REESE LIBRARY 
 
 . 
 
 OP THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 ( / /? 
 
 Received '_ _ J^^14^ i88A 
 
 Accessions No.. 
 
 if No. 
 
SOCIAL POLITICS. 
 
RECENTLY PUBLISHED. 
 THE ECONOMY OF CONSUMPTION; 
 
 An Omitted Chapter in Political Economy, with special reference to 
 the Questions of Commercial Crises and the Policy of Trades 
 Unions ; and with Reviews of the Theories of Adam Smith, 
 Ricardo, J. S. Mill, Fawcett, etc. 
 
 BY ROBERT SCOTT MOFFAT. 
 Demy 8vo. Cloth, price iSs. 
 
 CHAPTERS ON PRACTICAL POLITICAL 
 ECONOMY; 
 
 Being the Substance of Lectures delivered before the University of 
 Oxford. 
 
 BY PROFESSOR BONAMY PRICE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "CURRENCY AND BANKING," ETC. 
 
 Large post 8vo. Cloth, price I2s. 
 
 PHYSICS AND POLITICS; or, 
 
 Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of " Natural Selection " 
 and "Inheritance" to Political Society. 
 
 BY WALTER BAGEHOT. 
 
 Fourth Editton. Crown 8vo. Cloth, price 45-. 
 Vol. II. of the International Scientific Series. 
 
 THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 BY HERBERT SPENCER. 
 
 Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo. Cloth, price $s. 
 Vol. V. of the International Scientific Scries. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 C. KEGAN PAUL AND CO., 
 i, PATERNOSTER SOCAKK. 
 
SOCIAL POLITICS. 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR ARNOLD. 
 
 H 
 
 LIU U A R Y 
 
 UNI V HItSIT V OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 C. KEGAN PAUL AND CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 1878. 
 
.*! 
 
 (7 he Rights of Translation and of Reproduction are reserved.} 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE BUSINESS OF DISESTABLISHMENT i 
 
 II. THE ABUSES OF A LANDED GENTRY . . . .51 
 
 III. FREE TRADE IN LAND 81 
 
 IV. THE TRANSFER OF LAND 103 
 
 V. FREE LAND 119 
 
 VI. THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON . . . . 135 
 
 VII. THE CITY 151 
 
 VIII. WATER SUPPLY, LONDON AND ELSEWHERE . . . 175 
 IX. THE LIBERAL PARTY AND THE CATHOLICS . . .190 
 
 X. THE RAILWAYS AND THE STAT& 207 
 
 XI. THE INTOXICATING LIQUORS QUESTION .... 238 
 XII. TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT IN CASUAL DISTRESS . . 265 
 
 XIII. A REPLY TO CASSANDRA 285 
 
 XIV. WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE 3 22 
 
 XV. THE POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN . . 335 
 XVI. THE LEGAL POSITION OF MARRIED WOMEN . . .35 
 
NOTE. 
 
 / have to thank Mr. James Knoivles, Mr. John Morley, Mr. A. 
 Strahan, Mr. W. Allingham and Messrs. Longmans, for permission to 
 make use of so much of the material of this volume as has appeared in 
 the l Nineteenth Centiiry] the ' Fortnightly Review] the ' Contemporary 
 Review] and ' Frase^s Magazine? 
 
15 li' A It ; 
 J VKKS1TY OF 
 
 ^LIF 
 
 I. 
 
 THE BUSINESS OF DISESTABLISHMENT. 
 
 IT does not appear probable that Disestablishment which 
 is attended and followed by Disendowment as the sub- 
 stance by the shadow will ever be proposed by a Conservative 
 Government. Educators as audacious and ingenious as any 
 that exist will no doubt arise. But this would seem to be 
 a task beyond their powers. And when in time to come, 
 in days which I trust are yet remote, sorrowing admirers 
 and sincere political friends are seeking an epitaph for their 
 departed chief, it is by no means unlikely that Lord Beacons- 
 field's monument may be graven with the words in which 
 he denounced Disestablishment in 1868: 'If government is 
 not divine, it is nothing.' That the government of Ireland, 
 which, in the meaning of these words, has ceased to be divine, 
 and is merely ducal, is far less onerous and more secure than 
 it was ten years ago, is a fact which would shake the faith of 
 many in the dogma that the salvation of a State rests in the 
 principle of Establishment. But admitting improvement in 
 Ireland, the Conservative party would point to the divinity 
 which hedges the supreme Government in Whitehall, which 
 blossoms in the offices of a Chaplain-General, of Queen Anne's 
 Bounty, and of the Ecclesiastical Commission. 
 
 On the other hand, Churchmen whose religious devotion 
 and sincerity are unquestionable men who have a firm, wide 
 hold on the domestic side of the Conservative party declare 
 that not only is there no divinity in this association of Church 
 
 L 
 
2 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 and State, but that the divine character of the Church demands 
 separation. The Ritualist pleas are plaintive and pointed. 
 To the average mind of the Conservative party, the bench 
 of bishops is an element in the State which secures the divinity 
 of Government, and redeems it, as Lord Beaconsfield says, 
 from nothingness. But to Mr. Mackonochie and his friends 
 ' it is a grievous scandal that the chief pastor and typical 
 representative of the lowly Carpenter of Galilee should be, 
 in an earthly kingdom, simply by reason of his spiritual office, 
 the highest peer not of royal blood.' * To the Dissenters, the 
 Church Establishment is a continual offence, a standing in- 
 justice, compelling them to wear a badge of nonconformity. 
 These parties, with the aid and it may be under the direction, 
 of politicians who believe that ' if government is not human 
 it is nothing,' will probably in time accomplish this great work. 
 The Disestablishment and Disendowment of the Churches of 
 England and Scotland, ' as by law established,' will be effected. 
 But those who will take some trouble to study the magnitude 
 and method of the business will be the most likely to avoid the 
 error of assuming that it is an easy matter, that for this part 
 of the United Kingdom we have merely to write ' England ' 
 in place of ' Ireland' in a copy of the Act of 1869. 
 
 At the end of April, 1878, 'the Representative Body of the 
 Church of Ireland ' issued a report, in which they recognise 
 ' good grounds for hope ' that they will be able to place ' the 
 new arrangements of the Church upon a solid and durable 
 basis.' Never, in any one of their reports, have the Church 
 Body complained of Disestablishment; they have mentioned 
 ' evils brought about by Disendowment' But where Disestab- 
 lishment is most due, there must Disendowment involve most 
 difficulty. Undoubtedly the Church Body have had to contend 
 with many and grave disadvantages. Sympathisers and opponents 
 must alike admit that they have wrought a promise of success 
 out of circumstances which for obvious reasons presented 
 
 1 Nineteenth Century, June, 1877. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 3 
 
 formidable obstacles. The material assistance they have re- 
 ceived from England has not been liberal, nor equal to their 
 hopes. Nor can it be said that the great absentee landlords 
 have, except in a few cases, extended adequate encouragement. 
 Perhaps some English Churchmen have not relished the 
 spectacle of unity, and of successful co-operation on the part of 
 the laity, which have been exhibited in Ireland. However this 
 may be, it is certain that the prophecies of Lord Beaconsfield 
 have not been accomplished. In the debate upon the Irish 
 Church Bill, he committed himself definitely to the statement 
 that ' no permanent endowment could accrue from the scheme,' 1 
 and in the same speech he said 'it is not only possible but 
 highly probable that in a certain number of years, probably in 
 the ten years which the right hon. gentleman [Mr. Gladstone] 
 fixes upon, the Irish Protestant Church will not have a shilling 
 of property.' 2 That this was 'heedless rhetoric' we shall see 
 when we glance at the solid investments of the Irish Church 
 Body. It had relation of course to the possibility of a similar 
 process in England, a prospect upon which Lord Beaconsfield 
 then threw out many warnings. 
 
 Regarding the business of Disestablishment, what is the 
 difference between the undertaking in Ireland and in England ? 
 According to the present First Minister of the Crown, the 
 argument which was decisive in Ireland may be used with 
 reference to England. Lord Beaconsfield said: 'I ask you, 
 How can you meet the question of England ? Let not 
 honourable members around me say, There are millions and 
 millions in England who are members of the Established 
 Church. That does not answer the stern conclusion from the 
 census returns, viz. : that in England the majority of the 
 people are not members of the Church.' 3 When Mr. Gladstone 
 foreshadowed the Disestablishment of the Church of Ireland, 
 
 1 House of Commons Debates, March 18, 1869. 
 
 2 House of Commons Debates, April 3, 1 868. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
4 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 he said that it implied abolition of the Ecclesiastical Courts ; 
 the cessation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; that the ecclesi- 
 astical laws in Ireland would no longer bind by any authority 
 as law ; that the rights of peerage would lapse on the part of 
 the bishops, and that all ecclesiastical corporations would be 
 dissolved. Lord Beaconsfield said that Disestablishment was a 
 policy which would ' dangerously touch even the tenure of the 
 Crown.' 1 At present, the Sovereign is by law a member of the 
 Church of England. The admixture of clerical patronage with 
 highest judicial duties in the Lord Chancellor has rendered his 
 office subject to the same restriction. That the coronation is an 
 ecclesiastical function performed in an ecclesiastical building is 
 a matter of custom and ceremony, and nothing more. If it 
 appeared more seemly that the Sovereign should solemnly 
 assume the crown in Buckingham Palace, or in the House of 
 Lords, there would be no difficulty in the matter. The corona- 
 tion is merely a ceremony : the Sovereign's authority is as full 
 before as after that solemnity. Perhaps it would not be in- 
 correct to regard the coronation as peculiarly investing the 
 Sovereign with the title and dignity of Supreme Governor of 
 the Church ; and that is a title which, upon the enactment of 
 Disestablishment, must be laid aside. The Sovereign in that 
 capacity, as nominator of the bishops and patron of ecclesi- 
 astical offices and benefices, is in fact one of those ecclesiastical 
 corporations which would be dissolved. This is what occurred 
 with regard to Ireland. But diminution of the Sovereign's 
 ecclesiastical authority, such as was made by the Irish Church 
 Act of 1869, is a very different matter from the extinction of 
 that authority, which would be the consequence of Disestablish- 
 ment in England. When that is accomplished there must be 
 no act on the part of Government implying the existence of 
 any ' national ' Church. The religion of the Sovereign would 
 then be a separate matter, concerning the nation just as 
 much, or as little, as the nation pleased. 
 
 1 House of Commons Debates, Aprils, 1868. 
 
TJie Business of Disestablishment. 5 
 
 Whoever takes in hand the business of Disestablishment in 
 England, will have to encounter much language of a similar 
 character with that which I have quoted from the lips of Lord 
 Beaconsfield. In no part of the subject, perhaps, will error be 
 more common than in regard to the relations between the 
 Church and the Crown. In the 'Practical Suggestions relative 
 to Disestablishment of the Church of England,' issued in 1877 
 by the Liberation Society, there are suggestions which appear 
 to be misleading upon this point. At the conclusion of these 
 ' Suggestions ' it is stated that the most important of the 
 matters, which, though popularly associated with Disestablish- 
 ment, have no necessary connection with it, is ' the succession 
 to the Crown under what is known as the Act of Settlement.' 
 The 'suggestion' is 'that the exclusion of members of the 
 Roman Catholic Church from the throne of Great Britain, is a 
 political question quite as much as an ecclesiastical question, 
 and must be dealt with on its own merits. It was left un- 
 touched when the Irish Establishment was abolished, and may 
 in like manner be left untouched when those of England and 
 Scotland are also disestablished.' In the first place, I may say 
 that ' the Act of Settlement ' is hardly a correct expression, 
 inasmuch as there are two Acts of Settlement directly affecting 
 the matter. The rule of James II. and the Revolution, as it is 
 called, of 1688, had convinced the English Parliament of the 
 impolicy of placing a Roman Catholic on the throne; and, 
 resolving 'that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfaire of 
 this Protestant Kingdome, to be governed by a popish prince, 
 or by any king or queene marrying a Papist,' the legislature 
 declared that persons who should either be themselves members 
 of the Church of Rome, or should marry a Papist, should be 
 incapable of holding the crown, which in any such case of 
 incapacity, should descend to the nearest Protestant in the line 
 of succession. This, I admit, is ' a political quite as much as an 
 ecclesiastical question,' but that Act (i William and Mary, c. 2) 
 was, upon the death of Mary without issue, followed by another 
 
6 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 Act of Settlement (12 and 13 William III., c. 2), which, pre- 
 serving all the limitations of the former Act, provided that all 
 future Sovereigns must be members of the communion of the 
 Church of England as by law established. 
 
 An Act of Disestablishment would directly affect this latter 
 Act of Settlement. But it would touch it only so far as to 
 render the words affected obsolete. Upon the next demise of 
 the Crown such an obligation as is here expressed could not 
 then be enforced upon the Queen's successor. In any Act of 
 Disestablishment it would be necessary to insert a saving clause 
 of the same character as Section 69 of the Irish Church Act, 
 which is as follows : 
 
 In all enactments, deeds, or other documents in which mention is made 
 of the United Church of England and Ireland, the enactments and provisions 
 relating thereto shall be read distributively in respect of the Church of 
 England and the Church of Ireland, but, as to the last mentioned Church, 
 subject to the provisions of this Act. 
 
 That clause covers the coronation oath, and a clause of a 
 like character would deal with the corresponding obligations 
 of the Crown touching the Church of England. The Act of 
 Settlement must be so far amended by the same process that 
 the words ' as by law established/ having reference to the 
 Church of England, must cease, upon the Act of Disestablish- 
 ment, to have operation or authority. It may be held un- 
 necessary to repeal the provision for communion on the part 
 of the Sovereign with the Church of England. But whether 
 the Church of England is or is not disestablished, a positive 
 change must be made in the coronation oath upon the demise 
 of the Crown. Her present Majesty, upon her coronation, took 
 oath to 'maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of 
 the United Church of England and Ireland, and the doctrine, 
 worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law estab- 
 lished within England and Ireland,' and to 'preserve to the 
 bishops and clergy of England and Ireland, and to the churches 
 there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges 
 as do or shall appertain unto them or any of them.' That oath 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 7 
 
 cannot be administered in its entirety to Her Majesty's successor, 
 because the legislative union of the Churches has been dissolved 
 by section 2 of the Irish Church Act, which declared that 'on 
 and after the first day of January, 1871, the said Union created 
 by Act of Parliament between the Churches of England and 
 Ireland shall be dissolved,' and because by the same section 
 it has been enacted that ' the said Church of Ireland shall cease 
 to be established by law.' Her Majesty's obligation under the 
 oath was probably held by her responsible advisers to be subject 
 to the prior obligation she accepted on the same occasion. In 
 the Coronation Service, before the Sovereign entered into the 
 pledge which I have quoted, a promise of far greater gravity 
 and importance was recorded. The Sovereign was required 
 'solemnly' to 'promise and swear to govern the people of this 
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the do- 
 minions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in Parlia- 
 ment agreed on, and the respective laws and customs of the 
 same.' This, which is the first part of the coronation oath, 
 rules the remainder. The monarch swears to govern according 
 to parliamentary law and custom, which certainly involves royal 
 assent to a measure of Disestablishment carried by a large 
 majority in a Parliament elected with special reference to that 
 object, and introduced by Ministers enjoying the confidence 
 of the Crown as well as of that majority. 
 
 The personality, the personal conscience and the private 
 religious conviction of the Sovereign were not held to be in- 
 volved in these oaths. This may be clearly shown by com- 
 paring the oath concerning the Anglican Church with the 
 oath having reference to the Established (Presbyterian) Church 
 of Scotland. In the Treaty of Union, the 'Act for securing the 
 Church of England as by law established,' maintained those 
 words which I have quoted from the coronation oath, and which 
 in the language of that oath were held to imply (for England), 
 ' the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant reformed 
 religion, established by law.' By the Scotch oath, the Sovereign 
 
8 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 makes a precisely similar declaration concerning a religion which 
 abhors episcopacy. At the Union it was provided, in order 
 to prevent unseemly jarring of these oaths, that 'the security 
 of the Church of Scotland' should be promised and sworn, 
 'not at the coronation/ But the Scots had another motive 
 for avoiding the coronation. That is a ceremony not necessary 
 to the authority of the Sovereign. They therefore obtained 
 ' security ' upon accession. According to the terms by which 
 England and Scotland were united in the Kingdom of Great 
 Britain, the Sovereign is required to 'swear and subscribe/ upon 
 'his or her accession to the crown,' that 'the settlement of the 
 true Protestant religion/ that is, the Presbyterian Church of 
 Scotland shall, 'as established/ be maintained inviolably. On 
 this point, however, and on all such matters, the Sovereign is 
 not immediately affected by Disestablishment. The difficulties 
 of Disestablishment would be enhanced if the Sovereign had 
 at once to undergo a civil coronation, or even to accept a 
 revised oath. 
 
 These are times in which the conscientious scruples of princes 
 meet with consideration, and the absence of such scruples with 
 contempt, and if the acts of princes are made, even in appear- 
 ance, subject to ecclesiastical sanction, it would become more 
 difficult to accept the true position of a constitutional Sovereign. 
 Any needless meddling with real or even with fanciful attributes 
 of the Sovereign, would of course be avoided by those who 
 desired an Act of Disestablishment. They would not vainly 
 perplex themselves with the meaning of terms and titles. They 
 would not inquire whether the Sovereign did or did not rule 
 ' by the grace of God/ There was a time, if I remember 
 rightly, when the mysterious title, ' Defender of the Faith/ was 
 omitted upon a certain issue of coins. Lord Russell was then 
 in the position now occupied by Lord Beaconsfield. Clamour 
 arose for the restoration of ' F. D. ' upon the coinage. Yet who 
 can tell what ' Fidei Defensor ' means, and who will contend 
 that words of this sort, which have no definite meaning, must 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. g 
 
 be affected by Disestablishment ? We may write of them in 
 that tone of uncertainty which John Byrom assumed at a 
 Jacobite dinner-party: 
 
 * God bless the King ! God bless the Faith's Defender ! 
 God bless no harm in blessing the Pretender ! 
 Who the Pretender is, and who the King, 
 God bless us all ! that's quite another thing.' 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield is, or was, of opinion that we have religious 
 equality in England, that as touching equality, Establishment 
 is nothing. The Prime Minister has defined ' religious equality ' 
 to be that condition in which ' a man has complete and perfect 
 enjoyment of his religion, and can uphold and vindicate his 
 religious privileges in the courts of law.' 1 But it may be asked, 
 Is equality possible between a Church which is made political 
 and other Churches which remain non-political ? for this is the 
 meaning which in another speech Lord Beaconsfield has an- 
 nexed to Establishment. He said in the debate on the Irish 
 Church Bill, that what he understood by the union of Church 
 and State was an arrangement 'which renders the State re- 
 ligious,' and which 'renders the Church political.' 2 It would 
 be difficult to set up religious inequality by a more audacious 
 argument. Disestablishment is in truth the dissolution of a 
 fiction founded upon fact. There was a time there were 
 centuries when the Church was co-extensive with the nation. 
 All acts of authority had religious sanction, because the Church 
 and the people were one and the same body. Dissent in those 
 days was a crime and misdemeanour against the general law. 
 The union of Church and State is a different matter when 
 diversity of religious belief becomes established as one of the 
 great facts of national life. 
 
 We may judge pretty well how Establishment gained and 
 how it waned, by a glance at the Toleration Act, one of the 
 early legislative fruits of the reign of William and Mary. It 
 
 1 House of Commons Debates, May 22, 1868. 
 
 2 House cf Commons Debates, March 1 8, 1869. 
 
io The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 was then that Nonconformity ceased to be illegal, and when, by 
 the fact that Dissent was no longer held criminal, the nation 
 gave proof that it was not of one mind in matters of religion, 
 that, indeed, the Church was no longer co-extensive with the 
 nation the principle of Establishment began to lose- force. 
 Before the passing of the Toleration Act there were statutes 
 in operation which ordered attendance at the services of the 
 Church of England, with threat of severe penalties upon con- 
 viction of neglect. But especially were these statutes directed 
 to the prevention of attendance at ' conventicles ' ; and the 
 feeling of that time, even though it had been kindled into what 
 was then regarded as Liberalism by the revolution of the 
 preceding year (1688) did not permit the repeal of these 
 obnoxious statutes. The Toleration Act, the Magna Charta of 
 Dissent, merely provided that these Establishmental laws should 
 not be construed to extend to any person who should testify 
 his loyalty by taking the oaths of supremacy and allegiance 
 and his Protestantism by subscribing the declaration against 
 transubstantiation. The rift in the basis of Establishment 
 began when the Toleration Act relaxed the severe laws of 
 that period. Even then the Church made every Dissenting 
 minister put his hand to all except a few of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles. But this could not be done with the Quaker, who 
 would swear to nothing, and he was let off upon making pro- 
 fession of his faith ' in the divinity of the Son and of the Holy 
 Ghost, and in the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments.' L 
 ' Such,' Macaulay adds, ' were the terms upon which the Pro- 
 testant Dissenters of England were for the first time permitted 
 by law to worship God according to their own conscience,' and it 
 may be taken for certain that any measure for Disestablishment 
 will display, as the historian says did the Toleration Act, 
 ' the peculiar vices, and the peculiar excellences, of English 
 legislation. To think nothing of symmetry and much o* 
 convenience; never to renounce an anomaly merely because 
 
 1 Macaulay, Hist, of England, ch. xi. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 1 1 
 
 it is an anomaly ; never to innovate except when some grievance 
 is felt ; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of a 
 grievance ; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent 
 than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide ; 
 these are the rules which have, from the age of John to the 
 age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two 
 hundred and fifty Parliaments.' * 
 
 The consolation which Macaulay applied to this mixture 
 of vices and excellences, that ' it would not be easy to name 
 another country in which there has been so little retrogression,' 
 is hardly admissible with regard to Disestablishment. There 
 are arguments favourable to the maintenance of Establishment. 
 One may adduce the control of the clergy by the State, and 
 the reduction, if not the disappearance, of lay authority, which, 
 in his opinion, would in time follow upon Disestablishment ; 
 another may dilate upon the blessings of an universal provision 
 of religious offices, with no sectarian limitation. But no one 
 appears to suppose that religious Establishments will be a 
 feature of new communities, that the rising nations of the 
 New World will establish and endow an episcopalian or any 
 other Church. There can be no retrogression in regard to a 
 policy which lost its logical foundation at the birth of religious 
 liberty. 
 
 Disestablishment would include the abolition of the bench of 
 bishops. They must then quit the House of Lords. But, on 
 the other hand, not the bishops only, but all the clergy, must 
 be rendered eligible for seats in either House of Parliament. 
 Their exclusion is justified now on the ground of their 'poli- 
 tical ' connection with the State. That is Lord Beaconsfield's 
 word. By another authority the clergy have been called 'a 
 branch of the Civil Service,' and the members of that service 
 are, as everybody knows, disqualified for places in Parliament. 
 The State would cease to recognise anything like indelibility 
 in the Orders of the Church. If a bishop, upon compounding, 
 
 1 Macaulay, Hist, of England, ch. xi. 
 
1 2 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 or otherwise receiving compensation for the loss of his official 
 position in the State, thought proper to invest the money and 
 his energies in secular pursuits, and gained in civil life the 
 suffrages of some borough, he would, on his name being returned 
 in the writ, be entitled to take his place in the House of 
 Commons. Men who have acted with distinction as Non- 
 conformist ministers are now in Parliament, and a clergyman 
 of the disestablished Church would of course be free to take 
 the same position. 
 
 There has been a time in the history of many nations when 
 the clergy occupied all the higher offices of State, and held a 
 large personal share of influence in every assembly. Any one 
 who, with competent knowledge, examines the ruins of the 
 ancient Theatre of Dionysius beside the Acropolis of Athens, 
 will note that in Byzantine days the first circle of seats was 
 allotted to ecclesiastics. If we may judge from the inscriptions 
 upon those ruined chairs of white marble, the chief seats 
 belonged almost exclusively to hierarchs, and it was pretty 
 much the same in England. Buckle has pointed out that ' in 
 early and barbarous periods ' one half of the House of Lords 
 consisted of spiritual peers ; that by the beginning of the eighth 
 century the proportion had dwindled to one-eighth ; and that in 
 the middle of the nineteenth century it had shrunk to one- 
 fourteenth. It has continued to shrink, and is now even less 
 than the last proportion mentioned by Buckle. In the Middle 
 Ages, not a few clergy sat in the House of Commons. Then 
 for centuries they were excluded by custom, which was broken 
 by the Rev. Home Tooke, whose unwelcome presence as 
 M.P. for Old Sarum led to the passing of the 41 George III., 
 c. 63, which excluded ordained clergymen from Parliament. 
 
 We can well conceive England without an Act of Uni- 
 formity ; beneficed clergy without ex-officio powers in matters 
 of local government ; Convocation free to speak and free to 
 act, subject to such obligations as the laity controlling the 
 funds of the disestablished Church thought fit to impose ; 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 1 3 
 
 we can imagine all this as following upon Disestablishment, and 
 for the rest let us learn what we can by looking fully and 
 fairly at the Irish case. It will bear and will reward inspection. 
 The success has been very great. Parliament lent a helping 
 hand. Mr. Gladstone's Irish Church Bill was no unkindly 
 measure. The corporations, sole and aggregate, which composed 
 the dignified and beneficed ranks of that Church were not 
 scattered carelessly to the winds of heaven, shorn of their glebes 
 and tithes. Every facility was given for preserving the life of 
 the Church. It was at the invitation, almost, we may say, at 
 the bidding, of Parliament that the Representative Church Body 
 arose and became incorporated in place of the Church as by law 
 established. On the passing of the Act, all property belonging 
 to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland was transferred 
 to the specially appointed Commissioners of Church Temporali- 
 ties in Ireland and on the day of Disestablishment (ist January, 
 1871) all Church property passed into the same hands. To 
 those Commissioners the clergy had then to look for their 
 incomes, and other Church officers for their emoluments and 
 compensations. 
 
 In all this the interests of the, as yet, unborn Body were 
 carefully regarded. The clergy were induced to commute 
 their incomes in order that the commutation money, and with 
 it the superintendence of their interests, might be passed on to 
 the Church Body. The income of each benefice was taken as 
 an annuity at 3^ per cent, to which a bonus of 12 per cent, (on 
 the ground of the superior longevity of the clergy, and of the 
 cost of superintendence) was added. There were several in- 
 ducements to commutation, (i) By commuting, their pecuniary 
 interest was transferred to the Church Body ; professional 
 loyalty and duty were therefore enlisted. (2) The bonus of 12 
 per cent, was added when three-fourths of the clergy in any 
 diocese had signified their readiness to commute. (3) There 
 could be no compounding without commutation. By all three of 
 these means the establishment of the Church Body was pro- 
 
1 4 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 moted. Every one who wished well to the Episcopal Church in 
 the future urged the clergy to commute, and this policy was so 
 successful that at the end of 1871, the first year of Disestablish- 
 ment, the Church Body were able to report that 'commutation 
 has been generally adopted.' In every diocese more than the 
 requisite three-fourths of the clergy had intimated willingness ; 
 in fact, only about 300 cases remained ' to complete the whole 
 list of annuitants.' 
 
 When the Temporalities Commissioners commuted an 
 income, the annuity was calculated at 3^ per cent. Thus, 
 supposing an incumbent was forty years of age, the Church 
 Body received for every ;io of his income the sum of 
 .160 2s. 8d. To this was added a bonus of 12 per cent, 
 making a total sum of nearly ;iSo. The Church Body have 
 found no difficulty in obtaining suitable investment for their 
 funds at nearly 4^ per cent. In the report for 1878, giving a 
 statement of their finances made up to the 3ist December, 1877, 
 we find the following account of their investments : 
 
 COST. INCOME. 
 
 2,717.216 Railway Debenture and s. d. s. d. 
 
 Preference Stock . . . . 2,908,751 3 5 128,746 8 6 
 
 Mortgages on Land at 4j per cent. . 1,119,864 18 i 47,594 5 2 
 
 Mortgages on Land at 4]j per cent. . 2,368,679 16 10 106,590 12 o 
 
 Sundries per donors for various trusts 55>6o5 9 5 2,342 14 5 
 
 ,6,452.901 7 9 .285,274 o i 
 
 It will be seen from the above statement that the average 
 rate of interest obtained upon these six millions and a half v? 
 >Af 8s. 6d. per cent., which is 18^. 6d. per cent, more than the 
 cost to the Church Body of the annuities. This addition is 
 superadded upon the bonus of 12 per cent. The total amount 
 of annuities payable to the clergy of all ranks, when the Church 
 Body commenced their career, did not exceed ,460,000 per 
 annum, a charge less than 8 per cent, upon the above invest- 
 ment of capital. The Church Body were therefore liable to 
 suffer a diminution of their funds in the first year equal to 4 
 per cent. This liability would diminish as the annuities became 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 1 5 
 
 extinguished by death among the clergy, and, with reference to 
 the provision of incomes for the successors of expired annui- 
 tants, would be liable to new and perhaps enhanced charges. 
 To meet this claim upon their capital the Church Body have had 
 assistance from four sources, (i) Subscriptions and donations, 
 which appear to have been liberal, from the resident Protestant 
 gentry ; to display notable refusals on the part of absentee 
 landlords ; and to have been unsympathetic, in a degree almost 
 scandalous, on the side of the wealthy clergy and laity of the 
 Church of England. The Church Body, in their report for 
 1875, call attention to 'the limited amount of assistance 
 received from many quarters, where more liberal contributions 
 might have been expected, and the refusal of all aid from many 
 absentee landed proprietors.' But from all sources these 
 donations and subscriptions have substantially met the drain 
 upon the capital of the Church Body. The annual totals have 
 been as follow : 
 
 L s. d. s . d. 
 
 1870 229,753 14 2 1874 257,021 2 I 
 
 1871 214,709 8 4 1875 218,499 3 8 
 
 1872 248,445 i 8 1876 212,095 7 7 
 
 1873 230,179 ii o 1877 197,739 6 7 
 
 Considering the poverty of Ireland and the feebleness of zeal 
 in many rural parishes, these figures appear to me very remark- 
 able. Surely, no stronger tribute to the energy engendered 
 by religious dependence on voluntary aid has ever been 
 afforded. In their report for 1878, the Church Body view 
 the decline of the total with wise apprehension. They say the 
 receipts up to and including 1874, 'were swelled by the 
 payment of the last instalment of the large donations which 
 were promised by many liberal contributors when the Church 
 was disendowed in 1869, and the payment of which was spread 
 over a period of five years. The continued decrease of the total 
 amount of contributions during the last three years is certainly 
 discouraging. The experience of other voluntary Churches had 
 led many persons to expect that, year by year, as the various 
 
T 6 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 wants of the Church became more widely known, and the 
 claims of our poorer brethren upon our sympathy and aid were 
 more clearly realised, there would be a steady augmentation in 
 the contribution to the funds from which alone these wants 
 could be supplied. In the Free Church of Scotland, for 
 example, the total contributions to the General Sustentation 
 Fund, which in the year 1844 were only 68,704 14^. 8^/., have 
 shown a steady and progressive annual increase (with only two 
 or three insignificant exceptions) until, in the year ending May, 
 1877, they amounted to 172,641 18^. $d., being an increase of 
 nearly threefold in a period of little more than thirty years.' 
 
 The Church Body would doubtless have made this complaint 
 with better effect, and with larger promise of result, had they 
 been entirely dependent upon voluntary aid. But Mr. Gladstone 
 put them in quite a different position. I have touched only one 
 source of income. The Church Body have (2) derived profit 
 from dealings with glebe houses and glebe lands. (3) The 
 Church Body have largely reduced the amount of annuities 
 chargeable upon their funds by composition, or compounding 
 with the clergy. The general body of the clergy obtained 
 advantage through the system of compounding, because, by the 
 extinction of annuities on payment of two-thirds of the com- 
 mutation money, the diocesan fund was enlarged by the 
 remaining third. And there was very legitimate scope for 
 compounding on the indisputable ground that the Irish Church 
 was over-manned with clergy. No one will say that composi- 
 tion has been limited to those whose services were in excess of 
 the labours required by the Church. But there was an excess. 
 The rule in regard to composition has been that the money left 
 in the hands of the Representative Body is passed to the credit 
 of the diocese ; and this is fair and prudent, because the reason 
 that the Church Body have been able to reduce the number 
 of clergy in any diocese is owing to the scarcity of members 
 of the Church, which is a cause of local difficulty in providing 
 contributions to the Sustentation Fund. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 1 7 
 
 The reduction in the number of clergy has been the most 
 legitimate and beneficial operation of the arrangement as to 
 compounding. The sanction of the Bishop or of the Diocesan 
 Council was not necessary in making application. Commutation 
 would not have been so readily or generally adopted, and the 
 Church Body thus firmly founded, had there been any restric- 
 tion as to compounding ; the only conditions imposed by the 
 resolutions of the Church Body upon compounding were that 
 the 'life shall be insurable at ordinary rates at the time of 
 composition/ and it was provided 'that the right of composi- 
 tion shall, in any case, where the clergyman applying has not, 
 previous to his application, served in the ministry of the 
 Church of Ireland, at any time, for a period of three years, be 
 subject to the discretion of the Representative Body, who 
 shall be at liberty to postpone his composition until he shall 
 have completed that period of service ' ; and it was stated that 
 ' the Representative Body were induced to adopt these resolu- 
 tions by the debates in the Convention, from which it appeared 
 that if the right of compounding were not conceded, general 
 commutation would be impossible.' Many an 'ecclesiastical 
 person,' conscious of talents which would ensure employment 
 in England, if not in Ireland, looked with no dislike upon the 
 whole process, because he had in prospect the sale of his 
 position for the sum to be obtained on compounding, to which 
 would be added freedom to seek another income. The rule for 
 compounding was this, the operation being limited of course 
 to those who had commuted : ' Every person of the age of 
 sixty-five and upwards may receive two-thirds of his commuta- 
 tion money, including the twelve per cent, bonus ; and that for 
 persons of lower ages a nineteenth part of the whole commuta- 
 tion money shall be deducted for every year below sixty-five.' 
 
 I have already given an example of the value of an annuity 
 of 10 upon the scale of commutation; I will now give an 
 example of the value of a similar annuity upon composition. 
 For every 10 of annuity, the compounding applicant, at the 
 
 C 
 
1 8 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 age of forty, has received 69 14^. lid. In this case the sum 
 remaining in the hands of the Church Body, for the benefit of the 
 diocese in which the composition was effected,would exceed 100. 
 But by their fifteenth resolution the Church Body specially re- 
 served 'the power of considering propositions from individual 
 ecclesiastical persons, with reference to both commuting and 
 compounding, and of granting more favourable terms.' The 
 cases of this sort have not been numerous. A tabular state- 
 ment of the details of composition Was issued in 18751 from 
 which it appeared that out of a total of 753 compounders there 
 had been 154 special cases. Many of these special cases were in 
 some way remarkable ; I will, however, only refer to that which 
 is most notable, the case of the only bishop who has com- 
 pounded. The Bishop of Derry was, at the time of general 
 commutation, about forty years of age. The commutation sum 
 of the net annual value of his episcopal income, amounting to 
 6,847 I2s. $d., together with the bonus of 12 per cent, was 
 .111,367 19.5-. id. That was the amount paid by the Tempo- 
 ralities Commissioners to the Church Body as the commuted 
 value of the Bishop of Berry's income. From the general 
 report of 1875 we learn that the Bishop of Derry has com- 
 pounded, and in the statement from the Sustentation Com- 
 mittee we find .the following notice : ' That by the very liberal 
 and judicious disposition of his annuity by the Bishop of Derry, 
 a sufficient provision has been made to secure to his successor a 
 permanent income of 2,000 a year.' There is another refer- 
 ence to the matter in the report for the preceding year (1874). 
 There the Representative Body state that ' for future 
 Bishops of Derry, by means of an arrangement made between 
 the Representative Body and the Bishop on his compounding, 
 in which his lordship makes a large sacrifice of income during 
 his life, there has been secured for that See an income of 2,000 
 per annum.' 
 
 Now, what was that arrangement ? On the general rule of 
 compounding, the Bishop of Derry would have been entitled to 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 19 
 
 a sum between 45,000 and 50,000, and the Church Body 
 would have retained upwards of 60,000 for the permanent 
 endowment of the See of Derry, a sum which at 4 per cent, 
 would have produced 2,400 a year. I am told that the Church 
 Body have retained ,50,000 (which is confirmed by their state- 
 ment as to , 2,000 a year), and upon his compounding have 
 handed over ,61,000 to Dr. Alexander, who of course retains' 
 in addition the "2,000 a year so long as he is Bishop of Derry. 
 It is difficult to comprehend the process of reasoning by which 
 the Sustentation Committee were led to distinguish this trans- 
 action as ' very liberal.' But it is impossible to look through 
 the reports of the Representative Body of the Church of Ireland 
 without feeling increased confidence in the virtues and the 
 efficiency of self-government. Hasty deduction from what has 
 taken place in Ireland might produce one signal error, the 
 supposing that harmony of opinion within the Church Body 
 would be similarly manifested under like circumstances in 
 England. The Establishment in Ireland was always essentially 
 and uniformly Protestant, because it was confronted in the 
 greater number of parishes by a majority of Roman Catholics. 
 That constitutes a very important and material difference. On 
 the other hand, the financial points which presented most diffi- 
 culty in Ireland, and which have been so far surmounted only 
 by the aid which Parliament gave in the institution of the 
 Church Body and by unremitting and most arduous labour on 
 the part of zealous members and friends of the Church, would 
 occur in England amid circumstances of a precisely opposite 
 character. 
 
 The annals of the Irish Church Body more than vindicate 
 Mr. Gladstone's legislation. They encourage a similar policy 
 in the larger island. Not only are the Irish Church Body so far 
 successful that their latest utterance breathes 'an expression of 
 deep thankfulness,' but so acclimatised are Churchmen to 
 altered circumstances that they speak even of ' drawbacks ' 
 with self-gratulation. 'There are/ say they, 'drawbacks in- 
 
2O The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 herent in every voluntary system ; and some press with in- 
 creased force in a country like Ireland, where, in many places, 
 the members of the Church are few in number and widely 
 scattered in remote country localities.' Of their practical 
 good sense in dealing with the burial question, and of the 
 valuable uses of adversity, we have evidence in the recommen- 
 dation that where ' parishes have expressed their inability to 
 keep the burial-grounds in proper repair . . . the burial-ground 
 should be transferred to the Guardians of the Poor Law Union 
 in which such burial-ground is situated.' These annals give 
 encouragement especially to those of the Church laity who 
 are desirous of possessing a reasonable Church policy, and 
 for themselves an effective control. To the clergy they speak 
 volumes of profitable dealing with the funds of the Establish- 
 ment. To the laity they exhibit the most succesful chapter 
 of lay co-operation which the history of religion has hitherto, 
 afforded. To all they declare that success is born of difficulty 
 in religious as well as in secular matters. Their lesson is 
 plain and simple, and their influence irresistible. The framers 
 of the Irish Church Act did not desire to lay in ruins the 
 organisation which they sought to detach from official connec- 
 tion with the State. Mr. Gladstone did his work with care 
 and even solicitude for the Disestablished Church. It is not 
 to be expected that bishops who have lost their rights of 
 peerage will be just critics, but a Church is not made for, nor 
 is it composed of, bishops. There can be no doubt whatever 
 that throughout the ranks of Protestant laity in Ireland there 
 is profound satisfaction with their success. To many members 
 of the Church of England the records of the Irish Church Body 
 will be an incentive to speedy action. We may suppose they 
 have to some extent inspired the ' Practical Suggestions ' which 
 I am about to examine. x It is open to any one to suggest how, 
 if the Church of England is to be disestablished, the work shall be 
 
 1 Practical Suggestions relative to the Disestablishment and Disendowment of the 
 Church of England. Published by the Society for the Liberation of Religion from 
 State Patronage and Control. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 2 1 
 
 accomplished. But it is not possible to doubt, that when govern- 
 mental action is in view, this that has been done in Ireland will 
 be regarded as a precedent of the utmost importance. There 
 will be a tendency now and from henceforth in the Liberal 
 party to avoid the lines upon which the work was undertaken 
 in Ireland. But will that party be prepared and will it be 
 able, when the time of action arrives, to stand out against, 
 and to defeat, propositions which by their liberality would 
 paralyse the main body of resistance ? 
 
 A matter of the highest importance in the business of Dis- 
 establishment is whether or not the State should, as it did in 
 Ireland, promote by Act of Parliament the reorganisation of 
 the Church. The institution of a Church Body in this way 
 appears from one side to be in direct contravention of the 
 principle of religious equality. On the other hand it has been 
 said that this is but just compensation to the laity for inter- 
 ference with their rights as Churchmen. I should hesitate to 
 affirm so positively as do these * Practical Suggestions' that 
 only the bishops, clergy, and church officers, together with the 
 owners of advowsons and next presentations, will be entitled 
 to compensation. That is quite true so far as money is con- 
 cerned. But the Church in its widest and most proper meaning 
 the clergy and laity, the congregations, separate in parishes 
 and districts, and aggregate as to the whole, would seem to 
 have a strong equitable claim to the consideration of Parlia- 
 ment. Yet the institution of a Church Body on the Irish plan 
 cannot be conceded without to a certain extent invalidating 
 the plea to satisfy which Disestablishment is effected. There 
 would be a great desire for the constitution by authority of such 
 a body into whose treasury the commutation capital should 
 be passed, and this desire would be expressed by the most 
 liberal and valuable section of the Church. Co-operation be- 
 tween the parties in the Church might be found impossible if 
 it were not fostered by Parliament in the Act of Disestablish- 
 ment. But if Parliament is called upon to provide religious 
 
22 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 equality it must forbear from undertaking to prevent religious 
 dissension. For Parliament to institute or indicate the forma- 
 tion of a Church Body is an encouragement, if not a direction, 
 that the Protestant Episcopal Church in England should con- 
 tinue one and undivided. Such legislation involves direct 
 interference with the internal politics of a religious community, 
 and is therefore in opposition to the principle of religious 
 equality. But it is just because such a proceeding would be 
 the most likely to compose differences within the Church, to 
 draw together and to hold in compact the warring parties of the 
 Establishment it is because the institution of a Church Body 
 would seem the surest way to reinvest the laity with some of 
 that authority which must be lost upon Disestablishment by 
 the repeal of the Act of Uniformity and the renunciation of 
 Parliamentary control it is for these reasons that the intro- 
 duction of the germs of a Church Body into any Act of Dis- 
 establishment would be urged by that large and influential, 
 because so moderate, section of the Church which is possessed 
 of such vast power in Parliament. And perhaps I may safely 
 predict that if, when the time of Disestablishment arrives, an 
 organisation is not formed upon the lines of the Irish model, 
 it will not be that Parliament is disposed to abstract justice 
 in the matter of religious equality, but because the strife of 
 parties within the Church will have assumed such proportions 
 that it would be preposterous on the part of the Legislature 
 to assume to bind opinions in a bond, the mention of which 
 would be resented as an affront by those spiritualists of the 
 Church who, like Mr. Mackonochie, repudiate all association 
 with the temporalities of State authority and control. 
 
 The formation of a Church Body under the patronage of 
 Parliament ought certainly to be resisted by those who advocate 
 Disestablishment for the sake of religious equality. But of 
 course it would be the duty of Parliament to remove every 
 legal impediment from the way of all who desired to promote 
 such organisation upon an independent basis. There are ob- 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 23 
 
 vious reasons why in this matter the Irish precedent should 
 not be followed in England. The Church of England possesses 
 far greater vitality, and power, and wealth ; and in England the 
 release of the clergy from their connection with the State could 
 under no circumstances present to them the opportunity, upon 
 compounding and cutting, of offering their services to a more 
 wealthy Church. The English clergy would have no induce- 
 ment to reciprocate the compliment which has been paid to 
 their position by the disestablished and compounding clergy of 
 the Church of Ireland. 
 
