HN
15
C65
Subscription for 12 volumes, in cloth, $6.00; in paper, $2.50.
← •茶茶​茶茶
​OPICS
ERIES OF
JA SERV
A 486290
DUPL
•IME
Representative Essays
•ON QUESTIONS OF THE
OF THE DAY..
Vol. I. No. 1
MAY, 1883
Price 25 Cents
SOCIAL PROBLEMS
HISTORICAL Studies
OCIAL PROBlems·
ROBLEMS
QUESTIONS OF BElief
STUDIES IN BIOGRAPHY
INTERNATIONAL ISSUES
666666
STUDIES IN LITERATURE
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS
•NEW YORK.
G⋅P.PUTNAM'S SONS.
Copyright, 1883, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
ENTERED IN THE NEW YORK POST OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER

ARTES
1837)
LIBRARY VERITAS
SCIENTIA
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E-PLURIBUS UNUM •
TUF BOR
SQUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAM
CIRCUMSPICE
Number 1
HN
May, 1883
15
съ
TOPICS OF THE TIME
SOCIAL PROBLEMS
EDITED BY
TITUS MUNSON COAN

NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
27 AND 29 WEST 23D STREET
1883

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.
AFTER the announcements of this series had been com-
pleted, and while the first volume was passing through the
press, the attention of the publishers was called to the fact
that the general title selected by them was identical with that
used for one of the editorial departments of "The Century
Magazine."
The publishers need hardly say, that they have no desire to
trench in any way upon the editorial domain of "The Century."
But they do not see any possibility of the public's confusing
a series of volumes of essays, by European writers, with the
editorial studies which the readers of "The Century " have the
privilege of enjoying from month to month; and it does not
therefore seem to them necessary to alter their title.

COPYRIGHT.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
1883.
CONTENTS.
WORLD-CROWDING. By ROBERT GIFFEN, President
of the London Statistical Society.
EUROPE IN STRAITS. Blackwood's Magazine .
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE. By JEHAN DE
PARIS
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. By
J. WOULFE FLANAGAN
PAGE
I
· 43
·
75
. 103
A DEMOCRAT ON THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
By HENRY LABOUCHERE, M.P.
126
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE ABOUT HIS SOUL.
By AUBERON HERBERT.
154
THE EUROPEAN TERROR. By EMILE DE LAVE-
LEYE.
· 198
THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. Edin-
burgh Review
220323
229
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
WORLD-CROWDING.
AN ADDRESS BY ROBERT GIFFEN, PRESIDENT OF THE
STATISTICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.
THE TREMENDOUS GROWTH OF POPULATION.
WHAT I propose to discuss to-night are some
of the more common figures which lie on the
surface of the most accessible books. I shall
deal more especially with the most common
figures of all, viz., those of population. The
utility of the most general notion which we de-
rive from statistics of the distribution of the
earth's surface among different races and na-
tions is palpable. We can see at once that a
small corner like Europe is closely peopled by
the European family of nations, while the north-
ern peoples of that family also possess a large
new field of territory in North America, Aus-
tralia, and North Asia; and the more southern
peoples, a large new field of territory in Central
and South America. The European family is
7
2
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
།
thus, de facto, in possession of a large tract of
the earth's surface for its own habitation; per-
haps a half, or more, of the area available for
producing the food of civilized races. Further
consideration would show what races in particu-
lar, among the nations of Europe, have this in-
heritance; but the point is the predominance
of the European race, in mere extent of terri-
tory, coupled with the peculiarity that the bulk
of this population is still living on a compara-
tively narrow tract in Europe. The rest of the
world-China, India, and Africa—is possessed
by races of greatly differing type, on whose
territory Europeans do not press as colonists,
though they may settle in small numbers as
governors or traders, or both. Granting, on the
average, a difference in point of material strength
per unit of population between these European
and all other races, it is casy to understand at
once the idea that the future of civilization be-
longs to the European group, and that the prob-
lem of how the other races are to live in harmony
with the European group without being jostled,
and in what way they are to be affected by the
European civilization, is one of the most curious
presented for the solution of modern societies.
If the European numbers were less, the problem
might well be, whether European civilization, in
spite of its assumed superiority in type, could
maintain itself. The numbers and rate of in-
WORLD-CROWDING.
3
crease being what they are, it is easy to see that
the main problem resulting from the relations
of the European and non-European races can-
not be, whether the European civilization will
be able to maintain itself, but how it will be
affected by its varying relations to the other
races.
RELATIVE POSITION OF THE EUROPEAN POWERS.
Confining ourselves again to the European
group, and first of all to the nations within
European limits, another leading fact in inter-
national politics is immediately suggested by
the statement of the numbers of the people.
This is the existence of five leading powers,
Russia, Germany, Austria, France, and the
United Kingdom, each greatly stronger than
any of the other powers not among the five
(except two); each big enough to "take care of
itself," though there are, of course, differences
of strength between them; and, besides these,
the two others excepted, viz., Italy and Spain,
which come short of a first place, but by a less
degree than the minor states. All these rela-
tions of the great powers are based largely on
the mere enumeration of the peoples. Three
out of the five-viz., France, Austria-Hungary,
and the United Kingdom-have each about the
same population, in round numbers, 35,000,000
to 38,000,000; one of the others, Germany, has
4
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
about one-fourth more; and Russia only has a
much larger number in Europe, viz., 80,000,000.
While numbers, therefore, are not every thing,
or Russia would be preponderant (which is no-
toriously not the case), and Germany would not,
as it does, count for more than in proportion.
to its numbers, and the United Kingdom would
not have a peculiar position among the others
on account of the undeveloped state of its mili-
tary resources on the one side and the immensity
of its wealth and latent strength on the other
side; yet it is obvious that the mere numbers
are a most vital element in appreciating the
political position of these five powers and the
lesser powers around them. Perhaps if states-
men were always wise, and rulers and peoples
free from prejudice and passion, the popular
knowledge of the figures would be even more
serviceable than it is in demonstrating the abso-
lute insanity of offensive war. It is impossible
to conceive what object any of these five great
powers could gain by the misery and suffering
of war with another adequate to repay that mis-
ery and suffering. The very magnitude of the
wars forbids the possibility of gain.
The past history and future prospects of the
balance of power among these nations are also
illustrated by a mere consideration of the num-
bers. We have only to glance at the population
of the different states as at the close of the great
WORLD-CROWDING.
5
wars in 1815, and as they are now, to see that
great changes have happened.

1815.
ISSO.
Population.
Per cent
of
Total.
Per cent
Population.
of
Total.
Russia in Europe
Germany 2
Austria-Hungary
48,000,000
33
80,000,000¹ 34
•
21,000,000
142
45,000,000 19
28,000,000
20
38,000,000 16
29,000,000
202
37,000,000 16
17,000,000 12
35,000,000 15
France
•
United Kingdom
Total.
143,000,000 100 235,000,000 100
Thus in 1815 a compact France possessed
several millions more than the population of
Germany, nearly twice that of the United
Kingdom, and more than half that of Russia.
Austria-Hungary also came near, as it now does,
to the French numbers. Now the population of
Germany considerably exceeds that of France;
that of the United Kingdom is nearly equal,
and that of Russia is more than double. These
facts correspond very closely with the transfer
of military preponderance on the Continent
from France to Germany; and with the increas-
ing prominence of Russia, which would probably
be much more felt but for the simultaneous
I The exact figure by the last census is 84,000,000.
2 Germany was also much divided in 1815.
6
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
growth of Germany. They also explain why it
is that the United Kingdom, with an economic
and social development resembling that of
France in many respects, has fallen less behind
in the political race; why its relative position
among European powers, though not what it
was fifty years ago, is less weakened than that
of France has been. Fifty years ago it was the
leader among powers which were occupied in
restraining France, singly a greater power than
any. Now it is about equal in numbers to
France, although its whole position is changed
by the fact that no power, not even Germany,
preponderates to the same extent as France
once did.
As regards the future, again, what the figures.
suggest clearly is a possible rivalry between
Russia and Germany, and the further relative
decline of Austria and France; the United
Kingdom continuing to grow, but occupying
from year to year a different place, as its in-
terest in the so-called balance of power becomes
less. Our change toward Europe is, however,
affected in part by the growth of our relations
beyond the seas, which is another of the great
facts of population, evident on the surface of
the figures, that I shall afterward have to notice.
Of course these changes have had the effect
of raising questions of domestic as well as of
foreign interest; and here again we are indebted
2
WORLD-CROWDING.
7
to statistics mainly for the suggestion of the
questions. One of these questions is, in the
case of France, What are the causes and proba-
ble consequences, socially and economically, as
well as in its relations in respect of the balance
of power to its neighbors, of the stationariness
of the population? This is one of the most
remarkable facts, both in itself, and in compari-
son with the facts of other countries, which
population statistics disclose.
THE ENCROACHMENT UPON THE RESOURCES.
Another question presented is as to the in-
crease of population in countries like Germany
and Russia, and the rapid encroachment there
has been on the unused agricultural resources
of those countries. As the stationariness of
the population in France, however beneficial in
some social aspects, is not an unmixed good, be-
cause it weakens France in its external political
relations, so the increase of population in Ger-
many and Russia, while they still remain mainly
agricultural, appears to be attended by some
mischiefs. The social condition of the rural
population of Germany leaves much to be
desired, as we may see from the extensive emi-
gration, and from the difficulty of increasing
the national revenue. In Russia, again, the
threatened difficulties appear most formidable.
Until lately Russia has been largely in the con-
8
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
dition of a new country, with vast quantities of
land over which a growing agricultural popula-
tion could spread. Now the European area is
more or less filled up; and unless the vast terri-
tory of Siberia can be largely utilized for set-
tlement (which appears doubtful), the pressure
of population on the means of subsistence in
Russia may soon become very great. The soil
may be capable of supporting, with better agri-
culture, a larger population; but this is not the
point. The kind of agriculture possible in any
country is related to the existing capacity of the
population, or to such improvements in that ca-
pacity as are in progress; and with the Russian
population as it is, there are certainly traces in
Russia of an increasing severity in the struggle
for existence, which may at any moment become
most serious. The change in the conditions of
expansion for the population internally, as com-
pared with what they were fifty years ago, ought
at any rate to be recognized at the present day,
suggested as they are by the most obvious sta-
tistics of Russian population. Italy, it may also
be noticed, is fast increasing its population,
without any increase of new soil or correspond-
ing increase of manufactures.
EUROPE MUST BE FED FROM ABROAD.
Last of all, another fact presented by these
obvious figures is the dependence of the popula-
WORLD-CROWDING.
9
tion of the United Kingdom very largely, and
to a less degree of France, Germany, Belgium,
and Holland, on the importations of food from
abroad. The facts as to the United Kingdom
have been much discussed in all their bearings.
lately, ― Mr. Bourne, as we know well, having
taken a large part in the discussions; but you
have only to turn to the pages of the "Statis-
tical Abstract for Foreign Countries," to per-
ceive that the United Kingdom is not quite
isolated in the matter. It is much more de-
pendent in degree than any other European
country, but in the fact of dependence it is
not altogether singular. The fact is, of course,
partly due to the increase of population in far
greater ratio than the increase of agricultural
production; the prediction of Malthus, that the
population of England would not be supported
on the soil of England if it increased at any
thing like the rate in his time, having thus
been verified, though not exactly as he antici-
pated: but it is also partly due, however, to an
increase in the consuming power of the same
population, and the larger consumption of more
expensive kinds of food, requiring larger pro-
portionate areas to produce them. France, with
a stationary population, increases its imports
of food; and the increased consumption per
head among our own population of the quantity
of such articles as sugar and tea also suggests
ΙΟ
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
that articles of home agricultural production
are now consumed more largely than they were
twenty years ago or more by the same num-
bers. To these two causes combined, then, the
increase of population and increase of consum-
ing power per head, coupled with a compara-
tively stationary agriculture, Europe owes the
unique phenomenon of large masses of popula-
tion supported by imports from foreign and
distant countries. The social and political con-
sequences of this new fact must be manifold,
and again it is to the common figures of statis-
tics we owe our knowledge of it. This great
and striking fact would hardly be known at all
if the system of periodic censuses and the sys-
tem of recording imports and exports had not
previously been introduced. Socially and po-
litically, perhaps the phenomenon is not yet
sufficiently appreciated; and, as compared with
what it will be, it is probably only beginning to
be important but it is one which must before.
long play an important part in international
politics and in the economic life of nations.
Both the countries which grow the surplus
food, and the countries which receive it, are
profoundly concerned.
THE STARTLING DECLINE OF IRELAND.
In another way the internal growth of popu-
lation in different countries of Europe is also
WORLD-CROWDING.
I I
connected with great political changes. In
Germany, for instance, it was partly the special
growth of the population under the Prussian
monarchy which assisted to make United Ger-
many.
In Russia, again, the great growth of
population outside Poland has, from year to
year and decade to decade, dwarfed the Polish
difficulty as a bare question of the balance of
power in Russia. But we have even a more
striking case of political change from the inter-
nal changes of population nearer home. Every
one must have been struck, during the last few
years, by the calmness of the country generally
in presence of Irish agitation, and the evident
hopelessness of any insurrection arising out of
that agitation. When Mr. Parnell and other
Irish members were arrested in October, last
year, and the Land League suppressed, there
was hardly even a fractional fall in consols.
Forty, fifty, eighty years ago, things were en-
tirely different; the Irish difficulty being inces-
santly spoken of as most menacing, which,
indeed, it was. The present calmness and the
former apprehension are obviously due very
much to a mere change in population numbers.
Ireland, at the beginning of the century, held
about one-third of the population of the United
Kingdom; as late as 1840 it still held very
nearly one-third: now its population is only
one-seventh. Apart from all relative changes
12
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
in the wealth of the populations, these changes
in numbers make a vast difference in the Irish
difficulty. It becomes easier for us, on the one.
hand, to bear the idea of an alien state like Ire-
land in our close neighborhood, wholly indepen-
dent, or possessing home rule like the Isle of
Man or the Channel Islands: the power of mis-
chief of such a community is less to be feared
by a state of England's greatness than was the
power of a separate Ireland fifty or eighty years
ago by the England of that time. A separate
Ireland then might have been used by France
against the very existence of the English
empire, and the independence of England itself.
Now this would hardly be possible either to
France or to any other State. On the other
hand, any possible insurrection in Ireland is as
nothing to the power of the United Kingdom,
compared with what it would have been when
Ireland held a third of the whole population.
Hence the calmness of recent years in compari-
son with the agitation of a former period, and
which is all the more remarkable because the
agitated memories survive, and color a good
deal of the thought about the Irish difficulty
still. A still more careful examination would
show, I think, that the difficulty has diminished
in intensity that it is the alien part of Ire-
land which has most diminished in numbers,
while the loyal part - Ulster - has relatively
WORLD-CROWDING.
13
increased; but here again I wish to confine
myself to patent and obvious figures, the les-
son of which has more or less sunk into the
popular mind.
It is not difficult to perceive, moreover, that
these changes in figures must gradually tell
more effectively than they have yet done on the
Irish difficulty. In 1832 Ireland was endowed
with 105 members, its proportion of the popu-
lation of the United Kingdom being then one-
third. If one-third was then considered to en-
title it to 105 members, one-seventh, it is clear,
would only give it at the present day about 45.
Of these 45, again, one-third would be from
Ulster, and almost exclusively among the re-
maining two-thirds, or 30 in all, if we are to
judge from the present appearance, should we
find Home Rulers. The parliamentary Home
Rule difficulty would thus seem to have largely
arisen from the failure to adapt the representa-
tion of the country to changes in the population.
There is certainly nothing in the increased
wealth or vigor of the Irish population, compared
with that of the rest of the United Kingdom, to
suggest that Ireland should have a larger repre-
sentation in proportion to its population than it
had in 1832; yet if its representation were only
to be reduced in proportion, the parliamentary
difficulty would largely disappear. Even if no
greater change were now to be made than the
14
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
introduction of equal electoral districts, and
assuming that the present changes in popula-
tion continue, and that Irish representation is
adapted to the probable relative population of
Ireland and the United Kingdom at the next
census, then the representatives of Ireland in
Parliament would be reduced from 105 to 83;
and of these 83 only 55 would be sent from
those parts of Ireland in which there is disaffec-
tion: so that the maximum number of Home
Rulers, unless there are great changes of party,
which I am not discussing, would apparently be
less than 55. Of course I am not discussing
the possibility or expediency of any political
changes: I am merely pointing out the ideas
which the figures on the surface are suggesting
for consideration, and which must affect the
politics of the next few years.
THE IMPENDING STARVATION OF INDIA.
Still continuing the use of the most common
statistics of population, I propose next to direct
attention to one of the most formidable prob-
lems which have to be dealt with by our Impe-
rial Government, and for the knowledge of which
we are mainly indebted to statistics. I refer to
the growth of the population of our great depend·
ency, India. I have already referred, in the
most general terms, to the peculiar and compli-
cated relations which are likely to grow up
-
WORLD-CROWDING.
15
At
between nations of the European family and
the races or nations of different types.
no point are these relations more interesting
than they are in connection with the supremacy
the English race has gained over the subject
races of India. The point of interest in these
relations for our present purpose lies, however,
chiefly in this, -- that the Roman peace we have
established in India appears to be effective in
removing many obstacles to the growth of pop-
ulation which formerly existed,—what Malthus
described as the natural checks: so that under
our rule the Indian population is growing in
numbers from year to year, and trenching with
alarming rapidity on the means of subsistence.
I believe I am within the mark in saying that
there is no more anxious subject for the consid-
eration of our public men. The late Mr. Bage-
hot, I know, was profoundly impressed by the
fact; and others of our leading public men and
economists are also deeply impressed by it,
though it is considered almost too delicate for
public discussion. There can be no doubt, how-
ever, of the formidable nature of the problem.
India has now on its 1,400,000 square miles of
territory a population of 240,000,000, I am
dealing in round figures, or about 170 to the
square mile; not an excessive proportion, ac-
cording to formal comparisons with other coun-
tries, but in reality leaving the people no margin.
-
16
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
It appears, from the most careful studies, that,
whatever the number of people to the square
mile, there is very little new and fertile soil to
appropriate; that much soil has been so appro-
priated during the last century of our rule; and
that the population continues to grow fast with-
out any increase of the land revenue, or any
other sign that land is being rapidly taken into
cultivation, with signs, on the contrary, of ex-
haustion in the agriculture, and of an approach
to the limits of production according to the
means at the disposal of the population. So
much is more or less accurately known by
statistics; and of the cardinal fact — the mag-
nitude and increase of the population - it is
statistics from which we learn every thing. The
broad figures are here not so clear as they might
be, because improved methods in taking the cen-
suses have from time to time revealed larger
populations than could be accounted for by
taking the totals of one previous census and
adding the probable or possible increase of
population meanwhile; but of the actual fact
of increase between two census periods there.
is no doubt, while the rate of increase, if we are
successful in coping with famines, proves to be
nearly one per cent per annum. In ten years,
therefore, there will be 20,000,000 more people.
in India to feed; in twenty years, upward of
40,000,000 more; and the problem thus brought
WORLD-CROWDING.
17
before the Indian Government is, in what way
and by what means so to develop the character
of the people that their industry may become
more efficient upon practically the same soil.
Failing any speedy alteration in the character
of the people, the prospect seems inevitably to
be, that in India, from decade to decade, larger
and larger masses of the semi-pauperized or
wholly pauperized, the landless classes as Sir
James Caird calls them in the Famine Commis-
sion Report, will grow up, requiring state sub-
ventions to feed them, and threatening all
attempts to reform Indian finance, while rais-
ing social and political difficulties of the most
dangerous kind. It seems certain, then, that
India for many years to come will be an increas-
ingly dangerous problem for our statesmen to
deal with; the more dangerous, perhaps, because
any change in the character of the people, bring-
ing with it increased energy of production and
increased strength of character altogether, will
also bring with it a rise in the scale of living,
tending to make the masses discontented instead
of submissive to their lot. Whatever course
events may take, our rule in India must appar-
ently for generations become a problem of in-
creasing difficulty and complexity. The problem
is analogous to what seems to lie before a gov-
ernment like that of Russia; with this differ-
ence, that the government is in Russia a native
18
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
institution, whereas in India it is an alien
nation governing a host of subject races.
I shall be told, perhaps, that, if statistics sug-
gest problems like this, they are only making us
uncomfortable before the time: the evils appre-
hended are purely speculative. But in the case
of India this cannot be said. The actual crea-
tion of a famine-fund is a proof that the evil
is imminent. The fund is created in order to
secure that large numbers of people are kept
alive in times of famine, millions being in this.
way semi-pauperized. The prospect is, that
before long there may be millions to be kept.
alive in non-famine and famine years alike, peo-
ple without land or means of living, and without
the possibility of being employed as laborers.
Thus the difference between the present condi-
tion of things and what seems imminent, unless,
as I have stated, there is an unlooked-for change.
in the character of the people, is one not of kind
but of degree. The statistics only bring to light
and set out an immediate difficulty. The solu-
tion at present devised, of a famine-fund by
which millions of the Indian people are virtu-
ally pauperized, is certainly not one to be con-
templated with any satisfaction. It may be
unavoidable; but, from the point of view of civ-
ilization and progress, it is little more than a
confession of the hopelessness of the difficulty.
WORLD-CROWDING.
19
EIGHT HUNDRED MILLIONS OF AMERICANS.
-
The last broad fact I shall refer to as pre-
sented and made familiar to us by these statis-
tics of population, is that of the growth of
population in the United States, a subject,
perhaps, of even greater interest than any I
have yet referred to, and involved as it is in fact
with one or two interesting questions already
glanced at; viz., the existence and increase of
large European populations which are supported
by imports of food from new countries, and
mainly from the United States.
The broad fact presented by the United
States is that of the doubling of the population
in periods of about twenty-five years. There is
a little doubt about the exact population at the
time of the War of Independence, and down to
the first census at the beginning of the present
century; but for the present purpose the fig-
ures we get are good enough :-
1780
1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
3,000,000 | 1840
3,000,000 1850
5,300,000 1860
7,200,000 1870
9,600,000 1880
I 2,900,000
17,100,000
23,200,000
31,400,000
38,500,000
50,100,000
In other words, the population of the United
States has multiplied itself by 16 in the course
of the century; this being the result of its
doubling itself every twenty-five years for that
20
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
period. In another twenty-five years, at the
same rate of increase, the population would be
100,000,000, in fifty years 200,000,000, in seven-
ty-five years 400,000,000, and at the end of a
century 800,000,000! Such is the first aspect
of the broad fact presented to our consideration.
by the increase of population in the United
States. The rate is such as to be fairly bewil
dering in its probable consequences. The phe-
nomenon is also without a precedent in history.
There has been no such increase of population
anywhere on a similar scale, and, above all, no
such increase of a highly civilized and richly
fed population. The increase is not only un-
precedented in mere numbers, but it is an
increase of the most expensively living popula-
tion that has ever been in the world. For the
idea of such an increase we are indebted exclu-
sively to statistics. The United States, among
the other new ideas of old civilizations they
have had the benefit of, have had the idea of a
periodical census, which is even made a part
of their Constitution; and as the result we have
before us not only in a general way, but with
some precision, so that discussion may have an
assured basis this phenomenon of an unprece-
dented increase of population, which is, perhaps,
the greatest political and economic fact of the
age.
The fact has altered, in the first place, the
WORLD-CROWDING.
21
whole idea of the balance of power of the Eu-
ropean nations. A century ago the European
nations, in their political relations, thought little
but of each other. Now the idea of a new Eu-
rope on the other side of the Atlantic affects
every speculation, however much the new peo-
ple keep themselves aloof from European poli-
tics. The horizon has been enlarged, as it were;
and the mere fact of the United States dwarfs,
and I think restrains, the rivalries at home.
European governments can no longer have the
notion that they are playing the first part on
the stage of the world's political history. And
this sense of being dwarfed will probably in-
crease in time. In this country, at any rate,
we cannot but feel greatly attracted by the
United States. Because of the magnitude of
that country, the European continent is less to
us our relations are elsewhere.
It is in connection, however, with our own.
home problems of population, that the increase
of the United States is most interesting to us.
The increase is partly at our expense, and at that
of the other European nations. If the United
States, or some other new country, had not re-
ceived our emigrants, it is quite clear that our
whole history would have been different from
what it is. We should either have had in
our midst the people who emigrated, and their
descendants, straining the resources of our soil,
22
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
and mines, and capital, or the pressure upon
these resources would have checked in various
ways the growth of the population itself, so that
probably, at this moment, but for the new coun-
tries, more people would now be living in the
United Kingdom than there are, and larger
numbers of the population would be paupers,
or on the verge of pauperism. The actual
numbers we have lost altogether, and specially
to the United States, have been :

Before 1820
•
•
1820-30
1830-40
1840-50
1851-52
1853-00
1260–70.
1870-80 .
Total
•
•
To United States. Altogether.
50,000
100,000
123,000
247,000
308,000
703,000
1,094,000
1,684,000
511,000
704,000
805,000
1,312,000
1,132,000
1,571,000
1,087,000
1,678,000
5,087,000
8,022,000
Some correction of these figures would be
necessary, in the earlier years for foreigners
included, and in the later years for persons re-
turning home; but the correction in the present
view would make no material difference. If
these people had not emigrated, and had in-
creased as the rest of the population has done
at home, the existing population in the United
WORLD-CROWDING.
23
Kingdom would now be many millions more
than it is. The difference made by the emi-
gration to the United States alone must be a
good many millions.
THE FOOD SENT OUT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The influence of the United States and other
new countries has been greater still. On a
rough calculation, about 12,000,000 at least of
the people of the United Kingdom live on im-
ported food; and a certain part of the popula-
tion of Germany, France, Belgium, and Holland
also live on imported food, the importations.
being mainly from the United States. These
new countries, therefore, not only have per-
mitted an increase of population in a century,
till it is sixteen times the population at starting,
but a much larger increase. To take the United
States alone, we cannot estimate its contribu-
tion to the support of foreign populations at
less than an amount equal to the support of a
population of 10,000,000, similar in character
to that of the United Kingdom. Its exports of
breadstuffs and provisions are now about £90,-
000,000 annually, at the value as they leave
the United States; and at £9 per head, cor-
responding approximately to a value in the
United Kingdom of £11 per head, which is
about our consumption of agricultural products
per head, this would be equal to the support
24
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
of 10,000,000 persons. In other words, then,
the United States, from supporting 3,000,000 of
people a century ago, are now supporting at
least 60,000,000,- virtually an increase of
twenty times the original number. The growth
of population thus becomes more astonishing
than ever. Altogether there must be about
15,000,000 of people in Europe supported by
the produce of the new countries; and adding
together the populations of Canada, Australia,
and the United States, to this 15,000,000, less a
deduction for the population in these countries
a century ago, there remains a total of about
70,000,000 of European population, or nearly
one-fourth of the population now living in Eu-
rope, which is supported by the produce of
newly opened regions. To make these figures
quite exact, a correction ought to be made on
account of the non-European element in the
population of the United States; the colored
population in 1880 being 6,500,000. The col-
ored population in the United States, however,
is brought into competition with the European,
and in some degree Europeanized. The his-
tory of Europe, we may well say, would have
been entirely different from what it has been
during the last century, but for the new coun-
tries. It is difficult, indeed, to over-estimate
the extent to which the existence of a new field
for population, such as the United States pre-
WORLD-CROWDING.
25
sents, has dominated the recent economic his-
tory of Europe. We are so accustomed to a
set of economic circumstances in which popula-
tion, constantly increasing in numbers and in
the capacity for food consumption per head,
finds practically unlimited means of expansion,
that we can hardly understand economists like
Malthus, who were oppressed by the only too-
evident limits which nature, at the time he
wrote, had apparently set.
It seems impossible, however, not to see that
a period in which the pressure of limits to
growth and expansion may again be felt is not
far off. The approach of such a period seems.
to me to be suggested by the figures which are
on the surface; and I may perhaps be permitted
to anticipate, that the idea of such an approach,
if it is not now, will soon become, a familiar
subject for speculation.
DISMAL PROSPECT FOR US.
The very language in which reference has
been made to the increase of population in the
United States itself viz., that the present
rate of increase implies twenty-five years hence
a population of 100,000,000, a hundred years
hence a population of 800,000,000-indicates
that a continuance of this rate of increase may
be considered incredible. It implies future
changes in the industrial power of the race
26
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
which we have no warrant to anticipate. The
area of the United States, exclusive of Alaska,
which does not count, is 3,000,000 square miles;
and of this area there are at least 1,000,000
square miles, if not more, which are sterile or
rainless, so that cultivation, so far as we can
now foresee, is out of the question. There
remain, then, 2,000,000 square miles; and on
this area a population of 800,000,000 would
give 400 to the square mile, one-third as
much again as the present population per square
mile in the United Kingdom, twice as much
per square mile as the population of the United
Kingdom which is supported by the home agri-
culture, and more than twice as much per
square mile as the present population of France.
Allowing for the greater consuming power of
people in the United States, as compared with
that of the French people, this is as much as
to say that a rate of increase of population like
what has been going on in the United States
for a century is impossible in the next century,
unless the power of the human race to extract
food from the soil is enormously increased. No
doubt the United States may lose in each
decade that special force of addition to its rate.
of increase due to immigration. As its own
population increases, the proportion of the area
from which immigrants are drawn will diminish;
and hence there is apparent reason to antici-
WORLD-CROWDING.
27
pate that the proportion of the immigration
itself will diminish: but at present there is
hardly a sign of change in the proportion of
the immigration; and, for some time to come at
least, no material difference seems likely from
this cause in the rate of increase of the United-
States population. The increase of population
between 1870 and 1880 was almost at as great
a rate as any that has occurred. Besides, it
does not follow that the diminution of the area
from which immigrants are drawn should dimin-
ish the immigration itself. Other things being
equal, a larger and larger share of the increas-
ing population of older countries will emigrate;
and, if they do not emigrate, they will have
to be supported by the import of food from
new countries, which comes to the same thing.
Moreover, a much smaller increase in the
United States than we have supposed, say to
400,000,000 in a century, would presuppose
practically so violent a change in existing con-
ditions that the difference between it and the
more violent change which an increase of popu-
lation to the larger figure would require need
not be considered.
VERY GREAT CHANGES IN VIEW.
The bare statement of such figures appears
to me quite enough to indicate that the present
economic circumstances of the European family
28
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
of nations, including the United States as an
offshoot and part of the family, are not likely
to continue for more than a generation or two.
We are within measurable distance of very great
changes. No doubt there are other new lands.
-in Australia, in Canada, at the Cape, and else-
where which will be more or less available in
the future; but, singly, the United States is so
much the larger field, that the influence of these
other new lands need not be considered. As-
suming the United States to possess only half
the area of new country available for the Euro-
pean races, a single doubling of the population,
after the United States has been filled up the
work of a generation or two—would absorb all
these other new lands: their existence only
postpones the date when they will all be in the
position calculated for America alone at the end
of a century, by thirty years or so. In the
course of a century, then, we may affirm that
the present economic circumstances of the Euro-
pean races which make possible an indefinite
expansion of the numbers of the people, coupled
with an increase of their consuming power, will
have entirely changed.
The facts appear to me so interesting that I
ask leave to add something more; though the
figures I have now to give you, while easily
accessible, are not quite so much on the sur-
face, and have not been popularized. These
WORLD-CROWDING.
29
figures relate to the actual appropriation of land
for settlement, and the actual growth of popu
lation in the new and old States respectively.
What I wish to bring out is, that a much larger
portion of the available area of the United States.
has been “taken for settlement" than is com-
monly imagined; that, in fact, not only the thir-
teen original States and their three subsections
have been so taken for settlement, but what are
known as the Western States, exclusive of the
Pacific Territories, have also been taken for set-
tlement; that the growth of rural population
in this second group of States has now brought
them nearly to the level of the rural population
in the older States; that there is no longer much
room for growth by taking up new lands in all
these portions of the States; that the remain-
ing available area is so small as to render inevi-
table its being taken for settlement before very
long; and that from this point, probably within
twenty or thirty years, the new economic cir-
cumstances I have been referring to must make
themselves felt.
The total area of the United States, accord-
ing to the last census, exclusive of Alaska, is
given as 3,025,600 square miles, of which there
is a land surface of 2,970,000 square miles. Of
this the portion belonging to each of the three
groups named, with the quantities of each, re-
spectively, taken for settlement, is as follows;
30
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the figures being worked out from the data of
area and population as given by the last cen-
sus:
AREA OF UNITED STATES, AND AREA TAKEN FOR SETTLE-
MENT, IN THREE GROUPS.

Area taken
Total Area.
for
Settlement.
GROUP I.
Square Miles. Square Miles.
Thirteen to sixteen original States.
393,000
362,000
GROUP II.
Twelve Western and Southern States¹.
605,000
560,000
GROUP III.
Remaining States and Territories:
a. Six Far West States 2
b. Pacific States and Territories ³
Total .
Grand total.
620,000
370,000
I,407,000
277,000
2,027,000 647,000
3,025,000 1,569,000
Thus, out of the total area of 3,000,000 odd
square miles, rather more than one-half is the
area taken for settlement; and the area not
¹ Viz., Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michi-
gan, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
and Florida.
2 Viz., Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, and
Texas.
3 Viz., California, Oregon, Dakota, Colorado, Nevada,
Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, and
Washington.
WORLD-CROWDING.
♡
31
for settlement is almost exclusively in the last
group of all. This group I have subdivided into
two sections, — the first comprising States like
Iowa and Minnesota, more or less completely
settled, and the second comprising the Pacific
States and Territories; and of the first subsec-
tion, it will be observed, more than half is already
included in the area taken for settlement. The
question then arises, How much of the unset-
tled portion is available for settlement? and to
this the answer must be, Little. When I men-
tion that Mr. Porter, the well-known American
statistician, and one of the Tariff Commission,
in his book on The West" estimates that there
are 1,400,000 square miles of territory in the
West, of which only a tithe will ever be avail-
able for cultivation, it will be seen that the
wholly unoccupied portion of the available terri-
tory must now be reduced to very small dimen-
sions.
(C
The next point to which I draw attention is
the actual population of the first two groups,
exclusive of the town population, and the pro-
portion to the square mile. This figure I work
out from the tables at pp. 26–31 of the Introduc-
tion to the Population Statistics of the United-
States Census.
32
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
NET RURAL POPULATION OF THE UNITED STATES, EXCLU-
SIVE OF THE TOWN POPULATION, IN DIFFERENT GROUPS
OF STATES, WITH THE NUMBERS PER SQUARE MILE.

