that ordinary constitutional agitation gains them nothing. If it had not been for the organization of the Volunteers, Grattan’s Parliament of 1782 would never have been granted; the Duke of Wellington in 1829 admitted that he yielded Catholic Emancipation to the threat of civil war; it needed the terrible crimes of the early “thirties” to arouse England to the necessity for abolishing an iniquitous system of levying tithe; the Fenian outbreaks, the attack on a prison van at Manchester, and the blowing up of a gaol in London, opened the eyes of the English to the need for disestablishing the Irish Church and clipping the claws of the Irish landlords; the fearful winter of 1880 led to the granting of still further protection to the tenants; and to the “plan of campaign” of the winter of 1886 was it owing that a Tory Government felt compelled to still further encroach upon the property and privileges of the landlords of Ireland. As long as Ireland has held to constitutional agitation—as witness that for Catholic Emancipation from 1801 to 1825, and that for tenant right from 1850 to 1868—so long has England refused to grant a single just demand; and this is exactly what the Tories are doing now. Is it any wonder that Irish agitation should have become revolutionary when that is the only kind we have rewarded? In the relations between the governing classes and popular movements there has all through been this difference—in England, revolution has been staved off by reform; in Ireland, reform has been staved off till there was revolution.

“But,” it may be continued, “it is not so much that the agitation is revolutionary as that it is criminal which makes me object.” But a movement ought not to be called criminal because of the excesses of a few of its extreme partisans. No great popular agitation has ever been free from lewd fellows of the baser sort, who have given occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. But did English Liberals hesitate to support Mazzini because he was accused of favouring assassination; to sympathize with the French Republicans because Orsini prepared bombs for the destruction of Napoleon III.; or to-day to wish well to those Russians who conspire for liberty because the wilder spirits among them have assassinated one Czar and attempted to assassinate another? In our own history, are the Covenanters to be condemned because some of them murdered Archbishop Sharpe; the early Radicals because Thistlewood and his fellows plotted to kill King and Cabinet; the Reformers of 1831 because of the Bristol riots and the destruction of Nottingham Castle; or those of 1866 because the Hyde Park railings were thrown down? When it is remembered that even such a man as Peel could, in the midst of a heated controversy, accuse such another as Cobden of conniving at assassination, we should be careful how we accept the testimony of any partisan concerning the criminality of an agitation to which he is opposed.

These objections touch, after all, only the fringe of the matter, and another which is frequently urged—that the Irish agitation is a “foreign conspiracy” because it receives aid from the United States—does not go much closer to the root. But this, like the others, may be disposed of by English examples. Did not Englishmen aid, both by men and money, in liberating Greece and uniting Italy? Did they not help by subscriptions the insurrections in Hungary and Poland, and, when the former failed, did not many of them take the refugees into their homes? Did they not even raise a fund to assist the slave-holding States when in rebellion? And in all these cases, except in a remote degree the last, they had no tie in blood, but only one in sympathy, with those concerned. That the Nationalist movement has been largely aided from the United States is undoubted; but that aid has mainly come from those of Irish birth or parentage who have been driven across the Atlantic to seek a home. And when it is said that, because of this help, a self-governed Ireland would rely upon the United States to the detriment of England, may we not ask why it is that Italy does not rely upon France, though it was France that struck the first effective blow for Italian unity; or Bulgaria upon Russia, though without the blood-sacrifice of Russia that principality would never have occupied a place on the European map? However much it may be to be regretted, gratitude does not play any large part in international affairs.

When the more serious objections to the granting Home Rule are urged they are no more difficult to meet. “Ireland is not a nation,” it is said; “its people are of different races.” The argument has been used before by the Tories, and the value of it may be judged by an example. The late Lord Derby, as leader of the Tory party, addressed the House of Lords in 1860 in savage denunciation of the efforts then being made to secure the unity of Italy; and to the contention that all the inhabitants of that peninsula were Italians, he answered, in the words of Macbeth to his hired murderers,

Aye, in the catalogue ye go for men;

As hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs,

Shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves are cleped

All by the name of dogs.

And those who remember the unbridgeable differences which then appeared to exist between the Sardinian and the Sicilian, the Florentine and the Neapolitan, the dweller in Venice and the resident in Rome, will know that the perfect unity between them which now makes Italy one of the Great Powers would have been considered as unlikely as any between a Belfast man and an inhabitant of Cork to-day.

“The Irish are not fit for self-government,” is the next contention. If this be so, the shame is ours in not having given them the opportunity for being trained. We did not refuse to liberate the slaves until they were proved to be fit for freedom; we did not decline to give the labourers the suffrage until they were proved to be capable of rightly using it; for we knew in each case that no such proof could be afforded until the opportunity was offered. No proof that the Irish are not able to manage a Parliament is given by the corruption of the semi-independent body which they enjoyed from 1782 to 1799; for that consisted entirely of Protestants, mainly chosen by a band of borough-mongers, whom Pitt had to buy out at a high price. The same thing exactly was said by the Tories—sneers about the pigs and all—of the Bulgarians in 1876; and they have had good reason since to change their minds. What reason is there to believe that the Irish would be less able to manage their own affairs than the people of Bulgaria?

“But they are naturally lawless.” Where is the proof? It is true that in certain mountainous districts of Kerry and Clare there have been outbursts of moonlighting, but these have been as nothing compared with the prevalence of brigandage in Greece before the Greeks were allowed to rule themselves, or in Italy before the Italians founded their united kingdom. Where there is little popular respect for the law, there lawlessness flourishes; where the people make their own laws, there lawlessness is put down with a strong hand.

“If they had the power they would persecute the Protestants.” This is a prophecy, and a prophet has the advantage of being able to soar above proofs. But the fact that every prominent defender of national rights in Ireland for the last century and a half, except O’Connell, from Dean Swift down to Mr. Parnell, has been a Protestant, should count for something. The fact that Protestants have again and again been returned to the Corporations of the most Catholic cities should count for much. And the fact that, when for years not a single one of the 450 English members was a Roman Catholic, several of the 103 Irish members, even from the most Catholic districts, were Protestants, should count for more. Such religious persecution as exists in Ireland is certainly more at Belfast than at Cork.

“Giving them a Parliament would break up the empire.” Why should the empire be broken up because there was extended to Ireland the principle we have granted to Australia and Canada, New Zealand and the Cape? How is it that the German Empire continues united, though the Reichstag, its Imperial Parliament, is one body, and the Prussian Parliament, the Saxon Parliament, the Würtemberg Parliament, and the Bavarian Parliament are quite others? Is there no union between Austria and Hungary, or between Sweden and Norway, though each has its Parliament, and are the United States disintegrated because every one of the States has its own Senate and House of Representatives? If one were asked to name two of the strongest nations outside our own, Germany and the United States would be the reply; and in each there is a system of Home Rule for the separate portions.

“But did not the United States crush the Confederates when secession was demanded?” Of course they did; the United States fought against the South separating from the North, as we should against Ireland separating from England. But every State which joined the Confederacy possessed as ample a measure of Home Rule as the Liberals now propose for Ireland; and, to the lasting honour of the Northern States, that measure was restored soon after the war. Home Rule the South had, and has still; separation the South asked for, and did not receive.