 For the clergy, the terms laid down in the ' Practical Sugges- 
 tions ' are, it may be said, more advantageous than those of the 
 Irish Church Act. In Ireland, the State in a measure tied the 
 clergy to the Church Body. Their compensation was made 
 conditional. The 'Practical Suggestions' propose, in language 
 which is more true to the principle of Disestablishment, that 
 there should be no conditions imposed on the clergy that they 
 should not be passed on from service in connection with the 
 State to service in connection with a Church Body. The 
 ' Suggestions ' of the Liberation Society indicate that ' the State 
 should deal only with the individuals concerned, and not with 
 any body acting on behalf of the members of the Disestablished 
 Church, or with any ecclesiastical corporation which has been 
 dissolved by the Act of Disestablishment.' The clergy have 
 much cause to prefer this method, and for that reason the laity 
 may be expected to dislike it. Substituting ' England ' for 
 1 Ireland,' we may say of the former what Mr. Gladstone said of 
 the latter in 1869: 'We presume that during the interval 
 which the Bill will create after the disabilities are removed, the 
 bishops, clergy, and laity of the Church of England will proceed 
 to constitute for themselves, in the same manner as other religious 
 communities have done, something in the nature of a govern- 
 ing body.' Now it is obvious that the power of the clergy, and 
 their influence in moulding the constitution and rules of this 
 body, will be considerable if they deal solely with the State in 
 
24 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 regard to their official claims, and are able to approach this 
 body as independent members of the Church. Is it not very 
 obvious that their pecuniary interests would lie in the same 
 direction ; because as their dealing with the State would have 
 no reference to the continuance of their duties, they would be 
 free to enter into new arrangements with their congregations or 
 with a Church Body ? And assuming that the clergy have a 
 claim to be dealt with in this manner directly by the State, there 
 can be no question that such a method, if fairly carried out, 
 would render the surplus at the disposal of Parliament larger 
 than if the Irish plan were adopted. 
 
 The compensation of the clergy, calculated upon the scale 
 applied to ' other branches of the Civil Service/ would amount 
 to a smaller sum than the commutations upon the Irish method. 
 We may see this by an example. I take the first person, of the 
 age of forty, whose name appears in the lengthy list 1 of those 
 who, having been in the Civil Service, have received compensa- 
 tion upon the abolition of the office in respect of which their 
 salary was paid. The name is that of a gentleman in the 
 Home Office who had served continuously from the age of 
 seventeen, and whose salary at retirement was 525 a year. 
 His office was abolished in 1871, and a retiring allowance of 
 447 was granted, which, after five months, was commuted into 
 a capital sum of .3,898 1 $s. 9^., a composition which was paid 
 for the extinction of the annuity. Now, if this gentleman had 
 been a clergyman in the Disestablished Church of Ireland, 
 though he had held his benefice, valued at 525, but a single 
 month, his commutation money, payable to the Church Body, 
 calculated, according to the Act, at the rate of about 180 for 
 every 10 of the annuity, would have amounted to more than 
 9,000. The charge of a case of this sort upon the funds of the 
 Disestablished Church would therefore be less than half that 
 which was paid in Ireland, if the State dealt directly and solely 
 with the clergyman and compensated him upon the plan 
 
 1 Financial Reform Almanack, 1877. 
 
The Business oj Disestablishment. 25 
 
 adopted in the Civil Service. The Liberation Society have, we 
 may presume, an eye to this advantage in their ' Practical 
 Suggestions.' Their ' Suggestions ' on this head are not ex- 
 travagant. It would be impossible to deal with the clergy upon 
 less liberal terms than are adopted in the Civil Service. And if 
 compensation were carried out in this form it must be conducted 
 upon the intelligible principle of regard for the practice in 
 departments of State. The 'suggestion,' therefore, of the 
 Bishops' Resignation Act is not admissible. It is clear that 
 bishops over sixty years of age could, according to the general 
 practice in the Civil Service, claim their full salary upon com- 
 pulsory retirement. 
 
 Regarding the State as interested in the amount of the 
 surplus remaining after the satisfaction of all claims upon the 
 property of the Establishment, and looking at the matter from 
 that point of view, we may say that the largest gain in adopting 
 the method of the ' Practical Suggestions ' rather than that of 
 the Irish Church Act, would be in the compensation paid to the 
 beneficed clergy. There would be a corresponding gain in 
 dealing with curates of the 'permanent' and of the 'unattached' 
 class, whose stipends, under the provisions of the Irish Church 
 Act, were dealt with upon the same terms as the incomes of 
 the parochial clergy. In Ireland, 'temporary' curates received 
 a gratuity, which could not exceed 200 if they had not com- 
 pleted eight years' service, and could in no case exceed 600. 
 But a great part of the advantage of dealing directly and only 
 with the clergy would lie in the matter of what are called 
 'private endowments.' What are those endowments which 
 must be reserved in their entirety exclusively for Church 
 purposes ? In reply to this question one of such vast im- 
 portance in the business of Disestablishment it is found 
 necessary to assign a date. In proposing the Irish Church Bill, 
 Mr. Gladstone took 1660, the year of the restoration of the 
 Stuarts, as the date at which he would ask Parliament ' to dis- 
 tinguish private and public endowments, because,' he said, ' we 
 
26 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 know historically that a man at any rate knew what he was 
 doing, and the fair presumption arises that if he gave his money 
 to the Church it was for the support of that form of religion to 
 which it is now applied.' 1 He took that date because he held 
 that up to that time there had been no declared supremacy 
 obtained either by Episcopacy or Presbyterianism in their con- 
 tinual struggles and inextricable entanglement; because not till 
 then did Protestant Episcopacy emerge from the conflict as the 
 Established religion of Ireland. But it does not appear to me 
 that justice is done to the importance of union with the State 
 by such a remote limitation. If we consider what was the 
 condition of Ireland at that period; how the country had 
 recently been soaked with the blood of its inhabitants in the 
 fights of the Cromwellian conquest; how the landowners had 
 been ruthlessly dispossessed and their properties forfeited by 
 the rudest processes by acts which Charles the Second was 
 obliged for his own security to condone when we read in the 
 preamble of the Irish Act of Settlement, passed about the 
 period from which Mr. Gladstone claimed endowments as the 
 private property of the Church of Ireland, ' that Almighty God 
 had given His Majesty, by and through his English Protestant 
 subjects, absolute victory and conquest over the Irish Popish 
 rebels and enemies, so that they, their lives, liberties, and estates 
 were at His Majesty's disposition by the laws of the kingdom,' 2 
 we can hardly feel quite sure, upon a dissolution of the union 
 between Church and State in Ireland, that 'we know historically 
 that a man knew what he was doing/ we are somewhat doubtful 
 as to the title of the Irish Church Body to exclude endowments of 
 that date from the general fund applied in the first place to the 
 compensation of clerical and other claims, and, as to the surplus, 
 ' to be appropriated mainly to the relief of unavoidable calamity 
 and suffering' 3 in Ireland. 
 
 As to England, who shall fix this date ? There was no Day 
 
 1 House of Commons Debates, March I, 1869. 2 14 & 15 Car. II. c. 2. 
 
 3 Irish Church Act, 1869, sect. 68. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 2 J 
 
 of Reformation. From 1528 to 1688 the battle of Protestantism 
 was undecided. Many would say that the Church of England 
 as by law established dates from November 1534, the time at 
 which the 26 Henry VIII. c. I the Act of Supremacy was 
 passed. But the ' Anglicana Ecclesia,' which was established by 
 that famous statute, of which Henry was to ' be taken, accepted, 
 and reputed the only supreme Head in earth/ needed another 
 Act of Establishment in five-and-twenty years. It had been 
 burnt to ashes in the fires of the Marian persecutions. It was 
 set up again by Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity (i Elizabeth, 
 c. 2). Episcopacy fell in Cromwell's time, and was restored 
 under Charles the Second. But why go on ? The history of 
 these changes could not be closed even by reference to 1688. 
 I am disposed to think, using Mr. Gladstone's words again, 
 that we can safely assume that a man ' knew what he was 
 doing ' only when he is alive to tell us that the property which 
 he gave to the Church in union with the State is to be held 
 solely for and by the Church when that connection is dissolved. 
 Beyond a comparatively short period, I do not think it a ' fair 
 presumption that if he gave his money to the Church it was 
 for the support/ in a manner different from earlier endowments, 
 of the Church disunited from the State. I might indeed 
 suggest a precedent which would curtail within brief limits 
 this question of private endowments one taken from the 
 very period of the Reformation. At that time the Roman 
 Catholic clergy were prone, in evasion of the Mortmain Act, to 
 induce persons to leave estates ' to provide a priest for ever to 
 sing for their souls.' But by the 23 Henry VIII. c. 10 it was 
 declared that twenty years was long enough to sing a soul out 
 of purgatory. It was enacted that 'after twenty years the 
 lands were to relapse to the service of the living, and sinners 
 were expected in equity to bear the consequence in their own 
 persons of such offences as remained after that time unex- 
 piated.' 1 The * Practical Suggestions' of the Liberation Society 
 
 1 Froude, History of England, vol. i. ch. 4. 
 
2 8 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 appear to me to be not inequitable upon this important matter. 
 They propose that any endowment given by a person ' living at 
 the date of Disestablishment ' could be reclaimed by him, 
 subject to the rights of the holder of the benefice, and that, as 
 to endowments created by voluntary subscriptions, these should 
 be the property of the congregations or, if it pleased the con- 
 gregations, the property of the Church Body where such 
 endowments have been created ' since the date of the first of 
 the Church Building Acts (1818).' With reference then to this 
 which is one of the most important points in the business of 
 Disestablishment the date proposed is, as regards personal 
 endowments, the existence of the donor, and, as regards endow- 
 ments by subscription, the year 1818. 
 
 The mention of the congregations as the recipients of these 
 endowments carries us to the consideration of their position 
 that of the laity of the Church as affected by Disestablishment. 
 When Mr. Gladstone introduced the Irish Church Bill, he made 
 what appears to be an untenable distinction between ' the 
 Church ' and ' its members.' He said : ' What the Church will 
 receive under the plan of the Government I will endeavour to 
 separate from what its members will receive. No doubt its 
 members will receive compensation, and the congregations of 
 the Church have a very real interest, if not a vested interest, 
 in those compensations.' Technically and historically, there is 
 no Church apart from its members, and from any Government 
 contemplating an Act of Disestablishment the lay members of 
 the Church have an undoubted right to inquire how they and 
 their religious interests are to be dealt with. In the first place, 
 subject to the consequences of the date fixed upon with refer- 
 ence to private endowments, they have an evident claim to the 
 churches for the uses of their public worship and for other 
 offices of their religion. In some of these churches the claim 
 of the State, irrespective of religious denomination, is im- 
 measurably greater than that of the congregation. Westminster 
 Abbey, for example, must always remain the property of the 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 29 
 
 State. The congregation is of all creeds ; it is gathered from 
 no particular area, and besides, the building has other and 
 distinctly national uses. It is a national mausoleum ; it is 
 stored with historical traditions of State ceremony, and it may 
 be desirable to use it as long as it endures for such purposes, 
 with or without the services of the Church, as Parliament may 
 appoint. The same may be said of St. Paul's Cathedral, and 
 of all cathedral churches, as well as of some other churches, 
 throughout the kingdom. These are not parochial buildings ; 
 they are related to large areas ; in a peculiar sense they belong 
 to the nation, and it would be part of the business of Disestab- 
 lishment to retain these ancient monuments for the nation. 
 
 The ' Practical Suggestions ' propose that all ancient churches 
 (i.e. churches built before 1818) ' should be vested in a parochial 
 board to be elected by the ratepayers, which board should have 
 power to deal with them for the general benefit of the parish- 
 ioners in such ways as it may determine.' I should regard this 
 as a mischievous proposal if it was designed to erect another 
 and a special local authority. There is a tendency to multiply 
 elections which needs to be checked. Upon the occurrence of 
 Disestablishment, the proposal would seem to be acceptable if 
 it provided for handing over the church to the local authority 
 where an elected body existed, having jurisdiction within an area 
 conterminous with that to which the church belonged in the 
 parochial system. Churches erected after 1818, at the sole cost 
 of any person living at the date of Disestablishment, would, in the 
 same manner as endowments, on his application, be vested in 
 him or in such persons as he may appoint. Modern churches 
 built by subscription, and endowments created by subscription, 
 would be offered to the congregations, with reversion, in case of 
 refusal, to the local authority, and churches (all subject to the 
 above-mentioned date) built in part by public funds would be 
 handed over, charged with that expenditure. It is important to 
 bear in mind the result of these provisions. In the case of the 
 Irish Church, the date 1660 having been taken, private endow- 
 
3O The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 ments were commuted into a sum of ^"500,000, which was 
 handed over to the Church Body, and to that Body were con- 
 veyed all the fabrics required for the service of the Church. 
 
 The adoption of the ' Suggestions ' I have now noticed would 
 produce three important results, (i) The State would have no 
 hand in erecting, nor any dealings with, a Church Body. (2) 
 The compensation for private endowments would be confined to 
 personal donors and to congregations, and be subject to the 
 date of the first of the Church Building Acts (1818), and (3) 
 much greater freedom of action would belong to the laity and 
 the clergy in the formation and in the resolutions of a Church 
 Body. The plea of the English laity for the institution of a 
 Church Body in the Act of Disestablishment could not be so 
 strong as that of their co-religionists in Ireland. There the 
 Church people are few ; they are scattered and in some places 
 sparse ; their wealth is comparatively small, and of the wealthy 
 class not a few, and these the richest, are absentees who have 
 disclaimed all interest in the future of the Church. There the 
 independent formation of a Church Body might have been 
 doubtful, and success, such as has been achieved, would have 
 been impossible without the assistance of the State. Here there 
 can be no doubt as to the formation of a Church Body; the 
 gravest question will be and it would be for Churchmen only 
 to decide whether they could unite in one Church Body. 
 Here the Church people are not scattered ; they are numerous, 
 influential, and abounding in wealth. Suppose the Irish pre- 
 cedent were followed so far that, upon Disestablishment, Con- 
 ventions of the Church were called to determine the formation 
 of the Church Body. Is it conceivable that the laity would 
 obtain so much power as if they had, at the time of convention, 
 the churches and the private endowments in their hands ? In 
 order to secure the due representation of the laity, Mr. Glad- 
 stone made Her Majesty's Government the judge of the repre- 
 sentative character of the Church Body. There would be 
 peculiar difficulties in adopting that course in England. It 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 3 1 
 
 would be right and proper to leave that matter to the clergy 
 and laity to be settled among themselves. But Parliament may 
 be expected to favour any plan which would insure to the laity 
 their just weight of influence, and it is a merit of these ' Practical 
 Suggestions ' that they do contain strong guarantees upon that 
 subject. 
 
 The business of Disestablishment would include dealings with 
 parsonage houses, glebe lands, tithe rent-charges, with the 
 claims for compensation from Church and parochial officers, 
 with the plate and furniture of churches. But, when the main 
 lines of operation are laid down, none of these matters present 
 serious difficulty. There would be interests in the lands and 
 houses to be paid for out of the proceeds of sale, and if the tithe 
 rent-charges were sold to the owners of the lands in respect of 
 which they are payable, at the price which was set upon the 
 Irish tithes, such a douceur might do something to mollify oppo- 
 sition. There can be but few English landowners who would 
 not think it an advantage to make their acres tithe free by pay- 
 ment of twenty-two and a half years' purchase of the rent- 
 charge. Mr. Disraeli said that ' a reason why he was greatly 
 opposed to the confiscation (that was Mr. Disraeli's word for 
 disendowment) of Church property was because he invariably 
 observed that when Church property is confiscated, it is always 
 given to the landed proprietors.' 1 Well, if this matter should 
 come before Parliament in Lord Beaconsfield's time, he will 
 have the remedy in his own hands, so far as the tithe rent- 
 charge is concerned. Strange to say, the Liberation Society, in 
 their 'Practical Suggestions/ assent to the Irish figure of twenty- 
 two and a half years' purchase. It was a low figure in Ireland, 
 but it would look much lower in England, where the price of 
 such securities is substantially higher. Lord Beaconsfield may 
 prefer thirty years' purchase, and if he is followed by the landed 
 gentry, I shall say that not only has he educated them above 
 the level of self-interest, but that in selling the State tithes at a 
 
 1 House of Commons Debates, March 18, 1869. 
 
3 2 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 just price, he has rendered a signal service to the material 
 interests of the community. 
 
 Before passing to consider and examine what is the wealth of 
 the Church of England and what are the claims upon that fund 
 which must be computed and discharged before the surplus can 
 become available for such purposes as Parliament may direct, 
 it will be well to recapitulate and to review the business of Dis- 
 establishment, touching only the more important heads of 
 procedure. There would be first, suspension of appointments 
 in the Church under existing conditions ; then would follow 
 the surrender by the Crown of all rights of patronage, and the 
 nomination of commissioners into whose hands would pass 
 the property of the Ecclesiastical Commission. These commis- 
 sioners would proceed, in the interval before the fixed date 
 of Disestablishment, to ascertain the net yearly incomes of all 
 persons affected by the Act, including the yearly incomes of 
 curates : the salaries of Church lay officers, including clerks and 
 sextons, together with the amount of compensation to be paid to 
 lay patrons. There must be repeal of all laws prohibiting the 
 holding of assemblies, synods, and conventions. A date must 
 be fixed upon which the Church of England would cease to be 
 established by law ; at which all Church property would be 
 vested in the Temporalities Commissioners, tithe rent-charge 
 absolutely, the rest subject to life interests ; at which date there 
 would be dissolution of all ecclesiastical corporations and lapse 
 of all the bishops' rights of peerage ; at which compensation 
 would be payable to all ecclesiastical persons, including curates 
 and lay officers ; at which there would be abolition of Ecclesias- 
 tical Courts and jurisdiction, and of ecclesiastical law, except as 
 relating to matrimonial affairs. After that date there would 
 remain the completion of the payments by way of compensa- 
 tion ; the commissioners would receive and entertain applica- 
 tions for churches from parochial bodies, and also for the 
 purchase or letting of parsonages. They would make over such 
 private endowments as could be claimed ; they would sell 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 33 
 
 Church lands to the tenants who chose to claim pre-emption. 
 They would sell tithe rent-charges to owners, and in every other 
 possible way would convert into money the property vested in 
 them, so that at the end of the term, having discharged all 
 claims, they would be able to present the surplus for the dis- 
 posal of Parliament. 
 
 To what sum would that surplus amount ? No one, who has 
 looked closely into this part of the subject, will answer the 
 question with confidence amounting to anything like certainty, 
 in the absence of further and more authentic information than 
 is at present attainable. Those commissioners above referred to 
 must make their investigation and report before the figures upon 
 this subject can assume anything like an unalterable character. 
 But from the general accuracy of Mr. Gladstone's forecast in the 
 case of the Irish Church, it would seem possible to indicate by 
 trustworthy, if not precise, figures the broad outlines of the 
 larger undertaking. It must be remembered that the Irish 
 Church Bill was materially changed to the advantage of the 
 clergy after Mr. Gladstone made his introductory statement. 
 He estimated the capitalised value of the property of the Irish 
 Church at about 16,000,000, having previously set the income 
 at 700,000. The compensation to the 'incumbents of all kinds 
 in the Church bishops, dignitaries, and parochial clergy, he 
 placed at 4,900,000. The total amount of commutation agreed 
 upon to the end of July, 1874, excluding the 12 per cent, bonus 
 subsequently obtained from Parliament, was rather more than 
 5,000,000. The curates, partly owing to subsequent changes in 
 the Bill, have cost more than double the amount of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's estimate. Still, if we take his highest summary of cost, 
 which was 9,000,000, we shall probably be not far from the 
 actual result of this great transaction. And if there has been 
 throughout as much care and economy on the part of the Tem- 
 poralities Commissioners, as there has been manifested by the 
 Church Body, it may well be thought that in the end they will 
 be able to present accounts to Parliament showing a surplus of 
 
 D 
 
34 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 something more than 7,000,000, which would verify Mr. Glad- 
 stone's statement that 'the sum at the disposal of Parliament 
 will not be less than between 7,000,000 and 8,000,000.' 
 
 With regard to the income and the capitalised value of 
 Church property in England, I shall occasionally refer to, 
 though I shall not rely upon, the report w r hich Mr. Frederick 
 Martin has lately prepared at the request of the Executive Com- 
 mittee of the Liberation Society. 1 There are now (including 
 St. Alban's) twenty-nine episcopal sees in the Church of Eng- 
 land and Wales, the archbishops' and bishops' incomes being 
 fixed by law and having no relation whatever to their separate 
 estates. But in proceeding to assess the value of property 
 devoted to Church purposes, we must take first the landed 
 property of the archbishops and bishops. And for this we 
 cannot do better than go to the New Domesday Books. From 
 those ponderous volumes we gather that the archbishops and 
 bishops directly hold land to the extent of 30,233 acres, of 
 which the gross estimated rental is 40,854. I have, in the article 
 which follows this, and which is entitled ' The Abuses of a Landed 
 Gentry,' dealt with those books in connection with another class 
 and the returns concerning this large episcopal property are not, 
 more satisfactory than in regard to the landed gentry. The 
 metropolitan area is not included and all such woods and mines 
 as were not rateable when the lists were compiled, are also 
 excluded. These are matters which we must bear in mind as 
 affecting the statement of all the parcels of Church property. 
 This ,40,854 derived from the rental of separate estates is 
 barely sufficient to pay one-fourth of the fixed salaries of the 
 bishops, whose revenues, supervised by the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mission, are made up with income from various sources fines 
 on renewals of leases, tithes, and dues of many kinds. But in 
 estimating the property of the Church we take first these 
 separate estates, and to those we must add the episcopal resi- 
 
 1 The Property and Revenues of the English Church Establishment. By Frederick 
 Martin, author of the Statesman's Year Book. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 3 5 
 
 dences, thirty-one in number. These palaces are moderately 
 valued at 400 each, that is 1 2,400 a year, which sum, added 
 to the salaries of the twenty-nine bishops (amounting together 
 to 156,600), makes the annual episcopal charge upon the 
 Church revenues amount to .169,000. 
 
 The second item of Church property is that which belongs to 
 deans and chapters, who appear as owners of land in the New- 
 Domesday Books to the extent of 68,838 acres, the gross 
 estimated rental of that area being 136,488. The official 
 residences of the members of decanal and capitular establish- 
 ments may probably be estimated, without serious error, at 
 50,000 a year. As in the case of the bishops, that area and 
 value are exclusive of London, of mines, of woods and waste 
 land, and equally as in the case of their ecclesiastical superiors 
 it would be erroneous to suppose that this represents the whole 
 property devoted to the payment of deans and chapters, whose 
 salaries alone amount, for deans, of whom there are twenty-nine, 
 to 43,972, and for canons, of whom there are one hundred and 
 thirty-four, to 125,194. 
 
 When we have in vi'ew the claims upon Church property, we 
 shall have to estimate the number of the parochial clergy. At 
 this moment we are concerned with their income and the 
 sources from whence it is obtained. Pew-rents are not property 
 in the meaning of our present inquiry, nor are voluntary pay- 
 ments of any sort. Practically we may confine our attention to 
 the value of tithes, of glebe or parsonage houses, and of glebe or 
 Church lands. Briefly as to tithes, I shall take the estimate 
 placed, by authority of the Local Government Board, in the 
 preface to the New Domesday Books, which is 5,000,000. 
 The whole of this vast sum is not paid to the parochial clergy ; 
 it is, however, all Church property. From Parliamentary 
 Returns with reference to the operations of the Tithe Com- 
 missioners, it would seem reasonable to assume that about one- 
 fifth is held by lay impropriators. We may take the annual 
 value of the tithes at 4,000,000. It is impossible, without fresh 
 
36 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 inquiry, to make a correct statement as to the number and value 
 of the glebe or parsonage houses. We know, also from the 
 preface to the New Domesday Books, that, exclusive of 
 London, there are about 15,000 parishes in England and Wales. 
 Mr. Martin believes that ' the number of churches in existence 
 may be estimated at about 16,000, probably rather under than 
 over this number.' I should be inclined to think that, including 
 the metropolitan area, the number was nearer 20,000. There 
 are few parishes in England and Wales without a church, and 
 there are certainly more than a few parishes which contain ten 
 or even more churches. But it is quite evident that there is not 
 a glebe-house in every parish. Mr. Martin, after a careful 
 examination of diocesan calendars, believes 'it be may said, 
 roughly speaking, that there are about 10,000 glebe-houses in 
 England and Wales.' He thinks it would not be an over-state- 
 ment to compute the annual value of these glebe-houses and 
 their curtilages at 1,000,000. However, I prefer the sum he 
 takes 750,000 as more accurate. As to the glebe-lands, he 
 is not so near the mark. For information on this head he has 
 also turned to the diocesan calendars, and it is difficult to know 
 how one can do better. Yet it is clear that those compilations 
 exhibit a very incomplete statement of glebe-lands, and that the 
 lands indicated are for the most part the smallest in extent. 
 For example, in the calendar for Worcester, the total area of 
 glebe-lands attached to 234 benefices is 3,983 acres, an average 
 of seventeen acres for each. Mr. Martin's final calculation is an 
 average of fifteen acres for 10,000 benefices. That is not a 
 large estimate. I have examined the New Domesday Books, 
 which, however, are not very instructive. The glebe-lands are 
 not distinguishable, because, with very few exceptions, these 
 lands are returned as belonging to the individual clergymen, 
 who are in fact only holders during good behaviour. The 
 largest number of incumbents returned as incumbents is con- 
 tained in the list of owners within the county of Huntingdon. 
 In Hertford only three incumbents are returned by the title of 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 3 7 
 
 their ecclesiastical office, in Bucks only five, in the great county 
 of Lancaster only seven. In Huntingdon there are forty-four 
 rectors and vicars so returned. The aggregate area of their 
 glebe-lands is 4,414 acres, and the gross estimated rental 
 7,979. This gives 100 acres for each incumbent, with a yearly 
 value of 181. The three Hertfordshire incumbents have an 
 average of 22^ acres, which must be greatly under the general 
 average in that county. In Bucks the average is the same, 22\ 
 acres, and in Lancaster it is 26^ acres. Deducting the extent of 
 ground occupied by the glebe-houses, it would seem that twenty 
 acres for each of 10,000 benefices must be a very moderate 
 estimate. It is less than one-fifth of the lands of the Hunting- 
 donshire incumbents. In the smaller areas the value of the 
 land is much larger. If we consider that the glebe-lands 
 amount only to 200,000 acres, we may safely estimate the 
 annual value at ^400,000, which is less per acre than the 
 declared value of the probably less valuable lands held by deans 
 and chapters. 
 
 In the English counties, and in most of the Welsh counties, 
 there are lands held by churchwardens for ecclesiastical 
 purposes. In Yorkshire more than 1,500 acres of highly 
 valuable land are returned as so held in the New Domesday 
 Books. From an examination of those Books it appears that 
 250 acres would be a low average to assume for each of the 
 forty counties of England. Adding only 500 acres for church- 
 wardens' lands in Wales, we have 10,500 acres, the annual value 
 of which will probably be very much understated at ^"21,000. 
 
 The Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty have a considerable 
 revenue. Mr. Martin sets their net income at ^"34,000. That 
 may be, I am inclined to think, an excessive estimate. In the 
 early years of this century the Governors received large 
 donations not only from Parliament, but from private indivi- 
 duals. Their current income from private donations forms, of 
 course, no part of Church property in the meaning of our 
 present inquiry. If we take the net income at 30,000, we 
 
38 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 must place the same valuation upon it as upon the tithes. 
 When I proceed to indicate the claims which, upon an Act of 
 Disestablishment, would be made upon Church property, I shall 
 feel compelled to glance at the thoroughly Parliamentary 
 character of this corporation and also of the Ecclesiastical 
 Commission. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners are returned 
 ; n the New Domesday Books as owners in England and Wales 
 of 149,882 acres of land, of which the gross estimated rental is 
 3 1 1, 207. This statement completes the roll of the lands of 
 the Church. As the compilers of the New Domesday Books 
 admit great omissions, it is of necessity very imperfect. Such 
 as it is, let us recapitulate the quantities and values : 
 
 Acres. Rental. 
 
 Lands of Bishops .... 30,233 ,40,854 
 
 Deans and Chapters . . 68,838 136,488 
 
 Glebe Lands .... 200,000 400,000 
 
 Lands of Churchwardens, etc. . . 10,500 21,000 
 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners . 149,882 311,207 
 
 For Woods, Mines, Waste Lands, and 
 Property in Metropolitan Area, omit- 
 ted from New Domesday Books' 1 . 36,593 361,860 
 
 ,1,271,409 
 
 Mr. Martin estimates the lands belonging to the Church at 
 i ,ooopoo acres. I do not find any firm support for this state- 
 ment, nor any good reason to believe that half that extent 
 would not be a more accurate estimate. 
 
 Reverting to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the general 
 survey of Church property, I have in the above statement in- 
 cluded only a portion of their income that derived from owner- 
 ship of lands. The latest ' Revenue Account ' contains the 
 following entries : ' Rental of estates vested in the Commissioners, 
 
 11 The compilers of the New Domesday Books estimate in their preface that the 
 extent of land omitted from those volumes is not less than 2,781,063 acres, and that 
 the gross estimated rental of the property omitted is ,32. 501,412. I have considered 
 that the property of the Church in this omitted area and value would bear the same 
 proportion which the recorded area of their lands bears to the sum of all the lands in 
 the New Domesday Books the value being taken at ^27,501,412 in consequence of 
 a deduction of ^"5, 000,000 being allowed for tithes. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 39 
 
 733, 423.' ' Dividends and interest on investments, chiefly 
 Government securities, 97,424.' To some extent, the unre- 
 corded landed property of the Commissioners is included in the 
 last item of the above tabular account. But that can be true 
 concerning only a small portion of their income, because it will 
 be seen that the ' rental of estates vested in the Commissioners ' 
 exceeds, by the very large sum of 422,218, the income from 
 their lands in the New Domesday Books. Their income, ex- 
 cluding all but the two entries just mentioned, is 830,847. 
 We shall surely be making abundant allowance for the consider- 
 ations I have indicated in taking their disposable revenue at 
 700,000. 
 
 Our survey of the revenues of the Church is now complete. 
 Mr. Martin has added 1,000,000 on account of the voluntary 
 aid given for the building and repairing of churches, etc. But 
 that is clearly an error. I see no reason to dispute the assertion 
 that such a sum has been given annually for the last thirty-five 
 years, nor have I the slightest doubt that it would be doubled if 
 the needs of the Church required such expenditure. My present 
 concern is to ascertain what would be the amount of the fund at 
 the disposal of the State in the event of Disendowment, and I 
 will now proceed to summarise the revenue according to the 
 foregoing calculations. With regard to the capitalised value, I 
 am of course aware that the subjoined estimate is very moderate. 
 This property is certainly worth, and might be expected to sell 
 for, at least thirty years' purchase instead of twenty-five years' 
 purchase, the basis upon which the calculations have been made 
 for land, tithes, etc. ; the houses of bishops, dignitaries, and 
 clergy being calculated at twenty years' purchase of the sup- 
 posed net annual value. 
 
 Revenues. Capitalised Value. 
 
 Bishops' Estates . . . 40,854 1,021,350 
 
 Palaces . . . 12,400 248,000 
 
 Deans' and Chapters' Estates . 136,488 3,412,200 
 
 ,, Residences, etc. 50,000 1,000,000 
 
 Tithes .... 4,000,000 100,000,000 
 
 Glebe Houses . . . 750,000 15,000,000 
 
4 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 Revenues. Capitalised Value. 
 
 Glebe Lands .... 400,000 16,000,000 
 Churchwardens', etc., Lands . 21,000 525,000 
 Queen Anne's Bounty . . 30,000 750,000 
 Ecclesiastical Commissioners . 700,000 17,500,000 
 Property omitted from New Domes- 
 day Books . . . 361,860 9,046,500 
 
 6,502,602 158,503,050 
 
 Accepting all responsibility for these figures, I submit them 
 with some confidence. From this estimate it appears that we 
 have to deal with a revenue of 6,500,000, and a capitalised 
 value amounting to 15 8, 5 00,000. It remains for us to consider 
 what are the claims upon this property which in any Act of 
 Disestablishment would be admitted by Parliament. 
 
 I have already laid down the principles upon which I propose 
 to make out this account. The State would deal directly with 
 the clergy and lay officers of the Church, compensating them for 
 the abolition of their offices where these are held in connection 
 with, and by authority of, the State. I doubt if this plan could 
 reasonably be made less costly, so far as the bishops and digni- 
 taries of the Church are concerned, than the Irish plan of com- 
 muting their incomes in connection with a Church Body. There 
 are twenty-nine bishops (including archbishops) and one hun- 
 dred and forty-three dignitaries connected with cathedral 
 establishments. They are, for the most part, men long past 
 middle age. Their influence and their character would claim 
 for them the highest consideration. Taking the average of 
 their salaries, these one hundred and seventy-two dignitaries of 
 the Church each receive about 2,000 a year. In the Civil 
 Service, upon compulsory retirement, men of the age of most of 
 the bishops and dignitaries, and of such distinguished service, 
 would receive full pay, and, upon commutation of their pensions, 
 would obtain from nine to eleven years' purchase. It would 
 probably not be safe to take less than ten years' purchase of the 
 average salary, which would amount to 20,000 for each, 
 making a total claim of 3,440,000. 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 4 1 
 
 There has been no official numbering of the clergy since 1831. 
 Then the roll of the beneficed clergy appeared, from the report 
 of the Commission appointed to inquire into the Ecclesiastical 
 Revenues of England and Wales, to have been 10,718, and their 
 average income 303. Gross inequality then prevailed in the 
 value of benefices. There were ' livings ' with annual incomes 
 of less than 10, and the scale mounted to the golden rectory of 
 Doddington with more than 7,000 a year. In 1831 there were 
 i, 006 curates employed by resident incumbents, and 4,224 
 curates employed by non-resident incumbents. The stipends 
 of the first class of curates averaged 86, and those of the latter 
 class 79. But that report will soon be half a century out of 
 date. The present materials for calculation are the Clergy List 
 and Crockford's Clerical Directory, which appear to have been 
 tested and scrutinised with extraordinary care by the Rev. 
 Canon Ashwell in preparing the statement which he laid before 
 the Select Committee upon the Public Worship Bill in 1875. 
 The following tabular statement as to the number of the clergy 
 of the Church of England has been drawn from Canop Ashwell's 
 figures : 
 
 Church Dignitaries 
 
 Incumbents holding benefices . 
 
 Curates ..... 
 
 Total of Clergy serving in churches 
 
 Schoolmasters, and Teachers 
 Chaplains, Inspectors, etc. 
 Fellows of Universities, Missionaries, etc. 
 Unattached Clergy 
 
 Other Clergy . . . . 5,501 
 
 Total . . 23,738 
 
 I believe that the general accuracy of these figures is unques- 
 tionable. The next point to determine is the average income of 
 the beneficed clergy. In the Financial Reform Almanack for the 
 year 1877 there is a carefully prepared table entitled { Classifi- 
 
42 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 cation of Benefices.' It is a compilation from the Clergy List. 
 This table shows that there are in England and Wales 13,257 
 benefices, the aggregate value being 4,26 1,03 3, which gives an 
 average of 321 for each living. The number of benefices in 
 this statement is very close to that given by Canon Ashwell. 
 We may take it, without risk of serious error, that there are 
 13,300 beneficed clergy with incomes averaging 320 a year. 
 To what compensation would they be entitled ? Let us look at 
 what happened in the case of the Irish clergy. We have the 
 actual net annual value of the livings of 1,382 clergy, ' including 
 archbishops, bishops, and incumbents (including holders of 
 cathedral preferments)' who commuted, given as 493,261. 
 The average of their incomes was therefore 356, a sum not 
 very much larger than the average income of the beneficed 
 clergy in England and Wales. This income was commuted for 
 a total sum of 5,815,223, which gives an average of 4,200, or 
 about twelve years' purchase of the income. But in regard to 
 the Church of England I am not writing of commutation. To 
 obtain a parallel in the Irish case, we must consider what the 
 clergy would have received upon compounding, and must take 
 this at two-thirds of the commutation money, in accordance 
 with the resolution of the Church Body. If, then, the 1,382 
 clergy in Ireland had compounded, they would have been 
 entitled to claim a total sum amounting to 3,876,816, which is 
 rather less than eight years' purchase of the net annual value of 
 their livings. In compensating members of the Civil Service 
 upon compulsory retirement, the Government does not in any 
 case, so far as I can learn, pay a less rate. I can find no pre- 
 cedent for a lower scale in the case of men of the age which it 
 would be reasonable to assume would be the average age of the 
 clergy. And if the clergy were to be dealt with upon the basis 
 of the f Practical Suggestions ' I cannot see how their claim to 
 this rate of compensation could be denied. They would have 
 no claim to special consideration, because there would be a 
 demand for their labour on the part of the disestablished 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 43 
 
 Church. But assuming that the calculation is to be made upon 
 the ground that their dispossession is an absolute dismissal from 
 the service, then there would seem to be no just cause forgiving 
 them less in the aggregate than eight years' purchase of the net 
 annual value of the benefices. And if we take the aggregate 
 annual value at 4,261,033, the amount of compensation pay- 
 able to 13,300 incumbents would be 34,088,264. 
 
 As to the curates and ' other clergy,' I cannot concur in the 
 ' Practical Suggestions ' so far as they exclude the claim of any 
 of these ' ecclesiastical persons ' to consideration. Curates have 
 enlisted in the service of the Established Church with a fair 
 view to obtain its advantages, and it will never happen, when 
 Disestablishment is brought by a Government before Parlia- 
 ment, that the party in power will be careless of making virulent 
 enemies to their policy of the 10,000 unbeneficed clergy by 
 denying them any claim to compensation. Their claim should 
 not be large. A great number of them are attached to district 
 churches built long since 1818, the year of the first of the 
 Church Building Acts. In those cases the endowment would 
 not be claimed by the State. Curates may not appeal to their 
 prospects. In dealing with the Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone 
 said : ' In all cases of the abolition of establishments, be they 
 civil or ecclesiastical, the expectation of promotion is a matter 
 into which, however legitimate it may be, it is impossible for us 
 to enter.' They would, however, on the simple question of claim 
 have the precedent of the Irish Church to which to appeal ; and 
 if Disestablishment were effected peacefully, without revolu- 
 tionary violence, the permanent curates would certainly make 
 a good claim to compensation, and the unattached curates and 
 clergy would find many friends to advocate their case. I should 
 suppose that any estimate of the cost of Disestablishment would 
 be erroneous which drew a hard and fast line in the matter of 
 compensation between the beneficed and the stipendiary clergy. 
 In Ireland there were 900 curates whose incomes amounted in 
 the aggregate to 96,403. This income was commuted into a 
 
44 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 sum of 1,730,781, and if all had compounded at the two-thirds 
 rate, about 1,282 would have been the average of compen- 
 sation. This appears a large sum, and indeed it amounts to 
 more than twelve years' purchase of the average income of each 
 curate. In Ireland, the Church being overmanned, especially 
 when compared with that of England, it may be said that extra 
 liberality was due to this class of clergy. In England the 
 supply is less than the demand, and probably it would not be 
 wise to found an estimate for the compensation of curates upon 
 a higher scale than that adopted for the beneficed clergy. In 
 1831 the average stipend of curates in England was 83. I will 
 take 100 a year as the present average, and as I shall take that 
 rate for all the unattached clergy, very many of whom are 
 engaged in scholastic and other work apart from the Church, 
 the rate cannot be considered too low. Adopting Canon 
 Ashwell's figures, there are 5,765 curates, and of ' other clergy ' 
 5,501 a total of 11,266 to be placed in this category, and the 
 compensation, calculated at 800 for each, would amount to 
 9,012,800. 
 
 There are next the lay compensations, including the parish 
 clerks and sextons, the officers of cathedrals and of chapters, 
 the functionaries of the Ecclesiastical Courts and of the Eccle- 
 siastical Commission. It would certainly not be prudent to set 
 these at less than 6,000,000, that is ten times the estimate in the 
 case of the Irish Church. And with this matter of lay compen- 
 sation is closely connected the purchase of advowsons and rights 
 of presentation. It must be distinctly understood that the owner 
 of an advowson has no valid claim to compensation upon the 
 scale allowed to an incumbent. The income of the living is not 
 his, but only the right ot presentation, and that right cannot be 
 regarded by the State as saleable property. Upon this point it 
 is well to bear in mind a recent expression of opinion, upon the 
 motion of Mr. Leatham, by the Home Secretary. Mr. Cross 
 said : 
 
 ' So long as a man held an advowson and the estate to which it was attached, 
 
The Business of Disestablishment. 45 
 
 he had no right to sell the next presentation. That was a sacred trust which 
 ought no more to be sold than a vote for a member of Parliament. As to 
 the direction which legislation ought to take upon this subject, he, could not 
 better indicate it than by quoting the conclusions arrived at by the Committee 
 of Inquiry of the House of Lords. That Committee was of opinion that "all 
 legislation affecting patronage should proceed upon the principle that such 
 patronage partakes of the nature of a trust to be exercised for the spiritual 
 benefit of the parishioners." That was a sound principle, and he hoped it 
 would be unanimously adopted by the House of Commons. The Committee 
 further declared that " the exercise of the rights of patronage without due 
 regard to the interests of the parishioners, should, as far as possible, be 
 restrained by law." ' ' 
 
 The claim of the owners of advowsons to compensation upon 
 the appropriation by the State of their property in those advow- 
 sons is therefore greatly restricted. It is not to be tested by the 
 saleable value of an advowson, because advowsons are notoriously 
 purchased in order that the buyer may traffic in presentations. 
 In its legal aspect the property in an advowson is a barren trust, 
 in the exercise of which the owner is, as Mr. Cross lays it down, 
 bound to regard, not only in the first place, but solely, the in- 
 terests of others. The Scotch Patronage Act of 1875 (37 and 
 38 Victoria, c. 82), which took away from private patrons their 
 property in advowsons and their rights of presentation, is a very 
 important witness in this matter. In fact and in law, the posi- 
 tion of Scotch patrons before the passing of that Act was analo- 
 gous to that of English patrons. Whatever rights of property 
 English patrons have in advowsons, the same rights existed in 
 Scotland. It is most instructive to observe how these rights 
 were dealt with by the measure which the Duke of Richmond, 
 on behalf of the present Government, carried through the House 
 of Lords. The Act provides that 
 
 ' In all cases in which the patronage of a parish is held either solely or jointly 
 by a private patron, or any guardian or trustee on his behalf, it shall be 
 lawful for him or for such guardian or trustee, at any time within six 
 months after the passing of this Act, to present a petition to the sheriff 
 of the county, praying him to determine the compensation to be paid to 
 such patron.' 
 