Total
Population.
Town
Population.
Net Rural
Population.
No. per
Square Mile
of Rural
Population.
Group I..
Group II.
Group III.a.
Group III.b.
Total of III.
•
•
21,835,111 7,939,334 | 13,895,777
19,656,666 3,614,835 16,041,831
35
2612
•
6,761,132
1,902,874 534,659 1,368,215
9/2
I
847,282 5,913,850
8,664,006 1,381,941 7,282,065
Grand total 50,155,783 12,936,110 | 37,219,673
12
Thus, while the rural population in the thir-
teen original States is 35 per square mile, it
amounts to no less than 261 per square mile in
twelve other States which we are accustomed
to speak of as more or less unoccupied. This
is clearly not the case. An addition of 8 per
square mile, or of little more than 5,000,000 in
all, would make them as populous as the rural
parts of the original States. Group III.a, though
it has a larger area to fill up, would nevertheless
become as populous per square mile rurally as
the older group of States by an addition of
about 15,000,000 of population.
It appears,
however, that a large part of this area belongs
to the rainless region; so that probably less
than two-thirds of this 15,000,000 would fill up
WORLD-CROWDING.
33
the available area to the limit of the thirteen
original States. There remains only the last
division of all; but it would seem that the
available area here cannot be put at more than
400,000 square miles, on which the present rural
population would be about three per square mile;
so that, if the population grows to the limit of
the older States, the addition to the population
necessary would be about 10,000,000 to 12,000,-
000 only. Altogether an addition of about 20,-
000,000 to 25,000,000 to the rural population of
the United States would seem all that is re-
quired to occupy the available area in the same
way that the oldest and most settled part is now
occupied. When that point is reached, the pres-
ent conditions of expansion must begin to change.
I
How long will it be till the point is reached?
Some idea of this may be formed from a com-
parison of the increase of the total population
with the increase of the city population. This
is shown in a table at p. 29 of the Introduc-
tion to the Population Statistics of the Census,
already referred to; from which it appears that
the total population increased nearly 12,000,000
in the last census period, and the urban popula-
tion nearly 3,500,000; so that the rural popu-
lation increased 8,500,000. Of course it may be
urged that the rural population may have in-
¹ Viz., 5,000,000 to second group, 10,000,000 to group III.a,
and 10,000,000 to group III. ¿.
34
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
creased in the older parts of the country as well
as in the new; but it is interesting to observe.
how much of the absolute increase of popula-
tion is in the second and third groups, and not
in the first.
Thus, in the last decade about 4,000,000 of
the total increase of population is in the second
group, and 3,700,000 in the last group. At this
rate, clearly, the increase of population in the
second group in ten years from 1880, if all agri-
cultural, would be such as nearly to fill up the
country with a rural population to the level of
the older States, while the same increase would
go a very long way toward filling up the last
group in the same way. But the speed with
which the vacuum will be filled will probably
be even greater. The population in the new
regions grows at an increasing rate as regards.
amounts. In 1840 the population in the third
group was about 74,000 only; in 1850 it had in-
creased by rather more than 800,000; by 1868
there had been a further increase of 2,000,000;
by 1870 there had been another addition of
2,000,000; and between 1870 and 1880 there is
an addition of nearly 4,000,000. Thus, in only
one decennial period, viz., between 1860 and
1870, is the increase less than about double what
it had been in the previous decennial period.
The increase of population in this new region at
the past rate would therefore be, not 4,000,000,
WORLD-CROWDING.
35
but 8,000,000, or about half what is required to
fill up the region with a rural population to the
Fevel of the thirteen original States.
In 1890,
therefore, not only will the second group of
States very probably be filled up to the level of
the thirteen original States, but the work of, fill-
ing up the last group of all will have advanced
very nearly toward completion. In another ten
years, that is, by 1900, assuming the same pro-
gressive rate of increase, the addition to the
population in the last group of all would be
16,000,000, which would be far more than suffi-
cient to fill up the vacuum.
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AHEAD.
There is still another way of looking at the
matter. During the decennial period 1870-80,
the increase of population in the United States
was about equally distributed between the three
groups, - about 4,000,000 to each; the increase
in the first group being, however, mainly in the
cities. Assuming an equal division of the 50,
000,000 additional population which will be on
the territory of the United States in twenty-five
years (and it is more likely that the Western
States will have a larger proportionate share),
this would give 16,000,000 more to the second
group, or 11,000,000 more than is necessary to
fill up the rural districts to the level of the East-
ern States; and 16,000,000 to the third group,
36
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
To
which would suffice to fill the rural districts to
the Eastern level. Even looking at the matter
in this way, then, the prospect is, that the avail-
able area in the United States will be peopled
up to the level of the thirteen original States,
as regards the rural population, in the course of
twenty-five years. But the distribution of the
increase between the groups, as I have said, is
likely to be unequal; and the West will proba-
bly be filled up with even greater rapidity.
look at the matter in yet another aspect: Of
the 50,000,000 additional population, assum-
ing an increase of the town population like what
has been going on in the past, - about 12,000,-
ooo will be a town population, leaving 38,000,-
ooo as the rural increase. But unless rural
population is to increase in the original States,
and is also to increase in the second group to
more than the present level of the original
States, the whole of this 38,000,000 (except the
5,000,000 required for the growth of rural popu-
lation in the second group to the level of the
original States) will be left for the occupation
of the available area in the third group,
double what is required. Whatever way we
look at the matter, then, it seems certain that
in twenty-five years' time, and probably before
that date, the limitation of area in the United
States will be felt. There will be no longer
vast tracts of virgin land for the settler.
ΟΙ
The
WORLD-CROWDING.
37
whole available area will be peopled agricultur-
ally as the Eastern States are now peopled.
All this must involve a great change in the
conditions of the growth of population and the
general economic conditions of the country. It
confirms in the most ample manner what was
to be surmised from the bare statement of the
geometric increase of population itself, pointing
as it did to a population of 800,000,000 at the
end of a century from this time. Long before
that, it is plain, and I think quite certainly
within twenty-five years, the conditions of the
expansion of population must be substantially
different from what they are now.
THE NARROW LIMITS OF EXPANSION.
It will be urged that it is notorious that the
United States can support enormous masses of
population. Its available agricultural area in
round figures is twelve or thirteen times that
of the United Kingdom, and eight times that of
France. Considering what the population of the
United Kingdom or that of France is, and
the superior fertility of many tracts of the
United States, it appears safe enough to assume
that the United States can support an indefinite
increase of population, and that there is room
for great expansion of population within the set-
tled area. But, assuming all this to be the case,
what we may observe is, that it is not quite to
38
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the present point. This is not a question of
supporting a large population anyhow: how
they are to be supported, is here all-important.
The moment there is little new land to occupy,
the conditions of expansion must change: every
year must bring nearer the date when the fruits
of the soil will be extracted with increasing
difficulty. The agriculture must become dif-
ferent from what it is now. What has been
already said, moreover, as to the United King-
dom and France not supporting all their own
population, and as to what the position in the
United States would be, even as compared with.
the United Kingdom and France, if the geo-
metric increase in the United States should con-
tinue no more than a century, may show that
there is, after all, no room for an indefinite
expansion of population within the settled area
in the United States. I should like to go
farther, and suggest that the limits of such ex-
pansion, without a very great and almost incon-
ceivable change in the agriculture itself, must
be very narrow. Comparisons with European
states on this head seem very apt to mislead.
But the figure of thirty-five per square mile ast
the rural population of the older parts of the
United States is, after all, one-fourth of the agri-
cultural population of France per square mile.
And there are two important differences betw een
the agriculture of France and the United States:
WORLD-CROWDING.
39
1. The consuming power of the United-States
population is much greater, perhaps double that
of the French population, so that the soil can-
not be expected to support the same number of
Americans as French; 2. The Western farmer.
in the United States grows for export, not
merely to the towns of the country, but abroad.
A rural population one-fourth that of France
may thus be quite sufficient to settle up the
country. We must not come to the subject
with European ideas as to the scale of living.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS FUNDAMENTALLY
ALTERED.
It would be foreign to my purpose to indulge
in speculation as to what will be the conse-
quences of this approach to a complete settle-
ment of the United States, coupled with the
fact that population, whether in the United
Kingdom, or in Germany, or in the United
States, shows no signs of abatement in the rate
of increase. It is sufficient for my purpose to
point out, that as the existence of vast tracts of
virgin soil in the United States has permitted,
during the last hundred years, an expansion of
the European population without a precedent in
history, has made the economic history of Eu-
rope in that period entirely different from what
it would otherwise have been, so now the ap-
proach to a complete settlement must profound-
i
40
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ly affect the world. The conditions of economic
growth will be fundamentally altered. Possi-
bly there may be chemical or other inventions.
rendering possible great improvements in agri-
culture, which will have practically the same
effect as an increase of the quantity of new
land available. Possibly we may have the rate
of growth of population itself checked. But
with the change of one condition others must
change if the masses of European people are to
remain at their present level of prosperity. If
there is no change, the nature of the difficulties
that will arise is obvious: the masses of labor-
ers will have to contend, under increasing diffi-
culties, against a fall in the scale of living.
But while I refrain from indulging in general
speculation, I may, perhaps, be allowed to point
out some of the more immediate consequences
which are likely to follow from an approach to
complete settlement in the United States, of
which we seem to be within a measurable dis-
tance. First of all, there will probably be a
diversion of a large part of the stream of emigra·
tion from Europe and the Eastern States of the
American Union, to the north-west provinces of
Canada. Here there are probably about 400,
000 square miles of territory available for set-
tlement, equal in quality to the best land in the
United States West. As there is no such field
in the United States itself, the stream must ap-
WORLD-CROWDING.
41
parently be to the new land. The second im-
mediate consequence I should look for would be
an increase of manufactures and of town popu-
lation in the United States. The agricultural
outlet becoming less tempting, and agricultur-
al wages tending to fall, the population will in-
evitably be more and more largely drawn into
manufacturing. And a third consequence will
probably be a check to the tide of emigration
from older countries, a greater demand upon
the agriculture of those countries, or at least a
mitigation of the extreme competition it now
sustains from virgin soils, and possibly a re-
versal of the present tendency for rents to fall.
Such changes may hardly be apparent for a few
years, with the exception, perhaps, of the diver-
sion of the stream of emigration to the north-
west of Canada, which has begun; but it seems.
hardly possible to doubt that they must begin
to be felt before very long, perhaps in the
course of ten, and almost certainly in the course
of twenty, years.
To sum up this long review: These easy fig-
ures of population evidently go to the heart of
much of our politics and political economy. To
quote only the illustrations I have given, we
may say, first, they give some idea of the mass
of the European population in the world, and
consequently of the overwhelming strength of
European civilization. Next, as we have seen,
42
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
they help to explain the existence of five lead-
ing powers in Europe, and the changes in the
balance of power which have occurred in the
last fifty or sixty years. They equally help to
explain domestic changes in each country, such
as the diminished intensity of the Irish diffi-
culty in the United Kingdom, or the growth of
social difficulties in a country like Russia,
through the population increasing, with no
other opening but a restricted agriculture; or
such external difficulties as we have brought on
ourselves by the conquest of India, and the
Roman peace we have established. Finally
they set before us, in a clear light, the great
economic phenomenon of our time, the crea-
tion of the United States of America, and the
provision by this and similar agencies for a
growth of population, not only in the United
States, but in Europe, which is entirely without
precedent. I have endeavored to supplement
the last figures with a few others designed to
throw light on the question of the continuance.
of this portentous growth, and the probability
of a check to it; but the figures here used are
also easily accessible. Familiar as are some of
the things we have been discussing, it is often
too evident that they are not sufficiently appre-
ciated; that hazy ideas are widely held, which
a clear knowledge of statistics would disperse.
EUROPE IN STRAITS:
COMMERCE AND WAR.
WE lately called attention to the "omens of
trouble" manifest in the remarkable change
which, increasing year by year, has come over
the nations of Europe, whereby the panoply of
war has succeeded to, and displaced, the almost
Quaker-like habits of peace which prevailed at
the middle period of the century. We showed
how every country in this respect has fared
alike, and that nowhere is the war-change more.
conspicuous than in our own pre-eminently
peace-loving isles of industry and shopkeeping.
And we asked, Whence and whither? How is
it that this extraordinary change has super-
vened? and what does it forebode? Are the
nations of a whole continent gone mad? Or is
there really some great war "in the air," which
human instinct scents from afar, and whole
peoples are almost unconsciously preparing for?
hardly any one thinking of creating a war, but
each careful to see that its weapons of defence
lie ready at hand.
43
44
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
:
In considering whither Europe is drifting, we
certainly shall not assume to don the proph-
et's mantle, but simply desire to place before
our readers some of the peculiar aspects of the
times, out of which the future is likely to
shape itself; the present being ever to the fu-
ture what the child is to the man. Now, Europe
at present exhibits a very peculiar aspect in-
deed, one which, from the beginning of time,
it has never presented before; and also one
which, once established, must go on unless our
whole present order of things, society and civ-
ilization, are to come, be it suddenly or slowly,
to an end, whether by some vast catastrophe
of war and revolution, or by the gradual wast-
ing of declining energy and decay.
In one respect, no doubt, this aspect or gen-
eral condition of Europe (our own isles included)
is of itself a happy result of recently acquired
powers, of powers but for which a great Eu-
ropean crisis must have already have been un-
dergone, and our continent would ere now have
been distinctly on the wane; not at all mys-
teriously, but as a result seemingly as certain
as that of human existence itself. In a recently
published work,' a thoughtful writer has traced
the uprise and progress of "internationalism,"
— of the various facts and causes which after
the peace of Waterloo, and as a pressing neces-
I The New Golden Age, by R. H. Patterson.
+
P

EUROPE IN STRAITS.
45
ity, began to widen the sphere of individual
nd national enterprise, alike in commerce and
finance; and the final outburst of European
enterprise and capital all over the world, which
came with the advent of railways and oceanic
steam-navigation, making Europe as truly the
heart and headquarters of the civilized globe
as Italy was of the Mediterranean world under
the sway of Rome.
But for these and other co-operating causes,
it is an unquestionable fact, that ere this the
European continent, and England first, would
ave reached its limits of general greatness.
There must either have been a full stop in the
growth of population, or else, as natural passion
never yet took such warning in time, Europe
would have been landed in a crisis. a wider
and direr 1848-produced by starving poverty
n evil conjunction with the "dangerous classes"
which exist largely in even the most fortunate
countries. For years past, our own people have
pecome dependent for one-half of their food,
and also of their employment, upon foreign
countries. It is beyond our present purpose to
speculate whether the cataclysm above referred
to is not being approached anew, despite the
immense advantages which in recent times have
been placed at the disposal of civilized man-
kind. But, speaking solely of existing circum-
stances, we desire to call attention to the

:

46
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
condition in which our continent now stands,
and the natural influence which such a position
exerts upon national life and interests,
an in
fluence which is distinctly visible in the policy
of European states, whether they be kingdoms
or republics; and which, as it grows; must
more and more affect the haute politique of
Europe and the imperial fortunes of all the
leading nations of the Old World.
Let us observe some of the obvious facts and
warning lessons of the times. In all directions
human power has widened. vastly within the
last half-century; and, whether in peace or in
war, combinations of states and peoples now
possess a potentiality of magnitude previously
undreamt of. Moreover, strange and startling
-possibly even unnatural-as it may seem,
the very civilization of Europe has engendered
wants, which, however unconsciously, are prone
to create within the bosom of peace the circum-
stances of war. Every country in Europe -
even Russia - has become too small for its
people; not a few of them are actually inade-
quate for the sustenance of their inhabitants,
-the domestic food-supply is insufficient, and
all of them too small of themselves to supply
their people with the scale of comfortable ex-
istence, which, in many respects happily, has
become a common or well-nigh universal expec-
tation. The nations of Europe have entirely

EUROPE IN STRAITS.
47
.
་་་
1
ceased to be self-sufficing. They desire and
demand foreign trade; new markets for their
ever-increasing industry,- for the product of
that ever-growing work of manufacture which
is the only expansible employment for a popu-
lation which has become too numerous for its
soil. Nay, more: beyond foreign trade, not a
few of our nations imperiously desire foreign
settlements. Besides the knowledge that "com-
merce follows the flag," and that the surest
basis of a foreign trade is colonies and depend-
encies, a dependent empire, in some cases
here is a desire, born of an actual want, for
fresh fields and pastures new," to provide new
homes for their ever-growing numbers.
truth, even Russia, with her vast forests and
thinly peopled steppes, desires new territory for
agricultural settlement, for a population which
has little taste and equally small opportunity
for manufacturing industry.
C
In
This view of the case, this new aspect of the
European continent, has not yet been ade-
quately conceived. We are all more or less
alive to the fact that our own islands are, and
in reality have long been, insufficient for their
inhabitants. First, about the beginning of the
present century, a portion of our people became
dependent for employment upon other countries.
Our stores of coal and iron, together with the
then recent inventions in textile machinery, had
48
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
begun to furnish a new source of employment
alike for capital and labor, provided other coun-
tries supplied us with a portion of the raw ma-
terials, and with markets for the manufactured
articles. And these things we had obtained,
almost without noticing the fact. Thanks to
the sagacity of Pitt, we had acquired a splen-
did colonial empire, simply, as it were, in the
course of waging the great war against France
and her allies. And thus, as both our wealth
and our population augmented beyond the lim-
its of investment and of employment within the
area and upon the resources of our own little
islands, we launched forth under the most favor-
able conditions upon that career of internation-
alism, alike in commerce and finance, by means
of which both our population and our wealth
have acquired unparalleled proportions relative
to the size and natural resources of our country.
Indeed, so vast have our national requirements
now become, that despite our magnificent and
far-spreading empire, a marvel of the world!
- we have at length reached a stage at which
we are critically dependent upon foreign tariffs
and commercial treaties with the world at large.
In a proud self-reliance (whether wisely or not),
we cut ourselves adrift from Pitt's grand scheme
of a British Zollverein: we preferred not to
rely upon the smaller but safe world of trade
between a mother-country and its dependencies,
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
49
and to aim at and trust to a manufacturing and
commercial supremacy in the world at large.
To obtain this, we had to abandon the "differ-
ential duties,” — the commercial league with our
colonies. And now we have manifestly reached a
critical stage, when that commercial supremacy
is becoming endangered, partly by a growing
rivalry of other nations in manufacturing in-
dustry, and partly from the operation of their
hostile tariffs. Certainly we do not despair of
our commercial fortunes; but that our position
is becoming critical, must be recognized by
every one who adequately considers the enor-
mous extent, hitherto unparalleled in the world,
to which the fortunes of our people have be-
come dependent, not merely upon the integrity
of our vast empire, but upon our relations with
that vaster outer world, between which and our-
selves there exists no relationship save that of a
self-interest which is as often rival as mutual.
son.
We refer to this matter, not for discussion,
but in illustration, or for instructive compari-
What we desire to call attention to is,
that these conditions of national existence,
which, since the beginning of the century, have
become so imperative in our own country, are
gradually becoming imposed upon the other
states of Europe,¹ and are already most per-
The flight of population from Europe is at present greater
than ever, the immigration into the United States alone amount-
50
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ceptibly affecting their imperial policy. The
grand toast of our fathers, "Ships, colonies,
and commerce," is in one form or other becom-
ing a fixed object of policy with nearly all the
states of the Continent. It is a necessity for
them. Germany, it is true, which for a while
contemplated an oceanic extension of her em-:
pire (chiefly by making settlements in the Pa-
cific Archipelago), still refrains from such a
diffusion of her power and population; tempo-
rarily submitting to the growing discontent of
the latter, rather than lose the services of her
soldier-sons until the period of war-crisis at
home has ceased or been victoriously sur-
mounted. But France, Italy, Spain, Russia: is
it not to foreign extension, territorial aggran-
dizement with commercial influence, that the
imperial policy of each of these states is di-
rected? For this object, France sacrifices even
ing to three-quarters of a million annually. The "Daily
News" correspondent at New York states that the immigra-
tion for the past year (1882) "was the largest in the history of
the country. The grand total will be about 735,000, against
719,000 last year. This estimate is based on the official gov-
ernment figures for all the months except December. The dif
ferent nationalities are divided as follows: England and Wales,
81,000; Ireland, 70,000; Scotland, 17,000; Germany, 232,000;
Sweden, 59,000; Norway, 27,000; Canada, 89,000; all other
countries, 160,000. Germany maintains the lead, sending
nearly a third of the entire number. The quality of the arriv-
als has been good; the vast majority of them going West, and
becoming producers and useful citizens almost immediately."
1
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
51
•
the high idea of a Latin Confederation, whereby
alone South-western Europe could make itself a
match for the now unified central states, or rise
to a level of power with the Muscovite colossus.
France has quarrelled with Italy for the sake of
appropriating Tunis, and snarls at England for
the sake of Egypt. In turn, Spain watches
France with jealous and half-angry eyes, be-
cause suspecting that Gallic ambition would
fain seek new fields in Morocco, which the
Spaniards have marked out for their own spoil.
Balked in Tunis by the prompter and more dar-
ing policy of France, Italy still throws a covet-
ous glance southward to the African seaboard,
hoping to anticipate France in Tripoli; and
while looking now almost hopelessly at the
"Italian" valleys of the Tyrol, the Italian gov-
ernment watches with feverish anxiety the cast-
ern coast of the Adriatic, where the martial
hand of the Turk is losing its hold upon that
region of wild mountain tribes. According to
a newly issued report upon the crown-lands in
Italy, upwards of sixty thousand small proprie-
tors have been dispossessed-in our phrase,
evicted" on account of inability to pay the
taxes; a state of matters which seems to rival
the crushing poverty of the rural districts of
Italy under the later Roman emperors. Sev-
eral deputies, in consequence, have prayed the
minister of finance to bring forward the bill
52
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
for the abolition of the quote minime of the
property tax.¹
I
Further, and more formidable of all, there is
the mingled commercial and territorial ambition
-the combined land-and-trade hunger- both
of Austria and Russia in Northern Turkey and
the valley of the Danube. Apart from the mo
mentous objects of political power and racial
ascendency, which so visibly centre in South-
eastern Europe, the line of the Danube is indis-
pensable to the Germanic States as a commercial
highway and outlet; while, in the lack of trans-
marine settlements, it is in the fertile alluvial
plains of the Lower Danube that the Germans
must seek an emigration-field for their steadily
I
Italy is certainly not one of the most densely peopled por-
tions of Europe; yet, at the end of last year, the British con-
sul at Naples reports "that the tide of emigration to both
North and South America, from the Italian provinces of the
interior, is assuming quite alarming proportions. The poverty
and misery endured by the Italian peasantry have been shown
of late, in many authoritative publications, to be almost with-
out parallel; and it appears that their helpless and apparently
hopeless condition has begun to have its natural effect in stim-
ulating the desire to try their fortunes in other lands. The
number embarked on board British vessels in the port of Na-
ples, during the first three months of the present year, equalled
the total for the previous twelve months. The emigrants be-
long almost entirely to the peasant class; and it is not unusual,
we are told, for the inhabitants of an entire village to sell off
their small properties, and take passage in these emigrant-ships.
The provinces which give the largest contingent are those of
Abruzzi and Calabria.”
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
53
increasing numbers. There lies a lasting "bone
of contention" between the Germanic States.
and Russia, with her growing population, which
already feels cribbed and starved upon the bleak
northern steppes, and who are ready to fight "to
the last man and the last musket" rather than
remain shut out from the blooming gardens and
genial climate of the South.
Lastly, there is the vast field of Upper and
Western Asia, into which the European race
seems bent upon overflowing, alike by land
and by sea; and where, while Russia already
marks for her own the chief region occupied
by the falling Ottomans, the maritime nations
of Europe, especially the British and French,
will be drawn towards an occupation of the
southern, at least of the isthmal, portion of
the great continent extending between the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.
We are apt to underrate or wholly overlook
an urgent necessity which at present lies upon
the Russian Empire, upon that vast mass of
semi-barbaric population which still lies beyond
the pale of civilized Europe, and which resem-
bles, to a greater extent than we readily realize,
the swarm of half-starving hordes which lay of
old beyond the frontier-wall of the Cæsars and
their imperial successors.
Eighty millions of human beings occupy the
great Sarmatian plain from the Vistula to the
54
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Caspian (a westward extension into Europe (of
the steppes of Upper Asia), and such a mass
of humanity is no easy burden for the earth to
support. Sparsely though the soil be occupied,
the Russian peasantry find a great difficulty in
extracting from it a bare subsistence. Lying
inland from the sea, those semi-Asiatic plains
suffer the extremes alike of summer heat and
of winter cold. The succession of crops, and the
almost ceaseless labors of agriculture, which are
possible under the "open winters" of our islands,
and which mitigate our lack of cultivable area,
are unknown on the Russian steppes, where the
soil is frost-bound for well-nigh half the year;
and the peasants, condemned to idleness, huddle
and muse round the wood-fire in their smoky
cabins, rejoicing, too, whenever they can afford
it, in vodki and intoxication. And this populą-
tion, sluggish though it be, still grows; while
the steppes and the climate remain as before!
In this unprovided-for increment of population,
nihilism finds a favorable field; while the
vaguely dreamy temperament of the Slavoni-
ans, and especially the proneness to commun-
ism (to which they are bred by their immemorial
village communities "), make them ready be-
lievers in a socialistic millennium to arise upon
the swept board of the world.
Again and again has the Russian Government'
desired to remove portions of this population by
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
55
•
enigration into its Asiatic territories; and here
and there small Cossack communities have been
planted therein. But in his present stage of
development, —and largely, apparently, by racial
sentiment, the Russian peasant clings to the
soil, like a limpet to the rock. His village-
community is his world; his sole idea of life is
to cultivate the hereditary bit of ground, the
allotment gradually diminishing as each village-
community increases in numbers. Good soldier
though he becomes, he wails bitterly when car-
ried off by the recruiting-officers from his native
village; and a new settlement, however promis-
ing, has no charms in his sight when it must be
preceded by long marchings away into strange
and unknown regions.
It may seem a strange remark, yet it is a true
one, that an export-trade is the best security
against domestic famine. No man will produce
more of any thing than he requires for his own
wants, or can profitably sell to others. Accord-
ingly, in a secluded district, or where there
exists no foreign trade, a peasant population.
produces only enough for its own wants: each
man restricts his labor to cultivating only so
much ground as suffices for himself and family;
whereby, of course, there is no surplus acreage
or production to compensate any failure of the
customary crop.
But introduce foreign trade, -
a foreign or external demand, and then, sub-
56
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ject to the limits of the "effective demantl,"
each peasant acquires a motive to produce as
much as possible; so that, when a bad harvest
occurs, the produce which used to be sold
abroad is consumed at home. The actual loss.
is as great as before; but there is no famine,
only poverty and pinching. The great lines of
railway recently constructed in Russia have
been of immense service in developing the
natural resources of that vast country, and in
augmenting production in general. But the
ominous fact remains, that population is in-
creasing faster than food-production; and in
the memorably bad harvest-year, 1879, actual
famine prevailed over extensive provinces of
that empire. Even Russia can no longer feed.
herself in bad years, and American corn has
been imported into the steppes.
When such a change is taking place in Russia,
which hitherto has been the chief granary 'of
Europe, it ought not to surprise our readers, -
though probably it is a novel thought to them,
that our entire continent is undergoing a
similar change; and over the greater part of it
the change has already progressed much fur-
ther than in sparsely peopled Russia. In truth,
Europe the centre and heart of modern civili-
zation begins to repeat on a larger scale the
experience of Italy, the heart of the old Roman
world. To philosophic observers, there will

EUROPE IN STRAITS.
57
be no strangeness in the thought that the
great modern world should exhibit, in many
respects, the well-known historic phenomena
which marked the course of the smaller, but at
least equally brilliant, Mediterranean world;
and that, looking back across the dissevering
gulf of the dark ages of Europe, we should
find in the old Roman world some parallelism
with the phenomena of present times. The
Italian peninsula, the original source and per-
manent headquarters of Roman dominion, was
also, from its geographical position and con-
figuration, well fitted to be the chief seat of
commerce for that old Mediterranean world.
Stretching far out from the Continent into the
calm and sunny waters of the Inland Sea, Italy
became the centre of commerce, receiving the
trade as well as the spoils and tribute of the
surrounding regions. While imperial Rome.
became the grand magnet of population, attract-
ing residents from all parts of the surrounding
world, large and populous cities arose through-
out the peninsula; and the population of Italy
outstripped its agricultural productions. Trade
and tribute, and the imperial expenditure, co-
operating with natural increase, created a popu-
lation largely urban, and in excess of the
domestic production of food. So early as the
time of Livy, the corn of Egypt and Libya had
become indispensable for the sustenance of the
1
1
}


58
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
population of Italy. Partly from choice and for
profit, yet nevertheless as a fundamental neces-
sity, the bulk of the Italian population had taken
to commerce, manufactures, and the numerous
retail trades which are concomitants of com
merce and of a wealthy expenditure. And
apart from a portion of the tribute-money frɔm
the provinces, or its equivalents, this trade and
commerce were indispensable to pay for the
large annual importations of food. Italy, the
heart of the Roman Empire, must otherwise
have starved; and the classic historian lamented.
that the mother-country of the Legions, where
previously "every acre had its man," had in his
day become dependent upon the winds and the
waves for the means of subsistence !
We might go much farther than this in such
a parallel. There is much in the later history.
of Roman Italy which finds a parallel, both
materially and morally, in the present condi-
tion of Europe at large. But, confining our-
selves to the single matter here dealt with, we
may point to the fact, that, apart from the natu-
ral increase of trading and commercial pursuits
in old Italy, owing to there being no more land,
for agricultural occupation, an actual (and not
merely a relative) decrease of cultivation ere
long occurred, as a direct result of the importa¹
tion of corn from countries where it was grown
far more cheaply than was possible in Italy.
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
59
•
This result, also, is coming in Europe. Just as
the Roman roads, and especially the incompara-
bly cheap water-carriage of the Mediterranean,
sufficed to bring vast supplies of cheap grain
from North Africa and Syria into the markets
of Italy; so, during the last thirty years, have
railroads and steam - navigation been bringing
to Europe in increasing abundance the cheap
grain of the United States and other quarters
of the outlying world. A happy circumstance
for Europe, no doubt; but its effect must be to
quicken and precipitate that change from agri-
culture to trade, from rural life to urban, by ren-
dering unprofitable the less-fertile portions of
the soil, which hitherto have sufficed to yield a
maintenance to their cultivators. Thus trade,
manufactures, commerce, must more and more
occupy the nations, as the predominant industry
of Europe, alike as the means of employment.
for the population, and to pay for the ever-
increasing importations of food. The influx of
American corn would stop at once unless there
be an equivalent outflow of surplus produce.
from Europe. And there can be no such
equivalence unless the manufactures of Europe
and throughout the world as effective a demand
as that which starving Europe confers upon.
the grain produce of the prairies.
And so we come back to the fact, that the
nations of Europe have become too numerous
-
;
60
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
for the soil; that, even as regards the mele
necessaries of life, the supply is not always
adequate; while, contemporaneously, there is
a growing and well-nigh imperious demand for
a higher scale of living, of itself demanding
an increase of production, and which, when not
gratified, largely transmutes itself into political
discontent, shaking the peace of kingdoms, and
into social theories and conspiracies which
would destroy European civilization itself, and
transiently reduce the present heart of the
world to a warring chaos or a charred blank.
New fields and outlets are wanted, alike for the
people and for their industry. The industrial
and productive power of the European people's
is far from exhausted; judged even by present
standards, it is but half developed but ere it
can be developed, and made more profitable to
its possessors, there must be new markets,
more outlets for its labor and products, yield-
ing that profitable return without which no
increase of industry can be expected, or would
voluntarily be sustained.
It a fact, and one highly creditable to that
ambitious and far-seeing potentate, that it was
for trade and commerce that Peter the Great
pushed forward the frontiers of Russia alike to,
the east and to the west. It was to obtain this
indispensable foundation of civilized well-being,
as well as of national power, that he so strenu-
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
61
ously strove to bring Russia out of her seclusion.
and isolation as a purely inland state, and to
force his way to the sea, that common ground
of earth's nations, and the connecting highway
between all the various regions of the globe.
It was for trade, together with the political
power which comes with wealth, that the great
Czar forscok the natural Muscovite metropolis,
Moscow, and remorselessly (because with a vast.
expenditure of serf-labor and human life), built
a new capital upon the Baltic Sea; and it was
with a similar intent that he waged his wars with
the Turks, in order to open out Russia upon the
Euxine, and by and by, through the possession
off Constantinople, upon the Mediterranean. For
trade, extending his policy to the farther side of
Asia, he made treaties with China, and obtained
aft Kiachta, just outside the Great Wall, an en
trepôt for the Chinese trade with Europe, and a
haven for the Russian caravans after their long
journeyings across the steppes of Upper Asia.
For trade, too, to re-open one of the old over-
land routes to India, — Czar Peter carried on
alike his intrigues, wars, and explorations on
his south-eastern frontier, discerning in the line
of the Oxus a waterway up to Balkh and to the
Indian or Affghan frontier of the Hindoo Koosh.
We need not tell how, within the last twenty
years, by the successive conquest of the khan-
ates of Khiva, Bokhara, and Tashkend, Musco-

62
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
And
vite power has been made supreme up to the
"Roof of the World," the great dividing moun-
tain-range of Upper Asia; nor how, during the
last twelve months, the conquered Tekke Tur-
comans, with their host of daring cavalry, have
become dependent allies of the Czar; nor how,
following the tribe with offers of profitable peace
to their last stronghold, Russia has at length
opened a way for her caravans to the ancient.
and once famous city of Merv; while her rail-
way from the Caspian will soon have its termi-
nus within a march or two from Herat.
wherever the Russian flag goes, Russian trade
alone is permitted to follow; and British or
other goods are peremptorily excluded by hos-
tile tariffs. The attempt is now about to be
made, and probably with success, to divert the
great river Oxus from its embouchure in the
Aral Sea, leading it back into its ancient course
to the Caspian: so that, both by railway and
waterway, Russian trade and military power
will extend right across the northern frontier
of Persia and Affghanistan, presenting an im
pervious barrier against all competing British
trade from the south, while securing Central
Asia as a rich preserve for her own merchants,'

I The St. Petersburg correspondent of "The Standard" says
(Dec. 13), “In reference to the report that representations are
being made both at St. Petersburg and Bokhara in regard to
privileges said to have been granted by the Emir in favor of
4
1
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
63
P
not to say as a vast recruiting-ground for the
further extension alike of her arms and her
trade into the still more coveted regions of
Southern Asia. Apart from the important but
now seriously imperilled trade from India, the
eastern coast of the Black Sea is the only
quarter from whence foreign (i.e., non-Russian)
merchandise can find a passage into the inland
regions of Asia; and the Russian Government
takes care to "handicap" and virtually exclude
all such competition with the trade of her own
people. The once formidable barrier of the
Caucasus has long been broken through, by the
subjugation of Schamyl and the Circassians;
and the recent annexation of Batoum and Kars
Russian merchants, I believe the facts to be as follows: Some
months ago the local government in Russian Turkestan, with
or without the cognizance of the central authorities, determined
to close the Central Asian market to English and Indian goods
by laying heavy duties on some articles and totally prohibiting
the import of others. As, however, Turkestan is an integral
portion of the Russian, just as India is of the British, Empire,
Lord Granville held that the existing commercial treaties be-
tween Russia and England applied equally on the banks of the
Oxus as on the shores of the Black Sea or Baltic. In this
sense representations, have, indeed, been made in St. Peters-
burg; though with what result, I am not aware. It is obvious
that Bokhara can only be indirectly involved in this question;
and being, in form at least, an independent kingdom, untram-
melled by treaties with England, it is at liberty to impose what
duties it likes on English goods. Moreover, having no agent
there, it is difficult to see how we could make representations
unless through the friendly intervention of Russia, a course
that would hardly recommend itself to any English government."


{
?
64
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
I
has given to Russia a complete monopoly of
the direct trade-routes from the Euxine east-
wards, and some influence also over the old
caravan-route from Erzeroum into Persia. The
latest news is, that the Russian Government has
appointed "a new and more important commis-
sion to consider the Caucasus transit question,'
and is anxiously considering the best means by
which the last relics of this old trade can be
obstructed, — with the object of adding Persia
(or at least the northern and best portion of that
country) to the vast Asiatic region which by her
conquests Russia now appropriates, and fences
round with prohibitive tariffs, as a preserve for
the trade of her own people.2
¹ At the January meeting of the Royal Geographical Soci-
ety, Col. Champain read a paper on the subject of commercial
routes into Persia from the sea; in which he said it was a fact
which unpleasantly struck the English traveller, that a very
much greater proportion of imported articles came from Rus-
sian than from British sources. Twenty years ago it was
otherwise; but of late great changes had taken place in the
neighborhood of Northern Persia, all tending to improve the
conditions under which the Russian competed with the British
merchant. The only means by which British trade could now
penetrate into Persia would be from the south, by improving
the navigation of the Karun River, and obtaining the right to
use it. Our trade and influence in Persia, says Col. Champain,
are receding; and he believes, that (unless something be done),
in a few years' time Bushire, Bunder Abbas, and Shivaz will
be the only parts of the country where traces of British trade
will linger.
2 The latest news on the trans-Caucasian transit-trade is

EUROPE IN STRAITS.
65
Russia, in truth, has begun in downright ear-
nest the work of trade-extension and colonizing
conquest; and every year this pressure from
within outwards will grow more imperious.
Easy it is to say, Has she not territory enough
and to spare? are there not some minerals
undeveloped here and there, or some cultivable.
soil which scientific agriculture could profitably
utilize? We may grant all that, yet it will
go for little. Really, as much might be said
(proportionately) with respect to our own isles,
from which for half a century emigration has
been flowing as a recognized necessity. Wealth
will not expend itself upon small and doubtful
profits if it can do so upon larger ones; nor
will wealth sacrifice any percentage of its gains
for the sake of developing the resources of its
own country while without wealth, or "capi-
tal," a population must exist simply by such in-
dustry, or upon such soil and other resources,
as unassisted labor can turn to profitable ac-
count. We repeat—and is it not an obvious
given in "The Daily News" (Feb. 15), in a telegram from St.
Petersburg, as follows: "It is officially stated that the govern-
ment has decided, in the interest of Russian trade and industry,
to maintain a strict protective customs tariff in the trans-Cau-
casian transit-trade. This announcement will be received with
great satisfaction by the Russian press, which, with one or two
exceptions, is strenuously advocating the abolition of the transit
of European goods to Persia and Central Asia via the trans-
Caucasian region."
66
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
truth to reflecting minds?that even in our
own islands (although the most favored spot on
earth for capital and the other aids to material
improvement and production) there might be
room or means for employment-giving sub-
sistence for a larger population than can at
present exist here with advantage either to
themselves or to the state. And doubtless-
certainly probably — as time rolls on, the means
for such increased employment and subsistence
may be found. But here, as elsewhere, that
condition of affairs must come slowly. What
is more here, as in other countries, it must
come chiefly from more trade, from increased
commerce with other countries; creating new
markets for the products of industry, and there-
by, through an increased demand, rendering
labor more profitable, even although exerted
upon work or resources which at present will
not pay.
:
In short, it is with the present that we have)
to do; and, so judging, we find almost every
country in Europe — we might say, our whole
Continent without any exception-rapidly grow-
ing in the condition under which the population,
with ever-rising wants, becomes in excess of the
present powers of their territory, and requir-
ing new outlets or resources to maintain them
in comfortable existence. Really the thing it-
self is nothing new.
We have seen it exhibited
}
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
67
The
in single countries, notably in our own.
only peculiarity of the times is, that the change
is now in progress and steadily increasing
throughout our whole continent. The change is
not a simple, but a very complicated one. It is
not mere growth of population that is produ-
cing the embarrassment; for, in truth, trade and
the means of industrial development have fairly
kept pace with the growth of population in
Europe. Indeed, although there may be local
exceptions, it will hardly be questioned that the
condition of the people is distinctly improved,
ཤu། །
But
in our own country greatly improved.
not less visibly has there been a change of views
and habits; and, in the main for good (although
very serious peril may come of it), people are
no longer content with the scale of existence
which contented their fathers. This also, in
itself, is nothing new, it has prevailed at all
times under a progressive civilization; but it is
becoming new in its effects, it begins to con-
stitute a distinct and serious fact in Europe,
where the growth and growing wants of the
population are everywhere becoming in excess
jof
of the productive powers of the soil.
Happily for Great Britain, the Napoleonic
wars left us in possession of colonies and de-
pendencies, at least one-half of which is almost
unoccupied territory; while our maritime posi-
tion, and our leadership in navigation, offer un-
:
68
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
•
علي
equalled opportunities for ready emigration.
And these happy opportunities have undoubt-
edly quickened in our islands the new human
career of emigration; so that, dense as our
population is, the condition of the masses is
distinctly superior to what it has ever been be-
fore, and to what it is on the Continent. The
lesser opportunities for emigration, together
with inferior locomotive enterprise, combine to
load the social safety-valve upon the Continent
to a more perilous point than is to be expected
here. Indeed, what we have to point out is,
that the actual amount of emigration is no
rect criterion of the extent to which a country
is becoming inadequate for the support of its
inhabitants; and that, even were there no overt
sign like that of the increasing exodus, the
need for emigration, or for new channels of
trade and industry for the employment of the
people, is really much stronger throughout the
Continent as a whole (thinly peopled as much
of it is), than in our own country, where the
productive and employment-giving power of
capital is combined alike with a rare abundance
of mineral resources and with the highest de-
gree yet attained in mechanical and chemical
invention.
We have seen what gigantic and costly efforts
the Russian Government has put forth in order
to obtain, besides colonizing-fields, new markets.
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
69
and channels of trade, in order to increase the
scant employment and means of subsistence
for the mighty Muscovite nation. But look
nearer home, and at the present hour. So
imperious is a similar want in Western and
Southern Europe, that (besides our own part
in the matter) France, Italy, Spain, Portugal,
are all striving, each for itself, and coming to
loggerheads with one another, as to the appro-
priation of the African continent; which is to
thern what Central and Western Asia is to Rus-
sia, or what our "empire," our numerous colo-
nies and dependencies, are to us. Having
annexed Tunis to her African dominion, and
while not averse to pick a quarrel with Morocco
on the west, France is pushing her Algerian
frontier southwards to Negro-land, and also
seeks imperiously to force upon the Malagasy
envoys a treaty of partial sovereignty over the
great island of Madagascar. Even in the far-
off valley of the Congo, the French Chamber
of Deputies has unanimously resolved to insist
upon converting into a formal treaty of territo-
rial possession the preposterous trickery of a
De Brazza! In like spirit, but less preposter-
I
I The ill-fated Flatters' Expedition was designed to survey
the line for a railway across the Sahara, commercially uniting
Algeria with Timbuctoo and the heart of Negro-land, and also
to extend French influence and “protection," if not also the
Algerian frontier, southward into the interior.
70
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ously, Spain claims from Morocco the bay and
settlement of Santa Cruz, on the plea of hav-
ing once made a settlement there in the media-
val times. Even little Portugal, aroused, by
the territorial furore of her neighbors, protests
against the De Brazza "treaty," and maintains
(we believe justly) that the mouth of the great
Congo River, upon both its banks, has for hong
been a Portuguese fief and settlement. Fur-
ther, we had all but forgot to mention i-
France is making or claiming a settlement on
the mainland of Eastern Africa, not far from
Aden, where a M. Soleillet asserts that he has
made a treaty (of the De Brazza kind!) with
some native chief, and has actually (he says)
"built a wall" around the so-called territory
somewhat, perhaps, as Dido encircled the
primitive site of famous Carthage! Then, top,
there is the Tonquin Expedition, wherelly
France seeks an extension of her conquests i
the Far East, even at the cost of a war with
China-an expedition, however, which, since
the death of Gambetta, shows signs of "hang
ing fire." Ever since 1874 the "République
has urged upon the Government the importance
of taking possession of Tonquin, and of late
that journal has been developing in detail the
advantages which French commerce would de-
rive from the occupation of that country.
Finally, as already said, there is the great isl
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
71
and of Madagascar, where France is claiming
new rights again for the sake of our old toast,
"Ships, colonies, and commerce." I
In short, we are now in the "era of inter-
nationalism"-and with a vengeance! Yet of
this as of some other matters already spoken
of, we say again, the phenomenon is not new,
except in degree, and partly in complexion.
What is the story of the world but that of a
ceaseless pouring-forth of the stronger races
and peoples into the outlying regions? The
double continent of America has been re-peo-
pied by the white race of Europe, and so also
have Australia and New Zealand; the British
have revived the faded glories of India; the
Russians are engaged in a similar work in Up-
per Asia; and in a few years more, also, the
European nations will extend their power over
the south-western portion of that grand old con-
tinent. Simultaneously, as already said, they
The "Soir" says (Dec. 11), "We remain masters to im-
pose on Queen Ranavalo and her agents the respect of those
treaties and conventions which confer on us the effective pro-
tectorate over certain portions of the island of Madagascar,
the moral protectorate over all the rest, and a preponderating
influence with the Malagasy Government. England recog-
hizes these ancient rights of ours, and will not seek to hamper
in any way the freedom of our action. This is one of the con-
ditions necessary for the maintenance of the cordial relations
between the two Western Powers, concerning which the Queen,
in her speech on the prorogation of Parliament, expressed her
desire to see unimpaired."
72
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
are encroaching upon the "dark continent" of
the modern world; and who can tell in what
new form and complexion Africa will hold its
place in the world a century hence? Will it
not become to the Latin nations what the New
World has been to England and Spain, and
what Central Asia is to Russia? And what
new states, if not civilizations, may in course of
time arise on the green upland savannas of its
interior, or upon the shores of its mountain-
girdled lakes which, with the Nile and the
Congo, almost exhibit a parallel to the line of
the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, together with
the Mississippi River, in North America?
-
No nation can now afford to seclude itself;
and none will do so, except it be (what we do
not as yet see anywhere in the world) conscious
of growing weakness and decay, and only seeks,
like some death-stricken animal, to be let alde
to die in its seclusion. The "silver streak of
sea" theory is as great an anachronism as any
statesman could well utter. Nations must not
only live in increasing intercourse with one
another; but, if civilization is not to expire at
its fountain-head, the European nations must
find in that intercourse with the outlying world
alike outlets for its discontented classes, and
trade-born employment and the means of sub-
sistence for those who remain at home.
And commerce has its wars, not less than
EUROPE IN STRAITS.
73

kingly ambition or the military rivalry of peo-
ple. And although governments must appear
as the leading actors, it is really a popular neces-
sity (though not yet a popular passion) which
now urges on the work of European expansion.
Nations fight for trade as well as for boundaries;
for new markets as well as for new territories, -
whigh, indeed, go together. Europe is settling
down at home, territorially, upon the basis of
nationality. Yet the process is not complete :
beyond the independence of nations, there are
the agglomerations of race; and several serious
points of contention remain, tempting to that
trial of strength and rivalry in power which
beset nations as much as combative individuals,
especially where successful war will bring with
it not merely laurels but coveted spoils. Mean-
while the old spirit of national rivalry, excited
by self-interest, is coming more and more into
play in the outlying regions of which Europe is
the centre, and wherein its peoples desire new
fields for themselves or their industry. Wars,
we trust (yet how often in human history has
uch a hope been falsified !), are drawing to a
close; lingering latest in those parts of the
globe where the civilized nations come in con-
tact with barbarism- notably, with peoples
which refuse to trade. But a wide interval still
separates us from that blessed epoch of inter-
national peace. And when all Europe is now