“The Irish are ungrateful people; whatever you give them they ask for more.” Would it not be well to first ask what the Irish have had to be grateful for? Granting that we yielded Catholic Emancipation, reformed the tithe system, disestablished the Church, and legalized tenant right; why, after all these things, should we expect gratitude? The old phrase that “gratitude is a lively sense of favours to come” may be unduly cynical; but is it not absurd to ask that recompense for the doing of acts of simple justice? Former generations of Englishmen deprived the Irish of their rights. To what thanks are later generations entitled for simply restoring to the Irish the rights of which they had been robbed? “Be just and fear not,” was said of ancient time: “Be just and expect not gratitude,” should be added to-day. And when it is stated that “the Irish ought to accept what we choose to give them,” it must be replied that this is the purely despotic argument which has already done England sufficient injury by losing her the United States.

It is only in this, the briefest, fashion that an answer has been sketched to the various arguments and assumptions against Home Rule. In determining to grant it, the Liberals are acting strictly according to their old policy of favouring struggling nationalities. The support given by Burke to the cause of America; by Fox to Ireland; by Canning (in this, as in some other matters, truly Liberal) to Greece; by Palmerston to Italy; and by Mr. Gladstone to Bulgaria, indicates with sufficient clearness the traditional Liberal position. For a century we have been telling the whole world the advantages of autonomy; are we now to decline to adopt, in similar circumstances, the remedy for discontent we have all along preached to, and sometimes forced upon, others?

The Liberals say with Landor, “Let us try rather to remove the evils of Ireland than to persuade those who undergo them that there are none.” They are utterly opposed to the idea that it is right to give a people free representation and then deliberately to ignore all that that representation asks. They are, it is true, in a minority at this moment, but they do not forget that all great causes have three stages—first to be laughed at, next to be looked at, and last to be loved. Home Rule has certainly reached the second stage; it will soon reach the third. The Liberals have been beaten before, but they have always won in the end. And it is well to be beaten sometimes. If life were all sunshine we should find it oppressive; an occasional cloud serves to temper the heat. To the Liberals, as to nature itself, a misty morning is often the prelude to the brightest day.

XI.—WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THE LORDS?

In dealing with the other questions which the Liberals will have to consider, it will be well to take them in what may be called their constitutional order, and a beginning, therefore, may be made with the reform of the House of Lords. The theory upon which that House is upheld is that it is an assembly of our most notable men, called to rule either by descent from the great ones of the past, or by the proved capacity of themselves in the present, who discuss every question laid before them with impartiality, and who act as a check upon the hasty and ill-considered legislation of the House of Commons.

So much for the theory: what of the fact? Those peers who are not creations of to-day mainly spring either from Pitt’s plutocrats or from those who have been granted their patents because of having lavishly spent their money in electoral support of some party; those who can claim their peerage by direct descent from the great ones of the past can be numbered by tens, while the whole body is numbered by hundreds; and just as a sprinkling of successful lawyers, soldiers, and brewers adds nothing to its historical character, it in no sense brings the peerage into clear and close contact with the people. As to the impartiality displayed by the House of Lords, it is notorious that in these days it is little other than an appanage of the Carlton Club, and that, whatever the Tory whips desire it to do, it accomplishes without demur. And its power as a check upon hasty and ill-considered legislation may be judged from the fact that it never dares reject a measure which public opinion strongly demands and upon which the Commons insist.

When the history of the House of Lords is studied, it will be found that during the past century it has initiated no great measure for the public good, and a hundred times has wantonly mutilated or impotently opposed the reforms the people asked. The mischief it has done touches every department of public life. Whether it was to throw out a bill abolishing the penalty of death for stealing in a shop to the value of five shillings, on the ground stated by one of the bishops in the majority that it was “too speculative to be safe;” to again and again vote down every proposal to relieve Roman Catholics and Jews from civil disabilities; to pander to the will of George IV. in the prolonged persecution of his wife; or to defeat measures calculated to place the electoral power in the hands of the people—the House of Lords has always been one of the main forces in the army of darkness and oppression. Remember that every one of the reforms the Liberals have secured within the last 50 years has been distasteful to the House of Lords, and calculate the worth or wisdom of that institution.

It does not add to the estimation of either the worth or the wisdom that the Lords have ultimately accepted what they have bitterly opposed, for if they have consistently been a stumbling-block in the path of every reform which the people now cherish their tardy repentance is of little avail as long as they pursue the same obstructive course. And it is not merely measures which they throw out, but measures which they mutilate, that render them a power for harm. For the Lords are like rabbits; it is not so much what they swallow as what they spoil which makes them so destructive.

Those who defend the institution as it exists should, therefore, be called upon to point to some one definite case in recent history in which it can be said, “Here has the House of Lords done good.” Mere talk about the admirable administrators and the dexterous debaters it contains is no argument; for if the legislative functions of the peers were abolished to-morrow, those among them who were worthy a seat in the House of Commons would have no difficulty in securing it. What Liberals object to is the being subjected to the caprices, the passions, and the prejudices of some five hundred men, the majority of whom are not merely unskilled in legislative faculty and unqualified in administrative experience, but are drawn from a single class out of touch and sympathy with the mass of the people.

It is not the least of the evils of the present system that the attendance at the sittings of the Lords is of so perfunctory a nature. Even during the discussion of important measures not more than sixty or seventy peers, out of over five hundred, are commonly present, while ten or twelve is not an unusual number to deal with Bills. As Erskine May has pointed out, “Three peers may wield all the authority of the House. Nay, even less than that number are competent to pass or reject a law, if their unanimity should avert a division, on notice of their imperfect constitution.” And he furnishes an instance where an Irish Land Bill, “which had occupied weeks of discussion in the Commons, was nearly lost by a disagreement between the two Houses, the numbers, on a division, being seven and six.”

Adding to their number does not improve the average attendance, and yet the pace at which that number is growing is a scandal. In 1885, the first time since 1832, the total membership of the House of Commons was enlarged, not without trepidation and despite the fact that every member would be directly responsible to a constituency. The increase was only twelve, and a Premier often creates within a year as many legislators on his own account, who, with their successors, are responsible to no one for their public conduct. Is it not an absurdity to speak of ourselves as freely governed and ruled only by our own consent when a Prime Minister can make as many legislators as he chooses, and there be none to gainsay him?

If it were only that under the present system the drunken and the dissolute, the blackleg and the debauchee are allowed to sit in the Lords and make laws for us and our children, we should have a right to demand that the institution should be “mended or ended.” The former process has now distinctly been adopted as a plank in the Liberal platform, and the question of reform can, therefore, no longer be put on one side.

There are many Radicals who say that as the House of Lords, if it agrees with the Commons, is useless, and if it disagrees is dangerous, its abolition as a legislative body should at once be made a plank in the party programme. They argue further, that to reform will be to strengthen it, and that, by the reasoning just given, this is undesirable. But the main point is to secure the best legislative machine we can, and there is much to be said for the improvement of the House of Lords into a Senate which shall be in fact what the present institution is in theory—a body of sage statesmen, experienced in affairs, and elected for a specified term, so as to be directly amenable to the people, and not removed from obedience to public opinion.

As a first step to any reform, the creation of hereditary peerages, conferring a power to legislate, ought to be stopped. “The tenth transmitter of a foolish face” ought no longer to be able to transmit with the foolishness a power over the lives and liberties of his fellow-men. If there is any one who continues honestly to believe that because a man has secured a peerage by his brains (and the proportion of creations upon that ground is exceeding small) his successors are likely to prove good legislators, he would do well to procure a list of those peers who are descended from “law lords;” and he would find that while not one of them is distinguished for great political or administrative skill, there are various notorious instances, which will occur to every reader of the daily newspaper, of those distinguished for exactly the reverse.