 1 House of Commons Debates, June 26, 1877. 
 
4 6 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 But it was not obligatory on the patron to present such a peti- 
 tion, and his claim lapsed if he did not present a petition within 
 six months. In no case, however, could the sheriff award a sum 
 more than ' equal to one year's stipend of the parish where the 
 petitioner is sole patron.' It may be said that public opinion 
 permits the sale of livings in England, whereas in Scotland 
 public opinion never held advowsons to be saleable property. 
 But to this it may be confidently replied that Disestablishment 
 is yet afar off, and that opinion in England is every day becoming 
 more antagonistic to the traffic. Lord Leconfield's dealing with 
 the Irish Church will have some influence in this matter. He 
 had 20,000 awarded to him for loss of patronage by the provi- 
 sions of the Irish Church Act. Feeling that such patronage was 
 a public trust, and in no sense private property, he has given 
 the money to the parishes and to the diocesan funds. In view 
 of this and of the fact that, with regard to the Scotch Patronage 
 Act, not one of the great Scottish landowners made claim for 
 compensation, it is not difficult to assess the compensation which 
 ought to be given upon the suppression of a trust of this nature. 
 One year's value of the benefice, where any patron chooses to 
 claim it, would seem to be quite sufficient. To what would that 
 amount ? Referring to the figures compiled from the Clergy 
 List, to which I have alluded as appearing in the Financial 
 Reform Almanack, the number of benefices, the patronage of 
 which is in private hands, is 8,222, and their value 2,594,105. 
 If then to this amount I add nearly another half-million, and 
 take 3,000,000 as the compensation payable to owners of ad- 
 vowsons, I shall probably have named a more than adequate sum. 
 If Disestablishment were effected upon the lines which have 
 been indicated, the available surplus of Church property at the 
 disposal of Parliament would be liable to be further reduced by 
 the value of endowments made by private individuals living 
 at the date of Disestablishment, and by the value of endow- 
 ments created entirely or in part by voluntary subscriptions 
 since the date of the first of the Church Building Acts (1818). 
 
TJic Business of Disestablishment. 47 
 
 It is of course notorious that private benefactions made to 
 the Church within living memory have for the most part been 
 expended in church building. Not long since the Times esti- 
 mated ' that a million a year for the last thirty-five years is not 
 in excess ' of the sum which has been expended in the building 
 or restoration of nearly 9,000 churches, including, as to restora- 
 tion, some cathedrals. That rate of expenditure is maintained, 
 if not now exceeded, by voluntary subscriptions. But church 
 building, repair, and restoration are totally different matters 
 from endowment. Taking into consideration the fact that of 
 this class of endowments many are, for obvious reasons, not 
 included in the estimate I have formed of the value of Church 
 property, it would seem probable that a sum of ^5,000,000 
 that is ten times the amount paid to the Irish Church Body as 
 a composition for private endowments which could be claimed 
 to the very remote date of 1660 would more than cover the 
 deduction to be made under this head. 
 
 The business of Disestablishment would cost at least 500,000 
 for official charges, and this completes the list of claims. It 
 would perhaps be unreasonable to suppose that the operation 
 could be perfected or the surplus realised in less than ten years, 
 and therefore it is not necessary to take into consideration the 
 deduction which, if the surplus were to be realised at once, must 
 be made for tenancies of glebe-houses and glebe-lands. Ten 
 years' purchase of existing life interests would be abundant 
 satisfaction. I may therefore proceed to recount the items of 
 compensation, which, in the order I have dealt with them, are 
 as follow : 
 
 Number. Compensation. 
 
 Bishops and Dignitaries . . . 172 ,3,440,000 
 
 Beneficed Clergy . . . 13,300 34,088,264 
 
 Curates and other Clergy . . 11,266 9,012,800 
 
 Church and Cathedral Officers . . 6,000,000 
 
 Purchase of Advowsons . . . 3,000,000 
 
 Private Endowments . . . 5,000,000 
 
 Official Expenses . . . 500,000 
 
 61,041,064 
 
48 The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 The estimate of the capital value of Church property was 
 ;i 5 8,503,050. The prospective surplus would therefore amount 
 to 97,461,986. 
 
 With that statement my present task is practically ended. 
 But certain considerations have arisen during the survey of this 
 vast operation which it may be well to regard apart from the 
 figures. And first of all it is unquestionably true that the 
 country is not yet prepared to undertake this great matter. 
 Briefly, it will not be prepared until a majority, and a consider- 
 able majority, of the electors are determined to vote for 
 Disestablishment, and to maintain a large majority in the 
 House of Commons pledged to accomplish that work. From 
 this course many are now dissuaded by fear of the ecclesiastical 
 vagaries of a disestablished clergy. We may presume perhaps 
 that if it is not apparent that the clergy are manageable by the 
 established order of things, this alarm will melt away. Many 
 are dissuaded by fear that a Church Body would be established 
 in such a manner as to defeat their hope of religious equality. 
 The uncontrolled distribution of 46,000,000 among the clergy 
 will be to many a terror dissolving all wish for Disestablish- 
 ment, and inclining others, who desire to disconnect Church 
 from State, to think it were better to institute a Church Body 
 and commutation upon the plan adopted in Ireland. If any- 
 thing like a clear conception of the business of Disestablishment 
 should take the place of the crude, vague notions which are now 
 floating in the minds of the people, it must check the demand 
 for the moment, and give the subsequent appeal more steadiness 
 and strength, if only because the magnitude of the operation 
 and its vast consequences will be firmly grasped and com- 
 prehended. 
 
 There are other considerations. If those who promote Dis- 
 establishment are resolved that there shall be no simultaneous 
 reconstruction by the State, as there was in Ireland, they defer 
 the day of Disestablishment, though not without good reason. 
 I believe that to this resolution they will adhere. But to the 
 
The Business of Disestablisliment. 49 
 
 laity of the Church, to that body of Church people who have 
 especially the ear of Parliament, this plan will probably not 
 commend itself. The more they look upon it, the more earnestly 
 they will oppose themselves to the policy of the Liberation 
 Society. They will not find in it the most sure and certain 
 hope of the resurrection of their Church after it has been cut 
 off from the throne of State. But I do not therefore say that 
 the general tendency of any exposition of this kind is to delay 
 the action of Parliament. I believe that the more the whole 
 matter is discussed, the more clearly does it appear that all 
 classes would benefit by the operation. It is however certain 
 that a further measure of Parliamentary reform will take pre- 
 cedence of the Church question. 
 
 Let there be no doubt, meantime, as to the value of the 
 property held by the Church. There are compensations which 
 I have omitted. But I have taken no account of the extravagant 
 cost of the present management ; I have made no calculation 
 of prospective increase of value. It is stated as a consequence 
 of the last dealing with Church property by Parliament, when 
 some of it was transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commission, that 
 there ' was a vast increase in the revenues, amounting in some 
 cases to a trebling, and even a quadrupling, of the former sums 
 received/ If Mr. Martin's researches have led him to this 
 conclusion, there is good reason to believe that it is an experi- 
 ence which would be repeated in some departments. Nor need 
 there be any doubt as to the plenitude and precedent of power 
 in Parliament. The history of England, arid notably the history 
 of this century, records acts of authority by Parliament touching 
 Church property. The bishops' estates have been made con- 
 tributary, one to supply the deficiencies of the other, by Act 
 of Parliament. By the same power the number of canonries 
 has been reduced, the incomes of deans and canons regulated, 
 and the surplus devoted to equalising the incomes of the 
 parochial clergy. Looking further back, it is a noteworthy 
 fact that the churches of London destroyed by the great fire 
 
 E 
 
^o The Business of Disestablishment. 
 
 of 1666 were rebuilt by public rate levied by Act of Parliament 
 (19 Charles II. c. 3); that another Act of the same period 
 imposed a tax on coals for the same object; that coals were 
 again taxed and a public lottery established by Act of Par- 
 liament to provide endowment for clergy ; and that later, by 
 the 58 George III. c. 45, more than .1,000,000 was granted 
 from public funds in aid of church building. The origin of 
 Queen Anne's Bounty will not be forgotten, nor the Parlia- 
 mentary grants of 1809-20 which augmented the Bounty fund 
 by the proceeds of taxation to the extent of ; 1,100,000. 
 
 Nor will the present composition of the Ecclesiastical Com- 
 mission fail to convey a useful lesson to the laity of the Church. 
 Parliament always acts towards that laity with good intentions. 
 It set up the Commission in 1836 with a majority of lay 
 members, eight laymen and five ecclesiastical dignitaries. The 
 laymen did not attend ; the clergy did ; and four years later the 
 dignitaries achieved a revolution which made the Commission 
 virtually an ecclesiastical body. The Ecclesiastical Commission 
 is now to all intents and purposes the same body as the Upper 
 House of Convocation. The secretary of that Commission, 
 which is the richest ecclesiastical corporation in the world, 
 once stated in evidence before a Parliamentary Committee, with 
 regard to the much-enduring laity of the Church of England, 
 that ' the flow of benefactions seems to be inexhaustible.' That 
 generous flow would be immensely increased by Disestablish- 
 ment, and the laity would be in fault if they did not make 
 better terms for themselves. They have been pushed out by 
 the bishops from management of the funds of the Church, and 
 they will never regain adequate authority until those funds are 
 once more dealt with by Parliament. 
 
II. 
 
 THE ABUSES OF A LANDED GENTRY. 
 
 I AM only in part responsible for the title of this paper. There 
 was a discourse delivered in Edinburgh during the autumn 
 of 1876 which had the same title with the exception of a single 
 syllable. Mr. Froude held forth on ' the Uses of a Landed 
 Gentry/ and called upon all men to accept and admire the laws 
 and customs which have led to the present distribution of the 
 British soil. It seems to me that the most mistaken and un- 
 patriotic attitude which a public man can assume with reference 
 to our land-system is one of easy contentment. I do not for a 
 moment allege against Mr. Froude the conscious betrayal of the 
 interests of his countrymen. Diligent in research, picturesque 
 and powerful in literary display, he is probably short-sighted in 
 the region of practice. He is profoundly distrustful of all 
 popular movements. He is an apostle of the gospel of force. 
 Mr. Froude has no confidence in the policy of extending the 
 ownership of land, perhaps because of his declared conviction that 
 the philosophy of progress is false in its principles. 
 
 I am constrained to suppose that Mr. Froude believes the 
 actual distribution and apportionment of the soil of this country 
 have the approval of Divine Power. In the fact that 523 noble- 
 men hold in disability for they are only life-tenants one-fifth 
 of the United Kingdom, I think he recognises high purposes of 
 the Creator. I am sure I should respect Mr. Froude's creed if I 
 comprehended it, but for my own part I have never been able to 
 fathom that which appears to me the presumption of men who 
 
5 2 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 profess to discern the decrees of an Almighty God. Mr. Froude 
 has told us that ' the conditions under which human society 
 will cohere harmoniously are inherent in the nature of things ; 
 and human laws are wise or unwise, just or unjust, so far as 
 they are formed on accurate discernment of the purposes of the 
 Maker of the world/ 1 He does not tell us who are the high- 
 priests of these oracles. We are warned against neglecting the 
 important attributes of ' birth and station,' and against entrusting 
 the functions of government only to those who have given proof 
 of ' energy and ability.' 2 We are assured that this power of 
 accurate discernment is not in the people. He looks upon the 
 development of representative government as the growth of ' an 
 idol of spurious freedom/ g He believes in heaven-born men who 
 scorn the vox populi. As for 'the multitude, who are slaves to 
 their own ignorance, they will choose those to represent them who 
 flatter their vanity and pander to their interest/ 4 But, I should 
 like to ask, was it not the heaven-born men men of that past 
 which Mr. Froude loves so well who held the multitude in 
 slavery to their own ignorance; and is the provision of universal 
 education which is always a first demand of the multitude, and 
 is nowhere established until the multitude have been enfranchised 
 is universal education an improper pandering to their interests ? 
 I wish some better man had stepped forward to rebuke this 
 audacious philosophy, which proclaims in the face of history, 
 glaring all the while with contradiction, that when the posses- 
 sion of power is the property of few, they will be less eager in 
 the pursuit of self-interest than the many which, in violation of 
 the precepts of every writer on Political Economy, from Adam 
 Smith to Mill and Cairnes, ventures to assert that the distri- 
 bution of land in this country is the result of ' economic laws as 
 absolute as the laws of gravity.' 5 
 
 1 English in Ireland, vol. iii., p. I. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 2. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 3. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 8 Mr. Froude, ' On the Uses of a Landed Gentry: 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 53 
 
 Birt let us pass to consider what is the actual distribution of 
 land in Great Britain, and in this matter we shall derive no 
 small assistance from the returns recently made public in Blue 
 Books which are commonly known as the ' New Domesday 
 Books.' Pre-eminently these returns establish the fact that the 
 soil of Great Britain is held by the landed gentry. The island 
 is virtually in possession I do not say of country gentlemen, 
 because, through no fault of their own, they are not owners in 
 possession of the families which they represent. This cannot be 
 regarded as an exaggerated statement of the facts when it is 
 observed that 12,791 persons are returned as owners of four- 
 fifths of the soil of this island, their aggregate property, outside 
 the metropolitan boundaries, and exclusive of woods, other than 
 saleable underwoods and waste lands, being 40,180,775 acres. 
 This, I say, is the return ; but, in fact, the number of owners 
 upon that immense area is much less than 12,000, and if we 
 could get at the truth it would not surprise me to learn that the 
 number of so-called owners of four-fifths of the soil of Great 
 Britain is nearer 5,000 than 10,000. 
 
 To begin with the nobles, of whom there are about 500. One 
 the Duke of Buccleuch is counted as 14 landowners in the 
 total, His Grace having estates in no fewer than 14 counties in 
 this island. There are four peers who are returned as 44 land- 
 owners, because these noblemen the Dukes of Devonshire and 
 Cleveland, the Earl Howe and Lord Overstone are placed on 
 the roll of II counties. Thus we have five persons returned 
 in these New Domesday Books as 58 landowners ; and if we 
 include the Duke of Bedford, who has land in 10 counties, we 
 may say six peers returned as 68 landowners. Let us see how 
 any of them say the Duke of Bedford stands in the return. 
 There can be nothing invidious in selecting one of the best 
 landlords in the United Kingdom. In the lists for the counties 
 of Bedford, Cambridge, and Devon, the Duke of Bedford 
 appears as a great landowner. He is returned in each as the 
 owner of more than 10,000 acres. In the counties of York, 
 
54 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 Buckingham, Cornwall, Dorset, Huntingdon, and Northampton, 
 he is returned as the possessor of more than 1,000 and less than 
 5,000 acres, while in the counties of Hertford and Lincoln he is 
 returned as the owner of more than I acre and less than 100 
 acres. The effect of this is to make the superficial result of the 
 New Domesday Books very misleading. Not only is the Duke 
 of Buccleuch returned as 14 landowners and the Duke of 
 Bedford as 10 landowners, but there is consequent error in any 
 estimate of the various classes of landowners. In the category 
 of great landowners the Duke of Bedford makes a threefold 
 appearance ; then in the category which many assume is com- 
 posed of squires, his Grace makes a sixfold entry ; and last and 
 lowest of all, he is placed in the ranks of the small owners, who 
 some would have us believe are peasant-proprietors or yeomen, 
 and there he stands as two landowners. This is only an ex- 
 ample, and undeniably a fair one, of the fallacious character of 
 these returns. 
 
 But we should be on comparatively safe ground if we could 
 assume that the Blue Books need investigation only in regard to 
 the 12,791 persons who are returned as owners of four-fifths of 
 Great Britain. It is published for our acceptance and belief 
 that in this island there are not fewer than 269,299 persons 
 among whom is distributed the ownership of 11,597,514 acres of 
 land in parcels varying in size from I to 500 acres. I wish that 
 these figures, which appear in the New Domesday Books, were 
 true, or anything like true. I know they were compiled with 
 care and assiduity under the supervision of an eminent public 
 servant. But I fancy that if these big books had been issued 
 by Liberal instead of Conservative authority, the grand totals 
 would not have been promulgated without a large allowance for 
 necessary deductions, to which I am about to refer. We who, 
 from motives of national policy, desire to see a much wider 
 diffusion of property in land, do not complain that in this 
 category we have no indication of the number of persons con- 
 tained in it who derive their subsistence from the cultivation 
 
Tlie Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 55 
 
 of their own land. It is, we know, in great part made up with 
 gentlemen-owners of two or three acres of lawn and shrubbery ; 
 with tradesmen-owners of what is known as accommodation 
 land in the neighbourhood of towns in which their commercial 
 or other business is carried on. This confusion of classes was 
 inevitable. No one who has any positive acquaintance with the 
 facts would suppose that of the 130,000 persons returned as pos- 
 sessing more than I acre and less than 10 acres there is beyond 
 a mere handful of what may be called peasant-proprietors. 
 
 All this, however, applies to the figures when we have reduced 
 them to the actual number of persons owning land varying in 
 extent from I to 500 acres. But how is this to be accom- 
 plished ? Officials sitting down to compile a New Domes- 
 day Book, with unlimited power of obtaining correct returns, 
 would not think of including the separate properties of cor- 
 porations, in some cases giving the name of the corporation, 
 many times repeated, and in others the name of the occupier 
 or incumbent, as that of the landowner. Yet this is what has 
 happened throughout these returns. The North- Western Rail- 
 way Company is counted as 28 landowners. ' Trustees of Poor ' 
 stand as 40 landowners in the single county of Bucks. The 
 compilers have made an attempt to distinguish the lands of 
 corporations by italics, but in this respect there has been a 
 notable failure. I have selected for careful examination the 
 returns relating to the three counties Bucks, Hertford, and 
 Lancaster. The choice was made for no other reason than 
 because the three principal members of the Government reside 
 in those shires. In the county of Bucks I find that the only 
 Church lands represented by italics are those of I perpetual 
 curate, I rector, and 3 vicars ; in Hertford, there are only 2 
 rectors and I vicar; and in the county of Lancaster only 2 
 rectors and 5 vicars. But in the first county there are no fewer 
 than 235 landowners with the title of 'Reverend ' ; in the second 
 there are 159; and in the third there are 286 'Reverend' land- 
 owners. Of course, with very few exceptions, these clerical 
 
56 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 landowners are in possession of glebe lands, and their names 
 ought therefore to have been placed in italics. In the county 
 of Bucks there are 273 ' owners ' or corporations in italics, and if 
 we add that number to the total of the clerical ' owners ' of glebe 
 lands, we have a deduction of 508, or about one-sixth, to make 
 from the 3,288 reputed owners of more than I acre in that 
 county. The areas of these public lands are generally small ; 
 all, it may be said, are included in the category we are at present 
 examining that of the reputed owners of more than I acre and 
 less than 500 acres, who are returned as numbering 269,299 in 
 Great Britain. 
 
 We have learned from the case of the Duke of Bedford and 
 others that a large reduction must be made in this category for 
 the peers, baronets, and other great gentry who are also returned 
 in the former division containing all owners of above 500 acres, 
 and the allowance for these great gentry has to be added to the 
 holders of public lands who are not rightly returned as land- 
 owners. There are other errors ; sometimes the name of a land- 
 owner is repeated in respect of separate properties in the same 
 county. But to reduce this category to its proper dimensions 
 would produce no very interesting result. Take the actual 
 number of owners in this category at about 150,000 ; that total 
 would include a very large majority who are not agricultural 
 landowners. They are, for the most part, residential suburban 
 proprietors. 
 
 It is not unlikely that the true number of agricultural land- 
 lords does not exceed the famous estimate of 30,000. The New 
 Domesday Books were to establish the absurdity of that esti- 
 mate. In this they are unsuccessful. But we are not on the 
 whole dissatisfied with these ponderous volumes. They exhibit 
 the one great characteristic fact of the English land-system 
 that the ownership of four-fifths of the soil, if properly recorded, 
 would be inscribed above the names of a number of persons 
 between 5,000 and 10,000. 
 
 It would be just as reasonable to say that the overflow of the 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 57 
 
 Thames was caused by the policy of the Government upon the 
 Eastern Question, as to assert that this possession of four-fifths 
 of the soil by a body of persons who could be put into Exeter 
 Hall is the result of economic laws. It is the consequence of 
 the feudal customs of this country, established, confirmed, and 
 encouraged by the force and operation of law. We know how 
 it is done. The law declares in every county, except I believe 
 one, in this island, that if a landowner die intestate, the eldest 
 son shall inherit the whole property, and that his brothers and 
 sisters shall be dependent upon his bounty. In Kent a peculiar 
 rule prevails, which is unnatural only as regards the daughters 
 of the intestate landowner the property being divided in gavel- 
 kind among the sons, and the girls left destitute. The abolition 
 of this law of primogeniture is sought because it produces 
 injustice, especially in the class of small landowners ; primarily 
 it is demanded because the English people will not consent to 
 retain upon their statute book a law which is offensive to natural 
 ideas of morality and justice. But this narrowed ownership is 
 especially due to the custom of entail and strict settlement which 
 has been allowed to fasten so banefully upon the soil of our 
 country. This cannot be a free country while the freehold is 
 reserved to an unborn generation. Of these 40,000,000 acres in 
 Great Britain (I do not speak of Ireland) to which I have 
 referred, it may be said that they are in bondage. By legal 
 devices, which are not advantageous to the personal interests 
 of the nominal proprietors nor to those of the people at large, 
 these lands are, with insignificant exceptions, placed under per- 
 manent disabilities ; they are the preserves of entail, fenced 
 with strict settlement ; they belong to no man, and to a certain 
 extent they are doomed to infertility, because they are ever in 
 waiting for the unborn hand of the next generation. We all 
 know that this is opposed to the interests of the country ; we 
 none of us doubt that it would be for the advantage of the 
 landlords that the fullest energies of proprietorship should be 
 brought to bear through each generation upon agriculture. The 
 
58 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 material interests of the country demand from us an effort to 
 free the soil, and in this our labour will be sweetened by the 
 knowledge that while we shall be conferring a pecuniary advan- 
 tage upon those who are at present the nominal owners of this 
 vast and valuable area, we may fairly claim a part of that 
 increase of value for the revenue of the State. This law of 
 primogeniture, with its allied customs, is not a natural growth 
 of English soil. It was introduced by the Norman Conqueror, 
 who, in deference to the power of the capital, provided in the 
 charter he gave to London that the children of an intestate 
 should continue to inherit equally. Yet it matters little to us 
 what was the distribution of the soil 900 years ago ; our busi- 
 ness and determination should be to provide in this our day such 
 a distribution as, while it injures no man in his rights, shall be 
 most beneficial to the nation. 
 
 It is now my task to show (i) the rights of the people in the 
 land, (2) the abuses of the existing land-system, (3) the measures 
 of reform to be proposed, and (4) the consequences which may 
 be expected to ensue. It is easy to prove that absolute 
 property in land has never been conceded. As Mr. Froude is 
 an admirer of the English land-system, it may be well to refer 
 to him upon this point. He is of opinion that ' private owner- 
 ship in land is permitted because Government cannot be omni- 
 present, and personal interest is found, on the whole, an adequate 
 security that land so held shall be administered to the general 
 advantage. But, seeing that men are born into the world with- 
 out their own wills, and, being in the world, they must live upon 
 the earth's surface, or they cannot live at all, no individual or 
 set of individuals can hold over land that personal and irrespon- 
 sible right which is allowed to them in things of less universal 
 necessity.' 1 I am glad to say that in every word of this state- 
 ment I agree with Mr. Froude. As Mr. Lowe is understood to 
 be opposed to the extension of the franchise in counties, he has 
 also to some extent the confidence of those who are absolutists 
 
 1 English in Ireland, vol. i., p. 131. 
 
The Abmes of a Landed Gentry. 59 
 
 in regard to land-tenure. Mr. Lowe's opinion as to property in 
 land has lately been expressed with his customary candour. 
 ' Land,' he says, ' is a kind of property in which the public must 
 from its very nature have a kind of dormant joint interest with 
 the proprietor.' 1 Let us adopt Mr. Lowe's words, and hence- 
 forth speak of the national property in the soil as our 'joint 
 interest ' with the recognised proprietors. No intelligent person 
 will deny the existence of this joint interest, who considers that 
 the doctrine of absolute property in land might lead to a denial 
 of Mr. Froude's proposition that 'men must live upon the 
 earth's surface.' 
 
 Among the abuses of the present system perhaps the greatest 
 is that this ' joint interest ' has, in its universal relation to the 
 soil, been not only ' dormant,' not merely neglected, but ignored 
 by Parliament. The people have been treated as if their 
 property in the land had no existence. Their interest demands 
 that the transfer of land should be simple, expeditious, and 
 inexpensive. It remains complicated, dilatory, and costly, the 
 percentage of expense being so uncertain and so onerous upon 
 small purchases as to favour the aggregation of land in few 
 hands and the annexation of small properties to large estates. 
 Their interest demands that the owner of land should be free to 
 sell, or exchange, or to improve for his own advantage ; and in 
 the event of his becoming embarrassed, and therefore disabled 
 from exercising a beneficial ownership, the public interest de- 
 mands that his creditors should be empowered to take and sell 
 his property for the discharge of their claims. The heir to one 
 of the most ancient peerages has stated that ' seventy per cent, 
 of the land in this country is held by men whose power over it 
 is limited by modern settlement.' 2 I think the figures I have 
 taken from the New Domesday Books will lead to the conclu- 
 sion that even this is too low an estimate, and we may say that 
 nearly four-fifths of the soil of our country are placed in legal 
 
 1 Fortnightly Review^ January, 1877. 
 
 2 Mr. II. R. Brand, in Fortnightly Review, 1874. 
 
60 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 bandage. Over by far the greater part of this island there are 
 no landowners. It is a public grievance that our landed gentry 
 have but a limited interest in their inalienable properties, the 
 rents of which they are at liberty to farm for their lifetime. 
 Some of them from necessity, some from folly and extravagance, 
 have reduced their estates to the lowest level of impoverish- 
 ment. If these were freeholders, such land might be sold to 
 men who would treble its productive powers. But it is 'settled/ 
 and the 'joint interest' of the people must suffer until death 
 passes it on to a new proprietor, who perhaps will be as much 
 embarrassed as his predecessor. 
 
 The interests of the people demand that the tenure of land 
 shall be such as will promote the best agriculture, and will there- 
 fore attract the largest amount of capital to be engaged in the cul- 
 tivation of the soil. But their countrymen, the nominal owners 
 of estates, have taken quite a different view, upon which they 
 have acted. The land of England is now for the most part 
 farmed by occupiers upon a yearly tenancy, to whom, as well as 
 to leaseholders, landlords refuse a reasonable legislative security 
 for tenant-right. - Mr. Mechi published in 1871 the statement of 
 a land agent that out of 1,500 farms he had let, fewer than 400 
 were on lease. I am bound to say that several proprietors have 
 exhibited some consideration for the 'joint interest' of the 
 public. In the article entitled 'Free Trade in Land,' I have 
 quoted at length the speech in which Lord Derby declared his 
 conviction that every acceptable tenant ought to have a lease. 
 There could be no condemnation of his fellow-landlords more 
 direct than this, or than that delivered by Lord Dufferin in the 
 House of Lords when he said : ' What is a yearly tenancy ? 
 Why, it is an impossible tenure a tenure which, if its terms 
 were literally interpreted, no Christian man would offer, and 
 none but a madman would accept.' 1 But if we are rational, we 
 must admit that the landlord is free to take whatever view he 
 pleases of his own interest, and to act upon that view so far as 
 
 House of Lords Debates, January 14, 1870. 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 61 
 
 the law will permit ; for my part I will never join in ad miseri- 
 cordiam appeals to the owners of property. If they prefer the 
 personal pleasures of ownership to regard for public interests, to 
 the increase of production, and to a substantial improvement in 
 the value of their property, I shall never dispute that they are 
 free to choose, nor forget to extenuate their policy on the 
 ground that the fault lies deeper in the laws and customs for 
 which they are not personally responsible, which they and all 
 together have inherited. 
 
 But regarding the 'joint interest' of the people, this is a very 
 serious matter, and it is not difficult to form a just idea of the 
 magnitude of that public loss which is the consequence. I will 
 illustrate this part of the subject by a reference to the case of 
 two of the best farmers who have lived in our day one in the 
 south, the other in the north of the island. The southerner was 
 Mr. Prout, of Sawbridgeworth. Mr. Prout was too wise a man 
 to expend his capital upon the conditions which are usually 
 offered by the landlords of England. He farmed his own land, 
 and in twelve years he raised the rental value from 2js. per acre 
 to 42s. per acre. That this was due to his exertions and expen- 
 diture is shown by the fact that there was no such improvement 
 in the value of the surrounding property. The produce of his 
 land was double that of his neighbours, who had not his security 
 of tenure. Now let us turn to the case of the northern farmer 
 who fell into the power of his landlord I mean the late Mr. 
 George Hope, of Fenton-Barns, in Scotland. On the 3Oth of 
 December, 1874, there appeared a letter on 'Tenant Right' in 
 the Times from Mr. Hope, in which he said: 'For more than 
 twenty years I have bought manures and feeding-cakes to the 
 value of .2,000 annually. ... I have known three adjoining 
 farms on the same estate where the leases expired the same 
 year, and two were re-let to the old tenants, one a little above, 
 the other a little below, the old rents ; but the third was let to a 
 new tenant at an increased rent of 50 per cent., and this large 
 increase was mainly due to the expenditure of the former occupier, 
 
62 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 and to his keeping up its condition to the last' Upon the appear- 
 ance of that letter, I wrote to ask Mr. Hope if the third farm 
 was not Fenton-Barns, from which he had been evicted, and in 
 reply he told me that it was, but that he did not wish to parade 
 his personal grievance. He is dead now ; he never recovered" 
 from that blow. Now I say this : if the individual who was Mr. 
 Hope's landlord has, as a proprietor, a standard of duty which is 
 not that of the public, and from the exercise of which the people 
 at large are losers in regard to their 'joint interest' in his land, 
 it is not the wisest policy to throw hard words at him for this 
 transaction. The people are enfranchised, and it is their fault if 
 they do not put it for ever out of a landowner's power to make 
 a tenant regret that he lavished his life and fortune upon agri- 
 culture. We may learn by the letting value of these three 
 farms that, had the cultivation been equal to Mr. Hope's, the 
 produce of the two farms might have been doubled. The 
 people lost that increase in the supply of food owing to in- 
 security of tenure. Lastly, the 'joint interest' of the people 
 with the landlord demands the equitable taxation of land, so 
 that this 'joint interest' should be, in every proper sense of 
 the words, a beneficial interest. 
 
 Now what has Parliament done for the advantage of the 
 people in regard to their ' dormant joint interest ' in the land ? 
 Lord Chancellors, safely moored at the head of their profession, 
 have bewailed the intricacies of transfer ; and the failure of their 
 feeble efforts has, I think, demonstrated the impossibility of 
 obtaining adequate reform from the spontaneous action of 
 Parliament A late Liberal Chancellor, Lord Westbury, who 
 had no scruples in regard to the abolition of the established 
 doctrine of eternal punishment, was so fearful in touching this 
 hoary abuse of our land-system, that the Act which bore his 
 name, and which was devised to effect the registration of titles 
 to land, made a progress in operation upon which I have calcu- 
 lated, in the paper (No. IV.) entitled 'The Transfer of Land,' 
 that its work would not have been fulfilled before the year 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 63 
 
 2633, or about 760 years from the present time. As the evil to 
 be dealt with is one which nobody denies, the Tory Chancellor, 
 that eminent lawyer who now presides in the House of Lords, 
 thought it his duty to prepare a Bill. In its passage through 
 the House of Landlords, Lord Cairns' Bill was deprived of any 
 promise it contained of being effectual, and its place among the 
 statutes of England records only another and a contemptible 
 failure. What has Parliament done to promote the best agri- 
 culture ? It has passed some Public Drainage Acts, which were 
 thinly disguised measures of relief for embarrassed landowners. 
 In the preamble of one of those Acts, Parliament declared in 
 plain words that .2,000,000 should be advanced from the public 
 funds to mitigate the pressure of anticipated pauperism z>., in 
 reduction of poor-rates. 'Whereas . . . it is desirable to supply 
 the demand for agricultural labour, especially at that season of 
 the year when other sources are expended,' are the words of the 
 preamble of 9 and 10 Viet, c. ci. Looking to the duty of Parlia- 
 ment, we turn in a case of this sort to see what regard was had 
 in the expenditure of this 2,000,000 and other sums, to the 
 'dormant joint interest' of the people. What did the public 
 obtain as their share ? The answer is, Nothing. What, then, 
 did the landed gentry do with it ? Mr. Caird, a witness of the 
 highest authority and a friend to the present system, wrote 
 concerning Yorkshire: 'The Government Loan is repayable in 
 twenty-two annual instalments of 6\ per cent., which repays 
 both principal and interest. A few landlords charge their 
 tenants 5 per cent, of this annual sum, and themselves pay i| 
 per cent. Most frequently, the tenant is bound to pay the 
 whole, and in addition to cart the tiles free of charge. And we 
 are sorry to say that more than one instance exists in Yorkshire 
 where the landlord charges his tenant 7^ per cent, thus putting 
 into his pocket I per cent, besides securing a permanently higher 
 value for his land by an outlay to which he does not contribute 
 a single farthing.' I have no doubt that similar practice might 
 have been observed in other counties. In Scotland, ' the custom 
 
64 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 was to charge the tenant a yearly percentage of about I or ij 
 per cent, in excess of the Government rate.' 1 
 
 But all this was honest and dignified compared with the 
 policy of Parliament in regard to the Agricultural Holdings 
 Bill. How sadly true is the proverb that ' corporations have no 
 souls ' ! I don't believe there is one among the excellent and 
 honourable men who form the great majority in both Houses of 
 Parliament who, if the matter had been left to himself, would 
 have conceded legality to a moral claim, and then have enacted 
 that any one who pleased to put himself outside this legal 
 sanction should be at liberty to do so. Such an act of legisla- 
 tion ought to close the long-drawn history which records the 
 selfish, undutiful dealings of Parliament with the tenure of land. 
 Recognising the fact that of the 1,100 or 1,200 members of both 
 Houses not fewer than 800 are included in the landed gentry 
 a fact which those who run may read in the legislation of this 
 island the people must take this great matter into their own 
 hands, resolved that from henceforth Parliament shall look after 
 this * dormant joint interest' under their close and continuous 
 direction. There is no difficulty in the matter of tenant-right. 
 Mr. Hope, in the same letter from which I have quoted, referred 
 to the excellent cultivation he had seen in Lincolnshire, where 
 there is an equitable custom in this matter. He wrote : ' These 
 Lincolnshire tenants had no leases, but farmed under agree- 
 ments to quit on six months' notice, being paid, however, on 
 removal, for draining, marling, and manuring, either by the 
 use of feeding-stuffs or otherwise. Now it is this Lincolnshire 
 custom which I and Scotch farmers generally want to see added 
 to leases for periods of nineteen or twenty-one years, being sure 
 it would have the effect of adding one-third to the crops of the 
 kingdom in a very few years.' Lord Derby and Lord Leicester 
 think the produce of the country might be doubled by good 
 farming; Mr. Hope says that in a few years it might be 
 increased by one-third if all landlords were obliged to do that 
 
 1 The Land Question. By John Macdonnell. (Macmillan, 1873.) 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 65 
 
 which the force of custom compels in the county of Lincoln. 
 We may therefore consider the fact established that if Parlia- 
 ment had not in this matter disregarded the public 'joint 
 interest ' in the land, the food-supply of the island might soon 
 be at least one-third greater than it is at present, when land- 
 lords are free to appropriate the unexhausted expenditure of 
 tenants. 
 
 If these things are done in the green tree of cultivation, what 
 must we expect to find in the dry field of taxation ? While the 
 prosperity of the country has been advancing by ' leaps and 
 bounds,' what has become of the public 'joint interest' in the 
 soil ? The income from real property has in fifty years 
 increased at least 300 per cent. ' On the broadest historical 
 survey there has been an increase of 8,000,000 in local 
 burdens/ 1 which perhaps may be said to have doubled in that 
 period. I have glanced at the history of the land-tax in the 
 paper upon ' Free Trade in Land/ and will not now refer to 
 that subject. But I must say a word with regard to the Succes- 
 sion duty. It is one of the abuses of our present land-system 
 that the State the representative owner of that 'dormant joint 
 interest ' in the soil which Mr. Lowe has asserted has, under 
 the guidance of Parliament, permitted the landlords to arrange 
 this duty according to their own pleasure. The people have no 
 * dormant joint interest ' in the money which any tradesman 
 may bequeath to his children, yet a duty is imposed precisely 
 proportioned to the amount, and I think justly, because the 
 State needs a revenue, and because the State in the hour of a 
 man's death renders service in the transmission of his wealth. 
 But upon the land, in which the State has a joint interest with 
 the proprietor, the charge is not made upon the body of the 
 property, but upon the income. This is another indication of 
 the method of Parliament, which in these days of free trade has 
 been so specially protective of the interests of landlords that 
 even if a bankrupt's estate is in process of liquidation, the 
 
 1 Mr. Goschen's Report on Local Taxation. (Macmillan, 1871.) 
 
 F 
 
66 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 landlord who is a creditor for rent can arrest the proceedings 
 until his claim is discharged in full. Mr. Froude's indictment 
 against the multitude is that they will choose those to represent 
 them who pander to their interest. He has no words of censure 
 for the class which, from the foundation of Parliament to the 
 present day, has directed and controlled legislation touching the 
 land for its own interest. I dislike class legislation, but no one 
 will deny that the evil of it diminishes in proportion to the 
 extent of the class which is seeking its own advantage. In 
 regard to class legislation, I think no wrong so great can 
 happen to this nation as that which has happened that which 
 has placed four-fifths of the soil of our country in the unreal, 
 fettered ownership of five or ten thousand persons of whom the 
 most important section have and hold places in Parliament. 
 
 I have endeavoured to point out in subsequent papers what 
 I consider necessary for the liberation of the soil. The 
 measures must substitute conveyance by registration of title 
 for conveyance by deed, and proprietors must be brought to the 
 registry by compulsion in case of sale, by attraction where they 
 have held possession for a sufficient period. And in order that 
 land may be saleable, and that the process of transfer by 
 registration may be simple and speedy, the power of settling 
 land for life estates, and of consigning the freehold to unborn 
 persons, must be abolished. The 'joint interest' of the public 
 in the land being admitted, the landlord cannot rightly claim 
 to settle that which is not his. It would be obviously fair that 
 he should be permitted to settle charges upon his land to such 
 uses as those to which personalty may be secured. There must 
 be abolition of customary and copyhold estates. We should 
 need a Landed Estates Court, and trustworthy maps of all the 
 lands of the country. 
 
 I have advocated reform upon Conservative grounds. I have 
 pointed out that the position of the landlords for the most part 
 they are not landowners in face of a Parliament continually 
 more swayed by what Mr. Froude calls ' the multitude,' whom 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry./ . 
 
 \ (' ':' '' / 
 their laws have extruded from ownership of 'tJKe. soft, Ais. a 
 
 position fraught with peril to their own intetesrs/'^I have;- 
 appealed to low motives to the same motives which directed 
 the legislation to which I have referred in asserting that land- 
 lords would do well to strengthen their position by promoting 
 the increase of their number through legislative processes, 
 which there can be no doubt would add greatly to the pecuniary 
 value of their interest in the soil. And it is only natural that 
 proposals so moderate as to yield the strongest arguments in 
 this direction should be distasteful to many earnest and ener- 
 getic seekers after reform who demand larger measures. 
 Indeed, that which is most needful is to convince the reforming 
 party that the changes by which free trade in land may be 
 established would result in a wide diffusion of landowner- 
 ship. 
 
 The strongest crutches upon which our land-system still 
 stands are two fallacies. One, that the aggregation of land in 
 the hands of the rich is the result of that economic law which 
 brings diamonds into their possession namely, that com- 
 modities of which there is a limited supply, and which are 
 desired by all, will obtain so high a price as to be inaccessible 
 to any but the wealthy. Mr. Froude, and those who think with 
 him, firmly believe that were those obnoxious laws to which I 
 have been referring, removed and abrogated, and were those 
 other laws which I have suggested, in full operation, the large 
 estates would still grow larger, and the number of agricultural 
 landowners continue to dwindle. Now, I do not hesitate to say 
 that if I shared their belief if I thought that, after the esta- 
 blishment of free trade in land, the dangerous and menacing 
 contraction of landownership would tend to become yet more 
 perilous to the fundamental interests of the country I would 
 from to-day cease to advocate the remedy I have proposed ; I 
 would add to it a demand for something like the French law of 
 compulsory division. But I do not agree in this with Mr. 
 Froude. His theory of the inevitable tendency of landowner- 
 
68 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 ship is, as I have said, based upon a fallacy which is generally 
 formulated in words of this sort : ' Will men whose idea of life 
 is to earn an industrial income of 10 per cent, from their capital, 
 invest or retain an investment of a large part of that capital in 
 the purchase of land for a return of 3 per cent. ? ' The supposi- 
 tion thus raised is regarded as preposterous. The addition of 
 small properties to great estates which is taking place every 
 day is referred to, and the matter is dismissed as affording no 
 basis for argument. But I would ask, Why are the small 
 properties added to the large, and why, when a large estate is 
 for sale, is it not found advantageous to sell it in small lots, say 
 of ten to fifty acres ? Mr. Froude would reply : ' Because the 
 small capitalists are those who seek the highest rate of interest, 
 and an investment in land produces the lowest or next to the 
 lowest.' But this is a wild theory; it is not a fact. In every 
 country in the world, the class of smallest investors is contented 
 with the lowest interest. In Great Britain, being, for the 
 reasons I have stated and will further explain, divorced from 
 the soil, the class finds this in the Post Office Savings Banks, 
 which return only 2\ per cent. But here, partly in consequence 
 of their extrusion from landownership, the largest class is not a 
 saving class. Outside this kingdom the savings of the multitude 
 are. invested in the land and in public funds. The debt of 
 France is held by 4,000,000, that of England by 250,000, 
 persons ; and a like proportion holds in regard to the land. 
 The first demand of the small investor is never high interest ; 
 that form of folly belongs to the upper classes. His want is 
 security, and the consequence is that at this moment an amount 
 nearly equal to one year's revenue of the United Kingdom is 
 held by savings banks, for a return less than the average 
 received by the landowners of this country. The number of 
 small proprietors is dwindling every year because there is no 
 addition. And why is there no addition ? The answer is very 
 simple. It is not, as we have seen, because of the smallness of 
 the return from land; it is obviously because the small capitalist 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry, 69 
 
 cannot afford, and will not consent, to encounter a certain 
 delay in the business, and an uncertain risk in the cost, of 
 purchase. The only man who goes free of care in this respect 
 into the Auction Mart is the large buyer upon whose purchase 
 the cost can amount only to a very small percentage. Say that 
 a man, by years of self-denial and careful thrift, has saved 500, 
 and the idea, so delightful to the minds of most men, of pur- 
 chasing a small property upon which to spend his loving labour 
 and the remainder of his life, presents itself to his imagination. 
 In this country, and in this country only, the thought is chilled 
 and checked because he has no assurance that the cost of 
 purchase may not amount to a fourth or even a third of his 
 store ; and if the purchase-money exceed his possessions, and 
 he wishes to raise a further sum by way of mortgage, that 
 process, to be repeated perhaps at the end of three years, may 
 involve him in a lifelong charge for legal costs equal to the 
 amount of the mortgagee's interest. He abandons, with a 
 shudder, the coveted land to the men of ten and twenty 
 thousand acres, and possibly his store of gold (for these small 
 investors of the lower middle class may be thus imprudent) is 
 transformed into the baseless fabric of a foreign bond, not be- 
 cause he loves the foreigner, and not because he hankers after a 
 promise of 9 per cent., but because he is driven to the Stock 
 Exchange by terror of the cost of law, and if he must buy a 
 paper promise to pay he likes to have a high figure. Many of 
 us know in our personal experience the truth of this. Many 
 could mention cases in which this cost amounted to one-third of 
 the purchase-money. I bought a small leasehold property 
 lately. I thought the lawyer's account would not be more than 
 15 ; I had no assurance it would not be 150. It was ^35. 
 If that property had been in South Australia, the transaction 
 would have occupied hours instead of weeks, would have cost 
 me fewer shillings than it cost pounds sterling ; and the charge 
 would have been one which I could have calculated exactly 
 beforehand. Can any one fail to see what would be the con- 
 
jo The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 sequence if a system like that which works so well in our 
 colonies were established in this country ? The purchaser, who 
 always magnifies the uncertain cost of law, would then be 
 prepared to add considerably to his bidding. There could be 
 no objection to a part of that increase of value going to the 
 landowner, but some of it should find its way to the purse of 
 the State. Of course, to establish such a system of registration 
 of title would be more difficult here than in any of our colonies, 
 but no competent authority doubts that it could be done, or 
 that in this island we should gain advantages as great as those 
 which are being enjoyed by the people of the larger island of 
 Australia. The benefits actually realized in South Australia 
 are thus described by Sir Robert Torrens, the author of the 
 
 ' i. Titles being indefeasible, proprietors may invest capital in land secure 
 against risk of deprivation and the no less harassing contingency of a 
 Chancery suit ; mortgagees, having also no further occasion to look to 
 validity of title, may confine their attention to the adequacy of the security. 
 2. A saving amounting on the average to 90 per cent., or iSs. in the pound 
 sterling, has been effected in the cost of transfers and other dealings, 
 irrespective of the contingent liability to further expenses resulting from 
 suits at law and in equity, the grounds of which are cut off by the alteration 
 of tenure. 3. The procedure is so simple as to be readily comprehended, so 
 that men of ordinary education may transact their own business. 4. Dealings 
 in land are transacted as expeditiously as dealings in merchandise or cattle, 
 fifteen minutes being the average time occupied in rilling up the forms and 
 completing a transaction.' 
 
