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 A PAPER 
 
 READ BEFORE THE 
 
 OXFORD BRANCH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 0f t. # 
 
 On MAY ijM, 1887, 
 
 BY 
 
 D. G. RITCHIE, M.A. 
 
 Fellow and Tutor of Jesus College, Oxford. 
 
 WOMEN'S PRINTING SOCIETY, LIMITED, 
 GREAT COLLEGE STREET, WESTMINSTER, S.W.
 
 GUILD OF ST. MATTHEW. 
 
 OBJECTS. 
 
 I. To get rid, by every possible means, of the 
 existing prejudices, especially on the part of 
 " Secularists," against the Church Her Sacra- 
 ments and Doctrines : and to endeavour " to 
 justify GOD to the people." 
 
 II. To promote frequent and reverent Worship in 
 the Holy Communion, and a better observance 
 of the teaching of the Church of England as set 
 forth in the Book of Common Prayer.^ 
 
 III. To promote the Study of Social and Political 
 Questions in the light of the Incarnation.
 
 5" 
 03O 
 
 THE MORAL FUNCTION OF THE STATE. 
 
 ' T T 7"HY need we take an interest in politics ? Are not 
 V V politics a despicable tangle of personal ambi- 
 tions, party prejudices, unworthy compromises and 
 dishonourable intrigues, deliberate exaggerations and wilful 
 misstatements, unreasoning admiration and intemperate 
 abuse ? Is it not wiser for those, who are anxious to do 
 their duty in the world and to lead a life that may be 
 considered well-pleasing to God, to withdraw from the 
 temptations and degrading influences of political activity ? 
 After all, can even the best laws and the best institutions 
 suppose we could secure them avail to remedy the 
 corruption of the human heart ? Does not each of us need 
 all his energies to struggle with his proper enemies, the 
 passions within his own soul, and if we can do anything to 
 help others than ourselves, have we not our obvious duties 
 towards our own families and those with whom we are 
 brought into contact in the ordinary course of life ? There 
 is " the daily round, the common task " is not that 
 sufficient and more than sufficient ? And if we still wish 
 to attempt something further, is not personal help given to 
 the poor, the sick, the sorrowing, infinitely better than 
 anything that can be done through acts of parliament ? 
 Let us lead quiet and peaceable lives and keep ourselves, if 
 we can, unspotted from the world, leaving the dirty work 
 of politics to those whom God has set in authority over 
 us.'' (Apparently, it does not matter that they should be 
 soiled.) 
 
 These are the sort of arguments that we very often 
 hear: and there is obviously a great degree of truth in 
 them. We know exactly the kind of politician, whom
 
 people speaking thus have in their minds, the man who, 
 while professing to work for the noblest ends, seems only 
 to be loudly advertising himself and to care for nothing 
 beyond the mere machinery of politics. An overwhelming 
 majority at an election, a triumphant division in the 
 House, the overthrow of the party to which he does not 
 belong and the elevation to high office of the leader with 
 whom he has thrown in his lot, seem the ultimate aims- 
 and objects of his life's labour. And, in contrast with 
 such an one, is suggested the image of some unobtrusive 
 individual, a hard-working clergyman who is not heard of 
 outside his own parish or a district visitor, probably a self- 
 sacrificing woman, whose presence brings hope and light to 
 the dark abodes of poverty, suffering and sin. The contrast 
 is impressive ; but it is fallacious, if we assume that it 
 correctly expresses the relation between politics and 
 individual duty. There are many current opinions and 
 many current phrases which help to countenance this 
 assumption. Thus, it is supposed that there is a complete 
 severance between morals and politics : we frequently hear 
 it accounted one of the advantages of modern over ancient 
 moral philosophy that this severance has been effectually 
 and finally made. And if morals are distinct from politics, 
 does not religion seem to be much more distinct ? 
 There is the view of those who are apt to claim exclusive 
 possession of "Evangelical" Christianity, according to 
 which, religion is entirely an affair of the individual soul : 
 and, intimately connected with this view in logic and in 
 history, there is the doctrine that Government has nothing 
 to do with morality, that it is merely a mechanism for the 
 better protection of individual rights, and that consequently 
 a government is good in direct proportion to the narrow- 
 ness of its sphere. Individualism in politics and religion 
 is a good deal on the wane : and these opinions are not 
 now quite so prevalent as they were ; but they are 
 prevalent enough to influence seriously the practice, both of 
 those who openly accept them and of those who hold them 
 unawares nay, even of those who do not hold them, but 
 live in an atmosphere that has been permeated by them. 
 They arise, like all other widely accepted opinions that 
 contain a mixture of truth and error, from the habit
 