One minor reform in the constitution of the House of Lords ought to be pressed at once, and that is the removal of the bishops from their present place within it. Not only has no one section of religious persons the right to a State-created ascendency over others, but all parties are agreed in the most practical form that bishops as bishops have no inherent right to legislative power. In 1847, when the bishopric of Manchester was created, it was provided that the junior member of the episcopal bench for the time being should not have a seat in the Lords, and thirty years later, when the Government of Lord Beaconsfield made further new bishoprics, it similarly did not venture to add to the number of spiritual peers; there are consequently always four or five waiting outside the gilded chamber until the death of their seniors shall let them in.

What Liberals, therefore, demand is that the House of Lords shall be thoroughly reformed. The bishops must be excluded, no more hereditary legislators created, and a system devised by which the House shall become a Senate so chosen as to be directly responsible to the people, whose interests it is assumed to serve. A sprinkling of life peers would aggravate instead of lessen the difficulty. An hereditary legislator may, for the sake of his successors, be careful not too grievously to offend the people; an elected legislator, for his own sake, will be the same; but a legislator who was neither one nor the other would have no such check, and all experience has shown that corporations elected for life become cliquish or even corrupt, for want of the frequent and wholesome breeze of public opinion.

XII.—IS THE HOUSE OF COMMONS PERFECT?

There was a time, and that not far distant, when the question “Is the House of Commons perfect?” would have been considered by many well-intentioned and easy-going persons to be impertinent, even if not actually irreverent. But we live in days when every institution has to submit to the test of free discussion, and its usefulness and efficiency have to be proved, if it is to retain its place in the political system. And as there can be little doubt that, for many reasons, a feeling has been widely growing within the past few years that the House of Commons is neither as useful nor as efficient as it ought to be, the popular reverence for that great assembly has somewhat diminished; and it behoves all who wish to preserve parliamentary government in its fullest and freest form to examine the causes of apparent decay and to suggest methods of amelioration.

The preservation intact of the powers and privileges of the House of Commons must be the desire of every lover of freedom; but the conduct of its business must be brought into harmony with modern methods, and the mechanical side of the assembly made as perfect as possible. Not from me will fall one word derogatory to the venerable “mother of free parliaments.” The House of Commons has done too much for England, its example has done too much for liberty the wide world through, to allow any but the ribald and the unthinking to speak lightly of its history or scornfully of its achievements. For the People’s Chamber is not merely the most powerful portion of the High Court of Parliament; it is not alone the central force of the British Constitution, to which kings and nobles have had, and may again have, to bow; it is the directly elected body before whose gaze every wrong can be displayed, and to whose power even the humblest can look for redress. It deals forth justice to the myriad millions of India as to a solitary injured Englishman; it is a sounding board which echoes the claims of a single peasant or an entire people; and it practically commands the issues of peace and war, involving the fate of thousands, and of life and death, involving that of only one. No policy is vast beyond its conception, no person insignificant beyond its sight. It is a mighty engine of freedom, responsive to the heart-throbs and aspirations of a whole people, which has baffled tyrants, liberated slaves, and raised England to that position among the nations which our children and our children’s children should be proud to maintain.

Such is the assembly which needs reform. Often enough and with much success has there been raised a cry for “parliamentary reform,” but this has meant an amendment of the method of electing members, not of the manner of conducting business; and it is this latter which now is urgently required. The stately ship which has sailed the ocean of public affairs for six centuries has naturally attracted weeds and barnacles which cling to its hull and retard its progress. These must be swept away if the vessel is to pursue a safe and speedy course; and as little irreverence is involved in the process as in cleaning and repairing the old Victory herself.

The cardinal defect of the existing system is that it strives to do modern work by ancient modes, an attempt which is as certain to fail in public concerns as it would be if any one were sufficiently ill-advised to try it in private. And when there is contemplated on the one side the vast and growing mass of affairs cast upon the consideration of Parliament, and on the other the rusty and creaking machinery employed to cope with it, little wonder can be felt that much needful work is left undone, and a deal of that which is accomplished is done badly.

By granting to Ireland the right to manage her domestic affairs, and by providing some system by which England, Scotland, and Wales can in local assemblies each deal for herself with her own concerns, much will be accomplished in the way of real parliamentary reform. But even then more will remain to be done. The multiplied stages of each measure laid before the House of Commons must be lessened. It is possible to-day to have a debate and a division upon the motion for leave to introduce a bill, upon the first reading, the second reading, the proposal to go into committee, the report stage, the third reading, and the final proposition “That the bill do pass,” while financial bills have even more stages to go through; and although, of course, all these opportunities for almost unlimited obstruction are not often made use of, they exist and should be diminished.

Another fruitful source of wasted parliamentary time is the provision that if a bill is dropped at the end of a session, however far it may have progressed short of actual passing, it has to be started afresh when the House re-assembles, and every stage has to be as laboriously again gone through as if the measure had never been heard of before. One can understand why a new Parliament should start with a clean sheet, for no decision of a previous one in favour of the principle of a certain measure can bind it to pass that measure into law. But within the limits of the same Parliament, a decision once given should be so far binding that it should not be necessary for a bill to pass the stage of second reading four or five years running, because effluxion of time had prevented it passing into law during any of the sessions.

Against such waste of time as this—waste which is imposed by the very rules under which Parliament works—the closure is no remedy. It is a weapon with which it is right that the majority should be armed, but it requires great skill in the wielding lest the legitimate efforts of the minority be stifled. What is wanted is the better ordering of the whole machine. When private bills and purely local business are taken elsewhere, when the stages of each measure are lessened, and when bills which have passed their second reading are not killed at the session’s end, but allowed to remain in a state of animated expectancy, even then other means will have to be sought to make the machine move more surely and with greater expedition.

Something has been done to this end by the earlier hour of assembling and fixed hour of adjourning which the House has now adopted. But why should not the process be carried further, and the affairs of the country be settled by day instead of by night? The first answer is that it would not be possible for a legislative body to do its business during the day; and a sufficient answer should be that the French Assembly and the German Reichsrath do theirs during that period. The next is that Ministers could not get through their work if the hours of meeting were made earlier; the reply is to the same effect—that what French and German Ministers can accomplish, English Ministers must be taught to do. A further contention is that such barristers and business men as are members would not be able to attend sooner than at present; and the answer of many as to the barristers would be that it were well for the country if three-fourths of those in the House never attended at all, for it is largely owing to the number of lawyers in Parliament that the law is a complicated and costly process, often proving an engine of injustice in the hands of the rich, and a ruinous remedy for the injured poor; while as to the business men who cannot attend earlier than now, their number is so exceedingly limited that their convenience ought not to be consulted to the detriment of parliamentary institutions. There is one more argument which would be of greater weight than all the rest if present conditions were likely to continue, and that is, that it would be a serious hindrance to private bill legislation, because members would be loth to serve on committees during the time the House was deliberating; but it is obvious to all observers of the parliamentary machine that the greater portion of private business will have soon to be delegated to other bodies, and the main point of an undeniably strong argument will thus be destroyed.