 Compared with our restrictive system, this sounds like an 
 announcement of the millennium. The English Law Reform 
 Association declared twenty years ago that ' it has been esti- 
 mated by persons of experience and authority in such matters 
 that a cheap, simple, expeditious, and accurate system of trans- 
 fers of land would add four or five years' purchase to the market- 
 able value of land/ 2 From whence would this increase flow ? 
 Not from the pockets of the rich, for they are not hindered in 
 
 1 The South Australian System of Registration of Title. By Robert R. Torrens. 
 Adelaide, 1859. 
 
 2 On Registration of Transfers of Land. 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 7 1 
 
 the acquisition of land by fear of the cost of conveyance by 
 deed. It would come from the class of which Mr. Froude and 
 the maintainers of the feudal system say that its members 
 cannot afford to own land. The first fallacy is thus exposed. 
 The highest price is never obtained where land is purchased 
 as a luxury by the rich, but always where it is most suitably 
 divided for industrial occupation. This is as true of Old Broad 
 Street compared with Belgrave Square, as it is of the county of 
 Bucks compared with Flanders, France, or Switzerland. There 
 has been an approach to the system of free trade in land in the 
 offer of the Church lands of Ireland to the tenants. And what 
 has been the consequence ? Four thousand sales have been 
 effected at unusually high rates, and a small proprietary is being 
 thus established on those lands. A man who can buy twenty 
 acres of land, worth 30^. per acre in the hands of a great pro- 
 prietor, and returning at that rent 3 per cent, upon the outlay, 
 will commonly, by such diligent and unremitting labour as the 
 magic of property can alone call forth, make that land worth 
 gos. an acre in a few years. His investment will then be paying 
 9 per cent, upon the purchase-money. Ownership produces on 
 the part of the occupier labour which a leaseholder or yearly 
 tenant would never give. It would be easy to point to many 
 cases in which tenant-farmers, men of superior energy, would 
 have been in a far better position had their capital been first 
 employed in securing ownership. Take the case of Mr. Hope, 
 of Fenton-Barns, as one of many. At any time he could have 
 obtained two-thirds of the purchase-money of any breadth of 
 land at 4 per cent. The 50 per cent, increase in the value of 
 that farm, which was obtained by his landlord when he quitted 
 it, would have been his own. There can be no doubt such men 
 would be far richer at their death, could they be owners as well 
 as farming occupiers of the soil, even though they were restricted 
 to a third of the area over which their tenancy extends. The 
 price of land in this country is low compared with what it would 
 fetch if, by the establishment of what I have called 'Free Land,' 
 
72 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 the occupying farmer were brought in as a competitor. Land 
 which would be worth 60 an acre in this island fetches ;ioo 
 in the Channel Islands, and nearly ^"150 in Switzerland. 'In 
 England, 30^. an acre would be thought a fair, and indeed rather 
 a high, rent for middling land ; it is only inferior land that in 
 Jersey and Guernsey, where the average sizes of farms are re- 
 spectively eleven and sixteen acres, will not let for at least 4, 
 while in Switzerland the average rent is 6 an acre.' l 
 
 I think I have now demonstrated that the present distribution 
 of land in England is not the result of economic laws. The 
 distribution of land, where the unrestricted action of economic 
 laws is permitted, will tend towards those who will give the 
 highest price for it, and as a rule those are they in whose 
 possession it can be made most productive. And the primary 
 reason why, under a system of free trade in land, there would 
 be a wholesome tendency to the restoration of that valuable but 
 how almost extinct class, the small proprietors, is because in 
 their hands an increase of produce, the possibility of which 
 landlords like Lord Derby fully admit but cannot obtain, might 
 most surely be accomplished. We shall see this more clearly 
 in regarding the second fallacy, which may be thus expressed : 
 ' That the agricultural production of England is larger than that 
 of other countries because the farms are larger.' This fallacy is 
 constantly in the mouths of those who uphold the English land- 
 system. There is no lawyer of greater authority than the Lord 
 Chancellor, and when he undertook in 1854 the defence of 
 primogeniture, he believed he had reached firm ground in the 
 argument that primogeniture is favourable to agriculture be- 
 cause it tends to large estates, and large estates tend to large 
 farms. How is it that this belief, which I shall prove to be 
 erroneous, has become rooted in the minds of British statesmen, 
 even of some who I have no doubt endeavour to keep their 
 intelligence open to the reception of truth upon this great 
 question ? A too ready acceptance of statistics is in many 
 
 1 Peasant Proprietors. By W. T. Thornton, C.B. (Macmillan.) 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 73 
 
 cases the cause of error. When the lesson of statistics runs in 
 the direction of national self-esteem, or the interest of a govern- 
 ing class, it is hard to throw over the favourable witness. And 
 official figures do undoubtedly show that the produce of wheat 
 per acre in England is much greater than that of any other 
 country. Herr Block, a Prussian official, compiled a table which 
 was promulgated by his Government after the great German war 
 of 1866, and which, through the action of our Foreign Office, has 
 been widely circulated in England. 1 No well-informed person 
 believes that it is strictly accurate, especially with regard to the 
 production of France ; but its general indication is no doubt 
 trustworthy. We may certainly accept as true the result that 
 the United Kingdom has the smallest proportion of the popula- 
 tion engaged in agriculture, and the largest production of wheat 
 per acre. The following is Herr Block's table : 
 
 
 Agricultural 
 population to 
 total population. 
 
 Average returns 
 per hectare of 
 corn. 
 
 Head of cattle 
 per 1,000 
 inhabitants. 
 
 Head of cattle 
 per loo hectares. 
 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Hectolitres. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Number. 
 
 Russia in Europe 
 
 85 to 90 
 
 l6'0 
 
 6 93 
 
 86 
 
 Italy . 
 
 77 
 
 i6'o 
 
 291 
 
 249 
 
 France . 
 
 5 1 
 
 14*6 
 
 494 
 
 346 
 
 Belgium 
 
 5i 
 
 I9'3 
 
 402 
 
 660 
 
 Prussia . 
 
 45 
 
 19-8 
 
 540 
 
 369 
 
 Austria . 
 
 25 
 
 i6 4 o 
 
 635 
 
 307 
 
 Spain . 
 
 25 
 
 i6'o 
 
 .316 
 
 151 
 
 Holland 
 
 16 
 
 23-0 
 
 492 
 
 539 
 
 United Kingdom 
 
 12 
 
 40-8 
 
 515 
 
 478 
 
 But how do these figures bear upon the question of small 
 farms ? They have been accepted by some politicians without 
 scrutiny. Mr. W. R. Greg flourished them over my head in 
 rejoinder to the answer I gave his terrific observations in the 
 character of Cassandra. Referring to the above figures, he 
 thought ' Mr. Arnold would be surprised to find that the average 
 annual produce of wheat in Belgium is 20 per cent, below that 
 
 1 Part I. Reports from H. M. Representatives respecting the Tenure of Land in 
 the several Countries of Europe. 1869. 
 
74 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 of England.' l He seemed to think there was no appeal from 
 Herr Block's table. This is how the matter is put by politicians 
 such as Mr. Greg : ' Farms are large in England. Farms are 
 small in France and Belgium. The produce of wheat in Eng- 
 land as compared with those countries is as 40 to 14 and 19 
 Therefore large farms are better than small, and therefore, what- 
 ever changes may be made in our land-laws, provided there is 
 free trade, there will be a constant tendency to increase the size 
 of farms. Q.E.D.' Thus Mr. Froude and Mr. Greg, with per- 
 haps three-fourths of Parliament in full agreement. 
 
 But let us try to put the matter more accurately. England 
 is a country of large farms ; therefore the only proper com- 
 parison of English agriculture with that of any other country 
 would be where large farms prevail. By comparing large with 
 large, and small with small, we obtain a just comparison; we 
 see more clearly what are the essential differences of agriculture 
 in the several States. Perhaps no possible error is greater than 
 to suppose that the system of one country can be adopted in 
 all its features in another country by a mere act of legislative 
 authority. But, as a rule, the size of farms does follow the 
 tendency of legislation. The self-denial, the careful thrift, the 
 scrupulous frugality of the Flemish, the French, or the Swiss 
 peasant, could not be imparted to the English poor by any 
 statute of Parliament. These must grow from seed ; they 
 cannot be transplanted. But these domestic virtues, which 
 have become exotics by the maintenance of the feudal system 
 in this island, would surely spring up again when the law fa- 
 voured the possession by the comparatively poor of that form 
 of investment in which alone their confidence in property can 
 take root and become established. The rude comparison made 
 upon the face of Herr Block's table conceals the real facts, 
 which I maintain are these : I. That the soil of the United 
 Kingdom is well adapted for the varied forms of agriculture, 
 and has a greater natural fertility than the north and centre of 
 
 1 ' Cassandra's Rejoinder.' Contemporary Revieiv, November, 1874. 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 75 
 
 Europe. 2. That the large farms of England produce more 
 than the large farms of the Continent ; but (3) that the greatest 
 produce of grain of all sorts, as well as of meat, is gathered from 
 small farms, from the land of peasant-proprietors ; and (4) that 
 rent and saleable value are relatively highest upon peasant- 
 properties. From which I shall argue that if we had free trade 
 in land in England, even though we maintained the principle of 
 non-interference with the distribution among living persons of a 
 testator's land, we should find that the soil would, at least to a 
 wholesome extent, return to the hands of yeomen and peasant- 
 proprietors, in whose possession it would exhibit, as it does in 
 those of the neighbouring peoples of the Channel Islands, of 
 Normandy, and of Flanders, a higher level of agriculture, and a 
 heavier produce, than can be shown by the general results of 
 large farming in England. 
 
 The average produce of wheat in France would appear much 
 greater, were it not for the inferior production of the large farms 
 in the west and south ; and the same may be said of Belgium, 
 the produce of the small farms in Flanders being very much 
 greater than that of the large farms upon the French frontier. 
 In fair comparison with English agriculture, which department is 
 the garden of France ? There can be no doubt it is Normandy 
 the most subdivided. 'The west and south,' says M. de Mornay, 
 in an official report, ' have preserved more large estates than the 
 north and east.' I do not wish to see the French law of com- 
 pulsory subdivision established in England, but I do desire to see 
 the peasant a successful competitor for land as he is in France 
 and Belgium. It is quite a mistake to suppose that there are no 
 considerable estates in France, and that subdivision proceeds 
 only in obedience to the law. Together with five millions of 
 small proprietors, there were before the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, 
 according to the great authority of M. de Lavergne, 50,000 
 owners with estates averaging 500 acres. Division progresses 
 from economic causes. The peasant is the highest bidder, and 
 therefore, when estates are sold, the land is put up in small 
 
76 The. Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 lots. M. de Lavergne has stated in a letter to Mr. ClifFe Leslie 
 that 'the best cultivation in France is that of the peasant- 
 proprietors, and the subdivision of the soil makes perpetual 
 progress.' 
 
 If the average produce of France and Belgium is reduced by 
 classing the inferior yield of the large farms with the superior 
 yield of the small farms, then I have established the worth- 
 lessness of the comparison by which the advantage of the 
 exclusively large farm system of England is sought to be 
 maintained. And this is incontestably true. ' At the present 
 day/ says M. Passy, 1 'on the same area and under equal cir- 
 cumstances, the largest clear produce is yielded by small 
 farming.' And with regard to Belgium, M. de Laveleye 
 writes : ' The large farmers of Hainault and Namur do not 
 buy manure, fancying they would ruin themselves by doing 
 so. The Flemish small farmers invest from fifteen to twenty 
 millions of francs in guano every year, and quite as much in 
 other kinds of manure. Where does large farming make such 
 advances ? ' 2 ' On the ten-acre farms of Flanders, the crops 
 are heavier by a fourth than on the hundred-acre farms of La 
 Hesbaie, and as heavy again as on the farms of two hundred 
 and fifty acres in Le Coudroz.' 3 As to the objection that small 
 farmers cannot obtain the best machinery, it is contradicted by 
 the fact that the most costly machine in general use in England, 
 the steam-threshing machine, ' is to be found everywhere in 
 Flanders.' 4 So it is among the peasant farmers of Roumania. 
 I have seen more steam-threshing machines of English make 
 in a day's passage up the Danube than in any six hours 
 of railway travelling in England. 
 
 We may, I think, consider the fact established that in France 
 and Belgium it is the lands of the peasant-proprietors which are 
 the most productive. But I have undertaken more than this. I 
 
 1 Memoire de V Academic des Sciences. 
 
 2 Systems of Land Tenure. (Macmillan, 1870.) 
 
 3 Peasant Proprietors. By W. T. Thornton, C.B. (Macmillan.) 
 
 4 Systems of Land Tenure. (Macmillan.) 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 77 
 
 have promised to show that large farming, which is seen to the 
 greatest advantage in England, does not yield so much produce 
 as small farming under less favourable conditions. I say less 
 favourable, because of the superior soil of the United Kingdom. 
 'Not a blade of grass/ says M. de Laveleye, ' grows in Flanders 
 without manure.' 1 He adds that soil of the United Kingdom 
 ' might be bought to fertilise the soil of the Fleming/ But what 
 do industry and thrift united to ownership accomplish ? Mr. Caird 
 gives 26J bushels as the average produce per acre of English 
 farming. 2 But in Flanders, in the district of small farms, 
 where, however wheat covers but a small area (to the disadvan- 
 tage of Belgium in Herr Block's table), the average yield is 
 from 32 to 36 bushels. 3 ' Of barley, a more congenial cereal, the 
 average is in Flanders 41 bushels, and in good ground 60 bushels ; 
 while in England it is probably under 33, and would certainly be 
 overstated at 36 bushels.' 4 
 
 It will be admitted by all practical agriculturists that the 
 surest test of production is the number of cattle, and in this 
 matter Herr Block's table does exhibit our inferiority to Belgium 
 .and Holland. ' It would startle/ says Mr. Rham, ' the English 
 farmer of 400 acres of arable land if he were told that he should 
 constantly feed 100 head of cattle. Yet this would not be too 
 large a proportion if the Flemish system were strictly followed 
 ... a beast for every three acres being a common Flemish 
 proportion, and on very small occupations, where spade-husbandry 
 is used, the proportion being still greater.' In 1873, on a farm 
 of 32 acres, near Ypres, Mr. Thornton counted eight cows, six 
 bullocks, a calf, and four pigs ; and was told by the farmer that 
 over and above what his own cattle yielded, he purchased no less 
 than ^200 worth of manure annually. Again, take that part of 
 Her Majesty's European dominions in which alone small farming 
 may fairly be compared with the large farming of England I 
 
 1 Systems of Land Tenure. (Macmillan. ) 
 
 2 English Agriculture. 
 
 3 Outlines of Flemish Industry. By Rev. W. Rham. 
 * Peasant Proprietors. By W. T. Thornton, C. B. 
 
7 8 The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 mean the Channel Islands. Certain lands in Guernsey yielded 
 of wheat an average, for the three years ending 1847, f 7&> 80, 
 and 72 bushels per acre. In the Channel Islands, 'the agricul- 
 tural population is more than four times as dense as in England, 
 there being in the latter country only one cultivator to seventeen 
 acres of cultivated land, while in Guernsey and Jersey there is 
 one to about four. Yet the agriculture of these islands maintains; 
 besides cultivators, non-agricultural populations respectively 
 twice and four times as dense as that of England. . . . There 
 are larger estates in England,' says Mr. Brock, a Bailiff of 
 Guernsey, 'than the whole of this island, but where will one be 
 found that produces the quantity of provisions sent to market 
 by our small farms ? ' l 
 
 Why should the Isle of Wight be less productive than 
 Guernsey or Jersey, and why should the latter be free from, 
 while the former is oppressed, in common with all England, by 
 pauperism ? ' Certainly/ writes Mr. Thornton, ' there is not 
 a beggar within the limits of his [the Bailiff of Guernsey's] 
 jurisdiction, and an able-bodied person very rarely, if ever, seeks 
 admittance into either of the two hospitals or asylums for the 
 poor.' The pauperism of England is to a great extent the 
 consequence of our feudalised land-system. 
 
 I have endeavoured to set out the case fairly and honestly. 
 The abuses of a system which gives four-fifths of the soil to 
 fewer than 10,000 persons, and allows them but nominal 
 ownership, have now been exposed. Our race is deteriorating 
 by forced and unnatural confinement in the atmosphere of 
 streets. Owing to the size and character of estates, the rural 
 population does not increase, and pours no adequate infusion of 
 healthy blood into the towns. The primary cause of pauperism, 
 the great fault of the English poor, is want of thrift. Our land- 
 system denies to them the proper use of the best of all schools 
 for the acquisition of that virtue the careful cultivation of small 
 freeholds. No people have ever exhibited frugality who were 
 
 1 Guernsey and Jersey Magazine. 
 
The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 79 
 
 thus divorced from the soil. The production of our island is 
 restricted because the occupier has not sufficient security of 
 tenure. We are governed by landlords with a view to the main- 
 tenance of the English system, because their estates give them 
 power and place irrespective of personal claims. The value 
 of land is kept down by terror of the cost of conveyancing, and 
 we have to bear the heavy charge of a Socialist Poor Law in 
 a country swarming with paupers. Mr. Wallace says } educated 
 Russians wonder at 'our habitual callousness with regard to 
 social danger/ and asserts that the Russians have, in their very 
 widely diffused proprietorship, had in view the prevention of a 
 pauper class. All these evils, we contend, would be in process 
 of amendment and disappearance were free trade in land 
 established. We should not see we do not desire to behold 
 the extinction of large estates, nor the disappearance of large 
 farms. But the man who could buy ten, or twenty, or thirty 
 acres, would, in many places, compete successfully, and at far 
 higher prices than are now obtained, with the man of broad 
 possessions ; and from this increased value given to land, which 
 would be augmented by the decline of pauperism, there would 
 be an ample margin for the State to obtain by taxation on 
 transfer or succession an income which might be employed in 
 the reduction of the National Debt (to the further advantage of 
 landowners) by at least 10,000,000 a year. 
 
 All this is no chimera ; it is not even an experiment. The 
 requisite legislation has been highly successful in less favourable 
 circumstances than we can offer. Without doing wrong to any 
 man, with improvement to the property of all, this blessed 
 change may be effected. If part of our dear fatherland were 
 occupied by some hostile tribe, we should need no call to free 
 the illustrious soil which has known no conquest for 800 years. 
 Can we not see that our land in every part is now subject to a 
 costly and enduring, though perhaps less humiliating, bondage ? 
 The honour of liberating the soil of England by beneficent 
 
 1 Russia, vol. i., p. 217. (Cassell, Fetter, and Galpin, 1877.) 
 
8o The Abuses of a Landed Gentry. 
 
 legislation will not be lost, now that the power in Parliament 
 belongs, and will soon in the counties more fully belong, to the 
 people. It may be ours, or we, neglectful of our duty and 
 opportunity, may supinely pass it on to our successors. Let 
 this distinction be ours, and to" the latest of English life men 
 and women will recall the time in which we fought and won the 
 glorious battle, as the day in which the grand old country, 
 bating nothing of reverence and love for her traditions and 
 history, became renewed with the bloom and vigour of youth, 
 and, joining in the race with her competitors throughout the 
 world, was able to preserve her lead, because she wisely 
 determined to take off her feudal trappings, not to trample 
 upon them nor to tear them in pieces, but to lay them aside as 
 obsolete, antiquated, and outgrown. 
 
III. 
 
 FREE TRADE IN LAND. 
 
 1 .^OURTEEN years ago, in a vast mill-shed erected by the 
 -L co-operative enterprise of working men, I listened' to the 
 last public speech of Richard Cobden. Never have I seen 
 greater homage paid to living man. Some rough deal planks 
 formed a sounding-board above his head ; the place was not 
 well lighted ; his words could reach but little more than half the 
 vast assembly. Five or six thousand people had congregated to 
 listen to the ' unadorned eloquence ' of that practical man, in a 
 place most bare of ornament. He spoke with the measured 
 tone of one who is sensible of great responsibility, as a man 
 ought to speak whose words were carried to the magic needles 
 ere the ink that recorded them was dry, and flashed away to all 
 the centres of English intelligence, there to be reproduced a 
 thousand, thousand times before the eyes of his countrymen. 
 That night he offered to the competition of English statesmen 
 a splendid prize, the rich guerdon of a merit brighter than his 
 own ; a reward nobler even than that respect betokened by the 
 myriad of upturned faces, hanging, as it were, with unquestion- 
 ing confidence upon his words. He expressed his belief that 
 success would attend a properly conducted effort to establish 
 free trade in land ; and he asserted that the man who should 
 accomplish that work will have done more for the English poor 
 than had been effected by the application of free trade to 
 commerce. 
 
 And there it lies : the prize fell to the ground ; death sealed 
 
 G 
 
82 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 the lips of the speaker ; his words have assumed the solemnity 
 of a bequest; but nothing, positively nothing, has been done 
 towards the establishment of free trade in land. I really do 
 not believe that any one possessed of great authority in the 
 legislature questions the beneficial influence which a free ex- 
 change of land would exert. 'We Englishmen,' as Mr. Gladstone 
 said at one of the dinners of the Cobden Club, 'who have 
 received from Mr. Cobden a special commission and a special 
 charge,' have strangely neglected our calling. Believing in their 
 utterances, it can only be supposed that the conscientious men 
 who direct the powers of the State have been waiting long years 
 for a favourable breath of public opinion and for a clear channel. 
 The late head of the legal profession (Lord Hatherley) has said 
 that in 1815 he read Adam Smith, and that the study of the 
 works of that great economist was the cause of his taking up 
 the principles to which he has ever since adhered. In 1859 
 Lord Chancellor Hatherley a man possessing, perhaps beyond 
 any of his predecessors, the respect and confidence of his 
 countrymen spoke scornfully of the law, of which he was even 
 then a pillar, so far as it related to land. He said : ' Look how 
 the limitations of your law affect the transfer of your land. It 
 is only on account of these that you have difficulties as to title ; 
 because, if it were not for the complexity of limitations, a 
 system of registration would long since have been established, 
 which so far as fraud and rapidity of transfer was concerned 
 would have freed us from any difficulty of title whatever. You 
 have now the combined effect of fraud and the complicated 
 investigation of title, which operate in the most serious manner 
 to prevent the free transfer of the land in our community. 
 What I wish, and have long wished for, is a free transfer of 
 land' in other words, free trade in land. But it is not our 
 lawyers and statesmen only who have been content with the 
 expression of a personal opinion upon this great question. The 
 people have permitted the monopoly of land to become more and 
 more restricted, without interference. This surprised Mr. Cobden. 
 
Free Trade in Land. 83 
 
 He said : ' It is astonishing that the people are so tacit in their 
 submission to the perpetuation of the feudal system in this 
 country as it affects property in land, so long after it has been 
 shattered to pieces in every other country.' But he knew the 
 reason why ; he declared the cause of this languid acquiescence 
 to be that ' the great increase of our manufacturing system has 
 given such an expansive field of employment to the population, 
 that the want of land as a field for investment and employment 
 for labour has been comparatively little felt.' ' So long,' he 
 predicted, ' as this prosperity of our manufactures continues, 
 there will be no great outcry against the landed monopoly.' 
 
 I say the time has come when this tacit submission exists no 
 longer ; when the maintainers of the present land system must 
 accept reform, or risk the rude chances of opposition. Slowly 
 but surely the people are mastering this question. Every wind 
 that blows brings to the shores of England testimony to her 
 matchless wealth and to her unequalled poverty. Englishmen 
 know, as a rule, very little of the land systems of other coun- 
 tries ; and the books which have been written are, for the most 
 part, very superficial, or too ' dry ' for popular reading. But not 
 a few people are aware that our land system, so far as it is 
 known abroad, excites the wonder rather than the admiration 
 of the world. There is nothing like it. There are countries of 
 peasant proprietors, such as France, Switzerland, and Belgium ; 
 there are other countries with a class resembling our aristocracy ; 
 but there is no other portion of the earth where the land is for 
 the most part owned by one class, farmed by another, and tilled 
 by a third. I anticipate the criticism of the opponents of re- 
 form, who at this point will exclaim triumphantly that such 
 an exceptional position is the cause of that enduring stability 
 which the institutions of this country have preserved, and that 
 therefore the maintenance of the existing arrangement is desir- 
 able. It will surprise those only who are ignorant that free 
 trade in land is both a truly Liberal proposition and also a 
 thoroughly Conservative measure, that I should frankly admit 
 
84 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 this. I do believe that this singularity of our system has tended 
 to preserve our institutions. How ? Because it has rendered the 
 voice of the rural districts subservient to the will of the urban 
 population, and yet has presented a nearly equal power of re- 
 sistance aided by the peculiarity of our electoral system, which 
 found grossest expression in the acknowledged and even lauded 
 existence of 'rotten boroughs.' But this artificial equilibrium is 
 passing away, and every day the rural party are losing power 
 and influence in the State. To repair this balance free trade in 
 land has become necessary. 
 
 My earliest recollections are some incidents of the free-trade 
 struggle. I well remember the bitter words which, as a child, 
 I heard spoken around me with reference to Cobden and Bright. 
 As a boy of fourteen I sat on the stage of ' Old Drury ' never 
 so crowded, even on Boxing Night, as it was then with landlords 
 who had travelled long distances to hear the turgid eloquence of 
 Protectionist leaders. There was some fire in the movement, 
 but it was borrowed I will not say hired- light. A very un- 
 trained instinct might have detected unreality ; they were 
 defending a privilege, not a right ; and of the agricultural class 
 they had not the sympathy of the labourers. The peasantry 
 of England could not be rallied to the cry of ' Dear bread and 
 dear cotton stuffs ! ' But suppose it had been otherwise ; 
 assume that our land system had resembled that of France ; 
 grant that there had been 10,000,000 of people engaged in the 
 cultivation of the soil, instead of 2,000,000 ; and that instead of 
 these 2,000,000 inactively sympathizing with the demand for 
 cheap bread, there had been 4,000,000 of peasant landowners 
 and corn-sellers, with a far more weighty representation in 
 Parliament than the landed interest possessed. Had this been 
 the case in England, who will assert that our institutions would 
 then have survived ? It may be that civil war could not have 
 been averted ; for these peasants would hardly have condoned 
 such a policy as that of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli would 
 never have displayed the intelligence and patriotism which 
 
Free Trade in Land. 85 
 
 induced the leaders of the English landed interest so readily to 
 accept the victory of their opponents. 
 
 We must not be vain ; it is silly to suppose that we alone of 
 all people in the world, are wise that we only can construct 
 durable institutions. We are of a b,usy, enterprising, conquering 
 race, but we shall do well to remember that we are in possession 
 of a country, the natural circumstances of which have moulded 
 our institutions. Long before Adam delved or Eve span, rich 
 store of metal, thousands of fathoms from the surface, was, as it 
 were, distilled into fissures of the granite ; the trees of primeval 
 forests were converted by decomposition and pressure into rich 
 beds of coal ; and then, fortunately, these and other treasures 
 were so upheaved, that within the smallest area, probably, upon 
 all the earth, were to be found, in this our island home, the 
 greatest variety of natural wealth : stony districts, over which a 
 thousand limpid and perennial streams ran ready to serve in 
 cotton and woollen manufactures; coal-beds stretching in adjacent 
 and parallel lines from Newcastle to Cardiff; good soil for culti- 
 vation, and a climate assisting the husbandman all these things 
 tended to produce for England that balance of powers which, 
 usefully acting upon each other, have yet tended to give to the 
 concentrated, and therefore the more intellectual, population of 
 the towns, the preponderance that in other countries has rested 
 with the immobile and less educated class, the dominance of 
 which has been productive of revolution and disorder. The 
 shortlived triumph of the Communal idea in Paris, in 1871, was 
 nothing but a revolt of citizens against government by ' rurals.' 
 Had there been 10,000,000 of peasantry in this country, with a 
 land system like that of France, we might have seen revolution 
 followed by despotism, and have been subjects of the Emperor 
 Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 I propose to recommend the establishment of free trade in 
 land as necessary for the interests of every class in the country ; 
 but we must first glance at the land system as it now exists. 
 The number of agricultural landowners is, I believe, decreasing ; 
 
86 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 the causes which promote this decline are of increasing in- 
 tensity. What are the chief of these causes ? I should say, the 
 increase of capital, and the cost, together with the uncertainty of 
 the cost, of conveyance. The wealth acquired by manufactur- 
 ing industry has tended to this result, for the overflow of these 
 riches has narrowed the land market, because it has passed into 
 the hands of men who are content to sacrifice a large portion of 
 the ordinary profits of capital to purchase the social distinction 
 which acres confer, and upon whose large purchases the cost of 
 conveyance is not a" heavy charge. Manufacture pays an enor- 
 mous tribute to landlords in the shape of ground-rent, much of 
 which is spent in the purchase of other land. As Assistant 
 Commissioner of Public Works in Lancashire during the Cotton 
 Famine, I became officially acquainted with some of the most 
 striking instances of the conversion of land from agricultural to 
 manufacturing uses. Estate maps were brought before me of a 
 hundred years old, which showed the sites of towns now paying 
 .20,000 or ^30,000 a year in ground-rents to have been then 
 nothing but obscure villages on a neglected moor, not worth 
 500 a year to the proprietor. I could give many instances 
 where, by the competition of industrial capital, the rent of land 
 has risen within a very few years from so many shillings to as 
 many pounds per acre ; and I cannot forget that I saw this vast 
 industrial capital depreciated and jeopardized, charged with local 
 burdens most grievous to be borne, and receiving but scant 
 assistance from the landowners whom it had so enriched, and 
 who, in full security, held the property of the leaseholders as a 
 guarantee for their income. 
 
 Our manufacturing prosperity has done more than this to 
 enrich the monopolists of land. Some of the princes of manu- 
 facture have become successful accumulators of the soil, and 
 of many more the fair daughters have carried in their hands 
 at marriage the gains of industry to expand the ring-fence of 
 the landowner. The construction of railways was made sub- 
 servient to the same end. There was once a feast I could 
 
Free Trade in Land. 87 
 
 name the day and the place at which eight surveyors sat 
 round a tavern table in a home county, under the presidency of 
 a nobleman's steward. The carte du jour was unlimited, but 
 the favourite course was tasted first, and it went into the pockets 
 instead of the mouths of the company ; there was a 50 note in 
 each man's dinner napkin. The incident is a trifle ; but no 
 intelligent person who compares the cost of English railways 
 with that of those which the same hands have constructed in 
 other countries, will doubt that English landlords received 
 ,100,000,000 over and above the actual value of their land, 
 from which sum there is only to be deducted the unnecessary 
 payments to lawyers, and for other professional services which 
 their opposition and vexatious processes demanded. This vast 
 sum was for the most part expended by landowners in the pur- 
 chase of small freeholds ; and besides these enabling forces, 
 they have had the advantage of the increasing value of land 
 due not only to tenants' improvements, but also to the growing 
 wealth and number of the population an increase which has 
 been at least as rapid as the increase of national expenditure. 
 
 The monopoly of land is directly fostered by the cost of 
 transfer. The landlord is willing to invest his money for a 
 return of 2\ or 3 per cent., and the lawyer does all he can to 
 keep small capitalists from competition. Among industrious 
 nations of the Continent, the. greater part of the cost of the 
 conveyance of land is a percentage on the purchase-money, 
 which passes to the coffers of the State, so that while the ex- 
 pense on a purchase of 100 would be, say, $, that of the 
 conveyance of property worth 100,000 would be 5000. But 
 here the operation of the law imposes a system precisely the 
 reverse ; it practically forbids the purchase of small properties 
 by imposing legal charges, the proportion of which invariably 
 declines with the increase of the purchase-money. A well- 
 known land agent asserts and the experience of hundreds will 
 be similar that he has often signed deeds for the purchase of 
 property of small value, when the legal expenses have equalled 
 
88 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 one-third of the purchase-money. A member has stated in his 
 place in Parliament that he has known the conveyance of 
 half an acre of land to cost three times the purchase-money 
 the lawyer's bill having amounted to ^"150. Yet, perhaps, the 
 uncertainty of the cost of conveyance exerts a more powerful 
 influence in the limitation of the number of agricultural land- 
 owners. The charge is unduly magnified to the prejudice of the 
 small capitalist. An example of this occurred very recently 
 within my own knowledge. Solicitors now permit them- 
 selves to charge by a percentage for the cost of a mortgage, and 
 an owner of land valued at 7000, anxious for certainty, agreed 
 to pay 2 per cent, or 140, for all the business incident to 
 effecting a mortgage for securing a loan of ^"5000 upon the 
 property. The lawyer told me the title was so simple that he 
 could not, if he had made out a bill, have charged more than 
 40 ; so that this unfortunate person needlessly paid ;ioo, 
 merely from fear of the uncertainty of the amount of law 
 charges. It is not necessary to explain how much more strongly 
 the same fear would press upon the man whose entire property 
 consisted of land valued at two or three hundred pounds, nor 
 can it be doubted that the soil of England, speaking of the 
 country generally, is reduced in selling value to the extent of 
 from two to four years' purchase by the incubus of this system 
 of conveyancing. 
 
 The words which I have quoted as spoken by Lord Chancellor 
 Hatherley, condemning the limitations of the law, place the 
 axe of reform directly at the root of this system. Land- 
 owners are now encouraged to fence their ownership, by their 
 settlements, with limitations which swathe the soil of the 
 country in parchments, and make of us, as Lord Westbury said, 
 ' a lawyer-ridden people/ The soil of England is held under 
 disabilities. When the House of Lords was crowded prior to 
 the most memorable division on the Irish Land Bill, a friend 
 who was with me, looking down upon the august assembly, 
 whispered, ' And these men own one-fifth of the United King- 
 
Free Trade in Land. 89 
 
 dom!' 'Would to God they did/ I answered. 'I doubt if 
 there are a dozen men there who have an acre of land that they 
 can call their own.' Their families, not they, are the owners of 
 that large part of the kingdom. Years ago, in their hot youth, 
 when they were neither statesmen nor practical agriculturists, 
 as many of them now are, they signed away to their sons, and 
 after the sons, to a long line of brothers and nephews even 
 when they had not a thought of marriage the freehold of their 
 inheritance. How then are the interests of the community 
 regarded in their limited ownership of the land ? I speak of my 
 own practical experience and observation. On the majority of 
 great family estates the rent is far below what it might be if 
 the land were most advantageously prepared and divided for 
 cultivation ; but the arrangement between the landlord and, 
 tenant is a mixture of a feudal and a business character. Each 
 thinks he sees his advantage in this. The tenant likes a low 
 rent ; likes to remember that he and his father have had the 
 farm pretty much on the same terms ; it is not difficult to get a 
 living, and ambition centres not so much in change of social 
 position as in the hunter which carries him to covert-side. He 
 has no lease, but his landlord is a kind and honourable gentle- 
 man ; so long as the rent is duly paid, and he neither shoots 
 foxes nor, under some landlords, votes the wrong way, and does 
 not acquire a bad character in the neighbourhood, he will be 
 secure in his occupation. When he leaves the farm, he will be 
 paid, according to the custom of the country, for the unex- 
 hausted improvements he has made, which, of course, will not 
 approximate to those a thrifty man would have made if he had 
 been the owner and occupier, or the well-secured tenant, of the 
 soil. Says Adam Smith, ' It is against all reason and proba- 
 bility to suppose that yearly tenants will improve the soil ; ' and 
 is it much less contrary to reason and probability, to argue that 
 life tenants will to a necessary extent spend their incomes in the 
 improvement of estates of which they are but nominal owners ? 
 I am amazed at the ignorance of people with regard to their 
 
go Free Trade in Land. 
 
 own country. Men talk of this as a free country; journalists 
 wrote and politicians spoke of Mr. Goschen's Rating Bill as if it 
 would impose upon landowners one-half of the local rates as 
 they are now levied, and thus make them sharers with the occu- 
 pier in the weight of extra burdens of such unhappy years as 
 those of the Cotton Famine. But England is not a free country ; 
 in one most important aspect it is made up of life tenants and 
 lessors, the former being the great power in the rural districts, 
 just as the latter are rulers in the towns. We cannot liberate 
 the soil by an Act of Parliament ; all we can do is to legislate for 
 the successors of the life tenants, as well as for those who may 
 afterwards become leaseholders. The life tenants are, to a large 
 extent, free from responsibility, or, surely, they could not bear 
 to look upon the cottages which herd, rather than house, the 
 people on many estates. I wish carefully to avoid invidious 
 dealing with any class ; the fault is in the system rather than in 
 the men. Disgraceful and immoral overcrowding has been the 
 result of the nominal owner's indisposition or inability to build 
 new cottages, and hundreds of parishes will furnish such a scene 
 as I will briefly describe from official records. In the thatch- 
 covered roof of a single-roomed cottage a loft ten feet square 
 three beds contained ten people ; there were no curtains or 
 divisions of any kind ; one bed held the father, mother, and 
 infant son ; the centre bed was occupied by three daughters, of 
 whom two were upwards of twenty years of age ; and in the 
 third bed lay four sons, aged respectively seventeen, fifteen, 
 fourteen, and ten. Take 'S. G. O.V testimony as to cottage 
 beds in a room thirteen feet square. ' On the first lay the 
 mother, a widow, dying of consumption ; on the second, two 
 unmarried daughters, eighteen and twelve years' of age ; on the 
 third, a young married couple, whom I myself had married two 
 days before.' Looking on these things, can we wonder that the 
 English peasantry is the most immoral in the world ? The 
 statistics on this point are shocking, yet they conceal the whole 
 truth, because our population is so largely manufacturing, and 
 
Free Trade in Land. 91 
 
 these marry and have generally excellent cottages. The follow- 
 ing is the evidence of an English clergyman, who said : ' I 
 never recollect an instance of my having married a woman who 
 was not either pregnant at the time of her marriage, or had had 
 one or more children before her marriage.' I lay this frightful 
 immorality, which every country clergyman can confirm, to the 
 charge of the system of entails, which reduces the landowner to 
 the position of a life-tenant, and, not unfrequently, of a helpless 
 tenant. 
 
 And as with the peasantry, so it is with the farmers. In 
 many cases, the estate is mortgaged to the fullest possible 
 extent, and the nominal owner cannot obtain the means of 
 draining the land and improving the homesteads. Often have I 
 seen poor thrifty tenants imperfectly doing the work by filling 
 trenches with stones or bushes, or by dragging a mole-plough 
 through the cold, wet clay, so tenacious that the subterranean 
 mole-track made by the passage of the iron would 'perhaps 
 keep open for years. Though the nominal owner has under 
 various statutes a power of borrowing on the estate, why should 
 he in this way diminish his income from which alone he can 
 provide something for his younger children to improve the 
 property of his eldest son ? Before the passing of Mr. Locke 
 King's Act, if he had saved a little money, this would have been 
 liable for the payment of the mortgage debt in the event of his 
 death, in spite of any testament by which he sought to bequeath 
 it to his otherwise penniless daughters. But, then, the farmer 
 may have money ? Yes, he may ; though more often he has not 
 a quarter of that sum which is needful for the most efficient cul- 
 tivation of the soil. And if he execute works of improvement 
 he will want some consideration. He will demand a long lease 
 at the old rent, or he will ask a deduction from his rent to 
 repay, in so many years, the cost of the permanent improve- 
 ments ; and neither of these things is the nominal owner dis- 
 posed to grant. If landowners could reasonably be compelled 
 to grant leases on equitable conditions, and for a sufficient term 
 
^2 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 of years, then the evils consequent upon the system of entails 
 and settlements would be mitigated. But they dislike leases ; 
 and if they ever do contemplate such an instrument, it is often 
 as full of vexatious limitations and restrictions as the deeds by 
 which they hold nominal ownership of the land. The signal 
 and peculiar misfortune of agricultural England is that for the 
 most part it is ' no man's land ' that it is held in perpetual 
 mortmain the landlord is a life-tenant, and the farmer a depen- 
 dent. There are exceptions to this feeling against granting 
 leases ; I record most notable words to the contrary with 
 peculiar pleasure. Lord Derby said, in 1864: 'I think every 
 good tenant, who is expected to stay permanently on the farm 
 he holds, is entitled to ask for a lease from the proprietor. It is 
 a very simple alternative : if a man is not fit to settle on an 
 estate with a lease, he is not fit to settle without one ; if he 
 cannot be trusted with a lease, he cannot be trusted with 
 the land. ... I say this and in what I am saying I am 
 rather, in my own mind, addressing landlords than tenants I 
 say, if a tenant is to be expected to lay out capital on his farm, 
 it implies no distrust of the landlord it is simply an ordinary 
 and proper business precaution that he should insist on having 
 some lease. ... I believe that these two things one, the 
 making the giving of a lease a general rule, and the other, 
 having leases drawn more simply than as a rule they are at 
 present would go very far to settle that question of land- 
 ownership of which we have heard something of late.' This is 
 all very satisfactory, so far as it goes ; but Lord Derby is 
 scarcely an agricultural landlord. The broad acres of which 
 he is the nominal owner attract bricks and mortar so fast that 
 farmers let rushes grow those infallible indications of the want 
 of drainage. They would probably say, Where is the use of 
 draining land which in a year may be wanted for a mill, or the 
 level of which may be upset by coal-getting ? ' Where do your 
 rushes- come from ? ' I asked once of a great candle-maker. 
 ' Chiefly from Cheshire.' And when, some time afterwards, I 
 
Free Trade in Land. 93 
 
 met a party of Cheshire landlords, and told them of the want 
 of drainage in their county, they assured me that the best 
 cheese came from the undrained farms, and that cows were 
 most fond of grass which grows about rushes. 'Are you con- 
 vinced ? ' a worthy Cheshire baronet asked. ' Yes/ I said ; ' I 
 am convinced that there is no evil in the world which will not 
 find defenders.' This question of land-drainage is one that 
 concerns the food of the people ; and the operation of the 
 British system of entail and settlement is to retard its com- 
 pletion, and in other directions to keep from the land the 
 capital which would so greatly increase its produce. 
 
 It has been said by a practical man that the hostile passage of 
 100,000 foreign soldiers through our island, attended by all the 
 horrors of war, would not inflict so great an injury as this system 
 of land settlement works in a single year. The evidence of 
 farmers and land-agents proves that on heavy clay lands the 
 produce of the soil is trebled by proper drainage. But, as Smith 
 of Deanston said, ' Entail obstructs the substantial improvement 
 of the land.' Day after day, year by year, English capital is 
 flowing out of the country, to aid in every description of foreign 
 enterprise. Yet the agriculture of the kingdom in which this 
 ever-flowing wealth is made, is starved for want of more capital. 
 If Mr. Mechi finds that with 16 an acre he can make a better 
 return than with a smaller capital, we may presume that intelli- 
 gent farmers generally would have the same experience. But 
 his land is thoroughly drained ; the hedgerows are straightened 
 and cut down, so as not to obscure light nor shut out the passing 
 breeze ; all is put in the best form for cultivation. I will not 
 venture to say that one-half the cultivated land of the United 
 Kingdom is properly drained ; but if we assume that of the 
 46,177,370 acres which are now under cultivation, one-half re- 
 quires drainage, and if we place the cost of this work at 8 an 
 acre, we know that a sum of 184,000,000 is required for this 
 subsoil labour. If we take the authority of experienced land- 
 agents, and assume that this would in time treble the produce 
 
94 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 merely of the 11,755,05*3 acres under corn crops, the result would 
 pay about 15 per cent upon the outlay, and afford food, on the 
 wheat lands alone, returned at 3,750,000 acres, for nearly two 
 millions of people ! 
 