 people have of looking at a part only of the phenomena 
 with which they are concerned. On the one hand, it is 
 said, " You cannot make men moral by act of parliament : '' 
 on the other, '' No one can shake off his individual 
 responsibility for the use he makes of his life." These are 
 undoubted truths. But to estimate the effect, and 
 consequently the importance of government-action, we 
 must consider indirect, as well as direct results : and to 
 understand the meaning of individual responsibility we 
 must not treat individuals as isolated and similar agents, 
 equally free and equally capable of goodness. There have 
 been many protests against the immorality of the doctrine 
 of Predestination : but I question very much if it has been 
 the cause of so much practical mischief as the doctrine of 
 the Freedom of the Will in the crude form in which that 
 is accepted by popular philosophy. " What is the good " it 
 is said, " of improving the condition of the poor ? What is 
 the good of more wages, better houses, better schools, of 
 baths, public parks, picture galleries and so on ? People 
 won't be a whit better, unless there is a moral change, a 
 change in the heart and character." Doubtless the arm- 
 chair Christian moralist, who talks in this fashion, does not 
 want better wages and better housing he has probably a 
 good house of his own and a good income derived from 
 investments in the funds : he does not want rate-supported 
 schools he probably has no craving for more education 
 and rather prefers that such education as he has should be 
 a monopoly of himself and his class : he does not want a 
 public park he has his own garden : he signs petitions 
 against the Sunday opening of picture galleries he does 
 not want to go there : and he has no temptation to spend 
 his time or his money in the public house he has his club 
 and a round of highly genteel dinner parties. Has he ever 
 considered how very much, how almost entirely, his 
 respectability, which he dignifies with the name of morality, 
 is the product of his circumstances ? When the pious 
 clergyman John Newton, I think it was, though it may 
 quite well have been somebody else pointing to a criminal 
 going to the gallows, said, "There, but for the Grace of 
 God, goes John Newton," he expressed a perfectly true 
 sentiment, though his way of understanding " the Grace of
 
 God " probably took too little account of the modifiable 
 human agencies through which individuals are influenced 
 for good and for evil. There are heroic souls that even in 
 the most adverse surroundings keep on struggling towards 
 noble ideals they are the salt of the earth ; but most 
 human beings are not heroic. The society in which we 
 live, by its organization and the opinions to which that 
 organization gives rise, produces its regular crop of narrow- 
 minded respectable persons rooted to existing institutions, 
 of wealthy idlers wasting their own lives and the lives of 
 others, of weary toilers dulled into apathy by drudgery or 
 liable to be thrown out of work by the caprices of the 
 labour-market, of helpless women driven by starvation and 
 social pressure to sell themselves for a living, of drunkards, 
 thieves, swindlers and other habitual criminals, transmit- 
 ting their evil tendencies to coming generations. And for 
 all this we are responsible as a community. 
 
 In the middle ages, when governments were weak and 
 administered too often in the interests of a family or a 
 ruling caste, the only means of endeavouring to stem the 
 tide of oppression and misery were private charity and 
 private beneficence organized by ecclesiastical agencies. 
 St. Francis might almost be called the renovator of 
 Christianity, because he turned the religious enthusiasm of 
 his age into the channel of active service to the poor and 
 the sick. We know, alas ! only too well, what becomes of 
 charitable endowments how there grow up wealthy and 
 indolent corporations, surrounded by a pauperised and 
 demoralised population, so that one is tempted to say of 
 charity, in this sense of almsgiving : " It is twice cursed : 
 it curseth him that gives and him that takes." It deadens 
 the intelligence and conscience of the giver : it degrades 
 the character and will of the recipient. This is a hard 
 saying, and it sounds a harsh one. The giving of alms is a 
 venerable duty : it has been enjoined in all religions ; it 
 satisfies, at the moment, the feelings of both giver and 
 receiver ; it seems, though generally in a fictitious way, to 
 bring about a personal relation between human beings 
 which is lacking in more indirect methods of attempting to 
 remedy suffering. In those ages, places and respects, in 
 which the State is so little developed as to be unavailable
 
