fable of the shield—progress and conservatism—english and french colonisation—law-abidingness—irish land question—true conservative legislation—ultra-conservatism—law and education—patriotism—jingoism and parochialism—true statesmanship—free trade and protection—capital and labour—egoism and altruism—socialism and laissez faire—contracts—rights and duties of landlords—george’s theory—state interference—railways—post office—telegraphs—national defence—concluding remarks.
a well-known fable tells how in the olden time two knights were riding in opposite directions along a green road overarched by the trees of an ancient forest. it was a bright morning in early summer, with the green leaves freshly bursting in contrasted foliage; the sun had just risen over the tops of the trees in clouds of golden and crimson glory; dewdrops were glittering like diamonds on every twig and blade of grass; and the joyous birds carolling their loudest song to greet the opening day.
everything was fresh and cheerful as of a new-born earth, and so were the spirits of the two youthful knights, who were pricking forth in search of adventures. he whose face was turned towards the west, where the rising sun had last set, wore a primrose scarf over his cuirass, and had on his shield a quaint device, which,[228] on closer inspection, might be seen to be a tombstone with the inscription,
‘i was well, would be better, and here i am.’
he rode along musing on the heroic legends of the past, and wishing that he had been a knight of arthur’s round table to ride out with the blameless king against invading heathen.
the second knight, whose face was turned towards the rising sun, bore an azure shield with a different device. on it was depicted the good sir james douglass charging the serried paynim army, and, as he charged, flinging before him into the hostile ranks the casket containing the heart of robert bruce, and shouting for battle-cry—
go thou aye forward, as was thy wont.
as he rode his fancy wrought the fairy web of a day-dream, in which he saw himself delivering the fair princess liberty from the fiery dragon prejudice and the stolid giant obstruction.
the knights met just where an ancient oak of mighty bulk stretched overhead a huge branch across the path, as some aged athlete might stretch out an arm rigid with gnarled and knotted muscles, to show younger generations how olympian laurels were won when pollux or hercules plied the cestus. from this branch a shield hung suspended.
‘good morrow, fair knight,’ said he of the primrose scarf; ‘prithee tell me if thou knowest what means this golden shield suspended here.’
‘i marvel at it myself, good sir knight,’ responded the other; ‘but you mistake in calling the shield golden; it is of silver.’
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‘your eyes must be of the dullest,’ said the first knight, ‘if you mistake gold for silver.’
‘not so dull as yours,’ retorted the other, ‘if you mistake silver for gold.’
the argument waxed hot, and, as usual in such cases, as tempers grew weak adjectives grew strong. soon, like the old homeric heroes when greek met trojan
far on the ringing plains of windy troy,
winged words of fire and fury darted from each mouth, and epithets were exchanged, of which ‘stupid old tory’ and ‘low, vulgar radical’ were among the least unparliamentary. at length the fatal words ‘you lie’ escaped simultaneously from both, and on the instant spears were couched, steeds spurred, and, red with rage, they encountered each other in full career. such was the momentum that both men and horses rolled over, even as the templar went down before the spear of ivanhoe within the lists of ashby-de-la-zouch. but, like the redoubted knight brian de bois-guilbert, each sprang to his feet and drew his sword, eager to redeem the fortune of war in deadly combat. like two surly boars with bristling backs and foaming tusks quarrelling for the right of way in indian jungle, or tawny lions in numidian desert tearing one another to pieces for the smiles of a leonine helen, the heroes clashed together, cutting, slashing, parrying, foyning, and traversing, until at length, bleeding and breathless, they paused for a moment, leaning on their swords to recover second wind.
just then an aged hermit appeared on the scene, drawn thither by the sound of the combat.
‘pause, my sons,’ he said, ‘and tell me what is the cause of this furious encounter.’
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‘yonder false villain protests,’ said the one, ‘that the shield which hangs there is of gold.’
‘and that lying varlet persists that it is of silver,’ said the other.
the hermit smiled, and said, ‘hold your hands, good sirs, for a single moment, and use your remaining strength to exchange places and look at the opposite side of the shield.’
they obeyed his words, and found to their confusion that they had been fighting in a quarrel in which each was right and each wrong.
‘father,’ they said, ‘we are fools. grant us thy pardon for our folly and absolution for our sin.’
‘absolution,’ said the hermit, ‘is soon granted for faults which arise from the innate tendency of poor human nature. wiser and older men than you are prone to see only their own side of a question. come, then, with me to my humble hermitage; there will i dress your wounds and offer you my frugal fare; happy if from this lesson you may learn for the rest of your lives, before indulging in vehement assertions and proceeding to violent extremities, to “look at the other side of the shield.”’
the application of this fable to the polarity of politics will be obvious to every intelligent reader. as the earth is kept in its orbit by the due balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces, so is every civilised society held together by the opposite influences of conservative and progressive tendencies. the conservative tendency may be likened to the centripetal force which binds the mass together, while the progressive one resembles that centrifugal force which prevents it from being concentrated in a rigid and inert central body without life or[231] motion. as herbert spencer truly says, ‘from antagonistic social tendencies there always results not a medium state, but a rhythm between opposite states. now the one greatly preponderates, and presently, by reaction, there comes a preponderance of the other.’ so it is with the antagonism of conservative and liberal tendencies. in the societies of the ancient world, and to the present day in the east, the conservative tendency unduly preponderates, and they crystallise into inert masses in the form of despotisms, and of sacerdotal or administrative hierarchies. at times the pent-up forces which make for change accumulate, and, as in the french revolution, explode with destructive violence, shattering the old and bringing in new eras. but unless the balance between liberty and order is tolerably preserved in the individual citizens whose aggregate forms the society, after a period more or less prolonged of violent oscillations they crystallise anew into fresh forms, in which another military dynasty, or it may be administrative centralisation under the name of a republic, again asserts the preponderance of the centripetal force.
the happiest nations are those in which the individual character of individual citizens supplies the requisite balance. an ideal society is one in which every citizen is at the same time liberal and conservative; law-abiding, and yet with a strong instinct for liberty of thought and action, for progress and for individual independence. it is among the teutonic races, especially when they are placed in favourable conditions as in new countries, or in old countries where for ages
freedom has widened slowly down,
from precedent to precedent,
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that this happy ideal is most nearly realised. hence it is that these races are more and more coming to the front and surviving in the struggle for existence.