 But this is only a part of the demand of the soil. I have said, 
 quoting the experience of Mr. Mechi, that 16 an acre is not too 
 large a capital for farming land to the best advantage. There 
 are no statistics by which we can ascertain the amount of capital 
 invested in farming; any estimate must be more or less a matter 
 of guess-work. I am sure that to set the capital engaged in agri- 
 culture at half this amount 8 an acre, is an excessive calculation. 
 I have never met with an estimate which set the capital engaged 
 in agriculture at more than 6 an acre. But assuming the 
 higher sum, if then we take once more the 46,177,370 of cultivated 
 acres in the United Kingdom, and compute the extra capital 
 required to bring up the agriculture of the country to the high 
 level which Mr. Mechi has maintained with such good results at 
 Tiptree Hall, we find that in addition to the enormous sum 
 required for drainage, the land of this country demands, and 
 would well reward, a further investment exceeding ^35 0,000,000. 
 How is it possible for me to over-estimate the advantage to the 
 people at large of the profitable expenditure of ^500,000,000 
 upon the soil ? Here at once we have the means for rectifying 
 the position of the agricultural labourer. And why is the land 
 thus starved ? Why is its productive power thus abandoned ? 
 Because the landlords are but nominal owners of their property, 
 and because the tenants have no sufficient security. We need 
 free trade in respect to the land of the United Kingdom and the 
 abolition of the system of imperfect proprietorship in which the 
 main part of it is now held. 
 
 Then there are the 'waste' lands, which are slowly but surely 
 passing out of the freedom of commonage into the fettered con- 
 dition of most of the soil of this country. There are no trust- 
 worthy statistics as to the quantity of waste land; but I cannot 
 say that the extent is over-estimated at 10,000,000 acres. The 
 
Free Trade in Land. 95 
 
 total area of the United Kingdom exceeds 78,000,000 acres ; that 
 of the cultivated land exceeds 46,000,000 acres. We have, there- 
 fore, 32,000,000 acres which are not cultivated ; and allotting 
 22,000,000 to the towns, roads, rivers, etc., we have still 10,000,000 
 or nearly three times the extent under wheat in England of 
 waste or uncultivated land. There is sometimes clamour for the 
 cultivation' of these lands, as though such a work would deliver 
 England from pauperism. No doubt there is much to be done upon 
 the waste lands ; but the question in its relation to the wages 
 fund of the working classes is vastly inferior in comparison with 
 that of the general demand of agriculture for increased capital 
 and labour. I think Parliament should exercise great circum- 
 spection before sanctioning anywhere the enclosure of commons ; 
 but this care is especially necessary when they are situate in the 
 neighbourhood of large towns ; and though I am unable to 
 subscribe to what I understand to be the doctrine of some, that 
 in spite of law and custom, a property in rights of common 
 should be given to occupiers, I think that Parliament might, in 
 the cases where enclosure is sanctioned, demand a much more 
 liberal allotment for recreation and garden ground as well as 
 the preservation of all open spaces in towns, and of monuments 
 of peculiar or historic interest. 
 
 In order to establish free trade in land of which in these 
 preliminary remarks I have endeavoured to establish the need 
 I would suggest legislation directed to the following points : 
 
 1. The devolution of real property in cases of intestacy in 
 the same manner which the law directs in regard to personal 
 property. 
 
 2. The abolition of copyhold and customary tenures. 
 
 3. The establishment of a Landed Estates Court, for the 
 disposal of encumbered settled property. 
 
 4. A completion of the Ordnance Survey of the United 
 Kingdom upon a sufficient scale. 
 
 5. A system of registration of title, which shall be com- 
 pulsory upon the sale of property, the fees upon registration 
 
96 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 sufficient at least to defray all official expenses being a per- 
 centage on the purchase-money ; the same percentage for all 
 sums. A certificate of title would be given free of all costs 
 in respect of any freehold lands of which the reputed owner 
 could prove undisturbed possession for twenty years. Any 
 title could be registered in the Land Registry Office upon 
 satisfactory evidence of title for, twenty years ; the fees being 
 the same as in case of sale, when registration would be com- 
 pulsory. 
 
 6. That, preserving intact the power of owners of land to 
 bequeath it undivided or in shares, no gift, or bequest, or settle- 
 ment of life estate in land, nor any trust establishing such 
 an estate, should hereafter be lawful. Charges and mortgages 
 upon land would be registered, and the position of trustees, as 
 representing persons legally incompetent to hold land, would 
 also be indicated upon the register. As to the tenure of land 
 by corporations, I should be disposed, when the above-mentioned 
 reforms were in operation, to recommend the compulsory sale of 
 their lands. 
 
 The taxation of land is another, but a kindred subject. I 
 would propose the charge of a percentage upon the value in 
 fee of the estate, to be paid in the form of Stamp Duty, on 
 transfer, whether by gift, sale, devise, or inheritance the Suc- 
 cession Duty being remodelled to this end. The assessment 
 might be so many years' purchase of the annual rateable value ; 
 and in the case of land and buildings, so many years' purchase 
 of a proportion of the rateable value. 
 
 The question as to whether land can be the subject of 
 absolute ownership is only debated by ignorant persons. Mr. 
 Mill says : ' The claim of the landowners is altogether sub- 
 ordinate to the general policy of the State ; ' and this must 
 be admitted. It is equally true of every other class of property, 
 but specially of those which are limited, and which, being 
 limited, are also indispensable to the existence of the people. 
 If England were surrounded by hostile fleets, and famine was 
 
",'*/, 
 
 Free Trade in Land. s , ' /. 97 -/ 
 
 v / * /i j , -f 
 
 over all the land, the farmers' crops and the bak^/, loaves?',, 
 would be limited, and ' the claim ' of both farmers and barMprs 
 would be ' subordinate to the general policy of the State/ / , 
 Again, with reference to the North-Western, or any other 
 Railway, of which we may assume that it possesses a monopoly 
 of the most direct line between two or more great centres 
 of population ; such advantages are limited, and the property of 
 the shareholders is equally 'subordinate to the general policy 
 of the State.' Of course it could not be allowed in the one case 
 that the landed gentry should exercise their admitted ' right 'of 
 eviction, and condemn all the population except the members 
 of their own families to be crowded to death, in starvation 
 and plague, in such portions of the towns as do not belong 
 to their class so small in number, so rich in land and luxury ; 
 nor, in the other, would it be permitted, if London were closely 
 invested, that the bakers should control exactly as they pleased 
 the distribution of bread. It appears to me that all rights of 
 property are ' subordinate to the general policy of the State,' it 
 being understood that the owner should receive compensation 
 if he is displaced. And with regard to the rent of land, this is 
 most truly defined as the result of competition for the posses- 
 sion of certain advantages of quality or position. The first 
 settlers do not pay rent ; they select the situations which in 
 time to come will command the highest rent if the channel of 
 communication generally a stream beside which they settle 
 continue to be the chief highway. The next comers are willing 
 to pay rent for this situation, and so the settlement spreads, 
 the increase of rent being mainly due to the competition of 
 capital. This causes the houses in cities to rise higher and 
 higher, from one storey to four or five, or in some cases ten 
 storeys high ; and land which was once unfenced, and where, 
 perhaps, any one might allow his beast to graze, becomes 'ac- 
 commodation land,' worth $ or 10 per acre per annum for 
 the horses and cows or the vegetables and fruit of the town 
 population. I have said this much upon ownership and rent, 
 
 II 
 
98 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 because, finally, I have touched on the conditions upon which 
 the taxation of land should be based. But my immediate 
 object has been to show that free trade in land may be esta- 
 blished by the means I have suggested. 
 
 In advocating the adoption of those suggestions, I would ask, 
 and I hope to obtain, the co-operation of landowners. They are 
 most largely interested in promoting reform. By the abolition 
 of the law of primogeniture by which I mean the gift by the 
 State to the eldest son of all real property in cases of intes- 
 tacy when the State ceased to inculcate primogeniture, and 
 forbade the practice of entail and settlement, parents might 
 regain that proper authority which they do not now possess 
 over the ' heir/ This scheme would leave intact their power to 
 bestow their possessions in the customary manner, but in that 
 important national as well as family work the training of the 
 masters of great property the law would have put into the 
 hands of parents a power for which those who are duly sensible 
 of their responsibilities would surely be grateful. Insolvent 
 landowners would be relieved of the millstone about their necks 
 restored to a natural position ; not seeming rich and being 
 unutterably poor. They would be real owners of their property. 
 A large proportion of the families who mainly possess the 
 agricultural land of the country could give, without trouble or 
 expense, satisfactory evidence of acts of ownership for twenty 
 years, and then, when registration was accomplished, they might 
 burn those mouldy parchments, each reference to which at 
 present costs ;ioo, or they could preserve some of them as 
 curiosities and as a part of the family history. The registra- 
 tion of their property would supply an indefeasible title in the 
 place of these cumbrous and costly muniments, and would give 
 an increased value to their land. When registration of title 
 became general, as it would by this plan, being made com- 
 pulsory upon sale, there would be an established preference 
 for ' registered ' land, and for such the price would be higher 
 than for unregistered land, probably by two to four years' 
 
Free Trade in Land. 99 
 
 purchase upon all but the most extensive and costly 
 properties. 
 
 Lastly, the agricultural landlords ought to accept free trade 
 in land if they wish to avoid measures which will have less 
 regard for their interests. Let them reflect on their position. 
 See where they stand ! They have and can have no inde- 
 feasible title for their privileges in Parliament. They are but 
 a few thousands among 30,000,000; they have lost the rotten 
 boroughs ; they have lost the peculiar control they once pos- 
 sessed which they usually exercised in a negative mariner 
 over national education ; they have lost, too, by the agency of a 
 secret system of voting, their power of intimidation at elections. 
 Stubborn resistance to reasonable reform will assuredly produce 
 greater changes, and the first act of successful antagonism 
 might impose heavy taxation upon the land, and decree com- 
 pulsory distribution at death, proportioned by law. It is certain 
 as sunrise that our land system will not be permitted to con- 
 tinue in its present form. Unwise opposition would foster the 
 installation of the plan for 'nationalization/ the hobby of so 
 many of the working classes, by which the State would purchase 
 the interest of the landlords, and grant leases of the lands as 
 part of the public domain. Property owners, friends of order, 
 must condemn our land system, because it tends to deprive our 
 country of the best resource against revolution. Our land 
 system is very dangerously contracted in regard to ownership. 
 There is in fact no real power in the rural districts to gainsay 
 the will of the masses in towns. When a Socialistic Commune 
 was erected in Paris, and demanded the exclusion of the city 
 from the general law of the country, there were 5,000,000 land- 
 owners in France ready to say ' No,' and to enforce their views of 
 property upon revolutionary Paris. Here there is no such force. 
 The great landed families of the United Kingdom could not 
 stand a moment against the breath of revolution ; and, as for 
 the peasantry, there are not (if they were the friends of the 
 landed interest, which is not the case) more of them in England 
 
ioo Free Trade in Land. 
 
 than a single branch of manufacture collects in the vicinity of 
 Manchester. The Reform Act of 1867, the work of a Ministry 
 of landowners, carried by the country party Lord Beaconsfield 
 having 'educated' them to the task constitutionally placed 
 the supreme power in the hands of the population of the towns, 
 and the Ballot has confirmed their authority. The evident and 
 irrevocable tendency is towards the equalization of electoral 
 areas; one after another the smallest boroughs are disfranchised, 
 and a stimulus in the same direction will be given when that 
 defeated provision of the Ballot Bill, charging the necessary 
 expenses of elections upon the ratepayers, is finally adopted ; 
 for these charges will fall heavy upon the 'pocket' boroughs, 
 and will be unfelt by the populous constituencies. 
 
 I am no alarmist; I sincerely believe it would be dangerous 
 for the landed interest to set its face against reform. To what 
 could they trust in such a policy ? The forbearance of the now 
 legally, though not yet practically, all-powerful people ? Why 
 should these exercise forbearance ? Does history read such a 
 lesson to the people ? Has the landed interest ever shown 
 regard for their advantage when in supposed or actual conflict 
 with landlord interest ? About two hundred years ago the 
 position in which the landowners and the people find themselves 
 to-day was reversed ; the former were mightiest in the land. 
 And what did they do ? They found a large taxation levied on 
 the soil, of which it is not untrue to say that it was the purchase- 
 money of their estates ; they threw off those feudal dues, and 
 substituted an Act which declared that ' the people of England 
 should pay a tax of is. -$d. per barrel on all their beer and ale,' 
 with a proportionate sum on all other liquors sold through- 
 out the kingdom. And it was enacted that a moiety of this 
 tax 'shall be settled on the King's Majesty, his heirs and 
 successors, in full recompense and satisfaction for all tenures 
 in capite and by knight service, and of the courts of wards 
 and liveries, and all emoluments thereby accruing, and in 
 full satisfaction for all purveyance.' This Act was carried 
 
Free Trade in Land. 101 
 
 in a House of 300 members by a majority of two. Then, 
 again, when a land-tax of 4^. in the pound had been im- 
 posed, the landowners contrived, in 1697, so to frame the tax 
 (9 Wm. III. c. 10) that it should not increase with the value 
 of the land, as was at first intended, but should be a fixed 
 annuity without rise in value. I do not bring forward these 
 things as charges against the landed interest they are now 
 merely historical ; nor do I refer to them as incentives to re- 
 prisals on the part of those whose ancestors paid so dearly for 
 the legislation of the Caroline period. I hope the people will 
 use their power wisely and fairly ; but I have yet to see a party 
 which, being in undisputed possession of authority, has been 
 uninfluenced by motives of interest. I refer to these things as 
 a warning to the landowners, suggesting their acceptance of 
 such moderate, such wholly advantageous reforms as those I 
 have sketched, in the friendly spirit in which they are framed. 
 When Cobden said, in 1845, ' I warn the aristocracy not to force 
 the people to look into the subject of taxation; not to force 
 them to see how they have been robbed, plundered, and bam- 
 boozled for ages by them,' he spoke in days very far removed in 
 reference to political affairs from our own. Were he with us 
 now, he would be the first to admit this ; but I am very sure 
 that he would demand free trade in land, and, if it were with- 
 held, he would not fail to arouse the people to a sense of their 
 rights in this great matter. 
 
 The people ! Who are they ? ' The people at large ' of 
 whom Cobden wondered that they were ' so tacit in their sub- 
 mission/ Why are they not agitating for these reforms for 
 free trade in land ? I believe they will be tacit no longer ; yet 
 I must express my suspicion that the political education of the 
 people is as yet so imperfect, that they do not quite comprehend 
 the subject. Many think that they have no land, and can have 
 no land, and that therefore it does not concern them. On the 
 side of the people, I regard as important though as standing 
 by itself, utterly ineffective that question of primogeniture, 
 
IO2 Free Trade in Land. 
 
 which would have been for ever decided if Mr. Gladstone's 
 ' Real Estates Intestacy Bill ' had become law. This measure 
 which since the overthrow of the Gladstone Administration 
 has been introduced by Mr. Potter would not affect the actual 
 power of the landowner over his property, but it would reform 
 the teaching of the State. The example of the State is a 
 matter of supreme importance to the poor ; for if the State, in 
 making a will for an intestate person, follow the rule of primo- 
 geniture, which such men as Mr. John Walter, the chief pro- 
 prietor of the Times, call a f flagrant injustice,' then there is a 
 process of ' dry-rot ' going on within the body politic, which is 
 ruinous to the interests of the poor. If the State regard not 
 justice, it is the poor who will chiefly suffer. The leaders of 
 society are corrupted when the teaching of the State may be 
 directed by expediency. What is more sad than to have seen a 
 man such as Lord Russell defending primogeniture, and saying 
 that ' the law should adopt the general practice as the rule in 
 cases of intestacy'? Surely Lord Russell then forgot that it 
 is not the law but justice which is represented as blind, even 
 to ' general practice/ 
 
103 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE TRANSFER OF LAND. 
 
 IN these days of extraordinary projects, it is perhaps surprising 
 that we have had no proposal for filling up St. George's 
 Channel, so that a railway could be made direct from Bristol to 
 Cork and from Belfast to Liverpool. But it may be doubted if 
 we should not by that means lose any further development of 
 those eminent services which Ireland has rendered to England 
 as a trial ground and a motive power for great reforms. Had 
 there been but one island, we may hesitate to believe that Mr. 
 Gladstone's burning sense of justice would have enabled him to 
 accomplish the destruction of a supremacy almost as unjusti- 
 fiable and anomalous as would be the establishment of the 
 Roman Catholic Church in England as the religion of the State. 
 And as to the Land Laws of Ireland, who will assert that 
 embarrassed landowners would so long since have been led or 
 forced into an Encumbered Estates Court, and that with regard 
 to real property, a system of transfer, which is virtually one of 
 registration, would have been established in Ireland, had the 
 waters of St. George's Channel been abolished ? 
 
 The very general embarrassment of Irish landlords led to the 
 foundation of the Encumbered Estates Court, in which upon the 
 petition, either of the owners or of the creditors of encumbered 
 settled estates, these could be sold, and the land, together with 
 its incumbent, set free. Matters were so arranged that the Court 
 should inquire into and record the title with despatch and 
 
IC4 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 economy, and should give to the purchaser a simple and indis- 
 putable claim. What has been the result? The operation of 
 the tribunal was found so beneficial in regard to the transfer of 
 land, that the Encumbered Estates Court soon became the 
 Landed Estates Court, in the archives of which the titles of any 
 estates might be recorded after proper notice and investiga- 
 tion, and a sale of all or part conducted with economy and 
 credit. 
 
 This legislation may not have been designed to promote the 
 transfer of land, but such has undoubtedly been its effect. A 
 considerable step towards the establishment of free trade in land 
 in Ireland was taken to some extent unconsciously, and therefore 
 with much error, but the natural operation of self-interest is 
 making of the Landed Estates Court a register for the more ready 
 and economic transfer of land. The Encumbered Estates Court 
 was established in 1849, an ^ m l ess tnan five-and-twenty years 
 nearly one-sixth of the soil of Ireland had passed, with regard to 
 title, through the hands of the examiners. It is not asserted that 
 the whole of that area has been sold, though it is beyond ques- 
 tion that the object of such examination has always had reference 
 to sale. Any one who takes up an Irish newspaper may learn 
 much of the operation of the Court. He will find that though 
 the laws and customs in regard to primogeniture, entails, and 
 settlement, obtain in Ireland as in England and Scotland, yet 
 that the sales of land are in proportion vastly more numerous ; 
 and especially he will notice the extreme rarity of a sale con- 
 ducted otherwise than under the authority of the Court, and the 
 still more rare occurrence of a sale of land without a title 
 stamped with the authority of that tribunal. In fact, the land- 
 owners of Ireland have already learned something of the mar- 
 ketable value of a simple, indefeasible, registered title, and 
 accordingly there are many notices in Irish journals of appli- 
 cation for registration, even when a sale is not immediately 
 contemplated. Of course, the economic value of such an opera- 
 tion consists mainly in the fact that such transfers imply the 
 
The Transfer of Land. 105 
 
 surrender of the great natural agent in production the land 
 from ill-managing, unimproving, because embarrassed hands to 
 those which also hold the means to make it bring forth in great 
 abundance. 
 
 Nothing is more astonishing in this particular matter than 
 the apparently wilful blindness of some political writers who 
 pretend to authority. There are very influential journals which 
 actually parade a statement of sales of real property in England 
 having amounted in a single year to ; 10,000,000, as proof that 
 the transfer of land is all that it should be in this country. How 
 much more true to their proper function of rightly directing the 
 public opinion would it be, if instead of taking this ; 10,000,000 
 as a text for glorification over the land system of the kingdom, 
 they regarded its singular inadequacy to the circumstances of 
 England ! How much more true, for example, would it be to 
 say : ' Here is a country of surprising wealth, a country in 
 which capital has increased and is increasing at a rate which 
 transcends even the imagination of the recent past, which is so 
 rich that the world is to a great extent under mortgage to its 
 people. Its realm is so secure that it is the savings bank of 
 the universe ; its soil is guarded not only by the sea, but by a 
 dense and unconquerable people. And yet, such is the baneful 
 operation of its antiquated laws and customs with regard to the 
 tenure of land, so clumsy and dilatory and costly is its method 
 of transfer, that in 1873 the year of its greatest wealth and 
 of its highest and most unexampled prosperity, the transfer of 
 real property did not exceed the value of about ten millions 
 sterling, an amount which in the shape of a six per cent, loan 
 to the United States or to France, London would subscribe in ten 
 minutes.' Is any one hardy enough to say that this would not be 
 a more accurate way of putting the fact ? Let me then, for his 
 conviction, make one of the very few references I shall on this 
 occasion permit myself to the land systems of the Continent. 
 In France, the transfer of land is rendered onerous to the parties 
 concerned by the imposition of a considerable tax on the 
 
io6 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 transaction, amounting, in fact, to more than six per cent. 
 But notwithstanding this, we find, from one of the greatest 
 authorities, that in France ' the value of immoveable (real) 
 property annually sold may be estimated at 80,000,000 ; that 
 which changes hands by succession at 60,000,000.' Thus in 
 France which that great economist, Mr. J. R. M'Culloch, pre- 
 dicted fifty years ago would to-day be a ' pauper- warren ' as a 
 consequence of its land-system the ordinary annual transfer 
 of land by sale is eight times as great as in England, a country 
 overflowing with capital, of which millions are sunk, and much of 
 it squandered, in delusive foreign enterprises. 
 
 But we need not go outside the United Kingdom to show 
 the absurdity of this shallow jubilation. We may again refer 
 to the operation of the Landed Estates Court in Ireland, and 
 from that we may form some idea of what would be the result 
 of a more free transfer of land among this supremely wealthy 
 and home-loving English people. Through that Court nearly a 
 sixth of all the lands in Ireland passed, either for sale, or with 
 a view to sale or mortgage, in the space of twenty-three years. 
 Now let us suppose the real property of England to have been 
 dealt with in the same manner. The estimated rental of the 
 real property in England and Wales has been taken by Sir 
 John Lubbock and others at 150,000,000, representing (I am 
 taking Sir John Lubbock's figures), at thirty years' purchase, a 
 total sum of 4,500,000,000. It is not reasonable to suppose 
 that if even that small advance towards free trade in land which 
 has been made in Ireland had existed in England, the propor- 
 tion both in extent and value of property transferred would 
 not be vastly greater than in Ireland. There the differences of 
 religion, which as a rule separate the owners and occupiers of 
 land ; the terror of assassination, which was widespread in the 
 years to which we are referring ; together with the comparative 
 poverty of all, contrast forcibly with the teeming wealth of 
 England, and the pleasure, the security, the unmenaced influ- 
 ence which attach to the ownership of land in England. But 
 
The Transfer of Land. 107 
 
 even if we make" the unreasonable supposition that the transfer 
 would be no greater than in Ireland what do we find ? Sup- 
 pose that in twenty-three years, property to the value of one- 
 sixth part of Sir John Lubbock's estimate had been dealt with ; 
 that would be 750,000,000, or more than 32,500,000 a year ! 
 
 Is it not wonderful that we, in regard to the transfer of land, 
 retain practices less civilised than those of the Plantagenets ! 
 But even that is perhaps less remarkable than that we should 
 so utterly disregard the arguments of the greatest lawyers of 
 our time, and of both parties in the State. In the preceding 
 paper on ' Free Trade in Land,' I have quoted some memorable 
 words of Lord Hatherley with respect to the transfer of land. 
 From the opposite party in Parliament let us take, also before 
 he arrived at the woolsack, a lawyer so powerful and eminent as 
 Lord Cairns. What does he say ? Lord Cairns has illustrated the 
 evil in the following felicitous terms: 1 ' You buy an estate at an 
 auction, or you enter into a contract for the purchase of an estate. 
 You are very anxious to get possession of the property you have 
 bought, and the vendor is very anxious to get his money. But 
 do you get possession of the property ? On the contrary, you 
 cannot get the estate, nor can the vendor get his money until 
 after a lapse sometimes no inconsiderable portion of a man's 
 lifetime spent in the preparation of abstracts, in the com- 
 parison of deeds, in searches for encumbrances, in objections 
 made to the title, in answers to those objections, in disputes 
 which arise upon the answers, in endeavours to cure the de- 
 fects. Not only months, but years, frequently pass in a history 
 of that kind ; and I should say that it is an uncommon thing 
 in this country for a purchase of any magnitude to be com- 
 pleted completed by possession and payment of the price 
 in a period under, at all events, twelve months. The conse- 
 quences of this were stated in the Report of the Commission 
 [on the Land Transfer Act]. The Commissioners state in their 
 Report : " When a contract is duly entered into, the investi- 
 1 Speech on Introduction of Registration of Titles Bill, 1859. 
 
io8 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 gation of the title often causes, not only expense, but delay 
 and disappointment, sickening both to the seller and the buyer. 
 The seller does not receive his money, nor the buyer his land, 
 until the advantage or pleasure of the bargain is lost or has 
 passed away." Unquestionably that is one and a very great 
 evil under which we labour. But that is not the greatest evil. 
 I can well imagine that the purchaser of an estate would be 
 content to submit to delay, and even to considerable expense, 
 if he were assured that when the delay and expense were over, 
 upon that occasion, at all events, he would have a title as to the 
 dealings with which for the future there would be no difficulty ; 
 but unfortunately that is not the case. Suppose I buy an 
 estate to-day. I spend a year, or two or three years, in ascer- 
 taining whether the title is a good one. I am at last satisfied. 
 I pay the expense, the considerable expense, which is incurred 
 in addition to the price which I have paid for my estate, 
 and I obtain a conveyance of my estate. About a year after- 
 wards, I desire to raise money upon mortgage of this estate ; I 
 find some one willing to lend me money, provided I have a good 
 title to the land. The man says : " It is very true that you 
 bought this estate and that you investigated the title, but I 
 cannot be bound by your investigation of the title, nor can I be 
 satisfied by it." Perhaps he is a trustee who is lending money 
 which he holds upon trust. He says: " My solicitor must 
 examine the title, and my counsel must advise upon it." And 
 then, 'as between me, the owner of the estate, and the lender 
 of the money, there is a repetition of the same process which 
 took place upon my purchase of the estate, and consequently 
 the same expense is incurred as when I bought it ; and for 
 the whole of that, I, the owner of the estate and the borrower of 
 the money, must pay. Well, that is not all. Months or years 
 after all this is completed, from circumstances I find I must 
 sell my estate altogether. I find a person willing to become a 
 purchaser. The intending purchaser says : " No doubt you 
 thought this was a good title when you bought this estate, 
 
The Transfer of Land. 109 
 
 and no doubt this lender of money thought he had a very good 
 security when he lent his money ; but you are now asking me 
 to pay my money. I must be satisfied that the title is a good 
 one ; my solicitor must look into it, and my counsel must advise 
 upon it!" Then again commence abstracts, examinations, objec- 
 tions, difficulties, correspondence, and delay. I am the owner 
 of the estate, and I must pay substantially for the whole of 
 that, because, although the expense is paid in the first instance 
 by the purchaser, of course, in the same proportion as that 
 expense is borne by him, in the same proportion will he abate 
 the price which he will give for the estate.' 
 
 That is the English system of transfer described by the Lord 
 High Chancellor, and since that speech was delivered, Lord 
 Cairns has made attempts in the direction of reform. His 
 Bills were wrecked on the rocks of entail and settlement, the 
 removal of which will not be sanctioned by the landed gentry. 
 Lord Westbury was a great lawyer ; he tried his hand at reform, 
 and of course failed. The establishment which Lord Chancellor 
 Westbury set up by way of improvement was merely a waste of 
 public money. The desolate Land Registry Office which his 
 Act established provided for three or four sinecurists, and that 
 was all. There was a registrar at 2,500 per annum ; there was 
 an assistant registrar at 1,500 per annum ; there were examiners 
 of title ; there were solicitors ; there was a chief clerk, with a 
 staff of subordinates. Four years ago I endeavoured to make 
 such inquiry as was possible into the business of this Land 
 Registry Office, and I found that the officials had literally 
 nothing to do. In ten years the office had registered titles of 
 land to the value of about 5,000,000, and in extent about 
 50,000 acres. I calculated that at such a rate of progress 
 (which there was no prospect of maintaining ; for the most part 
 the business had been done while the Act was very new) it 
 would take about 760 years to accomplish the registration of 
 all the land in the country. 
 
 Of course there has been a Royal Commission. No one who 
 
no The Transfer of Land. 
 
 knows anything of England would doubt for a moment that 
 a Royal Commission had considered the subject of the transfer 
 of land. In Part II. of the Report which contains the views of 
 Commissioners on the working of Lord Westbury's Act and the 
 causes of its failure, we find them frankly stating that, ' As the 
 number of applications for registration during the six years that 
 the Act has been in force did not average more than eighty per 
 annum, and are falling off, it is clear that the amount of busi- 
 ness done is insignificant, and its progress affords no hope of 
 increase.' The Commissioners thought that obstruction was 
 caused by the requirement in the fifth section of Lord West- 
 bury's Act, that the person who sought registration should make 
 out not merely what is called ' a good holding title,' but a title 
 such as the Court of Chancery would compel an unwilling pur- 
 chaser to accept. The third cause of failure, described as * the 
 disclosure of trusts ' upon the register, is that ever-present denial 
 of reform which Lord Hatherley refers to in the speech that has 
 been mentioned. There is something very pitiful in these at- 
 tempts by men who know the evil and dare not deal with the 
 cause. They fail one after another, because they submit to have 
 the boundaries of reform marked out for them, somewhat after 
 the fashion of a skating-ring upon the ornamental water in St. 
 James's Park before the bottom was cleansed and made solid. 
 One great area the professional area where clients tumble 
 over head and ears in costs, is marked * dangerous ' ; then the 
 great area which belongs to entail and settlement is understood 
 to be 'very dangerous'; and so on, until the poor law-maker, 
 who is more to be pitied than some are ready to suppose, 
 warned on one side of the peers and squires, on another of 
 the lawyers, and urged above all not to be ' sensational ' by 
 colleagues who are themselves for the most part men imbued 
 with the prejudices and the ideas common to the landed gentry, 
 produces another of those legislative abortions of which the 
 miserable skeletons are strewn upon the track of Parliament. 
 There is probably not a lawyer of eminence who does not think 
 
The Transfer of Land. I r I 
 
 that conveyancing by registration of title is superior to con- 
 veyancing by deed. I should be very unwilling to suppose that 
 there is one who at any time thought it necessary that the title 
 of every plot of land in the country should have its history 
 written in crabbed letters, and written again and re-written for 
 the immense space of sixty years. Why, it is little more than 
 sixty years since the battle of Waterloo ! I lose patience when 
 I regard the construction of many of the laws under which we 
 live laws which seem retained only to add to the cost of exist- 
 ence and to the unprofitable expenditure of time and money 
 and intellect, all of which might be employed in the service of 
 more just and simple statutes ; I say just, because those laws 
 are obviously unjust which, by compelling needless expense, 
 press so much more hardly on the poor than on the rich. 
 
 It is refreshing to turn from this ' lawyer-ridden country, ' and 
 to see what Greater Britain can do and has accomplished in 
 regard to the transfer of land. The operation of Sir Robert 
 Torrens' Act in Australia appears to be a complete success. 
 Sir Robert has stated that the measure was suggested to him 
 in the course of official duties connected with the transfer of 
 shipping. He observed that * at the Custom House, you may 
 see an ordinary, uncouth clerk, without any difficulty, and with 
 perfect security, conducting transfers and mortgages of property 
 in shipping, and the time thus occupied in thus dealing with 
 a vast property, such as that of the Great Eastern, would not 
 exceed half an hour.' He saw that ' immobility and divisibility 
 of the land, so far from preventing, do greatly facilitate the 
 dealing with land by registration of title, especially as regards 
 the complication of the record, through the frequency of joint 
 ownership arising out of the indivisibility of shipping property.' 
 His Bill became the law of South Australia in 1857. In 1872, 
 he stated that no fewer than 18,000 or 19,000 ' distinct titles 
 (a considerable portion of them complicated or blistered) have 
 been placed upon the record without practical injury or injustice 
 to any one.' Under the system there in force, the requisitions 
 
112 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 which the applicant for registration is required to satisfy are : 
 '(i) That he is in undisputed possession ; (2) That in equity and 
 justice he appears to be rightly entitled ; (3) That he produces 
 such evidence, as tends to the conclusion that no person is in a 
 position to succeed in an action of ejectment against him ; 
 (4) That the description of the parcels is clear and accurate. 
 These requisitions being satisfied, advertisement and the service 
 of notices, calling upon all claimants to show cause against the 
 applicant's title within reasonable time, are found to be sufficient 
 safeguard against risks arising out of technical defects, and (in 
 accordance with an ancient practice under English law) in the 
 event of non-claims within the prescribed period, indefeasible 
 title is issued to the applicant.' Under the Torrens system, all 
 that relates to a plot of land is to be found in one book, ' in 
 which a distinct folium is opened for each parcel, which folium 
 contains a map, and the record of every estate and interest which 
 it can concern a purchaser or mortgagee to be acquainted with.' 
 ' The owner of each recorded estate or interest receives an in- 
 strument evidencing his title, which is in fact a counterpart or 
 duplicate of that portion of the register which relates to the 
 same ; and this contains a printed form of agreement for transfer, 
 discharge, or surrender, as the case may be, to be signed by the 
 parties, wherever they may be, in presence of notaries or com- 
 missioners for taking affidavits, and transmitted by the post for 
 registration.' 
 
 That our system as re-established by Lord Cairns' Act is a 
 failure, and that this Australian method is a complete success, 
 can surely excite no wonder. Our system, it is true, dangles 
 before the eyes of the applicant the bait of indefeasible title, but 
 on the other hand there are good reasons to keep him from the 
 office. In the first place he might be possessed of 'a perfect 
 marketable title,' and in that case he would be every way a 
 loser. A conspicuous merit of Sir Robert Torrens' method is 
 that it gives security to the possessor of 'a fair holding title.' 
 Then again, personal attendance is required in all the systems 
 
The Transfer of Land. 1 1 3 
 
 which have been attempted in England ; in Australia, the parties 
 may transact their business in the localities in which they reside, 
 and provide for the execution of the instruments ' in an easy 
 and at the same time safe way/ The plain fact is obvious that 
 our system is not registration of title, but rather certification 
 of deeds ; the very essence of a system of registration of title 
 for the transfer of land is that the land shall be passed by the 
 act of transfer upon the register. As the 3ist section of Sir 
 Robert Torrens' Australian Act puts it : ' No deed or instrument 
 shall have effect to pass or charge any interest or estate in land ; 
 but so soon as the recorder of titles shall have entered in the 
 record the particulars of any transfer, charge, or dealing, the 
 estate or interest shall thereupon pass or become charged.' 
 
 Concerning two important points the registration of trusts 
 and of mortgages the Australian system provides, with regard 
 to the former, that mere trusts shall be excluded from the 
 register ; and in reference to mortgages, the transfer of the legal 
 estate an excuse for costs plays no part. The Act plainly 
 states that ' mortgage and encumbrance shall have effect as 
 security, but shall not operate as a transfer of the land thereby 
 charged ; and in case default be made in the payment of the 
 principal sum, interest, annuity, or rent-charge thereby secured, 
 or in the observance of any covenant, and such default be con- 
 tinued for the space of one calendar month, or for such other 
 period of time as may therein for that purpose be expressly 
 limited, the mortgagee or encumbrancee may give to the mort- 
 gagor or encumbrancer notice in writing to pay the money then 
 due or owing on such mortgage or encumbrance, or to observe 
 the covenants therein expressed, and that sale will be effected 
 unless such default be remedied.' Lastly, as to this admirable 
 system, what do British mortgagors suppose is the cost of the 
 operation ? Ten shillings is the average cost of transactions 
 half being for transfer, and half for release. But more than 
 this ; the mortgage, being transferable by endorsement, may 
 pass freely from hand to hand like a bank-note. As a specimen 
 
 I 
 
H4 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 of the transfer powers of the Torrens' Act, one gentleman writes, 
 with reference to a very large transaction : ' Only two days 
 before the packet sailed, I had an offer for my estate. The 
 intending purchaser went with me to the Lands Title Office, 
 and in less than an hour the business was transacted. I got a 
 cheque for the purchase-money, and he got an indefeasible title 
 to the land ; and as we did the business ourselves, the cost was 
 only three or four pounds.' As to mortgage, another correspon- 
 dent writes : ' Recently I purchased a sheep-station for my son, 
 and being 5000 short of the purchase-money, I mortgaged 
 some land for the amount. The transaction was completed in 
 less than half an hour ; and as I did the business myself, the 
 whole expense was only fifteen shillings.' 
 
 It appears to me that in legislating for the transfer of land in 
 England, we could hardly do better than copy the Australian 
 system in much of its detail. But we must not make the error 
 of supposing that the registration of title is quite as simple a 
 matter in the old country as in the new. Yet the greater error 
 of assuming that all titles to land in the Colonies are very 
 simple is more common. If the period for investigation were 
 reduced to twenty years, it may be said with probable truth 
 that titles in the Colonies would appear more complicated than 
 in this country. Land changes hands in the Colonies with a 
 rapidity unknown in England. I have heard Sir Robert Torrens 
 say that the business of transfer in the Australian city of Adelaide 
 is more than occurs in the whole of Ireland. Nor should we 
 carelessly accept objections founded upon the immensity of the 
 business which the number of transactions would involve. Sir 
 Robert Torrens has alluded to the more complicated dealings 
 with shipping ; and any one may see with what small trouble, and 
 numbers and extent of offices, the transfer of the National Debt 
 is conducted and the dividends paid, which latter is of course 
 an operation altogether outside the work of registration. Mr. 
 Thomson Hankey, in his valuable work on ' Banking/ says that 
 4 to carry out the National Debt it is estimated that about 200 
 
The Transfer of Land. 1 1 5 
 
 persons are constantly employed, with an additional staff of 
 about 50 when the dividends are paid. Ten rooms are devoted 
 to the purpose, and upwards of 1700 books are in constant use. 
 The remuneration made to the Bank for this service is at the 
 rate of 300 per million for the first 600,000,000 and 150 per 
 million for the remainder of the capital stock, and amounts at 
 the present time to about 200,000 per annum. The number of 
 transfers is about 136,000 in the course of the year, and this 
 operation necessitates 272,000 alterations of accounts, because 
 for every transfer made the amount must be taken from one 
 account and added to another.' Mr. Hankey gives the following 
 ' number of transfers and of accounts in the Government Funds 
 in the years 1839, 1849, l8 59> l %6$> an d 1872 ' : 
 
 Years. Transfers. Accounts. 
 
 1839 201,190 279,584 
 
 1849 190,912 277,506 
 
 1859 171,881 269,304 
 
 1865 162,187 245,973 
 
 1872 136,000 214,000 
 
 In these figures may be seen that tendency to diminution in the 
 number of holders which is also the most striking feature in the 
 record of owners of British land. 
 
 In the foregoing paper, entitled ' Free Trade in Land/ I have 
 put forward six propositions which it is unnecessary to repeat. 
 I venture to think that those propositions would tend to facili- 
 tate the transfer of land, (i) The first would make the law 
 equal, and easily intelligible in its operation in the case of 
 intestates ; whereas at present, if an owner of land in gavel- 
 kind (so common in Kent) die without having executed a will, 
 his land is distributed among his surviving sons ; while we may 
 say all over England, outside of Kent, the law of primogeni- 
 ture prevails. (2) Copyhold tenure has a certain similarity 
 to tenure by record of title, but it is absolutely necessary to 
 abolish copyhold and customary tenures if we are to establish 
 a register, because a universal registration of title, with transfer 
 attendant upon the act of registration, is incompatible with the 
 
n6 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 present system of the enrolment of copyholds. (3) The esta- 
 blishment of a Landed Estates Court would greatly facilitate the 
 transfer of land. A large proportion of the soil of this country 
 is in the hands of embarrassed holders, whose lands, on their 
 own petition, or on that of their creditors, might be sold by 
 order of the Judge of such a Court. The produce of the soil 
 of England might perhaps be doubled by the application of 
 500,000,000 of capital in excess of that with which it is now 
 so poorly provided ; and it is probable that no inconsiderable 
 part of that sum would be expended by landowners, if, by the 
 operation of such a Court, their land could be taken from the 
 hands of those who now are forced to starve it in order to keep 
 themselves and their families from insolvency. (4) We cannot 
 have an efficient registration of title without an effective means 
 for the identification of each parcel of land, and to this end we 
 must have a completion of the Ordnance Survey upon a suffi- 
 cient scale. I have myself examined a considerable number of 
 parish maps, and have found them generally so excellent and 
 accurate that I have no hesitation in saying they might, in the 
 great majority of parishes, be adopted at once for purposes of 
 registration, being corrected when necessary by officers of the 
 Government Survey. (5) With regard to the registration itself, 
 we must not forget the holders of defective titles. It will not 
 surprise any one who reflects upon the circumstances of the 
 colony, to be told that these are in proportion probably more 
 numerous in Australia than in England. But we need not go 
 deeply at present into this matter, because it is now only pro- 
 posed that registration should be compulsory upon the sale of 
 property. On sale, by the act itself, every man may be held to 
 declare his willingness to expose his title, and therefore there 
 can be no hardship in making registration compulsory. A most 
 important matter is to shorten the time for which evidence of 
 title is requisite. I propose to reduce this requirement to 
 twenty years (I believe that twelve years is the Australian 
 limit), and the change would of course affect a vast number of 
 
The Transfer of Land. 117 
 
 titles which are now only 'maturing' in consequence of flaws 
 beyond the twenty years of undisputed title. The presentation, 
 free of all fees, of a certificate of title in respect of any freehold 
 lands (the owner of which could satisfy some such queries as those 
 which I have previously quoted from Sir Robert Torrens' method 
 in respect of his title for twenty years), would, I anticipate, bring 
 at once, and without difficulty, upon the register, the bulk of 
 that vast portion of the soil which is held in settled or en- 
 tailed estates. And this is needful, because, in order to make 
 registration successful which cannot be, except on sale, com- 
 pulsory, it is necessary to devise means for bringing owners 
 of property to the position of applicants. The advantages of 
 registration soon prove themselves when once their reputa- 
 tion extends over a wide area. The superior selling value of 
 registered land would attract the attention of all who might 
 find themselves in the position of sellers or mortgagors. It is 
 not needful in Ireland, and it would not of course be necessary 
 in England, that an applicant for registration should be about 
 to sell. Any title could be registered in the Land Registry 
 Office upon evidence of title for twenty years ; and as for the 
 fees, the wisdom of Parliament would decide whether these 
 should be of such weight as to contribute largely to the public 
 revenue, as is the case in most continental States, or whether 
 they should be sufficient only to defray all official expenses. 
 (6) The final proposition I have put forward would have a 
 powerful effect in promoting the transfer of land. It is stated on 
 respectable authority that one-sixth of the soil of this country 
 is held in mortmain by corporations ; yet this considerable 
 proportion is but small in comparison with the area which has 
 no owner in fee simple, which is held by the nobility and gentry 
 on a system of life tenure of nominal ownership ; a system 
 under which the duties and responsibilities of parent and land- 
 lord are so generally in conflict, and are often so inequitably 
 regulated. I propose, however, to make no change in the status 
 of the landed gentry; except in so far as these suggestions 
 
1 1 8 The Transfer of Land. 
 
 would tend to raise the status of the landowner by compelling 
 him to be the real owner of his estate, with as much power to 
 bequeath it undivided or in shares as he has over his money in 
 the Funds. Existing trusts would not of course be dealt with, 
 except in the case of corporations which never die ; but I would 
 strictly prohibit, with the exception I have named, the creation 
 of new trusts, and this of course would greatly simplify the 
 registration of titles. The aim should be to have but one 
 description of title to land that of owner in fee simple. Then 
 the registry would be indeed a simple affair, dealing with owner- 
 ship, with leaseholds, and with mortgages and other charges. 
 In sight of so great a national advantage, I am disposed to 
 think and hope that the real or supposed interest of any one 
 class will not much longer be allowed to impede progress in 
 that which would vastly enlarge the wealth and powers of the 
 country. 
 