 as a means of relieving or preventing want, there alms- 
 giving is a duty, just as indiscriminate hospitality was a 
 duty as well as a convenience in the days of few travellers 
 and no inns. But, if in changed circumstances we cling to 
 ancient forms of beneficence, we are sacrificing human 
 welfare to a prejudice in favour of the picturesque. The 
 gracious figure of the lady of the manor, dispensing 
 blankets and soup to the curtseying dames of the village, 
 must not blind our eyes to the less pleasing features of the 
 English system of land tenure, which, along with 
 the growth of the large capitalist, are accountable 
 for a great part of the squalor of our overgrown towns. 
 The game-keeper's cottage looks very pretty at the 
 park-gate : and there are perhaps a few model dwellings on 
 the estate. But what of the rest of the rural population ? 
 The most fortunate are no longer in England. What has 
 become of those that have not escaped from their native 
 land ? And, meanwhile, the Landlord sits in the House of 
 Land-lords, obstructing all changes : nor should we blame 
 him very much, for " 'tis his nature to." But he is probably 
 a liberal subscriber to all the local charities. It is not 
 charity, in the wretched sense in which the word has come 
 to be used, it is justice that is wanted by a free people. 
 You give the crumbs to Lazarus ; but why is there a 
 Lazarus there ? Charity is only a temporary remedy. 
 We must face the evil conditions which are the source of 
 misery and try to remedy them. 
 
 " For all this we are responsible as a community." 
 When we have traced an evil back to Society, we have no 
 right to quiet our consciences by the phrase. By the 
 denial of individualism and of the supposed arbitrary and 
 absolute freedom of the individual will, it must not be 
 imagined that our responsibility is diminished : it is 
 enormously increased. Because of the solidaritcoi mankind, 
 no man can escape from being " his brother's keeper." For 
 the miseries of our age and for everything that tends to 
 mitigate these miseries we are indebted to those who have 
 gone before us: and every one of us, by act and by word and 
 even by thought, is contributing something of good or evil 
 to those who are to come after us. 
 
 That society is an organism and that its history is a
 
 history of continuous growth these have become the 
 truisms of popular science. But we are very much misled, 
 if we think the truths involved in them justify any 
 fatalistic acceptance of things as they are and any refusal to 
 endeavour to remedy evils of which we have become 
 acutely conscious. In our consciousness of the process that 
 is going on and of the society of which we find ourselves 
 members lis to be found what differentiates the social 
 organism from the natural organisms which are studied by 
 the biologist. In this consciousness, also, is to be found 
 the secret of what is so often incorrectly represented ^as a 
 non-natural and mysterious power of volition. The 
 merely vegetable or animal organisms are engaged in a 
 struggle for existence and those which prove themselves 
 most capable of surviving do survive, (the 'survival of the 
 fittest ' means nothing more than that). But we can think 
 about the end towards which we find ourselves moving, 
 and we can pronounce it good or bad and can endeavour, 
 accordingly, to accelerate the movement or to prevent it, or 
 at least, to diminish the accompanying suffering. The 
 wise statesman is he who can foresee the inevitable in 
 politics who knows in which direction the current is 
 moving and does not blindly try to thrust it back, but to 
 direct it in safe channels, making its force beneficent 
 instead of destructive. 
 
 It is as a State, i.e. as an ordered political society, that a 
 social organism becomes most distinctly conscious of its 
 existence as an organism and consequently most capable of 
 regulating the tendencies, which if left to themselves, would 
 make its history a merely natural process. I do not say 
 that the State is the only organization in which human 
 beings feel their community with one another and their 
 capacity for influencing one another's lot. By no means. 
 The family and the various associations into which men 
 group themselves, more or less consciously, come nearer to 
 the life of each individual and seem more obviously to 
 touch and influence it and at a greater number of points. 
 Religious organizations affect more readily the highest 
 motives, call forth greater enthusiasm and may extend 
 beyond the limits of national existence ; but the State has 
 the greatest force to compel at least outward obedience in
 
 the majority of persons and its working is the most open, 
 and the most capable of being observed and criticised. 
 