74
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
visibly on the move for extra-European expan-
sion (a new movement inspired not so much by
imperial ambition as by the more imperous
demand for the means of subsistence, o at
least of that more comfortable existence which
is everywhere in growing demand among the
masses of population), is there not a more than
problematical danger that this extra-European
rivalry will be reflected back, if not imitated,
at home, creating new or intensifying old
sources of quarrel and combat; and ultimately
giving a dread magnitude to any coming Euro-
pean conflict, by bringing upon the decisive
battle-fields additional combatants in the shape
of auxiliary forces drawn from the adjoining
continents?
!
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
BY JEHAN DE PARIS.
A
THE events which have recently taken place.
in the coal-mining districts of the Department
of Saône-et-Loire-the destruction of chapels
and @crucifixes, followed immediately by other
attacks upon property and persons, and more
especially the explosions at Lyons and Mont-
peler have revived a question that has long
been unasked in France: Are there really in
existence secret societies, in which preparations.
for the destruction of the established order of
things are silently and furtively carried on under
a deceptive appearance of public security? It
may be at once answered, that there are no
secret societies in France according to the tra-
ditional definition of the term, none such as
those which existed under the Restoration, or at
Haples under the Bourbon monarchy. There
re non-authorized societies, perfectly well
known, though not recognized, acting in broad
daylight, their meeting-places unconcealed, and
their assemblies and proceedings duly and regu-

75
76
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ཅ
larly chronicled in the third page of the news-
papers. There may, it is fair to add, also exist
a conspiracy, more or less extensive, and formed.
of widely varying elements, whose object is pil-
lage and incendiarism; but that is a phenome-
non in France totally new in itself, and of which
no clear idea has yet been formed, if, indeed,
such an idea can ever be attainable. Certainly
it bears no relation to secret societies hitherto
so called.
If we suppose this conspiracy, which certain
persons claim to have discovered, to have an
actual corporeal existence, not to be merely
a sort of moral and social epidemic, a vague and
indefinite evil, but a coalition of wills and inter-
ests directed against the existing order of thir s,
the fact still remains, that it has neither a
settled plan nor definite rules of conduct: i is
not known to possess chiefs, a flag, or a wah-
word; it does not propose to seize upon political
power and the government of the country, in
order to modify the form or the progress of the
latter; it does not threaten the life of the poli-
ticians at the head of our national affairs. The
Russian Nihilists have an immediate and dis-
tinctly defined object, the suppression of th
Czar. When they blow up a railway-train, it is
with the intention of blowing up Alexander III
The Irish and American Fenians also have a
perfectly well-known social and political object


SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
77
to gain by the crimes and outrages which they
They have an organization, funds,
perpetrate.
and chiefs.
Up to the present time there is
nothing in France which resembles either the
Nihilists or the Fenians. In the heat of dis-
cussion, some of our newspapers, even those of
the serious and responsible kind, have said that
France has both her Nihilists and her Fenians;
but when a more discerning spirit of criticism is
brought to bear upon the facts, it becomes evi-
dent that a great and singular difference exists
between the Fenians or the Nihilists, and that
conspiracy which is supposed to have revealed
itself in certain districts of France. At several
points, and at about the same time, explosions
took place; threats were addressed to the ma-
gistrates and the jury who were sitting at the
assize court at Châlons; a number of incendiary
placards and proclamations were posted on the
walls of the towns, or sown broadcast among
the public: but in these insensate productions,
and in those outrages, which were more stupid
than criminal, for up to the present moment
no man's life has been taken, not a single
feature of organization, not a trace of any chief,
or of any definite or definable political object,
has been discovered.
On the 18th March, 1871, the case was very
different. The Central Committee was a real
society, organized for the conquest of political
}
78
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
power, and for the occupation of Paris by force.
The committee had its political and military
chiefs, its soldiers, its flag, and even its news-
papers. The first object of its revolutionary
action was to seize upon the Hôtel de Ville,
the Prefecture of Police, and the forts with
which Paris is surrounded. In this there was
a course of action calculated beforehand, and
a well-studied aim. That M. Thiers did not
go more skilfully to work about laying hands
on the Central Committee, that he did not
from the first employ all the forces which were
needed for such an enterprise in the midst of
a general disorganization of the country, no
doubt precipitated the explosion of the 18th
March, and gave it intensity which it would
not have attained under less deplorable cir-
cumstances; but it is certain that the Central
Committee was a veritable secret society, which
had its watchword, and held itself in readiness
to act at the first signal.
Lord Beaconsfield said in "Lothair," that the
world's future would be divided between the
papacy and the secret societies. Thus far there
are no signs of the future or the present of
the French Republic belonging to the latter.
Whether we consider the occurrences that have
taken place in the coal-mining basins of the
Saône and the Rhône, or whether we study the
numerous democratic societies which are in
1
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE,
79
action in Paris and the departments, it is plain
that it is not with secret societies we have to
deal; and if social and political perils still
threaten France more or less,
- for under every
régime there are always some perils for the peo-
ple, we must acknowledge that their nature
and aspect are changed.
Instead of secret societies, there must be
substituted the expressive societies which are
non-authorized-known, if not recognized.
The most numerous and powerful group of
those which have developed in our democratic
republic within the last ten years, under favor
of the general liberty, is that constituted by
the Syndical, Patronal, and Workmen's Cham-
bers. To attempt the suppression of them
at present would be an extremely dangerous
enterprise, contrary, not indeed to the text,
but to the very principle, of our constitution,
and to the spirit of republican government.
We are still under the empire of the law of
1791, which laid our economic system in the
dust, by destroying the organization of the
old régime. According to Clause 2 of that
law, citizens of the same condition or profession,
contractors, keepers of open shops, workmen
and journeymen in any craft whatsoever, could
not, when they met together, nominate a presi-
dent or a secretary or syndics, keep registers,
¹ Chambres syndicales, ouvrières, et patronales.
!
80
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
take resolutions, hold discussions, or form any
rules concerning their alleged common interests.
This law, therefore, laid it down as a principle,
that workmen in one and the same trade have
not common interests; that their claim to pos-
sess common interests ought to be rejected
as factious, and tyrannical toward the other
sections of French society; and that those in-
terests could not be made a cause for meeting
and deliberation in common. Clause 3 added,
"It is forbidden to all administrative munici-
pal bodies to receive any address or petition
under the denomination of a state or profession,
and to make answer to such address or petition.
They are enjoined to declare the nullity of
deliberations which shall have been made in
any such matter, and to take special care that
no effect or execution shall be given to them."
The ensuing clauses were designed to give
final sanctions of an extremely rigorous kind
to the law.
Such is the régime under which we have
been living for more than eighty years. The
Syndical Workmen's Chambers, which are sim-
ply professional associations of which workmen
and employers of the same trade form part,
and whose object is the defence of the common
interest of their members, the discussion of
contracts, and the fixing of tariffs, are, then,
absolutely contrary to French law. Neverthe-
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
SI
+
less, since the later years of the empire, 1864
and 1865, they have assumed such dimensions,
and, especially since 1871, have developed so
rapidly, that it has become impossible to con-
template their suppression. It is a matter of
importance, on the contrary, to secure a legal
existence for them; and a project of law,
already adopted by the Chamber and rejected
by the Senate, will certainly be voted in a
definitive manner without delay.
The services rendered to the workmen by
the Syndical Chambers are very considerable.
They offer them means of finding work more
easily, without losing their day in fatiguing and
vain efforts to obtain it; they inculcate the
spirit of order, organization, and saving; sev
eral of these Syndical Workmen's Chambers.
have stores of tools and supplies of all kinds,
which they can sell to members and their
families at twenty, thirty, or even fifty per cent
below the shop prices; they have also superan-
nuation and out-of-work funds. They annex
mutual-aid societies to themselves, and have
"cours" and "conférences" on all parts, theo-
retical or practical, of the trade with which they
are concerned. Some have a newspaper of
their own; as, for example, the "Alliance of
Stokers, Enginemen, and Guards." This is a
very important Syndical Chamber; and it is
even something more, as it proposes, according
82
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
to its own statutes, "to group under the ægis
of education" the various societies or Syndical
Chambers of the stokers of France. Each
chamber preserves its autonomy, its own par-
ticular organization, and its statutes: but they
strive in concert to promote education among
their members; and they organize competitive
trials of skill, at which medals, and certificates.
of merit, are distributed to the best workmen.
The principal Syndical Workmen's Cham-
bers at present are those of the hat-makers,
the tailors, and the cabinet-makers. These are
the most wealthy and the most numerous.
The Syndical Chambers of employers (patrons)
are useful in the first place to the employers
personally, and then to the development of
industry and general commerce. They form.
centres of business where the employers ex-
change their ideas, discuss the conditions of
home commerce and of export trade; and they
keep progress, emulation, and activity of mind,
constantly up to the mark. The chambers of
employers and those of workmen maintain mu-
tual relations. They have adopted the custom
of nominating mixed commissions, composed
of employers and workmen in equal numbers,
in order to settle, by common consent, the con-
ditions of labor, contracts, and tariffs. These
committees have prevented several strikes, and
have, generally speaking, been beneficial: at
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
83
present, however, grave difficulties have arisen.
from the system, and Parisian industry is in
one of the most severely strained positions in
which it has found itself for twenty years.
The conflict now in progress between em-
ployers and workmen in the cabinet-making
and wood-carving trades had its origin in this
institution of mixed commissions. The em-
ployers, occupied with various cares, and de-
ceived by the security of long possession, had
abandoned the habit of attending the meetings
of the mixed commission of cabinet-makers:
the workmen, on the contrary, attended them
with indefatigable assiduity; and on a day when
they found themselves almost alone, and mas-
ters of the situation, they changed the condi-
tions of work. The employers then woke up,
declared that they would not submit to the law
of the mixed commission, and carried out a sort
of economic coup-d'état by closing their work-
shops. Instead of a workman's strike, there
was an employer's strike, or lock-out. It seems
to be clearly demonstrated, that the employers
could not accept the new conditions imposed by
the workmen without exposing their industry,
which is one of the most considerable in Paris,
to irremediable ruin. Competition with foreign.
trade, already difficult, would have been impos-
sible; and already Paris, instead of sending fur-
niture to all parts of the world, was beginning
*
84
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
to attract furniture from Belgium, Germany,
and Austria. This occurrence may probably
bring about important changes in the constitu-
tion of the Syndical Chambers, and in their
reciprocal positions. The institution of mixed
commissions has received a heavy blow; and
many employers are of opinion that another
mode of mutual relations must be found, the
mixed commissions being an instrument over
which the workmen would, from various causes,
too often acquire the sole power.
Apart, however, from this incident, it has
been shown that the Syndical Chambers of
every kind in action in Paris, and in the depart-
ments, are extra-legal societies, not recognized,
not authorized, but acting nevertheless in broad
daylight, and perfectly well known. The daily
occupation of these societies is entirely eco-
nomic and social: it is none the less true, that
they also exercise an active but intermittent
influence, when, for instance, an election is in
question, or a political revolutionary movement,
like that of the 16th of May, when Marshal
MacMahon and the Duc de Broglie had con-
ceived the hope of bringing the country once
more into the path of parliamentary monarchy.
On these occasions the Syndical Chambers,
especially those of the workmen, exercise a
far-reaching influence, which penetrates to the
very depth of the nation. That influence may
་
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
85
be decisive at a given moment in a country like
ours, where universal suffrage exists. In fact,
the chambers are very sound and very exten-
sive cadres; and the workmen whose intelli-
gence and activity have enabled them to assume
the leadership of those associations have under
their orders numerous troops who march to the
electoral urns with perfect steadiness and dis-
cipline.
In these societies there are always certain
smouldering embers of politics; and either in
periods of repose when the yoke of the painful
necessities of existence is for a while forgotten
or shifted off, or in national crises when liberty
or the country is in danger, a smouldering
ember may, in the twinkling of an eye, become
a great fire, and emit devouring flames. But,
for all that, it may safely be affirmed that there
is a promise of safety in the fact, and not a
menace or a danger to France and society.
The anarchical theories which have made a
noise in these latter times do not find their way
into our Syndical Chambers. These are com-
posed of the élite of our workingmen, a little.
harsh perhaps, there is nothing surprising in
that, obstinate in dispute over the conditions.
of their toil, but intelligent and industrious,
opposed to anarchy, and hearty haters of dis-
order. Thus the workmen's associations of
Lyons have loudly testified their indignation at
86
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the explosions that have terrified that city; and
if, on the day of those outrages, their authors.
had fallen into the hands of the workmen, there
would probably have been no need of either
gendarmes or judges.
There exists in Paris another species of
"groups," those, exclusively addicted to poli-
tics. They approach perhaps a little more nearly
to so-called "secret societies;" but they are
not, nevertheless, mysterious. The nomencla-
ture, the character, and the customs of all of
them are well known: they convoke their ad-
herents by the plain and simple medium of the
newspapers; and any one may go into and
come out of their meetings with extreme facility,
provided with an introduction from one or two
friends or "companions." These associations
may be divided into two principal categories, —
the Societies of Free Thought and the Studying
Clubs (Cercles d'Etudes). The former are in
action chiefly in the banlieue, or suburbs, of
Paris; and the latter, in the interior of the
capital. They are of widely varying shades of
opinion; and they correspond to all the notes
of the political gamut, from the most moderate
to the most violent. The oldest associations of
Free Thought-which are, so to speak, free
branches of Freemasonry, occupy themselves
wholly in making sure that their members shall
have civil funerals; and the formal acts of asso-
·
•
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
87
ciation are only two. One is made when a
member accompanies the corpse of a friend to
the cemetery, wearing a red immortelle at his
button-hole; the other, when he is carried
thither himself. Other associations of Free
Thought, founded within the last ten years in
the banlieue of Paris, are composed of more
active men,
more "advanced," as the saying
is, whose politics are of a militant order, and
who display considerable energy in electoral
contests.
In each of the twenty arrondissements of
Paris, several Cercles d'Etudes exist. These
are social, or political and social, clubs or cer
cles; and a complete list of them would be as
easily supplied as it would be uninteresting.
Some among them have hardly any members:
others are more numerous, and make a little
more noise. They bear various names, some
very strange, and invented to strike the imagi-
nation of young people; as, for instance, the
Equals, the Equality, the Socialist-Atheists, the
Young Toilers of the Centre and of the Awaken-
ing (this reminds us of the strangely complex
signs of certain taverns; for instance, the "Jean
Bart and the Low Countries," the Revolutionary
Sentinel, etc., etc.). These pretentious names
I
I
¹ Le Cercle des Égaux, le Cercle de l'Égalité, le Cercle des
Athées Socialistes, les Jeunes Travailleurs du Centre et du
Réveil, la Sentinelle Révolutionnaire.
88
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
do not indicate very alarming associations:
they are chiefly composed of youths, or idle
workmen who like to declaim and excite them-
selves among themselves, but who exercise no
serious influence in the workshops. This must
not be taken to mean that really dangerous men
may not slip into these associations, and that
the groups may not make themselves masters
of certain district elections in low neighbor-
hoods, like our municipal elections. But in the
whole of Paris, or even in the whole of an
arrondissement, they do not count; yet they are
known, and heed is taken of their sayings and
doings.
But, it is said, the Government could dissolve
these cercles, which are, like the Syndical Cham-
bers, outside legality, but, unlike the chambers,
do not render any public services, and have
nothing correct or regular in their organization.
No doubt it would be within the right of the
Government to dissolve them, but it should be
understood that their dissolution would be abso-
lutely illusory. Our law of the 30th of June,
1881, upon the right of holding meetings, did
not subject private meetings to any kind of
restriction; and it imposed upon public meet-
ings only one single condition, or, rather, a
purely formal preliminary, the declaration
that, on a given day, a meeting should be held
at a given place. The prefect of police can only
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
89
>
register the declaration that is his sole part in
the matter; he has not the right to grant any
authorization. The utmost he has the right to
do is to intervene in the case of any violence
being resorted to at the meeting. Under this
régime of complete liberty, what would be the
use of dissolving the cercles? The groups
dispersed to-day would be re-formed to-morrow
without hinderance, and might hold a meeting
on a fixed day in each week, or, indeed, on all
the days in succession. This would be equiva-
lent to the permanence of the cercle itself.
The enumeration of the various republican.
or democratic associations of Paris would not
be complete without the mention of the small
"Blanquist" group, which has survived its chief.
A short time ago a Parisian newspaper pub-
lished a long list of Blanquist groups, arranged
by arrondissements, with initials of names and
addresses given. It has been proved that this
organization, which had, during the life of Blan-
qui, a purely electoral object, has long since
ceased to exist. Several streets, named in the
newspaper which states that the meeting of
the committees are held there, no longer bear
the names inscribed upon the famous list. It
is, however, a fact, that a nucleus of Blanquists
still exists, and that the newspaper entitled
"La Tenaille" is directed by some of those who
form it. These men have true political quali-
90
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ties; they are reserved of speech; they do not
frequent meetings and congresses; they dislike
and despise blusterers. The aspirations of an-
archists, collectivists, revolutionary socialists,
all those people who have been making so much
noise of late, are diametrically opposed to the
spirit and traditions of the Blanquists. The
dogmas of the faith of that group are unity.
and authority: decentralization is contrary to
their doctrine. If, indeed, it could be said that.
there still exists a secret society in Paris, it
would be this one; that is to say, it approaches
most nearly in temperament to the secret soci-
eties of the past. But not only does it consist
of only a few members, powerless because they
are so few: its faith is enfeebled by want of
success, its traditions are broken, and its disci-
pline is in process of dissolution. It is a
memory rather than a hope, and, as it were,
a last spark of the soul of Blanqui preserved by
some devoted friends.
Blanqui himself died in 1879, in a state of
profound depression. M. Baur, who knew his
system, and considered it an ineffective one,
wrote of him as follows: "Blanqui remains a
problem to many men of good faith. From the
period of his leaving his prison at Clairvaux, it
was impossible to form a fair judgment of him.
Weighed down with age, broken with thirty-
five years passed in prison, with the eye of
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
91
death fixed upon him, he was no longer himself.
The enmity, the calumny, the moral ostracism,
of which he was the victim, had a most fatal
influence upon his life, his destiny, and his
mind. Being repulsed, he shrank back more
and more into his isolation; he exaggerated
his revolutionary system, which in the end
proved to be powerless; he believed in the
possibility of bringing about a serious action
secretly by the aid of a little group of devoted
friends. In a word, he refined and sharpened
his talent for conspiracy, while he allowed his
incomparable faculties as a politician and a
statesman to remain inactive."
After the Syndical Chambers, the Cercles
d'Etudes, and the Blanquist group, what re-
mains? Nothing, unless we take into account
a certain shapeless amalgamation of revolu
tionary collectivism and socialist anarchy. This
does not constitute a party, or even parties;
it is not a secret society, nor secret societies: it
is a vague, indeterminate element, formed of
dreams, passions, vices, and simplicity, of ignor-
ance and anger, and also, to some extent, of
sincerity and noble aspirations toward an ideal
justice. This element is to be found in all
countries, and its presence in a great free
democracy like the French is very natural.
Collectivism, communism, anarchism, are rather
current ideas, confused tendencies toward a
92
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
better future, which naturally must manifest
themselves among populations overburdened
with toil, eager for comfort, as they behold the
luxury of modern industry, and acquiring ever-
increasing liberty and instruction, although they
are still very far from the true intellectual light.
Mingled in this current, men from all the groups
and all the cercles are to be found, pure and
ardent imaginations side by side with gloomy
and malignant minds. It is a characteristic
of this thing, to be confused, shapeless, and
without self-consciousness. It is a sort of non-
organized, chaotic matter, formed of heteroge-
neous molecules; and each time that one of
these molecules becomes conscious, and ac-
quires will and defined intelligence, it goes off
elsewhere, and takes its place amid the organ-
ized parties and groups.
Collectivism, if we want to define it in a few
words, in so far as these vague theories are
definable, means the placing of capital in the
hands of a “collectivity" of workingmen. Col-
lectivists contend that capital is nothing else
than the product, the accumulated toil, of the
hands of former generations; or, to use the
words of Karl Marx, "of unpaid labor." Capi-
tal is, therefore, to return to the whole of the
workers the mine, the works, the factory, are
to be the property of the working "collectivity"
which produces the profits of the mine, the
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
93
works, and the factory. This collective prop-
erty is to pass on from the present generation
of workers to the next, and so on, being always
possessed and exploited in common. The col-
lectivist system does not include personal prop-
erty, which may be acquired by the economy of
the workman; while communism, of which we
never hear any thing nowadays, excludes every
form of personal property.
The French anarchists do not want any elec-
toral power to exist under any form whatsoever;
nor, according to their own expression, any capi-
talist or governmental authority. They believe
in living in the bosom of a federation of person-
al forces spontaneously associated. Admitting
neither government, nor property, nor laws,
they are necessarily brought back to the most
primitive and the most childish expression of
communism. An anarchist group (eleventh
arrondissement) published a programme some
weeks ago. It contains the following statement
of what they want :
I. "In the political order, the abolition of the state,
that of governmental authority, whatever may be its form,
its name, and its defenders; its replacement by the free
federation of free producers, spontaneously associated ;
that is to say, anarchy. 2. In the economical order, the
abolition of individual property and capitalist authority,
and the placing of the social wealth at the disposal of all,
in such manner that each person, working according to
94
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
1
his faculty, may freely consume according to his needs;
that is to say, communism."
The anarchists are internationalists, just as
they are communists. There is for them no
'country," as there is no state and no property.
It was they who recently interrupted M. Clé-
menceau at the meeting at the Cirque Fernando,
by exclaiming, "There is no nation! There is
no party!" They do not admit the republic any
more than the monarchy, nor do they grant any
authority to the principle of universal suffrage.
The anarchists, the collectivists, and others,
with their different degrees and their multiplied
shades, have troubled our recent meetings, and
especially the Congress of St. Etienne, with
their quarrels. M. Jules Guesde, one of the
most active representatives of collectivism, pub-
lished the first collectivist manifesto in 1878, on
the occasion of the Socialist Congress which
was to have met in Paris during the Exhibition,
but was prevented by M. Dufaure, at that time.
minister. This manifesto says, -
"The foundation of production is given up to the des-
potism of individual interests: to require that it should be
otherwise, that disindividualized capital should be placed
entirely and in perpetuity at the disposal of the producing
activity of all, is to require that social production be
carried to its maximum."
M. Jules Guesde does not, then, admit either
individual property or savings under any form;
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
95
but neither does he appear to admit violent
revolution. He does not make common cause
with the revolutionary anarchists.
There is another collectivism, besides that of
M. Jules Guesde; and its principal representa-
tive is M. Malon. The latter, who is of a more
moderate and reflecting turn of mind, includes
the principle of individual saving in his scheme
of collectivism, which we have already defined.
In his system, collective property and personal
property have their respective places. He be-
lieves in universal suffrage, in the republic, and
in the country. Now, this is what occurred at
the Congress of St. Etienne. Against him M.
Jules Guesde had the anarchists on one side,
and on the other the moderate collectivists who
follow M. Malon. There was, just as there is
in Parliament, a sort of coalition of the Right
with the extreme Left. M. Jules Guesde, who
was in the middle, was crushed. It was he
who, if we are not mistaken, founded, about two
years ago, what he called "the Federation of
the Centre." Seeing that this device did not
succeed in Paris, he went to Rheims and Lyons
and St. Etienne to hold "conférences," and
preach his collectivism. He passed through
those central departments in which education
is by no means advanced, and where great
masses of working-people, whose lives are par-
ticularly hard, congregate.
After this propa-
96
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ganda the Federation of the Centre began to
be talked of. It is a good name, and looks well
in the socialist journals; but it is only a name.
No Federation of the Centre exists, and no
association is organized under the direction of
M. Jules Guesde. His melancholy adventure
at St. Etienne, on his own stage, demonstrated
both his own weakness and that of all the others,
collectivists or anarchists.
In the course of this analysis we have passed
in review the Syndical Chambers, the cercles or
clubs, and various manifestations of a socialism.
which is a prey to internal divisions; but we
have not ascertained the existence of any force.
secretly organized against the actual state of
things in France. We may look in all direc-
tions for the secret society, we shall not find it.
There remains, then, only one source to which
we may refer for an explanation of the outrages
that have excited the public mind. We can only
hold them to be the effect of a sort of moral
contagion, kept up by the passions of some, by
the sufferings of others, and by the violent
prompting of evil counsellors; and, as the pub-
lic mind in France has been extremely impres-
sionable since the war of 1870 and the Commune
of 1871, this contagion has been invested with
an importance which would not have been as-
signed to it at any other time.
"But," it has been said, "where does the
•
2
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
97
dynamite which was used at Montceau-les-
Mines, and which exploded in the café on the
Place Bellecour at Lyons, come from?" It is
not very difficult to answer that question. Gun-
powder is a monopoly of the state; it is manu-
factured in government workshops, by licensed
and brigaded workmen, who are entitled to a
pension, and are, in reality, agents of the gov.
ernment, placed under its constant supervision.
and inspection.
The administration and the
manufacture of gunpowder are organized in
almost the same way as the manipulation of
tobacco, and are national industries. This is not
the case with dynamite: that explosive is freely
manufactured by private individuals, in private
workshops, and may be bought and sold without
let or hinderance. The greater portion of the
dynamite consumed in France comes from the
factory of M. Lemoine at Honfleur.
It is true that the manufacture is subjected
to daily inspection by an officer in the service
of "indirect contributions;" but this is purely
a fiscal measure, and its object is to secure the
regular payment of the duties to the state. The
agents gauge the dynamite which they find in
the workshops of the factories, calculate the
quantity that has been issued, and settle the
amount of tax to be collected. For each issue
they hand over a permit, which is detached from
a register with a counterfoil. This is the sys-
98
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
tem by which the circulation of our wines and
spirits is regulated. The dynamite that comes
out of the factory at Honfleur has four different
and clearly defined distinctions. It is purchased
by the state for the purpose of experiments; by
the ship-owners of Havre and Dunkerque, who
charter vessels for the cod-fisheries; it is bought
for great mining operations, like those at Mont-
ceau; and also for the smaller enterprises of the
quarrymen who remove the rocks from the Jura
and other mountains. Poachers also have begun
to use dynamite to kill fish in rivers and ponds.
No other modes of employing dynamite than
those given above have hitherto been known.
A plausible explanation of the manner in which
the miners at Montceau contrived to procure the
dynamite that they used has been given. It is
this: The explosible matter, having arrived at
the mine, is distributed each morning by the
foremen to the miners about to go down the
shaft. In the dark depths of the mine, super-
vision must be difficult; and the nature of the
work to be done, that of explosion and destruc-
tion, render it still more difficult. The head
men assert that it is very easy, for instance, for
a workman to save one capsule per day, to put
it aside, and take it away with him when he
comes up out of the mine. It is evident, that,
if a number of workmen have each been able
to secrete a capsule per day for several months,
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
99
a considerable quantity of dynamite must be in
criminal hands. Some of the workmen may
themselves have used them in the explosions
that have occurred: others, weak rather than
guilty, may have sold them to add to their pay.
The coal districts generally comprise glass-
works and founderies: there, also, it is ex-
tremely easy to abstract a glass capsule, or to
prepare a metal capsule to hold the dynamite.
Workmen who mean mischief have, therefore,
every facility for carrying out their own notions
or acting on the evil suggestions of others.
This
There is, however, another means by which
dynamite may get into the hands of certain
persons. The "kilo" of dynamite at Honfleur
costs the manufacturer about twelve francs; the
transport-permit costs him twenty-four.
is an enormous charge, it must be acknowledged,
being double the price of the fabric. Thus every
kilo of dynamite bought at Honfleur costs the
purchaser, with the manufacturer's profit, forty
francs. The quarrymen of the Jura are not
rich they are, for the most part, in a small way
of business, and find it hard to live. It is
thought that they supply themselves with dyna-
mite fraudulently brought into the country from
Switzerland; and this supposition is supported
by the fact that the quantity of dynamite regu-
larly employed in France for industrial purposes
seems to exceed the quantity taken note of by