But even such a reform in the hours of work would not expedite matters to a sufficient extent, if the present power of unlimited talk be preserved. Every member has the right of speaking once at each stage of a bill, and as many times as he likes during committee. If the number of stages be lessened, as they are likely to be, there will not be much to be objected to in the continuance of this right; but its retention should be contingent upon the shortening of each speech. This is a proposal which can be justified on “plain Whig principles,” and has certainly a plain Whig precedent. For Lord John Russell, when Prime Minister, brought forward in 1849 a proposal to limit the duration of all speeches to one hour, except in the case of a member introducing an original motion, or a minister of the Crown speaking in reply. The proposal fell through, but that it was made by so cautious a Premier is a proof that there is much to be said in favour of compulsorily shortening speeches.

The proposition that Parliaments should be chosen more frequently in order that they may preserve a closer touch with the people should be earnestly pressed forward. In the early days of the House of Commons annual Parliaments were practically the rule, an assembly being summoned to vote supplies and do certain necessary business and then dissolved. When matters were put upon a more certain footing, after the Great Rebellion, Parliaments elected for three years were ordained, and this term was extended to seven years shortly after the Hanoverian Accession, in order to guard against a Jacobite success at the hustings, which might seriously have endangered an unstable throne. The time has now come to ask that a term adopted in a panic, and for reasons which have long passed away, should be shortened. A four years’ Parliament has been found to be long enough for France, Germany, and the United States; and as the average of the last half-century has proved a seven years’ period to be unnecessarily long for England, the briefer should be enacted. Now that the suffrage is on so wide a basis, it is essential that members of Parliament should be in as close touch with the people as possible. Once elected, members frequently forget that they are not the masters of those who have chosen them, and that, though called in one sense to rule the country, there is another sense in which they are called to serve. It is necessary that this truth should be enforced upon such members as are apt to ignore it, and shorter Parliaments would enforce it.

There are some who believe that by payment of members a better representation of the people would be secured. The example of other countries can certainly be quoted in favour of such a proposition, but there appears no necessity for any general payment in England. As, however, it is in the highest degree desirable that representatives of every class in the community should appear at Westminster, some provision should be made by which members, upon making a statutory declaration of the necessity for such a course, would be able to claim a certain moderate allowance for their expenses during the session. There would be nothing revolutionary in this; the fact of members being paid would be merely a return to the practice which prevailed for close upon four centuries after the House of Commons was established upon its present basis.

XIII.—IS OUR ELECTORAL SYSTEM COMPLETE?

Many would be surprised if told that there remained serious deficiencies in our electoral system; and would ask, “How can that be? We now have the ballot at elections, household suffrage in both counties and boroughs, and a nearer approach to equal electoral districts than the most sanguine Radical ten or even five years ago would have thought possible?”

But has the suffrage really been extended to every householder? As a fact, it has not; it is largely a merely nominal extension; and tens of thousands of qualified citizens are disfranchised for years at a time by the needless restrictions and petty technicalities which now clog the electoral law. Registration should be so simplified that every qualified person would be certain of finding his name on the list; and the duty of compiling a correct register should be imposed upon some local public official, compelled under penalty to perform it.

The common belief is that a twelvemonth’s occupation qualifies for a vote, but all that it does is to qualify for a place on the register, which is an altogether different matter, the register being made up months before it comes into operation. At the very least, a man must have gone into a house a year and a half before he has a vote for it, and it often happens that he has to be in it for two years and a quarter, and even more, before he possesses the franchise. Let me state such a case. A man goes into a house at the half-quarter in August, 1888; he will not be entitled to be placed on the register in the autumn of 1889, because he was not occupying on July 15 of the previous year; if he continues to occupy, he will, however, be placed there in the autumn of 1890; but it is not until January 1, 1891, that he will be able to exercise the suffrage. So that all taking houses from July 15, 1888, are in the same position as those who take them up to July 15, 1889, and will have to wait for a vote until 1891.

“But,” it may be said, “when a man once has his vote he is able to retain it as long as he holds any dwelling by virtue of ‘successive occupation.’” That is so only as long as he remains within the boundaries of the constituency wherein he possessed the original qualification. He may move from one division of Liverpool to another, or from one division of Manchester to another, or from one division of Birmingham to another, and retain his vote by successive occupation; but if he goes from Liverpool to Birkenhead, from Manchester to Salford, or from Birmingham to Aston, his vote is lost for the year and a half or the two years and a quarter before explained. The effect of this is most apparent in London, where thousands of working men are continually moving from one district to another, treating the whole metropolis as one great town, but by passing out of their original borough they are disfranchised. And this is the more a grievance because the Redistribution Act, though dividing the larger provincial towns into single-member districts, left them as boroughs intact; while the old constituencies in London were not merely divided, but split up into separate boroughs. Lambeth thus became three boroughs—Lambeth, Camberwell, and Newington—each with its own divisions; Hackney was severed into the boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch, and Bethnal Green; Marylebone into the boroughs of Marylebone, Paddington, St. Pancras, and Hampstead; and so throughout the metropolis. And the consequence of the purely artificial nature of the boundary lines thus created is that many a man who merely moves from one side of the street to the other, or even from one house to another next door, is disfranchised for a couple of years. The obvious remedy for this peculiar evil is that London should be treated as one single borough, like Liverpool, Manchester, and Birmingham; but the remedy for the whole evil is that when a man has once qualified for a place on the register, proof of successive occupation in any part of the country should suffice to give him his vote in the constituency to which he moves.

When we pass from the household to the lodger franchise, we are faced by one of the hugest shams in the electoral system. There are certain constituencies which contain hundreds of lodgers, and of these not more than tens are on the register. The reason is twofold: it is not merely a trouble to get a vote, but there is a yearly difficulty in retaining it. For a lodger, as for a household vote, a twelvemonth’s occupation is necessary to qualify, and the purely nominal nature of this qualification is the same in both; but the lodger has the additional hardship of being deprived of even as much benefit as “successive occupation” gives the householder, for if he moves next door, though with the same landlord, he is disfranchised, while the landlord retains his vote. And, further, he has to make a formal claim for the suffrage every succeeding summer, an operation too troublesome for the vast majority of lodgers to undergo, and one from which the householder is spared. And thus this particular franchise is a mockery, and the proportion of lodger voters to qualified lodgers is absurdly small.

Of course, the term “householder,” equally with the term “lodger,” presupposes at present that the one who bears it is a man, and, equally of course, an agitation is on foot to give the franchise to women. This is a matter which is likely to be settled in favour of the other sex, and the only question is as to how far it should go. The extreme advocates of female suffrage would give it to married women, but what appears the growing opinion is that spinsters and widows, qualified for the suffrage as men are qualified, should receive it; and this is a settlement which will probably soon be reached.

Much dissatisfaction would continue to be felt, even were these points granted, if “faggot-voting” were still suffered, or a single person allowed to possess a multitude of votes. The “forty-shilling freehold” is a prolific source of bogus qualifications: abolished in Ireland by the Tories because it gave the people too much power, it ought to be got rid of throughout the kingdom by the Liberals because it leaves the people too little. For it is largely by its means that some men are able to boast that they can exercise the franchise in six, or ten, or even a dozen constituencies. Men of this type occupy themselves at a general election by travelling around, dropping a vote here and a vote there, and they ought to be restrained. That this can be done without violating any right is evident even under the present system. However many qualifications a man obtains, he can vote for only one of them in any constituency; and more, if he has qualifications in every division of the same borough he has, when the register is made up, to state for which division he will vote, and in that division alone can he claim a ballot paper. If it is right to prevent him from having more than a single vote in any one division—or, which is a still stronger point, in any one borough—it must be equally right to limit him to a single vote throughout the country. “One man, one vote,” should be the rule in a democratic state. If a person possesses qualifications for various constituencies, let him be called upon to do what he is now compelled to do if he has qualifications for different parts of the same constituency—vote for only one of them; and that one should be the place in which he habitually resides.