the contrast of english and french colonisation affords a striking instance of this difference of races. a century and a half ago france stood as well as england in the race for colonial supremacy. she had the start of us in canada, and her pioneers had explored the great lakes, the mississippi, and a large part of the continent of north america west of the rocky mountains. to-day there are sixty millions of an english-speaking population in that continent, while french is scarcely spoken beyond the single province of quebec. political events had doubtless something to do with this result; but it has been mainly owing to the innate qualities of the two races, for even the genius of chatham might have failed to establish our supremacy if it had not been backed by the superior intelligence, energy, and staying power of the english colonists. the ultimate cause of the triumph of the english over the french element in america and india is doubtless to be found in the stronger individualism of the former. the character of the french is eminently social, they like to live in societies, and shrink from encountering the hardships and still more the isolation of the life of early settlers. they like to be administered, and shrink from the responsibility of hewing out, each for themselves, their own path in the relations of civil life or in the depths of prim?val forests.
it is so to the present day, and they fail conspicuously in creating a large french population even at their own doors in algeria; while in their more distant colonies they conquer and annex, but to see their commerce[233] fall into the hands of english, germans, and chinese, as in cochin china, or to stagnate as in new caledonia. as a witty french writer puts it, the trade of a remote french colony may be summed up as—imports, absinthe and cigars; exports, stamped paper and red-tape. individualism in this case has been fairly pitted against socialism, and has beaten it out of the field by the verdict of fact, which is more conclusive than any amount of abstract argument.
to return, however, to the field of politics. where the essential quality of being law-abiding is wanting in individuals, it is hopeless to look for real liberty. the centripetal force in societies, as in planets, must be supplied somehow, or they would fly into dissolution; and if not by the integration of the tendencies of the individual units, then by external restrictions. socialists may be allowed to make inflammatory harangues in a non-explosive atmosphere, but hardly to let off their fireworks in a powder-magazine. in order, however, that a nation shall be law-abiding, it is essential that the great majority should feel that, on the whole, the law is their friend. it is not in human nature to love that which injures, or to respect that which is felt to be unjust. the volcanic explosion of the french revolution was due to the feeling of the french nation, with the exception of a few courtiers, nobles, and priests, that the existing order of things was their enemy, and law a tool in the hands of their oppressors. even among english-speaking races we find, in the unfortunate instance of ireland, that under specially unfavourable circumstances the same effects may be produced by the same causes. what has english law practically meant for centuries to an average peasant of[234] kerry or connemara? it has meant an irresistible malevolent power, which comes down on him with writs of eviction to compel him to pay a high rent on his own improvements. more than half the population of ireland consists of tenants and their families occupying small holdings, paying less than 10l. a year of rent. of an immense majority of these small holdings two things may be safely asserted: first, that the total gross value of the produce is insufficient, after paying the rent, to leave a decent subsistence for the cultivator. secondly, that this rent is levied to a great extent on the improvements of the tenant or his predecessors. throughout the poorer parts of ireland the greater part of the soil, in its natural state of bog or mountain, is not worth a rent of a shilling an acre; but some poor peasant, urged by the earth-hunger which results from the absence of other sources of employment, squats upon it, builds a wretched cottage, delves, drains, fences, and reclaims a few acres of land so as to bear a scanty crop of oats and potatoes. when he has done so the landlord or landlord’s agent comes to him and says, ‘this land is worth ten or fifteen shillings an acre, according to the standard of rents in the district, and you must pay it or turn out;’ and the law backs him in saying so by writs of eviction and police. put yourself in poor pat’s place, and say if you would love the law and be law-abiding.
it would take me too far from the scope of this volume into the field of contemporary politics if i attempted to point out who is to blame for this state of things, or what are the remedies. it is enough to say that this is the real irish problem, and to point to it as an instance of the calamitous effects which inevitably[235] follow when the instincts of a whole population are brought by an unfavourable combination of circumstances into necessary and natural antagonism with the laws which they are bound to obey.
conservative legislation, by whatever party it is introduced, really means making the law correspond with the common sense and common morality of all except the criminal and crotchety classes, so that the majority may feel it to be their friend. for instance, the most truly conservative measure of recent times was probably that which legalised trades’ unions and gave working-men full liberty to combine for an increase of wages. the old legal maxim, that such combinations were illegal as being in restraint of trade, was so obviously an invention of the members of the upper caste who wore horsehair wigs, to give their fellows of the same caste who employed labour an unfair advantage, that it could not fail to cause feelings of discontent and exasperation among the masses of working-men. by its repeal the sting has been taken out of socialism, and the british working-man has come to be, in the main, a reasonable citizen, on whom incitements to violence in order to inaugurate utopias, fall as lightly as the howlings of the barren east wind on the chimney-tops. it has led also to reasonable and peaceful adjustment of disputes between employers and labourers by arbitration and sliding-scales instead of by strikes and lock-outs. in the united states of america the law-abiding instinct is even stronger. we find that strikes attended with violence are almost always confined mainly to the foreign element of recently imported immigrants, and that the native-born american citizen[236] considers the laws as his own laws, and is determined to have them respected.
the balance between the conservative and progressive tendencies is, however, at the best, always imperfect, and inclines too much sometimes in one and sometimes in the other direction. in england the conservative tendency has had on the whole too much preponderance. i do not speak of political institutions, for in these of late years the balance has been pretty equally preserved; but in practical matters there is still a good deal of old-fashioned stolid obstruction. this is most apparent in law and in education. the common or judge-made law, though on the whole well-intentioned and upright, is fettered by so many technicalities and musty precedents, that it fails in a great many instances to be, what civil law ought to be, a cheap, speedy, and intelligible instrument for enforcing honest dealings between man and man. one of our greatest railway contractors once said to me, ‘if i want to make an agreement which shall be absolutely binding, i make it myself on a sheet of note-paper; if i want to have a loophole, i send it to my lawyer to have it drawn up in legal language and engrossed on sheets of parchment.’ another man of large experience in commercial and financial matters laid down this axiom: ‘if you want to know what is the law in a doubtful case, reason out what is the common-sense view of it, and assume that the direct opposite is probably the law.’ these may be extreme instances, as all such epigrammatic sentences generally are, but it is undeniable that they have a considerable basis of substantial truth; and that law, with its dilatory processes, its enormous expense, and its uncertain conclusions, may[237] be, and often is, not an instrument of justice, but a weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer or of a dishonest rich man, to extort blackmail or to defeat just claims.