100
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the agents of the "contributions indirectes
19
in the factories. If dynamite be fraudulently
imported for industrial purposes, it is easy to
perceive that miscreants may procure it for their
own ends by the same means. Since the occur-
rences at Montceau and Lyons, a decree, dated
28th October, has subjected the employment
and the sale of dynamite to stricter conditions.
Henceforth any person who requires to make use
of dynamite, or of any explosive whose basis is
nitro-glycerine, must previously address to the
prefect of his department a written declaration
countersigned by the mayor of the Commune,
or, if in Paris, by the commissary of police of his
quarter. In addition to this, he must, within
eight days after he has received the dynamite,
render an account to the authorities of the use
which he has made of it.
We are acquainted with several great typical
secret societies, the Fenians, the Nihilists,
the Carbonari, and the Tugendbund (Society
of Virtue) which was founded at Königsberg
after the taking of Tilsit, to deliver Prussia
from foreign rule, and for the material and
moral reconstruction of the country, which
seemed to be falling into utter ruin. There is
no need to dwell upon Freemasonry: it is a
universal association of such breadth and flexi-
bility that it adapts itself to all places and all
peoples; and it has now been for a long time
MU
SECRET SOCIETIES IN FRANCE.
ΙΟΙ
plunged in a sort of lethargy. The others have
always had one or two aims, and sometimes both
together, to deliver the country from an inte-
rior despotism, and elevate the people toward
an ideal of liberty, happiness, and justice; or,
to deliver the country from a foreign despotism,
and reconquer the national independence lost
or lessened by the fate of war. France enjoys
within itself almost unlimited liberty; and,
though the country has been mutilated by war,
it knows that the armed conflicts of nations are
neither prepared nor settled in these days by
the aid of that blunted instrument, secret
societies. Our "League of Patriots," presided
over by the eminent historian M. Henri Martin,
bears no more resemblance to a secret society
than the League of Education presided over by
M. Jean Macé.
France has not its Tugendbund, and it has
no longer Carbonari of any degree. All the
secret societies of the Restoration and the em-
pire, modelled more or less upon the Italian
Carbonari, proposed to themselves to take up
the interrupted task of the French Revolution,
to realize the great principles of 1787, to prepare
a future of “liberty and bread" for the nation.
All the chiefs of the liberal parties of that
time, such as Lafayette, Dupont de l'Eure,
Benjamin Constant, and others, who did honor
to the press, to literature, and to the tribune,
102
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
hastened to enroll themselves in these societies,
and became the soul of them. Now the na-
tional sovereignty is wielded in all its plenitude:
the republic is based upon universal suffrage;
the rights of meeting, association, and freedom
of publicity, are exercised upon an almost unlim-
ited field. As war is made at the present day
in Europe with entire peoples, so in France
politics are conducted by the whole nation.
These immense displays of force, whether it
acts within or without, render the organization
of secret societies henceforth absolutely useless;
and, indeed, their impotence has been made evi-
dent in France by the whole history of events.
for eighty years.
i
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION.
BY J. WOULFE FLANAGAN.
Two policies are possible for Ireland: the
Imperial policy, which aims at the assimilation
of Celtic Ireland into the body of the United
Kingdom; and the "Nationalist" policy, which
designs the creation of a separate, alien, and
hostile Irish state. Via media there is none,
for federalism and home rule are fancy consti-
tutions of a clearly unworkable kind. Practical
politicians on both sides are agreed as to the
real issue. The Irish Executive have made a de-
termined attempt to use the Coercion Act with
effect. After a long interval, convictions have
been obtained for agrarian murder. Extraor-
dinary crime has diminished in amount, if not
in gravity. Rent, it is said, has in some places.
been fairly paid. The efforts of the Executive
have been met with promptitude and decision.
The Land League has been revived under a new
name. The "no-rent" manifesto has been con-
ditionally re-issued, and, with irresistible logic,
extended to "judicial" rents. The government
103
104
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
I
of the Queen has been publicly described as
"an organization of pirates and brigands;" and
a well-planned series of outrages has reminded
judges, jurors, and policemen that "the unwrit-
ten law" has sanctions of its own. Two re-
markable articles have recently appeared on the
question thus raised practically in Ireland; the
one by Mr. Healy, the other by Mr. John Morley.
Both take the "Nationalist," or, as it is perhaps
better named, the "Secessionist," point of view.
Both limit their present demand to "some form
of local self-government," but they do so "with-
out prejudice" to further claims. The nature
and extent of the "self-government" to be con-
ceded are left conveniently vague, but in both
papers the home rule of Mr. Shaw is defended.
by arguments expressly devised to cover the
home rule of Michael Davitt. The premises
laid down involve the erection of Ireland into
an independent state. There is barely a hint
of the inevitable conclusion. It is at most a
distant and well-nigh impossible danger, a mere
"Conservative reason" for delay, which should
not hinder "modern Liberals" from hastening
to "the next step." The traditions of that
party are relied on with justice. If Liberals
can be cajoled into granting "a large and lib-
eral measure of local self-government" now,
Speech of Mr. Healy at St. Mullins, County Carlow.—
Freeman, Nov. 27.
1
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 105
1
electioneering necessities and the fostering care
of the American-Irish will surely do the rest.
The "germs" will develop in their season; and
a peal of the "Chapel Bell" will awaken great
statesmen to the fact, that, "whether they in-
tended it or not," they have created a nation,
whose de facto independence it would be foolish.
and illogical to deny. Like "the First Whig,
in Milton, they may be something startled at
the sight of their own progeny; but they will
quickly school their disgust under the sense of
common interests, acknowledge their paternity,
and offer terms for the political support of the
new power.¹
Four principal reasons are put forward by
both writers for the concession of home rule.
They are: (1) the utter weariness of English-
men at the prospect of an eternal wrangle; (2)
fear of the American-Irish; (3) fear of the
terrorists; and (4) the iniquities of the land-
lords. The first three are clearly as forcible.
arguments for secession as for home rule. If
utter weariness or fear can drive modern Lib-
erals to federalism, it may well be argued that
a little extra fatigue, or a few more assassina-
tions, will extort absolute independence. This
idea of an imperial race worried out of their
empire is new in history. Perhaps, after all,
it is not very likely to be first realized by the
1 Paradise Lost, ii. 744.
106
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
:
countrymen of Marlborough and Wellington
and Clive. But it will always be precious, as
illustrating the conception of public duty en-
tertained by thinkers, who are scandalized at
our Irish incapacity to discern the value of gen-
eral principles." England expects every man
to do his duty," - if he is not "utterly weary,
bien entendu! It is a strange version of the
famous watchword, and has scarcely the charm
or the promise of the old.
The second ground for concession - the fear
of the American-Irish 2 reveals such an esti-
mate of English courage as might be expected
from those who advise Englishmen to abandon
their duty for their ease. It will be an evil day
for the popular party in Ireland, if ever Amer-
ica should interfere on their behalf. All Eng-
lish opinion, more especially the opinion of the
democracy, draws a sharp line between conces-
sion to domestic agitation, and submission to
foreign menace. Threats of the kind could
only result in the estrangement of that good-
will which Mr. Healy admits is felt toward Ire-
land, and possibly in the denial of civil and
I
1 "One is inclined," writes Mr. Morley, "to put down the
whole of Ireland as a nation of casuists. The value of a gen-
eral principle or a strict construction is unknown."
2 The American argument is, in one form or other, rather
popular just now. Mr. A. M. Sullivan fairly threatens us with
the active interposition of the United States through their
"established government."- Observer, Dec. 4.
3
1
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 107
political rights to subjects who were leagued
with a foreign power.
The third reason stands upon a somewhat
different footing. The existence of a revolu-
tionary party of the ultra-Jacobin type in Ire-
land cannot be denied. They have given us
too recent tokens of their activity and their
strength. If the Nationalists could prove their
policy capable of disarming the terrorists, they
would solve the problem of the day. But this is
just the point in which their argument is weak-
est. Beyond a few commonplaces about "giv-
ing public spirit an outlet," and "letting off the
steam," they do not attempt to show how home
rule would lessen the power of the anarchists,
or strive to meet the reasoning of those who
maintain that such a measure would increase
the force of socialism.
The conclusive answer to these first three
reasons is, that there is no finality in the policy
proposed, and that it can satisfy neither the ob-
structionists, nor the American-Irish, nor the
terrorists. The admission of the one writer,
that "any effectual form of home rule" in-
volves the absolute control of such subjects as
land-tenure, religion, and trade, by the Irish
democracy, and that English opinion is not yet
ripe for such concessions, coupled with the as-
surance of the other, that the attainment of
minor reforms will mean "an additional strength
108
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
to the popular party in Ireland, and an additional
leverage in the carrying of greater ones," sums
up the argument against them. Local self-gov-
ernment would, in fact, arm the Parnellites in
a day with the very weapon the Liberals are
laboriously forging for themselves, a real
working caucus of the American pattern, with
"pickings" complete, the great fly-wheel whose
absence mars the Birmingham article so sadly.
English Radicals hope to perfect their own
machine by giving its members the control of
county government and county patronage in
England. It does not lie in their mouths, to
contend that this very endowment, which is to
make them irresistible, will enfeeble the caucus
of the Land League. The Irish county boards
would be, like the corporations before them,
"normal schools of agitation."
I
The denunciations of the landlords are
scarcely worth answering. They are irrele-
vant, unless the "form of local self-govern-
ment" asked for is "home rule in Mr. Davitt's
I
"Even now," says Mr. T. D. Sullivan, "the people are
working out the principle of self-government. Wherever there
is a representative body, little or great, in whose election the
people have a voice, there the people are obtaining for them-
selves a real representation, and are leading up to home rule"
[cheers]. (Speech at Navan) Freeman, Nov. 27. A confer-
ence of the elected guardians of the entire county of Cork has
been lately held, to consider the effect of recent legislation on
the land question, and "to protest against the administration
of the Land Act."- Times, Nov. 18.
home rule, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 109.
*
""
I
sense; that is, home rule plus spoliation.
It is, however, amusing to find the English
writer declaring the landlords "convicted" by
the judgments of the Land Court; and his
Irish colleague describing that august tribunal
as "a Land League Court," with one of its
members "in a wig and gown to make him look
respectable — put to lower rents.” 2 I have said
""
¹ It must be remembered, when estimating the value of this
testimony, that Mr. Gladstone has publicly declared all Con-
servatives disqualified for sitting in the Land Court, because
the Land Law has to be administered in a partisan spirit; that
the sub-commissioners are exposed to the political' pressure
from which other judges are scrupulously guarded; and that
this pressure has at times been freely applied. See, for ex-
ample, the Prime Minister's reply to Mr. Healy's questions on
"Adams v. Dunseath." The only other witness against the
landlords, whom Mr. Morley names, is Sir Walter Scott. All
the rest of his evidence is anonymous. He confidently ac-
cuses landlords and agents of sending up "proscription lists
to the Castle, under the Coercion Act, containing the names of
"thousands" of "independent and vigorous characters." This
is a very cruel charge. It is easily made, it increases hatred of
a defenceless class, it is utterly untrue, and it is utterly impos-
sible for us to disprove. There are, indeed, only one or two
men in England in a position to contradict it. Happily one of
them has spoken out. "No arrests," Mr. Forster assured his
constituents (Times, Dec. 8), "absolutely none, were made
at the instigation of landlords or agents. Very rarely did the
landlords make representations at all." The Act, he went on to
say, was used to lock up boycotters, and actual and intending
murderers. So much for the "vigorous and independent char-
acters," and for Mr. Morley's accurate knowledge of Irish gen-
tlemen. Mr. Healy says the landlords intimidate electors.
2 Speech at St. Mullins.
IIO
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
that both writers evidently regard secession as
the ultimate solution of the Irish question, and
that their reasoning is directed quite as much
to further that policy as to promote home
rule. Here the objection of
does not, at first sight, apply.
want of finality
Secession must
be opposed on somewhat broader grounds.
The authority of the dead has not much
weight with the left wing of the Liberal party.
They think, like Urban VIII., that the slightest
word of their living Pope overrules the political
decrees of a hundred who are gone. But most
educated men will acknowledge that a long and
continuous tradition is entitled to respect. And
through all the line of statesmen who have gov-
erned these kingdoms, from Mr. Pitt to Lord
Hartington, there has never been, till yester-
day, one moment's paltering, one adroit ambi-
guity, or pretence at hesitation, on this question
of repeal. Men of all parties have hitherto de-
clined to tamper with a design which they "felt
and knew must make Great Britain a fourth-rate
power in Europe, and Ireland a savage wilder-
ness.” I It is needless to establish the conti-
nuity of this belief by a pile of quotations. For
eighty years the necessity of the Union has been
held a truth too deep for argument." The bur-
den of proof lies on those who would question
this cardinal principle of our national life.
¹ Sir Robert Peel, Hansard, xxiii. 3d series, p. 69.
T
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. III
That a novel policy should be defended by
novel reasoning, is not strange; but it is cer-
tainly remarkable, that the very symptoms
which convinced Pitt and Canning that a Union
was imperative, should be the Home Rulers'
chosen argument for repeal. The dread that
Ireland "would receive and cherish and mature
the principles of the French Revolution" im-
pelled Canning to force on the Union. The
prospect of "a violent political revolution, like
the Jacobin Revolution that saved France," im-
pels certain "modern English Liberals " to de-
mand repeal. The premises of the statesman
and the philosophers are identical, and must be
admitted. The "principles which go to array
the physical force of the lower orders of the
people against the educated and governing
parts of the community, to arm poverty
against property, labor against privilege, and
each class of life against its superior," are at
least as wide-spread now as in 1799. Which
conclusion shall we adopt, the philosopher's, or
the statesman's? I have said that the premises.
are the same; but in fact repeal would be a
greater evil now, than when it meant merely
the "Restoration of the Heptarchy." The
kingdom of Ireland, as it existed between 1782
and 1800, was an English plantation, governed
despotically by those who were one in race, re-
-
¹ Canning, Parliamentary Hist., xxxiv. 236.
T
I 12
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
•
ligion, and education, with the rulers of Eng-
land. The peril of Jacobinism was imminent
when the resources of Ireland were in the hands
of a loyal aristocracy. Will the risk be lessened
by placing these resources at the disposal of
Michael Davitt? These "modern Liberals," it
is true, propose to train our future Chaumettes
and Héberts "in the practice of civil virtue
and political responsibility," by the immediate
grant of local self-government. But we have
had some costly experiments in political educa-
tion lately in Ireland, Lord O'Hagan's Jury
Act, for example, — and we are not altogether
satisfied with the "civil virtue and political re-
sponsibility" developed. That such a scheme
I
The working of the Poor Law is another good instance.
Both writers complain of the ex-officio guardians. Under the
original Irish Poor Law (1 and 2 Vict., c. 56), only a third of
the guardians were ex-officio. The jobbery and incapacity of
the elected members forced Lord John Russell to increase the
proportion of ex-officios to one-half in 1847. Recent facts
seem to show that Lord John Russell was not altogether wrong.
"There were methods," said Mr. Sexton last year, "of increas-
ing the expenditure of the landlords: for example, he knew of
one or two cases in which tenants had been turned out by the
action of the Property Defence Association; and he knew that
the local boards of guardians were about to act upon another
of the practical and suggestive notes of the honorable member
for Wexford, for they were about to make liberal grants out of
the poor-rates for the maintenance of those families; and half
of those grants would fall upon the gentlemen who were main-
taining this association. The other half would not fall upon.
the ratepayers to the fullest extent, because arrangements
would be made by which the ratepayers would be protected
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. I13
would accelerate a Jacobin purification of Ire-
land, is certain. That it would mitigate the
catastrophe, is an assumption credible only on
the merest "Liberal principles." Repeal of the
Union would not now mean "the Restoration
of the Heptarchy," but the official installation
of Hobbes's "State of Nature" in Ireland.
There is, indeed, nothing more remarkable in
Irish politics than the increasing degradation of
each successive disturbance. A comparison of
from the full portion of their own moiety of the poor-rates."
["Hear, hear!"] The following table from the Times of Sept.
30 will show that this was no empty threat: —
TRALEE UNION.
SUSPECTS' HOUSEHOLDS.
ORDINARY RECIPIENTS.

Name.
In
Family.
Am't per
Week.
Name.
In
Family.
Am't per
Week.
Stack
Nolan
Sullivan
Pott.
Driscoll
Williams
7563N3
15 0
15 0
£ s. d.
I 00
Sheehy
Connellan
Lyne
•
•
•
15 0
M'Enery.
•
2
15 0
Sullivan
.
I O O
M'Quin
Egan.
•
3374242
40
s.
d.
3
6
I
6
2
55N N N
2
O
6
6
2 6
The whole letter is well worth study, and gives a very pretty
picture of the "civil virtue and political responsibility" of the
elective guardians, when the ex-officios are got rid of. See also
Mr. T. P. O'Connor's speech at Cork (Times, Dec. 18).
¹ See an able speech of Lord Malmesbury's, Hansard, cxc.
3d series, 1054; Feb. 24, 1868.
114
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the hireling assassins, and the hireling cham-
pions of assassination, who work the movement
of to-day, with the men of education and posi-
tion who headed the rebellions of 1798 and
1803, is the best proof that the Imperial policy
has not been barren. The rebellion of 1798
was led by a Fitzgerald. The rebellion of 1803
was the dream of an accomplished gentleman.
Even the "Young Ireland" of 1848 could pro-
duce the "Nation" of Davis and Ingram. The
"Irish World" embodies the intelligence and
the cultivation of the Land League.
The reason of such a rapid degeneration is
not obscure. Nearly a hundred years ago the
wisest and greatest of all Irishmen told his
countrymen how they should set themselves to
secure the Catholics from the seductive vision
of a "frantick democracy," and win them to
the cause of constitutional rule. "If," said he,
"the disorder you speak of be real and consid-
erable, you ought to raise an aristocratic inter-
est, that is, an interest of property and education,
amongst them, and to strengthen by every pru-
dent means the authority and influence of men
of that description." I
Ι
Unhappily, the Irish Legislature took a dif-
ferent way. They admitted a shoal of Catholic
peasants to the franchise, and continued the
exclusion of Catholic gentlemen from Parlia-
1 Burke, Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, 1792.
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION.
115
I
ment. Men like Plunket and Canning were
not slow to see the mischiefs of such a course,
but the bigotry of Parliament was immovable.
By a strange irony, the admission of Catholic
gentlemen to Parliament was at last achieved
by that very agitation and menace against
which Burke had desired to rear their "au-
thority and influence" as a bulwark. The les-
son of agitation had been taught. The people
had learned to look for guidance and for victory,
not to "the interest of property and education"
amongst themselves, but to the delegates of a
democratic convention.
The complete and rapid success of emancipa-
tion in conciliating the Catholic gentry shows
the deep wisdom of Burke's policy. Had it
been brought out as a whole, influence and au-
thority must have been lodged in the hands of
those who have long been perfectly loyal to the
Crown. The delay of a generation between
the grant of the franchise, and the grant of the
right to sit in Parliament, fatally impaired the
power of that order, through which alone, as
See the speeches of Canning on the Catholic Emancipa-
tion Bill of 1821 (Hansard, iv. N. S. 1310), and the Unlaw
ful Societies (Ireland) Bill of 1825 (Hansard, xii. N. S. 480),
and that of Plunket on the Elective Franchise (Ireland) Bill
of the same year (Hansard, xiii. N. S. 220). The last-named
measure carried the principle into the region of practical poli-
tics, by disfranchising the forty-shilling freeholders from the
date of emancipation.
116
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
›.
}
Burke foresaw, the people could be reached.
But in spite of all, the cause of loyalty has not
failed in Celtic Ireland. "There is," in the
words of a noble Irishman who is dead,' “a class
in Ireland—a daily increasing class-which
comprises within its limits men of all creeds,
and of all shades of political and religious belief.
It includes within its ranks all those who pos-
sess the land, who direct the industry, and who
by their intelligence, character, and education,
can pretend to guide any thing that is sound in
the public opinion, of the country. The spirit
of patriotism and love of country, as pure and
as ardent as is to be found among any people
in the world, animates their breasts. Their
faces are not turned toward the west; for in
their consciences they believe that every hope
for their country or her advancement, for her
welfare, her prosperity, and her liberty, is in-
dissolubly bound up in British connection.
They desire, and, what is more, they intend,
that their sons should be, as they themselves
and their fathers have been, sharers in your
greatness and your glory, your freedom and
your power. Their best and dearest hope for
their country is, that the day may not be far
distant, when . . . the whole mass of their
countrymen may be brought to acknowledge,
¹ Lord Mayo, Hansard, cxc. 3d series, p. 1392 scq.; March
10, 1868.
1
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 117
and in acknowledging to appreciate, the count-
less blessings that a free constitution pours on
the heads of a loyal and united people."
This is the spirit with which the Union has
filled the gentlemen of Ireland. They do not
think themselves worse Irishmen for the love
they bear to England. They estimate the abili-
ties of the old race to which they belong, at
least as highly as the patriots who would con-
fine Irish talent to Ireland. But they do not
wish to see these powers wasted. They are not
eager to be the citizens of a Switzerland with-
out a history, of a new and impoverished Bel-
gium. They do not desire that the genius and
the valor of Ireland should be again driven to
choose between insignificance and banishment,
between the parochial politics of College Green
and a perpetual exile. They covet honor for
their country, but the laurels they would have
are to be won on
on "the arena of the world."
Are we to be told that the policy which has
gained over all educated Irishmen has failed?
Lord Palmerston spoke of "the open and un-
disguised discontent of the Catholic gentry"
in 1829. Forty years later Lord Mayo found
them, "to a man, thoroughly well affected to-
ward British rule." 2 Why should we doubt,
that, as education spreads, loyalty will spread
too? Why should not the Catholic peasantry
I
Hansard, xx., p. 1248. 2 Ibid., cxc. 3d series, p. 1745.
118
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
I
abandon their discontent, as well as the Catholic
gentry? But there is even evidence, and very
remarkable evidence, that, at the date of Lord
Mayo's speech, the constitutional spirit had
made no inconsiderable progress amongst the
people. "In the classes above the want of the
immediate necessities of life," said Mr. Glad-
stone in the same debate, "there has grown
up, within the last generation, a sentiment of
attachment to law and order, greater, more sub-
stantial, more lively, and more effectual with a
view to the administration of justice, than has
ever perhaps been known in former times." In
1868 the "interest of property and education"
was at last beginning to tell upon the people.
What evil principles have since paralyzed the
"influence and authority" of that interest, it is
for "modern Liberals" to explain. Mr. Healy
irreverently suggests the ballot and the land
movement. But the ballot and the Land Acts,
we know, were "messages of peace," which
have knit society together, and trained the de-
mocracy "in the practice of civil virtue and
political responsibility;" not causes of a cruel
social war.
The great and progressive results of Burke's
policy, up to the time of Mr. Gladstone's first
administration, seem to show that we who
maintain "that it will all come out right after
1 Hansard, cxc. 3d series, p. 1745.
1
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 119
A
a while" have had considerable grounds for our
belief hitherto. We are even prepared, as the
Secessionists complain, to "go on writing and
speaking the same things into the next century
if we are allowed." But we are beginning to
feel that we may not be allowed. We have
come to what we know is a crisis in the rela-
tions of the two kingdoms. England must now
determine either definitively to abandon the
Union, and enter upon the path which leads
step by step to Secession, or to revert to the
policy of Pitt and Canning and Peel and Dis-
raeli, of Grey, of Russell, and of Palmerston,
by resolutely turning her back on all schemes,
great and small, which throw power into Seces-
sionist hands. "The peril is instant: the decis-
ion must be instant too." Should that decision
be favorable to home rule, the Secessionists
will go on their way, undisturbed for the future
by assurances that "it will all come out right
after a while."
I have said, that, even if we believed secession
would turn Ireland into a Switzerland or a Bel-
gium, we should regret the change. But what
are the prospects of such a growth? Undoubt-
edly there is a hearty sentiment of nationality
amongst our race, but it takes something more
than sentiment to make a nation. It is, we are
very truly told, a delusion "to believe in a whole
community being given over forever to the rep-
I 20
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
robation of social madness." But where is this
community, this organized fellowship of classes,
which is the very essence of a nation? Is it to
spring full-armed from Mr. Healy's head? Or
do "modern English Liberals," like the philoso-
phers of the Encyclopédie, really fancy that they
can make a "body politic," the slowest and the
stateliest growth of time, by intrusting four mil-
lions of "men in the abstract," as M. Taine calls.
them, with the destinies of their country? They
might as well expect a nest of jelly-fishes sud-
denly to develop a backbone. Our Irish race is
no more a nation than a hundred thousand re-
cruits are an army, or five hundred able-bodied
seamen a ship's company. The natural growth
of our people has been distorted and turned awry.
The very success of Burke's policy amongst
Catholic gentlemen has but served to complete
the disintegration he deplored. A "great inter-
est of property and education" has grown up
and thriven amongst them. But it has not the
"authority and influence" to dash "the wild
and senseless project of those who do not belong
to their body, who have no interest in their well-
being, and only wish to make them the dupes
of their turbulent ambition." The fact, that
Catholic gentlemen feel the spell of English
thought and English sympathies has uprooted
whatever power over their countrymen they
possessed. They are mere "West Britons," to
•
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 121
The aristocracy is
be driven out with the rest.
powerless. There is not, there never has been,
a Celtic bourgeoisie. It is idle to talk of the
"whole host of people in a middling condition
of life, the shopkeepers, the men of business,
the larger farmers." There are many thousands
of such men, steady, active, more than com-
monly intelligent. But there is no historic
middle class, with its own vigorous tradition of
respect for law, reverence for social order, con-
tempt of menace, and resistance to oppression.
The middling rank is no status in Ireland: it is
a stage through which men travel, as they ad-
vance or recede in the social scale. It is a body
eminently of waverers, of those who are sure
to gravitate to the winning side. In the begin-
ning of the agitation they resisted the League.
When the Government abdicated, they trans-
ferred their allegiance. Now that the law is
restored, they will support the law. They are
the persons, whom, of all others, a prudent ruler
would strive to win, and whom Government has
of late done very much to lose. They are the
men on whom modern Liberals rely to sweeten
"local self-government"! Have they sweet-
+
¹
Ι
I "Day after day," says Mr. Forster in the speech already
quoted, "as I went to my office, and took details of crime,
I found out how utterly impossible it was to detect outrages.
Then would come to me, not landlords, but respectable farmers,
shopkeepers, and others, with cases, not of personal injury, but
of pecuniary and commercial ruin, in consequence of Mr. Par-
122
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
ened the House of Commons? Is it the meek
citizens who direct the Home-Rule vote, or the
avowed allies of "Rory"? And if the "mod-
erates" are bullied into excesses of which they
are ashamed, where self-assertion would meet
with the moral support of both the great parties.
in the state, what may they not be coerced to
on the county boards of Munster or of Con-
naught?
We have, then, to deal with a population of
peasants; a population, too, which has been of
set purpose unfitted for the exercise of all politi-
cal functions. The declared object of the penal
laws was "to reduce the Catholics of Ireland to
a miserable populace, without property, without
estimation, without education; . . . to deprive
the few men who, in spite of those laws, might
hold or retain any property amongst them, of all
sort of influence or authority over the rest.
Are we to be astonished, . . . that, whenever
they came to act at all, many of them would act
exactly like a mob, without temper, measure, or
foresight?" Certainly we should not be aston-
ished. But we may be well astonished to hear
responsible men talk seriously of purchasing a
respite from worry for themselves by making
this mob the rulers of Ireland.
nell's speech at Ennis. That speech began the boycotting sys-
tem. The Irish Executive felt the reins of power falling from
their hands."- Times, Dec. S.
❤
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 123
1
Many fear the English democracy. But they
at least have received a long and wholesome
education. They have worked their way to
sovereignty by degrees, and in the process they
have learned something of the perils of liberty.
As power has gradually shifted from the privy
council to the peers, from the peers to the
squires, from the squires to the common lords,
the electors of '32, the electors of '67, each
class has taught moderation and restraint to
its successor. The Irish electors have never
known the discipline in the ways of freedom.
They were serfs fifty years ago. They will be
despots with home rule. They are no fitter
to play the part of sovereign people now than
the originals of Mouldy and Bullcalf in the days
of the Armada.
But will England so surely find that ease for
which she is bidden to barter away her empire?
Will "a vestry for the parish of Ireland" satisfy
Mr. Healy's aspirations for "the management
of his own affairs"? Will home rule slake the
hatred that glows in Mr. Sexton's fine speeches?
Will independence itself sate the lust of ven-
geance displayed in every column of the "Na-
tional" press? When we have heaped all this
scattered enmity together, when we have suf-
fered “self-government" to harry every West
Briton out of Ireland, and home rule to fuse
the new democracy together, what pledge shall
124
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
we hold of the enduring amity of the new state?
Political gratitude? The resources of civiliza-
tion will be, ex hypothesi, exhausted. There will
be nothing to give. The fair promises of Mr.
Healy? I do not like the security. There is
no better to offer. Do the Radicals counsel
their "utterly weary" countrymen to rely at last
upon their big guns?
I
Was there ever a more desperate policy?
We are warned not to "expect too much from
any expedient whatever," and an impediment is
straightway pressed upon us, which is admit-
tedly ineffectual unless it involves, (1) the expul-
sion of all land-owners from Ireland; (2) the
imminent risk of a degraded copy of the most
degrading religious war in history; and (3) pro-
tection an expedient, too, which must almost
certainly lead to a collision with this country.
Only very modern Liberals can listen patiently
to such proposals. And even if they were as
safe to true liberty and to property as they are
perilous to both, there is a reason which should
itself alone determine England to refuse seces-
sion. To sever the Union is not only to destroy
every prospect of the ultimate fulfilment of
Burke's policy, by the natural increase of the
authority and influence of "the interest of edu-
cation," but to ruin the great work already ac-
I "A reduced and squalid version of the Thirty Years
War, in Mr. Morley's own words."
HOME RULE, SOCIALISM, AND SECESSION. 125
complished in the growth of that interest itself.
The silent, healthy formation of a cultivated
Celtic opinion has been the noblest result of
the Imperial rule. It binds us to England as
no other tie should bind. She is to us the inter-
preter of the great thoughts that move the
world. We have made her learning our own.
We have enriched it with immortal names.
Through her literature, our genius "has come
upon the arena of the world." It is our ambi-
tion to spread this wholesome light amongst our
countrymen. Here lies our ideal of a true Irish
nation. We hope to see it grow — as all real
nations do grow-a living, organized commu-
nity, with leaders and thinkers and workers of
its own, not a causus - ridden proletariate of
peasants "exploité'd" by professional politi-
cians. And we think, that, like the English and
Scotch, such a nation will find ardent devotion
to their own land perfectly compatible with
pride in the great empire they have helped to
rear and to adorn. But with the advent of "a
frantick democracy" all this must end. Where
the Jacobins cannot level up, they will trample
down. They will "root up the laurels to plant
potatoes ;" and the wisdom of Silas P. Radcliffe
—of those to whom loyalty is self-interest, and
patriotism a trade-will reign supreme in the
country of Edmund Burke.
A DEMOCRAT ON THE COMING
DEMOCRACY.
BY HENRY LABOUCHERE, M.P.
An insight into what is, and what is not, pos-
sible, distinguishes the practical man from the
dreamer; and, as it has been customary in this
country for many a year to assume that democ-
racy is an impossible form of government, all
those who either advocate or predict its advent
are dubbed dreamers. A dim consciousness is,
however, stealing over many, that the impossible
is becoming possible. It may enlighten them,
therefore, to explain how those who avow them-
selves democrats propose to give reality to their
"dreams," and what they hope for when democ-
racy in these isles is no longer a "dream," but
a hard fact. Before doing so, however, it is
perhaps desirable to say a word or two upon
our political past and present in their relation
with our political future.
Up to the passing of the Reform Act of 1831,
the aristocratic form of government, based upon.
the ownership of land, prevailed. The aristoc-
126
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
127
racy
of broad acres were masters in both houses
of Parliament. There were amongst them en-
lightened and patriotic men, who desired that
the people should be well and fairly ruled; but
any idea of governing by the people, as well as
for the people, was alien from the political
notions of the best of them. Occasionally a
man not of the Brahmin class was admitted
to power; but no sooner did he attain it than
he was "permeated," and became a supporter
of the prevailing system. Between Whig and
Tory there was little real difference: indeed,
the Tory of one day was the Whig of the other,
and vice versâ. Whichever party was in power
represented the status quo; whilst the opposi-
tion, in order to attain power, was perforce
obliged to profess an ardent admiration for
popular rights, not so much because it believed
in them, as because the winning side could not
act on them. The people were fed with phrases
lauding the glorious constitution under which
they lived, and, being occasionally allowed to
indulge in the orgy of a closely contested elec-
tion, were deluded into the notion that they,
like the fly, turned the wheel that crushed
them. Only on rare occasions, and when class
legislation had reduced the people to the depths.
of misery and want, did any public opinion make
itself heard.
The parliamentary advocates of the Reform
128
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Act of 1831 were mainly actuated, in their sup-
port of this measure, by a desire to secure to the
party to which they belonged a lengthy tenure
of office. They fancied that by giving votes
to the ten-pound householders, and by putting
an end to some of the more scandalous of rotten
boroughs, they would make the political balance
permanently incline to their side. Just as Lord
Derby subsequently passed a Reform Act "to
dish" the Whigs, so did the Whigs in 1831 pass
one to dish" the Conservatives. Their action
found favor with the middle classes, who were
awake to the abuses which were rampant under
the rule of the landed aristocracy, and were
desirous to share power with it.
Their participation proved of great benefit to
the country. Disloyalty and discontent were
hushed. A vast number of men, hitherto polit-
ical outcasts, were reconciled to the constitu-
tion. Much unjust and class legislation was
swept away, and many sound liberal measures
of reform were passed. The aristocracy, how-
ever, still dominated in the Executive, and still
were far too powerful in both houses of Parlia-
ment. The middle classes, who had acquired
the franchise, were Liberal rather than Radical,
and even their liberalism was stronger in words
than in action. They were at the same time
jealous of and yet subservient to those socially
above them, whilst they dreaded and disliked
•
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
129
•
ten pounds, or at
Let us be frank :
those whom they regarded as their social in-
feriors. They were ready to make common
cause with the aristocracy in refusing to extend
the franchise to all who were not as they,
dwellers in a house rated at
something more, per annum.
these ten-pound householders were in the main
poor creatures. They had a keen knowledge
of their own interests, but cared for little else.
Respectability, "gigmanity" as Carlyle calls it,
was their fetich; and no one who lived in a
smaller house than they, or who labored with
his hands, was in their eyes respectable. Their
ideas revolved within a narrow circle, hemmed
in with prejudices; and their minds were as
narrow as this circle.
Their "social inferiors," however, were no
longer the ignorant, unthinking pariahs that
they had been in 1831. They had been edu-
cated; they read and thought; they had their
clubs and their associations; they had learnt
their strength by acting together; they failed
to regard as one of the most perfect systems of
government that which excluded them from all
share in the choice of their rulers; they de-
manded the franchise. The parliamentary Lib-
erals were anxious to grant it to them, but
for a considerable time the Conservatives and
Whigs found means to render this impossi-
ble. The initiative was taken by Mr. Disraeli.
130
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Whether he really believed in the existence of
the Conservative workingman, and fancied that
he would ally himself with the territorial aris-
tocracy against the middle classes, or whether
he only wished, like his colleague Lord Derby,
to extinguish the Whigs, is not quite clear. It
is probable that he perceived that the elector-
ates established by the Reform Act of 1831
were in the main Liberal, and, without any
close consideration of the subject, thought that
his party might gain, but could not be in a
worse position, by extending the franchise, and
therefore gave votes to the workingmen, much
as a gambler, who is losing with one pack of
cards, calls for another.
At the first subsequent election the Con-
servatives were defeated, as the new electors –
most of whom had always called themselves
either Liberals or Radicals — voted for the Lib-
eral candidates. At the second election the
verdict was reversed. This was due, not to the
workingmen going over to the Conservatives,
but to the Dissenters sulking, and refusing to
vote, as a demonstration against Mr. Forster,
whose legislation in regard to education had
displeased them. At the third election — that
which returned the present Parliament - the
Conservatives suffered an overwhelming defeat.
For this there were many reasons. They
had committed numerous mistakes, and their
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
131
r
"spirited" foreign policy had turned out un-
fortunately for them; Mr. Gladstone had taken
the field, and in burning eloquence denounced
them. Both of these were factors in the result,
but comparatively unimportant ones. The Lib-
eral victory was due to three causes: 1. That
the Dissenters were ashamed of their absten-
tion on a previous occasion, and came up to the
poll; 2. That the provinces wished to show
that London, which had thrown itself into the
arms of Lord Beaconsfield, was not the entire
country; 3. That Mr. Chamberlain had organ-
ized the masses by means of the caucus.
No sooner was the result of the election
known, than an intrigue was set on foot amongst
the official Whigs, to exclude Mr. Gladstone
from office. They hated him. Unlike them,
he was no mere aspirant to office: he was not
likely, when he had attained it, to rest and be
thankful; he was no coiner of words to conceal
ideas; he had not merely professed a belief in
popular reforms, but he believed in their neces-
sity, and was prepared to insist on their adop-
tion. The Whigs wanted a servant who would
aid them to keep up the farce of promising
every thing and doing nothing. In Mr. Glad-
stone they knew that they were more likely
to find a master.
Unfortunately, however, Mr. Gladstone does
not seem to have been aware of his own
132
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
strength, or he was perhaps unwilling to break
with former political associates and with long-
formed social ties. No sooner was he intrusted
with the task of forming a government, than
the Tadpoles and Tapers circumvented him.
Peers, Whigs, and ex-ministers who had been
pitchforked into former Liberal cabinets, sur-
rounded him. He was not a young man. He
succumbed, and formed his cabinet of the very
men who had intrigued against him, and of the
political hacks who had formerly been his col-
leagues. Had it not been for the determination
of Sir Charles Dilke, not one single representa-
tive of the party that had been true to him,
and had enabled him to triumph not only over
Lord Beaconsfield, but over his former asso-
ciates, would have had a place in his cabinet.
As it was, the only Radical admitted to a seat
was Mr. Chamberlain.
This gentleman's entrance into the cabinet
was regarded as almost a revolution by the
Whigs, and by the London clubs and London
coteries, who, up to then, had regarded the
choice of ministers as a sort of domestic mat-
ter, on which they alone were to be consulted.
He had not been very long in Parliament; he
belonged to no London clique; he had never
held office; he was a provincial; he was an
avowed Radical; he had organized the caucus
that baneful scheme which was destined to
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
133
F
+
enable constituencies to choose their candi-
dates, and to restrain them if, as usual, they
sought to break loose from their pledges. He
was rich, it was true, and this was in his favor;
but he had made his money in screws so low,
so common! he had been the mayor (a mayor!)
of a provincial town; he had a vestry mind;
he was capable of encouraging Mr. Gladstone
in any attempt to emancipate himself from
Whig guidance; his views in regard to the aris-
tocracy, the landed interest, the monarchy per-
haps, were not orthodox. All this, and much
more of the same kind, those who thought that
Mr. Gladstone had been tamed like the wild
elephant, by being surrounded by trained ani-
mals, and who distrusted Mr. Chamberlain,
sadly whispered.
Mr. Gladstone's cabinet may therefore be
said to have consisted of two Radicals, — him-
self and Mr. Chamberlain, and of a number
of noblemen and gentlemen, who, whatever they
may have termed themselves, were not Radi-
cals; and the cabinet remains much what it
was, except that Lord Derby, an ex-Conserva-
tive, and Sir Charles Dilke, a Radical, have
joined it.
In the present Parliament there is unques-
tionably a stronger Radical element than in any
previous one. There are more men than here-
tofore who not only avow themselves Radicals,
134
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
but whose Radicalism has been proof against
the usual cajoleries that are brought to bear
on those who profess this pernicious political
creed. They, however, do not constitute the
majority. On the ministerial side of the House
the mass is composed of men who have got into
Parliament by means of Liberal and Radical
votes, but whose Liberalism is only skin-deep.
Their aspirations do not go beyond a desire to
tack M.P. to their names as long as possible,
and a vague hope that one of these days they
may either be made baronets, or given some
little office which will secure to them an ob-
scure seat on the Treasury Bench. These
waiters on Providence are harmless for good
and for evil. They consider that they will best
serve their own interests, and best insure their
re-election, if they give an unqualified and
undeviating support to Mr. Gladstone, — not
because they have personally any liking to him,
but because he is the leader of the Liberal
party, and they are the rank-and-file of that
party. If Mr. Gladstone proposed home rule
for Ireland, they would cheer him if he resist-
ed the proposal, they would equally cheer him.
When Mr. Gladstone withdraws, they will cheer
his successor with as hearty and vociferous a
zeal as they have cheered him. They are party
What may be termed the right section
of the ministerialists is composed of men who
men.
1
1
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
135
T
are in every thing, except in name, Conserva-
tive. Although their political views have little
in common with those that former Whigs pro-
fessed, they give themselves this designation,
and are known by it. All told, they do not
muster above thirty; but their influence is en-
tirely out of proportion with their numerical
strength. There are several reasons for this:
they are in the main able men, and have es-
tablished for themselves a prestige for emi-
nent respectability. In the cabinet they are
very fully represented, as well as amongst the
minor official fry. They are not to be trusted ;
and, were they or their views to be ignored, they
would at once intrigue with the Conservatives;
and in all their resources of parliamentary tac-
tics they are past-masters. It may be asked,
why, being Conservative, they do not go over
to the Conservative side of the House. They
are not likely to do this until they are driven
over. They find it far more advantageous to
themselves to belong to a party in which they
are given much in order to secure their alle-
giance, and where their presence leavens Radi-
cal resolves with Conservatism. Eminently
respectable as they are, they cheerfully accept
the part of traitors within the Liberal camp,
and no doubt sincerely believe that the country
owes them a debt of gratitude for so doing.
They have, too, a most voracious appetite for
136
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
office, and take exceedingly good care to be
handsomely paid for condescending to support
a Liberal government. Although they act skil-
fully and compactly, their weakness lies in the
fact, that, were they to vote against the Liberal
leader upon any great party question, not one
of those who does not sit for a pocket-borough
would ever return to Parliament through Lib-
eral votes. Knowing this, their aim is to emas-
culate Liberal legislation by means of artful
amendments on bills in committee, to bring
social pressure to bear on Mr. Gladstone, and
to secure to themselves the lion's share of the
"spoil." The left wing of the ministerialists
numbers perhaps about one hundred, but of
these probably not more than twenty are real
democrats. It has been a matter of reproach to
this section of the party, that they have not
sufficiently asserted themselves or their princi-
ples in the present Parliament. In this, how-
ever, they are well advised. They are aware
that the majority of the House, and indeed of
the ministerialists, would not go one step far-
ther on the Radical path than Mr. Gladstone;
and that he has up-hill work to make head
against the majority of his Cabinet, the social
influences with which he is surrounded, and
the Punic faith of the Whigs, who would turn
against him the first moment that they could
do so without danger to themselves. Moreover,
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
137
they have a hearty and grateful personal admi-
ration for the old statesman himself, which,
irrespective of political considerations, renders
them loath to render his difficult task still more
difficult. The Radicals in Parliament of all
shades, therefore, bide their time, and leave
Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Chamberlain free scope
to pave the way for their inevitable, and not
far distant, triumph. The Conservatives, as a
parliamentary party, may, for all practical con-
siderations, be said to have almost ceased to
exist. They have no policy, and their official
leaders are singularly wanting both in debating
talent, and in skill to turn any mistakes which
are made by ministers to their own advantage.
Serious official opposition to the ministry does
not exist. The leadership of the Conservative
party seems to be in commission. Lord Salis-
bury in the Lords, and Sir Stafford Northcote
in the Commons, pull in opposite directions;
whilst the lieutenants of the latter, Sir R. Cross
and Mr. Smith, although good men of business,
are, like their amiable and respected chief, sin-
gularly wanting in those characteristics which
enable their possessors to influence a large
popular assembly. If the initiative of a free
lance, which succeeds in dragging an inert mob.
into battle, denotes leadership, Lord Randolph
Churchill indeed, rather than any occupant of
the front opposition bench, is the leader of

138
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the Conservative party; but his opposition
does not go beyond indiscriminate criticism,
and a persistent endeavor to stave off Liberal
legislation by means of much talking. So far
as can be judged from his utterances, Lord
Randolph has some hazy idea of a Radical-
Conservative party of the future. If so, it is
most unlikely that the Conservatives will follow
him. Putting aside a few hungrily loquacious
lawyers and blatant youths, the party consists
of worthy men, who, although misguided in
their political views, honestly believe in them,
and would not sacrifice them either for place,
power, or success at the polls. The Irish have
been alienated from the Liberal party, owing
to the ill-advised Coercion Acts having dealt
not only with the suppression of actual crime,
but sought to render even legitimate political
action impossible in Ireland. Although the
"Kilmainham treaty" is a figment of Conserv-
ative brains, yet there is no doubt that the
release of Mr. Parnell and his friends, coupled
with the substantial recognition of the justice
of their cause by the adoption of the Land
Act, would have constituted a new departure
in the relations of the Parliamentary Irish with
the Liberal party, had it not been for some of
the clauses in the second Coercion Act. That
bill was, unfortunately, in the hands of Sir
William Harcourt, who avowed himself a Whig,

THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
139
}
nailed the Whig flag to the mast, and declined
even to listen to any arguments in favor of any
alteration in its worst and most oppressive
clauses. The Irish-so long as this unhappy
Act is in existence will not aid Government
with their votes, should any chance of a minis-
terial defeat arise. At the same time, they are
sensible that Mr. Gladstone has done more for
their country than any previous English pre-
mier, and nearly as much as he possibly could
do. Whilst, therefore, they still occasionally
fall out with him, their opposition has lost the
virulence which characterized it during the first
session of the present Parliament.
As the only specific engagement entered into
with the constituencies by the majority of those
elected at the last general election was, that
they would vote in favor of a bill assimilating
the county with the borough franchise, it may
be presumed that this vital reform will be car-
ried before the present Parliament is dissolved.
Any scheme for a redistribution of seats ought,
however, to be left to a Parliament elected on
the larger franchise; for the present Parliament
would not treat the question in the drastic man-
ner that is needed, but its action in the matter
would be half-hearted.
We will suppose, therefore, that Parliament,
after having given votes to the agricultural
laborers, is dissolved. What ought then to be
140
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the course of those who desire to democratize
the constitution of the United Kingdom?
To break entirely with the Whigs, and to
hand this damnosa hæreditas over to the Con-
servatives. Better, far better, that the Con-
servatives should for a brief period be in power,
than that these emasculating traitors should
any longer be tolerated within the Radical fold.
This clearance would be effected by submitting
certain test-questions to every Liberal candi-
date, and by every Radical refusing to record
his vote for him unless they are satisfactorily
answered. These questions ought to be clear,
simple, and few in number, but thoroughly
practical. If the instrument of legislation is
not democratic, it is not likely that it will legis-
late in a democratic spirit. If democracy is the
faith of the majority of the electors, they must
take means to insure that it will also be that of
the assembly that represents them. No Liberal
candidate, therefore, should receive a democratic
vote unless he agrees to support the following
reforms.
ELECTORAL DISTRICTS.
As Mr. Disraeli once said, all modern legisla
tion tends toward this end. Much from a Con-
servative standpoint may be urged against a
franchise which is based upon giving a vote to
every man who is not under personal disquali-
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
141
fication; but if this be recognized as a right,
it follows as a necessary consequence that the
weight of each vote in the political scale ought
to be equal. To grant a vote to all, is to evacu-
ate the last defensive work at which democracy
can be resisted. To attempt to stem the demo-
cratic flood by means of disproportion in elec-
toral areas, is to endeavor to fight in the open
country after the fortress has been surrendered
and the guns spiked. It is simply childish, and
it is difficult to understand how intelligent men
can suppose it to be possible. To imagine that
the masses, having been given the franchise,
will allow themselves to be jockeyed out of it for
the benefit of classes numerically infinitesimal,
is much like opening the door to the Atlantic
Ocean, and then fancying that its course can be
directed with a broomstick.
ELECTORAL AND PARLIAMENTARY EXPENSES.
Sir Henry James has elaborated a bill which
is intended to punish bribery and to reduce the
cost of elections. The bill is drastic in the
penalties that it provides for bribery, and so far
is a good one: in its provisions respecting the
cost of elections, however, it is open to much
criticism. It re-affirms a property qualification
for a seat in the House of Commons, by still
permitting a heavy expenditure on the part of
candidates, and by obliging them, as now, to
1
142
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
-
pay the fees of returning-officers, the cost of
poll-booths, the salaries of poll-clerks, and other
such outlay; which there is as much ground to
ask a candidate to meet, as there is to require
him, when elected, to contribute to the amount
requisite to light, fire, and keep in repair St.
Stephen's. All this has but one object, an
insidious and an objectionable one, to insure
by a side wind, so far as is possible, that only
rich men shall legislate for the rich minority
and the poor majority. The cost of the entire
machinery of elections must be thrown on the
taxpayers, the expenditure of candidates at elec-
tions must be limited to a nominal one, and
members of the House of Commons must be
given a sufficiency to live upon from the public
purse. In this way alone will the choice of con-
stituencies be between all their fellow-citizens,
and in this way alone will the majority of elect-
ors be represented by men who know their re-
quirements, and who will insist upon obtaining
them. The payment of members may seem a
small matter; but on it, more perhaps than on
any thing else, depends whether the electors and
the elected are to be henceforth in harmony.
DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS,
Three years is quite long enough for any
representative assembly to exist without the
electorates who have chosen its members having
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
143
:
an opportunity to renew or to withdraw their
confidence in them. If an elected assembly sits.
for six or seven years, during the first half of
its existence its members are too apt to stray
away from their pledges, owing to the day of
reckoning being so far off; and during the latter
half they are out of touch with the country.
A septennial parliament crystallizes public opin-
ion, and does not allow for its onward progress.
Conservatives, from the nature of their political
creed, desire to alienate electors from all real
control over the elected, and from all genuine
interest in public affairs, by rendering the oppor-
tunities to exercise this control infrequent. At
the end of three years, either a member enjoys
the confidence of his electors, or he does not.
In the former case his position is strengthened
by re-election in the latter case, why should
he continue to be the representative of those
whose opinions he does not represent?
THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
This branch of the legislature is composed
of hereditary land-owners, who collectively own
14,258,527 acres of land, and whose collective
incomes are about £15,000,000. They have per-
sistently opposed, so far as they dared, every
measure of reform brought forward during the
present century, and more especially every
measure that has militated against their own
144
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
class interests. Not only are they Conserva-
tive in the real sense of the word, but in the
party sense. When a Conservative ministry is
in power, they are useless: when a Liberal min-
istry is in power, they are actively pernicious.
Notwithstanding their wealth, they are not in-
dependent. They are place-hunters: they are
clamorous for decorations; and they dip heavily
into the public exchequer. In pay, pensions,
and salaries, they annually divide amongst
themselves (including the salaries of the bish-
ops) £621,336 per annum. It may be an open
question, whether the system of one or two
chambers is the more desirable. No sensible
person, however, can advocate a chamber, des-
tined to act with controlling impartiality, com-
posed of enormously wealthy men, draining vast
incomes from land, absorbing large amounts of
public money in pay and pensions, and perpetu-
ally intriguing to secure the triumph of the party
to which the great majority of them permanently
belong. It is surprising that so astounding a
legislative assembly as our House of Lords can
have existed so long in a country inhabited by
sane human beings; and its existence in any
country where the paramount assembly is elected
by a numerical majority would of course be out
of the question.
The forces of democracy being thus organized,
the traitors having been expelled from the camp,
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
145
and a legislative assembly having been elected
which would be the direct reflex of the national
will, we may anticipate that no time will be lost
in bringing the country into line with the spirit
of the age.
What will follow, however, is too
wide a subject to enter into in this article, al-
though a few of the political and social prob-
lems, to the solution of which it will devote its
energies, may be briefly alluded to. It is doubtful
whether, even amongst democrats, the majority
regard the issue between a monarchy and a
republic to be within the realm of practical
politics. So long as a monarch reigns, but does
not rule, the question is an academical one. To
democrats, whether the ornamental figure-head
of the state be a living human being, a piece
of painted canvas, or a gilt club, is a matter of
exceedingly small importance in their eyes.
Moreover, they recognize that the human figure-
head has its advantages in a state such as ours,
where the tie that unites the metropolis with its
colonies is of the slightest. What they object.
to is the needless and foolish expenditure which
is arbitrarily connected with the institution of
monarchy in this country. The monarch and
the monarch's family now cost about £800,000
per annum; and without any impeachment of
the personal respect that is felt for the Queen,
this expenditure is regarded, not only as exces-
sive, but as one for which there is no more
146
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
inherent necessity than there would be to en-
circle the mace with strings of diamonds, were
it, instead of an individual, our figure-head.
Democrats can conceive an hereditary mon-
archy such as ours without the abject ceremonial
or the vast expenditure of a court. Much, in-
deed, of what is now voted to the monarch, goes
to fill the pockets of members of the aristocracy
and of needy courtiers. The monarchy assur-
edly is not bound up in the annual payment
of £4,000 to a wealthy nobleman for walking
backward with a colored stick on state occasions.
In the United States the president receives
£10,000 per annum, and lives in decent dignity,
receiving all citizens who wish to pay their re-
spects to him. Between this modest sum and
the £800,000 which our royal family costs us,
there is a considerable margin for retrenchment.
It need hardly be said that the Established
Church will at once be disestablished and dis-
endowed. It is estimated that about £3,000,000
per annum might revert to the nation from this
source, without injury to the rights of any
individual. The money would be devoted to
educational purposes. Religious equality is a
cardinal article of the democratic creed; and to
make persons contribute, not only toward the
cost of their own worship, but also toward that
of another sect, is, in the opinion of democrats,
a flagrant violation of religious equality. Under
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
147
黏
​a legislature where land-owners have been par-
amount, the object of law has been to vest the
ownership of the entire soil in the hands of a
few. Democracy will reverse this, and strive
by legal enactments to vest it in the hands of
many. Practically, occupiers will become own-
ers, or, to speak more accurately, will exercise
those rights which are now in the hands of
non-resident owners. It may be, too, that a
law will be passed limiting the number of acres
that can be owned by any person who does not
farm them. Such a law would have its political,
as well as its economical, advantages; for nothing
can be more desirable than to break down the
social prejudice which now attaches to the own-
ership of vast tracts of the national soil. Taxa-
tion will be based upon the excellent principle,
that, a certain amount of money being required
in order to meet the cost of government, those
ought, in the main, to pay it who can best afford
it. The sums that are now levied on industry
by means of customs and excise will be raised
by a progressive income tax and a progressive
succession duty. It is very clear that no indi-
vidual can want more invested capital than such
an amount as will produce in interest an income
sufficiently large to enable him to gratify all his
real and all his acquired wants. More is sur-
plusage, and the owner of this surplusage has
no real right to demand that society should be
148
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
taxed to secure him in the possession of it.
What can a man with a fortune beyond the
very dreams of avarice do with his money? He
has to compete in thousands with others as rich.
as himself for the possession of china cups and
saucers, which may be intrinsically worth ast
many pounds, or he employs it in some other
equally silly manner. Very large fortunes, as
the Americans are learning, are a positive dan-
ger to a democratic state. To take from the
individual all above a certain amount, however
just in theory, might, however, have its disad-
vantages. To take one-half beyond the amount
regarded as alike safe to the state and sufficient
for the individual, would be beneficial to both;
and fifty per cent might be laid down as the
limit to which an income-tax should in any case
extend. It may be said, that, in this case, accu-
mulation would cease beyond the fixed amount.
No harm would ensue if it did; but, as a matter
of fact, it would not. Of course, right to raise.
money for local purposes now possessed by ex-
officio magistrates would be at once swept away.
The principles of local self-government, viz.,
imposition of local taxes by the representatives
of all the inhabitants of the locality, and local
control over expenditure, would be pushed to
their ultimate consequences. We should have
elected parish boards in each parish, just as we
have now elected borough boards in the munici-
4
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
149
.
-
pal towns. In each county there would be an
elected county board; and each board-county,
municipal, or parish would have full power
over all matters which only affect its locality.
The excellent system of local self-government
which obtains in some of the New-England
States might be adopted by us, almost in its
entirety, with signal advantage. Thus the peo-
ple, by being allowed to control their local
affairs, would receive a political education, and
be better able than now to realize the duties
and responsibilities of citizenship. Local self-
government also, in the fullest acceptation of
the word, would be accorded to Ireland; and in
this way the long-standing grievance of the Irish
would be removed.
These are but very few of the questions which
would occupy the attention of a democratic
legislature. Democrats are not such fools as
to fancy that pauperism can be extinguished
by law, nor that the difference between the lot
of rich and poor will ever cease to exist. They
indulge in no dream of absolute financial equal-
ity between man and man; nor do they desire
to interfere with the rights of property, although
they might wish to put an end to the so-called
rights of the few, when they involve the wrongs
of the many. They would no longer permit
the law to produce and perpetuate inequality,
and be the servant of rich men but the master
150
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
of poor men.
Wealth would be more equitably
partitioned there would be fewer very rich men,
and fewer men struggling and striving for the
barest necessaries of existence. Thus the sum
of human happiness would be more equally
divided. Social distinctions would be depend-
ent rather on merit than on birth or wealth.
The public expenditure would be reduced to
the lowest limit consistent with efficiency, and
taxation would be properly apportioned. The
resources of the country would be no longer
squandered in wars to realize a wild dream of
imperialism, or to secure to money-lenders the
fruits of their spoliations. What is now a mere
rhetorical phrase would become a reality: "The
public affairs of England would become the pri-
vate affairs of every Englishman."
That Conservatives, that Whigs, that great
land-owners, and that millionnaires should re-
gret the advent of all this, is conceivable. They
have drawn a prize in life's lottery; like Doctor
Pangloss, they consider that all is for the best
in the best of worlds; they are convinced that
legislation by them and for them is in accord-
ance with the fitness of things. It has ever
been so.
An individual can seldom free himself
from the illusion that a system is sound and
good for all if it suits him. But between regret-
ting that a thing will be, and believing that it
will not be, there is a wide difference. Demo-
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
151
crats are told that they are dreamers. And
why? Because they assert, that, if power be
placed in the hands of the many, the many will
exercise it for their benefit. Is it not a still
wilder dream to suppose that the many will in
future possess power, and use it, not to secure
what they consider to be their interests, but to
serve those of others? Did the land-owners act
thus in England as long as they were the pos-
sessors of power? Can any instance be shown
in history except in Rome when votes were
bought (and we are seeking in every way to
render bribery impossible) — in which a democ-
racy acted with such astounding abnegation?
Is it imagined that artisans in our great manu-
facturing towns are so satisfied with their pres-
ent position, that they will hurry to the polls to
register their votes in favor of a system which
divides us, socially, politically, and economically,
into classes, and places them at the bottom,
with hardly a possibility of rising? The school-
master has been abroad. The artisan no longer
is an ignorant, besotted beast of burden. He
thinks; he reasons; he aspires. The poor vil-
lage slave, too, the hewer of wood and the
drawer of water, no longer regards his squire
and his parson as beneficent beings, whose will
is forever to be his law. Is his lot so happy a
one that he will humbly and cheerfully affix his
cross to the name of the man who tells him that
152
1
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
it can never be changed for the better? That
democrats should rejoice over the coming future,
is only natural; but that those who are not dem-
ocrats should, le cœur as leger as that of M. Olli-
vier, do every thing in their power to pave the
way for democracy by giving to all the franchise,
and yet remain convinced that this will produce.
no fundamental alterations in our social and
political system, is indeed surpassing strange.
We democrats know that democracy involves
great changes, and we rejoice at its advent be-
cause we desire these changes. We know that
artisans and agricultural laborers will approach
the consideration of political and social problems
with fresh and vigorous minds, and will judge
them on their merits, without being warped by
any prejudice in favor of what is, because it long
has been. We, dreamers! We, theorists! It
is because we know clearly the end we have in
view, and because we know by what means we
shall attain this end, that we shall succeed.
Constitutionally we mean to alter the constitu-
tion. Whilst Whigs, Conservatives, and moder-
ate Liberals are actuated by the paltry ambition
of appending Right Honorable to their names,
and are quarrelling for the spoils of office, we
look steadily to the triumph of our principles.
For the moment, we demand the equalization of
the franchise we regard this as a step on the
democratic path from which there is no turning
}
?
t
THE COMING DEMOCRACY.
153
back. Our next demands will be electoral dis-
tricts, cheap elections, payment of members,
and abolition of hereditary legislators. When
our demands have been complied with, we shall
be thankful, but we shall not rest: on the con-
trary, having forged an instrument suitable for
democratic legislation, we shall use it.
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE ABOUT
HIS SOUL.
BY THE HONORABLE AUBERON HERBERT.
"For, what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in
exchange for his soul?
THE Irish Land Bill had just passed through
committee in the House of Commons; and
members were pouring out of the House, much
in the fashion and temper of schoolboys released
from school.
"Breakfast to-morrow with Angus," said
Geoffrey Lewin to a group of three or four
other men, who, having secured their coats,
were lighting cigars before dispersing home-
ward. Geoffrey Lewin was a young member
belonging to the advanced Radicals. He had
lived a good deal abroad: was well informed
and well read; had worked hard and system-
atically at different subjects; was dry, clear,
and positive in his views; and perhaps was
rather more aware than was pleasant to his
154
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
155
friends, of the state of ignorance in which the
world around him generally lived. He was a
fairly regular supporter of the government; of
which he approved less for what it was in itself
than for those future enlargements of the same.
policy, and those bolder governments, which he
believed it would render possible. He had sym-
pathies of an intellectually cultivated kind with
the mass of the people, "grown in rather thin
soil with plenty of manure," as one of his friends
said he believed in the dogma of a supreme
government; looked forward, to use his own
words, to the establishment of collectivity; and
frankly avowed that he should belong to the so-
cialist party in England, had the nation known
enough of its own wants and beliefs to form
such a party. The friends to whom he spoke
were Angus Bramston, Walter Pennell, Lord
Holmshill, and John Danby. Angus Bramston
was a young member sitting with Geoffrey Lewin.
below the gangway, not very constant in his sup-
port of the government or settled in his political
opinions, but occupied by many doubts and in-
quiries about all things in general and the Lib-
eral party in particular. Danby had sat and
grumbled for many years on the benches some-
where behind the government, gave them a vote
on all the more important divisions, but was not
supposed, by those who knew him well, to do it
from any excess of loving-kindness toward them.

156
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Lord Holmshill was another young member re-
turned in the Parliament of 1874, a Whig by
birth and training, eldest son, and heir to large
estates, but not overmuch wedded to these;
looking with rather hopeless eyes on the present
situation, and wanting as much in active desire
to preserve an old order and avert changes, as
in enthusiasm for the new things which were
taking its place. Walter Pennell sat on the
other side of the House, but thought and acted
in a borderland between the two parties, occa-
sionally voting with the Liberals, and well
known by his friends to hope for the formation
of a third moderate party as the remedy of all
political evils. They were all intimate friends,
bound by ties of different kinds to each other:
none of them very strict party-men, but pos-
sessed of sufficient philosophy to discuss with
great plainness of speech their own opinions and
the questions of the day. Of them all, Geoffrey
Lewin was the one who saw his own way the
most distinctly, and knew, or professed to know,
what he wanted. Angus Bramston's mental
attitude was in strong contrast to that of
Lewin. He was unsettled and tentative in his
opinions, but was being constantly spurred on
by a strong perception that there were great
problems to solve, which could not be left with-
out some definite attempt at their solution. He
had had no intention of entering Parliament

A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
157
for some years, but an accident had put him
unexpectedly in possession of a seat. And now,
being transferred from a life of watching others.
and comparing opinions, into a life of action, he
was becoming aware of the mental difficulties.
which surrounded him. He had formed a strong
opinion on the special controversy which occu-
pied the constituencies in the 1880 election, and
had been able without difficulty to give a clear
answer in his own mind to the single questions,
"Shall England view with favor, or with jealousy,
the rising nationalities of the East? Shall she
pursue an aggressive, or non-aggressive, policy
abroad?" But he now found himself face to face
with subjects of a different order, which, involv
ing social reconstruction, could not fail to be
full of perplexities and enigmas for philosophers
still looking about for mental foundations, and
were not made easier by the way, as it seemed
to him, in which Mr. Gladstone and the party
assumed that such a matter as an Irish Land
Bill only required a well-balanced arrangement
of details, and care that all the parts of the
new mechanism should work without excessive
friction.
Breakfast was finished, chairs were pushed
back from the table, and cigars lighted.
"Have you been supporting the government
lately in most of their divisions?" asked Walter
Pennell of Danby, who, by right of prescription,
158
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
was occupying the most comfortable armchair in
the room.
"Yes, always, whenever I voted.”
"And yet you do not like the bill?"
"No, I don't like the bill: who does? It
has almost every fault crowded into it that a
bill could have; but I have supported it, and
I suppose I shall support the Government if
the Lords insist on having a trial of strength
over it."
"That is the true Liberal way of going on!
You hate the bill, and yet you support it.
How can you defend such flagrant treachery
to your own opinions?" retorted Pennell.
"Wait a moment," said Angus: "before he
clears his character, let him first tell us why he
does not like the bill."
"Why should you make me tell you?" an-
swered Danby. "Pennell's friends have been
telling you over and over again during the last
few weeks, and most of the things they have
said are substantially true. Except Argyll and
Lansdowne, nobody could have said truer things
about it than Gibson did. The bill is not a
straightforward measure: it seems ashamed of
its own meaning. It is a mass of complica-
tions; just as if Gladstone did not like it to be
said that he was giving the three F's after hav-
ing denounced them so vigorously in old days,
and therefore he wanted both to do the thing
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
159
•
and not to do it, in which difficult perform-
ance he can succeed better than most of us;
and the greatest courage it shows is in its
hypocrisy, since it sanctimoniously pronounces
it a crime in the landlord to sell what he has
got, at the best price he can get for it, a
crime which every trader and every workman,
every person, rich and poor, Radical and Con-
servative, is committing every day to the best
of his ability. Of course the object has been,
to buy the tenants over from the Nationalists,
and make them love the English Liberal party
in return for certain practical advantages repre-
senting a considerable money value; and the
whole machinery of these interminable clauses
is little more than a piece of decorative work
to hide what the Government cannot afford to
put into plain words."
"You are daubing on your black paint thickly
enough," interposed Bramston.
"My dear Angus, you are still in the age of
innocency. Don't you think," went on Danby,
"it would have been a simpler way of doing
business, if the bill had only had one clause
in it, to say that the Irish tenant, or whoever
the tenant likes to put in his place, should pay
for the next fifteen years to his landlord twenty
per cent less rent, or whatever figure Gladstone
chose to fix upon? Some forty words would
have arranged the whole matter, and everybody
160
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
would have known what they were doing.
Great heavens! Pennell, what a number of
headaches it would have saved some worthy
men on your side in trying to put together
Gladstone's wonderful new puzzle of landlord
and tenant! Our men were wiser: they never
troubled themselves to understand any part of
it. It is quite touching to see their faith in
Gladstone when he is operating on an Irish
landlord. But I suppose a bill of one clause
would have had a brutal look about it, and
would have shocked our dear respectable nation;
and perhaps Gladstone, for the sake of his own
feelings, likes plenty of conventional wrappings.
The bill without any of its fig-leaves would
have been called indecent, and even in the case
of a landlord it is best to save appearances."
"
"Have you more to say?" asked Pennell.
"Yes, of course I have. There is no adjec-
tive expressing mental or moral stupidity which
does not apply to some part of the bill. It has
been bespattered all over by the praise of the
Gladstone worshippers; but it is easy to see,
that in messing over details, and entangling
himself in contrivances to check this dodge of
the landlord and that dodge of the tenant, Glad-
stone has never really faced the great under-
lying difficulty of the question. Everybody
who keeps his common-sense in the matter
asks, 'If there was over-competition for land in
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
161
+
the past, will there not be over-competition in
the future? If the tenant was reckless about
engaging to pay rent, will he suddenly, to suit
Mr. Gladstone's political reputation, become
moderate and prudent in buying the tenant's
interest?' No attempt is made to answer this
question. It is left to answer itself; and Glad-
stone simply buys off the Irish question for the
moment with the landlord's purse. Of course
some day the difficulty will return on his suc-
cessor in an aggravated form. It is likely
enough, when good seasons return, that under
the stimulated competition for land the tenant's
interest will become a millstone about the neck
of the farmers; enormous sums having been
recklessly spent in buying, and only a small
part of the real value received. The true ver-
dict on the bill will never be pronounced until
that unfortunate successor of Gladstone has
the whole mess to deal with again in another
period of depression like the present; and then
perhaps the nation will begin to learn what an
expensive process it is apt to be, when political
leaders have a genius for constructive legisla-
tion, and a fancy for putting feathers in their
cap. But in any case it will end in a third
slice being cut out of the landlord."
But what would you have done?" asked
Holmshill.
"Why, clearly," said Danby, "if you were to
162
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
have a bill of this kind, which is a large ques-
tion in itself, as it was a case of disputed rights,
you should have arranged for the tenant buying
up at a fair value such of these rights as were
most necessary to him; as, for example, the
ownership of all improvements. You could not
do the tenant a worse turn than simply transfer-
ring to him rights by Act of Parliament. He
will think for the next twenty years that it is
both more profitable and more amusing to be a
politician than to follow his own dull trade of
butter and cattle growing."
"What I am half puzzled and half angered
about," said Bramston, "is, why we have been
legislating for so many months about the tenant,
and have done nothing for the laborer.
I dare
say we are wrong in all we have been doing;
but if we are to help anybody, the laborer ought
to have the best claim. He is certainly the
most down in the world."
"I fear you are the freshest of young men up
from the country, Angus," said Danby. "What
has the laborer to give Gladstone? He has not
got a vote; he is not organized; he has not
even learnt how to shoot at the tenant; our
newspapers and the English public are scarcely
aware of his existence; and at present he has
not been quoted, and is quite without value
in the political market. Rightly or wrongly
Heaven only knows, the Government calculate,
•
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
163
that, if the tenants can once be detached from
the National party, they will keep the laborers
in order. So the laborer may be left for the
present to stew in his own juice. Had you
watched Gladstone as long as I have done, you
would know that he never buys stock except in
a rising market. When once he buys, then he
buys boldly. He is always a little slow at first,
but he never lets the market slip. You may be
quite content, if ever the Irish laborer is worth
looking after, our political leaders will take him
in hand."
"But as the laborer is at present," said Walter
Pennell, "it was like wringing blood from a
stone, to get any thing from the Government for
him. When he pressed for something to be
done for him, the other night, the Government
almost had a relapse of political economy."
"Ah! I remember that your party was in a
very philanthropic mood that night," remarked
Danby. "They always are whenever the Gov-
ernment is in difficulties. If Gladstone suc-
ceeds in nothing else, he will have succeeded in
teaching your party some very sound views. If
ever they let me write his epitaph, I will duly
record the amount of your debts to him. You
have already learnt to believe in freedom of con-
tract, and to love the Irish laborer. My own
belief is, that Gladstone has done more for your
mental development in a twelvemonth than
Dizzy did in a lifetime."
164
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
"I can't flatter your party by saying they have
learnt from anybody," said Pennell. "They
show more aptitude for unlearning than learning
just at present. But have you other faults to
find with the bill?"
(C
Other faults?" said Danby.
"Why, the
whole thing is made up of faults. Gladstone
has gone out of his way to give the Conserva-
tives the best of the argument throughout the
whole session, and has left the Liberal party
and himself nothing but the dirty end of the
stick.
ceed.
In
And after it all we are not going to suc-
Of course the Irishmen will take all that
they can get out of the bill; and for three or
four years there may be a lull, if Mr. Gladstone
keeps his temper, and does not put Parnell too
often in prison. But the lull won't last. Every
sick man in a fever has his quiet moments, whilst
he is getting up steam for another outburst.
Ireland it is just the same: first a lull, then an
outburst, then a heroic remedy; always the same
series, in the same order. And I think we have
some right to complain of our party-managers.
As they were determined to go in for national
bribery, they might as well have managed their
delectable business successfully.
sign that the Irish are less inclined
faces after the bill than before it.
But I see no
to spit in our
As they can
see exactly how much our generosity at the land-
lords' expense has cost us, I think their want of
1
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
165
gratitude to the Liberal party does credit to their
intelligence. But why should I give you a sec-
ond-reading speech? You know all the moral
and economical lies we have been telling this
session, and so does everybody else; and so
would Gladstone himself if he were not stung
with a gadfly about any new matter he has in
hand, to the utter exclusion of all other consid-
erations, and their banishment to the farther.
planets."
"We'll forgive you the second-reading
speech," said Bramston, "if you will now make
your own confessions, and tell us why you have
supported the bill."
(6
Well, that wants very little answer," said
Danby. "I don't see anybody offering any thing
else. Everybody wants something done, but no-
body on one side or the other tries to see dis-
tinctly what should be done, or, if he sees it, has
the courage to put it into words. We all blame
Gladstone; but we all have a sneaking belief
that we have got to swallow Parnell in some
form or another, and the country seems to like
the Gladstone sauce as much as any other. If
we were not all of us given over, body and soul,
to quackery and the medicine-men; and if we
were not always being driven, like a herd of
slaves, by our political necessities along the road
which we like the world to think that we choose
of our own free will and choice; and if-great-
166
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
est of all ifs — there were any party that spoke
the truth, served the truth, and tried to save its
own soul,-why then, perhaps I should not have
voted as I have done. But I suppose I am phi-
losopher enough to see, that political parties are
about as anxious to know and follow what is
true as the churches are; and I suppose I have
been in the House long enough to see, that
when our leaders are in the higher regions of
their eloquence on the subjects of justice and
generosity and all the other virtues, they are
only doing their best to win the odd trick for
the party.
There may be some shades of dif-
ference between parties; but a politician of
any party nowadays would have to make as
wry a face as Thomas the Rhymer did, were he
offered the gift of 'the tongue that can never
lee.' To cheat himself about his own motives,
is his first necessity, if he is to succeed. And
so, you see, faute de mieux, I support the Gov-
ernment. What other choice is there? As for
all the eloquent speeches we have heard from
Pennell's friends lately, they are true enough;
but I want to know how long those who make
them will care for us to remember them? What
greater reality is there in the eloquence of one
side than the other? Who ever heard of Pen-
nell's party believing in free contract, or free
trade, or peasant proprietorship, or any other
sensible sort of a thing, unless it were to buy
1
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
167
r
off something from the hands of the enemy
that they were afraid of losing? Their political
virtue, of whatever kind it is, is always the
child of necessity, and never outlives the special
moments which called it into existence. How
much political economy shall we hear, do you
think, from Gibson, when Pennell's friends re-
turn in two or three years to power, and Chap-
lin, as the new minister of agriculture, is dishing
Mr. James Howard as Gladstone has dished Par-
nell?"
“I admit something of what you say,” replied
Pennell, “about our side. As we are at present,
we are ceasing to be the stupid party, only to be
the dodgey party. The absurd thing about the
whole of the present matter is, that a mere
chance would have reversed the parts that we
have each played this session. Had Dizzy lived,
and had he remained in power, it is likely
enough that our party would have been dealing
with the Irish question, and that all the moral
and economical and common-sense speeches
would have come from your benches. What a
picture Gladstone would have given us, of the
tenant called away from his sober industry by
the political bribes flaunted in his face! what
tempests of denunciation he would have poured
on our heads for offering him a new and royal
road to property! I am often tempted to despair
about ourselves. Our misfortunes seem to do
168
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
us no good they give us no steadiness of pur-
pose; we show none of the better qualities
which belong to minorities; our highest aim
seems to be to make a damaging speech against
Gladstone, — and how can you damage a man
whose supporters are all caucused? or to make
some new combination, some flank movement,
or do some clever sleight-of-hand. Our leaders.
are always ready, at a moment's notice, to pour
out any quantity of criticism, as if they were
engaged to do it by the piece, and they are
good enough to throw in a certain number of
epigrams for us without charge; but even the
epigrams, when we get them, only seem to leave
us in much the same unimproving condition of
mental health after as before. Of any distinct.
leading, of any attempt to rally the party to
definite opinions, to touch our reason and
redeem us with a faith, of these things there
is no spark to be seen in our darkness. All that
happens is material for party criticism, and
nothing more. But low in the world as we are,
I still hope more from our men than from yours.
There is an incurable 'sand-the-sugar and come-
to-prayers' snuffle about your Government,
which they share with the grocer of pious and
practical habits. I suppose you can't help it;
and perhaps some day, when you are all repub-
licans and atheists, and are no longer half
ashamed of your own opinions, and are not
1
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
169
trimming between two or three sets of support-
ers, you will get rid of it. But I want to know
how Lewin has been voting lately. - Have you
supported the Government, Lewin? and are you
glad that the bill is so far safe?"
"Yes," replied Lewin, "I voted steadily for
the bill. I don't say that I like its shape, but
it goes in the right direction. Of course the
bill is a bit of cumbersome machinery, which
was to be expected, considering the ecclesiasti-
cal-metaphysical machine-yards from which it
came; and I don't expect it to last even half of
the time that the much-praised and little-per-
forming machine of 1870 lasted. However, you
may throw all the hard names at it you like, and
most of them may be just enough, I don't
know, and I don't care, - still, depend upon it,
long after the checks and counter-checks, dodges
and counter-dodges, cease to mean any thing, and
have been sold off as old iron, the principle that
is in it will remain, and bear its fruit: I mean,
that Government is a bigger thing than the
landlords, and can remodel all havings and be-
longings, all rights of property and all social
arrangements, as it thinks best. We have got
to come to this, and we have taken one right
good step at least toward it. The bill is proba-
bly all you say; but perhaps you forget that the
metaphysics in it are not only the necessary
product of an age of confused intelligence, but
170
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
are specially adapted for spreading a useful mist
round the changes that are taking place, and
preventing our seeing too clearly what we are
doing they are therefore by no means altogeth-
er useless. The great function of a Liberal
leader at the present moment is to lead us just
as we are going, without making us aware, or
even without being aware himself if possible,
of the true readings of the compass. The pres-
ent is essentially a transition moment, requiring
very delicate adaptations; and in Gladstone we
have probably found the suitable instrument,
just as other times have produced other leaders
who were exactly fitted to their special circum-
stances. Everybody can see that three hundred
years of Protestantism were a preparation to
help us to pass from a superstitous state to a
rational state of mind; and Gladstone, like the
Protestants, is making the same transition easy
for us in social politics. We wanted at that
time a race of theologians sufficiently irreverent-
minded and sufficiently enterprising to break up
the old authority, but not so logical, or consist-
ent, or thorough-going in their views as to be
tempted to travel in one day's journey to the
end of the new road that was opened before
them. Men of greater mental hardihood, who
would not have overleapt one formula to stop in
front of the next, would have spoilt the slow
preparation that was wanted, perhaps would.
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
171
have ended in refixing the old fetters upon us.
It is the same in social politics now. We want
a transition leader who can reconcile us gently
to the inconsistencies of thought and action
that are involved in the changes we are making,
and that would startle the world if the passage
from the old to the new were abruptly made.
Were I given the task to describe the kind of
leader most suited to the present moment, I
should say that he must be confident in his own
constructive enterprises, committed to a policy
of satisfying wants and difficulties as they arise,
fitting into the English habit of mind of not
looking beyond the twenty-four hours as regards
the further consequences of an action, with a
reputation that he cannot afford to lose for
being the people's friend, with a dash of the
political spendthrift about him, fluid in character
but powerful in impulse, and, whilst ready to
devote superabundant powers with enthusiasm
to the movements which the people force upon
him, always abiding by Frederic Harrison's pre-
cept of using the old terms to which we are
accustomed, so that we may get as few joltings
as possible in our passage from the old to the
new beliefs. I have a perfect faith in natural
selection producing for us in politics, as in every
thing else, the instrument which is wanted; and
whenever I listen to Gladstone lubricating for
the English middle class the process of stripping
172
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
$
the Irish landlord, I feel the same thrill of de-
light that watching the apparatus of an insect-
eating plant or any other bit of beautifully
adapted machinery gives me. The co-ordina-
tions in the political world are fully as perfect
and admirable as those in the plant and animal
world."
"I don't know whether to envy you," said
Angus, "or to believe that you also are of those
who know nothing about their own direction.
You are always satisfied and contented with
whatever happens; you always see yourself one
step nearer the end which you desire; you tell
us quite plainly what that end is: but still I can-
not help asking myself whether your plain words
really make you see any plainer. When Gov-
ernment has passed its last Land Bill, and per-
formed its last operation on the landlords; when
what you call collectivity is fairly established,
and when we are all under its direction, is
not that only the beginning rather than the end
of things? How do you know what form the
will and pleasure of the collective agency will
take? Have you the least idea on what princi-
ples, by what methods, it will act? Have you
even distinct wishes as to what it should be?
If you have not, are you not as much obeying
forces as Gladstone is? perhaps deceiving your-
self a little more than he does, since you set
up a claim to know clearly what you mean,
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
173
and Gladstone, as Danby says, has never yet
had time, with so many speeches to make and
so many bills to pass, even to consider whether
he does know or does not know what he means.
I cannot see that it helps us much, to know
that we are being carried nearer the collective
agency, unless we are told what kind of a thing
it is to be."
Your challenge is fair enough," said Lewin,
"but I don't intend to attempt to reply to it.
To answer such questions as you propose, would
require that I should know the secrets of evolu-
tion. The little marsupial of a few inches long,
that lived at the time of the Purbeck beds near
Swanage, might have told you what he thought
was best for himself; but he could not have told
you what would be best for the great race of
mammals who were to tread so closely in his
small footsteps. I can only say that to me the
collective agency is the best instrument for gen-
eral happiness; that it is better that people
should agree by a majority as to what they want,
and then proceed to carry it out, than that every
man should be ceaselessly laboring to fashion
his own muck-heap after his own special fancy,
or to make it a little broader or longer than his
neighbor's. That is all I can tell you. Collec-
tive agency seems to me a better agency than
individual action; and the work of modern poli-
tics is to accustom the mind of all classes to
174
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the idea. Without agreeing in all details with
Karl Marx, I agree far more with him than with
Gladstone. But I should greatly prefer Glad-
stone as prime minister under our special cir-
cumstances. Marx would do us infinite harm.
Gladstone does as much good by involving all
that we are doing in general indistinctness.
He is always the last man to be convinced of
the step which he is taking; and, when con-
vinced, the most fervent in expounding the
necessity under which he is acting. There is
no finer method for sapping settled convictions.
His regrets and hesitations, his appeals to the
principles he is overthrowing, his skilful hand-
ling of the old familiar phrases, and his perora-
tions in which democratic sentiment, religion,
communism, and conservatism are all mixed up
together, are a work of art which none of you
sufficiently understand to admire as you ought.
But even Gladstone, I think, would fail in dis-
guising what wants disguising, if it had not
been for the sort of theology on which the
nation has been fed over so long a period. An
ordinary Englishman cannot think unless he
has a certain amount of fog hanging about his
brain. There is no shrewder or more capable
class than our well-to-do English Dissenters ;
they are the money-makers of the nation: but
in politics you can do almost what you like with
them, if you only tickle their ears with the right
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
175
sort of words to which they are accustomed in
their chapels."
"Here is Bramston asking you for bread,”
said Danby, "and you only give the poor fellow
a stone. Is this wretched pittance of informa-
tion all you have to offer us? Have you no
picture to give of the life we are all to live, and
the happiness we are all to enjoy, when you have
established the collective agency? We want to
hear some practical details: we want to know,
now that we have started with government in-
spectors to direct us in all that we do, and Irish
Land Bills for turning tenants into owners, if
we are to arrive in due course at state owner-
ship of all instruments of production, and state
employment for everybody. Please to tell us if
any class or if any persons are to be allowed to
exist in independence of the Government is
everybody to receive an official salary for what
he does? or perhaps I should say, in the case of
the idle and unprofitable people like myself, for
what he does not do. Are we still to live, each
man under his own fig-tree, or are we all to club
together under one family roof? may I suggest
corrugated iron to the collective agency as a
cheap and expeditious way of roofing us all in ?
Are we still to be allowed to marry when we
like? or are we only to become happy fathers
of families when we can get a certificate of
collective agency permission? You are a very
176
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
uncommunicative prophet of the new faith.
Please do something for our conversion, by tell-
ing us a little more of your new kingdom-come;
and especially of the methods by which you
propose to extract a week's work in return
for the payment you are so generously going to
give, I believe from five such ornamental and
useless members of society as have just been
breakfasting together in this room.'
")
"All such questions are simply idle," said
Lewin. "Were I to try to answer them, I
should only use words, and cheat myself as much
as our present leaders cheat themselves. There
is no man living who can tell you what the
collective agency will do. It will probably, as
everybody can see, be protective in its nature
at first; but when society has once been remod-
elled, and a new start given to every one, what
form of protection it will develop afterward, or
whether it will be protective at all, can only be
answered by guess-work. All that I can affirm
is, that it is best for men to act as an organized
body; for them to agree on what they consider
happiness, and then to carry it out by organized
means. It is the natural tendency of human
nature, to make use of the collective power; and
therefore it is wise to recognize its use in the
most complete form possible. It is the greatest
of human forces; and to tell men to live in its
presence, and yet not to use it, is like telling
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
177
I
them that the forces of steam and electricity
surround them on all sides, but must not be
employed in their service. But to tell you what
men will consider happiness when they are free
to construct it, is not a task I pretend to under-
take."
66
'Well," said Danby, "we are all of us very
much disappointed. I am of opinion that we
are not going to be better off under the new
than we were under the old leadership. If I try
to interpret Mr. Gladstone, there are many vol-
umes a year to read; and I confess that what the
sum total amounts to in the matter of spiritual
guidance, how much or how little it all means,
lies altogether beyond my powers of discern-
ment. I may at once confess that I have not
the least idea where I am to be led this year,
next year, or any other year. I do not know,
as I follow my leader, whether I shall remain a
free-trader, or shall develop into the brilliant
discoverer of some new form of protection;
whether I am the column and support of Es-
tablished Churches, or their declared enemy ;
whether I am going to back the Lords, or give
them a sly kick if occasion serves; whether I
am going to construct a new system of state ed-
ucation that is to begin with the babies and end
with the graduates, or whether I believe in let-
ting people educate themselves; whether I am
going to enlarge our system of poor-law relief,
178
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
!
and generously offer free-living to all who wish
for it, or whether I shall be rigidly virtuous and
economical, and take my stand on the House
and nothing but the House; whether I am going
to let Mr. Parnell take his coat off as many
times as he likes in the day, and welcome, or
whether I am politely going to give him my
best help in putting it on; whether I am in my
inner consciousness an Imperialist, or a Federal-
ist, or a Separatist; whether I abhor blood-guilt-
iness, or am on the side of the Queen's authority;
whether I am the friend of the English tenant,
or of the English laborer (I am quite clear, for
the moment, that I am dead against the landlord);
whether I am going to present the public with
new wines from Spain and Portugal and perhaps
some other part of the world, or whether I am
going to fine and imprison some thousands of my
countrymen for wishing to take a glass of beer;
whether I am going with the doctors for vac-
cinating and registering the people, or whether
I shall throw doctors and registers overboard,
and support the liberty of the subject; whether
I am going to preach economy, and save the
public money, or whether I am going to enter
on a career of constructive enterprises, and
spend with both hands. This year I have been.
the apostle of peace, and pledged to nationalities.
and moralities: next year I expect to be march-
ing shoulder to shoulder with the Jingoes into
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
179
1
•
the heart of Africa, annexing the Congo, and
placing Bartle Frere on a black throne. I am
quite humble-minded in the matter: I bear my-
self like a weaned child; I am quite conscious
that I have no knowledge as to what my own
opinions and actions will be for any five min-
utes in advance of the present moment; and I
have long ago given up the effort to make any
connection between our mental zigzags of to-
day and our zigzags of yesterday. Many years
of practice and some philosophy have at last.
brought me into this state. But when a young
prophet invites me to strike out a new path,
and, with himself as my leader, says quietly, 'I
know absolutely nothing,' as if that were the
best way to inspire me with sufficient confi-
dence to leap after him into all the dark holes
for which he seems to have a fancy, I may be
excused for doubting if I shall not be as com-
fortable where I am."
"Don't mind Danby," said Bramston: "he is
only digesting his breakfast, which never agrees
with his temper. Go on, Lewin, with what you
were saying."
"There is not much more to say," said Lewin.
"The rule of the majority is the principle that
is being evolved at this moment of the world's
history it is the principle of the future, by
which the world's destiny is to be definitely
shaped; and it is already running its course be-
I 80
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
fore our eyes. The majority, with all their
learning to give some
And whatever phrases
day may use, whatever
wishes and wants, are
real effect to their rule.
the party-leaders of the
credit they like to take to themselves for their
Land Bills and social constructions and generous
gifts, you may look on these little bits of ingen-
ious statesmanship as the first blind acknowledg-
ment of the force that is acting upon us all. All
our phrases make no real difference to the fact,
that, whatever the majority thinks adds to their
happiness, that henceforward they intend to
have or to do. This is a fact, which, if you don't
yet see, you had better all of you see as quickly
as you can; and then perhaps you will under-
stand why I vote for a bill that I don't take the
trouble to defend from Danby's attacks, that
creaks and groans in all its cumbersome parts
like a Spanish peasant's cart, and of which the
one merit is, that in unsettling every thing, and
settling nothing, it accustomes one part of the
people to want and to ask, and the other part to
give up the bone to their bigger brother; and
this is conveniently done without the use of too
much plain language. Perhaps you all suppose
that there is a reality in the distinctions which
our intelligent Liberal spokesmen like to draw
between land and other kinds of property. Yes,
there is a distinction; but it is not the meta-
physical one which they draw so glibly and to
T
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
181.
13
their own self-content. The distinction is, that
land is the most visible, the most easily seized,
the most easily divided up, and the worst de-
fended, of all kinds of property. It is exactly
fitted to the first meal, and when eaten it will
leave a noble appetite for the other more diffi-
cult morsels. Vive l'appétit! Perhaps you all
comfort yourselves by repeating what those
same intelligent spokesmen are always telling us,
-that in England there is a stronger belief in
property than in other countries. My own sus-
picion is, that England will be the first country
to try a real experiment in socialism; not simply
because property lies in few hands, but because
our people have such an infinite faculty for cov-
ering up and disguising what they do with words.
If only the words are right, they are quite satis-
fied. Once call a thing by a good name, no
matter what it is, — christen it in public as a just
and generous measure, and the English people
will be enthusiastic in its behalf. Do you re-
member Elmore's French cook, who used to say
that he could turn horseflesh into woodcock if
you let him make the sauce? Well, Gladstone
is quite as good in his own way. I should con-
sider him the equal of the French artist if the
English nation had not a certain natural apti-
tude for being led by the nose. Criticism of all
kinds is an unknown art in this country; and, so
long as there is plenty of political seasoning,