 There are those who hold that States cannot affect the 
 natural processes going on in Society and there are those 
 who hold that they ought not to attempt this, if they could. 
 It is curious how some who are fond of protesting against 
 the belief in the State, with a large S, are so ready to throw 
 themselves into the arms of Nature, with a very large N. 
 If Nature be taken in so wide a sense as to include all 
 human thought and effort, then the State is one of the 
 manifestations of Nature which must be allowed its own 
 capacities to struggle with the other natural forces. But if 
 so, it is not logically justifiable to draw arguments from 
 Nature against the State. If, on the other hand, the State 
 be expressly excluded as artificial from our conception of 
 Nature, what becomes of the advance we are supposed to 
 have made from the ' mechanical ' to the ' organic ' way of 
 regarding human institutions ? 
 
 To clear the way, we must first mark off a sense in which 
 the State cannot make men moral. No moral act, strictly 
 so-called, can be commanded by Law. If an act which we 
 call a right act, because outwardly resembling acts which 
 are the outcome of a good character, be done solely in 
 obedience to an external command and through fear of 
 penalties, that act is not a morally right act at all. Only 
 if the agent accepts the external command as reasonable 
 and brings his will into inward accordance with it, only 
 then has he acted in a morally right manner. This truth 
 agrees with the principle, which is generally admitted in 
 theory, that Laws are ultimately ineffectual unless they are 
 in accordance with the opinion of at least a great part of 
 the community. But another and connected principle is 
 not always so readily recognised, viz., that public opinion 
 gradually (often, indeed, very rapidly) comes to adapt itself 
 to a Law which may at first have been strongly approved 
 only by a small number, if that Law be really such as to 
 promote the social health and well-being of the community. 
 Marvellous is the power of accomplished facts. A long, 
 long struggle was needed to abolish slavery. How many 
 defenders has that institution now ? Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion, the Abolition of Tests, Extensions of the Franchise
 
 8 
 
 afford other, though less conspicuous, instances in which 
 what was once fanatically opposed has very soon after 
 come to be calmly accepted. Most people are wanting in 
 imagination and they find a difficulty in figuring to 
 themselves society existing and flourishing in any different 
 forms from those to which they are accustomed. Only let 
 the change once be made, and if it be a wise and successful 
 one, these same persons or their representatives will have 
 difficulty in believing that they could ever have held other 
 opinions than those which result from the changed set of 
 circumstances. 
 
 Laws and institutions cannot directly produce morality, 
 but they may produce those opinions and sentiments which 
 go to the furtherance of morality. Even if the function 
 of Government be limited to the mere police duties of 
 arresting wrong-doers and punishing them, the State 
 cannot escape its moral responsibility. For has it not 
 determined, in at least certain matters, what is to be 
 considered right and what is to be considered wrong? 
 If the State aims only at protecting individual rights 
 of person and property (as the phrase goes) has it 
 not determined what these rights are ? These rights 
 are just what they have been made by Society ; and 
 if the State leaves them alone and maintains them, it 
 thereby gives them its sanction and becomes responsible 
 for them. Can any thinking person be deceived by the 
 programme of the "Liberty and Property Defence 
 League ? " Do we not know that it means a defence at all 
 hazards of the status quo f It is a league for the defence 
 of the strong and for prohibiting the protection of the 
 defenceless. Its motto ought to be "To him that hath 
 shall be given " in a material and not a spiritual sense. 
 
 Again, the imposition of punishments involves a very- 
 serious and very difficult moral responsibility. What wi.l 
 be the effect of various penalties on the characters of the 
 persons punished and on those of other persons ? If the 
 State prohibits murder and imposes the penalty of death, 
 is it not doing what it can to produce a certain sentiment 
 of respect for human life ? And when there were no 
 Factory Acts, was not the State by its neutrality diminish- 
 ing the checks to the reckless sacrifice of children on the
 
 altars of Mammon ? We may be afraid of making 
 mistakes by interfering, but we do not escape responsibility 
 by washing our hands and doing nothing. 
 