again, what nation but england would tolerate so long a system of land law, so bristling with antiquated technicalities, so tedious, and so expensive, as almost to amount to a prohibition of the transfer of land in small quantities; or could let the private interests of a mere handful of professional lawyers stand in the way of a codification of laws and a registration of titles?
education is another subject which shows how difficult it is to move the sluggish ultra-conservative instincts of the english mind in the direction of progress, when not stimulated by political conflict. what is education? the word tells its own story; it is to draw out, not to cram in; to unfold the capacities of the growing mind, strengthen the reasoning faculty, create an interest in the surrounding universe; in a word, to excite a love of knowledge and impart the means of acquiring it. for the mass of the population, education is necessarily confined in a great measure to the latter object. the three r’s—reading, writing, and arithmetic—are indispensable requisites, and the acquirement of these, with perhaps a few elements of history and geography, absorbs nearly all the time and opportunity that can be afforded for attendance at school. for any culture beyond this the great majority must depend on themselves in after life. but there are a large number of parents of the upper and middle classes who can and do keep their children at school for eight or ten years, and spend a large sum of money in giving them what is called a higher education. what is there to[238] show for this time and money, even in the case of the highest schools, which ought to give the highest education? on the credit side, a little latin and less greek, plenty of cricket and athletics, good physical training, and, best of all, on the whole a manly, honourable, and gentlemanlike spirit. but on the debit side, absolute ignorance, except in the case of a few unusually clever and ambitious boys, of all that a cultivated man of the nineteenth century ought to know. no french, no german, and, what is worse, no english. the average boy can neither write his own language legibly nor grammatically, and, if he goes straight from a public school into a competitive examination, stands an excellent chance of being plucked for spelling. and, what is worst of all, he not only knows nothing, but cares to know nothing; his reasoning faculty has never been cultivated, and his interest in interesting things has never been awakened. what is the first lesson he has had to learn? ‘propria qu? maribus dicantur mascula dicas,’ that is, words appropriated to males are called masculine—a lesson which elicits as much reasoning faculty, and creates as much interest, as if he had been made to commit to memory that things made of gold are called golden. suppose instead of this that the lesson had been that two volumes of hydrogen combine with one volume of oxygen to form water. the exercise to the memory is the same, but how different is the amount of thought and interest evoked, especially if the experiment is made before the class and each boy has to repeat it for himself! how many new subjects of interest would this open up in the mind of any lad of average intelligence! how strange that there should be airs other than the air we breathe, which can be[239] weighed and measured, and that two of them by combining shall produce their exact weight of a substance so unlike them as water! or if the exercise of a class were to look through a microscope at the leaf of a plant or wing of an insect, and try who could best draw what they had seen and write a description of it in a legible hand and in good english, how many faculties would this call into play compared with the dull routine of parsing a latin sentence or writing a halting copy of greek iambics! even grammar, the one thing which is supposed to be taught thoroughly, is taught so unintelligently that it awakens no interest beyond that of a parrot learning by rote. from ‘propria qu? maribus’ the scholar passes to ‘as in pr?senti perfectum format in avi,’ without an attempt to explain what language really means, how it originates from root-words, and how these inflections of ‘as’ and ‘avi’ are part of the devices which certain families of mankind, including our own, have invented as a mechanism for attaching shades of meaning, such as present and past, to the primitive root. even the alphabet intelligently taught opens up wide fields of interesting matter as to the history of ancient nations, and their successive attempts to analyse the component sounds of their spoken words, and to pass from primitive picture-writing to phonetic symbols. but the instructors of the budding manhood of the élite of the nation, like gallio, ‘care for none of these things,’ and the organisation of our higher schools seems to be stereotyped on the principle that they are made for teachers rather than for scholars, and that their chief raison d’être is to enable a limited number of highly respectable gentlemen from the universities to realise comfortable incomes with a maximum of holidays[240] and a minimum of trouble. and the parents support the system because so many of them really reverence rank more than knowledge, and are willing to compound for their sons growing up ignorant, idle, and extravagant, if by any chance they can count a lord or two among their acquaintance.
mr. francis galton, in the course of his interesting inquiries as to the effect of heredity and education on character and attainments, took the very practical course of addressing a set of questions to some hundred and eighty of our most distinguished men as to the hereditary qualities of their ancestors, and the various influences which they considered had done most to promote or to retard their success in life. of course he received a variety of answers, ‘quot homines tot sententi?,’ but upon one point there was a striking unanimity. ‘they almost all expressed a hatred of grammar and the classics, and an utter distaste for the old-fashioned system of education. there were none who had passed through this old high and dry education who were satisfied with it. those who came from the greater schools usually did nothing there, and have abused the system heartily.’
and yet the system goes on, and the eton latin grammar will probably be taught, and hexameters written, for another generation. surely the needle swings here too strongly towards the negative or obstructive pole.
the instances are so numerous in social and practical life in which it is necessary to look at both sides of the shield that the difficulty is in selection. take the case of patriotism. patriotism is beyond all doubt a great virtue—in fact, the fertile mother of many of the[241] higher and heroic virtues. who does not sympathise with the legends of wallace and william tell, and scorn with walter scott
the man with soul so dead
who never to himself has said,
this is my own, my native land?