V. 
 
 FREE LAND} 
 
 DURING the Cotton Famine, when I was in Lancashire for 
 four years, administering in all its towns the business 
 of the Public Works Act, I often expressed, and I have many 
 times since repeated the opinion, that I knew no part of 
 England which seemed so free from stupid people. From that 
 time, I have felt an attachment to the people of this manu- 
 facturing district ; and I have felt, too, that when any great 
 social question has to be placed before the public for solution, 
 there is no part of the country in which it is more important 
 that the subject should be well expounded and well understood 
 than in Lancashire. I am convinced that if the people of 
 Lancashire will master this question of free land, and insist 
 upon the necessary legislation being adopted by Parliament, 
 the thing will be done. This is a matter which concerns the 
 food of the people. There is not a pound of meat in the 
 butchers' shops, there is not a bit of bacon at the grocers', 
 there is not a loaf of bread at the bakers', there is not an 
 article of food which is not indirectly taxed of which the 
 price is not made higher than it would be if the soil of England 
 were free land ; if that soil were not withheld from increased 
 production by positive and permissive laws which have but 
 one object and one defence that they maintain a privileged 
 class in a position of supremacy in the legislature and upon 
 
 1 An address delivered at the request of the Liberal Association, at Bolton, 
 March 6th, 1878. 
 
I2O Free Land. 
 
 the land, whose power with regard to the land has always been 
 used, and is now employed, to defeat the legitimate demands of 
 the people of this country. 
 
 In the first place, this matter of free land is a food question. 
 But man does not live by bread alone, and perhaps the greater 
 part of this matter is that which connects it with the habits 
 and status of the people. Now, in regard to self-help and 
 self-elevation, there is nothing like thrift ; no man is rich who 
 is improvident ; no man is poor who has all his life been wisely 
 careful. But as to a nation, we look in vain for carefulness 
 when the greatest of all incentives and encouragements to thrift 
 the possession of land is withheld, as in this country it is 
 withheld, from the people. We English are known all over 
 Europe for the reverse of carefulness ; even our fellow-subjects 
 in Jersey say, if they have a pauper, that he must be English or 
 Irish. I have often noted the absence of thrift among our own 
 people as compared with the saving, frugal habits of people of 
 other nations, and have asked myself to what are the com- 
 paratively wasteful habits of the English people to be ascribed ? 
 No candid and competent person will doubt that the response 
 to this question involves a heavy charge against our arrange- 
 ments with reference to land. People become thrifty through 
 the desire to acquire, to retain, and to extend their property ; 
 and wherever and whenever they are debarred from acquiring 
 property in land, the consequence is painfully marked in the 
 habits of the people. Our land system, to use Mr. Cobden's 
 phrase, divorces the people from the soil, and, therefore, I lay 
 to its charge that for which the people of this country have an 
 unenviable distinction among the populations of Europe. 
 
 In sight then of these gigantic evils evils which affect every 
 one of us, we say we want free land ; and we are quite prepared 
 to explain how it is that the land of England is held in bondage, 
 and what we mean by free land. The old English term, a free- 
 holder, implies a good deal of what we mean, but agricultural 
 freeholds occupy a very small part of England. We wish our 
 
/., 
 
 Free Land. f / *'}f l V$ 
 
 opponents, among whom there are certainly stupid people, to vj> 
 strive to comprehend and digest the fact (for it is a fact) ukft\ . 
 more than 50,000,000 acres of this United Kingdom that is,* ' / 
 nearly four-fifths know no freeholder. These 50,000,000 of 
 acres are not free land ; they are in bondage. Let us try to 
 understand this great matter fully and thoroughly. Let us 
 take, by way of example, the case of one who is known, at least 
 by name, to all in Lancashire, and who, I believe, is as widely 
 respected the case of Lord Derby. He is not, he never has 
 been, he never can be, owner of the Knowsley estate ; and of 
 course his interest and his responsibility in regard to that large 
 property are infinitely inferior to what they would be if he were 
 the freeholder. Take the five hundred members of the House 
 of Lords, who receive the rents of nearly one-fifth of the United 
 Kingdom. They are not owners ; they are only life tenants ; 
 they have small inducement and small power to improve the 
 land. Some of them are, for their position and in their fashion, 
 poor men, who are trying, regardless of the interests of agricul- 
 ture, to scrape what they can out of their estates, which must all 
 go at their death to eldest sons, for the benefit of the younger 
 children. Some of them are insolvent ; but because the land is 
 not free, they drag it with them through all the years of their 
 struggles and into their occasional bankruptcies, and of course 
 the interests of production are upon all such estates terribly 
 neglected. Let us take a case recently before the Bankruptcy 
 Court, by way of illustration. A property of 16,000 acres, with 
 
 a rental of as many pounds sterling, was settled upon Lord 
 
 for life, with remainder to his son Lord as tenant in tail. 
 
 Upon the coming of age of Lord the estate was re-settled. 
 
 Within a year after the re-settlement, the son, having run into 
 debt, was made bankrupt ; the whole of his reversionary interest 
 was then assigned to the creditors ; and as Mr. Shaw-Lefevre 
 has written in allusion to this case ' the result is that during 
 the lives of father and son, and perhaps for many years after, 
 this great estate will be in the position of being in the ostensible 
 
122 Free Land. 
 
 possession of men absolutely without means, and without any 
 motive or probable power to sell.' 
 
 As I travelled towards Manchester to-day, I was thinking of 
 this sad case of the restricted production and the miserable 
 future of that and of many other settled estates, while by a 
 curious coincidence, a fellow-passenger, a Manchester man, whose 
 name I do not know, was speaking of part of an impoverished 
 estate of about 200 acres which he had purchased six years ago 
 in the county of Chester. Fortunately for the interests of agri- 
 culture, the male line in the entail had failed, and a female 
 inheritor had exercised powers of sale. When the land was 
 conveyed to him from the possession of the long-embarrassed 
 family, he said there was barely feed for thirty sheep, and that 
 there was not a load of hay ; indeed his own expression was, 
 ' You could cart all the hay in a wheelbarrow.' In six years, by 
 the due application of capital upon this land, so happily made 
 free from settlement, he had raised the produce to fifty loads of 
 hay; and he said he had at that moment six hundred sheep 
 upon the land, which as ' settled ' land barely afforded food for 
 thirty. We want free land, because it would greatly increase 
 the food supply by attracting capital to investment in the soil, 
 thus adding to the wealth and strength of the country in the 
 surest manner ; because it would tend to increase the number of 
 agricultural owners a policy of the most wisely Conservative 
 character, affording security such as none other can give for the 
 rights of property, and the permanence of the most valuable 
 institutions of the nation. Objections have been raised to my 
 employment of the words 'free land.' I have given those objec- 
 tions full consideration. But though I have used ' free trade in 
 land ' as well as ' free land/ I am bound to say that I regard the 
 latter as the closer and more correct designation of the reforms 
 to which I am about to refer, and which it is certainly my fixed 
 intention to advocate. It is not necessary, nor is it possible, 
 that the general title of a programme of reform should convey 
 detailed instructions to the legal mind. The tribunal, in an 
 
Free Land. 123 
 
 appeal of this sort, is the people ; and the title will not be 
 accepted by them unless it is intelligible and indicative of the 
 direction in which it is desired that their movement should be 
 made. I think ' free land ' best satisfies this requirement. When 
 I have confined my observations mainly to the work of facili- 
 tating and cheapening the processes of transfer, I have thought 
 ' free trade in land ' an adequate, though necessarily very imper- 
 fect, expression of the object. But in viewing the whole subject, 
 of which the larger part is the emancipation of the soil from the 
 bondage of settlement, and the establishment of freehold tenure, 
 'free land* is clearly more correct. It is not a valid objection 
 that a title given to a programme of reform may, by uninquiring 
 minds, be held to imply something foreign to the purpose of the 
 reformers. ' Free trade ' was the title of the great Manchester 
 reform initiated at the time when I was but a child. You did 
 not give up that title because it might have been held to imply 
 free exchange of commodities without payment of carriage, 
 or the abolition of the duties upon spirits, malt, and tobacco. 
 When a Free Church was constituted in Scotland, when the 
 same term is resounding throughout Europe, and is heard in 
 every community, men were not and will not be persuaded to 
 throw it aside because some pedant might suggest that it meant 
 a Church in which every one was free to promulgate diverse and 
 personal opinion. We ask for Disestablishment as a measure 
 of justice to the whole people, and of real advantage to the 
 Church ; shall we abandon the word because, taken apart from 
 the circumstances of the Church of England, the expression is 
 vague, and might be held by ignorant minds to imply the 
 abolition of that great and beneficial organisation ? No ; and 
 I maintain that ' free land ' has a claim as good as any one of 
 these to acceptance, and that no other designation with which 
 I am acquainted indicates so correctly that which is our most 
 pressing need the liberation of the soil from the influence of 
 laws and customs which are of feudal descent and of most 
 pernicious operation. 
 
124 Free Land. 
 
 With very few exceptions, the estates of the landed gentry 
 are settled for fifty or a hundred years, and are by that means 
 practically withdrawn from all possibility of sale. Now I want 
 to ask this question : Can it be for the advantage of the country 
 that four-fifths of the soil should be without owners should be 
 settled by fetters immovable in many cases for a century ? I 
 assert that in order to have free land, we must insist that the 
 tenure shall be freehold, and to that end it must be forbidden 
 to create life estates in land. There must be no settlements of 
 land. There can be no objection to settlements, for a reasonable 
 period, of personalty, or of money charges upon land. But 
 when we advance this preliminary demand in relation to free 
 land, it will be asked, Why should not land be settled as well as 
 money ? Because, as Mr. Lowe has said, ' Land is a kind of 
 property in which the public must, from its very nature, have a 
 kind of dormant joint interest with the proprietor,' and because 
 the public will not submit to be deprived for a century it may 
 be of the beneficial advantage of that interest. 
 
 I must say a few words upon the nature of property in land. 
 The ownership of land is and must always be a monopoly, and 
 it is a monopoly of something necessary to the existence of 
 every member of the community. Therefore absolute property 
 in land cannot exist. No well-informed person has ever claimed 
 that it does exist in England. In the standard book upon the 
 Law of Real Property, we find it stated that ' no man is in law 
 the absolute owner of lands.' This is true even of a freeholder, 
 of whom we speak as one who holds an estate in fee-simple. I 
 am a great stickler for the rights of property ; I never join in 
 the cry that landlords ought to give leases or ought not to 
 raise rents. We have moral obligations connecting us with all 
 men ; but we are speaking now of legal obligations. Let every 
 man do as he sees fit with his own ; but in regard to land, the 
 definition of that which is his own must be determined by the 
 State. 
 
 I say that the State must withdraw the power of settling life 
 
Free Land. 125 
 
 estates in land, because it is opposed to public interests, and 
 that whatever is opposed to public interest in regard to the 
 tenure of land should be made the subject of legislation. But 
 to what extent should this be carried, and who shall judge 
 what is for the public interest ? I will mention what is my 
 rule in the matter. It is this. Be sure that the legislation 
 which is proposed will raise the pecuniary value of the interest 
 of the landowners. This is, I think, the truest way in which 
 legislators can inform themselves whether the change will be 
 really for the public advantage. I say that it can never be for 
 the public interest to lessen the value of the landlord's interest 
 through any modification of the admitted rights of property. 
 I have never met any one who had a doubt that if the power 
 of settling land were abolished, and its transfer by registration 
 made simple and inexpensive as it is in the Channel Islands, 
 or by a much better system in Australia the result would be 
 a large increase in the value of the proprietary right. And in 
 completion of this point I would add that wherever it is clear 
 that the proprietary interest runs with the public interest, then 
 to legislate is an imperative duty, and to withhold legislation is 
 to betray the interest of the public to the prejudices of a class. 
 This is what is now happening in our country. Though every 
 step in the beneficial progress of reform must augment the value 
 of their possessions, though no man who sought to violate their 
 rights of property to the extent of a rood of ground would 
 obtain a hearing from the British people, yet it is not to be 
 expected that the vast majority of landowners will abandon 
 their traditional policy of resistance. One reason why an un- 
 reasoning opposition to reform may be looked for, is because 
 the most intelligent of the landlords are the least concerned 
 with the management of their estates. Were they owners, 
 it might be different; but as life tenants, with fettered powers 
 of improvement, they prefer the paths of pleasure or of states- 
 manship. As for the majority, they will oppose, because, as 
 Lord Beaconsfield has written of them in 'Lothair,' 'They live 
 
126 Free Land. 
 
 in the open air, and they never read ; ' and because, as Mr. Mill 
 has said of them, ' Great landlords have rarely studied any- 
 thing.' 
 
 But if the British people do not now proceed to free the 
 soil of their country from bondage in feudal forms of law 
 and custom, the fault is entirely their own. It is absurd to 
 speak harshly of the seven or eight thousand life tenants of 
 these 50,000,000 acres, as though they alone were responsible. 
 They are without question responsible for their own opposition 
 to reform, and for the self-interested legislation of their time. 
 It is undeniable that they have been guilty of class legislation. 
 But this selfish disposition cannot surprise those who have 
 taken even a cursory observation of the main stream of history. 
 Land tenure is the simplest of all its chapters ; the proceeding 
 is, in outline, uniform in character. First the king claimed all, 
 and finding that he alone could not hold all against other kings, 
 he called in great nobles that he might have their swords at 
 need ; then the nobles, finding that they could not keep their 
 great neighbours out of their castles with their own weapons, 
 admitted knights and esquires to landownership, who, as long 
 as the reign of force endured, secured the stout arms of meaner 
 men in the same way. There was at that time much sub- 
 division of the land. But when law became supreme in place 
 of force, then the great people grew less liberal, and costly 
 processes of law which favoured the re-attainment of the soil 
 by the wealthy, were set up, and are still in operation. Thus 
 it happens that we now confront the greatest anomaly in the 
 world ; and the danger which would menace this country if it 
 were not quite certain that Parliament can and will deliver 
 us is, that together with representation of an increasingly 
 popular character, we are maintaining a mediaeval land system. 
 When millions rule, the ownership of four-fifths of the land 
 may not wisely or safely be left to a few thousands. If the 
 claim to constitute the best Second Chamber that could be 
 devised must for ever continue to involve the placing in mort- 
 
Free Lana. 127 
 
 main for that is what it comes to of 50,000,000 acres, or 
 four-fifths of our country, then, I say, unhesitatingly, that the 
 continuance of the House of Lords is not worth the cost, which 
 I believe to be a cost sufficient to discharge the national debt. 
 But there is nothing in the programme of free land which 
 demands the distribution of the large properties of the peerage, 
 and of course their titles of honour have no connection with 
 the matter. No one, however, who is wise will defend the 
 law of primogeniture, and the customs of entail and settlement, 
 upon the ground that these things are necessary and their 
 endurance justifiable for the maintenance of the House of Lords. 
 The nobility may count securely upon the goodwill of the great 
 body of the people, although I do not think that this tenderness 
 is, as has been said, peculiar to the English people. The fact 
 that a lord has an undoubted advantage over another man, is 
 due to that preference which is world-wide for those who are 
 in any honourable way distinguished ; to the traditions of power 
 and wealth with which that particular distinction is associated ; 
 and, last, but not least, to the undoubted excellence of members 
 of the British nobility. But I would warn its friends not to put 
 nobility upon a false basis. Those who are its natural guardians 
 must in this age be careful to keep its savour sweet before the 
 enfranchised people, and they must be careful not to identify 
 the uses of a landed gentry with those abuses of law and custom 
 which have placed 50,000,000 acres of the United Kingdom in a 
 condition of ownerless and settled disability. 
 
 Lately I read a debate in the House of Commons upon the 
 county franchise. In the speeches of honourable members I 
 observed a great many good reasons why the voting qualifi- 
 cation should be made equal in counties and boroughs. But 
 the best reason of all found no place in the debate. I am sure 
 it could not have been so utterly absent from the minds of 
 honourable members. I suppose it was suppressed in deference 
 to that supremacy which the landed interest has always held 
 and still holds in Parliament. If I were asked what I thought 
 
128 Free Land. 
 
 would be the best and most valuable result of the extension 
 of the franchise in the rural districts if I were asked for what 
 purpose I think that extension is most needed I should say 
 it was to make England free in regard to the system of land 
 tenure, to abolish the law of primogeniture, to release four-fifths 
 of the soil from the disabilities of strict settlement, and to 
 make the transfer of land simple and secure. England is 
 embarrassed in her competition with other nations for want of 
 these reforms ; food is much dearer than it need be ; capital is 
 wasted in foreign enterprises which, if we had free land, would 
 be put to the most productive uses at home; the population 
 in rural and most healthy districts does not increase ; in other 
 words, the poor are forced into the already overcrowded towns. 
 All this is written most plainly upon the surface of English 
 life. But we shall not get reform without a large extension of 
 the suffrage. And it will need something more than that. We 
 must educate the voters as to what must be demanded from 
 their representatives ; and then, when the whole country is 
 instructed and resolved, we shall have free land. 
 
 The evil is not denied. There is not a great lawyer in the 
 kingdom who is not ready to abuse that crying evil, the English 
 law of transfer. It is a needless and expensive protection to 
 the landed gentry ; a terror to the middle class ; an unknown 
 and unintelligible mystery to the mass of the people. It is 
 bad in every point. To this abominable system of conveyance 
 our country is condemned, partly because it suits that not 
 less injurious system of settlement. In their utter aversion 
 from its intricacies, its costs, its delays, its uncertainties, its 
 responsibilities, the people of England have turned altogether 
 away from the land; and the consequence is that millions 
 which might be spent with immense benefit to the interests 
 of labour and production at home, go abroad to provide such 
 despotisms as Turkey and such republics as Peru with those 
 most costly toys of sovereignty, iron-clad shipping. The people 
 of England have been driven out from the possession of the soil 
 
Free Land. 129 
 
 by the policy of Parliaments of landowners; I want them to be 
 brought back to that possession by the policy of Parliaments of 
 their own choosing ; and a main part of the work of freeing the 
 land is the substitution of transfer by registration of title for 
 transfer by deed of conveyance. 
 
 I see that some lawyer has been imposing upon the good 
 Bishop of Manchester by telling him that registration only 
 adds to the cost of transfer. That is, though the Bishop does 
 not seem to be aware of it, a crafty allusion to those costly 
 shams which have been set up in this country those wretched 
 attempts of our legislature to make a system of registration 
 square with the feudalism of English land tenure. We have 
 been taxed to support such a legislative mockery as the Land 
 Registry Office of Lord Westbury, which, at its rate of operation 
 in 1873, would have completed the registration of English land 
 in 760 years. That is not what we mean by registration of 
 title. That is rather how not to do it. Assuming registration 
 to be compulsory, and that the validity of a transaction could 
 only be established by the fact of registration, then we may say 
 there are two systems of transfer one by registration of deeds, 
 and the other by registration of title. Both are in operation 
 within Her Majesty's dominions ; both in that operation confer 
 upon happier communities of fellow-subjects, the blessings of 
 secure, expeditious, and cheap transfer; and either could be 
 established in this country. If we want an example of transfer 
 by registration of deeds, we have it in a part of the empire 
 where titles are quite as ancient as in England in the Channel 
 Islands, which from the time of the Norman conquest have been 
 annexed to the English Crown ; while as for the far superior 
 system of transfer by registration of title, there can be no doubt 
 that the best example in the world is that which was established 
 twenty years ago by Sir Robert Torrens in South Australia. 
 Land is transferred in the Channel Islands in an hour, and at a 
 cost of a few shillings; the title is secure, and there is no 
 trouble about the custody of deeds. The system which Her 
 
 K 
 
130 Free Land. 
 
 Majesty's Government has long ago approved for South Aus- 
 tralia, and which is highly successful in operation, is still better, 
 and that is a system which its founder, Sir Robert Torrens, has 
 demonstrated could be adopted in this country. The cost of 
 a mortgage under that system is ios., and it need be no more 
 in England ; the time occupied is fifteen minutes. The cost of 
 transfer or release is $s. ; the time occupied is five minutes ; 
 and the validity of each step is guaranteed by an assurance 
 fund supplemented by the security of the general revenues of 
 the colony. When the title is registered it is indefeasible. Mr. 
 Gladstone said in Dublin that he attached ' no value to our land 
 laws in respect to entails and settlements/ and that in regard 
 to these points he was 'in favour of bold and important, if not 
 sweeping change.' Well, if we had much less complexity of 
 limitations, there would be no insuperable difficulty in the esta- 
 blishment of compulsory registration, and we might then have 
 transfer upon the Australian method. It is a common mistake 
 to suppose that titles are of necessity simple in a newly-settled 
 country. Land changes hands in a prosperous colony with 
 rapidity quite unknown in England, where nearly four-fifths 
 of the soil is settled for generations in the same families. Sir 
 Robert Torrens has put the matter very clearly. He says : 
 ' The first essential, therefore, in every measure for the reform 
 of the law of real property must be to cut off the retrospective 
 character of titles, thus removing existing complexities. The 
 next essential is the substitution of a method of conveyancing, 
 under which future dealings will not induce fresh complications. 
 Both requirements are secured in South Australia by substituting 
 "title by registration " for "title by deed," applying to the transfer 
 of property in land the same principles under which, for more 
 than a century, our dealings with property in shipping and in 
 the Funds have been conducted with safety and satisfaction.' 
 
 But this is by no means the full measure of advantage to 
 the landowner. With such a system of registration, the price 
 of land of course rises, and the rate of interest on mortgages 
 
Free Land. 131 
 
 becomes substantially lower. An estate held by indefeasible 
 title is as sound a security as can be offered quite as good as 
 Consols ; and if we were rid of that 'tortuous and ungodly jumble,' 
 as Cromwell called our law of real property, there is no reason 
 why borrowers upon land should pay more than 3^ per cent, 
 for loans. Nor need their borrowings be less secret than at 
 present, under the provisions of this best system of registration. 
 We have parish maps quite sufficiently good for purposes of 
 registration until the Ordnance Survey is completed ; and if we 
 made registration compulsory upon sale or transfer, and the 
 period for investigation were limited to twenty years, we should 
 soon have the great bulk of land registered. We must give 
 indefeasible title (with pecuniary compensation for error) where 
 that could be given, and a good holding title in the compara- 
 tively few cases where the title would be maturing to inde- 
 feasibility. And if we got rid of entail and settlement, our 
 registry would be even more simple than that of South Australia. 
 We should then have free land, and what would be the conse- 
 quence ? 
 
 Let us look first at the altered circumstances of the landed 
 gentry. If a landed proprietor died intestate, the abolition of 
 primogeniture would give a share of his property to his wife and 
 each of his children, instead of all going to the eldest son. But 
 the landed gentry do not die intestate, and we may suppose that 
 the majority would follow the rule of their fathers, and would 
 give the landed estate by will to the eldest son ; the more so 
 because titles of honour and nobility are so bestowed ; and those, 
 of course, no alteration in the land laws would affect. It is in 
 their marriage settlements that the landed gentry would be 
 chiefly concerned by the changes we propose. They could not 
 settle the land as they do now for the lives of their sons and 
 their sons' sons, or their brothers and their brothers' sons thus 
 withdrawing it from risk of transfer, it may be, for a century. 
 No such settlement would be valid. When a settlement was 
 effected, it must be of personalty charged upon the land, leaving 
 
132 Free Land. 
 
 the soil free to the accidents of ownership. Trustees would be 
 needed to hold lands for persons incapacitated by law, and 
 their names upon the register, with 'No survivorship' attached, 
 which is the Australian method of indicating trustees, would 
 stop dealings with the estate until the expiry of their trust. 
 The landed gentry, as they came under the operation of the 
 new system, would be free to sell any of their lands, and we 
 may presume that their interest in their property would be 
 much more keen and intelligent than it is at present. Of 
 course, the estates of the insolvent landlord would pass away 
 from him, to his great relief, to the great advantage of his 
 family and of the community. 
 
 But what of the people? The advocates of the present 
 system say that if we make the land free in the way I have 
 attempted to describe, the result will be the same so far as 
 the exclusion of the people from landowning is concerned. 
 I deny that, and I say that all the evidence leads to an 
 opposite opinion. The proposition is true, however and where- 
 ever it is tested, that industry always pays a higher price 
 for land than luxury can or will afford. In Jersey, where the 
 average size of farms is ten acres, the price of land is twice 
 or three times as high as in England. The man who can 
 afford to pay the highest price for land is he who intends to 
 labour upon it for his own reward. People ask, Will he 
 sink part of his capital in land at two or three per cent. ? 
 Yes, he certainly will, because that is the only way to 
 security, and he will make it pay him 10 or 12 per cent. 
 With free land, small farming would become a recognized 
 business, as it has never been in our time ; it would not 
 be universal, any more than small shopkeeping is universal. 
 But it would establish itself, and would tend to increase 
 rather than to extinction. 
 
 Then, as to produce. I saw the other day that the Bishop of 
 Manchester had been led astray by Mr. Caird's statement that 
 with five times the extent of land under wheat in France, the 
 
Free Land. 133 
 
 French produce little more than twice the quantity grown in 
 England ; and as farms are small in France, the Bishop rode 
 away upon this as conclusive against the possible existence of 
 small farms under a system of free trade in land. The worth 
 of this statement, as an argument, is destroyed by the fact, 
 familiar to every writer upon French agriculture, that the yield 
 of wheat in France is most miserable upon the large farms ; 
 that of the small farms many produce as much and some much 
 more than the English average. No useful comparison can, how- 
 ever, be made between the agriculture of two countries without 
 taking account of the different amount of capital employed. 
 Inadequate as that is in England, it is far larger than in any 
 other country. Frenchmen have been known to take large 
 farms with a capital of less than los. an acre. But the capital 
 employed is not ruled by the size of farms. In Jersey, the 
 average capital is greater than in England, and the result is 
 that the average yield of wheat a crop very widely grown, but 
 for which the soil of the Channel Islands is not well suited is 
 much larger than in England. It is a delusion to suppose that 
 capital and science must be the exclusive possession of large 
 farmers. Agriculture is in this respect undergoing a great 
 change. The farmer of 300 acres cannot afford to keep for his 
 sole use such agricultural machinery as is coming into vogue ; 
 there is no article of that machinery of which the farmer of 
 twenty acres need be deprived. The steam threshing-machine 
 is far more commonly used in Jersey, where the farms average 
 ten acres, than in the Isle of Wight. The progress of steam 
 cultivation and steam carriage will be all to the advantage of 
 the small farmer. The steam plough and the spade will be the 
 implements of the future. The terribly expensive team of horses 
 dragging a few sacks of wheat loiteringly along country roads 
 will soon be a more rare sight. The traction engine or the 
 light railway will take everybody's corn and potatoes at a fourth 
 the price of horse labour, and bring back manure from the rail- 
 road stations for distribution at the farms by the roadside. We 
 
134 F ree Land. 
 
 shall have fewer farmers standing about with their hands in their 
 pockets, or riding their nags to the meet of hounds. A Jersey 
 farmer who had just threshed a crop of wheat of his own growth, 
 producing about fifty bushels to the acre, which is nearly 
 double the English average upon large farms, said to me last 
 autumn, ' How I should like to be an English farmer !' ' Why ?' 
 I asked. ' What I wish/ I added, ' is to see English farmers 
 produce crops like yours.' 'Ah/ he replied, 'that's all very 
 well, but what I should like would be to ride in a gig like an 
 English farmer and take it easy.' 
 
 Now I must break off. I have touched upon many points, 
 and there is not one which would not in detail furnish matter 
 for an evening. If I have not succeeded in impressing upon 
 your minds the economic importance of the consequences which 
 would result from the liberation of the land, the fault is mine, 
 for the case is plain and the arguments irresistible. I want to 
 rouse the people of our country to fight this battle for free land. 
 This is the first time in the history of England in which the 
 people have had a prospect of being strong enough for the work 
 of power sufficient to ensure that no legal subtleties and no 
 selfish interests shall defeat their demand for free land. I hope 
 they will be worthy of the time and of their opportunities ; and 
 when they are asked, in reference to this great question, ' Shall 
 England be free ? ' that their voices and their votes will demand 
 reform and abolition of evils which affect not merely the 
 character and the acts of the legislature, but all the circum- 
 stances of our daily life. 
 
135 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE GOVERNMENT OF LONDON. 1 
 
 IT would not be possible to address inhabitants of London 
 upon any subject of greater importance than that of the 
 government of the Metropolis, which, after ages of neglect, 
 varied with partial and ineffectual legislation, stands before 
 us discredited by every Administration, admired and approved 
 by none, except, perhaps, the typical Frenchman, who has a 
 vague idea that the rule of Guildhall and of the Mansion House 
 extends over all London, and that the loving-cup represents 
 all the riches of contentment and satisfaction of all the citizens 
 of the largest and richest city of the world. I shall assume, 
 this evening, not only that you are better informed than he, 
 as of course you must be, but also that you are acquainted 
 with very much of the past and present condition of the govern- 
 ment of London. I shall mention but two Acts of Parliament, 
 those by which I trust the government of London will soon 
 be remodelled. I shall suppose you do not approve of the 
 undertaking of the local government of this capital of the 
 British Empire by thirty-nine bodies, which bodies probably not 
 a hundred out of London's four millions of people could 
 enumerate. All of them, even to the least, deal with incomes 
 derived from patient ratepayers incomes amounting to tens 
 of thousands of pounds ; but whence they come, what they do, 
 or whither the money goes, who is there can tell ? As for our 
 own ignorance of the matter yours and mine must we not 
 
 1 An Address to the Members of the Social Science Association. 
 
136 The Government of London. 
 
 confess that we were fairly represented by the late Mr. Charles 
 Buxton when he said, in bringing to the attention of the House 
 of Commons those Bills, the outlines of which are in accordance 
 with the suggestions I shall offer : ' I have not the faintest idea 
 when I pay my rates, who those are by whom I am governed, 
 or how or why they have been chosen to govern me/ 
 
 Is there one person in this room who would not shrink with 
 horror, as 1 confess I should, from the task of explaining to any 
 inquiring foreigner our system of local government ? Regarding 
 ourselves for the moment as inhabitants of this hall, is there any 
 one present so adventurous, so rash, as to assert that he could 
 off-hand say by whom we are here, in this particular spot, 
 governed for local purposes ? He might bethink himself of one 
 board the Metropolitan Board of Works ; but the boards are 
 legion. Our paving and lighting are the work of the Vestry of 
 St. Martin's ; our sewers are the province of the Metropolitan 
 Board, in regard to which body we, as ratepayers, are not 
 permitted the right of electors, that office being performed on 
 our behalf by the vestry, which has about it so much of the 
 clerical cloth from which it takes its name as to give colour to a 
 suspicion that London has thirty-nine governments for no better 
 reason than a blind concurrence with the number of articles of 
 the Church. If you commit an offence, that will at once bring 
 you in contact with another government the police and the 
 police magistrate, of which the former dwells on neutral ground, 
 neither exactly local nor imperial, the latter being, in every re- 
 spect, an officer of State. But nothing that you could do would, 
 so far as I am aware, bring to your notice, in its entirety, that 
 antique curiosity the Corporation of Westminster, in whose 
 dominions, however, you are assembled to-night. If you were 
 a candidate, in this city of Westminster, for election to Parlia- 
 ment, you might catch sight of a part of it in the person of 
 the High Bailiff; and another part of it, the Dean and Chapter, 
 may be seen occasionally at the Abbey ; but I have never met 
 with more than one man who had beheld the entire collection of 
 
The Government of London. 137 
 
 antiquities. Again, you must not suppose, if, in quitting this 
 hall, puzzled with these mysteries, you should fall over the 
 Embankment and be drowned, it would be the duty of this 
 fossil Corporation, or of any body I have yet mentioned, to take 
 charge of your corpse. You would then be on the grounds of 
 the Conservators of the Thames, a body whose respectability 
 appears to be so nice, that while they have filled large Blue 
 Books with evidence about foreshores, they have shunned any 
 useful dealings with the filth which is poured into the river in that 
 part of its waters from which your drink is taken, and have been 
 inactive concerning the vast volume of sewage, which is thrown, 
 with waste of that which would make the bread of tens of 
 thousands, into the same river where its stream is open to the 
 traffic of the world. 
 
 The list is tedious, and my memory will certainly fail to 
 enumerate the many governments to which a dweller in this 
 house would be subject. But if we omitted the School Board, 
 the rate-collector of that beneficent organisation would not 
 forget us, nor would the company's officer who gathers the 
 water-rate, nor they who supply us with the artificial light so 
 much used in this murky city ; and all three Education, 
 Water, Gas are the realms of separate and distinct authorities. 
 Lastly, if we succumbed to pauperism, we should fall to yet 
 another local government ; and if we attempted, on any well- 
 drawn map of London, to identify the district which fared with 
 ourselves in each one or all of these matters, so that at least we 
 might know whom to call upon when we desired to unite in 
 protest, we should be involved in hopeless difficulty, for these 
 different governments have different districts, overlapping, inter- 
 lacing, intermixed confusing to bewilderment. First, London is 
 seen seated on parts of four counties ; then she is divided among 
 thirty-nine district governments, including the Corporation of 
 Gog and Magog and the Vestry of St. Pancras. But these divi- 
 sions have no correspondence with the nineteen police districts 
 and fifteen police-court districts ; nor these last with the thir- 
 
138 The Government of London. 
 
 teen county-court districts ; nor with the ten postal districts ; nor 
 with the thirty-seven districts into which the Registrar-General 
 divides London ; nor with the forty-four surveyors' districts ; nor 
 with the fifteen militia districts ; nor with the ten parliamentary 
 and school board divisions ; nor with the gas and water divi- 
 sions : if we attempted to distinguish these divisions by colour, 
 our map would soon be blotted out of sight. I doubt if fifty 
 maps would be sufficient to show you intelligibly the anomalies 
 of London government. 
 
 You know, as ratepayers, and as practical people, what 
 all this means. Tens of thousands of your fellow-citizens 
 know also that it implies of necessity inefficiency, extravagance, 
 jobbery, and waste. But they are powerless, or, at least, they 
 feel powerless, because the area is so large, the grievance so 
 tremendous, the remedy so distant ; because the only organiza- 
 tion in their own neighbourhood is so consciously interested in 
 maintaining the anarchy which I have vainly attempted to 
 describe. You know very well what are the best characteristics 
 of good government efficiency, economy, publicity. We need 
 not speak ill of those who, in honorary and laborious service, 
 administer the government of London. They are a population 
 themselves. The House of Commons is sometimes regarded 
 as a numerous body. But the 654 members of that House do 
 not represent a tenth of the army which, for the most part 
 in various honorary official positions, administers the local affairs 
 of the Metropolis. There are more than 7,000 men, chiefly 
 fathers of families, engaged in it. Their number alone is suffi- 
 cient to command respect ; but I need not tell you there are 
 very many of them to whom the community is under much 
 obligation. Yet it is obvious that, in order to secure efficiency 
 of government, our aim should be to attract the persons best 
 qualified for its due administration ; and no one will allege that 
 under our present system we succeed in this to the greatest 
 possible extent. In regard to the paid officers, efficiency is 
 clearly sacrificed by their mere multiplication. Agreeing, as we 
 
The Government of London. 139 
 
 all must, that this immense, this unparalleled complication of 
 governments is unnecessary, we must admit that in the main- 
 tenance of a separate staff by each division of local government 
 the efficiency of the officers is sacrificed. We see examples 
 everywhere. Why are there two sorts of pavement in the 
 Strand ? Because the Strand is under two governments. Why 
 have we seen some street lamps lighted with the expeditious 
 staff, while in other streets lamplighters were running about with 
 the old-fashioned ladder ? For the same reason, of course. 
 And this condemnation on the ground of inefficiency, includes a 
 judgment also on the question of economy. 
 
 Who shall count the waste which ensues from this needless 
 subdivision of collecting and spending power ? I met a man not 
 long ago, a carter by trade, who told me that he let his horses 
 to the vestry of a West End parish, in order to give them a rest 
 now and then from the fatigues of their customary work. In 
 one parish we see a steam-roller at work, in the next our car- 
 riage wheels must plough through the raw macadam. I shall 
 endeavour presently to make an estimate of the saving which 
 might be effected by a reform of the government of London, and 
 no part of my task will be more easy than to prove that the 
 present system is most wasteful and extravagant. I have said 
 that another, the third characteristic I ought, perhaps, in this 
 case to say the guarantee for good government is publicity. 
 The opinion is somewhat cynical, but I accept it, and experience 
 leads me to endorse the view, that without publicity in matters 
 of administration there is always jobbery unfair and improper 
 use of public funds. How can you make public that is, how 
 can you interest the public in the affairs of these thirty-nine 
 governments, especially when the governments are not com- 
 posed (I will not be offensive) of first-rate citizens? Some 
 years ago one of the many vestries did, indeed, obtain a passing 
 notoriety, but it was only upon charges which, if they were 
 proved, would make any government infamous. For the most 
 part, even the place of meeting of the minor governments of 
 
140 The Government of London. 
 
 London is unknown to the vast majority of the ratepayers whose 
 money is there dealt with. In each centre there is a small 
 entourage which is informed and is fattened upon parochial 
 affairs, and beyond that all is darkness and blind payments. 
 
 It is clear, then, that to secure efficiency, economy, and pub- 
 licity in the metropolitan administration, we must diminish the 
 number of centres of control ; and, inasmuch as all possible 
 uniformity of area is productive of economy, and the divisions 
 are otherwise very suitable, I see no reason why we should 
 not substitute those parliamentary divisions which have been 
 proposed in the Bills introduced by Lord Elcho, Mr. Mill, and 
 Mr. Buxton, and which are now adopted in the elections to the 
 London School Board. Originally it was designed that each 
 of these boroughs should have a complete, separate, and distinct 
 municipal organization, but that idea is, I am glad to observe, 
 entirely abandoned. No doubt it would be better than the 
 existing method, in which thirty-nine governments, more or less 
 obscure, spend, unwatched and unchecked, the revenues of 
 London. But I do not hesitate to object to the plan on 
 another ground than that of perpetuating division and pro- 
 moting injurious rivalry. I object to it, also, because the 
 mayors of these boroughs must either be to the mayor of the 
 City as a gig to the state-coach, or they must be useless, 
 because subordinate to the potentate of Guildhall. It is with 
 me a cardinal point in this great work to maintain, and not only 
 maintain, but to enhance and to extend, the dignity and im- 
 portance of the ancient mayoralty of the city of London. I 
 have no sympathy with those who do not cherish the best 
 traditions of the City ; and I heartily approve of that part of 
 the design of the late Mr. Buxton's Bills which places the Lord 
 Mayor at the head of the government of the Metropolis. I 
 cannot hear of any weighty argument to the contrary. Why 
 should we sacrifice a tradition and a history of eight centuries 
 of honour ? To a fear of a Metropolitan Commune ? I 
 thought that bogey had at last been laid to rest. Our towns 
 
The Govern ment of London. 141 
 
 are not like those of France, outvoted by the country. In 
 England the towns have always led ; and so far from there being 
 a shadow of a shade upon their supremacy, the prospect is that, 
 in any redistribution of electoral power, their influence must 
 increase. I can understand narrow, old-world politicians being 
 fearful that if the Lord Mayor were really what the French take 
 him for that is, Lord Mayor of London his power would be a 
 formidable rival to that of the Executive Government But I 
 cannot believe that this will be urged as an objection by any 
 responsible person, now that the nation is fully represented in 
 Parliament, and the supremacy of the House of Commons is so 
 unquestionably evident. I am inclined to think that, apart from 
 securing the efficiency of local government, we shall find, in 
 strengthening municipal government everywhere, a useful coun- 
 terpoise which it would be exaggeration to call a check, to the 
 power of the House of Commons. In 1837, when Parliament 
 enacted the scandal of reforming all municipal governments 
 save that of London, it may be said, by way of excuse, that 
 the nation was not then represented. Parliament had but just 
 ceased to be the nomination club of an oligarchy, who might 
 reasonably fear to touch a power possessing a title as good as 
 their own. But now we have progressed to a more complete 
 acceptance of the principle that taxation and representation 
 shall go together, the government of London is an anomaly 
 which cannot endure ; and no one has a right to contend that, 
 because, for some silly reasons, he does not wish to see the 
 ancient municipal government of London aggrandized, it is to 
 remain in its present anarchical, wasteful, and inefficient state, 
 divided against itself in all directions. 
 
 The division between Temple Bar and Aldgate, an area of 
 about 650 acres, subject to the Lord Mayor and the unreformed 
 Corporation, is now only the counting-house of the Metropolis : 
 there has been no exodus comparable with that which has 
 depopulated the City. In the ten years ending 1871, the number 
 of inhabitants of the City declined from 41,076 to 25,360 a loss 
 
142 The Government of London. 
 
 
 of 38 per cent. ; and I doubt if there will be found 20,000 souls 
 in the City when the next census is taken. But while this 
 drain has been going on from the home of the most prominent 
 and distinguished of the thirty-nine governments of London, 
 what has taken place in the dominions of the vestries and 
 the district boards ? There the population, including all within 
 the districts of the City and Metropolitan Police, has reached 
 4,000,000; it was 3,883,092 (including the City) in 1871, and 
 had increased 20 per cent, in ten years. The rateable value of 
 the property outside the City is 20,967,804, and those who pay 
 rates in respect of this vast property are closely interested in 
 the establishment of a government directly elected by them- 
 selves, and of sufficient importance, not only to attract the 
 co-operation of the most worthy citizens, but also to draw their 
 attention to the exercise of its powers in regard to the expendi- 
 ture of their money. 
 
 It would seem desirable to extend municipal government to 
 the whole of the Metropolis, the mode of election of councillors 
 being the same as that which prevails in the boroughs of the 
 kingdom. But while it is of the first importance to have 
 unity of government, not only for the dignity of local authority, 
 but in order to secure uniformity in design and execution of 
 works of improvement, it would at the same time be necessary 
 to decentralize sufficiently to ensure due attention to the wants 
 in detail of each neighbourhood. And this, it appears to me, 
 might be accomplished by constituting the councillors to be 
 elected in each of the parliamentary divisions a Standing Com- 
 mittee for the government of that borough, their chairman, 
 elected by themselves, to have the title and dignity of alderman, 
 unless it was thought better to choose the aldermen by separate 
 election, as at present. The council might consist of three times 
 the number of the School Board, and I should certainly prefer 
 that the cumulative vote adopted in school board elections 
 should obtain also in those of the Corporation of London, 
 though this would be a feature new in municipal elections- 
 
The Government of London. 143 
 
 With a view to obtain men of great position to serve in the office 
 of Lord Mayor, it might appear desirable to retain the separate 
 election of aldermen, who should take the chair in rotation, as 
 at present, subject to a veto by two-thirds of the council. 
 