 Legislation would be a very easy matter if there were 
 some definite sphere of individual right which could be 
 known a priori and within which no state-action must 
 come. But human beings are not atoms moving in the 
 void without contact. The rights of the individual are 
 exactly those which society gives him, no more and no 
 less. Can we then lay down no rule at all by which to test 
 any proposed measure of state-action ? ' Natural rights ' 
 will not help us ; for the phrase is meaningless or 
 mischievous, unless it signifies just those rights which a 
 Avell -organized society ought to secure to its members : and 
 what these are is the very question to which we seek an 
 answer. We have said already that the State cannot 
 directly command morality (commanded morality being a 
 contradiction in terms) : but what the State can do, and 
 what it ought to do, is to provide all its members so far as 
 possible with such an environment as will enable them to 
 live as good lives as possible good in every sense of 
 the term. 'Compulsion, 7 'interference,' 'liberty,' are 
 ambiguous words and give us little help in determining- 
 such matters. There is no evil in compulsion and 
 interference per se : there is no good in liberty in the 
 mere negative sense of " being left alone." The more the 
 mischievous forces in society can be compelled and interfered 
 with, the better for the only liberty that is worth having 
 the liberty to make the best of our lives that the limita- 
 tion of our physical nature allows of. Opposition to 
 compulsory education and compulsory sanitation means 
 advocacy of permissive ignorance and permissive disease. 
 Absolute liberty of contract means the slavery of the weak. 
 In the sense in which alone Liberty may be regarded as an 
 end, there is no inconsistency between Liberty and Law. 
 
 But cannot a great deal be done by voluntary effort ? Is 
 it not the special honour of Englishmen, as it certainly is 
 their favourite boast, that they do not at every grievance 
 call out (like those foreigners) for the help of the State, but 
 put their own shoulders to the wheel and so escape from 
 giving too much power to governments ? Undoubtedly
 
 1O 
 
 very great things have been done and can be done by 
 voluntary association : and, wherever and so long as 
 political power is chiefly in the hands of those who have 
 not very lofty ideals as to their use of it, the most 
 important thing to be done is often to secure and maintain 
 the liberty of association. But history makes it unfortu- 
 nately too clear that associations are very apt to become 
 close and narrow as they grow old and to acquire a good 
 deal of the selfishness of individuals, without being equally 
 accessible to new ideas. The history of monastic orders, of 
 trade-guilds, of universities, of trades-unions, of co-operative 
 societies, of philanthropic and charitable institutions shews 
 a tendency in associations formed by voluntary contract to 
 stiffen into rigid bodies, whereas the State, however some 
 of its organs may become inefficient, is always in the last 
 resort the outward expression of the national spirit and, 
 where there is any spirit in a people, must grow and live 
 with the life of that spirit. Thus voluntary associations 
 are mainly useful to lead the way in social experiments, to 
 shew in what modes individuals can best receive help from 
 an organized body of their fellow men. But, as time goes 
 on, they have to be modified and controlled by the State, 
 or absorbed in it. I know that this is a statement which 
 would be contradicted by the large majority of Englishmen ; 
 but I think that the recent history of Europe points pretty 
 clearly to its truth. The growing activity of the State on 
 behalf of the well-being of the community will still leave 
 abundant fields open for the energy of individuals and of 
 voluntary associations. When one set of evils is remedied, 
 another will certainly enough be noticed. There are many 
 things which we consider evils now and which we attempt to 
 remedy, that were not noticed at all, or were accepted as a 
 matter of course, in ruder conditions of society. There are 
 many respects in which the world is becoming, not worse, 
 but more sensitive to its remediable miseries. Again, new 
 conditions produce new evils to be coped wilh. Slavery is 
 abolished ; but the evils which came from the industrial 
 revolution have grown up in the meantime. The worst 
 thing that can happen to a community is to be contented 
 with its efforts in the past to go on building the sepulchres 
 of the old prophets whilst it slays the new ones.
 
 II 
 
 The demand for increased recognition of the moral 
 function of the State is constantly met by the objection 
 that States, as we know them, are little deserving of trust 
 and that it would be dangerous to give governments more 
 power. It is easy to draw up a long list of the blunders, 
 the follies, the crimes and the cruelties, which rulers have 
 comm itted in times past : it is easy to point out the defects 
 in the best governments that now exist. The State whose 
 activity we demand is undoubtedly an ideal State. Those 
 who are perfectly contented with things as they are, would 
 like it to remain an ideal, to be realized only in an 
 infinitely remote future, or in another world. They may 
 profess to believe in a divine kingdom of justice and 
 brotherhood only a few persons are cynical and candid 
 and pagan enough to deny this but they seem to have no 
 real wish or anxiety that the will of God should be done 
 in earth as in heaven. They tell us that Christianity has 
 abolished the distinctions of race, of caste, of sex ; but, 
 with a false idealism, they are very much afraid of "turning 
 the spirit into flesh." 
 