and yet how thin a line of partition separates it from narrow-minded arrogance and insolent ignorance! reflected in the latter form from paris, in hysterical shouts now of ‘à berlin, à berlin!’ and now ‘à bas perfide albion!’ we call it ‘chauvinism,’ and recognise it as an unlovely exhibition. but call it ‘jingoism,’ and let it take the form of the bellowings of some stupid bull, as the red flag, now of a french and now of a russian scare, crosses his line of vision, and we are blind to its deformity. still there is another side to the shield, for even ‘jingoism,’ which is only another word for patriotism run mad, is more respectable than the opposite extreme of a sordid and narrow minded parochialism, which shrinks behind the ‘silver streak,’ measures everything by the standard of pounds, shillings, and pence, and, with what tennyson calls
the craven fear of being great,
groans over the responsibilities of extended empire. the growth of such a spirit among prominent politicians of the advanced liberal school seems to me one of the most alarming symptoms of the day; but i take comfort when i reflect that the most democratic community in the world, that of the united states, is precisely the one which has shown most determination to maintain its national greatness, if necessary by the sword, and has made the greatest sacrifices for that object. if[242] the ‘copperheads’ were a miserable minority in america, why should we be afraid of our ‘english copperheads’ ever becoming a majority in old england?
in this, as in all similar cases, it is evident that true statesmanship consists in hitting the happy mean, and doing the right thing at the right time; and that true strength stands firm in the middle between the two opposite poles, while weakness is drawn by one or other of the conflicting attractions into
the falsehood of extremes.
when sir robert peel some forty years ago announced his conversion by the unadorned eloquence of richard cobden, and free trade was inaugurated, with results which were attended with the most brilliant success, every one expected that the conversion of the rest of the civilised world was only a question of time, and that a short time. few would have been found bold enough to predict that forty years later england would stand almost alone in the world in adherence to free-trade principles, and that the protectionist heresy would not only be strengthened and confirmed among continental nations such as france and germany, but actually adopted by large and increasing majorities in the united states, canada, australia, and other english-speaking communities. yet such is the actual fact at the present day. in spite of the cobden club and of arguments which to the average english mind appear irresistible, free trade has been steadily losing ground for the last twenty years, and nation after nation, colony after colony, sees its protectionist majority increasing and its free-trade minority dwindling.
[243]
it is evident there must be some real cause for such a universal phenomenon. in countries like france and russia we may attribute it to economical ignorance and the influence of cliques of manufacturers and selfish interests; but the people of germany, and still more of the united states, canada, and australia, are as intelligent as ourselves, and quite as shrewd in seeing where those interests really lie. they are fettered by no traditional prejudices, and their political instincts rather lie towards freedom and against the creation of anything like an aristocracy of wealthy manufacturers. and yet, after years of free discussion, they have become more and more hardened in their protectionist heresies.
what does this prove? that there are two sides to the shield, and not, as we fancied in our english insularity, only one.
free trade is undoubtedly the best, or rather the only possible, policy for a country like england, with thirty millions of inhabitants, producing food for less than half the number, and depending on foreign trade for the supplies necessary to keep the other half alive. it is the best policy also for a country which, owing to its mineral resources, its accessibility by sea to markets, its accumulated capital, and the inherited qualities, physical and moral, of its working population, has unrivalled advantages for cheap production. nor can any dispassionate observer dispute that in england, which is such a country, free trade has worked well. it has not worked miracles, it has not introduced an industrial millennium, the poor are still with us, and it has not saved us from our share of commercial depressions. but, on the whole, national wealth has greatly increased, and, what is more important, national well-being[244] has increased with it, the mass of the population, and especially the working classes, get better wages, work shorter hours, and are better fed, better clothed, and better educated than they were forty years ago.
this is one side of the shield, and it is really a golden and not an illusory one. but look at the other side. take the case of a country where totally opposite conditions prevail: where there is no surplus population, unlimited land, limited capital, labour scarce and dear, and no possibility of competing in the foreign or even in the home market with the manufactures which, with free trade, would be poured in by countries like england, in prior possession of all the elements of cheap production. it is by no means so clear that protection, to enable native industries to take root and grow, may not in such cases be the wisest policy.
take as a simple illustration the case of an australian colony imposing an import duty on foreign boots and shoes. there is not a doubt that this is practically taxing the immense majority of colonists who wear and do not make these articles. but, on the other hand, it makes the colony a possible field for emigration for all the shoemakers of europe, and shoemaking a trade to which any australian with a large family can bring up one of his sons. looking at it from the strict point of view of the most rigid political economist, the maximum production of wealth, which is the better policy? the production of wealth, we must recollect, depends on labour, and productive labour depends on the labourer finding his tools—that is, employment at which he can work. a labourer who cannot find work at living wages is worse than a zero: he is a negative quantity as far as the accumulation of wealth is concerned. on the[245] other hand, every workman who finds work, even if it may not be of the ideally best description, is a wealth-producing machine. what he spends on himself and his family gives employment to other workmen, and the work must be poor indeed if the produce of a year’s labour is not more than the cost of a year’s subsistence. the surplus adds to the national capital, and thus capital and population go on increasing in geometrical progression. the first problem, therefore, for a new or a backward country is to find ‘a fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ for as many hands as possible. the problem of making that employment the most productive possible is a secondary one, which will solve itself in each case rather by actual practice than by abstract theory.
this much, however, is pretty clear, that in order to secure the maximum of employment it must be varied. all are not fit for agricultural work, and, even if they were, if the conditions of soil and climate favour large estates and sheep or cattle runs rather than small farms, a large amount of capital may provide work for only a small number of labourers. on social and moral grounds, also, apart from dry considerations of political economy, progress intelligence and a higher standard of life are more likely to be found with large cities, manufactures, and a variety of industrial occupations than with a dead level of a few millionaires and a few shepherds, or of a few landlords and a dense population of poor peasants. if protection is the price which must be paid to render such a larger life possible, it may be sound policy to pay it, and the result seems to show that neither it nor free trade is inconsistent with rapid progress, while, on the other hand, neither of them[246] affords an absolute immunity from the evils that dog the footsteps of progress, and from the periods of reaction and depression which accompany vicissitudes of trade.