An indirect method of practically securing the “one man, one vote,” result would be to have all the elections throughout the country on the same day. Under the existing system, the polls drag on for weeks, and not only does this distract the attention of the nation and put a hindrance to business for a far longer period than is necessary, but it has the further evil effect of causing many voters in the constituencies which are later polled to waver until they see whither the majority elsewhere are tending, and then “go with the stream.” The only instance in recent electoral history when the later polls reversed the verdict of the earlier was at the general election of 1885, when the boroughs, speaking broadly, voted Tory and the counties Liberal; but that, owing to the recent extension of the county franchise, was an abnormal period, and the rule is that the stream gathers as it goes, and the waverers are swept into the torrent. That it is possible for a great country to be polled on the same day is evident from the examples of Germany and France, and it is only adherence to worn-out forms which prevents its accomplishment here.

The remedy, therefore, for the anomalies caused by the defective “successive occupation,” the presence of “faggot voters,” and the prolongation of the pollings, is simply to treat the kingdom as one vast constituency, in which a man once on the register remains as long as he has a qualification, in which no one has more than a single vote, and in all the divisions of which the poll is taken on the same day.

This suggested single constituency would, of course, resemble the great county and borough constituencies of to-day in having divisions, but it would not be single in the sense proposed in Mr. Hare’s original scheme of “proportional representation,” by which the possessor of a vote could cast it where and for whom he liked. Those who have adopted Mr. Hare’s ideas, while modifying his methods, have not been successful in discovering any feasible plan for representing public opinion in the proportion in which it is held, the sort of Chinese puzzle proposed by Sir John Lubbock and Mr. Courtney having failed to commend itself to any practical politician. It is wrong, however, to imagine that the present system of single-member districts roughly secures that the minority shall be duly represented while the majority retains its due share of power; for it was proved in some striking instances, the very first time it was put in operation, that, so far from retaining, it often sacrifices the rights of the majority. At the general election of 1885 the Liberals of Leeds cast 23,354 votes, and the Tories 19,605, and yet the latter gained three seats and the former only two; the Sheffield Liberals won but two seats with 19,636 votes, while the Tories secured three with 19,594; and the Hackney Liberals could win only one seat with 9,203 votes, and the Tories two with 8,870; while, on the other side, the Southwark Tories, with 9,324 votes, returned one member, and the Liberals, with 9,120, returned two. The reason is obvious: a party with overwhelming majorities in one or two districts is liable to be beaten by narrow majorities in most of the divisions, and the minority thus elects a majority of members. The present system, therefore, is evidently imperfect. It was adopted in haste and without due discussion; it has failed in France, Switzerland, and the United States; and in at least the divided boroughs it ought to give place to double or triple member districts.

The question of having second ballots, so as to provide that, as in Germany and France, where there are several candidates and none secures an absolute majority of votes given, another ballot shall be held, is not an immediately pressing one, though much may be said in its favour; but that of the payment of election expenses out of the rates ought to be dealt with at once. It is highly unfair that a candidate should be fined heavily, by the enforced payment of the official expenses, for his desire to serve the country in Parliament; and it is the more unfair because the official expenses of elections for town councils, school boards, and boards of health and of guardians are paid by the public.

This fine helps to keep men of moderate means out of the House, though their abilities might prove to be most useful there; and another method by which the wealthy have the advantage in parliamentary contests ought equally to be attended to. People are forbidden by law to hire conveyances for carrying voters to the poll, but they are allowed to borrow them, with the result that constituencies on an election day swarm with carriages of peers and other rich people, who have nothing whatever to do with the district, and who yet affect by this influence the voting. The use of carriages should not be prohibited, for the aged and infirm ought not to be disfranchised; but no importation of vehicles should be allowed, and while an elector, and an elector only, should be entitled to use his own, it should, as a means of identification, be driven by himself. Such a provision would largely diminish the present interference of peers in elections. They may address as many meetings as they like; but, as long as they have a legislative assembly of their own, they must not be allowed to use their wealth and position to interfere with the voters for the Commons House of Parliament.

XIV.—SHOULD THE CHURCH REMAIN ESTABLISHED?

From the great concerns of the State it is natural to come to the Church, and when that point is arrived at, the problem of disestablishment at once arises. “Can the Church be disestablished?” is a question sometimes put, and the answer is plain, for that answer is “Most certainly,” and a further question “Where is the Act establishing the Church?” as if the non-production of such an enactment would prevent Parliament from severing the link which binds Church and State, may be replied to by another. Supposing one asked, “Where is the Act establishing the monarchy?” would the non-production of that measure prove that it is not a parliamentary monarchy under which we live? By the Act of Succession, Parliament “settled” the monarchy; by various Acts in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, and Charles II., Parliament has “settled” the Church. There is no authority in this realm higher than Parliament; and if Parliament chooses to “unsettle” either monarchy or Church, it can do so.

This is no new-fangled Radical idea; it is an old Whig principle. Charles Fox, in a debate just a century since, observed, while favourable to the principle of religious establishments, “If the majority of the people of England should ever be for the abolition of the Established Church, in such a case the abolition ought immediately to follow.” Macaulay, in his essay on Mr. Gladstone’s youthful book on “Church and State,” was clearly of the same opinion. And Lord Hartington, in his declaration a few years ago that if the majority of the people of Scotland desired disestablishment their desire ought to be satisfied, completed the chain of Whig traditional opinion.

If upon such a matter one is not content to swear by the Whigs, the verdict of the bishops may be accepted. Dr. Magee, of Peterborough, has declared that “Our Church is not only catholic and national: she is established by law—that is to say, she has entered into certain definite relations with the State, involving on the part of the State an amount of recognition and control, and on the part of the Church subjection to the State.”

The very use of the common term “The Church of England as by law established” involves recognition of the fact that what the law has done the law can undo. And if any one doubts the power of Parliament in this matter, let him read a table of the statutes passed in the session of 1869, and he will find that the most important of all of them was “An Act to put an end to the Establishment of the Church of Ireland.” Now, the legal position of the Irish Establishment and the English Establishment was identical. Is any further proof required that, if Parliament chooses, the latter can at any moment be severed from the State?

It is sometimes said that Nonconformist bodies are equally established with the Church because they are subject to the law, as regards the construction of their trust-deeds, and other matters, of which the courts of justice have occasionally to take cognizance. But that is as if it were argued that all persons who come within the enactments affecting the relations between employer and employed should be considered servants of the Crown as well as those engaged in the government offices. The difference is plain: the law regulates all, the Government employs only some. The Crown appoints the Archbishop of Canterbury, but has no right to choose the President of the Wesleyan Conference; Parliament can deal with the salaries of the bishops, but cannot touch the stipend of a single Congregational minister.

There being no doubt that, if the people will, the Church can be disestablished, a further question remains, “Ought it to be so dealt with?” and the reply in the affirmative is based upon the lessons of the past, the experiences of the present, and the possibilities of the future.