 This type of objection, which we have just been consider- 
 ing, calls our attention to the importance of what those 
 interested in moral and spiritual progress are apt to despise 
 and dislike, viz. the machinery of politics. "Why glory in 
 representative government ? Why care for mere political 
 reforms ? Why excite ourselves about the organization of 
 representative bodies? Why make a fuss about the 
 franchise? Why wish to multiply little parliaments, with 
 all their idle talk, up and down the country by schemes of 
 local government ? " All these things may seem to matter 
 very little ; but they do matter very much to the well-being 
 of every man, woman and child. In themselves they are 
 merely means to the means to the end that we really care 
 for. And sometimes one set of means may be equally good 
 with another. But they are means : and no end can be 
 reached without means. It matters very much that the 
 political machine should be in good order and capable of 
 turning out good work ; or, to use a more adequate image, 
 that the constitution of a country in its every fibre should 
 be such an organism as to give a genuine and healthy 
 expression to the "general will" or spirit of the com-
 
 12 
 
 munity. How can a people 'realize what is best in them, if 
 their government is corrupt, selfish, incompetent, or, while 
 nominally free, is really controlled by long purses and 
 narrow minds ? Hence it is a symptom of disease when a 
 large number of intelligent and educated and kindhearted 
 persons in a country profess to be indifferent to politics. 
 To refer to one matter only, it were well if the giving of 
 votes at elections were regarded always as a public duty and 
 its neglect punished with a fine, like the non-attendance of 
 jurymen when summoned not that the reluctantly given 
 votes or the voting papers spoilt in bad temper would be 
 of much value to the community, but in order to impress 
 every one with the opinion that the suffrage is a duty to 
 one's fellow beings, not a privilege to boast about, a source 
 of occasional excitement, or, worst of all, an opportunity of 
 immoral gain. "Yes," it will be said ''we should take 
 an interest in politics, if it were not for the division into 
 parties. Are not the best men in a community wise in 
 holding aloof from the wretched contests of rival 
 factions?" Certainly, some individuals may be placed in 
 positions where a strongly partizan attitude at elections 
 would seriously impair their general usefulness : there are 
 many cases where an honest man may conscientiously feel 
 himself obliged to remain neutral : and there are persons 
 of refined instincts and gentle temperament, who are 
 repelled by the coarser and less scrupulous natures which 
 political struggles are apt to bring into prominence. But 
 one may be excused for having less sympathy with these 
 Pococurantes of culture, than with the law of Solon, which 
 disgraced the citizen who took no part in civil dissension, 
 and the indignation of Dante, who did not hesitate to put a 
 saintly Pope in the vestibule of Hell, because he made the 
 great refusal and decided neither for God nor for^his enemies. 
 This matter of parties raises some very difficult questison 
 of political casuistry, through which it is not easy to steer 
 one's way. It is obvious that where parties exist, the 
 practical man, the man who is anxious to help others by 
 political agencies, must work with them. There are certain 
 extreme cases in which any compromise is dishonourable, 
 but in most instances we may go upon the homely maxim, 
 that half a loaf is better than no bread provided always
 