here, as in other cases, there are two sides of the shield, and true statesmanship consists in seeing both, and doing the right thing, at the right place, and at the right time. if free trade is, as we believe, ultimately to prevail, it will be an affair of time. the real trial of protection comes when it has stimulated production to a point which gluts the home market and leaves a surplus which must be exported. exports of articles the cost of which has been artificially raised by protection, cannot compete in the world’s market with the cheaper products of free-trade countries. vicissitudes therefore of prosperity and depression must tend to become more frequent and more severe, and, if production goes on, a point must be reached where, at whatever cost, it must either be arrested or made capable of competing in the wider market. the united states are probably not far from such a point, and it would have been already reached but for the immense and unexhausted resources of that vast continent. in france the point has apparently been reached, and we find that, with a lower scale of wages than in england, it is becoming more and more difficult every day to maintain that lower scale, and the export trade of its manufactured goods to foreign markets.
protection, leading to higher wages and profits than can be permanently maintained, and artificially enhancing the cost of living to the working classes, threatens, more and more every day, to introduce strained relations between capital and labour in most countries of europe.
the relation between capital and labour affords a good[247] instance of the inevitable error of applying hard and fast logical conclusions to the complex and ever-varying problems of actual life. ricardo and other distinguished writers on political economy have assumed that the two constitute a fundamental antagonistic polarity. wealth, they say, is the joint product of capital and labour, and, as in the case of a cake which has to be divided between c and l, the more c gets the less is left for l, and vice versa. the theory sounds plausible: but what says fact? in the most unmistakable manner it pronounces, as the outcome of practical experience, that the profits of capital and the wages of labour rise and fall together. high profits mean high wages, rising profits rising wages, falling profits falling wages. it has been proved so in a thousand instances, and not one can be quoted where the one factor has varied in an inverse, and not in a direct, ratio with the other. it is obvious that there must be some fallacy in ricardo’s argument. the fallacy is this: he assumes the cake to be of fixed dimensions, whereas in point of fact it varies, sometimes diminishing to zero, or even to a negative quantity, at others expanding to many times its original size. a new gold-field is discovered in a remote country, and forthwith profits rise to cent. per cent., and wages to a pound a day; a bad season and depression of trade overtake an old country, and the gross value of the produce of many a farm is insufficient to cover expenses and depreciation, even if the labourers worked for nothing. the polarity is therefore confined to the limited and temporary case of the division of the profit, where there is a profit, in particular trades and in individual instances. and this is regulated mainly by the accustomed scale of wages and standard of living of the workmen,[248] and their opportunities of finding employment elsewhere if dissatisfied with the terms offered to them. on the whole, it may be said that capital has the best of it on a rising, and wages on a falling, market. a manufacturer or mine-owner’s profit may rise from five to twenty per cent. without quadrupling the rate of wages; but, on the other hand, it may fall from twenty per cent. to five, or even for a time below zero, without a proportionate diminution in the price paid for labour. capital is, in fact, the great insurer of labour, the flywheel which regulates the motion of the industrial machine. this will be best illustrated by a practical instance. the brighton railway company for several consecutive years paid no dividend, or only a trifling amount, on the shareholders’ capital, but during the whole of this time it gave steady employment at good wages to upwards of ten thousand workmen. the blaenavon coal and iron company in south wales was for many years a losing concern, and successive capitalists lost the best part of a million pounds in it, until at length it was reorganised with a small capital and became a fairly prosperous concern. during the whole of this time it gave employment at fair wages to several thousand workmen. which had the best of it in these two cases, capital or labour, and where would the workmen have been on any communistic or co-operative system? in fact it will be apparent to any one who will study dispassionately the statistics of any line of inquiry, such as the scale of wages, the price of provisions, the accumulations of savings banks and provident societies, &c., for the last twenty years, that the working classes have had the lion’s share of the vast increase which has taken place in the wealth and income of[249] the nation. i am glad that it is so, for it is better, both morally and politically, that the condition of the masses should be improved, and their standard of living raised, than that capital should accumulate too exclusively in large masses.
still there is a good deal to be said for such large accumulations. let us go to the united states of america for an illustration, where everything is on a large scale, and colossal fortunes have been made in a few years. the modus operandi by which most of these fortunes have been made may be described according to the way we look at it, either as railway jobbing or as pioneering the way in useful enterprise. the construction of the first railway across the continent to california is a typical instance. a clique or syndicate of wealthy speculators make surveys and estimates of a line across deserts and over mountain ranges, and ascertain pretty accurately what it will cost. they form a company with a capital of double that cost, and by subventions from the government, grants of land, and sale of mortgage bonds, raise the half really required, and hold the other half in shares as profit in paper. the line is made, and if the traffic turns out well, and there is a period of speculation in the money market, the paper is turned into dollars, and, if the line really costs, say, 10,000,000l. or 20,000,000l., the promoters realise an equal amount as profit.
this has two sides to it: it is doubtless bad for the public to have to pay rates which give a return on twice the actual cost, and the possession of a close monopoly in the hands of a few millionaires may be abused to the detriment of individual traders. but, on the other hand, the railway could not have been made in any[250] other way. if it had been necessary to wait until the slow growth of population insured such a traffic as would induce the ordinary public to subscribe for shares at par, you might have waited for twenty years before a single mile of railway was made west of the mississippi. nor is this all: the enormous profit realised in the first of these enterprises led to a rush of rich speculators into the lottery of pushing railways ahead of traffic, in which there were such magnificent prizes. the continent was covered by new railways built to create new traffic rather than to provide for that which already existed. and the traffic was created, though, as the lottery contained blanks as well as prizes, many of the original promoters were ruined. the second great line spanning the continent—the northern pacific—ruined two successive sets of promoters, and is only now beginning to be moderately successful.
but the final result has been that while british india, which went on what may be called the respectable system of getting a pound’s worth of work for every pound raised, has only 12,000 miles of railway, the united states, under the speculative system, has got 120,000 miles. i cannot doubt that the national wealth of america is greater at the present day than if there had been no jay goulds or vanderbilts, and the construction of her railways had been delayed on the average for twenty years.