The Church, though possessed of every advantage which high position and vast wealth could supply, has failed to be “national” in any true sense of the word. So far from embracing the whole people, it has gradually become but one of many sects; and, had it not been for the efforts of those who conscientiously dissented from its doctrines and its practice, a great portion of the religious life we see in England to-day would not have existed. Further, and from the time of its settlement on the present basis, it has been the consistent friend to the privileged classes, and foe to any extension of liberties to the mass of the people. In defence of its position and emoluments it has struck many a blow for despotism. The harassing and often bloody persecutions of Nonconformists and Roman Catholics in England and Wales, and of Covenanters and Cameronians in Scotland, were undertaken at its desire and in its defence; while the hardships and indignities inflicted for centuries upon the Catholics of Ireland were avowedly in support of “the Protestant interest”—a Protestantism of the Establishment, in which the Presbyterians were allowed little share. In its pulpits were found the most eloquent defenders of the English slave trade, which was from them declared to be “in conformity with principles of natural and revealed religion;” and when Romilly strove to lessen the horrors of the penal code, its bishops again and again came to the rescue of laws the disregard of which for the sanctity of human life can in these days scarcely be conceived. And when it was proposed to give to some extent the government of the country to the people whom it mainly concerned, it was the bishops who threw out the first Reform Bill.

At this present the efforts of the better men within the Establishment are hampered by the State connection. It cannot bring its machinery into harmony with the growing needs of the time without appealing to a Parliament in which orthodox and heterodox, Catholic and Atheist, Jew and Quaker, Unitarian and Agnostic sit side by side, and to which a Hindoo has twice narrowly escaped election. By a Prime Minister dependent upon the will of this body its bishops are chosen; by a Lord Chancellor equally so dependent are many of its ministers appointed. Because of the necessity for going to Parliament for every improvement, little improvement is made. Private patronage is left untouched; the scandal of the sale of livings remains unchecked; criminous clerks are often allowed to escape punishment because of the cumbrous methods now provided; and disobedient clergymen defy their bishops and go to prison rather than conform to discipline, the law which permits persistent insubordination and provides an unfitting penalty remaining unaltered because Parliament has too much to do to attend to the Church.

As to the future, things are likely to be worse instead of better. Then, as now, the connection between State and Church will injure both—the State because it is an injustice to all outside the Establishment that a single sect should be propertied and privileged by Parliament, and the Church because it is as a strong man in chains attempting to walk but only succeeding to painfully hobble.

In how many ways disestablishment would benefit the Church, let Dr. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool, declare:—“(1) It would doubtless give us more liberty, and enable us to effect many useful reforms. (2) It would bring the laity forward into their rightful position, from sheer necessity. (3) It would give us a real and properly constituted Convocation. (4) It would lead to an increase of bishops, a division of dioceses, and a reconstruction of our cathedral bodies. (5) It would make an end of Crown jobs in the choice of bishops, and upset the whole system of patronage. (6) It would destroy all sinecure offices, and drive all drones out of the ecclesiastical hive. (7) It would enable us to make our worship more elastic, and our ritual better suited to the times.” True, the bishop adds that the value of these gains must not be exaggerated; but if disestablishment can do even as much good as this to the Church, it cannot be the bad thing some of its opponents would have us believe.

But it is sometimes urged that if the Church were disestablished, there would be no State recognition of religion, and England would become un-Christian. Is not this a technical rather than a real argument? Would the number of Christians in this country be lessened by a single one if the Church were deprived of State support? Was not the same thing said when Jews were admitted to Parliament and Atheists claimed admission? And has England ceased to be Christian because Baron de Worms is sitting on one side of the Speaker and Mr. Bradlaugh on the other?

A more real argument is that disestablishment would break up the parochial system; but those who use it impute a discreditable lukewarmness to their own community. Seeing what the Wesleyans, the Congregationalists, the Baptists, and the other dissenting denominations have done to spread religion in every village in England and Wales; what the Free Kirk has accomplished in Scotland; and what the Roman Catholic Church has effected in Ireland—and all without a penny of State endowment, and dependent alone for success upon the gifts of their members—is it to be believed that the adherents of the Episcopal Church, among whom are included the wealthiest men in the country, will permit that institution to perish for lack of aid? Is not experience all the other way? Is not that of Ireland in particular a striking testimony to the wisdom of substituting the voluntary system for State support? Upon this point the testimony of two Irish Protestant bishops is abundant proof. The Bishop of Ossory, Ferns, and Leighlin averred, in 1882, that “no one could look attentively upon our Church’s history during the last ten or twelve years without perceiving that, by the good hand of God upon them, there had been a decided growth in all that was best and purest and most important. Never in his recollection had their Church been more clear or united in her testimony to Christian truth, or more faithful in every good word and work;” and Lord Plunket, the Archbishop of Dublin, has congratulated his clergy that disestablishment saved the Church from being involved in the land agitation, adding, “The very disaster which seemed most to threaten our downfall has been overruled for good.”

The question is likely, however, to be considered a more immediately pressing one for Scotland and Wales than for England. In Scotland it is the Presbyterian and not the Episcopalian form of Christian government which is State supported; and the fact that forms so opposed in striking points of doctrine and practice should be established on the two sides of the Tweed, is an interesting commentary upon the system generally. When the majority of the members for Scotland demand disestablishment, and press that demand upon us, it will as assuredly be granted as was the like demand from Ireland just twenty years ago. And “the Church of England in Wales”—supported by a small minority, and never enjoying the confidence of the body of the people—should similarly be dealt with, according to the wish of the Welsh parliamentary representatives.

The continued existence of the Church of England as an establishment is the largest question of all, and it is one which politicians will have to face, if not this year or next year, yet in the early years to come. It is only its continued existence “as an establishment” which is in dispute, for it would be a slanderous imputation upon its sons if it were said that a withdrawal of State support would cause its collapse as a religious body. The very strides it has made during the last few years, which are sometimes urged in its defence, have been made not by State help but by voluntary effort; and if that voluntary effort had free scope, the good effect would be greater and more lasting.

What is wanted is that which Cavour asked, “A Free Church in a Free State,” for both would be benefited by the process, and particularly the former. When the late Lord Beaconsfield was asked why, in the height of Tory reaction, he made no effort to re-establish the Irish Church, he replied that there was a difference between cutting off a man’s head and putting it on again. But the illustration was imperfect, for it is a strange kind of decapitation which strengthens the patient; and that was the effect in Ireland. And the Irish Church was not only disestablished but disendowed. In the mind of the practical politician the two processes are inseparable.

XV.—WOULD DISENDOWMENT BE JUST?

The question, “Would disendowment be just?” is admittedly a crucial point to determine when the whole subject comes up for settlement, for there are many defenders of the Establishment who exclaim, “We are quite prepared for the severance of the Church from the State, but only upon condition that she retains her endowments.”

But the two concerns cannot be separated. Supposing the Government engaged an officer to perform certain functions, and that, in process of time, finding these functions not fulfilled, it determined to sever the connection, would the officer be justified in demanding not only consideration for his long service and his life interests, but that his salary should be paid to himself and his descendants in perpetuity, though directly neither he nor they would again render service to the State? If it be contended that the illustration is not applicable, because the Church receives no aid from the State, issue can be joined at once.

For what is the first question that naturally arises? It is as to the source from which the Church originally derived her revenues. “Pious benefactors, stimulated by the wish to benefit their fellows and save themselves,” is the reply of the average Church defender. But any attempt to prove this fails. Does a solitary person believe that every proprietor of land in each parish of England and Wales voluntarily and spontaneously imposed a tithe upon his possessions? Is it not an admitted fact that it was by royal ordinance such an impost was first levied, and by force of law that it has since been maintained?