 I had unusual opportunities for close observation of a similar 
 form of local government in Manchester during my official 
 residence there in the years of the Cotton Famine. The popu- 
 lation of Manchester is perhaps about twenty times that of the 
 city of London ; and, for the purposes of local government, the 
 northern metropolis is divided into six townships, each having a 
 town hall, with a staff of officers for the execution of public 
 works. The elected councillors for each of the federated town- 
 ships are appointed a committee for that township, and to this 
 committee is practically left the carrying out of the powers 
 applying to objects which are paid for out of township rates, 
 the proceedings of all committees being submitted for approval 
 at the meetings of the council. I have transacted business with 
 the Corporation of Manchester in all its departments, both with 
 the superior officers of the council in the negotiation of loans , 
 and with the township officers in reference to the execution of 
 public works ; and if my approval of the system be qualified, it 
 is only because I observed that further improvement might be 
 made in the direction in which I am informed the Corporation 
 is now moving that is, of stronger central control to ensure 
 greater uniformity of excellence in public works of every 
 description. In London, we should have a town hall in every 
 borough, and an election of one-third of the members of the 
 council every year. For the sake of economy it is most 
 desirable that rates should not be made by separate levy in 
 each borough, but obtained for each, as in the case of the town- 
 ships of Manchester, by precept issued to the overseers. By 
 adopting this method, avoiding the trouble and expense of 
 levying and collecting separate rates, Sir Joseph Heron, the 
 town clerk of Manchester, tells me that the Corporation has 
 saved not less than 3,000 a year. 
 
The Government of London. 
 
 The government in any city or town should be one, or there 
 can be no proper execution of public works, no uniform 
 observance of sanitary and other regulations, no convenient 
 construction of new or improved streets, and no satisfactory 
 provision of water and gas. At present there are hardly two of 
 our thirty-nine governments which perform any function in the 
 same manner or at the same cost. Let us take an instance, 
 and one in which you will agree with me there is least room 
 for divergence of expenditure : I allude to the charge for 
 watering the streets. From the reports issued by the vestries 
 at the request of the Metropolitan Board of Works, we are 
 able to compare the charges for watering. The cost per mile, 
 including labour and cartage, in Marylebone, is 82 I2s. gd. ; 
 in St. Pancras it is $2 a mile, where the authorities discover 
 that a saving of 22 per mile is effected by the use of a meter. 
 In Lambeth, the cost is reported at jo per mile. Paddington 
 spends 97 i/j. per mile; and while St. Martin's does the work 
 for 90, Rotherhithe accomplishes it for about 30 per mile. 
 On the whole, the cost varies from 30 to 115 per mile, and 
 I ask you, as I fairly may, to judge from this example the 
 inevitable waste attaching to such a system of minutely divided, 
 complicated, and obscure government. I regard Mr. James 
 Beal's calculation and no man has given more time, thought, 
 and practical ability to this question that a saving of 150,000 
 a year would be effected by establishing a Corporation of 
 London, in place of these thirty-nine governments, as extremely 
 moderate ; but even that amount would pay your education 
 rate. Yet this is certainly but a small part of the gain which 
 might accrue to the people of London from the establishment 
 of a duly elected municipal government. I say elected, to dis- 
 tinguish it from any government in existence. I have no word 
 to utter in disparagement of the Metropolitan Board of Works. 
 Though that board was brought into existence as a compromise, 
 though it has but little of the dignity which would belong to a 
 metropolitan corporation, and though the election of its mem* 
 
The Government of London. 145 
 
 bers is a travesty of a real election by ratepayers, yet the board 
 has done good work and service such as I am quite sure will, 
 in the reconstruction of London government, ensure a place for 
 every one of its members and officers in the new and more 
 stately fabric. I can fancy the day when, without regret, the 
 members of the Metropolitan Board of Works will see their 
 offices become those of the City of Westminster, and of the 
 committee of the Corporation of London acting for the City of 
 Westminster. 
 
 If we look forward to the time when a municipal government 
 shall control the metropolitan supplies of gas and water, we 
 may anticipate much larger reductions of expenditure. Some 
 one may ask, Why should the provision of water and gas be the 
 work of the municipality ? As the matter is only part of the 
 subject we are discussing this evening, I cannot go into it fully; 
 but I will touch upon some of the reasons for, and the advantages 
 accruing from, this course. To begin with, the quality of the 
 water is sure to be better. Do you suppose that people would 
 pay rates for water which contained cholera poison or diluted 
 sewage, to the Corporation of London, as quietly as they have 
 paid rates to companies whose water has been reported to be 
 so affected ? Do you suppose that the recent water-famine in 
 Bermondsey would have been possible if the supply of the rest 
 of London could have been thrown into the mains of that dis- 
 trict ? Of course that scarcity, which in its effects might have 
 been so terrible, would thus have been entirely avoided ; and that 
 incident, from which we may learn something of the economy 
 of distribution, will teach us also how wasteful in point of 
 expenditure is the present system, by which we are dependent 
 for a supply of far from first-rate quality, upon eight companies, 
 every person in the west of London being forced to drink 
 Thames water taken at points above which the stream has 
 received the sewage of thousands of people and the manurial 
 washings of the farm-lands of the river basin. Water, unlike 
 gas, is a necessary of universal consumption ; it is therefore, 
 
 L 
 
146 The Government of London. 
 
 the interest of all the ratepayers to supply themselves with 
 water, and at cost price. Even assuming the existing sources of 
 supply to be the best attainable, and sufficient (which I do not 
 concede), then by unity of management and supply at cost 
 price, we could certainly reduce our water-rate by twopence 
 in the pound, and thus again we should save an amount equal 
 to the present payment for the education rate. In Manchester, 
 water of excellent quality is supplied on these conditions : 
 the works have cost more than ^"2,000,000, but the united 
 charge for the public and domestic water-rate does not exceed 
 tenpence in the pound. And that is not all ; the Manchester 
 people have the advantage of constant service, and of service 
 at such pressure that from any of the street mains I believe 
 water may, without a fire-engine, be thrown into the upper 
 rooms of any house in the city. Such a system as this can, of 
 course, only result from unity of management, under the control 
 of a single municipal authority. 
 
 The supply of artificial light, which is almost as necessary as 
 that of water, and is absolutely needful at night in all public 
 streets, should be the work of the local authority. It is not only 
 the profits of the supply that are lost by the ratepayers, but 
 because the supply is a matter of private concern, they are 
 forced to burn gas of various qualities and different prices. 
 What benefits have the ratepayers of London received from the 
 concession of this monopoly to nine companies ? Can any one 
 here point to a shilling's worth of advantage, except the example 
 of shareholders pocketing easy dividends of 10 per cent. ? an 
 example which, I hope, will not be lost upon ratepayers. Why 
 should not the profits of our gas supply free our bridges and 
 repair our roads ? Profits there must be, for we must not supply 
 gas as we should supply water, at cost price, because the gas- 
 works, being the property of the ratepayers, they would be 
 entitled those who consumed no gas equally with those who 
 burned the most .to share in profits, and therefore the supply 
 of gas should be fixed at a fair, uniform market price. I think 
 
The Government of London. 147 
 
 the Corporation of Manchester have acted wisely in strictly 
 adhering to this method. No one will say that their supply of 
 gas is not infinitely superior in general quality to that we have 
 in London ; and the price is less, which is partly due to the 
 proximity of coal-pits. But, charging a fair market rate, what 
 have they done for the ratepayers ? We shall make the inquiry 
 more interesting by looking to the gas supply of Liverpool, 
 which, like that of London, is a private monopoly. Liverpool 
 has quite equal facilities with Manchester for obtaining coal and 
 cannel, yet at the present time the price in Liverpool is 3^. gd. 
 per 1,000 cubic feet, while in Manchester it is only 3^. 4^. But 
 this is not all. The Corporation of Manchester have received 
 profits from the supply of gas already amounting to upwards of 
 .1,500,000; and this sum has been expended in the execution 
 of works of public utility and permanent improvement within 
 the city. I feel sure there is no exaggeration whatever in the 
 estimate that an annual sum of 300,000 might be saved if the 
 supply to the metropolis of gas and water were in the hands of 
 such a Corporation of London as has been suggested. There 
 is yet another great work which, not less than those I have 
 mentioned, demands that the metropolitan area should be under 
 one local authority. That which would afford a splendid reve- 
 nue is now poured out in monstrous waste and defilement at 
 Barking and Plumstead. The main sewers of a city should of 
 course be under one management. To a general ignorance of 
 this fact I have seen tens of thousands of pounds sacrificed by 
 petty Local Boards whose territory adjoined, and which for 
 drainage purposes should have formed one district ; and to this 
 fact the Metropolitan Board of Works owes its existence. But 
 only a Corporation of London will be sufficiently powerful to 
 deal aright with the utilization of the sewage of the metropolis. 
 It would be in accordance with my ideas that this Metro- 
 politan Council, or Corporation of London, as I prefer to call it, 
 should perform all the functions of government which are not 
 within the domain of the State. I should advocate this course 
 
148 The Government of London. 
 
 in order more fully to promote the advantages which I antici- 
 pate from the institution of the new corporation efficiency, 
 economy, and publicity. The body would gain in dignity by 
 this absorption of authority ; the advantage to the ratepayers in 
 point of economy is very considerable by the concentration of 
 establishments ; and the proceedings of a public body attract 
 attention in exact proportion to their importance. If the change 
 were not simultaneous with an election to the School Board, it 
 would of course be desirable to accord seats in the council to 
 the members of that board, who would then form the first 
 committee of the Corporation of London for education. The 
 administration of justice, and the control of the police, should, 
 I think, belong to the State. For if the control of the police 
 be not conceded to the general government, we must, of course, 
 expect to see the palace of the legislature and other property 
 of the State guarded by soldiers, and that would not be con- 
 sonant with English feeling. If time permitted, it would be 
 easy for me to speak of the long train of indirect advantages 
 which would follow the erection of such a local government 
 for London as I have described, and such as is substantially 
 defined in the Bills which have been submitted to Parliament. 
 The strongest opposition will come from those who think that 
 reform would bring back the funds they now control to the 
 service of the people. And we must here avow, that while every 
 proper provision should be made for the enhanced dignity 
 of the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, the aldermen, and common 
 councillors, and for maintaining the time-honoured reputation 
 of civic hospitality and splendour, it would be necessary that 
 every item of receipt and expenditure should be brought to 
 audit, and that the ratepayers should be able to look down and 
 to see clearly into the lowest recesses of the budget of London. 
 This, which would involve some surrender on the part of the 
 Corporation, would be incomparable when contrasted with the 
 enormous increase of authority and prestige which would be 
 thus established in the Guildhall, securely and for ever. At 
 
The Government of London. 149 
 
 present, when the Lord Mayor emerges westward from Temple 
 Bar, he is a foreign potentate whom the people regard with 
 feelings far less acceptable than those which would greet their 
 own chief magistrate. 
 
 I should like, if I had not already trespassed too long upon 
 your patience, to speak upon the educational, the ecclesiastical 
 and the industrial endowments of the City of London, which 
 could not fail to be affected by the change. Why should not 
 such endowments as those of Christ's Hospital be equitably 
 appropriated for the higher education of boys and girls, and why 
 should ^"500,000, which might promote this grand work and 
 help forward the best scholars of the elementary schools why 
 should this vast capital be locked up in the site of that great 
 school, which could not have a more disadvantageous position ? 
 As to the ecclesiastical property in the City of London, when 
 I think of it I am reminded of what Sir Charles Trevelyan 
 said in this room three years ago : that 'while, notwithstanding 
 the most strenuous efforts, only 389,000 of the million required 
 to relieve the spiritual destitution of the outer circles of the 
 metropolis has been raised, at least two millions are lying at 
 waste and abuse, to the scandal of the Church, in her ancient 
 stronghold of the inner circle of the City of London.' 
 
 Lastly, in speaking of the industrial endowments of London, 
 I am alluding to the funds of the Livery Companies, which 
 should, of course, be devoted to promote the welfare of the 
 respective trades of the operatives as well as the employers ; 
 and I can imagine nothing more likely to aid us in overcoming 
 the difficulties that beset the co-operation of labour and capital 
 than the due employment of the historic influence and the 
 funds of these trade guilds for this object. I might speak of 
 funds for the provision of ' comfits,' which have developed into 
 boxes of rich Parisian bonbons, or of the trust for providing a 
 postprandial draught which, I am informed, bears the name of 
 ' Lady Cowper,' because a lady of that name once gave the 
 testator a glass of pale brandy when he had gorged himself 
 
150 The" Government of London. 
 
 at an eighteenth-century dinner. It cannot be regarded as 
 satisfactory that the Drapers' Company should expend .70,000 
 in building a dining hall, or that the Goldsmiths' Company 
 should relieve the indigence of decayed members by giving 
 to one man as much as would serve to keep hundreds from 
 the workhouse. All these, and a thousand other ills, would be 
 righted I would almost say, would right themselves if we 
 had a duly elected Corporation of London. And in giving our 
 energies to the accomplishment of that great end, let us not 
 fear to be proud of much that is written in the annals of the 
 Corporation of the City. Eight hundred years of honourable 
 history constitutes a treasure which no wealth could purchase, and 
 which nothing but folly could destroy. But even these splendid 
 traditions would be too dearly bought by a continuance of the 
 misgovernment of London. To the citizens and ratepayers 
 there is every inducement to press forward in this matter of 
 reform, which is to them a subject of sanitary, moral, and 
 pecuniary interest. 
 
VII. 
 
 'THE CITY: 1 
 
 r I "'HOSE who denounce the Corporation of the City of 
 -* London are not always wise in their mode of attack. 
 They do not distinguish and discriminate; they confound and 
 confuse the evil with the good. Abuses, the growth of 
 centuries, and due rather to inertness of prosperity than to 
 activity of corruption, have fastened upon a historic corporation, 
 honourable through all its long career and for ever illustrious in 
 the annals of local government. The absence of reform and 
 the overwhelming growth of riches through the increase in the 
 value of property, have fostered the existence of drones and 
 gluttons, lovers of pay without labour, wanton consumers of 
 charitable funds, sycophants and social hypocrites. Yet, in spite 
 of all this, the Corporation is sound and vigorous still in its 
 public life, and its existence is in no danger. The history of the 
 Corporation of the City of London forms no mean part of that 
 of England, and to strike with the axe at the stem of a stately 
 tree, in order to destroy parasites which infest its branches, 
 would not be more impolitic and reprehensible than is the action 
 of some of these municipal reformers. 
 
 If the Corporation of London were a corrupt body, as venal 
 and infamous as that which till lately ruled the city of New 
 York, it would deserve the language with which it is assailed. 
 This language misses its mark because it is not justifiable ; 
 because the Corporation of the City of London is not a corrupt 
 
 1 The City: an Inquiry. By William Gilbert. Daldy and Isbister, 1877. 
 
152 'The City: 
 
 body. The fruits of a thoroughly corrupt corporation are not 
 such works as the Holborn Viaduct, the new Smithfield Market, 
 the popular victory in Epping Forest, and the construction of 
 Queen Victoria Street. The officers of a corrupt corporation 
 are not men of distinction such as the late Recorders, Mr. 
 Russell Gurney, and Mr. Stuart Wortley. A corrupt corpora- 
 tion is as a rule popular only with those who are in its pay : the 
 Corporation of London has admirers in every town and village 
 in the United Kingdom. Of all this we find no word in such a 
 book as that lately written by Mr. Gilbert. He believes that 
 the government of no capital in the world enjoys a reputation 
 so far above its merits as that of the ancient city of London/ 
 and that the majority of its admirers * are directly or indirectly 
 interested in the continuance of its abuses.' That is a statement 
 which upon careful examination could not be sustained. 
 
 What then is really the matter with the London Corporation ? 
 Simply this : it is suffering from disease which has assailed 
 many corporations, and from which others were relieved in 1834. 
 The symptoms in the capital have become aggravated, as we 
 might expect, by delay. To confound the splendid hospitality 
 of the Mansion House or of the Guildhall with the sordid 
 gluttony of committees in back rooms of the well-known City 
 taverns, or with the squandering of charitable funds by City 
 companies, is a blunder which reformers would do well to avoid. 
 In no part of this great capital is order better maintained in the 
 streets, and nowhere is improvement in paving, lighting, archi- 
 tecture, and in the lines of communication, more noticeable than 
 in the City. In all this the Corporation of the City of London 
 justifies the hopes of those who are its most judicious critics, 
 and who are most anxious for its reform. The disease, by this 
 diagnosis, is seen to be not organic. In fact there is no difficulty 
 in determining what is wrong with the London Corporation. 
 There is not another corporation in the kingdom which would 
 not exhibit the same symptoms under the same conditions. 
 Where the wholesome light of publicity shines upon the work of 
 

 / 
 
 cu y : 
 
 the City Corporation there is little to complain of : yqfa Jeadin^' j . 
 article, read by a hundred thousand people, is a great purifier. 
 The notebook of the reporter is as needful in the affairs o x i 
 corporations as the bull's-eye of the constable in the dark alleys 
 of the City. The conscript fathers of the Guildhall are by no 
 means the only persons who cannot be trusted to deal with the 
 public funds and endowments uncontrolled by the public eye. 
 Deans and chapters were found unworthy of such blind con- 
 fidence. Time was, and that not long ago, when bishops rolled 
 untold thousands into their private treasuries. It is not fifteen 
 years since the present writer saw a prelate preside at a meeting 
 for the relief of * spiritual destitution ' in London, whose demise 
 in that chair would have benefited the inferior clergy to the 
 extent of about ; 10,000 a year. He was then the only un- 
 reformed bishop. We are all the better for the greater publicity 
 of the present time. This then is what is needed in the City. 
 Who has not witnessed the good results of candlelight on 
 various occasions ? It happened lately to the writer to enter 
 upon a six days' occupation of a cabin in a Russian vessel during 
 the dark hours of morning. On striking a light he saw that the 
 sides, and floor, and roof, were covered with greedy creatures, 
 and that the only condition upon which that cabin could be 
 occupied was that of keeping a light burning. It is just so 
 with the London Corporation. Light and air ; public control ; 
 popular election ; public audit ; the training and transfer of 
 endowments from obsolete to beneficial uses ; the kindly 
 operation of public intelligence upon public affairs ; that is 
 the cure for all that is wrong in the City. 
 
 Attacks upon the Corporation imputing ' foul injustice ' as to 
 dealings with the houses of the poor have not much of our 
 sympathy. That the poor will continually demand and con- 
 tinually obtain improvement in their dwellings is our earnest 
 hope. But the destruction of the wretched lanes and courts, 
 the fever-nests of the City, is matter for congratulation. Nor 
 do we agree with those who appear to desire that the con- 
 
I 5 4 'The City: 
 
 struction of workmen's houses and of workmen's houses 
 exclusively should be the business of local or imperial govern- 
 ment. Let designs be multiplied and perfected ; afford all 
 possible facilities for obtaining land ; but to bemoan the fact 
 that the smoky heart of this vast city holds fewer inhabitants 
 at night than it did twenty years ago, is a regret in which we 
 cannot join. The doctrine that the provision of superior 
 dwellings for any independent class of the community is a 
 proper function of imperial or local government, is one to which 
 we cannot subscribe. The demand for land in order to erect 
 workmen's dwellings in places where land would not be thus 
 devoted without the intervention of authority, is to us vain and 
 unsound. Those houses of the poor, the demolition of which 
 is thus deplored by reformers of the City, were condemned by 
 the possession of every vice of unfitness and insalubrity. The 
 general, we may say the universal, construction of the homes 
 of the poor in London five-and-twenty years ago was far worse 
 than that of any other capital in Europe. It is nearly as many 
 years since the present writer met one morning in Paris a 
 gentleman who is now a highly distinguished medical officer in 
 one of the largest of English towns. ' Where do the poor live 
 in this city ? ' was his puzzled, anxious inquiry. ' I cannot find 
 them,' he said ; a confession which pointed directly to the 
 superior condition of the poor of Paris. The sanitary inquirer 
 in the French capital could not find the miserable, narrow 
 courts and streets, bordered with shabby little houses con- 
 structed for the wants of a single family, but tenanted by 
 half a dozen families, with which he was so sadly familiar in 
 London. He was directed to find the poor of Paris in the 
 entresols and the garrets of houses inhabited, as to their best 
 apartments, by persons of somewhat superior quality. The 
 houses from which the poor of central London have been 
 'ejected' were of the worst description. How could a girl 
 learn to be a tidy good housekeeper who was one of a family 
 which had its ' home ' in a bedroom, or perhaps in two small 
 
'The City: 155 
 
 rooms of a mean little house, with no sink, no dustbin, no 
 sanitary appliance whatever ? There would be a sink and 
 scullery in the basement or on the ground floor, but that would 
 be occupied exclusively by another family. On the Continent 
 it has been otherwise. Bad as the homes of the poor were and 
 still are in Paris, they have been for the most part constructed 
 for separate homes. This is the reason why the Model Lodging 
 Houses and Industrial Dwellings are so valuable and successful 
 in London. By all means let the imperial and local govern- 
 ments insist upon the observance of sanitary regulations in 
 dwelling-houses, raising the standard higher and higher as the 
 knowledge of the true economy of life descends and widens in 
 the social scale ; but let us beware lest we sap the virtue of 
 independence in the name of philanthropy. 
 
 The evils which we shall now have to disclose and to descant 
 upon in connection with City government have nearly all one 
 origin, that of misdirected, misapplied ' charity,' and the least 
 pardonable error which reformers can make is to imitate the 
 evils of which they complain, to foster the breed of parasites 
 which they should utterly sweep away, and to cheer on the poor 
 to assault this citadel, so full of treasure, with the promise that 
 they shall be, by possession, at least partially secured against 
 the need of thrift, of frugality, of temperance ; that in fact they 
 shall be endowed with houses, or elementary education, without 
 labour and without price. We shall see as we proceed that 
 much at least of the funds is directed to the encouragement of 
 sloth, hypocrisy, intemperance, and hereditary pauperism of the 
 most expensive kind. But it were better that the endowments 
 were turned into money, and the gold sunk in the deepest 
 furrows of the Atlantic, than that it should be employed in 
 relieving the poor from those obligations which must be sus- 
 tained in order to win and to wear the blessings of civilisation. 
 
 It was a glaring evil one not yet wholly removed that 
 legislation should encourage the extrusion of the poor from 
 parishes in order that the owners of property might gain by 
 
156 'The City: 
 
 ceasing to be responsible for their support in case of distress or 
 incapacity for labour. It is not long since the parish of St. 
 Michael's, Cornhill, paid a poor-rate of only one penny in the 
 pound, while another in Farringdon Street paid five shillings. 
 Mr. Gilbert tells us that ' the parish of St. Christopher-le-Stock, 
 containing the Bank of England, paid one-tenth of a farthing in 
 the pound, on an assessment of half its value, while the parish 
 of St. Ann's, Blackfriars, containing the space between Ludgate 
 Hill and the river side, paid eight shillings ; and the greater part 
 of this amount was levied on persons scarcely above poverty 
 themselves.' So that while the proprietors of the Bank of 
 England were paying a tenth of a farthing in the pound, the 
 proprietors of the Times office paid eight shillings in the pound. 
 Yet in that iniquity of fiscal injustice a limit had been fixed, 
 and it was this. A parish which had no pauperism was obliged 
 to pretend to have some, for if a parish had no poor of its own 
 it was liable to be joined to some poverty-stricken parish in the 
 neighbourhood. It is needless to say that this condition of 
 utter freedom from pauperism was carefully avoided. There 
 was, however, a parish which was at one time separated from 
 this dangerous prosperity by a single life. St. Bartholomew-the- 
 Great, containing the Royal Exchange and the Stock Exchange, 
 had, some forty years ago, but one pauper, a sort of pet old 
 man, whose valuable life stood between the parish and a 
 poor-rate. He was boarded and lodged in the country. He 
 was visited and inspected by guardians, who had a pleasant 
 jaunt and a heavy dinner now and then, all for the sake of 
 this cherished old pauper. But this pet pauper, dear to St. 
 Bartholomew-the-Great, died at last. The guardians looked 
 anxiously round, hoping to find a poor parishioner. They were 
 ready to stretch a point, there can be no doubt of that. But they 
 found no one who, with any decent pretence, could assume the 
 requisite condition of poverty. They were driven, Mr. Gilbert 
 says, * to the painful necessity of advertising for a pauper, though 
 for some time without success.' 
 

 *The City: 157 
 
 It is observed that the ejectment of the poor from the City 
 within the last fifteen or twenty years has, for the most part, 
 been caused by the construction of railroads, which are, in fact 
 the means whereby the industrial classes are carried to and from 
 their labour. It was probable indeed it was inevitable, during 
 the construction of these railroads that there should be shocking 
 and numerous cases of overcrowding in the neighbourhood of 
 the works. We observe that Mr. Gilbert, who is very full upon 
 this subject, and very severe upon the 'ruthless' conduct of the 
 civic authorities, quotes occurrences in 1861, and, in fact, that 
 all the saddest tales of overcrowding are of that comparatively 
 ancient date. It is our impression that there has been from that 
 time a steady and continuous improvement in the homes of the 
 poor ; that they live in better atmospheres than formerly ; that 
 they are, on the whole, less crowded ; that the death-rate among 
 them has diminished ; that epidemics are more rare ; that their 
 food is of better quality, especially as regards freshness ; and 
 we believe that for all these things they are indebted to those 
 improved means of communication, to make room for which 
 so many of them were ejected from less wholesome places of 
 abode. Can it be seriously contended that the construction of 
 the Blackwall Railway, or of the Metropolitan Railway, or the 
 South-Eastern and Chatham and Dover Railway extensions 
 into the City, have not benefited the artisan more than any 
 other class ? There can be no question of the benefit. The 
 advantage of the railways and tram-cars has been greatest of 
 all to the labouring classes. To write about the necessary 
 clearances of the ground in a tone almost suitable for a de- 
 scription of atrocities in Turkey appears to us to be a pitiful 
 misdirection of force. The Farringdon Road works caused 
 the demolition of houses which covered, perhaps, fifty thousand 
 people. To quote the Building News of 1860, or the Medical 
 Officer of Health for Blackfriars in the year 1861, as to the 
 consequent suffering of that large population, may be useful 
 as teaching us in future how to avoid the temporary hardships 
 
158 'The City' 
 
 of such dislodgment ; but to bring such evidence forward as 
 proving that the works have been a curse instead of a blessing, 
 is sheer folly. For the terminus of the Cannon Street railway 
 more than twelve hundred persons were dislodged. ' In the 
 formation of the Moorgate Street station, three thousand 
 householders and lodgers, the latter principally shop assistants 
 and lodgers, were ejected.' Mr. Gilbert seems to regard this 
 and similar operations as among the great sins of great cities. 
 Let any one go and look upon the narrow piece of land occupied 
 by the Moorgate Street station, and ask himself whether every 
 philanthropic heart should not rejoice that there are no longer 
 'three thousand householders and lodgers' upon that small 
 area. If this demolition had been carried out merely to 
 beautify the City with open spaces, it would, after temporary 
 suffering by overcrowding, have benefited those whom we call 
 the poor by an improvement in their sanitary condition, and 
 the same may be said if the object had been to make new 
 streets, long and airy, from which the contamination of the 
 atmosphere due to animal life would be quickly removed by 
 the passing wind. But these dislodgments were owing to 
 constructions more beneficial to the working classes. The 
 wealthy classes have, in fact, invested their savings, some at 
 4 per cent., and to a great extent for no interest at all, in 
 providing those railway carriages by which the labouring 
 people can be swiftly and cheaply carried to and from any 
 part of the metropolis. They have been made 'carriage- 
 folks ; ' the power of their legs has been multiplied ; while the 
 shareholders of the Chatham and Dover, and of the Metro- 
 politan District Railways, have never seen a penny of interest 
 upon their outlay of millions sterling. Mr. Gilbert's attack 
 is almost ludicrously misdirected at this point. The employe 
 of one City tradesman lives, say, at Notting Hill, and in the 
 same day does one piece of work in St. John's Wood, and 
 another piece of work at Mile End. Is he the loser because he 
 has been expelled from his wretched tenement in Farringdon 
 
'The City: 159 
 
 Street to make way for the railroad which enables him to do 
 all this without fatigue ? 
 
 Mr. Gilbert's attack is, as we have said, misdirected. His 
 statements of fact are of great value, the evident result of 
 careful and long-continued inquiry. He marks the evils in the 
 City, and adds them up with rising indignation, but does not 
 carry forward the proper inference. For example, in this matter 
 of dislodgment, he sums up the atrocities of City government in 
 the following sentence : ' They have been driven so far from 
 the City that they have lost not only their identity as citizens 
 of London, but also their right in the thousand and one 
 charitable endowments and educational institutions of enormous 
 wealth which it contains, as well as their constitutional privileges 
 as voters in the City elections, parliamentary and municipal, to 
 which, had they remained, vast numbers of them would have 
 been entitled.' Properly valued, all that would appear a loss 
 incommensurate with the gain they have achieved. But we 
 should have been better pleased with the argument had it 
 proceeded to show that these advantages ought to follow the 
 removal of the people, and that just as they have passed out 
 from the narrow limits of the old wall-bound London of the 
 City, so should these influences, and powers, and properties be 
 made, as far as these are good, advantageous to the whole of 
 that Greater London in which the people are dispersed ; that 
 Metropolis, which is now divided into thirty-nine territories, 
 governed by persons who are, for the most part, unknown to 
 the ratepayers ; who have not obtained, and do not claim to 
 possess, the confidence of those with whose affairs they are 
 concerned ; who, so far as they are elected by vote, are chosen 
 by a vicious and contracted suffrage, and whose operations, 
 subdivided into a merely parochial significance, are, because of 
 their subdivision, conducted in obscurity. It is wiser, we know, 
 to look for figs from thistles, than for the fruits of honest and 
 wise government where the proceedings are not enlightened by 
 a commensurate publicity. We shall see as we go on that what 
 
160 'The City: 
 
 is wrong in the City is that the area of administration and 
 of the application of benevolent endowments has not grown 
 with the growth of London, and that misdirection is princi- 
 pally due to the exigencies of reconciling the natural increase 
 in the value of property and the altered conditions of life, with 
 the selfish interests of men who have retained for themselves 
 advantages which should have been distributed, and have done 
 this with such unreflecting perseverance and persistent greed, 
 that they have been blind to the increasing absurdity of their 
 position. 
 
 The expenditure of many of the parochial charities of the 
 City has long been scandalous, and a reformed application of 
 the funds is much overdue. Take the case of the parish cited 
 by Mr. Gilbert, which has a fund of 300 a year originally 
 perhaps not a tenth or twentieth part of that sum for the 
 support and repair of the parish church. Unable to get rid of 
 the money in any preferable way, the rector and churchwardens 
 have been wont to invite their friends to an entertainment at 
 Richmond, and there to spend about 40 a year, a churchwarden 
 having recorded his opinion that it is 'very advantageous for 
 the interests of the parish and the promotion of good feeling 
 amongst the parishioners, that an opportunity should occa- 
 sionally be afforded them to meet together in a sociable and 
 friendly manner.' Another ' charity ' is charged twenty guineas 
 for an 'audit dinner at the Crystal Palace/ the total income 
 from the property being less than 500 a year. In one case, 
 eighteen trustees have made a triennial visitation to inspect 
 a property worth about 300 a year, and have charged fifty 
 guineas for the day's outing. These eighteen persons were, 
 both in their cups and in committee, unanimously of opinion 
 that it was ' very desirable that the whole of the trustees should 
 be intimately acquainted with the nature of the property.' 
 But for a case of 'devouring widows' houses,' none perhaps 
 equals that quoted by Sir Charles Trevelyan, who refers to a 
 'charity' for poor widows, freemen, etc., with an income of 
 
'The City: 161 
 
 60 a year, the whole of which is derived from dividends. In 
 
 1868 the charge for management was: 
 
 *. d. 
 
 To the seven trustees for dinner, etc. . .800 
 Secretary and solicitor 1146 
 
 ;i9 4 6 
 
 Not a few of the City parochial charities are distributed in 
 doles given on condition of attendance at church. Founded, 
 we may say, for the encouragement of hypocrisy and religious 
 mendicity, it is not, perhaps, to be wondered at that these 
 ' charities ' are plundered by their appointed guardians. Take 
 the case, for example, of a 'charity' founded in 1461, when it 
 seemed doubtful whether, after payment for masses for the 
 repose of the soul of the testator, it would yield 40^. a year. 
 The money is now invested in a farm yielding 275 a year, 
 'which is applied to doles and church purposes/ Although 
 this farm is let on lease for twenty-one years, the trustees seem 
 to charge about 15 15^. annually 'for supervision.' 
 
 To call these things ' charity ' is gross misuse of a word 
 which suggests an association with virtue, benevolence, and 
 misfortune. The confiscation of these ' charities ' is a duty which 
 the State cannot long neglect. Directly their administration is 
 exposed, it is seen at once how hurtful to public morality is their 
 present distribution. We have employed the word 'confis- 
 cation ' advisedly, and here we may introduce the argument 
 of Mr. Freeman touching that word which is precisely in point. 
 Mr. Freeman says, 1 'We use the word "confiscated" in its 
 proper sense, not in the sense in which it has often been used by 
 Mr. Disraeli and others when they wished to put a measure in 
 a bad light by giving it what they thought an ugly name. In 
 vulgar use the word has got a wrong meaning. " Confiscation " 
 is vulgarly used to mean "robbery." But the word has a 
 meaning of its own, a meaning which is wanted in this dis- 
 cussion. Confiscation is an act of the State, and of the State 
 
 1 Disestablishment and Disendowment. By E. A. Freeman. (Macmillan.) 
 
 M 
 
1 62 'The City: 
 
 only. It is the taking of property by the State. It is a per- 
 fectly colourless word, which does not rule whether such taking 
 be just or unjust. When a magistrate inflicts a fine, he does an 
 act of confiscation. So when a man's land is taken from him by 
 Act of Parliament because it is wanted for a railway, his land is 
 confiscated. To be sure, he gets compensation ; but the land 
 may be taken from him quite against his will, and the com- 
 pensation may be one which he thinks quite inadequate. . . . 
 The one sound principle is that the State may, when it sees 
 good reason for doing so, take or confiscate any property of 
 any kind. From this rule property given to ecclesiastical 
 purposes can claim no exemption. It is liable, on just and 
 sufficient cause, to be taken and applied to some other purpose, 
 and of such just and sufficient cause the State itself is the only 
 judge.' But I presume that no one would question the power 
 of the State to confiscate these miscalled ' charities.' The real 
 question is this : Are we convinced that their organisation is 
 so bad, that their application is so baneful, that any plea for 
 their continuance in their present form must be disregarded ? 
 The condemnation which we pronounce against them is no new 
 thing. They have been condemned already. For years they 
 have been waiting execution. Mr. Gladstone is a good Church- 
 man, and fourteen years ago was, perhaps, more convinced of 
 the benefits of Establishment and Endowment than he is at 
 present. Speaking of these City parochial charities in 1863, he 
 said, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1 ' It might be alleged, and 
 with some truth, that a multitude of these charities are positively 
 bad, injurious, demoralising, poisoning and sapping the principles 
 and independence of the poor, not one jot better, in many cases, 
 than the old poor-law doles, which at an epoch of courage and of 
 wisdom, the House of Commons swept away in 1834, under the 
 guidance of Lord Grey's Government.' 
 
 Mr. Gilbert sees no small part of the evil in the fact that ' the 
 poor who have been driven from the City are deprived of all the 
 
 1 Debate on Customs and Inland Revenue Bill, May 4, 1863. 
 

 'The City: 163 
 
 benefits which were solely intended for their use and comfort.' 
 That is one way of looking at the matter ; but to us it seems 
 that the exodus of the poor from the City is not to be regretted, 
 and that as for the benefits of the ' charities/ those must follow 
 them into Greater London. 
 
 Now let us turn to the Livery companies, and here again we 
 must say that the attack is not wisely directed. These com- 
 panies have large incomes ; some are enormously wealthy. 
 The misuse of these funds is unquestionable, is glaring ; with 
 paltry exceptions these funds have been diverted from their 
 original design. But there is this important difference to be 
 marked in comparing the Livery companies with the parochial 
 charities. The design of the City companies was sound, and is 
 not, nor is it likely to become, obsolete. These companies were 
 formed and established for the advantage and dignity of labour 
 of the higher sort, and of the commerce of the City ; and to 
 those uses, if we are not much mistaken, they will some day 
 return. What is the future of labour in this and other countries ? 
 To us it seems brightening into a time, and that not very far 
 distant, when skilled handicraft, and when excellence in every 
 branch of production, will meet with adequate reward and social 
 acknowledgment. Those who remember the artificers of fifty 
 years ago must be filled with hope of this sort on comparing the 
 best work of that time with the productions of to-day. Less 
 and less, as time goes on, will the middleman be able to over- 
 shadow and to hide the artist-workman ; and the tendency in 
 all trades, but especially in those which are concerned with art- 
 workmanship of any sort, will be to elevate the importance of 
 the skilled operator. Probably the time will come again when, 
 if we speak of a goldsmith, we shall mean a goldsmith, and not 
 a capitalist who buys and sells gold ornaments. At all events, 
 as skill increases, and a longer and more intelligent pupillage is 
 requisite in every trade, the body will become more closely knit 
 together, there will be a new growth and increase of corporate 
 feeling. With that prospect we do not think it will be possible 
 
1 64 'The City: 
 
 or desirable to destroy the ancient guilds of the City of London. 
 But their present form is monstrous. We should very much 
 like to read an argument by Lord Selborne, the Prime Warden 
 of the Mercers' Company, justifying his acceptance of that 
 position. One of the Prime Warden's particular duties, it 
 appears, is to satisfy himself that the wine taken from the 
 company's cellars at each feast is replaced by other wine of 
 equal value; an office which leads to buying hock at 104^., and 
 other wines at 120.9. to 150.?. a dozen. That clearly cannot be a 
 suitable or satisfactory occupation for the dignified and erudite 
 ex-Chancellor. Lord Selborne cannot be ignorant that the 
 original charter of the Mercers' Company, granted in the reign 
 of Richard and confirmed by Elizabeth, denotes the com- 
 position and objects of the guild. By its charter, the company 
 was founded ' for the perpetual sustentation of the poor be- 
 longing to the mystery of mercery in the City of London.' In 
 1701, Sir William Gore, mercer, and Lord Mayor of London, 
 commended in pointed terms the exclusive admission to the 
 company of men belonging to his trade. These were the 
 original circumstances of the Mercers' Company. A vast 
 change has taken place in the value of the company's property, 
 but none in its charter and statutes. This company, members 
 of which have been lately described as boasting that they drink 
 wine at enormous prices, was in recent times again the subject 
 of notice from a Lord Mayor. Mr. Cotton, than whom no one 
 is more convinced that whatever is, is best in the City, gave a 
 special entertainment to the masters and wardens of the com- 
 panies, avowedly with the benevolent intention of keeping up 
 their spirits in depressing days of reform. And the Prime 
 Warden of the Mercers' Company, having newly cast off the 
 robe of the highest judicial office in the realm, stood up to 
 speak for the City guilds. When we are told that one of these 
 companies lately built a dining hall at a cost of ,74,000, and 
 that another spent 30,000 Mr. W. H. James, said in the House 
 of Commons that ' when one of the members of the Goldsmiths' 
 
'The City: 165 
 
 Company was charged with this fact, he indignantly repudiated 
 it, and said that not 7,000 was the amount ' in the feasting 
 of a single year ; that not one company can claim to represent 
 the trade the name of which it bears ; that, for instance, in the 
 Mercers' Company there is said to be not a mercer, it does seem 
 strangely bold on the part of so modest and moderate a man as 
 Lord Selborne, that he should, with all his legal honours thick 
 upon him, declare that no other trusts had existed so long and 
 remained so unaltered and unimpaired as those appertaining to 
 the City guilds ; that their funds were well, honestly, charitably, 
 and conscientiously administered. 
 
 Lord Selborne could probably find no more favourable 
 example than that of the Joiners' Company ; yet it seems dif- 
 ficult to suppose that he could repeat his laudation after 
 perusal had been given to the following account of the ex- 
 penditure of the Joiners' Company : 
 
 EXPENDITURE OF THE JOINERS' COMPANY FOR 1875. 
 
 Court and Livery Fees ,30 
 
 Pensions and Donations . . . . . . .130 
 
 Salaries 130 
 
 Investments . 560 
 
 Dinners and Entertainments . . 760 
 
 Sundries 200 
 
 Balance 170 
 
 ^2250 
 
 What will his Lordship say to the average expenditure for 
 ten years, from 1860 to 1870, of the Innholders' Company also 
 quoted by Mr. James in the House of Commons, which shows, 
 he said, the following particulars : ' Provisions ,229, wine .97, 
 court .214, casual expenses 118, salaries ,150, making a 
 total of .808 ; that is, 808 a year is paid in fees, salaries, and 
 feasting for the management of a total of ^852 a year, the Court 
 concluding the decade by pocketing and swallowing down the 
 balance previously carried over from year to year.' The mal- 
 practices are not confined to gluttonous feasting. Take as a 
 
1 66 'The City: 
 
 sample of other evils the charge posed by Mr. James against ' a 
 man of the highest honour and integrity/ who it appears has 
 several leases from his company at 10 per annum, which he 
 underleases to some one else for several hundreds. How is it 
 possible to maintain that these trusts are conscientiously 
 administered ? 
 
 We may surely take as evidence that all has not been right, 
 the new line of action assumed by the Goldsmiths' Company. 
 This guild, probably the richest, is said to possess property 
 worth more than 100,000 a year. The Goldsmiths' Company 
 has offered prizes of 50 and 2$ and a scholarship of 100 
 a year for the encouragement of skill in gold-working. This is 
 the company which is reported as having expended 30,000 
 in the dinners of one year. This is the company which occa- 
 sionally endows 'decayed' liverymen, not necessarily gold- 
 smiths, with 300 a year. This is the company whose clerk has 
 emoluments estimated at the annual value of 4,000. This is 
 the company which has built /w-houses worth 60 or 70 
 a year each, for house-rent alone. And these prizes are its 
 grand deliverance in the line the acknowledged line of its 
 duty ! It comes to this, that whenever and wherever a City 
 company is found doing something meritorious and praise- 
 worthy, it is simply prudent to believe that the dutiful outlay is 
 but a trifle in comparison with that which is expended in a way 
 not so well suited for the public eye. 
 
 We are not of those who object to reasonable hospitality, or 
 even to a certain amount of magnificence in the halls of these 
 ancient guilds. But at present neither hall nor hospitality has 
 any meaning beyond what is for the most part a sordid gluttony. 
 We shall pass on presently to speak of the Corporation and of 
 the Mansion House, and shall not deprecate the Lord Mayor s 
 hospitality. But there is no ' hospitality ' in the proper sense of 
 the word at the dinners of the City companies. Most of the 
 men who assemble there are unknown outside their own parish ; 
 they are self-trained athletes in the labours of gastronomy. 
 
'The City: i6j 
 
 There is no performance of a due and useful function. For the 
 most part it is eating and drinking with splendid accessories, 
 and nothing more. The stately hospitality of the Mansion 
 House has a meaning ; the position of the Lord Mayor is so 
 dignified that honour can be shown in this way even to dis- 
 tinguished guests. It is one thing to dine at the Mansion 
 House, and quite another to dine with a livery company, or 
 with a committee of the Corporation. The livery companies' 
 dinners are dull and solemn for those who do not care for the 
 luxuries of a costly banquet. But to see a City dinner in its 
 grossest form, one must, perhaps, undergo the gastronomic 
 labours of a guest of a committee. The especial vice of civic 
 expenditure in feasting is in committees ; it is there that one 
 encounters the typical turtle-eater, with no redeeming accessories 
 of good-fellowship. The committees of the Corporation are, it 
 has been stated, allowed ^"4,000 a year for refreshment ! 
 