the contrast between labour and capital or free trade and protection is only a particular case of the larger polarity between what is called in scientific language egoism and altruism, or, in more popular phraseology, individualism and socialism. according to one theory, the best result is obtained by leaving[251] individuals as free as possible to act on their own suggestions of their duties and interests, and confining the intervention of the state to enforcing laws for the protection of life and property, and such measures as are obviously necessary for the safety of society. according to the other theory, the state ought to interfere wherever the results of individual liberty lead to abuses, and should endeavour to create a society as near to ideal perfection as possible, by administering and regulating the public and private affairs of its citizens. it is obvious that the question has two sides, that extreme conclusions in either direction are, as is always the case, invariably false. individualism carried too far would disintegrate society. it would be impossible to leave it to the short-sighted selfishness of every citizen to say whether an army and navy should be maintained for national defence, and taxes should be levied for their support.
individualism also easily passes over into a hard and cruel selfishness, which recognises no obligation beyond the letter of the law, and acts practically on the principle of ‘every one for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.’ it is this phase of individualism which makes enthusiasts and men of strong moral and religious sympathies declaim so vehemently against laissez faire, and cry aloud, like carlyle, for a hero or benevolent despot who is to scourge humanity into the practice of all the virtues.
on the other hand, socialism, if not confined within rigid limits of experience and common sense, is even more destructive in its consequences. civilised society is based on the security of private property and the observance of contracts. if these are liable, not merely[252] to be regulated in extreme and exceptional cases, but to be absolutely condemned in principle, as by socialists of the proudhon school, who declare, ‘la propriété c’est le vol;’ or overruled and set aside whenever they are thought to conflict with humanitarian scruples or sentimental aspirations, society would be dissolved into its elements, to crystallise anew about some military dictator or other strong form of repressive government, who could restore it to a state of stable equilibrium in accordance with these fundamental laws.
no society based on the community of goods has ever existed, except on a very limited scale and for a very short time, under some strong temporary influence such as religious excitement. in the early christian church it only existed as long as its members were a handful of humble individuals who were impressed with the idea that the end of the world was close at hand, and that sacrifices made on earth would be repaid at an early day with compound interest in heaven. they acted on what was almost as much a principle of enlightened selfishness as if they had placed their money on the best possible security at the highest possible interest.
the only existing society, as far as i am aware, which has everything in common, is a small sect of shakers in the united states, which owes its limited success to two conditions—first, that there is no marrying or giving in marriage; secondly, that a member invented a patent rat-trap—conditions which are hardly likely to survive in the struggle for life and become a type for general adoption.
the nearest approach to communism in practical operation on a large scale is that of the village communities[253] of russia and parts of india, which certainly show no signs of being progressive types destined to gain ground. on the contrary, they fail to fulfil what is the first condition of an agricultural community, that of obtaining a fair average produce from the soil, and the more enterprising and intelligent moujiks or ryots invariably seek to obtain something which they can call their own and are not obliged to share with the idle and improvident. a conclusive objection to all schemes of socialism or communism is, that they not only crush out all individual initiative and enterprise in material life, but that they also destroy all incentives to individual charity and benevolence. why make sacrifices to help others, if they are already helped at your expense by the state? this is no theoretical objection, but has been proved practically by the history of the poor laws. what scope for individual charity was there in a parish like that in buckinghamshire, where under the old poor law the rate had risen to twenty shillings in the pound, and the cultivation of the soil was abandoned? or even in less extreme cases, any one who is acquainted with remote rural parishes inhabited by cotters and small farmers must be aware that the poor law operates strongly to destroy the feeling of manly independence and family affection which induced the poor to support their own aged and infirm relatives.
in many parts of scotland with which i am personally acquainted men who a generation ago would have thought it a disgrace to ask for help to support an aged father or mother, now think it only fair play, after having contributed for years to the poor rate, to try and get something out of it in return.
[254]
altruism, as herbert spencer well puts it, if carried to excess, defeats itself, for in annihilating egoistic vices it annihilates egoistic virtues, and the result is zero—a result which, as ‘nature abhors a vacuum,’ can happily never be attained, and the precepts of the sermon on the mount must always remain maxims of private morality, rather than of state regulation.
it is of little use, however, to deal with such generalities; as long as we confine ourselves to extreme instances on either side, it is as easy as it is idle to refute them. profitable discussion only begins when we enter on the wide intermediate space which lies between the extreme frontier provinces, and, instead of arguing for absolute conclusions, endeavour to discover the happy mean in doubtful cases, where there really are limitations of time and circumstance, and a good deal which may be reasonably said on each side of the question.
take for instance the case of contract, which has been so much discussed with reference to the irish question. nothing can be clearer than that the enforcement of contracts is one of the principal duties of a government. the principle of caveat emptor may occasionally lead to results not altogether consistent with strict morality; but there will always be fools in the world, and it is better they should pay for their folly than that the state should be perpetually interfering in the vain attempt to protect them. the bargain may be a bad one, but it is far better that men should be held to their bargains than that every loser should have a loophole provided to escape by appealing to some legal quibble or state-provided tribunal of arbitration.
but there are limits to this salutary principle. the[255] contract must be a free one, freely entered into by parties who meet on equal terms. if it is a compulsory one, which the weaker party has practically no option of refusing, the case is altered. thus, in the case of children, it is absurd to say that they are free agents in contracting for the disposal of their labour, and the state properly interferes by factory acts to limit the number of hours for which they are to work. so in the relations between landlord and tenant, whenever they meet on equal terms, and the tenant has an option of either taking or refusing to take a farm at the rent asked, both sides must be held to their bargain, however disadvantageous it may turn out for either of them. but if the landlord is practically omnipotent, and the tenant has no alternative but to promise to pay an impossible rent or to be turned out on the roadside and die of starvation, it is by no means so clear that the state should enforce the bargain unless the landlord submits to equitable terms. or again, if the rent is not due to the intrinsic value of the land, but is a confiscation of the tenant’s improvements, it is far from being self-evident that the law should look only at landlords’ rights and forget all about landlords’ duties.
it is a question rather of fact than of argument or assertion, whether such a state of things does or does not prevail at any particular time in any particular country. if the contracts were fair bargains entered into by free agents, they ought to be enforced whether prices have risen or fallen, leaving it to the humanity and self-interest of landlords to make reasonable reductions. but if they were no more equal bargains than those of slaves or factory-children, the state might[256] fairly interfere to attach equitable conditions to the enforcement of inequitable contracts.