This most ancient property of the Church in England, the tithe, is a law-created and law-extorted impost for the benefit of a particular sect. As far back as the Heptarchy, royal ordinances were given in various of the kingdoms of which England was composed directing the payment of tithes; and that the far greater portion of these were not voluntary offerings is indicated in Hume’s account of the West Saxon grant in 854. “Though parishes,” he observes, “had been instituted in England by Honorius, Archbishop of Canterbury, two centuries before, the ecclesiastics had never yet been able to get possession of the tithes; they therefore seized the present favourable opportunity of making that acquisition when a weak, superstitious prince filled the throne, and when the people, discouraged by their losses from the Danes and terrified with the fear of future invasions, were susceptible of any impression which bore the appearance of religion.”

When England became one kingdom, and tithes were extended by royal decree to the whole realm, penalties soon began to be provided for non-payment, Alfred ordaining “that if any man shall withhold his tithes, and not faithfully and duly pay them to the Church, if he be a Dane he shall be fined in the sum of twenty shillings, and if an Englishman in the sum of thirty shillings;” and William the Norman, speedily after the Conquest, directed that “whosoever shall withhold this tenth part shall, by the justice of the bishop and the king, be forced to the payment of it, if need be.” These provisions are part of the common law of England, and they effectually dispose of the idea that the tithe was a voluntary offering which the farmer to-day ought to pay because of the supposed piety of unknown ancestors.

The proceeds of the tithe—which originally, according to Blackstone, were “distributed in a fourfold division: one for the use of the bishop, one for maintaining the fabric of the church, a third for the poor, and a fourth to provide for the incumbent”—were the first great source of revenue to the Church; but in the course of centuries that revenue was largely added to by gifts. It was not uncommon for a man to hand over his property to a monastery upon condition that he was allowed a sufficiency to keep him; while the money given for the provision of masses for the dead was a considerable aid to the Church in the Middle Ages. And as the monks were exceedingly keen traders, their wealth was increased by farming, buying, and selling to a degree that at length tempted the cupidity of a rapacious king. It was during that period that our great cathedrals and all our old parish churches were built; and when, because of a divorce dispute, the Eighth Henry resolved to cut the Church in England altogether adrift from the Church of Rome, he adopted a measure of Disendowment which, though not complete, was very sweeping, and proved in the most absolute form the right of the State to deal as it willed with the property of the Church.

In the preamble of the Act dissolving the lesser monasteries, it is declared that “the Lords and Commons, by a great deliberation, finally be resolved that it is and shall be much more to the pleasure of Almighty God, and for the honour of this His realm, that the possessions of such small religious houses, now being spent, spoiled, and wasted for increase and maintenance of sin, should be used and committed to better uses.” The State in this asserted a right it had never forfeited, and which, by successive Acts of Parliament, has been specifically retained. No one to-day would defend the fashion in which Henry took property which had been devoted to certain public uses and lavished it upon favourites and friends. The main point, however, is not the manner of disposal, but the fact that it could be disposed of at all; and when any one doubts the power of the State regarding the property of the Church, a reference to what Parliament has done in the matter is sufficient to show constitutional precedent for Disendowment.

But though much was taken from the Church at the Reformation period, much was left, and it was left to a body differing in many important particulars from that which had been despoiled. As Mr. Arthur Elliott, M.P., a Whig writer, observes in his book “The State and the Church,” “It would be to give a very false notion of the position of the Church towards the State to omit all mention of the sources from which, as regards its edifices, the Church of England finds itself so magnificently endowed. In the main, the wealth of the Church in this respect was inherited, or rather acquired, at the time of the Reformation, from the Roman Catholics, who had created it. The Roman Catholics and the English nation had been formerly one and the same. When the nation, for the most part, ceased to be Catholic, these edifices, like other endowments devoted to the religious instruction of the people, became the property of the Protestant Church of England, as by law established.”

The new Act of Parliament Church—for it had its doctrines and its discipline defined by statute—became possessed, therefore, of the cathedrals, the churches, much of the glebe, and a large portion of the tithe that had been given or granted to the Roman Catholic communion, which had held the ground for centuries. And succeeding monarchs, with the exception of Mary, so confirmed and added to these gifts that “the Judicious Hooker” was led to exclaim—“It might deservedly be at this day the joyful song of innumerable multitudes, and (which must be eternally confessed, even with tears of thankfulness) the true inscription, style, or title of all churches as yet standing within this realm, ‘By the goodness of Almighty God and His servant Elizabeth, we are.’”

And it was not only “His servant Elizabeth” who, among monarchs since the Reformation, has assisted the Houses of the Legislature to pecuniarily aid the Church. Queen Anne surrendered the first fruits, or profits of one year, of all spiritual promotions, and the tithe of the revenue of all sees, in order to create a fund for increasing the incomes of the poor clergy; but Queen Anne’s Bounty comes straight out of the national pocket, for, had our monarchs retained this source of income, it would have been taken into account when the Civil List was settled at the commencement of the reign, and at least £100,000 a year saved to the Exchequer. And the nation has even more directly helped the fund, Parliament having, between 1809 and 1829, voted considerably over a million towards it.

But this is not all. Dealing merely with national money appropriated to Church purposes during the present century, it may be added that in 1818 Parliament voted a million sterling for the purpose of building churches, that in 1824 a further sum of half a million was granted for the same purpose, and that a subsequent amount of close upon ninety thousand pounds has to be added to the total. And not only by large grants did Parliament help the Church. In the old days of Protection, when almost every conceivable article was taxed, the duty chargeable on the materials used in the building of churches was remitted, this amounting between 1817 and 1845 to over £336,000. A drawback was also granted on the paper used in printing the Prayer Book, and this, while the paper duty was levied, could scarcely have averaged less than a thousand a year. In small things, as in great, Parliament helped the Church, for an Act of George IV. specifically exempted from toll the carriage and horses used by a clergyman when driving to visit a sick parishioner.

I claim, therefore, that the State has a right to dispose of such property of the Church as was not given to it in recent times by private donors, knowing it would be appropriated to the purposes of a sect; and I claim it because the tithes were law-created, because the bulk of the possessions passed from one communion to another by force of law, and because the State has continued to pecuniarily aid the Church throughout the centuries during which she has existed. And, if constitutional precedent be demanded, they are to be found in abundance upon the statute book, notably in the measures affecting the monasteries, the Tithe Commutation Act, and the Act putting an end to the Established Church in Ireland.

If it be urged, as it sometimes is, that, because the original royal ordinance enforcing tithes was granted before our regular parliamentary system was in existence, Parliament has no power to deal with it, it must be answered that in all matters within these realms, touching either life or property, Parliament is supreme. And, as bearing even more directly upon the point raised, it may be added that rights of toll and market, granted to boroughs by royal charter before Parliaments were chosen as at present, have been altered and abolished by Parliaments since; and that Magna Charta itself, signed many years before Simon de Montfort called the first House of Commons into being, has been modified, and often modified, since that event.

If further proof be wanted, not only of the power but of the will of Parliament to interfere directly in the monetary affairs of an Established Church, the Act disendowing the Irish Establishment eighteen years ago, and another passed fifty years since, chopping and changing the salaries of the English bishops, may be referred to. And, regarding a further measure of the last half-century, the words of such a sturdy Conservative as Lord Brabourne, used in a letter written in 1887, are eminently satisfactory:—“The Tithe Commutation Act was nothing more nor less than the assertion by the State of its right to deal with tithes as national property.”