!
.182
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
our people are always satisfied. In other coun-
tries men like to taste and know what they are
eating they would not stand the emptying of
the pepper-pot into their dishes; and if Dizzy
with his turgid patriotism, and Gladstone with
his conventional morality, have succeeded with
us, they have owed their success to the fact
that the English are by nature predestined to
fall into the hands of the word-makers. I know
no place where the faculty exists in the same
perfection as it does in England, of seeing in a
thing not what it is, but what it happens to be
called. Without such a faculty, that special
British product which we call cant, and for which
I defy you to find a name in other languages,
could hardly have become one of the national
facts. But it plays a great part with us, and,
when rightly understood, seems to be a very use-
ful sort of thing in politics. English cant is a
study in itself; and it would be worth the while
of any of you to watch some of its forms, and
put together an article about it for the Fort-
nightly.'"
"Please not to be in such a hurry to reform
us," said Danby, "out of cant. Until the col-
lective agency is established, I doubt if we can
get on without it. What you call cant is the
oil that eases the working of all social and po-
litical wheels. If I am asked to subscribe to a
popular charity, I do not say to the individual
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
183
.
who asks me, 'Your charity exists to give its.
secretary an occupation, and to amuse a certain
number of unemployed persons in spending the
money of other people;' but I say, 'My dear sir,
I have a great respect for your charity, and the
excellent work it is doing, and the unselfish
manner in which your commiteee devote their
time to it; and I only regret that other calls.
upon my limited means do not allow of my sub-
scribing.' Perhaps you would like all of us,
whenever we open our lips, to indulge in a stream
of crude verities. Perhaps you would like the
Liberal party to stand in a palace of truth at
noonday, and say, 'Not one of us in a thousand
are either Irish or English landlords, for matter
of that; and we are quite prepared, therefore, to
pinch the landlord to any extent if it is conven-
ient to do so;' or for Gladstone to say, 'Prime
ministers must live like everybody else; and if
it is necessary for me to offer up my only son
Isaac to the wants of the country, I shall know
how to find good reasons for doing it.' I can
hardly think that would be an improvement on
our present method. You say we are an in-
artistic, uncritical nation. I say we know how
to admire a thing whenever it is thrown into
the right form. When Gladstone has to explain
why he is sacrificing some principle, and paints
the struggle of conflicting tides in his bosom,
both the House and the country instinctively
184
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
feel the touch of the artist-orator, and exclaim,
'There! you see how unwilling he has been to
act, how necessary it is for his mind to look on
both sides.' Are we not right on both sides?
Why should we not make disagreeable things as
pleasant as we can? Here is Holmshill, if you
only let him alone, and give him enough speeches
of Gladstone's to listen to, not only ready to vote
away that respectable Upper House, into which
some day he will have to retire for his pre-pran.
dial doze, but to make the tenant-farmers owners
for life of all those pleasant farms over which
we shot partridges last year; or to sacrifice his
farmers, and vote it all in a lump for the labor-
ers, with the Towers, I suppose, as a superior
kind of workhouse. Why not leave him to vote
himself out of existence, without even enough
pain to know that he is doing it? Why should
we shock him with plain words and disagreeable
explanations as to what he is doing? He is
much happier as he is."
"That is what I complain of," said Pennell.
"I don't quarrel with Geoffrey Lewin. He
dreams of his collective agency; and I only
hope to heaven it will make him as uncomfort-
able when it comes, as it will make the rest of
But Holmshill and all his Whig friends
Was there ever
us.
are the disgrace of the age.
a tail to a party so pitifully bedraggled? Here
are men with really great traditions, who once
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
185
thought for themselves and led the country, and
who now are hanging on to a party they dislike
and dread, for the sake of the crumbs that are
thrown to them. And, if you ask them why
they take the kicks and the half-pence, they will
tell you that they hope to check the Radicals,
and to keep an influence over Gladstone; or
they point to some half-dozen words in some
clause or other, in some bill or other, and say,
'See how we have succeeded in modifying legis-
lation;' or they appeal to this or that great
Whig in the cabinet, and ask you what danger
can there be as long as he remains in the gov-
ernment to represent landed interests. It would
be fatal, they say, to separate ourselves from
the Radicals when they might rush into any
folly without us, and when we can always have
a duke or two, or three or four peers of our own,
in the cabinet. They don't see that their duke
or their earl or their somebody is a sort of decoy-
creature, which the other Liberals think it worth
while to keep with a special view to them. One
of my friends has had great trouble with rats.
He has now invented a large wire cage, in the
inner part of which he always keeps two or three
tame rats feeding on the things which are dear-
est to the soul of a rat. All the other rats are
so moved by the spectacle of their friends en-
joying themselves, that they walk cheerfully
into the outer part of the cage, from which,
;
186
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
except into the white terrier's jaws, there is
unfortunately no return. My friend is full of
practical benevolence toward the two or three.
rats who are kept in the inner sanctuary, and
lets them live on the best of food in return for
the service they render him; but I scarcely know
if he loves them for their own sake, and will
continue to feed them when there are no more
of their fellows to catch. You are an honest
fellow, Holmshill, and don't care a straw for
office; but the real truth is, that the rest of the
Whigs are the crumb-eaters of the Radicals, and,
if they had a little honest pride left, their meal.
would choke them. And, as for Danby, what-
ever he may choose to say, he knows well enough
it is true."
My dear Pennell," said Danby, "please tell
us what the Whigs are to do if they get out of
the nest. We know that you are ready to form
a party with them; but, then, they are ungrate-
ful enough to hesitate about the advantages of
your offer. Don't be angry, Holmshill, if your
admirer is a little unreasonable. As we all know,
he loves you Whigs better than all the rest of
us put together, and it is only disappointed affec-
tion which makes him a little bad-tempered."
'I'll forgive him," said Holmshill: “it is easy
enough to abuse the Whigs. I don't say, and I
don't think, we are doing the best thing possible;
but it is hard to say what we ought to do. There
A POLITICIAN IN TRouble.
187
are few of us who believe enough in what we
have, to fight very desperately for it. We all
feel that things are slipping. We all know well
enough that we are not in the country what
we were twenty years ago, and we shall not be
twenty years hence what we are to-day. I sup-
pose we can guess that the principal service our
presence in the government does to the party
is, as Lewin says about Gladstone's phrases, to
disguise the changes that are taking place, and
make every thing more decent. I suppose we
shall stick to the party as long as any sort of
possible excuse remains for our doing so. We
have been, like Lewin's Protestants, a useful
sort of stop-gap between the old and the new;
and probably they will let us keep Hartington,
or somebody else like him, in the cabinet till
the end of it all, to satisfy our little vanities and
pacify our little irritations. It is not very grand,
or very independent; but I doubt if it is wholly
meanness on our part. It is true that it would
not be a profitable political investment for us to
set up on our own account; but, even if it could
help us, there is, I think, a sort of honorable.
shame which would prevent our doing it. It is
difficult to forget that we took our stand in old
days, for better or worse, on the principle of
'all for the people, by the people;' and even
when the principle is made to cover measures
that have less regard for justice than for party
188
1
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
convenience, we have a silent feeling that we
are like so many others who have to reap what
they once sowed. We can hardly begin to pro-
test against the principle on the very first day
and in the very first hour that it goes against
our own interests. Remember, also, that we
are entangled and impeded by an exceptional
position. Had there been no favors and privi-
leges in old days, I suppose that the Towers
and myself would have had little enough to do
with each other; and it is these favors and
privileges which make it seem ungenerous to
oppose demands made in the name of the peo-
ple, even when I think that they are founded
on wrong principles and likely to end in disap-
pointment. Perhaps I may see faults in a Land
Bill as well as you; but I cannot come down to
the House as easily as you can, and criticise
from a strictly economical point of view a bill
that may lessen what is paid into the family
bankers by some thousands of pounds. Per-
haps I ought to do it, but if so I ought to be
rid of the old privileges and favors which have
made me what I am. You seem to forget that
a Whig is mortal like everybody else.
If you
were fair to us, you would remember that we
have had politics in the blood for many genera-
tions; that we are justly proud of the party we
have belonged to, and the part we have played;
that it is only strong convictions which make
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
189
men break old ties, it is difficult to have
strong convictions at the present day, and
that it would be a bitter humiliation to us to
go and join the Tories in our latter days. We
have fought them and beaten them too often.
to go back to-day, and look for a camp of refuge
in their ranks. It is best to stay where we are,
and to cheat ourselves, if we can, into believing
that we belong to the modern Liberal party. I
don't think any thing that we do matters very
much, or will make any great difference to any-
body but ourselves. And for ourselves I have
but few hopes and few wishes. A very few
years, and the only place where you will find a
Whig will be in Macaulay's History."
“I give you up, Holmshill," said Danby. "I
never will defend you again. I think you are
thoroughly mean-spirited; and if you were to go
on talking for another five minutes, you would
almost make a Radical of me. A humble-
minded Whig is a lusus naturæ, a monster of
inconceivable parts and affections; and, if there
are many others like you, I take it as a sign that
the Whigs are pretty nearly done up, and that
we must put some one else in their place who
will be ready to fight when they are wanted.
It's all very well, throwing down your arms, and
saying, 'Pray, gentlemen, help yourselves;' but
I think, whether you are a Whig or not, you are
bound to fight for all that rightfully belongs to
190
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
you.
Whenever you talk in this worm-inspired
manner, I feel as if I should like to see three
thousand peasant proprietors at the Towers
with five acres each of the park land, and hear
the answer they would make if some improving
member of Parliament proposed to touch one.
blade of grass that grew on their outside border.
I should like to hear a little of their unsophis-
ticated mind upon unearned increment or unex-
hausted improvements, or tenant-right, - if one
man wished to let land to another,
or collec-
tive agencies, or principles of the future. There
would be some downright English in it. But
there's that Gaby Holmshill goes down and
meets his father's tenants, and lets some talk-
ing fellow tell him that an English farmer ought
to sell his holding like an Irishman, and that
all that the landlord has a right to is the rent,
and that rent ought to have the approval of
a tenant-farmer's court; and Holmshill smiles,
and makes some mild remark about the land-
lord's wish for fair play, and probably will end
by putting his name on the back of a bill, if
the talking fellow ever gets into Parliament,
and complacently begs the House to make a
little landlord of him in place of the big land-
lord, who, as he proposes, should resign in his
favor. I don't think that will improve the
breed. I think I am getting a Radical; and,
if we are to give up our partridge-shooting at
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
191
the Towers, I should like to see my three thou-
sand small owners planted there, and have done
with revolutions for half a century. There were
few nicer men in the country than the English
farmer in old days. But there are too many
of the present lot who will let any enterprising
gentleman with views persuade them that the
greatest want of an honest man is an Act of
Parliament to let him dip his hands into his
landlord's pocket, and pick out what he happens
to like best. They suddenly discover that it is
the fairest thing in the world for the farmer to
use his political influence to be buyer and seller
at the same time, and to settle for the landlord
as well as for himself the terms of the bargain;
and Holmshill, who is trustee for the rights of
everybody who owns property, who is bound
to stand by these rights for the good of us all,
palavers and hesitates, and says he has no heart
to fight for property because he has so much of
it. You would be a far better landlord if you
told these men the plain truth. You and your
hesitations make them think it is an honest.
thing not to stand upon the terms of a business
contract, but to vote into their pocket what they
never dreamt of having when they made their
contract, and what they would never dream of
asking for now if Gladstone had not the knack
of teaching us all that rights go up when we
are strong and troublesome, and go down when
192
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
we are weak and unpopular. It is a good lesson
to teach hungry men, and we are all apt to be
hungry if we can feed ourselves by voting break-
fast and dinner into our own mouths. And the
Whigs play into the hands of the prime min-
ister. They pretend to watch the fold, and are
always exchanging civilities with the wolf, and
being talked over by him. The truth is, that
our watch-dogs are getting old, and have lost
their teeth: they can neither bite nor bark;
and, if we are to keep what we have, it is time
to put somebody else in their place. Bismarck
says, that a nation that begins to give up what
it possesses is not worth thinking about; and I
say the same about a class. A class that lays
down its rights, and, as they said in old days,
gives its poll for the shearing, and its beard for
the shaving, is about done also. Don't trouble
about the Whigs, Pennell: they will never do
you any good. They will all follow Hartington,
like Highland sheep into a snow-drift, and come.
to their end together."
"Well," said Holmshill quietly, "whether we
are sheep or sheep-dogs, get something better.
as soon as you can. I don't praise ourselves.
But, after all, politics have their practical side;
and what I want to ask you is, what would you
have us do? Suppose we were to break with
the party, how many of us would be elected at
the next election? What are we to go and say
•
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
193
to the country? Shall we go and say, 'Here
are a few of us, the remains of an old party, with
nothing very new or definite to tell you, except
that we think Mr. Gladstone does not exactly
know his own mind, and is apt to be carried
forward by the strongest wind that is blowing
at the moment. The astronomers are prophe-
sying that the comet of 1883 will go a little too
near the sun, and get dragged into it; and we
also expect that the same kind of accident may
befall our prime minister. We are quite sure
you will be much safer following us than him.
We are ourselves in a very comfortable condi-
tion there is nothing that we know of that
particularly wants change; our shooting, hunt-
ing, and fishing prospects, we are glad to say,
are in as good a state as we can expect after
the season; and we feel quite sure that you will
agree with us, that there would be no better
foundation for a party than the old families and
the family estates of England.' Well, I don't
know if Pennell has the courage to go and say
that. I am afraid, if I were to go and speak my
own mind, I should say, 'Gentlemen, I am as
fond of the good things of the world as anybody
else, but I am a little puzzled to find myself in
such ample and comfortable possession of them.
I am the centre of an enormous machinery. I
think in the paternal mansion there are fifteen
housemaids, two cooks and a half, butler, under-
194
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
:
butler, groom of the chambers, more footmen
than I know of; outside, a tribe of keepers, for-
esters, bailiffs, estate agents, and all kinds of
people and of all these I am the special flower
and product. I am obliged, gentlemen, to con-
fess, that, if you propose to divide me up amongst
you, I shall be at some loss to find any argu-
ments against the proceeding that are likely
to move you very deeply; though I must also
honestly say, that I don't think I shall do any
of you much good if you once begin to scramble
for me.
I doubt if I am quite worth all the
cooks, butlers, and keepers it takes to produce
and maintain me; but I am not yet confident that
you will be on a better road to happiness after
you have made a meal of me, than you were be-
fore. Now, gentlemen, pray do as you think fit.'"
"You are giving yourself unnecessary trouble,
Holmshill," interposed Geoffrey Lewin, "about
the digestion of the people. You may be sure
that will arrange itself. Why, they will eat up
the Towers at a mouthful when the time comes,
and be as happy after it as Pluto was when we
found him finishing the dead sheep.'
"But seriously, Lewin," said Bramston, "let
us take for granted for a moment, that it is
better we should sacrifice Holmshill ".
"We shall have to go and shoot partridges in
Morocco if we do," interposed Danby. "I hear
there is some sport to be had there."
•
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
195
"That it is better," continued Bramston,
"that all the large land-owners should go, that
our people will be happier and better off, that
property itself will be safer, and agitation less,
-more people inside the charmed ring, and
fewer outside, can we justify the doing of it?
Where do we get the power to do what we like
with Holmshill?"
"The people gave, and the people can take
away," observed Lewin.
"How little you have learnt or profited all
this session, Angus!" said Danby. "If you
want to divide Holmshill into little pieces, all
you have got to do is to turn on the Gladstone
tap; call it a just and generous measure, praise
the people for their forbearing spirit, and de-
clare, without going into details, that Holmshill
will be generally better off for it, and will shoot
just as many partridges after as he did before,
and therefore it cannot possibly make any dif-
ference to him. It is, of course, plain on the
face of it, that we shall save him the expense of
collecting rents and of paying rates, taxes, and
fire-insurance. If you wish it, I am quite ready
to give you a second-reading speech on the sub-
ject at once, to show that in Holmshill's case
all great principles must be laid aside; that in
their very nature they were never intended to
apply to him; that even Tory landholders have
used words which could only mean that he
196
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
should be cut up; that, whilst Holmshill unites
all the many virtues we should expect and
desire to find in him, yet there are some few
other money-grubbing persons in his country
for whom we must, unfortunately, hold him ac-
countable, and therefore an inexorable neces-
sity requires that we should submit him to a
process which I will proceed, with truly archi-
tectonic skill, to describe at full length to you.
And then I will let you off with only ten min-
utes about justice as the guide of our actions."
"Please don't," said Bramston: "you have
given us one second-reading speech already this
morning, and now I want a serious answer to
my question. Have we a right to cut up Holms-
hill? Is there a right and wrong in the matter?
If there are such things in politics, on what do
they depend? If there is no right and wrong
in the matter, what is to make us decide either
one way or the other?"
Go
'My dear Angus," said Lewin, “you are still
back in the darkness of the Middle Ages.
and ask Gladstone. He will spend the whole.
morning in explaining it to you, and then do
exactly the opposite in the evening when he
comes down to the House of Commons.”
"Go and inquire in Saturn," said Danby. "I
know nowhere short of that, where you will get
an answer in the present day. But I must be
going. Give me my sacré hat.”
·
A
1
A POLITICIAN IN TROUBLE.
197
I
"No: let him ask the whips," said Pennell,
"and I shall have the pleasure of watching
Kensington's face whilst he answers.
"I think it is a very good question," said
Holmshill; "and if we were not all of us farceurs,
we should be able to answer it. Good-by.'
And they all dispersed to their various en-
gagements, leaving Bramston to finish his cigar
alone.
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
BY ÉMILE DE LAVELEYE.
THE repression of the conspiracy of the
Mano Nera in Andalusia, the explosion of bombs
charged with dynamite in our peaceful little
Belgium, the riots of Monçeau-les-Mines in
France, the Nihilistic character which the Irish
agrarian movement is taking, and the terrible
explosion at Westminster, show that it is clearly
time that this movement, which has attained.
already so wide a development, and which is
certainly destined to play a most important rôle
in the history of Christian and civilized nations,
should be studied attentively.
The Socialists of the present day may be
divided into two parties or sects: on the one
hand there are the Collectivists, on the other
the Nihilists, or Anarchists. Sometimes these
two parties are opposed to each other, as at
the present moment in France: at others they
unite together, as in Spain for the Mano Nera
conspiracy. This conspiracy is of a pronounced
agrarian character, and has been principally re-
198
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
199
•
cruited from agricultural laborers and small
farmers, who were reduced to despair by the
latefundia and bad harvests. The principles of
the Spanish Mano Nera are a sort of commun-
ism, as may be judged from the following pas-
sage of their programme :
66
Land," they say, "exists for the common good of
mankind, and all have an equal right to its possession:
it was made what it is by the active labor of the work-
ing classes. The existing social organization is both
criminal and absurd. The workers produce, and the rich
do nothing but benefit; and not only so, but have a hold
on the workers: therefore it is impossible to feel too
deep a hatred for political parties, for all are equally des-
spicable. All property acquired by the labor of others,
be it revenue or interest, is illegitimate: the only legiti-
mate possessions are those which result directly from
personal exertions. Consequently our society declares
that the rich be held to participate no longer in the rights
of man to his fellow; and that to combat them, as they
deserve, all means are good and necessary, not excepting
steel, fire, and even slander."
Their mode of action is exactly that of the
Nihilists in Russia, and that employed also for
the agrarian crimes in Ireland. The tenets of
the popular or secret tribunal resemble also
those of Nihilism. They are headed by the
following declaration :-
"Whereas the Government, by its refusal to accept
the international law, has prevented a peaceful solution
of the social question, it has become necessary to estab-
lish a secret revolutionary organization. Victory is still
200
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
far distant. Sins are daily committed which must be
punished; and, as all the members of this society are
bent on a chastisement being carried out, a popular tri-
bunal is charged with the condemnation and punishment
of the crimes of the middle classes. Members of this
revolutionary tribunal must belong to the International
League, and be capable of executing the task they un-
dertake. The middle classes may be chastised in every
possible way, — by steel, fire, poison, or otherwise.”
In the fourteenth century Socialism in Eng-
land had very similar notions, save the refer-
ence to the employment of force. The follow-
ing words are put into the mouth of a priest,
John Ball, speaking in the name of the peasant-
ry, by Froissart: "Good people, things can not
and will not go well in England till all shall
be in common; that there be neither lord nor
vassal, but we shall be all united. To what
good are those we call lords masters over us?
Why do they hold us in bondage? And if we
be all descended from the same father and
mother, Adam and Eve, how can they show
themselves better than we, save only in that
they spend what we earn? They are clothed
in silks and camocas, in velvets and furs, while
we wear the poorest cloth. They have their
wines, their savory dishes, good bread and
cakes; while we sleep on straw, and live on
rye-bread and water. They have their manors
and palaces, which they enjoy in idle luxury;
while we labor in the wind and rain to earn a
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
201
scanty nourishment. And yet it is our labor
that gives them their plenty."
As early as the close of the thirteenth cen-
tury the communistic ideas of the orders of the
Begging Brothers found an echo in the verses.
of the Flemish poet, Jakob van Marlant. The
following is an extract :-
"Twee worde in die werelt syn:
Dats allene myn ende dyn,
Mocht men die verdriven
Pays ende vrede bleve fyn.
Het ware al vri, niemen eygyn,
Manne metten wiven.
Het waer gemene tarwe ende wyn."
("Two words exist in the world, mine and thine. If
they could be suppressed, peace would reign, and all
would be free, no serfs, neither men nor women; corn
and wine would be in common.")
I think it may be safely affirmed, that in
France the majority of workmen in the large
towns and great centres of industry, in addition
to a certain number of agricultural laborers,
are already Socialists. According to informa-
tion, for which I am indebted to the kindness
of M. B. Malon, the author of a good history
of Socialism, and one of the leaders of the
movement in Paris at the present time, the
party may be approximatively divided as fol-
lows at the extreme left are the Anarchists
or Nihilists, such as Prince Krapotkine and
202
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Elisée Reclus. They, to a certain extent, hold
Proudhon's ideas of anarchy, but follow more
directly Bakounine, who, by the formation of
secret societies from the remnants of the Inter-
national League, has spread notions of Russian
Nihilism in almost every Socialist circle. The
Anarchists are few in number, but they are.
exceedingly enthusiastic and fanatic; and the
extreme adepts of the party hesitate at nothing
-petroleum, fire, bombs, dynamite, and even
assassination, as in Spain. Metayer, who died
recently in Brussels from the results of the
explosion of dynamite concealed on his person,
and his companion, Cyvoct, belonged to this
dangerous class.
Nihilistic Anarchism does not make much
progress in France, because Frenchmen have a
preference for fixed ideas for their programmes
of reform. The articles of a new social code,
to please them, must be clearly drawn up, and
all the plans easy to grasp. Collectivism offers
all this to a certain extent, and we will now
try to analyze its principles. Collectivists are
themselves divided into two groups, and more
distinctly so since the Socialists' Congress of
St. Etienne, in September, 1882. There are
the Collectivists, the followers of Marx, who
live in expectancy of a revolutionary movement,
like the ancient Jacobins; and the evolutionist-
Collectivists, who are beginning to admit the
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
203
I
truth announced by science, that, in the social
order, as in nature, all must change slowly and
by evolution. These latter are called "Pos-
sibilists," because they recommend the urging
of legal claims, and take part in electoral con-
flicts, not merely as a protest, but that their
ideas may gain access to Parliament. In this
respect they follow the example of the German
Socialists, who have not only succeeded in
sending eleven or twelve members to Parlia-
ment, but have also induced the German Gov-
ernment to take up the question of social
reforms, as doubtless the number of votes
obtained by the Socialists in the electioneering
total did much to influence this decision.
Among Socialist workmen the evolutionist-
Collectivist creed is the most popular, and gains
rapid ground against the "Irreconcilables,"
the Anarchists and the Jacobins, who dub
their opponents traitors and cowards. In order
more clearly to show the notions they hold,
I will now quote some of the most important
¹ In the election which has taken place at Belleville to re-
place Gambetta, each of these parties had its candidate. The
Marxists had selected Jules Guesde, and the Possibilists J. B.
Dumay, a mechanist and former mayor of Creusot. Among
the chief men of this party may be mentioned Jules Joffrin,
town councillor, an enlightened and active workman; John
Labusquière, an orator well listened to at meetings; Deynaud,
said to be an economist; Paul Brousse, a converted Anarchist;
and B. Malon, the theorist and learned man of the party.
į
204
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
passages of a programme of theirs recently
published:
-
"Whereas the emancipation of the producing classes
is that of all human beings, indistinctive of either sex
or race; that the producers cannot be truly free until
they themselves possess the means of production, and
that there exist but two ways of their so possessing
them, — first, individually, and this has never existed as
an established state of things, and industrial progress
has rendered it wholly out of the question; and, secondly,
collectively, and as the very development of capitalist
society prepared the elements requisite for collective
possession, the French Socialist workmen, considering a
return to this collective possession of the means of pro-
duction the great object to be obtained, have decided
to take part in elections, adopting the following pro-
gramme. . . . Economic programme: Ist, One day of
rest weekly, and the labor of adults reduced to eight
hours per day. Prohibition to employ children under
fourteen years of age in factories. 2d, A legal minimum
of wages, to be fixed every year, according to the local
price of provisions. 3d, Equal wages for the two sexes
(their labor being equal). 4th, Complete and scientific
and professional instruction for all children at the cost
of the State and the Commune. 5th, Society to provide
for old people and invalids. 6th, The master to be held
responsible for all accidents. 7th, The workmen to have
a voice in the drawing-up of any special regulations for
their special works or factory. 8th, Revision of all con-
tracts that have alienated public property, banks, rail-
ways, mines; and the working of the factories belonging
to the state to be intrusted to workmen themselves.
9th, Abolition of indirect taxation, to be replaced by a
progressive tax on all incomes which exceed 3,000 frs.
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
205
(£120), suppression of all indirect succession, and of
all direct succession exceeding 20,000 frs. (£800). 10th,
Reconstitution of communal property. 11th, The Com-
mune to appropriate all unemployed funds at their dis-
posal to building, on the land belonging to them, work-
men's cottages and warehouses; and these to be let to
workmen without profit to the Commune.”
The word Collectivism is a new one, but the
idea forms part of every system of present Radi-
cal Socialism. Radical Socialism either wholly
suppresses or restricts the right of hereditary
succession within very narrow limits, even in
the direct line: because the effect of this is to
increase inequality, as the heirs are in the en-
joyment of possessions which they themselves
have not labored for; and this is in direct viola-
tion of the doctrine which says that property
should be the reward of personal exertions, and,
consequently, contrary to distributive justice.
Hereditary succession suppressed or limited,
what would become of the lands and other
means of production left ownerless?
dently, as at the present day when there is no
heir, they would go to the State, who would, in
some cases, depute the Commune to hold them.
Evi-
Collectivism may be conceived more or less
completely applied, according as the state hold
only the soil (and this is the system which is
being now so much discussed in England, under
the name of nationalization of land), or as the
206
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
state hold all fixed capital (and, in this latter
case, all that is reserved to individuals is the
enjoyment of what they can purchase with
the immediate produce of their labor). The
"Saint-Simonians" have gone deeper than any
in this problem; for without stopping to trace
any plan of ideal organization, like Fourier or
Cabet, and without referring to or quoting
economic principles, as Marx and Lassalle did,
and most ably too, they at once, and very.di-
rectly, attack hereditary succession, on which,
in point of fact, all depends. But, to obtain a
more precisely defined notion of Collectivism,
it is necessary to study the writings of the Bel-
gian Socialist, Colins, and of his disciples.
Collectivism, which has become the gospel of
contemporary Socialism, sprang, it is true, from
the general effect of the equalizing movement
of which it is, indeed, the enforced conclusion,
and not at all from the works of Colins. But
it is Colins's theory of Collectivism—especially
as condensed by his disciples, Hugentobler,
Borda, and Agathon de Potter-which is the
most clearly defined and the easiest to grasp.
Colins and his disciples are very proud of
their philosophical views, on which they main-
tain the whole of their system, which they call
Rational Socialism, is based; but here the lack
of any special study becomes too clearly visible.
They admit the immortality of our spiritual
THE EUROPEAN Terror.
207
being, which they call by a strange misapplica-
tion of the word "sensibility," and they deny
the existence of God. They are most earnest
in demonstrating that notions of morality, jus-
tice, and equality, as regards rights and privi-
leges, are founded solely on the permanency of
human personality; but they do not recognize
that the pursuit of a rational order supposes an
ideal, an aim and object beyond and above our-
selves. They are therefore at the same time
Spiritualists and atheists.
All men are equal, as all are formed by the
union of a sensibility to an organism. All men
are brothers, as all have the same origin. Man
alone, among all created beings, is responsible
for his actions; for he alone is conscious, intelli-
gent, and a free agent. As opposed to the
order of physics, where all is fatal, there exists
a moral order of justice and liberty.
Man being a responsible agent, his every ac-
tion must be infallibly and fatally rewarded or
punished, according as it is or is not in accord-
ance with the conscience of the perpetrator.
And, for this punishment to be inevitable, it
must take place in an existence posterior to the
present one. All irrefutable arguments consti-
tute impersonal reason. When this is regarded
as prescribing rules, and authorizing or forbid-
ding actions, it may be called sovereignty.
Originally there only existed man, and the
208
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
planet on which he developed. On the one
hand there was labor; on the other, the soil as
raw material, without which all labor would
have been of course impossible. But the union.
of the two elements of production created mat-
ter of a special kind, - the accumulation, so
to speak, of labor, changing in its nature; and
this matter, detached from the planet, is called
capital.
Capital, while fostering production, is an in-
strument of labor, but in order to become pro-
ductive it must have something to act upon;
and this something is the soil, which is there-
fore indispensable. According to Colins, the
following important result arises from the abso-
lute necessity man feels for an object on which
to expend his strength. Labor is free when
the raw material or the soil belongs to the
laborer. Otherwise it is fettered: the work-
man's labor is then for the benefit of the holder
of the soil or the owner of the raw material; he
works with his permission; and, when a man
needs another's authorization to act, he is not a
free agent.
A collective appropriation of the soil would
secure to every member of society a permanent
proprietorship of the national soil; and for land
to become collective property it would be neces-
sary, in the first place, that it should be at the
disposal of those who wished to turn it to ac-
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
209
r
count, and, secondly, that the rent paid by the
tenant to society should be employed for the
joint benefit of all. According to the Belgian
Socialist, there exist two forms of property
quite distinct the one from the other: the one
in vogue at the present day, in which land be-
longs to individuals or certain classes of indi-
viduals, and labor is fettered; the other, the
system of the future, in which land will become
collective property, and labor will be free.
What we have stated above refers to the pro-
duction of wealth. We will now examine how
Rational Socialism arranges for its distribution.
When labor is free, and this is the case only
when land is accessible to all, - every man can
live without receiving wages from his fellow.
Men then work for others only when offered, as
salary, more than they could gain if they worked
for their own profit.
When such a state of things exist, we say in
economic terms that wages are at a maximum;
the greater share in the profits of labor going
to the laborer, and the lesser to capital. When
labor is fettered, workmen, to avoid starvation,
offer to work for the owners of land and the
possessors of capital; and, as there is competi-
tion, wages fall to what is strictly necessary for
the most ordinary requirements of life. If the
holders of wealth do not need laborers, the su-
perfluous hands must disappear. Wages then
210
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
fall to a minimum; and the largest share in the
profits of labor goes to proprietors and capital-
ists, the smallest to the laborer. When labor.
is free, every man's wealth increases in pro-
portion to his own labor. In the opposite case,
a man's riches increase as his capital accumu-
lates. Colins deducts the two following conse-
quences from these two dissimilar systems of
property in land: When land is owned individ-
ually, the riches of the upper classes and the
poverty of the lower increase in parallel lines,
and in proportion as intellectual power devel-
ops in society; while, when land is collectively
appropriated, the riches of every one increase
in proportion to the activity displayed by each,
and in accordance with the economic progress.
made by civilization. Colins seeks a confirma-
tion of his views in history.
The earliest sovereign is physical strength.
The father of the family rules; the strongest
of the tribe commands; but if the number of
human beings increase, this sort of sovereignty
can be but of short duration, for he who is at
one time the strongest cannot always remain
So. What happens then? In order to continue
chief, he changes, says Jean Jacques Rousseau,
his strength into a right, and obedience into a
duty. To this end he affirms that there exists a
being, conceived as a very powerful man, called
God; that God has revealed rules of action,
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
21.I
1
|
1
and has appointed king and priest as infallible
legislators and interpreters of his revelation;
that God has given to every man an immortal
soul; and according as man has or has not been
obedient to revealed law in this world, so in the
world to come will he be either rewarded or
punished. But as these doctrines must not be
examined or looked into, ignorance is main-
tained and thought compressed as much as pos-
sible. Theocratic sovereignty, or sovereignty
by divine right, is thus established, and society
becomes aristocratic and feudal. This is the
historical period which rational Socialism names.
the period of social ignorance and of compressi-
bility of examination.
After a term of years, longer or shorter ac-
cording as the development of intelligence and
the discoveries which follow are rapid or the
reverse, and as communications with other lands
are facilitated, the examination into facts can
no longer be wholly suppressed. Then the
sovereignty by divine right is contested, and its
authority falls to the ground. The government
is transformed, and despoiled of its theocratic
mask. It becomes merely a sovereignty of
strength; that is to say, of the majority of the
people. Aristocratic society becomes "bour-
geoise;" and the historical period of ignorance,
combined with the incompressibility of exami-
nation, is attained.
i
212
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Society is then profoundly agitated, and dis-
organization spreads rapidly. The theories and
principles which previously insured the obedi-
ence of the great masses of the population lose
their power. Every thing is doubted and dis-
cussed. Denial of the ultra-vital sanction and
of an anthropomorphic God ends in the affir-
mation of materialism. After this, with an ever-
growing number of people, personal interest
wields a greater sway than notions of order and
justice, and a state of society is reached of which
Colins speaks as follows: a period of social
ignorance, in which immorality spreads in pro-
portion as intelligence develops. This is the
stage we have now reached.
As pauperism increases in similar propor-
tions, producing revolutions, this bourgeois so-
ciety is but of short duration; and sovereignty
by divine right is restored for a time, when
new revolutions bring back the bourgeoisie.
Society cannot tear itself from the dismal circle
in which it turns since the earliest origins of
humanity. When, as a result of new inventions,
of the development of the press, and the impos-
sibility to suppress the universal enlightenment
which ensues, all return to a theocratic form of
government has become out of the question,
humanity has but two alternatives, — either to
definitely perish in final anarchy, or methodi-
cally to re-organize itself according to recog-
P
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
213
nized dictates which reason demonstrates. It
is at this point that humanity attains the last
period of its historical development, — the period
of knowledge, which will last as long as the life
of the human species is possible on the globe.
A theocratic administration, says Colins, is order
based on despotism; a democratic administra-
tion is liberty engendering anarchy; a rational
or logocratic administration would be produc-
tive, at the same time, of both order and free-
dom.
According to the Belgian Socialist, the socie-
ty of the future will be organized as follows:
All men, being by right equal, will occupy equal
conditions with regard to labor. Man is a free
agent his labor must, then, be free also; and
to this end matter must be made subordinate to
intelligence, and labor must own both land and
capital. Wages would be then always at the
highest possible maximum. All men are broth-
ers, for they have a common origin. If, then,
any are unable to support themselves, society
must care for them, and supply their wants. In
the intellectual world there must be an equal
distribution of knowledge to all, and, in the
material world, social appropriation to all of the
soil and of the wealth acquired by past gener-
ations and transformed into capital.
Society must give theoretical and practical
instruction to all minors gratuitously, and chil-
214
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
dren be taught, by physical science, in what
manner to act on matter to be able to turn it
to the best advantage; and, by moral science,
how they must behave to their fellow-men. On
leaving the establishments for public education,
on coming of age, young men will be called
upon to serve a sort of apprenticeship for active
life in the service of the state, thus paying in
a measure the debt incurred during childhood.
When of age, each member of society will be
given a fixed sum as a dowry to establish him-
self in life, and this sum will be taken from
the surplus of the state receipts. Three dif
ferent careers are now open to the young man:
he can either work alone, or associate him-
self with others to produce in common, or, if
he prefer avoiding all personal risks, he can
hire himself to another, who will direct and
take the responsibility of all operations.
Society offers either land or capital to the first
two categories. To this end, land is divided
into farms, larger or smaller according to the
locality in which they may be situated, the
requirements of the population, and the fertility
of the soil. These farms are let to the highest
bidder, who is forbidden to sub-let. Society
also lends capital, in order to prevent individual
capitalists demanding a higher rate of interest
than that fixed by law.
Colins suggests also several other measures
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
215
for assuring the subjection of capital to labor,
or, in other words, maintaining wages at as
high a rate as possible, and also for stimulating
every member of society to labor to the best
of his ability.
The first of these measures is the abolish-
ment of perpetual interest, which shall be
replaced by the payment of debts as annuities.
during the life of the creditor; the abolishment
of capitalist associations, those for labor being
alone sanctioned, and the competition of society
itself against individual trading. The second
consists in limiting hereditary succession to the
direct line, all other successions ab intestat
returning to society, and in laying a heavy tax
upon all wills.
By the enforcement of these several meas-
ures, the principles of liberty, equality, and fra-
ternity would be established; at the same time
the turning to account of labor by individual
capital would be effectually prevented.
The disciples of Colins maintain that in this
system there is perfect harmony between intel-
ligence and property. All have a share in the
possession of the soil; all have their leisure,
and all possess the intellectual and material
necessaries for their earthly happiness. So-
ciety based on principles rationally incontro-
vertible may be freely discussed; being founded
on justice, there need be no fear for its stability.
216
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
Being in conformity with reason, and guaran-
teeing to each of its members a maximum of
well-being, according to his personal aptitudes,
he who is miserable has but himself to reproach
for his misery. Who, then, would dream of
overthrowing an administration which injures
no one, but gives satisfaction to all?
Colins's Collectivism is applicable to land
only. The same ideas have been recently and
more forcibly set forth by Henry George in
his book entitled "Progress and Liberty," and
by M. A. Russell Wallace in his "Nationaliza-
tion of Land." The idea of Collectivism ap-
plied to every branch of production was foreseen
as early as 1854 by a French philosopher, Fran-
çois Huet, who published a most able work on
social reform, entitled "Le Règne Social du
Christianisme." The aim of this book is to
prove that equalizing Socialism has its root in
the Old Testament and in the gospel.
The first article of all the recently published
Socialist programme is general Collectivism,
or, as they call it very strangely, Communisme
libertaire. But the only publication in which
the system is clearly defined and scientifically
discussed is a short pamphlet entitled "Quint-
essenz des Socialismus" (translated into French
by M. B. Malon). It consists of extracts from
a large work on Sociology, "Bau und Leben des
Socialen Körpers" ("Constitution and Life of
1
4
י
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
217
the Social Body"), by Dr. Albert Schäffle,
formerly financial minister of Austria, and one
of the most eminent of Germany's economists.
Let us follow Dr. Schäffle's analysis, and en-
deavor to obtain a correct idea of Collectivism
applied to both capital and land. We must
beware of mixing up this system with Commu-
nistic Utopias. The ideal of these latter was
a Trappist monastery, common labor, a com-
mon life, common enjoyment of produce, with-
out any regard to the work accomplished, just
as in family life. Collectivism admits of fami-
lies living apart; and, by making all remunera-
tion proportionate to the labor effected, it keeps
up private interest. With a collective organi-
zation, there should be as many co-operative
societies as there are principal branches of
industry, agricultural societies, transport so-
cieties, manufacturing societies of all kinds.
Farms, mines, railways, factories, workshops,
which are in principle the collective property
of the state, would be handed over to work-
men's corporations, who would be charged with
their administration, thus replacing the pres-
ent joint-stock companies. Workmen would be
paid in accordance with the quantity and quality
of their labor: there would be, therefore, the
same stimulant for activity and care as at the
present day, at least for the workmen. The
only difference would be, that, on the one hand,
218
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
they would be paid the total of what their work
produced, nothing having to be deducted for
rent, interest, or profit; and, on the other hand,
all, even those now idle, would be forced to
work for, the means of production being no
longer private property, the income they now
bring in to individuals, and which allows of
their living in idleness, would have ceased to
exist.
In primitive societies, where every man pos-
sesses his instrument of labor, land, tools, or
implements, the wherewithal to carry on his
trade, whatever it may be, the ideal of justice,
which consists in each enjoying what he pro-
duces, is realized; but, since the introduction
of large industries and extensive landed prop-
erty, the remuneration of labor is reduced to a
minimum by the number of applications for
land and for labor, that is to say, by the an-
ticipatory claims of land and capital. Collec-
tivism, admitting the co-operative productive
system which the employment of machinery
enforces, aims at realizing the end which would
be attained by generalized private property;
viz., the securing of the full enjoyment of the
produce to the producer. Every thing concern-
ing means of transport and circulating medium,
money, credit, etc., would become a public ser-
vice. Dr. Schäffle even supposes the realiza-
tion of a general system of exchange and
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
219
remuneration spoken of by Proudhon and Marx,
and which would be as follows: By virtue of
the economic theory which holds that all value
is derived exclusively from labor, the workman
would be paid for each object the average num-
ber of hours necessary for the manufacture of
the said object, and he would be paid in checks
or tickets, to be refunded in goods. The wares
to be sold would be brought to public or co-
operative stores, where checks would be ex-
changed for merchandise, and vice versa.
mechanism of exchange is ingenious.
great London co-operative stores give some
idea of it; but they cannot be said to form an
integral part of Collectivism.
This
The
The best way to form any accurate notion
of the Collectivist system is to imagine that the
Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale have obtained a
complete success, and that all has passed into
their hands, lands, houses, shops, warehouses,
and factories, and that every other locality
has imitated Rochdale's example. Collectivism.
does not wholly abolish hereditary succession;
but as all real property would belong to the
state, to the commune, or to corporations, and
as again every man would be forced to live on
what he gained by his trade or by the function
he occupied, it would follow, as a natural conse
quence, that the accumulation of wealth would
be very much restricted, and that, in a general
220
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
way, all that people could inherit would be fur-
niture, money, and movables.
Dr. Schäffle seems inclined to think that a
state of things such as this may exist in the
future. Some people go even so far as to im-
agine that the spirit of renunciation will again
have sway, that there will be life in common,
and that many of the wonders that arose in
ancient times from this system will be repeated.
M. Renan, in his volume on the Apostles, writes
the following charming lines on this subject (p.
132):-
"We have forgotten that mankind tasted the most
perfect joy when life was lived in common. The Psalm,
'Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren
to dwell together in unity,' can no longer be applied to
us. But when modern individualism has borne its latest
fruit; when depressed and sorrowing humanity shall have
become powerless, and shall return to grand old institu-
tions and to severe discipline; when our wretched 'bour-
geois' society shall have been chased away by the ideal
and heroic portion of humanity, — then life in common will
be valued at its true worth. Selfishness, an essential law
of civil society, will not be sufficient for great minds.
The words of Jesus, and the ideas held as to poverty in
the Middle Ages, will be looked upon as containing deep
sense. The beautiful ideal traced by the author of the
Acts of the Apostles will be inscribed as a prophetic
revelation at the entrance of this paradise of humanity:
'And the multitude of them that believed were of one
heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that
aught of the things which he possessed was his own,
but
they had all things common.
And all that believed were
THE EUROPEAN TError.
221
*
together, and had all things common, and sold their pos-
sessions and goods, and parted them to all men as every
man had need. And they, continuing daily with one ac-
cord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to
house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of
heart'" (Acts iv. 32, ii. 44, 45, 46).
Stuart Mill also occasionally indulged in
these poetic visions; but Dr. Schäffle keeps on
practical ground, and poses well the crucial
question, which is this: No social reform can
possibly succeed if it fail to recognize the psy-
chological fact on which the present individual
system is based, viz., that it is private interest
which urges to production. Neither penalties,
nor appeals to sentiments of duty and honor,
would guarantee a sufficient amount of zeal and
care being displayed by all concerned, to insure
the largest amount possible being produced at
the lowest cost, without any waste of either
time or raw material. The great difficulty is
the efficient directorship of any large industrial
enterprise. It is the lack of such directorship
that has occasioned the failure of many co-
operative societies. Collectivism supposes that
workmen's corporations are capable of working
alone, of taking the management of every thing.
into their own hands. When workingmèn's
societies have given proof of this, the triumph
of the new organization will be a mere question
of time; but so long as the working classes do
222
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
not show themselves capable of managing with-
out their masters, all attempts at hastening the
coming of a new order of things will terminate
in signal defeats.
Anarchism and Nihilism may be very briefly
analyzed, as they are mere negations. Proud-
hon says in his book, "La Révolution Sociale"
(p. 255), "No authority, no government. What
society needs is anarchy. The object to be
attained is the abolition of authority, the clear-
ing-away of all government organism." The
Nihilistic formula traced by Bakounine in the
programme of that truly revolutionary associa-
tion, l'Alliance Universelle, which has spread
the germs of violent Socialism, ready systemati-
cally to employ bombs, daggers, dynamite, and
petroleum, all over Europe, is as follows:
"Our association, the International Brotherhood,
wishes for a universal, social, philosophic, economic, and
political revolution; in order that of the present social
order of things — which
· which is founded on the right of prop-
erty, on making capital by oppression, on the principle.
of authority either religious or metaphysical, 'bourgeoise-
ment,' doctrinal, or even Jacobinly revolutionary — not
one stone may be left upon another, in all Europe first,
and afterwards in the entire world. To the cry of 'Peace
for the workers,' 'Liberty for the oppressed,' we desire
the destruction of every thing, states and churches, with
all their institutions and their laws, — religious, political,
judicial, financial, educational, economic, or social, — to
the end that all these millions of poor human beings,
deceived, oppressed, and held in thraldom, delivered at
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
223
last from their directors and benefactors, official and non-
official, may breathe the pure air of liberty."
Do not question a Nihilist as to what the
new social organization shall be. He will reply,
"We wish for complete amorphism. It is a
crime to foresee a society of the future; for re-
searches of this sort prevent utter destruction,
and impede the advance of the revolution.
Every Utopist is a tyrant, for he urges his plans
of reform on all. The watchword of our party
is exceedingly simple, - Universal destruction;
nihil, nothing. As in the early ages of humani-
ty, a new organization will spontaneously spring
up, and will be just what is best suited to the
wants of the delivered people."
It is certain that the devotion and religious
fanaticism of the Nihilists, and their diffusion
all over our continent, where they become mani-
fest by acts of fierce violence, as in Russia, at
Monceau-les - Mines in France, in Andalusia,
and constantly in different parts of Italy, is one
of the most curious phenomena of our time. It
may be compared to an incandescent lava which
from time to time bursts through the stratum
which hides it from view. How explain that
distinguished and enlightened men, men of
noble and humane sentiments, Prince Krapot-
kine, for instance, and the eminent geographist
Elisée Reclus, can allow themselves to be
led away by doctrines so monstrous? History
224
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
gives us the explanation. At certain periods
of social transformation, those persons who
thirst after the ideal suffer and feel indignant
at sight of the evils with which the human race
is afflicted. The contrast between the order of
equity and justice they aspire to see established,
and the iniquities of the world, is quite intoler-
able to them. They do not believe that succes-
sive progress will suffice to banish these iniqui-
ties; and they long for the total destruction of
the existing order of things, for a new one to be
founded on its ruins. These were exactly the
views held by the early Christians. This world
was to perish utterly by fire before the kingdom
of God could come. Even the Evangelists de-
scribe the signs of the advent of this great
calamity. The religious songs of the Middle
Ages contain echoes of these eschatological
notions.
"Dies iræ, Dies illa,
Solvet sæculum in favilla." I
The idea of the destruction of the world springs from
the great problem of evil and from the aspirations of man for
a better order of things. God cannot allow iniquity to live
forever. He will come, and re-establish justice. Job discusses
the terrible problem. All Eastern religions believed in the ex-
istence of a better world; and Virgil admirably sums up this
belief in his fourth Eclogue, "Magnus ab integro sæclorum
nascitur ordo,” etc. In one of the songs of the Edda, Voluspâ,
the end of the world is described in a similar manner as in the
New Testament: "The sun is darkened, and the brilliant stars
disappear from the sky, and smoke surrounds the destructive fire
•
į
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
225
As the destruction of the universe failed to take
place, those who were the most impatient for a
reign of justice withdrew, in the first instance.
to the desert, and, later on, to monasteries.
It was this same sentiment which inspired
Rousseau in the eighteenth century. Civil in-
stitutions consecrate propriety and inequality,
whence arise the servitude and misery of the
multitude; reformation is impossible; there
must be a return to primitive existence, or, as
Voltaire puts it, in mockery of poor J. J. Rous-
seau, we must go off into the forests, and there
walk on four legs. The brigand Karl Moor,
in Schiller's famous piece, who rises in insurrec-
tion against all social laws, is a type of the
Nihilists of the present day. It may be recol-
lected he says,
Happy the man who is the fiercest to burn every
thing, and the most relentless to kill." (Act I. Scene 2.)
which is to destroy the world. Gigantic flames rise to heaven.
Vala sees springing up from the midst of the ocean a new earth,
covered with admirable verdure. The fields produce without
being planted. All sin and suffering disappear. Baldur will
return with Hadur to inhabit the sacred abode of the gods.
The people will be in the enjoyment of eternal peace; and
then will come from above, to preside at the great judgment,
the All-powerful One, the ruler of the universe. All dissen-
sions and discords will be calmed, and he will give an invio-
lable table of laws to be established forever." Is not this
exactly the kingdom of heaven as foretold by the prophets
and in the New Testament?
226
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
:.
The same reasoning which led to a belief in
the end of the world, and to a desire to return.
to a primitive state of society, leads also to
Nihilism; only, as Nihilists look for nothing
from divine justice, the existence of which they
deny, it is not fire sent from heaven, but the
avenging flame of petroleum, that is destined to
destroy the present social order. The Utopian
schemes of Owen, Fourier, Cabet, and Louis
Blanc, all failed; the difficulty of carrying out
economic reform has been proved by science
and by facts: must we, then, wait till the gradu-
al spread of education and of equality improve,
by slow degrees, the present situation? In that
case there are still centuries to be passed with
things as they are. No, it is too much! A
curse on society! Away with its institutions
and its laws! We will overthrow all, and re-
establish things in their natural and primitive
condition, as Rousseau proposed.
If we examine closely the present social situ-
ation, we cannot feel any surprise at these sen-
timents civilized states at war, either open or
secret, one with the other, draining their popu-
lations by unlimited armaments, and retaining
for military service the flower of the nation's
youth; crushing debts everywhere, national,
provincial, and communal, in all about
£6,000,000,000, bringing in a revenue of about
£300,000,000 to £350,000,000, taken from the
—
D
THE EUROPEAN TERROR.
227
Κ
necessitious, and serving to allow an ever-in-
creasing number of people to live on their
income and do nothing; everywhere enormous
budgets, quite out of proportion with the advan-
tages which accrue thence to the people; the
cultivators of the soil reduced to live on bread
and water, on potatoes as in Ireland, and on
pellagra-engendering maize as in Italy; the
workingman's condition a trifle ameliorated, it
is true, but not at all in proportion to the
increase in production; in the upper classes,
luxury overflowing and becoming daily more
refined and more wanton; parliamentary ad-
ministration, which was to have brought with
it salvation, incapable of carrying out any great
social reforms, either under a constitutional
monarch or a republic; and if at times a min-
ister is met with, who, like Prince Bismarck,
desires to take steps in this direction, the satis-
fied middle classes raising objections to such a
policy, with the watchword of laissez-faire.
Anarchism and Nihilism, in spite of the grow-
ing number and the despairing energy of their
adherents, are, at present, wholly powerless to
jeopardize the safety of the present social order
if all goes as usual; but suppose one of those
crises, when there is a collapse of power, were
to take place, a great defeat, a middle-class
revolution, or, for instance, an attempt at a
restoration in France, then it is much to be
228
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
feared that the terrible scenes of the Commune
of 1871 would be repeated with even more ter-
rific features. In the last volume of "Paris et
ses Organes," M. Maxime du Camp casts a
melancholy glance at the beautiful city, reflect-
ing that it will be one day the prey of fire. Let
us hope that this sad fate will not befall our
capitals, and that a transformation of the social
order will take place without the aid of petro-
leum and dynamite.
a
THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND.
FROM "THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.”
In an age in which no creed, system, or doc-
trine, however venerable, escapes criticism, and
no fortress of orthodoxy stands secure against
the assaults of speculation, political economy,
a science of modern birth, scarcely yet emerged
from its struggle for recognition, cannot reason-
ably claim that its conclusions should pass un
challenged. Though some may attribute an
almost axiomatic certainty to doctrines which
have won the assent of the most acute and saga-
cious minds, there are others who regard the
"unsettled questions" of political economy as
still more numerous and important than its es-
tablished maxims. Any restraint upon freedom
of inquiry would certainly be incongruous with
a science which conspicuously inscribes freedom
of action upon its own banner; and we most
readily concede that no deference for authority,
however high, should deter inquirers from con-
testing economical doctrines that have received
the sanction of distinguished names. On the
229
230
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
other hand, it has been aptly remarked by a
writer in another field, that "those who support
social paradoxes must expect severe treatment,
as by the usages of war the conquerors never
spare those who maintain untenable positions."
Any writer who ventures to controvert doc-
trines which have been well tested, and are
generally accepted as true, ought to take good
heed to the temper of his weapons and the metal
of the armor in which he marches to the attack.
A more daring assailant of the faith which is
in Malthus, Mill, McCulloch, Fawcett, and their
school, has not for some time appeared in the
lists than Mr. Henry George, whose volume
entitled "Progress and Poverty" has been cir-
culated in the cheapest form from the London
press. The author is, we understand, a citizen
of the State of California; evidently no unprac-
tised writer, for the paradoxes which he upholds
are maintained with a considerable amount of
ingenuity and skill. The illustrations of his
argument are drawn from a wide field of obser-
vation, both in the Old World and in the New;
the language is forcible and incisive; and the
whole discussion is conducted with a vivacity
and spirit well calculated to affect impression-
able minds, and to gain adherents among those
whose convictions upon economical subjects are
rather superficial than scientific. The conclu-
sion which his reasonings are directed to estab-
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 231
lish is, indeed, no original doctrine; for it has had
its apostles both in this country and elsewhere,
of whom none is more notorious than the author
of the famous maxim "La propriété c'est le vol."
As advocated by Mr. George, it is described by
his phrase, the "nationalization of the land;” in
other words, the abolition of land-ownership in
private hands. The problem which he under-
takes to solve is that which has exercised the
sagacity of the most thoughtful minds, and foiled
the efforts of the most ardent philanthropists.
It is the existence of the wide gulf between
rich and poor; the juxtaposition in almost every
advanced community, certainly not least in our
own, of the two extremes of exorbitant wealth
and grinding poverty. But it is not merely the
co-existence of these two extreme conditions in
the same society, that Mr. George descants upon:
he boldly asserts that the two stand together in
the relation of cause and effect; that it is the
progress which has produced the poverty. In
his own words, "all the increased wealth that
progress brings goes but to build up great for-
tunes, to increase luxury, and to make sharper
the contrast between the house of Have and
the house of Want." According to him, all the
improvements in productive power, labor-saving
inventions, the contributions of science, every
device by which wealth is multiplied, tend only
to the widening of the chasm, and the deeper
232
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
impoverishment and degradation of the working
portion of mankind. Nor is it only in the older
communities of Europe that he perceives this
tendency. "In the United States," he says, "it
is clear that squalor and misery, and the vices
and crimes that spring from them, everywhere
increase as the village grows into the city, and
the march of development brings the advan-
tages of improved methods of production and
exchange." It is, however, in the older and
richer States of the Union, he says, that pauper-
ism and distress among the working classes are
becoming more painfully apparent.
"If there
is less deep poverty in San Francisco than in
New York, it is only because San Francisco is
yet behind New York in all that both cities are
striving for. When San Francisco reaches the
point where New York now is, who can doubt
that there will be also ragged and barefooted
children in her streets?"
How it comes to pass that the progress of
industrial development, which, according to the
prevailing impression of mankind, should result
in a wide diffusion of comfort among all classes,
is in fact attended, as this author asserts, with
an increase of suffering to the lower ranks,—
the poor becoming poorer by the same agency