 13 
 
 that our getting half a loaf to-day does not put an obstacle 
 in the way of our ever getting a whole loaf afterwards. 
 We must work on the whole with those whose policy, 
 however inadequate it may seem, we honestly consider 
 most likely in the end to bring about those changes which 
 we consider necessary. It is better to shove a party on 
 from behind than to turn round and slap it in the face, 
 through impatience at the short-sightedness and half- 
 heartedness of those who after all are moving, however 
 slowly and blindly, in our direction. To give way to such 
 impatience is only to play into the hinds of our enemies' 
 That, in any very near future, we are likely to find any of 
 the great countries of the world with popular government 
 and yet without party government one can hardly venture 
 to hope. It is very distressing, that in the United States of 
 America, where the constitution, making the executive 
 independent of the legislative body, might seem to promise, 
 as well as to imply, a government without parties, some of 
 the very worst evils ot party government have at various 
 times been experienced. For the worst and most 
 demoralising kinds of parties are those not based on 
 difference about great principles, but merely on a contest 
 between " ins " and " outs." Accepting parties, in the 
 meantime at all events, as a necessary evil for ourselves, we 
 must distinguish between the unavoidable use of, and 
 co-operation with, parties, which represent real differences 
 in principle or in method such as may occur between 
 perfectly sincere and well intentioned men, and the 
 deplorable habit of regarding politics as a gigantic game in 
 which the sporting proclivities, that are the curse of 
 English life, find opportunity of gratification as an 
 agreeable variety from the turf and the stock-exchange. If 
 politics are a game, it must not be forgotten that the pieces 
 played with are human bodies and human souls. It rests 
 with everyone who has any sense of public duty to aid in 
 the formation of a saner public opinion on the subject. 
 Not by disdaining and disregarding political movements, 
 but by considering them always in the light of their bearing 
 on the moral elevation of human beings, can we hope to 
 spiritualize, or, let me say, to Christianize the State. 
 Corresponding to, if not identical with this endeavour, is
 
 14 
 
 the endeavour to socialize Christianity,* to get rid of the 
 narrowness and selfishness of much that is popularly 
 considered religion and to shake indolent souls out of their 
 trust in conventional formulas and their unreal way of 
 apprehending the spiritual principles they profess to 
 believe. This I understand to be one of the objects of your 
 Guild : and so far I am most heartily with you. I must 
 ask your toleration, if I have less confident hopes than you 
 have, of the possibility of animating existing ecclesiastical 
 organizations with this large and practical spirit. If it can 
 be done, so much the better : reform without revolution 
 means a great saving of energy. You at least " have not 
 despaired of your republic." We often look back with 
 envy or with pride on some of the great churchmen of the 
 middle ages who stood forth as tribunes of the people and 
 who, in defence of the oppressed, regarded not the anger of 
 king and noble ; but it is to little purpose, if we only dream 
 of them as picturesque figures in a dim historic background 
 and make no attempt to renew their spirit amid the prosaic 
 details of modern politics. It is to equally little purpose 
 that we praise Reformers who protested against the 
 corruptions of the mediaeval Church, if we have forgotten 
 the intellectual and moral fearlessness, which is the 
 worthiest part of the example they have left us. 
 
 This paper has probably dwelt too exclusively in vague 
 generalities to be of much direct practical service to anyone. 
 But it is occasionally worth while to go back on some 
 fundamental questions : and political and social problems 
 will be better studied, if we do not shirk an enquiry into 
 the nature and ends of society and the State. The fore- 
 going statement, being brief, is necessarily very inadequate, 
 and many remarks would need much illustration and 
 elucidation to give them their fair claim to acceptance. I 
 
 * Of course this statement implies a view about " the essence of 
 Christianity " which many persons would repudiate. But such persons 
 ought not then to be astonished that many of those who are most zealous 
 for social reform have so little sympathy with their Christianity. If we 
 really thought that the essence of Christianity was a combination of 
 intellectual suicide with selfish "other-worldliness," we should not care 
 about retaining the name.
 
 ID 
 
 have said nothing about the relation between Church and 
 State. But what I have said is consistent either with the 
 view that Church and State are identical, i.e. that they are 
 the same body of persons under different aspects, or with 
 the view that the Church is a distinct organization extend- 
 ing beyond the limits of States and essentially independent. 
 (These two views are perhaps not ultimately so incom- 
 patible as may at first appear.) What I have said is 
 inconsistent only with the view that the State is in no 
 sense a spiritual power, a view which, though maintained 
 by very able men, seems to me hardly capable of defence ; 
 for, as I have tried to show, even if the function of the 
 State be limited in the most extreme manner, it is still 
 indirectly a moral function, and the moral interests of the 
 community must be considered by its legislators. 
 