But, it may be said, the property, whether contributed by private benefaction or royal grant, was distinctly given to the Church, and ought not, therefore, to be taken away. I dispute both points of the contention. The property was allotted to a Church which acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope, and it is used by one which abjures it; to a Church possessed of seven sacraments, and used by one with only two; to a Church believing in transubstantiation, and used by one holding that doctrine to be a dangerous heresy; to a Church with an unmarried clergy, and used by one in which the large families of the poorer parsons are their stumbling-block and reproach; to a Church which performed its most sacred mysteries in the Latin tongue, and used by one whose ceremonies are delivered in a language understanded of the people. If it be true that the Church to-day is the Church as it has always been, why, in the name of common reason, was Cranmer, the Protestant, burned by Mary, and Campion, the Jesuit, hanged by Elizabeth?

From the fact that the Church of England is not a corporation—that is, it has not property in its own right, and what is possessed by its members is vested in them not as proprietors but as trustees—there flows the consequence that it is mainly the life interests of those engaged in clerical work which have to be considered. And those life interests will be considered and generously dealt with when the time for disendowment arrives.

And then comes a question which many will deem of all-importance—“How is the Church to exist afterwards?” or, to put the point in the extremest fashion, and in the words addressed to the clergy in the very first of the “Tracts for the Times,” “Should the Government of the country so far forget their God as to cut off the Church, to deprive it of its temporal honours and substance, on what will you rest the claims to respect and attention which you make upon your flock?” And the answer is that, if the Church be worthy to exist, it will be able, like other religious bodies, to stand upon the open and constant manifestation of its own excellences.

Look around and see what the voluntary system has done. In England it has planted a place of worship in every corner of the kingdom; in Wales it has saved from spiritual starvation a populace neglected by the Establishment; in Scotland it has founded a Free Church by sacrifices which were the marvel and the pride of a preceding generation; and in Ireland it has secured to the mass of the people the ministrations of their own religion, despite every bribe, persecution, and lure. Is it in England, where the Episcopalian system has most that is wealthy and all that is socially influential on its side, that a State endowment is needed to provide for its professors what the miners of Cornwall and the labourers of Carmarthen, the hardy toilers in the Highlands, and the poverty-stricken peasants of Connemara provide for themselves? If this be so, then no greater indictment could be levelled against the process of Establishment, no more certain proof could be afforded of the evils which follow in its train, than that it produced such a mean coldness of soul. But the supposition is so dishonouring to the great body of church-goers that its use proves the straits in which the defenders of the existing system find themselves.

Disendowment would undoubtedly reduce the larger salaries allotted to the clergy, and probably increase the smaller. A parson would then be paid according to his value to the parish, whether as preacher or administrator, and he would not draw a thousand a year for doing nothing, while his curate received eighty or a hundred for performing the work. The Church would no longer be a rich man’s preserve, wherein younger sons could obtain comfortable family livings, while their duty was done by ill-paid deputies. We should no longer see an Archbishop of Canterbury, with a salary of £15,000 a year, begging upon a public platform for worn-out garments for the poorer working clergy. A primate is conceivable at a third the cost, and the money thus saved to the Church alone would prevent the necessity for such a humiliating proceeding as openly asking for old clothes for toiling clergymen. With disendowment, in short, men would be paid according to their merits and not their family connections—according to their work and not their birth. And, further, the scandal of the sale of livings—the shame of the public advertisement of cures of souls as eligible according as they are in a hunting country, or near a fishing river, or close to “good society”—would be done away with. Would all these gains count as nothing to the Church, considered as a religious body?

The process of disendowment, then, is the necessary accompaniment of disestablishment; it is possible; it is just; and its effects would make for good. It is necessary, because if the Church is to be severed from the State on the ground that it has failed in its mission, it would be obviously out of the question to leave it possessed of the property given to it to secure that mission’s due performance. It is possible, because Parliament is not merely supreme in all such matters, but has shown within the past few years its capacity for disendowing a Church having precisely the same rights and privileges as the English Establishment. It is just, because no one sect has the right to property granted it on the ground that it represented the religious sentiment of the whole nation. And it would make for good in giving a more distinctively religious character to the clergy, in paying them according to their deserts and not according to the length of the purse that purchased them their livings, and in freeing a religious system from the ignoble associations of the auction mart.

Upon these grounds it is demanded that, with disestablishment, disendowment shall come. Life interests will be respected; all modern gifts to the Episcopalians as a distinct sect will be fairly dealt with; further than this the Establishment is not entitled to demand, and further than this Liberals will not be prepared to go.

XVI.—OUGHT EDUCATION TO BE FREE?

A question which is intimately connected in many minds with the Church is that of national education. It stood next to it in order in that early programme of Mr. Chamberlain which demanded “Free Church, free schools, free land, and free labour.”

This matter of free schools is not likely to create as much opposition as it would have done even a short time since, for no question awaiting settlement is ripening so rapidly. Experience is teaching in an ever-increasing ratio that certain defects exist in our system of national education which hinder its full development, some of which, at least, could be avoided by the abolition of fees.

The progress which has been made in public opinion within only half a century regarding the amount of aid that should be given to elementary schools, encourages the hope that more will yet be given, and that very speedily. It is but a little more than fifty years ago that a Liberal Ministry led the way in devoting a portion of the national funds to this purpose; and no one unacquainted with the history of that period could guess the number and the weight of the obstacles thrown in the way of even such a modest proposal as that Ministry made. The Tories, while not particularly anxious that the mass of the people should be educated at all, were decidedly desirous that such teaching as was given should be under the direct control of the Church. Archbishops and bishops, Tories, high and low, joined to continually hamper the development of any system of national education which afforded the Nonconformists the least privilege; but despite their every effort the movement spread. The annual grant of £20,000, which was commenced in 1834, grew by leaps and bounds. In a little more than twenty years it had become nearly half a million for Great Britain alone; in thirty years it had increased by close upon another quarter of a million; and in fifty years (and the growth in the meantime had been mainly the fruit of the Education Act, passed by the Liberal Ministry in 1870) it had touched three millions. And that sum, vast as it was, represented only the amount granted from the national exchequer, being supplemented by an even larger total raised by local rates.

So far has the nation gone in the path of State-aided and rate-aided education, and the question is whether it is not worth while to go the comparatively little way further which is needed to make elementary education free. For the fees which are now paid do not represent a quarter of the amount which the teaching costs. And not only so, but the existence of these fees is a continual hindrance to the working of the Act. The effect of the fee is to keep out of the board schools thousands of children who ought to be in them; and the attempt to enforce its payment increases the odium which almost necessarily attends upon compulsion.

“But,” it will be said, “where a parent is too poor to pay, the fee can be remitted.” That is true, and the extent to which the system of such remission is carried in some districts is one of the strongest arguments in favour of free education. It is desirable to get the children into the schools, but it is highly undesirable to do this by practically pauperizing the parents. If elementary education were free to all, all could partake of it without any appearance of favour on the one hand or shame on the other. But the independent poor have now the choice of making themselves still poorer by paying the fee for the education they are bound to have administered, or of losing their independence by asking the school board or the poor-law guardians for relief. And the consequence, of course, is that many who have no independence to lose, and are the least deserving of help, receive the assistance they are never backward to ask.