which adds to the riches of the wealthy,
the question which he undertakes to solve. It
involves in its very statement a startling para-
is
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 233
ļ
}
dox. If it is progress itself which increases
poverty, are we not therefore bound, in the
interest of the community, to resist, instead of
promoting, those agencies which increase the
power of production, and conduce to the "wealth
of nations"? Are we not striving against our
own cure by encouraging ingenious inventions,
improving manual skill, and cultivating human
intelligence? Ought we not rather to reverse
the wheels of our industrial machinery, and to
obstruct, instead of making smooth, the path of
commerce and exchange? Furthermore, to as-
sert that progress in skill and knowledge, and in
the arts of mechanical contrivance, tends only
to grind down the working-class (that is, the
mass of a nation) to starvation point, is not
this to arraign the ordinance of Providence,
which certainly appears to contemplate and in-
tend the progressive civilization of man? How-
ever, in justice to Mr. George it should be said,
that, according to his view, it is not the natural
constitution of society that is to be blamed;
but rather the perverse institutions of man,
which thwart the providential scheme, and make
progress itself the parent of suffering. And,
above all other human institutions, that which
he arraigns as the main source of physical dete-
rioration and of moral evil, the prolific injustice
which condemns the bulk of a nation to ever-
increasing indigence and degradation, is the
234
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
private appropriation of the soil. Speaking of
rent, which, without mincing the matter, he
designates by the plain name of "robbery,"
he thus recapitulates the evils engendered by
that great fundamental wrong:
"This robbery is not like the robbery of a horse, or a
sum of money, that ceases with the act. It is a fresh and
continuous robbery, that goes on every day and every
hour. It is not from the produce of the past that rent is
drawn: it is from the produce of the present. It is a toll
levied upon labor constantly and continuously. Every
blow of the hammer, every stroke of the pick, every thrust
of the shuttle, every throb of the steam-engine, pay it
tribute. It levies upon the earnings of the men, who, deep
underground, risk their lives, and of those who over white
surges hang to reeling masts; it claims the just reward
of the capitalist and the fruits of the inventor's patient
effort; it takes little children from play and from school,
and compels them to work before their bones are hard or
their muscles are firm; it robs the shivering of warmth,
the hungry of food, the sick of medicine, the anxious
of peace. It debases, and embrutes, and imbitters. It
crowds families of eight and ten into a single squalid
room; it herds like swine agricultural gangs of boys and
girls; it fills the gin-palace and groggery with those who
have no comfort in their homes; it makes lads who might
be useful men, candidates for prisons and penitentiaries;
it fills brothels with girls who might have known the pure
joy of motherhood; it sends greed and all evil passions
prowling through society, as a hard winter drives the
wolves to the abodes of men; it darkens faith in the
human soul, and across the reflection of a just and mer-
ciful Creator draws the veil of a hard and blind and
cruel fate!
1
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 235
The
It cannot fail to surprise sober persons, on
reading such rant as we have just quoted, that
a person of so much intelligence as the writer
evidently is, however misguided his views of the
economical results of land-ownership, should be
able to persuade himself thus summarily to as-
cribe all the derangements and diseases, physical
and moral, of society, to one single cause. Is it
possible for any one, who casts an observant
eye on the sad condition of the indigent classes
in our crowded towns, to believe that the greed.
of the landed proprietor, and that alone, is the
source of all the evil that he sees there?
true causes of that manifold mass of suffering
are not easily enumerated. Intemperance, with
all the baneful consequences which it entails,
not on the individual only, but on his children
and posterity, heads the list. Indolence, im-
providence, physical disease, inherited weak-
ness of mind or body, vicious dispositions and
all manner of evil passions, are the chief factors
of this conglomeration of misery. Mere indi-
gence, indeed, is to be met with in the country
as well as in the city; but by a natural gravi-
tation the refuse of the community, the great
multitude of the feeble and the helpless, those
who can not and those who will not work for
their own living, the tramp, the criminal, the
profligate, and the outcast, flock together and
concentrate themselves in the large towns.
236
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
These are the camp-followers of the great in-
dustrial army, whose headquarters are in the
crowded centres of trade and manufacture. Nor
is the plague of squalid pauperism peculiar to
the populous centres of the Old World. Accord-
ing to Mr. George's own statement, New York
is no less burdened than Manchester or Lyons
with a degraded and indigent population. How
it should be dealt with; how to rescue from the
mass those whom it may be possible to reclaim,
to succor such as may be helped to extricate
themselves, to restrain those who are abandoned
to evil habits from preying on their fellows,
such are the problems which task to the utmost
the wisdom of the statesman and the philan-
thropist. Happily we may say, that in this age,
and in our own country, the efforts to cope with
such difficulties are more energetic and better
directed than perhaps at any former period.
Yet the attempt to raise the stone of Sisyphus
to the summit is still baffled. According to our
American philosopher, however, all the mise-
ries of society have but one neck, which may
be severed by a single blow. The neck is Rent,
the remedy Confiscation.
We should, however, do injustice to the au-
thor if we did not concede that his arguments
against the existing arrangements of the world.
are founded on something stronger than mere
hypothesis or gratuitous assumption. His con-
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 237
clusions are worked out by a regularly conduct-
ed, however fallacious, process of reasoning;
and solid facts are not wanting, though occa-
sionally mingled with rash and extravagant
assertions which admit of direct contradiction.
He is evidently well versed in the literature of
political economy, and knows how to handle,
though he perverts and abuses, the weapons of
his craft. We are unwilling to weary our read-
ers with technical subtleties, or to embark upon.
an elaborate vindication of the first principles
of economic science; but it is necessary, in the
interests of truth, to describe briefly the steps
by which Mr. George makes his way to his
paradoxical conclusion, and to point out some
of the faulty links in his chain of reasoning.
He begins by impugning certain leading posi-
tions of the orthodox school of economists; and,
throwing down the gauntlet to John Stuart Mill,
he contradicts the propositions that labor is
limited by capital, and that the rate of wages
depends on the proportion which the fund ap-
plicable to production bears to the number.
of workmen seeking employment. To Mr.
Ricardo's doctrine of rent he in the main ac-
cedes, though demurring (not without reason) to
the historical unreality of its statement. But
to the Malthusian solution of the social prob-
lem, so widely at variance with his own, he
offers a resolute defiance, and controverts it
238
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
with a force of argument which makes this, in
our judgment, the most cogent portion of his
work. Having thus overthrown, as he con-
siders, the two doctrines which ascribe the
insufficient remuneration of labor to the defi-
ciency of capital, or to the pressure of popula-
tion upon subsistence, he finds the ground
cleared for the substitution of his own dogma,
— that rent is the fundamental restrictive check
upon production, the cause of inadequate wages,
and of the consequent indigence and suffering
of the working-class.
As the argument against the over-population
theory is the strongest, the attempted confuta-
tion of the limitation of labor by capital is the
weakest, part of the book. The author strives
to demolish the prevalent belief that the antag-
onism on the wages question is between capital
and labor, and to establish in lieu of it that the
real controversy is that of labor versus rent.
John Stuart Mill has laid down the law on this
head with such perspicuity and force that it
requires no little courage to dispute it. The
mere statement of the doctrine carries convic-
tion to most minds.
Industry is limited by capital. . . . There can be no
more industry than is supplied with materials to work up
and food to eat. Self-evident as the thing is, it is often
forgotten that the people of a country are maintained, and
have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present
A
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 239
labor, but of the past. They consume what has been
produced, not what is about to be produced. Now, of
what has been produced, a part only is allotted to the
support of productive labor; and there will not and can
not be more of that labor than the portion so allotted
(which is the capital of the country) can feed, and provide
with the materials and instruments of production.”
Principles of Political Economy, Book I. chap. v. sect. 1.
In assailing this position Mr. George knocks
his head against a stone wall. He labors, with
a prodigal waste of ingenuity, to prove that
labor is paid, not out of the capital created by
antecedent labor, but out of the proceeds of
the particular labor itself that is, out of the
value of the thing produced. "Labor," he
says, "always precedes wages: it is from the
produce of labor, not from the advance of capi-
tal, that wages come. The precise time of the
payment of wages is immaterial: the essential
point is, that it is after the performance of
work."
The proposition that labor is paid and the
industrial machine set a-going, not by means of
capital previously laid up, but out of the prod-
uce of the specific work for which the pay-
ment is made, is supported by a variety of illus-
trations. Some of these are taken from the
primitive stage of a community in which no
accumulated capital has as yet come into exist-
ence, and the savage hunter or fisher has only
240
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
his own hands wherewith to help himself to
subsistence; a state of things to which the
teachings of political economy, adapted only to
the transactions of a civilized community, are
manifestly inapplicable. Others are derived
from operations of an exceptional kind, such as
those in which a gang of Californian gold-
miners, or the crew of an American whale-ship,
engage together on the terms of a division of
the profits among the party; the men being, in
fact, co-partners in an adventure, and each of
them a capitalist and laborer in one.
Such ex-
ceptions do but prove the rule. Mr. George
thinks that he is giving a death-blow to the
received doctrine of capital and labor when he
argues that "the assumption that capital sup-
plies labor with materials and maintenance is
preposterous; since capital is produced by labor,
and there must be labor before there can be
capital." That all capital must be originally
derived from labor, is a truism; it can come
from no other source: but the question is not
how capital is originated, but what it does
when accumulated. In the infancy of industry,
labor must first produce capital; but when in-
dustry has been organized, and production is
carried on upon an extended scale, whether
in agriculture or in manufactures, then the
capital which has been hived out of the prod-
uce of antecedent labor becomes the motive
•
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 241
power that sets human hands and brains to
work. Thus, materials and maintenance for
workmen must be provided, at the cost of
millions of pounds, for the construction of a
railway, some years, it may be, ere a single shil-
ling is returned by the traffic on the line. Thus,
also, the applicant for a farm is required to
satisfy the landlord that he has at command a
capital equal to so many pounds per acre, before
he is allowed to enter upon the land, and, of
course, long before he can procure a return from
his first harvest. But it would be a waste of
words to discuss further the untenable position.
that capital antecedently produced does not
supply wages or material to the laborer during
the progress of his work. If that be not so,
what then, the reader naturally asks, are the
functions of capital? Mr. George answers, in
somewhat evasive style, that capital does to
a certain extent limit the power and aid the
productiveness of industry, since it supplies
tools and materials, and also facilitates the divis-
ion of employments, an answer which virtu-
ally admits the disputed law; for in every kind
of labor, even the lowest, some implements are
needed, and some division of services is found
indispensable. But the reason why this writer
contests so keenly the economic principle that
capital sustains and must therefore limit labor,
is that he has committed himself to the main-
242
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
tenance of an antagonistic position; viz., that
the real limit to labor is something else, namely,
rent, the obstruction opposed by land-owner-
ship to the common use of land, including in
that term all natural agents applicable to pro-
duction,
Proceeding in his demonstration that land-
ownership is the fountain-head of all social de-
rangements, Mr. George finds another theory
in his path, which traces the evil to a very dif-
ferent source, the theory of over-population.
The doctrine enunciated by Malthus, carried to
more extravagant lengths by some of his fol-
lowers, and presented in its not least repulsive
shape by Mr. Mill, is attacked by Mr. George
with no inconsiderable force of invective, ridi-
cule, and accumulation of facts. The refutation
of the theory, however, except so far as it re-
moves out of his way a rival solution to his
own, does not, as our readers will perceive, ad-
vance in any degree the proof of the author's
fundamental position, the condemnation of
rent. The argument against over-population
may be complete, yet the distress and penury
which exist in all communities may be account-
ed for by many other causes than the proprietor-
ship of the soil. Mr. George, however, fairly
takes the Malthusian bull by the horns, and
contends, that, whether tested by historical facts
or by the analogies of the animal or vegetable
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 243
world, the theory of the disproportion of the
fecundity of the human race to the potential
increase of subsistence entirely breaks down.
It must be admitted, of course, by him, as by
all, that assuming the utmost power of human
propagation to be exercised without limit, un-
checked by any prudential regards or fear of
consequences, stimulated by perverse legislation,
and favored by physical circumstances, the num-
bers of a people would be likely to outrun their
means of maintenance. This is, indeed, a mere
truism. But taking the world as it exists, and
human beings as they are constituted, pre-sup-
posing only so much prudence as to induce men
of ordinary intelligence to abstain from bring-
ing on themselves and their families degrada-
tion and ruin, and considering on the other hand
the immense development of production which
human labor and intelligence are capable of
achieving, Mr. George argues that the advance
of civilization and industry tends to contract,
and not to widen, the interval between the num-
bers of a people and their means of subsistence.
For the question is, as he truly states it, “not
in what stage of population is most subsistence
produced, but in what stage is there exhibited
the greatest power of producing wealth? For
the power of producing wealth in any form
is the power of producing subsistence, and the
consumption of wealth in any form is equiva-
244
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
lent to the consumption of subsistence." In
other words, the comparison to be made is not.
between numbers and food, but between num-
bers and production, since all production is by
means of exchange convertible into food.
John Stuart Mill has laid down the Malthu-
sian law in the following manner:
"A greater number of people cannot, in any given
state of civilization, be collectively so well provided for
as a smaller. The niggardliness of nature, not the in-
justice of society, is the cause of the penalty attached to
over-population. An unjust distribution of wealth does
not aggravate the evil, but, at most, causes it to be some-
what earlier felt. It is in vain to say that all mouths
which the increase of mankind calls into existence bring
with them hands. The new mouths require as much food
as the old ones, and the hands do not produce as much.
If all instruments of production were held in joint prop-
erty by the whole people, and the produce divided with
perfect equality among them; and if, in a society thus
constituted, industry were as energetic and the produce
as ample as at the present time, —there would be enough
to make all the existing population extremely comfort-
able; but when that population had doubled itself, as,
with existing habits of the people, under such an en-
couragement, it undoubtedly would in little more than
twenty years, what would then be their condition? Un-
less the arts of production were in the same time im-
proved to an almost unexampled degree, the inferior soils
which must be resorted to, and the more laborious and
scantily remunerative cultivation which must be employed
on the superior soils, to procure food for so much larger
a population, would, by an insuperable necessity, render
every individual in the community poorer than before.
་
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND.
245
If the population continued to increase at the same rate,
a time would soon arrive when no one would have more
than mere necessaries; and, soon after, a time when no
one would have a sufficiency of those, and the further
increase of population would be arrested by death."
Principles of Political Economy, Book I. chap. xiii.
Mr. George meets this statement with a flat
contradiction :
"All this I deny. I assert that the very reverse of
these propositions is true. I assert that in any given
state of civilization a greater number of people can col-
lectively be better provided for than a smaller. I assert
that the injustice of society, not the niggardliness of
nature, is the cause of the want and misery which the
current theory attributes to over-population. I assert
that the new mouths which an increasing population calls
into existence require no more food than the old ones,
while the hands they bring with them can in the natural
order of things produce more. I assert, that, other things
being equal, the greater the population, the greater the
comfort which an equitable distribution of wealth would
give to each individual. I assert that in a state of
equality the natural increase of population would con-
stantly tend to make every individual richer instead of
poorer."
Taking a wide survey of the principal com-
munities both of the ancient and modern world,
Mr. George affirms that in no instance has dis-
tress been caused by over-production of human
beings, but has been everywhere attributable
to a stinted production of wealth, the effect
246
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
of oppression or tyranny, of the extortion of
the ruling class, of war or rapine, of the inse-
curity of the fruits of labor, or of the restric-
tions imposed upon exchange. Where just
government and good laws prevail, there the in-
crease of population, by facilitating the division
of labor, by multiplying products, and by pro-
moting celerity of exchange, has operated, as it
always must operate, to increase wealth, which
means to increase subsistence. The most popu-
lous nations are now the wealthiest. It is not
the countries whose soil is the most fertile, but
the countries in which trade is most free, the
laws most just, property most secure, "not
Mexico, but Massachusetts; not Brazil, but
England," that present the greatest examples.
of productiveness, the largest surplus of wealth
over and above the necessaries of existence.
We must not argue the matter, as the Ricardo
school has done, with reference to the poten-
tiality of production on a given section of
ground. It is not a question of acre-plats.
Through the medium of exchange the whole
earth is the area of supply to the community
of nations. England at the present time draws
largely upon foreign fields for the very bread
she eats. Is it therefore to be said that her
population is too large for the food she yields,
while she is able from her ever-increased powers
of production to pay for her imported supplies,
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 247
many times over, with the produce of her fac-
tories and workshops?
The alleged examples of over-population
India, China, and Ireland - are successively ex-
amined; and the misgovernment and oppression
which have cramped industry and confiscated
its fruits in those countries are assigned as the
true cause of the indigence and the famines with
which they have been afflicted. There is much
truth in these allegations: at the same time we
cannot but severely reprobate Mr. George's ex-
travagant assertions in respect to our own two
great dependencies. We assent to the conclu-
sion that the real cause of the afflictions of
India has been not the "niggardliness of na-
ture,” but the rapacity of her past rulers; but
we protest strongly against his wild and inflam-
matory denunciation of the existing English
rule as "worse than all the yokes of her many
conquerors;" "a weight," he says, "which is
literally crushing millions out of existence, and,
as shown by English writers, is inevitably tend-
ing to a most frightful and wide-spread catas-
trophe." The writer who gives utterance to
these preposterous accusations, on the faith of
some sensational paragraphs culled from irre-
sponsible pamphleteers and writers in maga-
zines, while he shuts his eyes to all the palpable.
evidences of the great advances made by India
in wealth and prosperity under British sway, to
248
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the comparative infrequency of those terrific
famines that devastated the country under na-
tive rule, and to the earnest and benevolent ex-
ertions of our Government to mitigate their
severity when they do occur, is guilty of a foul
libel on the honor and humanity of the British
nation.
With regard to Ireland we find Mr. George
indulging in the same reckless vehemence of
invective. The want and suffering of that
country, wrongly attributed to excess of popu-
lation, is laid by him at the door of absentee
proprietors, "who drain away without return at
least a fourth of the net produce of the soil;
to the "resident landlords with their horses
and hounds, agents, jobbers, middle-men, and
bailiffs; to an alien State Church to insult re-
ligious prejudices" (we thought it had ceased
to exist); "and to an army of policemen and
soldiers to overawe and hunt down any opposi
tion to the iniquitous system." "Were it not,"
he declares, “for the enervating influence which
the history of the world proves to be the effect
of abject poverty, it would be difficult to resist.
something like a feeling of contempt for a race
who, stung by such wrongs, have only occasion-
ally murdered a landlord."
Over-population, it should always be borne
in mind, is a relative term. There is no abso-
lute standard of numbers to the square mile.
·
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 249
With a soil fully cultivated, with an adequate
supply of capital, with an ingenious and in-
dustrious population, with just laws and unre-
stricted trade, there is no doubt that a country.
may thrive though its population should exceed
in density any of which we have had experi-
ence. Reverse these conditions, and a country
will be over-peopled with a fourth part of the
population which revels in abundance in an-
other. It is simply a question of the ratio of
numbers to production. The Ireland of to-day,
distracted, turbulent, with its half-starved peo-
ple dependent almost on a single industry, is
said, and not without color of reason, to be
over-peopled. Ireland united, peaceable, law-
abiding, with her large natural resources de-
veloped by capital and industry, might main-
tain in comfort a much larger population than
at present. We are not now laying blame for
what is past, on one party or another: we as-
sert only that a long sequence of mismanage-
ment, and a deplorable perverseness of policy,
are sufficient to account for the disastrous spec-
tacle which Ireland now presents, without at-
tributing her miseries to so inadequate and
irrelevant a cause as excess in the numbers of
her people.
We are unable to give further space to that
part of Mr. George's work which is directed
against the doctrines of Malthus. There is
250
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
much in it which the adherents to the over-
population theory will find it difficult to contro-
vert; but it is less necessary to dwell upon it
here, since, as we have before remarked, it
forms only a parenthesis in the writer's argu-
ment, which, being primarily aimed against the
institution of private property in land, is but
indirectly, if at all, affected by the proof or dis-
proof of the Malthusian dogma.
Recurring to the main position which he
labors to establish, we find Mr. George assert-
ing, with the confidence which gives to a para-
dox the air of an axiom, the following proposi-
tion:
"The reason why, in spite of the increase of pro-
ductive power, wages constantly tend to a minimum
which will give but a bare living, is, that, with increase
in productive power, rent tends to even greater increase,
thus producing a constant tendency to the forcing-down
of wages."
And in another place he reiterates the great.
economical heresy with which his mind is pos-
sessed:
"The principal is as universal as it is obvious. That
rent must reduce wages, is as clear as that, the greater
the subtractor, the less the remainder. That rent does
reduce wages, any one, wherever situated, can see by
merely looking around him."
We are thus brought face to face with the
capital fallacy which lies at the root of this
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 251
impeachment of land-ownership. Wages, it is
alleged, are something subtracted from rent.
Now, rent, through the operation of causes
which the progress of wealth and population
necessarily develops, tends constantly to in-
crease. Wages, therefore, will simultaneously
grow smaller; and thus pauperism inevitably
overtakes labor. In the name of political
economy, on the authority of all those eminent
writers who have formulated the laws of nation-
al wealth into a science, nay, in the name of
common-sense itself,- we protest against, and
denounce as equally false and mischievous, this
assertion that wages are a subtraction from rent.
Mr. George has himself stated, in one pas-
sage of his book, the theory of production.
"Three things," he says, "unite to production,
- labor, capital, and land. Three parties divide
the produce, the laborer, the capitalist, and the
land-owner." But in another place, as we have
seen, when treating of capital, he virtually elimi-
nates the function of the capitalist. "Capital,
after all," he says, "is merely labor:" the la-
borer is really paid out of the produce of his
own work; "he pays himself." In effect, land-
owner and laborer are the joint producers.
They divide the produce. It is simply a sub-
traction sum: the more the land-owner appro-
priates to himself, the less is the balance left.
for his humble coadjutor, the working-man.
252
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
The writer who thus argues has, neverthe-
less, accepted in explicit terms the doctrine of
rent as enunciated by Ricardo and those who
have adopted, in a more or less modified form,
his well-known exposition. Rent has been cor-
rectly described by a recent writer, Mr. Thorold
Rogers, as "all that remains of the price at
which the produce of land is sold when the
cost of production is deducted." Consequently,
"rent is paid last," when all the other contribu-
tories have been satisfied. True, it is estimated
and stipulated beforehand. The cultivator, be-
fore he applies to the owner for a farm, cal-
culates beforehand how much surplus it is
estimated to yield above the cost of produc-
tion. That rent he binds himself to pay.
Should his estimate prove fallacious, and the
cost of cultivation leave him less than his fair
remunerative profit, he will as soon as possible.
demand a reduction of the rent, or he will
throw up his tenancy. Of the cost of produc-
tion, labor forms on most farms the heaviest
item. But labor, like other commodities, has
its current or market price. That rate cannot
be lowered to meet the need of a particular
employer. The farmer cannot say to Hodge
or Giles, "My landlord makes me pay so high
a rent that I am obliged to cut down your
wages." Those wages must bear the same rate
as other employers in the district pay, other-
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 253
wise Hodge or Giles will betake himself else-
where. They must be paid, too, week by week,
long before the produce is realized; and the rent
which the land can bear is not ultimately ascer-
tained and paid until after all the laborers have
been settled with. The result is just the same,
whether the cultivator farms his own land or is
the tenant of another. In the former case, as
in the latter, the whole cost of production, the
wages of labor at the standard rate, the interest
on capital, and the farmer's own remuneration
for superintendence quâ cultivator, must first
be subtracted; and then the surplus will re-
main to him quâ land-owner, as representing the
rent.
But in neither case, nor in any case, do
the land-owner and the laborer meet together,
either actually or constructively, as Mr. George
supposes, to work a sum in arithmetic, of which
the term representing rent shall be just as
much as the land-owner thinks proper to exact.
The wages, on the contrary, are a fixed rate,
a first charge,
of production.
a primary element in the cost
It would be as reasonable to
say, in the case of a railway company, that the
dividend to the shareholders must first be paid
out of the earnings, leaving what remains to
meet the working expenses of the line, as to
say that the farm-laborer must needs take what
the landlord leaves him after first satisfying his
own claims in respect of rent. Mr. George
254
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
must know little indeed of our English tenant-
farmer system if he is not aware, that, in point
of fact, landlord and laborer do not come to-
gether at all. There is, to use a legal phrase,
"no privity of contract" between them. The
farmer must pay as wages the sum which the
law of the market prescribes to him; the land-
lord can get no more than the ultimate surplus
which remains, after the tenant has recouped
both himself and his laborers for the cost of
production.
It is quite true, indeed, and not at all incon-
sistent with what has now been stated, that in
every progressive community the increased rent-
al of the soil is a marked-and, except during a
temporary crisis, such as this country is now
passing through, an invariable-feature. The
demand for land and the value of land grow at
each successive stage in the development of
wealth. The greater productiveness of labor,
the increase of population, the extension of com-
merce, the multitudinous new wants and ever-
growing luxury of a prosperous community, -
all contribute to enhance the value of the soil.
New lands, before regarded as unimprovable,
are brought into use by a more highly skilled
agriculture. Wastes are reclaimed, forests.
cleared, morasses drained; the mere ground
itself, without reference to its agricultural ca-
pacity, is needed for houses and factories, for
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 255
roads and railways, for a thousand purposes of
business and accommodation, as well as of lux-
ury and display. The artificial wants of an
advanced state of society are almost as urgent
as the natural. Again, the lands already under
cultivation derive a new and adventitious value
from the proximity of roads, of railways, of
markets, and of populous towns. Thus comes
into existence that "unearned increment" which
John Stuart Mill, while recognizing the vested
rights of the land-owner in the original soil, re-
garded as an element of value extrinsic to those
rights, and justly to be claimed on behalf of
the community at large. Such a claim seems
modest indeed, in the presence of Mr. George's
exorbitant demands. We cannot now enter into
a discussion of the unearned-increment theory,
and can only observe in passing, that there are
three distinct grounds on which it must be
pronounced impracticable. (1) If the State is
entitled to sweep off the anticipated profits, it
would be bound, pari ratione, to indemnify the
owner against prospective loss on his invest-
ment. (2) It would impair or destroy the great
motive for speculative improvements, were the
State to step in and claim the result of the
investment when successful. Lastly, and above
all, it would be found utterly impracticable to
draw the line between the increased value
due to the skill or diligence of the owner,
256
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
and that which was the outgrowth of external
causes.
"The increased power of production," Mr.
George goes on to say, "has everywhere added
to the value of land: nowhere has it added to
the value of labor." The condition of the
working-classes, he declares, has in civilized
communities been so grievously depressed in
consequence of the progressive rise of rent, that
he considers the circumstances of the modern
laborer in such communities inferior even to
the lot of the savage. He goes so far as to say
this:
"I think no one who will open his eyes to the facts
can resist the conclusion, that there are in the heart of
our civilization large classes with whom the veriest sav-
age could not afford to exchange. It is my deliberate
opinion, that if, standing on the threshold of being, one
were given the choice of entering life as a Terra del
Fuegian, a black fellow of Australia, an Esquimau in
the Arctic Circle, or among the lowest classes in such a
highly civilized country as Great Britain, he would make
infinitely the better choice in selecting the lot of the
savage."
"There are some," he adds, and not without
reason, “to whom this may seem like exaggera-
tion." We have little doubt, indeed, that such
will be the prevailing sentiment of his readers.
There are other passages in the book which
describe, in highly colored and inflammatory
language, the present condition of our English
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 257
workingmen; not the scum and refuse of the
great towns, be it observed, but the regularly
employed laborers and artisans.
Such reprc-
sentations may accord with the conception
sometimes formed of our industrial organiza-
tion in America; but they do not correspond,
we venture to assert, with the reality of things.
In another paragraph Mr. George commits him-
self to a very bold allegation. "Free trade,"
he says, "has enormously increased the wealth
of Great Britain, without lessening pauperism.
It has simply increased rent."
If by "pauperism" he meant that which is
technically so called, that is, relief afforded
by the poor-rates, Mr. George might have
satisfied himself, by reference to the most easily
accessible proofs, that such a statement would
be quite incorrect. In fact, pauperism in this
sense has decreased since the era of free
trade. The numbers receiving indoor and
outdoor relief have, relatively to the increase
of population, become not greater but less. If,
on the other hand, the term "pauperism" is
used in a more loose signification, as descrip-
tive of the general condition of the working-
classes in England, again the allegation is un-
true. Forty years ago the proportion of the
population receiving relief under the Poor Law
was six per cent: it is now three per cent.
wages of labor employed both in agriculture
The
258
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
and manufacture are, generally speaking, higher
than in the days of the Corn Laws, not in pecu-
niary amount only, but even more in purchasing
power. The great fiscal reductions that have
taken place since the late Sir Robert Peel
entered upon his career of commercial and
financial policy in 1842 have resulted in cheap-
ening to a large extent those articles which
enter into the consumption of the masses.
Bread, tea, coffee, cocoa, cheese, soap, and
many more articles of the first necessity, are
now much lower in price. Fuel, postage, loco-
motion, are largely reduced. The means of a
sound elementary education are brought within
the reach of the poor. The hours of labor are
shortened, a change in itself equivalent to an
increase of wages. Two principal articles only
have become dearer,-butcher's-meat and house-
rent. The high price of the former has been
caused in great measure by the casualties of
unfavorable seasons and cattle-disease; but the
efforts made in several quarters to open fresh
sources of supply from those parts of the world
where meat is superabundant, though hitherto
only partially successful, will, as we may fairly
anticipate, ultimately abate the present extrava-
gant prices of animal food. The improvement
of the dwellings of the industrial classes is now
engaging the earnest attention both of philan-
thropists and of the legislature, and public
•
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 259
opinion is setting forcibly in that direction.
On the whole, we may fairly assert, both that
the physical condition of the working-class has,
during the last forty years, been steadily rising
to a higher standard, and also that the priva-
tions and hardships still incident to their lot are
receiving, whenever they are brought to light,
an amount of attention and solicitude which
contrast very favorably with former periods.
After an examination of the causes which
tend, in his view, to depress the rate of wages,
and to keep the lower classes in civilized com-
munities in a state of chronic indigence and
squalor, and after dismissing as inadequate the
remedies and mitigations hitherto proposed,
such as education, frugality, and temperance,
economy in government, trade combination, and
co-operation in labor, the author of "Progress
and Poverty" arrives at the conclusion of his
argument: the one true remedy for the disor-
ders and disasters of society, the nationaliza-
tion of the soil. "We must make land common
property." How is this to be done? The land-
owner must be divested, by legislative decree,
of his possessions.
This
The first question that arises on this proposal
is the very obvious one, "Is it just?"
test is at once accepted, and Mr. George pro-
ceeds to inquire what is the true foundation of
the right of property; and he determines it to
260
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
be this: "The right of a man to himself, to the
use of his own powers, to the enjoyment of
the fruits of his own exertions." There is, to
every thing that is produced by labor, a clear
and indisputable right to exclusive use and en-
joyment; which is perfectly consistent with jus-
tice, as it descends from the original producer
in whom it vested by natural law.
"The laws of Nature are the decrees of the Creator.
There is written in them no recognition of right, save
that of labor. . . .
"This right of ownership that springs from labor," he
continues, “excludes the possibility of any other right of
ownership. If a man be rightfully entitled to the prod-
uce of his labor, then no one can be rightfully entitled
to the ownership of any thing which is not the produce
of his labor, or the labor of some one else from whom
the right has passed to him. If production give to the
producer the right to exclusive possession and enjoy-
ment, there can rightfully be no exclusive possession and
enjoyment of any thing not the production of labor, and
the recognition of private property in land is a wrong.
For the right to the produce of labor cannot be enjoyed
without the right to the free use of the opportunities
offered by nature, and to admit the right of property in
these is to deny the right of property in the produce of
labor. When non-producers can claim as rent a portion
of the wealth created by producers, the right of the
producers to the fruits of their labor is to that extent
denied.
"There is no escape from this position. To affirm
that a man can rightfully claim exclusive ownership in
his own labor when embodied in material things, is to
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 261
deny that any one can rightfully claim exclusive owner-
ship in land. To affirm the rightfulness of property in
land is to affirm a claim which has no warrant in nature,
as against a claim founded in the organization of man
and the laws of the material universe."
There exist, it is argued, two classes of things.
The characteristic of one class of things is, that
"they embody labor," are brought into exist-
ence by human exertion, their existence or non-
existence, their increase or diminution, depend-
ing on man. The essential character of the
other class is, that they do not "embody labor,"
and exist irrespective of human exertion, and
irrespective of men. Land, the writer contends,
must belong to the latter class. He goes on,-
"If we are all here by the equal permission of the
Creator, we are all here with an equal title to the enjoy-
ment of his bounty, — with an equal right to the use of
all that nature so impartially offers. This is a right which
is natural and inalienable; it is a right which vests in
every human being as he enters the world, and which,
during his continuance in the world, can be limited only
by the equal rights of others. There is in nature no
such thing as a fee-simple in land. There is on earth
no power which can rightfully make a grant of exclusive
ownership in land. If all existing men were to unite to
grant away their equal rights, they could not grant away
the right of those who follow them. For what are we
but tenants for a day? Have we made the earth, that
we should determine the rights of those who after us
shall tenant it in their turn? The Almighty, who created
the earth for man and man for the earth, has entailed
262
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
а
it upon all the generations of the children of men by
a decree written upon the constitution of all things,
decree which no human action can bar, and no prescrip-
tion determine. Let the parchments be ever so many, or
possession ever so long, natural justice can recognize no
right in one man to the possession and enjoyment of land
that is not equally the right of all his fellows. Though
his titles have been acquiesced in by generation after
generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of West-
minster the poorest child that is born in London to-day
has as much right as has his eldest son. Though the
sovereign people of the State of New York consent to
the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant
that comes wailing into the world in the squalidest room
of the most miserable tenement-house becomes at that
moment seized of an equal right with the millionnaires ;
and it is robbed if the right is denied" (p. 52).
The argument that there can be no private
property in land, because it is the work of the
Creator, and not of man, is a strange fallacy.
Man does not confine his property to the work
of his own hands. He does not make diamonds,
or silver and gold, or trees or vegetables. They
are natural products, or the result of natural
forces. They exist by no human art or inter-
vention. He digs up the diamond, he extracts.
the precious metals, he plants the trees, he
cultivates the vegetables. It is the alliance of
man's labor with nature which gives birth to
the wealth of the world. Just so it is with land.
Land without the application of labor in some
form or other is no more value than so much
י
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 263
sea.
What was the value of the American and
Australian continents without a domestic ani-
mal, and with but few useful plants, and a bar-
barous and scanty population? The labor of
civilized man has imparted to them whatever
value they now possess, and has created the
right of property in the land in the same pro-
portion. That right of property may be ex-
changed for money, or transmitted by descent,
at the will of the owner; but the distinction
sought to be drawn between land and other
forms of wealth is entirely fallacious.
It must appear somewhat strange, that Mr.
George, while asserting the paramount right of
every man to the produce of his own labor, or
to the produce which he has derived by rightful
title from the original producer, can shut his
eyes to the obvious fact, that no small part of
the landed property of every civilized country
has been originally acquired by means of the
earnings or savings of labor; has been ex-
changed for labor, or bought with funds which
have been previously accumulated from that
source alone. Has not the man who has thus
acquired an exclusive property in land as valid
a title to his plat of ground as he who has con-
verted his earnings into household-furniture or
food, into railway stock or three-per-cent con-
sols? Is there no "embodied labor" in the little
section of freehold which the frugal artisan has
264
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
purchased through the medium of the Savings
Bank or the Building Society? To drive out
such a man from his holding as an intruder and
a trespasser, on the plea that "in nature there
is no such thing as a fee-simple in land,"
would not this be in reality a fouler outrage on
the rights of labor than the most unscrupulous.
monopolist has ever been guilty of? What
would be unjust in regard to the original invest-
er of his labor in the soil would be equally so
in regard to those, whether purchasers, legatees,
or heirs, to whom, under the sanction of law,
the property had been transmitted. Upon the
author's own showing, all titles to land thus
good in their inception, as being acquired with
the earnings of labor, must be exempted, sup-
posing it were possible to separate such portions
from the mass, from the sentence of depriva-
tion.
Mr. George next enters into an historical
investigation of the origin of property in land,
and pronounces the larger portion of such pos-
sessions to have been tainted ab initio with
violence and fraud, —a statement which at the
present date it is scarcely worth while to con-
test. He asserts also, on the authority of cer-
tain legal antiquaries and learned men who have
made researches into the institutions of primi-
tive communities, that tribal or communal pro-
prietorship was the original form in which the
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 265
land was held in early times, severalty of tenure
being of later introduction. This is probably
true; but it is not less certain, that, although
relics of such joint ownership survive to a
limited extent both in this and in other coun-
tries, the most advanced nations of the world
have long since, in the natural course of things,
outgrown and discarded it. It was abandoned,
to use the writer's own words, “when the devel-
opment of agriculture had imposed the neces-
sity of recognizing exclusive possession of land
in order to secure the exclusive enjoyment of
the results of the labor expended in cultivating
it." As Blackstone has said, "Necessity begat
Occupancy;" the wants of society and the need
of improved methods of agriculture necessitated
the exclusive appropriation of the soil. But,
whatever be the historical account of the matter,
the rights of the land-owner at the present time
rest on a much more solid basis than antiquarian
precedents, the same security upon which all
the most valued rights of the community depend,
even that of life itself, the guaranty of the
law. The title of prescription, once complete,
cancels all original defects of acquisition, heals
all flaws of title, legitimates all past transfers
and successions. In every system of jurispru-
dence, time gives title. But for this security, the
rights of every man in the community would
be founded on a quicksand. Society would be
-
266
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
rent in pieces by an internecine war between
the Have-alls and the Want-alls.
"We must take peaceful possession, when it has con-
tinued for a certain time, as absolute evidence of just
title; for, were we not to do that, there would be no end to
dispute, and no secure possession of any thing. It is this
common-sense principle that is expressed in the Statute
of Limitations, in the doctrine of vested rights. This
is the reason why it is held and as to most things held
justly that peaceable possession for a certain time cures
all defects of title."
Sound words these; but what is most remark-
able is, that they are the words of Mr. George
himself, contained, not in the work now under
consideration, but in a small pamphlet recently
published by him on the Irish land-question.
Is it necessary at the present day to demon-
strate the folly and iniquity of these schemes
of confiscation, which could never be realized
but at the cost of a struggle which would con-
vulse society? Do the advocates of spoliation
imagine that those who now own the soil of this
country we do not speak only of the lords of
great domains, but also of the petty freeholders
of fields and tenements - would tamely submit
to be dispossessed of their properties, inherited,
perhaps, through a long descent, cherished with
the utmost tenacity of pride, interest, and affec-
tion, and associated with all they hold most
dear? The revolution - for it would be noth-
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 267
1
ing less which should extinguish all existing
titles in the soil, could only be effected at the
cost of a frightful civil struggle; and the desola-
tion which it would cause would only be effaced
when, after a period of great suffering, society
had reverted to that institution which is neces-
sary to the order and stability of every civilized
community. Nor can any one but a fanatical
theorist suppose that the right of property in
the soil could be extinguished without under-
mining the security of all other proprietary
rights. The title of the land-owner is based on
the most solemn guaranties, the oldest tradi-
tions, the most obligatory compacts of public
faith. If all these bulwarks are swept away by
the force of confiscation, what prospect would
there be of immunity to the fund-holder? The
same reasoning would apply to both.
How easy
for those who now preach the doctrine that
property in land is a "robbery," because the
original donee some centuries ago was enfeoffed
by a usurper or a marauder, to contend also that
the debt by which the industry of the country
was mortgaged, and which was laid by our pro-
genitors upon the shoulders of succeeding gen-
erations, originated in wars waged by corrupt
statesmen for the purpose of cementing the
fabric of despotism, and crushing the liberties
of foreign peoples! What says Mr. George
himself? "When a title rests but on force, no
268
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
complaint can be made when force annuls it.
Whenever the people, having the power, choose
to annul those titles, no objection can be made
in the name of justice." Whenever, then, "the
people choose," and have the power, the end of
all security of title, whether real or personal,
will have come, and anarchy and bankruptcy
may shake hands over the grave of justice.
The audacious justification of plunder which
our American reformer thus propounds needs.
little refutation beyond the mere statement of
the scheme, and we might perhaps spare our-
selves the trouble of exposing the futility of the
methods by which he proposes to work it out.
But it may be worth while to exhibit briefly the
impracticable and iniquitous character of the
proposal. Other theorists have expressed in
recent times their approval of the principle of
the expropriation of the landholders; but there
are differences among them, especially on the
question of compensation for the loss. M. Lave-
leye, whom we regret to number among those
who avow themselves unfriendly to the system
of individual ownership, is not an advocate, if
we rightly apprehend his views, of uncompen-
sated resumption by the state. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, who, in his work called "Social Stat-
ics," distinctly propounds the dogma that “equi-
ty does not permit property in land," and that
the right of mankind at large to the earth's sur-
1
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 269
face is still valid, "all deeds, customs, and laws
notwithstanding," has still qualms about seizing
the people's lost inheritance without an indem-
nity to the men in possession.
"No doubt great difficulties must attend the resump-
tion, by mankind at large, of their rights to the soil.
The question of compensation to existing proprietors is
a complicated one, one that perhaps cannot be settled
in a strictly equitable manner. Had we to deal with the
parties who originally robbed the human race of its herit-
age, we might make short work of the matter. But, un-
fortunately, most of our present land-owners are men who
have, either mediately or immediately, either by their
own acts, or by the acts of their ancestors, — given for
their estates equivalents of honestly earned wealth, believ-
ing that they were investing their savings in a legitimate
manner. To justly estimate and liquidate the claims of
such, is one of the most intricate problems society will
one day have to solve. But with this perplexity, and our
extrication from it, abstract morality has no concern.
Men, having got themselves into the dilemma by dis-
obedience to the law, must get out of it as well as they
can, and with as little injury to the landed class as may
be." - Social Statics, p. 142.
But the American economist, a much bolder
man, goes a long way beyond the English
philosopher. "Herbert Spencer says, 'Had we
to deal with the parties who originally robbed
the human race of its heritage, we might make
short work of the matter.' Why not make
short work of the matter anyhow?" asks Mr.
George.
270
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
"It is not merely a robbery in the past: it is a robbery
in the present,
a robbery that deprives of their birth-
right the infants that are now coming into the world!
Why should we hesitate about making short work of
such a system? Because I was robbed yesterday, and
the day before, and the day before that, is it any reason
that I should suffer myself to be robbed to-day and to-
morrow? any reason that I should conclude that the rob-
ber has acquired a vested right to rob me?
"If the land belongs to the people, why continue to
permit land-owners to take the rent, or compensate them
in any manner for the loss of rent?
•
"If we apply the same maxims of justice that have
been formulated by land-owners and law, and are applied
every day in English and American courts to disputes
between man and man, we shall not only not think of
giving the landholders any compensation for the land,
but shall take all the improvements and whatever else
they may have as well.
"But I do not propose, and I do not suppose that any
one else will propose, to go so far. It is sufficient if the
people resume the ownership of the land. Let the land-
owners retain their improvements and personal property
in secure possession."
Mr. George, therefore, concedes that "im-
provements," whether made by the existing
owner or his predecessors in title, ought to be
paid for. That which the state may resume
without any compensation is the bare soil it-
self.
But in that case a problem of insuperable
difficulty presents itself. Take the land of Eng-
land in its existing state,
transformed, as it
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 271
་
has been, by the skill and industry of successive
generations, and by the expenditure upon it of
an amount of capital that does not admit of
calculation, with all the artificial constructions.
and substructions that have been laid upon or
under it, with the surface, the subsoil, the nat-
ural properties of the earth itself, transmuted
and impregnated by the various appliances of
chemistry and culture-and then draw, if you
can, the just line between the mere soil itself
which is reclaimed as the patrimony of the
people, and the "improvements" which should
belong, as is conceded, to the expropriated
owner. There is but one mode of dealing with
such a Gordian knot as this. "Ense reciden-
dum est." Mr. Spencer, in the passage above
cited, intimates as much: "If the complexity
is such as to defy scrutiny, the fault is with
those who got themselves into the dilemma."
"A short method with land-owners" would have
to be devised. It might be proposed, perhaps,
that they should be paid at a valuation of so
much of the improvements as could be proved
to have been made within a definite date, or that
the value should be appraised by a rough esti-
mate, and compensation be made by a lump
sum. If such an assessment should appear to
be a hap-hazard one, whose fault is it but that
of the land-owners, who were intruders and tres-
passers from the beginning? Are they not
272
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
leniently dealt with in being excused from pay-
ing back the mesne profits?
The authority of Professor Fawcett is cited.
by Mr. George for an estimate of the capitalized
rental value of the land of England at £4,500,-
000,000, about five to six times the amount of
the national debt. Say that the land-owners.
were allowed one-half of that sum in respect of
their improvements, the operation would impose
a new public debt, about thrice the amount of
the present one, upon the shoulders of the
nation. That being done, the state would then
be placed, according to the scheme of Mr.
George, in the shoes of the land-owners. The
rent of the whole soil of England would be com-
muted into a tax, in which all other taxes, being
repealed, would merge, and which would yield,
it is alleged, a return sufficient to defray all
the expenses of government, the interest of all
debts charged on the revenue, so long as they
might subsist, and over and above these pay-
ments a surplus, available in various ways for
the improvement, recreation, and gratification.
of the community, - "panem et circenses" on
a magnificent scale. The process, as described
by the author of "Social Statics," and adopted
by his American disciple, looks beautifully sim-
ple upon paper:
"Such a doctrine," he says, "is consistent with the
highest state of civilization, may be carried out without
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 273
་
involving a community of goods, and need cause no very
serious revolution in existing arrangements. The change
required would simply be a change of landlords. Sepa-
rate ownerships would merge into the joint-stock owner-
ship of the public. Instead of being in the possession
of individuals, the country would be held by the great
corporate body, society. Instead of leasing his acres
from an isolated proprietor, the farmer would lease them
from the nation. Instead of paying his rent to the agent
of Sir John or his Grace, he would pay it to an agent or
deputy-agent of the community. Stewards would be pub-
lic officials instead of private ones; and tenancy the only
land-tenure.' - Social Statics, p. 144.
The project, as explained by Mr. George,
teems with absurdities. Instead of relieving
burdens, and replenishing revenue, it would
aggravate the one, and drain the other. The
authors of such schemes should take counsel
with Cocker. How argue with men who con-
ceive that the public finances can be recruited
by reducing to insolvency and ruin that class of
the community, who, by their expenditure and
mode of living, are directly or indirectly among
the largest contributors to the public revenue?
But there is one glaring inconsistency be-
tween the scheme of confiscation, when con-
sidered in detail, and the main position of Mr.
George's argument. Throughout his whole vol-
ume, but especially in the chapters devoted to
economical disquisition, his aim is to prove that
the existence of rent is the great obstacle to
274
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
the prosperity of the nation, the cause of insuf-
ficient wages, and the consequent penury and
degradation of the working-classes. Rent is,
according to him, the root of all social evils; and
why? Because, according to his perverse mis-
reading of economic laws, rent and labor divide
between them the fruits of industry. Labor gets
too little, because rent gets too much. Again,
enterprise is checked, advance is impeded, be-
cause those whose strong arms and active brains
might procure ample returns for their exertions.
are shut out, by the monopolists of the land,
from the use of those natural agents which are
the raw material of industry, and are debarred
from admission to the soil which is the field of
man's productive powers. Only take down the
fences which now bar access to the soil, and
the crowd of needy laborers at present standing
idle might enter in at once, and reap the rewards
of their exertions.
But supposing rent to be, as Mr. George from
first to last contends, the great enemy to na-
tional well-being, does the author of this great
scheme of nationalization propose thereby to
abolish rent? Nothing of the sort.
His pro-
posal amounts simply to a change of landlords.
Rent is to exist still, but to be levied in the
shape of a tax; the tax-collector takes the place
of the lord's steward. The payment, instead of
going into the pocket of the proprietor, is
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 275
diverted into the coffers of the state. The
dramatis persone only are changed; the plot
and the outcome of the drama are the same.
It is only a new way to pay old rents.
We cannot allow Mr. George to have it both
ways. Either rent, that intolerable burden,
would have to be made easy to the tenants by
a large reduction of its amount, or it would not.
If the new landlord, the state, should continue
to exact the same sum in tax as the private
landlord took in rent, where would be the bene-
fit to the laborer and the artisan? They would
still be excluded from the soil, and mulcted of
their share of nature's bounties, as before. If,
on the other hand, the new rent is to be levelled
down, so as to relieve materially the parties
liable to the payment of it, — if a Land Office is
to be opened, and grants are to be liberally
made to all who may require sites for various
undertakings, or materials for their industry to
work upon, what then becomes of the public
revenue, derivable, after the abolition of all
other taxes, from this single source? Whence
will the compensation conceded to proprietors
for their improvements be forthcoming? How
will the interest of the national debt be pro-
vided for? What funds will remain to carry
out the various designs for the relief and regen-
eration of the community?
It is needless to do more than to indicate
276
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
very briefly the enormous abuses which would
inevitably attach to any scheme for converting
the state into the universal landlord, and vest-
ing the administration of all the landed estate
of the country in political hands. We can
form but a slight conception of the favoritism,
the intrigues, the jobbery, and the venality,
which the exercise of such a power would in-
volve. A more effective instrument for cor-
rupting and demoralizing society could hardly
be devised than would be afforded by what is
mildly called the "nationalization of the land."
Enough, and it may be thought more than
enough, has been said to expose the folly of a
scheme so extravagant in its pretensions, so
crude and self-contradictory in the methods pro-
posed for its execution, as this panacea which
Mr. George has prescribed for the sufferings of
humanity. It has not even the merit of nov-
elty; for the expropriation of the land-owners
has been advocated before by several projectors
of more or less note, in Germany and France,
as well as in our own country. We should not
have thought it necessary to vindicate the exist-
ing institutions of society from assailants who
might be so wrong-headed as to believe that
the inevitable sufferings of mankind were to be
remedied by so quixotic an experiment, or so
unscrupulous as to desire to reap for themselves
a harvest of license and spoliation. But Mr.
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 277
George is an innovator of a different type. He
attacks the fortress of property in the guise of a
political economist. He sets to work, by unset-
tling and confusing the notions of unwary read-
ers upon the leading principles of the science,
to undermine the institution to which these
principles, rightly interpreted, lend the firmest
support, by proving it to be conducive to the
well-being of society. The style of the book,
and the air of philanthropy and righteous indig-
nation with which the crusade against vested
interests is preached, make it dangerous read-
ing for those whose convictions on economic
subjects are not firmly based; still more for the
half-educated and ill-informed, who may be cap-
tivated by the prospects of relief and benefit held
out to them, but are unable to detect the fallacy
of the arguments. In fact, we cannot regard
in any other light than as a public mischief the
promiscuous circulation, in a popular shape, of
this deleterious compound of anarchical princi-
ples and spurious political economy.
We are not of those who regard property in
land with a blind and servile idolatry, or treat
it, like the poet's "Northern Farmer," as an
object of fetich-worship. We do not conceive
of the landed estate of the kingdom as resting
on a tenure of irresponsible and inalienable
right, with which any interference whatever by
the supreme authority of the State is a species
278
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
of sacrilege. That "property has its duties as
well as its rights," we shall ever strenuously
maintain; and if those duties should be repudi-
ated, or flagrantly neglected, a power must exist
somewhere to enforce the obligation. Those
"large-acred" men, if any such still exist, who
hold that a "man may do what he likes with
his own," need to be reminded of the original
principles of our Constitution. The ancient
tenures of this kingdom were based, as we
know, upon obligations of duty and conditions
of honorable service. It stands upon high
authority even now, as a legal axiom, that "the
idea of absolute ownership is unknown to the
English law; that no man is in law the abso-
lute owner of lands." "It is a fundamental
rule, that all the lands within this realm were
originally derived from the Crown, either by
express grant or tacit intendment of law; and
therefore the Queen is sovereign lady or lady
paramount, either mediate or immediate, of all
and every parcel of land within the realm." I
The constitutional title of the Crown here.
asserted, though not likely to be put in force to
the detriment of the subject, involves the prin-
ciple that the right of land-ownership is subor-
dinate to the supreme control and dominion of
the state, should an occasion arise for exercising.
I
¹ See Joshua Williams's Law of Real Property, and the
authorities there cited, pp. 17-119.
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND. 279
its imprescriptible prerogative in the cause of
the salus populi. That principle is acknowl-
edged, indeed, to a large extent, in our ordi-
nary legislation, under which the property of
individuals is frequently appropriated, subject
always to the payment of compensation, for the
execution of works of public necessity or ad-
vantage. The subordination of private rights.
to the common good is here fully recognized;
and in this point of view we think that the
application of such terms as "confiscation" and
"plunder" to certain legislative measures has
of late been too lightly and inconsiderately
made. But those opprobrious terms are by no
means out of place when the rights of owner-
ship, fortified by long prescription, are held up
to popular odium as illegal and iniquitous, and
when it is gravely recommended that they
should be swept away by an indiscriminate act
of forfeiture, without any compensation to the
deprived proprietors, and for the purpose of
effecting a social revolution which could only
result in disastrous consequences to the nation
at large.
Writers like Mr. George and Mr. Herbert
Spencer are at war not only with the first prin-
ciples of political economy and of law, of social
order and domestic life, but with the elements.
of human nature. Man does not live by bread
alone. Man does not labor solely for his own
280
SOCIAL PROBLEMS.
daily sustenance.
He labors for others: he
lives by the past, and for the future. The
strongest incentive to industry, economy, and
good living, is the desire to provide for the
future, and to hand down to our children some
results of our own lives. That desire is one of
the chief bonds of the human family, and it
consecrates the right of property. The capital
so saved must be invested; and, being invested,
it becomes equally useful to those who own it,
and to those who employ it, although their po-
sitions in life may widely differ. Land has
hitherto been regarded as the most secure of
all investments, and for that reason it is the
least remunerative. To attack the rights of
private property in land, is to attack property
in its most concrete form. If landed property
is not secure, no property can be protected by
law; and the transmission of wealth, be it large
or small, is extinguished. With it expires the
perpetuity of family life, and that future which
cheers and ennobles the labor of the present by
the hopes of the future. These are the doc-
trines of communism, fatal alike to the welfare.
of society, and to the moral character of man.
Nowhere are they more emphatically rejected
than by the most democratic communities, -
by the land-holding peasants of France and by
the homesteads of North America. They are
not only false and mischievous, but absurd
NATIONALIZATION OF THE LAND.
281
when addressed to a class of men who are never
likely to have an acre of land, and who would
starve on an acre of land if they had it. We
can only regard Mr. George's work and Mr.
Davitt's speeches as a part of the revolutionary
warfare now waged by certain Americans, or
Hiberno-Americans, against the institutions of
this country, which degrades them to the level
of the Socialists of Germany, the Nihilists of
Russia, and the Communards of Paris.