 I have said nothing about that part of the function of the 
 State which is usually most debated, viz. its relation to 
 economic matters. That question is so large that it has to 
 be taken by itself. I would only now point out that, even 
 if it be held that in purely economic matters the State 
 ought not to interfere at all (as the phrase goes), purely 
 economic matters form a very limited class indeed, 
 if such a class exists at all. About the u laws" of political 
 economy much nonsense is talked, even by those who 
 ought to know better. What are called economic laws 
 are not precepts for conduct ; at best they are generalisa- 
 tions of facts, usually they are only deductions from 
 supposed facts. Abstract economics are farther removed 
 from practical politics than abstract dynamics from 
 practical engineering. Dynamics, supplemented by practical 
 knowledge of the materials he has to work with, will tell 
 the engineer how best to construct a bridge ; but the 
 authorities, who determine whether a bridge is to be 
 constructed in a particular place or not, must be guided by 
 the requirements of human beings. The physician rightly 
 studies the law of a disease, but is not thereby absolved from 
 the duty of trying to cure the patient. And so, economic 
 study may show that under certain conditions certain 
 effects will follow ; but, if the effects are detrimental to 
 human well-being, our duty as practical persons is, not to 
 acquiesce in the sacred name of Political Economy, but to
 
 i6 
 
 endeavour to alter the conditions. There is indeed a sense 
 in which we have to recognise inevitable tendencies in 
 human societies ; but these tendencies are something 
 deeper and stronger than the economic laws, which so far 
 as they are true, are true only of a particular stage of social 
 evolution and yet are proclaimed by the organs of the 
 money-market as if they were immutable laws of nature or, 
 through a strange confusion of ideas, as eternal principles of 
 morality. We may feel great doubts as to how far the 
 State meaning thereby any one State as now existing 
 can engage directly in economic production except in 
 regard to those matters which are necessarily monopolies. 
 It may be a long time before any State can take upon 
 itself as an acknowledged function the organization of 
 industry and the distribution of its products a function at 
 present discharged by competing individuals or groups of 
 individuals, blindly, anarchically and irresponsibly. But 
 we need therefore have no doubts about the advisability of 
 immediate State-action to secure the health and the 
 intelligence of the community and a fair chance for its 
 moral progress. 
 
 These two subjects, religion and economics, have more 
 connection than might at first appear. One of the main 
 difficulties in the way of a State engaging directly in 
 economic undertakings, is the fear that it might thereby 
 put itself at a disadvantage in comparison with other 
 States. Even as it is, we know how restrictions on the 
 selfishness and recklessness of employers of labour are met 
 by the outcry that they are put at a disadvantage in their 
 competition with producers in other countries where such 
 restrictions do not exist. The movement for industrial 
 emancipation must in the long run be an international 
 one : and the way for it must be prepared by the spread of 
 an enlightened public opinion and public sentiment. Now, 
 a religious body which professes to be Christian and 
 Catholic, i.e. Universal, is false to its profession, if it remains 
 an organization of members of one nation only : still more 
 so, if it consists mainly of one social caste in that nation. 
 The Christian Church must be really democratic in its 
 sentiments and it must be supra-national in its aims: else 
 it is false to its professed belief in the brotherhood of all
 
 17 
 
 mankind. If in any way the spiritual teachers of the race 
 can be the bridgemakers to unite those divided by self- 
 interest and prejudice, they are earning the blessing of the 
 peacemaker and are preparing the way for the better society 
 of the future. The materialist may consistently disbelieve in 
 the possibility of putting an end to the competition between 
 nations, which we call war, and the often not less cruel 
 competition between individuals, which we disguise under 
 the name of commercial enterprise. Those who profess 
 to be Christians have no excuse for such hopelessness. 
 Many of the reforms, which we look for, cannot soon take 
 place ; but none the less, rather all the more, must we keep 
 before us the ideal towards which we are moving, in order 
 to stimulate our interest and direct our conduct in the 
 practical politics of the present. It is easy to scoff at those 
 who are thinking always of the day-after-to-morrow ; but 
 perhaps the work of each day will not be done in a less 
 worthy manner, because some of us are not satisfied with 
 merely that. Not the hope of the Promised Land, but the 
 memory of the flesh pots of Egyptian bondage made Israel 
 disobedient in their wandering through the wilderness. 
 And we are more likely to lead unprofitable lives by 
 longing with a sickly sentimentalism for the good old days 
 of contentment and subjection, than by cherishing an 
 aspiration after an ideal commonwealth, that is to say, by 
 really meaning the petition that all Christendom repeats : 
 " Adveniat regnum tuum ; fiat voluntas tuan, sicut in coelo, 
 et in terra" " Thy kingdom come : Thy will be done in 
 earth as it is in Heaven." 
 
 Women's Printing Society, Limited, 2iD, Great College Stret, Westminster, S.W
 
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