the antithesis between the rights and duties of property, especially in the case of land, is one which raises many nice and difficult questions. some theorists, like henry george, are for solving it by ignoring the rights altogether. according to them, private property in land is the source of all the evils that afflict modern society; poverty, depressions of trade, low profits, and low wages are caused by the constant drift towards high rents, due to the possession by a small section of the community of a monopoly in that which is as much a necessity of existence as air or water. abolish private property in land, and straightway you will have the millennium.
in this extreme form the fallacy of the argument is obvious. you cannot stop at land, but must have the courage of your opinion, and go the full length, with proudhon, of denouncing all property as robbery. for if the right of individual property is the first condition of civilised society, you can hardly exclude that form of it which, in all ages and all countries, has been practically the most powerful incentive to progress and civilisation.
compare the united states of america under their homestead laws, with russia under a system of village communes; or the california of to-day with that of fifty years ago under the jesuit padres; and you will see that the desire to acquire property in land has been what may be called the high-pressure steam supplying the motive power to reclaim continents and multiply population.
nor in principle is there any argument for the confiscation of land which would not equally apply to the[257] confiscation of any other sort of property, when theorists, philanthropic at other people’s expense, thought that the owner had more than was good for him, or had acquired it as an unearned increment, without working for it. suppose two men, a and b, employed as engine-drivers on an american railway, have each saved a hundred dollars. the railway has been a failure: intended to reach a distant terminus, it has stopped halfway in a desert, for want of funds, and for years has paid no dividend. the hundred-dollar shares are only worth ten, and the land at the distant terminus is only worth ten dollars an acre. but a and b are sharp fellows, and see that if speculation ever revives the line will probably be completed, and both shares and land will become valuable. a buys ten shares with his hundred dollars, and b ten acres of land. the boom comes, the capital is found, the line completed, and the shares rise to par, and the land to a hundred dollars an acre. a and b have each realised nine hundred dollars by what may be described, as you like to put it, either as an unearned increment or as providence and foresight. on what principle can you confiscate b’s nine hundred dollars because it is in land, and leave a’s untouched because it is in shares?
on the other hand, there is no doubt that when we come to more complex cases, in which land is held in large masses, fenced in, not by the natural right of a man to the produce of his own exertions, but by artificial legal systems of inheritance and settlement, we are on neutral ground, where fair discussion is possible as to the limitations and conditions under which the state may afford its protection. landed property is more the creature of law, and runs greater risks in case of[258] revolution or communistic legislation, than personal property, which is more easily concealed or transferred. it is not unreasonable, therefore, that it should pay a higher insurance in the form of taxation, and especially when it passes by inheritance or settlement, when the new owner’s title is to a great extent artificial and the creation of the law. no one can dispute the abstract justice of a succession duty on all property, landed or personal, in proportion to its amount, passing by operation of law: the only question can be as to the amount, and the expediency of confining it within limits that shall not trench on confiscation or impair the desire to accumulate capital. and in the case of land, there is no doubt that there are a good many instances in which the question of the ‘unearned increment’ is raised more forcibly than in the case of ordinary property. take a practical instance within my own knowledge, for an illustration is often better than an argument. there was a mountain property in wales which, as a sheep or cattle farm, might be worth at the outside 800l. a year. coal and iron were discovered under it, capitalists sank pits and erected works, two or three sets lost their money; but the works were carried on, a large amount of labour was employed, and in course of time a town of some eight or nine thousand inhabitants, sprang up. the proprietor’s 800l. a year grew into 8,000l. from fixed rents and royalties, which he has enjoyed for the last thirty years, through good times and bad, without being called on to contribute a penny towards schools, churches, roads, sewers, water, or any of the local objects necessary for the civilised existence of the population of eight thousand whose labour has added to his wealth. i do not blame him: the law told him[259] to do what he liked with his own, and it probably never occurred to him that he was under any moral obligation to go beyond the law. but i do think that the law would have been more just, and better for the interests of the community, if it had made some portion of this unearned increment of 7,000l. a year liable for a contribution towards the sanitary and other objects essential for the decent existence of the town which had grown up on this property and given it this increased value. i cannot help thinking that centuries of landlord legislation, and of a public opinion based mainly on that of the wealthy and specially of the landed classes, have made our laws in many respects too favourable to the predominant interests, and that the swing of the pendulum now is, and properly is, in the direction of recognising the duties as well as the rights of property.
we must take care, however, not to let it swing too far in this direction, for of the two evils it is better to put up with occasional cases of hardship and oppression on the part of bad landlords than to endanger the security of property by reforms pushed to extremes at the dictation of impulsive masses, designing demagogues, or sentimental philanthropists.
herbert spencer, in his works on sociology, often dwells with great force on the evils which arise from state interference. there can be no doubt that it is very undesirable that the state should become a sort of jack-of-all-trades, and undertake branches of business which can be conducted by private enterprise. it is undesirable for two reasons: first, because the work is certain to cost more and be worse done; secondly, for the still more important reason that it tends to extinguish individual enterprise, strangle progress with red-tape,[260] and teach a nation to look, like children to outside guidance, rather than, like men to their own. still the question has two sides. whatever individual enterprise can do should be left to it; but there are, in the complex conditions of modern society, a number of things which cannot be done by individuals, and which must either be left undone or done by the state, or by some local authority, joint-stock company, or other quasi-monopoly sanctioned by the state. thus, if it were a question of bringing coals from newcastle by sea, no one would suggest that the state should interfere with the private enterprise of individual shipowners. but to bring them by land requires railways, and railways can only be built by capitals beyond the reach of private individuals. if the state had not delegated a portion of its powers to joint-stock companies, not a ton of coal would ever have been brought by land to london.