!
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY

DATE DUE


UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 01676 8494
DO NOT REMOVE
OR
MUTILATE CARDS


TOPICS OF THE TIME.
A Series of Representative Essays on Questions of the Day
EDITED BY TITUS MUNSON COAN.
Published in handsomely printed 16mo volumes, which will be issued
monthly. Price each, in paper, 25 cts., in cloth, flexible, 60 cents.
Subscriptions received in advance for twelve numbers, in paper, at $2.50;
n cloth, at $6.
The Essays will be arranged in such divisions as the following, to each of
vhich successive volumes will be devoted:
SOCIAL PROBLEMS,
STUDIES IN BIOGRAPHY,
INTERNATIONAL ISSUES,
HISTORICAL STUDIES,
QUESTIONS OF BELIEF,
STUDIES IN LITERATURE,
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.
The series is designed to bring together, for the convenience of readers
nd for permanent preservation, the results of the best thought of the best
vriters of the day, principally selected from the leading English and Conti-
ental journals.
It is characteristic of recent thought and science that a much larger pro-
portion than ever before of their most important work appears in the form
of contributions to reviews and magazines, the thinkers of our time submit-
ing their results at once to the great public.
As a consequence, there are subjects of the deepest present and perma-
hent interest, almost all of the literatures of which exist only in the shape of
letached papers, individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in
verybody's mouth, yet collectively only accessible for re-reading and com-
arison to those who are painstaking enough to search long files of periodi-
als.
The grouping of topics by volumes is the distinguishing feature of the
resent series, and in so collecting these separate papers as to give the
eader a comprehensive view of the discussions of which they form a part
nd in enabling them to be preserved as a part of the history of modern
ought, it is believed that the series will render a service that will be widely
ppreciated.
Continued on Cover Page 3.