and if the state may thus occasionally delegate its powers with advantage to the community, there are cases in which it may, with equal advantage, undertake itself branches of the nation’s business. for instance, the postal service. the advantages of a cheap and uniform system for the collection and delivery of letters throughout the whole kingdom are so great that they far outweigh any theoretical objections to state interference. possibly some of the larger towns might have been as well or better served by private enterprise, but no non-paying district would have had a post-office, and the enormous commercial and educational benefits of the penny post would have been in a great measure lost to the community.
the case of telegraphs is not so clear. probably, on the whole, the advantages of a uniform state management[261] preponderate, but there are drawbacks which make it doubtful. even at a sixpenny rate a great deal of the telegraphic communication of the large towns and active centres of business is taxed to make up for the deficiency of the rest of the kingdom. and invention and improvement in telegraphy are no doubt checked to a considerable extent by creating a state monopoly whose first duty it is to try to satisfy its masters at the treasury by making the system pay.
when we come to railways we are on debateable ground, and it is fairly arguable that they should be worked by the state for the public good. but the objections here outweigh the advantages. every one who has any practical experience of the working of railways must be aware that the simplicity and uniformity of the penny postal system are totally inapplicable, and that the traffic of the country requires, above all things, great freedom and elasticity in meeting, day by day, the varying contingencies which arise. here is an illustration: in a certain town in france, on a railway worked by the state, it was determined to have a fête in order to raise funds for a hospital, and, as an attraction, to bring down from paris a small troop of actors and have a play in the evening. the question turned on the railway consenting to give them a reduced fare for the return journey. the manager of the railway was quite willing, but said that he had no power to alter the tariff without permission from the minister of public works. the permission was applied for, and the result was that it arrived exactly on the day twelve months after the fête had been held.
contrast this with the case of the general manager of the london and north western railway sitting in[262] his office at euston and receiving half a dozen telegrams asking him to quote special rates, one perhaps for beef from chicago to london, another for emigrants from hamburg to new york via liverpool, and all requiring telegraphic answers then and there, if the business is to be done at all.
again, if railways had been in the hands of the state, i do not suppose that we should have had half our present mileage; for the treasury would never have sanctioned the outlay of public money on lines which could not show the prospect of a fair return on the capital, and it would have vetoed any multiplication of trains or reduction of rates which threatened loss to the exchequer. i can speak with some authority on this point, for i have been both chairman of a railway company and secretary of the treasury, and i am certain that, in the former capacity, i have introduced important innovations, such as excursion trains and cheap periodical tickets, by which the public have greatly benefited, which i should have vetoed in the latter capacity.
still there may be exceptional cases, as that of ireland, where an unreasonable number of poor companies, in a poor country, wrangling among themselves, and giving a bad service at an excessive cost, intensify social and political evils, where the arguments in favour of a state purchase may outweigh the objections; and the extent and nature of state control over british railways is always a question fairly open to discussion.
in other departments, the supply of articles such as water and gas, and the enforcement of sanitary conditions, are probably best left to local authorities: in the latter case, under some central supervision to see[263] that the duty is not evaded. wherever neglect involves danger to others, as in the case of small-pox and other contagious epidemics, it is clear that the decision cannot be left to individuals, and the state is bound to interfere to enforce rational precautions.
so also the state is bound to undertake trades which are essential for the protection of the nation against foreign enemies. our dockyards and arsenals may, and doubtless do, often make mistakes and turn out expensive work; but we could not safely leave the building of ironclads and supply of cannon solely to private enterprise, for there is no such large and steady demand for such articles as would induce a number of private firms to erect works and keep up establishments adequate to supply the wants which might arise in an emergency. in all such matters, therefore, of national defence we must put up with a certain amount of drawbacks incidental to state management, and confine ourselves to endeavouring to reduce them to a minimum. and this is to a great extent within the power of the nation and its parliament, by applying common-sense principles of business to national expenditure, and seeing that while on the one hand we get as nearly as possible a pound’s worth of work for every pound spent, on the other hand we do not spend nineteen shillings uselessly, because some chancellor of the exchequer wants to gain momentary popularity by the ‘penny wise and pound foolish’ economy of docking the extra shilling off the necessary estimates. in private life a man gets on by knowing when to spend as well as when not to spend, and true economy has no greater foe than spasmodic parsimony alternating almost certainly with spasmodic extravagance. it would be[264] easy to multiply instances, for there are few phases of political and practical life to which the principle of polarity does not apply, where extremes are not false, and where there is not a good deal to be said on both sides of the question. but the very obviousness of the principle makes it difficult to deal with it generally without degenerating into commonplace, while to trace its application exhaustively in any one instance would require a volume. those who wish to pursue the subject further will do well to study the works of herbert spencer, where they will find the application of general principles to all the problems of sociology treated with a depth of philosophic insight and an abundance and aptness of illustration which i cannot pretend to equal. my ambition is of a humbler nature. i do not expect to set the thames on fire, or to produce a revolution in modern thought; but i do hope that the views which i have endeavoured to express may do somewhat to make some readers more tolerant and charitable in their judgments, less bitter and one-sided in controversy; and that whatever truth there may be in my ideas will contribute to form a small part, neither more nor less than it deserves, of the great body of truth which is handed down from the present to succeeding generations, and which becomes, long after i am there to witness it, the inheritance of the human race in the course of its evolution.
and now, before i take my final leave of the reader, let me for a few moments throw the reins on the neck of fancy, and suppose myself standing with that group of parsees by the shore of the indian ocean, listening to its murmured rhythm, inhaling the balmy air, watching the silver crescent of the new moon, and musing[265] on the wise sayings of the ancient sage; the sum of the reflections which i have tried to embody in the preceding pages would take form and crystallise in the following sonnet:—
hail! gracious ormuzd, author of all good,
spirit of beauty, purity, and light;
teach me like thee to hate dark deeds of night,
and battle ever with the hellish brood
of ahriman, dread prince of evil mood—
father of lies, uncleanness, envious spite,
thefts, murders, sensual sins that shun the light,
unreason, ugliness, and fancies lewd—
grant me, bright ormuzd, in thy ranks to stand,
a valiant soldier faithful to the end;
so when i leave this life’s familiar strand,
bound for the great unknown, shall i commend
my soul, if soul survive, into thy hand—
fearless of fate if thou thine aid will lend.
the end