 We now come to the lands held by these City companies, the 
 extent of which is estimated at more than three hundred thou- 
 sand acres. For our own part, we should like to see an end to 
 the holding of land in mortmain. Free trade in land will never 
 be complete while colleges and companies are permitted to hold, 
 century after century, lands such as those in the possession of 
 these guilds. Moreover, a great loss to the revenue is involved 
 in this ownership by undying corporations. The succession 
 duty on land is far from what it ought to be. But nothing of 
 the sort is levied upon the lands of corporations. Mr. Glad- 
 stone said in that very eloquent speech upon the taxation of 
 charities to which we have already referred : ' I maintain that 
 exemption is a grant.' It is undeniable that to these corporate 
 holders of lands, the State does make a grant to the extent of 
 their exemption from succession duty. 
 
 When Mr. Gladstone used in 1863 the words we have just 
 quoted, he was referring to the case of the great endowed schools 
 and medical charities of the City in connection with the exemp- 
 tion of their funds from income-tax. Of these schools, Christ's 
 
J68 'The City: 
 
 Hospital is by much the most wealthy and important. We do 
 not say that the best expenditure of its vast resources, amount- 
 ing to nearly ; 100,000 a year, would be the provision of 
 elementary schools in the metropolis. That would simply be a 
 reduction of the education rate. But we do say that such a 
 direction of the funds would be much more in harmony with 
 the original foundation of the school than the present expendi- 
 ture. In the first place, Christ's Hospital was established for 
 the poor. Secondly, it was established without distinction of 
 sex, and girls have just as much claim as boys to its benefits. 
 Thirdly, there is no justice in any restriction of its advantages 
 to the walls or to the government of the City ; these belong to 
 the metropolis. S tow's London is a book of great authority, 
 mentioned with all respect by Mr. Samuel Pepys, himself 
 perhaps the best-known man in the long line of Presidents of 
 Christ's Hospital. Stow, in 1556, said of Christ's Hospital that 
 4 it was established to take the chylde out of the strete, which 
 was the sede and increase of beggary, by reason of ydle bring- 
 ing up. And to nouryshe the said chylde in some goode learn- 
 inge and exercise profitable to the commonweale.' In another 
 place, he says that in one month from the opening of the school, 
 November 21, 1552, 'chyldren had been taken from the stretes 
 to the numbre of fower hundred.' No closer analogy to the 
 Board School of the present day could be obtained. There was 
 originally no limitation to boys. Machyn, in his Diary, refer- 
 ring to attendance at the Spital sermon and to Christ's Hospital, 
 wrote : ' And alle the chyldren of the hospital, boyth men 
 chyldren and women chyldren, that be kepte with certayn landes 
 and the cherete of the nobul citie of London.' Restrictions 
 appear to have begun in the time of Charles I., when it was 
 declared that no child of illegitimate birth could be admitted. 
 But even to that there was a proviso, ' except in cases of 
 extremity where losse of life and perishing would presently 
 follow ; ' and the proviso is important, because it shows the 
 character of the school as devoted to the most necessitous 
 
'734* City: 169 
 
 children. Mr. Gladstone complained in 1863 that Christ's 
 Hospital was in fact receiving a grant from the State of ,6,000 
 a year in the form of exemption from income-tax. And when 
 he was told that if this exemption were no longer accorded 
 at the cost of the general body of taxpayers, the educational 
 advantages of the Hospital must be curtailed, he put the very 
 pertinent question, to which, of course, there was no response, 
 'Why then do you spend 220 in a feast?' Mr. Hare, one of 
 the Charity Commissioners, reported in 1864 that the Hospital 
 possessed property worth about 85,000 a year, devoted to the 
 education of twelve hundred boys and twenty-seven girls. The 
 appropriation of this great 'charity,' as one belonging in its 
 government exclusively to the City, is unjustifiable, and the 
 system of nomination to the benefits of Christ's Hospital is open 
 to grave objections. There is a pretence that, in accordance 
 with the rules of Charles II., dated February 9, 1676, ' None be 
 admitted but suche as are without probable means of being 
 provided for in other ways'! But it is flagrantly untrue that 
 such are the circumstances of the pupils. It seems an act of 
 great munificence for a person to contribute 500 to this institu- 
 tion, and those who give this sum are, as a rule which has we 
 believe no exception elected governors. But in truth, if they 
 wish to enjoy for themselves or others the educational ad- 
 vantages of the ' charity/ the money is excellently well invested, 
 and, in fact, a bonus of nearly double the amount is added to it 
 from funds which most clearly belong to the poor and miserable, 
 who have no claim but indigence and the danger of neglect. 
 The nominations are sometimes of so gross a character that 
 the committee has been known to remonstrate ; but there is 
 abundant evidence that they are not over-scrupulous ; while as 
 regards the education of girls, a grave misappropriation is con- 
 tinued without reproach and under the highest patronage. 
 
 We have alluded to Christ's Hospital as fairly typical of the 
 endowed schools of the City. To a certain extent they are all 
 well managed. No one says that the education obtained at 
 
170 ' The City? 
 
 St. Paul's School, which belongs to the Mercers' Company, is 
 not good, but no fair inquirer will deny that it is limited by 
 unsound restrictions, of which the fanciful arrangement of 153 
 pupils is a fair example. A clear insight into the general ad- 
 ministration of City ' charities,' including parochial charities, 
 endowed schools, and hospitals, may be gained by a glance at 
 the affairs of St. Paul's School. St. Peter is supposed to have 
 included in his net when he hauled in ' the miraculous draught 
 of fishes,' a hundred and fifty-three of all kinds, and when St. 
 Paul's School was founded in 1509, the number of pupils was 
 designed for perpetual commemoration of the miracle ; just as 
 the Escurial was built in the form of a gridiron to commemorate 
 the martyrdom of San Lorenzo. There was another provision 
 in -the original rules, concerning 'the littel dinner, the cost 
 whereof was not to exceed foure nobles, and which was to be 
 held as near Candlemas as possible, the time not to exceed three 
 days after or before.' The value of the noble never, we believe, 
 exceeded ten shillings the cost of the ' littel dinner ' in money 
 of our time was therefore ' not to exceed ' two pounds. Atten- 
 tion has been drawn to the expenditure by the managers of St. 
 Paul's School of ^229 for the * littel dinner' in a single year ; 
 and supposing that the value of their property and their conse- 
 quent ability in regard to the business of the foundation had 
 increased in the same ratio as the cost of their dinner, they 
 ought now to be providing for the education of at least a 
 hundred times 153 scholars, for more than 15,000 children. 
 
 If we were in turn to visit the Charterhouse, or Merchant 
 Taylors' School, or any other of the endowed schools of the 
 City, we should find only a repetition of these things. We must 
 pass on to consider the position of the three great medical 
 charities which pertain to the City of London. The manage- 
 ment of St. Bartholomew's, of Bethlehem, and of St. Thomas' 
 Hospitals, belongs to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Corpo- 
 ration, only as representing the government of London. Until 
 their jurisdiction is extended over the metropolis, their claim to 
 
'Tke City: 171 
 
 the exclusive control of these hospitals is not equitably good. 
 These hospitals were founded at a time St. Bartholomew's in 
 1 143, and the other two about a century later when they may 
 be supposed to have been sufficient for all the necessities of 
 the sick, the wounded, and the afflicted of London. * To fulfil the 
 same function as nearly as possible in the present time, 
 the enormously increased funds should have been devoted to the 
 erection of a number of small hospitals, where poor persons 
 who are sick, or any who are suffering from accident, could 
 be received without having to travel miles, which in case of 
 accident may and sometimes does involve death. There is, as 
 things are, no just or reasonable proportion between the increase 
 of funds and the extension of benefits. St. Thomas' Hospital 
 has been lodged in an imposing fabric, which suffers nothing 
 even by the close proximity in which it stands to the Palace of 
 Westminster ; a great medical school has grown up, has become 
 established, and only 600 patients are provided for. It is a 
 modest statement to assert that ten times the number might 
 have been cared for in several parts of the metropolis with the 
 funds belonging to St. Thomas' Hospital. We may learn from 
 the accounts of the Poplar Hospital, that for building, fitting, 
 and furnishing, beds may be provided at $o each. These 
 charges, in the case of St. Thomas' Hospital, have amounted to 
 little less than ^850 for each bed ! 
 
 We entirely agree with Mr. Gilbert that 'the original esta- 
 blishment of St. Bartholomew's Hospital was simply and purely 
 that of a parish workhouse under the Local Government Board 
 at the present day.' This is clear from the deed dated 2/th 
 December, 1546, which recites that 'Our Sovereign Lord the 
 King is pleased and contented that the said Hospital of Saint 
 Bartholomew shall from henceforth be a place and house for 
 the relief and sustentation of poor people, and shall be called 
 the " House of the Poore," in West Smithfield, in the suburbs 
 of the City of London, of King Henry the Eighth's foundation.' 
 There was also a power of taxation which was resorted to when 
 
172 * The City? 
 
 necessary for the maintenance of the Hospital. St. Bartholo- 
 mew's has had a splendid career, but its present distinction is 
 rather as a great medical school. The population which up 
 to twenty years ago surrounded St. Bartholomew's has gone, 
 and the funds of this great institution would be much more 
 equitably bestowed in maintaining the workhouse hospitals of 
 London. But there is and will be increasing need for branches 
 of these great hospitals in various parts of London. Medical 
 science must be encouraged and diffused, and it cannot be 
 expected that masters of that science who now attend in 
 these hospital schools could give their services in all quarters 
 of London. These are considerations which must not be lost 
 sight of. But it cannot be denied that the primary object 
 of these hospitals is, and ought to be, the care of the sick and 
 wounded. Yet this is not the first concern of the Governors. 
 So recently as July, 1877, the Governors of St. Bartholomew's 
 Hospital determined upon an expenditure of ^"50,000 in a 
 resolution which contained no reference to the public ; and the 
 Charity Commissioners, replying to the Governors, stated that, 
 'having regard to the great development of the School of 
 Surgery and Medicine, and the rapid augmentation of the 
 number of students in recent years, which is apparently due to 
 the position and other advantages possessed by the Hospital, 
 the Commissioners think that their sanction may justly be given 
 to the erection of the new theatres, library, museum, and other 
 buildings devoted to instructional purposes.' We are disposed 
 to maintain that this is a misdirection of the funds, and that 
 these medical charities belong by right to the people and to the 
 government of the metropolis, and not to the government of the 
 City while that represents but a small portion of the people of 
 London. 
 
 The Lord Mayor, the two Sheriffs, the 26 Aldermen, and the 
 206 Common Councillors, who govern the City, ought numeri- 
 cally to be sufficient for the metropolis. How their jurisdiction 
 is to be reformed and extended has been shown in the Bill 
 
 
'The City: 173 
 
 which Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth,in succession to Lord Elcho, 
 Mr. Charles Buxton, and Mr. John Stuart Mill, has recommended 
 to Parliament. When the municipal government of London is 
 reformed, a change will follow in regard to the property and en- 
 dowments now controlled by the Corporation of the City. Our 
 contention is that this property and those funds belong to London, 
 and not to the particular space between Ludgate and Aldgate. 
 
 Not willingly would the people of England see the illustrious 
 Corporation of the City of London pass away. But its existence 
 can be secured only at the price of real and thorough reform. 
 The election of members must be made upon the same method 
 which is practised in other municipalities there must.be aboli- 
 tion of election by the Livery. ' Nothing/ said Mr. James, in 
 the speech already referred to,* 'can be worse than the powers 
 of voting which these bodies possess. I have a return moved 
 for a year since, bearing date August 15, 1876, according to 
 which it appears 1,932 liverymen within the City have on 
 various occasions bought their votes. In one of the companies, 
 it was a well-known fact that not long ago the duties of the 
 master, assistant, and clerks were all consolidated in one person, 
 who had it in his power to increase the Livery entirely at his own 
 choice. From the return of the Loriners' Company, it appears 
 that 273 persons purchased their vote ; in the Coachmakers, 79 ; 
 the Curriers, 43 ; the Butchers, 69 ; the Founders, 75 ; and 
 many others in like amount. I am not going to insinuate 
 against any of the large companies that they pack their 
 register by unfair or improper means, but as long as you have a 
 system of this kind there are always those who will avail them- 
 selves of any artifices or dodges which are within their means, 
 and which no just person by any sort of casuistry can defend.' 
 If the proposal of Lord Camperdown in the House of Lords 
 had been adopted, the Metropolitan Board of Works would have 
 been elected, as a School Board is elected, by ratepayers. At 
 present the members of the Metropolitan Board are nominated 
 by the vestries and district boards. Had the change been 
 
I 7 4 'The City: 
 
 effected, the Metropolitan Board of Works would have gained a 
 great increase of popular strength and approval. Much of this 
 would have been achieved at the cost of the Corporation, the 
 election of whose members is a sham, having no substantial rela- 
 tion to the present circumstances of the real constituency. 
 
 The prestige of the Corporation of the City is historical, and 
 is supported by its properties, and its powers of banqueting. 
 That all which is good in this may be retained and extended in 
 conformity with the altered conditions and with the growth of 
 London, that all the utility it possesses may be preserved, and 
 that the needs of the vast population of the metropolis may 
 obtain the benefits of the best local government, is the hope and 
 the object of the present writer. 
 
'75 
 
 VIII. 
 WATER SUPPLY OF LONDON AND ELSEWHERE. 
 
 DO not think the alarming language which some have used 
 -* in treating of this subject, is either called for by actual 
 circumstances, or that it can be productive of good results. It 
 is far more likely to lead to the adoption of crude and ill- 
 advised schemes, requiring a large investment of capital in 
 works which are not most advantageous in the present, and 
 which will be obstacles to future improvement. 
 
 It is very true that the quantity of water which the soil of 
 the country annually receives is limited. Fortunately there is 
 but little variation in the amount, though a considerable 
 difference in the intervals, of rainfall. But assuming an 
 average annual fall of thirty inches in depth, it is at once 
 seen that the quantity received may be regarded as practically 
 unlimited, and that our care should be concentrated upon the 
 most economic mode of obtaining the largest possible quantity 
 which is demanded by the most liberal estimate of our wants. 
 
 The term ' water economy/ if not used, has certainly been 
 interpreted, in the sense which would be applicable to coal 
 economy. The difference between the supplies of coal and 
 water is, that it is quite possible to imagine the day when the 
 coal-fields of England will be exhausted, while it is quite im- 
 possible to suggest any operation which would reduce the 
 rainfall by an inch. We know, for instance, that the North- 
 umberland coal-field is not a thousand square miles in extent, 
 that the greatest thickness of workable coal is not more than 
 
176 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 one hundred feet, while the mean thickness scarcely exceeds 
 twelve feet ; and resulting from this, we can calculate with 
 tolerable accuracy that a consumption of twenty millions of 
 tons annually will exhaust this coal-field in about three hun- 
 dred years. But the rainfall remains undiminished. 
 
 It has, indeed, been suggested, that land drainage has 
 reduced the rainfall by an appreciable degree : but it should 
 be remembered that this interesting statement is made 
 with respect to an island which, from east to west, nowhere 
 measures more than three hundred miles. Undoubtedly, the 
 primary effect of land drainage is to reduce the amount of 
 water evaporated from the soil ; I say, the primary effect, 
 because the quantity of water of which the soil is relieved by 
 these drains is not so important in its actual effect upon the 
 producing qualities of the soil, as is the rise of temperature in 
 the earth above the level of the drains, which is the result of 
 reduced evaporation. It is certainly true that less water is 
 evaporated from a well-drained than from a marshy country, 
 and that the soil of England gives out much less watery 
 vapour than it did fifty years ago ; but when we remember 
 that the division of the surface of the globe is three-fourths 
 of water to one of land, and that a hundred and forty-five 
 millions of square miles of sea are constantly supplying the 
 heavens with rain, and, moreover, that we in this small 
 island are surrounded by seas of great extent, with an in- 
 fallible and immense rain machinery close at hand in the 
 junction of the heated Gulf Stream with the icy Arctic waters, 
 it should excite a smile rather than alarm when we are 
 threatened with thirst because of agricultural land drainage. 
 
 Probably there is no equal area in the world upon which 
 so many geological strata are exhibited at the surface as in 
 England. Speaking with reference to the general industry of 
 the country rather than with scientific minuteness, it may be 
 said that mountains and metal mines characterise the older 
 and harder formations ; that coal mines and manufacturing 
 
Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 177 
 
 industry abound upon those which are -next in degree of soli- 
 darity ; while to agriculture are devoted those beds of more 
 recent and lighter composition. This division affects the 
 supply of water, inasmuch as the first and second have 
 generally an impermeable surface, and the water must either 
 be utilised during its passage to the sea, or be stored upon the 
 surface for use in times of drought ; while in the third division 
 the supply, running through the permeable beds until it falls 
 upon some impermeable stratum, finds a natural storage beneath 
 the surface ; and, saturating to the level of its outfall those 
 beds through which it has passed, it is lessened only by 
 artificial depletion or by the slow process of capillary action 
 moving upwards to the drier surface of the soil. Of all 
 English reservoirs, whether natural, like Windermere, or artificial, 
 such as those of the Manchester water-works, none above- 
 ground are so capacious as the great bed of New Red sand- 
 stone, which, with an enormous thickness, underlies so large 
 a part of mid and north-western England, or as the great bed 
 of chalk, upon which rests so much of the wealth and popu- 
 lation of the south and south-eastern portions of the kingdom. 
 When it is considered that these are the thickest strata in our 
 geological series, and that while sandstone will take up a sixth 
 of its bulk in water, chalk will absorb double this quantity, or 
 one-third of its bulk, it needs but little acquaintance with the 
 extent of subterranean reservoirs to be certain that they are 
 not filled by the rainfall of a single year. 
 
 It follows, then, from this brief description of the water 
 resources of the country, that generally, those districts which 
 are mountainous and manufacturing obtain their supply by 
 means of storage reservoirs constructed at high levels, pouring 
 forth their contents by gravitation ; while those localities which 
 are agricultural are mainly supplied from underground sources, 
 the water being lifted by pumping and then carried away for 
 consumption. Yet this distribution of rainfall by the geological 
 strata is much more equable than appears upon the surface 
 
 N 
 
178 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 For instance, the rainfall of Lancashire is about double that 
 of Middlesex, while the fall of portions of the Lake country is 
 twice that of Lancashire. But it cannot be doubted that a 
 large portion of this excessive rainfall finds its way into the 
 red sandstone stretching to the south, just as the increased 
 rainfall upon the South Downs is distributed throughout the 
 vast bed of chalk of which those hills form the most elevated 
 portion. 
 
 There is no question that a plentiful supply of good water 
 is one of the first requisites of public health, and with reference 
 to any increase in the northern division of the country, nothing 
 would seem easier than to advise utilisation of those natural 
 reservoirs the Lakes, and the construction of additional 
 reservoirs. If water-closets should in time to come be generally 
 used among the population in the North, a largely increased 
 supply would be needed. But the difficulty of obtaining this 
 increase in the immediate neighbourhood of existing water- 
 works is complicated by vested rights of landowners and mill- 
 owners in the neighbouring rivers and streams, rights which 
 offer a far stronger resistance to extension than any caused by 
 the expense of works. These water rights form a subject of 
 perpetual litigation, of endless intrigue, and continual anxiety 
 to manufacturers. Yet such are the economic advantages of 
 the storage of excessive rainfall, that by the construction of 
 reservoirs constant flow can be given to a river or stream, for 
 manufacturing purposes, exceeding its average flow, although 
 a large portion of the drainage of the watershed is abstracted 
 for household and urban consumption. But in a densely 
 populated district the expense of contesting and satisfying 
 these rights increases to an alarming extent the cost of exten- 
 sions, and suggests a wider search for any large addition. The 
 supply of the chief towns in Lancashire is generally of very 
 excellent quality ; and indeed it may be said that no other 
 city in England possesses a water supply equal to that of 
 Manchester, whether as regards its purity or volume. The 
 
Wafer Supply of London and elsewhere. 179 
 
 waterworks of that city belong to the Corporation, who have 
 power to supply nearly thirty townships, including a population 
 considerably exceeding half a million. The water thus dis- 
 tributed by gravitation, which is gathered from high lands, of 
 the millstone grit formation, is very soft and pure, and at a 
 distance of nearly twenty miles from the storage reservoirs, the 
 Corporation are able to supply other local authorities at the 
 price of threepence per thousand gallons, and at this rate to 
 realise a considerable profit. 
 
 The difference between pure and impure water does not 
 pass the public comprehension, yet it must not be hastily 
 assumed that they can appreciate this distinction by sight or 
 smell or taste with sufficient certainty to protect their health. 
 But analysis will detect all impurities. That admixture of 
 bi-carbonate of lime which constitutes the difference between 
 ' hard ' and ' soft ' water, is not, when it exists to a moderate 
 degree, deemed an impurity sufficient to cause a supply to be 
 rejected for domestic purposes, though it affects the real value 
 of the water for such uses. ' Hardness' is defined by Dr. Clark's 
 test to imply, * one grain of bi-carbonate, or sulphate of lime, 
 in each gallon'; but commonly if water contain six grains 
 per gallon, it is called ' hard ' ; if less than six, * soft ' water. 
 Among the physical advantages attending the consumption of 
 soft water are said to be a comparative freedom from granular 
 and calculous deposits in the bodily system, and a greater 
 delicacy of complexion, to which circumstance some ascribe 
 the reputation of the ' Lancashire witches ' for personal beauty. 
 But this is not all. The water supply of the Lancashire dis- 
 trict as compared with that derived from the chalk formation 
 in the South, requires but one-half the quantity of soap and 
 one-third the quantity of tea to effect the same results in the 
 washing-tub or the teapot, an advantage which is equivalent 
 to an immense reduction in the price of those articles, to say 
 nothing of the saving of labour and linen in the process of 
 washing. The master of the Bolton workhouse, some years 
 
180 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 ago, crucially tested this difference, by making the ' old 
 women's ' tea with hard water. Their allowance was four 
 ounces of tea, but he put six ounces to the usual quantity of 
 water, substituting hard for soft. Nothing was said respecting 
 the experiment, but after three days of the ' six ounce and 
 hard water' tea, a deputation waited upon him to complain 
 ' that the tea had not been so strong as it had been formerly ; 
 the person making it must have made a mistake, and forgot 
 to put the usual quantity of tea to the same quantity of 
 water.' 
 
 In course of time it may happen, through the increased 
 demand for water in the manufacturing districts by the rapid 
 growth of the towns, by the general use of water-closets, by a 
 large addition of manufacturing power, by the diminution of 
 surface supply owing to the construction of sewers and drains, 
 by a demand on the part of owners of great industrial works 
 for a supply free from all dangers of litigation and impurity, 
 that it will be necessary to go farther in search of water, and 
 to utilise, for the consumption of a very extensive area, the 
 excessive rainfall of the Lake district, which about Seathwaite 
 averages 140 inches per annum. It has been proposed to 
 make use of the water of Thirlmere, a proposal in regard 
 to which the Corporation of Manchester have been met with 
 inconsiderate opposition. The first and best utility of a fresh- 
 water lake situated upon high ground within reach of a dense 
 population must be for water supply ; no other supply can be 
 equally pure or attainable with such certainty and economy. 
 The rainfall must be greatest in that region, and thus the 
 quantity and freshness of the water are secured, and the 
 elevation natural to such a lake is in fact an important and 
 advantageous circumstance in distribution. If the neigh- 
 bourhood of the lake possesses great beauty of scenery, there is 
 utility in that, which, though of a secondary order, is not likely 
 to be forgotten. And it may be confidently asked, which 
 would more probably preserve the natural charm of the Lake 
 
Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 1 8 1 
 
 district, a policy which leaves all the land open to the erection 
 of buildings, or one which would necessitate the preservation 
 of the land in a state of nature ? In fifty or a hundred years, 
 with all the changes in the tenure of land which that period 
 may be expected to bring, I doubt if there will be an acre 
 in the Lake district without a house upon it, unless, owing to 
 the utilisation of the Lakes for the health and the largest 
 benefit of the community in the storage of water, the increase 
 of building is forbidden except under strict regulations which 
 would allow very rare exception. 
 
 In seasons of drought, the Corporation of Liverpool have 
 experienced great difficulty in ekeing out their store of water, 
 and may yet have to resort to the plan suggested some years 
 since by my friend Mr. Rawlinson, who proposed to bring the 
 waters of the Bala Lake to the banks of the Mersey. A com- 
 prehensive scheme was about the same time brought forward 
 by Mr. Dale, the manager of the Hull waterworks, who pro- 
 posed, at the cost of eight and a half millions sterling, to utilise 
 the waters of Ullswater and Haweswater, leading them by a 
 line of not less than one hundred and fifty miles, to supply the 
 following towns, daily, with an aggregate of 131,000,000 
 gallons, distributed in these proportions : Liverpool, 40,000,000 
 gallons; Leeds, 15,000,000; Bradford, 10,000,000; Lancas- 
 ter, 2,000,000 ; Preston, 8,000,000 ; Wigan, 4,000.000 ; 
 Dewsbury, 3,000,000 ; Wakefield, 3,000,000 ; Bingley, 
 1,000,000; Kendal, 2,000,000; Bolton, 8,000,000;. Black- 
 burn, 6,000,000 ; Keighley, 2,000,000 ; Huddersfield, 
 4,000,000 ; Burnley, 4,000,000 ; Rochdale, 4,000,000 ; 
 Halifax, 4,000,000; Colne, 1,000,000; Bury, 8,000,000; 
 and St. Helens, 2,000,000. Whether this proposal will ever be 
 carried into execution, I cannot venture to predict, but I am 
 confident that the demands of manufacture alone will induce a 
 much greater storage of the northern rainfall. 
 
 It is, however, in London, that the question is of the highest 
 importance. The water supply of the metropolis is bad in 
 
1 82 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 quality, deficient in quantity, and faulty as to the sources from 
 whence it is obtained. Nothing is more certain than that 
 ' progress ' involves a large increase in the individual demand 
 for water. The quantity delivered in London rose from 
 44,383,332 gallons in 1856 to more than 108,000,000 gallons 
 in the year 1866. One-half of this supply is filched from the 
 river Thames ; not economised from the storm waters of rainy 
 seasons, but drained from the sluggish stream in the thirsty 
 summer, more largely even than during the impetuous floods 
 of winter. This water is fouled by the sewage of many con- 
 siderable populations scattered throughout the Thames basin, 
 which includes 1,000,000 inhabitants above the point at which 
 the lowest supply is obtained ; it is further polluted by the 
 surface drainage of many thousand acres of highly manured 
 land, and by the incidents of an extensive traffic, including the 
 corpses of innumerable dogs and cats, which, after a frequently 
 cruel death, are thus noxiously avenged. And the same objec- 
 tions may be urged against so much of the remainder of the 
 supply as is derived from the Lea and the Ravensbourne, in 
 the east and south of London. 
 
 The Thames can ill afford to lose this quantity of water, 
 which amounts to one-sixth of the dry-weather flow at Hamp- 
 ton ; and now, less than ever, when the diversion of the sewage 
 has prevented the restoration of this water in the place where 
 its outfall would much affect the flow of the river. But that the 
 Thames should bear a further abstraction is not to be tolerated, 
 nor are there adequate sources of supply in the neighbourhood 
 of the metropolis sufficient to meet the increasing demand. It 
 is quite possible that a more rigid inspection may prevent, to 
 a great extent, the pollution of these and other rivers. We 
 may yet see the Thames Embankment lined with anglers ; but 
 we must not expect that populous river basins will afford a 
 supply of pure water, nor is it right, upon sanitary or economic 
 principles, to take water for domestic consumption from the 
 dry -weather stream of such rivers. 
 
Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 183 
 
 I have said that the water supply of London is not only 
 unsatisfactory in quantity, but also in quality. I will not refer 
 to the wells many of which are directly fouled by poisonous 
 contaminations, of which the Broad Street pump, of cholera 
 notoriety, was a signally fatal example, but to the quality of 
 water furnished by the eight great companies which together 
 pour in the daily drink of the metropolis. In point of organic 
 impurity, as expressed in analytical tables, the London water 
 does not appear much inferior to that of the northern cities, 
 but the organic impurity of the first is, we should remember, 
 of a very different character from that of the organic impurity 
 of the latter. Organic impurity is hurtful in proportion to its 
 power of putrefaction, and the humous peaty matter which 
 forms so large a portion of the organic impurity contained in 
 the waters from the northern moors upon the millstone grit 
 and Silurian formations, is comparatively harmless when con- 
 trasted with the matter which pollutes the river supplies of 
 London. Again, in reference to the important quality of 
 hardness, the whole of the London supply appears distinctly 
 inferior to the northern waters. The water of Lake Bala, 
 to which I have referred as a possible source of supply for 
 Liverpool, contain but O'8 of hardness, while the London 
 water contains from \2~ to 16 by the same test. It may 
 perhaps be safely assumed that the presence of this quantity 
 of lime in the metropolitan supply of water involves the waste 
 of not less than 3,000,000 Ib. of tea and 3,000,000 Ib. of soap 
 every year ; nor is it a high estimate to set the money loss thus 
 involved at $ 2 5,000, a sum which, capitalised at 4 per cent, 
 represents 1 3,125,000. But this is only part of the waste 
 occasioned by the hardness of London water. To this must 
 be added the loss in coffee, in the preparation of chemicals 
 for manufacturing purposes, the large item represented by wear 
 and tear of clothes in washing, and other sums, which as 
 positive loss would swell this total probably to 20,000,000 
 sterling. I will leave to the readers of this paper the task of 
 
1 84 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 computing the sum which should be added for the sanitary 
 advantage of a soft water supply. Once, to be sure, there 
 did appear an advocate of hard water, on the ground that 
 lime was necessary to renew the osseous framework of the 
 body, but he retired abashed upon the suggestion that ' bone ' 
 was rather a characteristic of the Scotch people, who are, in 
 general, consumers of water containing but i or 2 of hard- 
 ness. 
 
 Assuming, then, it is necessary that increased supply should 
 be obtained for the metropolis, and that it is desirable the 
 water should be as soft as can be procured, I will refer to the 
 localities from whence this addition, or entirely new supply 
 could be obtained. It is the opinion of the best informed 
 persons upon this matter, that a large addition to the exist- 
 ing supply might be obtained from the chalk which under- 
 lies the metropolitan district, and from the Bagshot sands of 
 Surrey. The first would, of course, be very hard, though if 
 the lime which it contains were precipitated, this evil would be 
 to a great extent annihilated. The latter would be soft water. 
 But neither would of itself furnish a supply sufficient for the 
 total demand of London, which is the prime necessity of any 
 scheme proposing the largest measure of reform. The eight 
 companies to which I have previously referred have an invested 
 capital of about .7,000,000 sterling, with a gross annual 
 revenue of about 700,000; they compose an obstacle of very 
 formidable dimensions ; but not insuperable, if we may judge 
 from the scheme promulgated about ten years since by Mr. J. F. 
 Bateman, who proposed to supply London with 220,000,000 
 gallons a day from the sources of the Severn, comprising two 
 drainage areas, each of about 66,000 acres in extent. One of 
 these ' is situated a little to the east of the range of mountains 
 of which Cader Idris and Aran Mowddy are the highest sum- 
 mits, respectively of 2,914 and 2,979 feet in height, and forms 
 the drainage ground of the rivers Banw and Vyrnwy, which 
 join the Severn about half-way betwixt Welshpool and Shrews- 
 
 
Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 185 
 
 bury. The other district is situated immediately to the east 
 of Plynlimmon, 2,500 feet in height, and forms the drainage- 
 ground of the upper portion of the river Severn proper. The 
 discharge pipes of the lowest reservoir in each of these districts 
 would be placed at an elevation of about 450 feet above the 
 level of Trinity high-water mark.' 
 
 The idea is not novel, but the details are original, and 
 appear to have been well considered. The water would be of 
 a far better quality (containing only r6 of hardness) than can 
 be obtained from any nearer locality; indeed, the high moun- 
 tain lands are, as I have said, the natural water-fields of a 
 country. Mr. Bateman proposed in these districts to construct 
 four reservoirs, containing an aggregate storage capacity of 
 4,991,000,000 cubic feet, the embankments in no case to 
 exceed 80 feet in height. By aqueducts of 19 and 2\\ miles 
 in length respectively, the waters of the two districts would 
 be united a little to the N.E. of Montgomery, and from thence 
 by a common aqueduct of 152 miles in length, open or tun- 
 nelled, according to the level of the intervening country, be 
 conducted to high land near Stanmore, from which point water 
 could be supplied to the metropolis from service reservoirs, * at 
 high pressure, and under the constant-supply system.' 
 
 For the present the waters of those districts, estimated at 
 130,000,000 gallons per day, would be sufficient; and the 
 necessary works, including the long aqueduct, of such dimen- 
 sions as would conduct the full supply when it was needed, 
 and the cost of connecting new pipes with the existing systems, 
 Mr. Bateman estimated at 8,600,000 ; the total estimate for 
 a supply of 220,000,000 gallons per day being 10,850,000. 
 But then there are vested rights to be dealt with, and the 
 engineer calculated ' the gross cost, after capitalising the pre- 
 sent dividends and interest of the existing companies, if they 
 are to be purchased, viz., 450,000 per annum, at twenty-five 
 years' purchase, will be ^"19,850,000 for the first instalment 
 of I 30,000,000 gallons per day (exclusive of any of the New 
 
1 86 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 River supplies, which may still be retained), or 165,41 6 per 
 million ; when the full quantity from North Wales is intro- 
 duced, viz., 220,000,000 gallons per day, the total cost will be 
 22,100,000, or 100,454 per million gallons per day/ 
 
 I do not see anything in this scheme which should alarm our 
 civic economists, although it will probably be some time before 
 they rise to a full appreciation of the benefits to be derived 
 from it. The cost would amount to about one year's rateable 
 value of the property within the district receiving the supply, 
 and that is a charge which in many northern towns has not 
 been suffered to withstand the effort to obtain a good supply 
 of water. 
 
 From a sanitary point of view the question of water supply 
 eminently demands attention, in its relation to the small scat- 
 tered towns and villages, hundreds of which have no regular 
 supply whatever, and are dependent on ditch-water, or well- 
 water, which is in many cases very impure. I have heard of 
 1 1 7 people waiting around one pump ; of poor women rising 
 in the early morning, three hours before working time, and 
 walking more than a mile in order to be first at the tiny stream 
 upon which their village was dependent for water. There are 
 many rural districts, too, where the poor are drinking dung- 
 discoloured water ; many, where the supply is drawn from old 
 wells, the mouths of which, trodden to a funnel shape, mingle 
 the washings of the surface with their contents. In very many 
 towns which have a supply, the poorer classes are obliged to 
 fetch their water from standpipes a mode of distribution not 
 only wasteful to a very serious extent, but involving continuous 
 and unnecessary labour on the part of working people, when, 
 by a proper application of machinery, a quantity equal to the 
 contents of 30,000 pails could be lifted to their housetops for 
 a shilling. 
 
 At a meeting of the Society of Arts, a paper was read upon 
 the subject of ' water supply, especially to small towns and 
 villages in rural districts/ by Mr. Bailey Denton, in which he 
 
Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 187 
 
 recommended the storage of agricultural drainage water in 
 small reservoirs, and assuming the population of a village to 
 be 400, requiring 10 gallons each per day, he estimated that 
 it would be necessary to store 120 days' supply, or 480,000 
 gallons, the reservoir containing 720,000, to allow for evapora- 
 tion and waste, and covering four-tenths of an acre with a 
 depth of 7 \ feet. The cost of this work was set by Mr. Denton 
 at 415. 
 
 It is impossible not to feel grateful to him for having so 
 assiduously called attention to the real suffering which a very 
 large proportion of the population endure, owing to the want 
 of a proper supply of water. But I cannot convince myself 
 that the ills they suffer are much more grievous than would be 
 the wholesale execution of a system of small works of this 
 description. The fact is, that the reform must be' made, each 
 place for itself, in the manner and under conditions which the 
 locality suggests. I have seen a small township construct very 
 efficient waterworks for ,450, which held a good supply 
 during a very prolonged drought. But this is quite an ex- 
 ceptional case. The construction of a number of small, shallow, 
 and exposed ponds throughout the rural districts, is an under- 
 taking which cannot be recommended on sanitary or economical 
 grounds. There are many cases where such reservoirs may be 
 constructed with great advantage ; but the reform cannot be 
 carried out upon a system which ignores the capacity or in- 
 capacity of separate districts. It might be thought desirable 
 that the funds should be borrowed from one common source ; 
 but there can be no common treatment in the design of the 
 required works, which, both to secure greater purity of the 
 water and economy of cost, should be made as large as possible, 
 feeding the widest practicable area which could be supplied 
 from one centre. 
 
 To the proposal to collect effluent water from land-drainage 
 for domestic consumption, there are, however, obvious objections 
 to be made. As a rule, this water would be considerably softer 
 
1 88 Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 
 
 than that to be obtained by pumping from the under-lying 
 strata. There are grounds for believing that the habitual use 
 of water drawn from the chalk formation tends to impair the 
 digestive organs, and predisposes to calculous disease. It is 
 said, too, that the presence of carbonate of lime in water is a 
 frequent cause of sore throat, and is invariably found where 
 goitre is a common affliction. But this objection applies 
 principally to the chalk beds, and there are many water-holding 
 strata throughout the agricultural districts to which it is not 
 applicable. Of the water which is carried off by land drains, 
 it is true that sometimes none whatever comes directly from 
 the surface of the soil. The drain may mark the level of 
 saturation of the soil in which it rests ; but during the season 
 in which these small reservoirs would become full, the soil below 
 the drains would be saturated, and all water carried off by 
 the pipes would come directly from the surface. This season 
 is also concurrent with the time of manuring, and if it be 
 possible for taint of manure to remain in water after per- 
 colating to the drains, the outfall would certainly be impure. 
 
 On this point the General Board of Health took evidence, 
 some years since, at the suggestion of the late Lord Carlisle. 
 Among other witnesses, they examined Mr. Smith of Deanston, 
 who, in reference to land-drainage, has the place which Adam 
 Smith holds in political economy. Mr. Smith said : * The water 
 flowing from drains is generally very limpid and pure, although 
 at times, when much manure has been put upon the land, it is 
 impregnated to a considerable degree with soluble matter and 
 sometimes colouring/ But unquestionably, the water issuing 
 from drains four feet deep, especially from land under grass, is 
 generally very soft, and of good quality ; and if the main drains 
 were carefully led away, so as to avoid contact with any 
 impure washings from the surface of cultivated lands, a valuable 
 supply of water might thus be gained. Yet in place of con- 
 structing one small reservoir for each village, in which it might 
 be very difficult, if not impossible, to preserve the purity of the 
 
Water Supply of London and elsewhere. 189 
 
 water, it would, when practicable, be far more economical and 
 serviceable to construct the needful storage for each watershed. 
 By such aggregation the quality of the water would be im- 
 proved, and its cost lessened. If works could be constructed 
 for a population of 400 persons, at a cost of 4 1 5 , they would 
 obtain a supply of 480,000 gallons for this sum. That was 
 Mr. Denton's proposal. But the Manchester Corporation are 
 enabled to sell this quantity at a considerable profit, and at a 
 distance of twenty miles from their reservoirs, for an annual 
 charge of 6 ; while if a pumping system is considered de- 
 sirable, not less than 80,000 gallons may be lifted upwards of 
 fifty feet at a cost of one shilling. 
 
 I have made these remarks in order to prove that in this, as 
 in every other undertaking, there are great advantages in asso- 
 ciation. The provision of a pure and sufficient supply of water, 
 especially in rural districts, has been very much neglected ; 
 and if regard is to be had to the health of the people, this is a 
 matter which presses for immediate attention. The want is 
 felt keenly among populations too small to possess local autho- 
 rity capable of executing considerable works ; and in the 
 endeavour to remedy a state of things which must be charac- 
 terised as disgraceful, it may be found desirable to give to local 
 authorities greater facilities of union for this object. 
 
1 90 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE LIBERAL PARTY AND THE CATHOLICS. 
 
 HEN Lord Melbourne was Prime Minister, in the first 
 December of Her Majesty's reign, there was a question 
 before the House of Commons touching Irish Election Petitions. 
 A young man addressed the House for some twenty minutes, 
 amid ' murmurs ' and ' interruption/ until at last the ' shouts ' of 
 members overwhelmed half a sentence. ' The noble lord/ said 
 the maiden speaker, ' might wave in one hand the Keys of St. 
 
 Peter, and in the other .' Since that day Mr. Disraeli [in 
 
 writing of Lord Beaconsfield's life in the House of Commons, it 
 is still well to use his family and familiar name] has sketched 
 for us, with the fine satirical pencil of his tongue, a long gallery 
 of Parliamentary portraits ; they troop in the mind's eye, some 
 with the supple step of his ' red Indian of debate/ others with 
 the ' Batavian grace ' of his honourable friend the member for 
 the University of Cambridge/ but he was never permitted to 
 finish his first Parliamentary painting ; and in place of Lord 
 Melbourne's left hand he had to raise his own in deprecation 
 and in prophecy that ' the time will come when you will hear 
 me.' England had then effaced part of a great blot ; some 
 years before she had conceded a tardy measure of justice to 
 Roman Catholics, but even then there were few indeed of the 
 Protestant majority who were sensible of the wrong, or in any 
 way pained at the maintenance of religious disabilities of the 
 most odious and insulting character. 
 
 The attention I propose to invite to the relations of the 
 
The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 191 
 
 Liberal party and the Catholics has been suggested by the paper 
 entitled ' The Tory Party and the Catholics/ which Mr. Pope 
 Hennessy contributed to the Contemporary Review. He him- 
 self appears in the paper in two parts, conspicuously as a 
 political Rip van Winkle, who, while the European world has 
 been boiling in the caldron of controversy, has been slumbering 
 among Labuans and West Africans, and as a Colonial Governor 
 removed from the ' struggles of party/ who must not venture 
 into the whirlwind of current politics. This, however, I should 
 say, is a reserve to which Mr. Hennessy pretends ; he is quite 
 unable to maintain the role which he thinks most fitting for a 
 Colonial Governor who was once a busy member of Parlia- 
 ment. In his swallow-flight through more than 200 years of 
 history, he dips, like the bird in stormy weather, again and 
 again to earth, pecking now at Mr. Gladstone, now at Cardinal 
 Cullen, and chirping always when he meets with Mr. Disraeli, 
 in whose brilliant and bejewelled utterances Mr. Hennessy 
 delights to mirror himself. His paper is a eulogy of the policy 
 of Mr. Disraeli, from the hour in which we have seen that dis- 
 tinguished man first rise in the House of Commons ; and it 
 is a censure of the Catholics for those wanderings from their 
 ' natural alliance ' with the Tory party of which they have 
 been, as he alleges, especially under the leadership of Mr. 
 Gladstone, so frequently and foolishly guilty. 
 
 I have followed his example in giving Mr. Disraeli a leading 
 place in this reply, because Mr. Disraeli is the hero of Mr. 
 Hennessy's paper 'the highest living authority on political 
 parties ' ; ' the most successful party organizer that the Con- 
 servatives of England have ever known ' ; the consolation of a 
 Tory Catholic in a State of which the vast majority is Pro- 
 testant. And we shall understand Mr. Hennessy better if we 
 recognize how gladly he would be Mr. Disraeli if he were not 
 Mr. Hennessy. I had a special object in referring to Mr. 
 Disraeli's maiden speech. His hat once covered a party in 
 Parliament, and so did Mr. Pope Hennessy's. It is a matter 
 
192 The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 of history Mr. Hennessy says so that ' the Tory Catholic 
 party that was formed in 1859' na -d a ' solitary representative,' 
 one who has for a little while returned from places far more 
 outlandish than the home of Lord Macaulay's New Zealander, 
 to contemplate the stability of the Church of Rome from a seat 
 upon the ruins of his party. And now in what his political 
 master would denote as his * historical conscience/ Mr. Hen- 
 nessy thinks that minute and single-voiced body ' attracted 
 some attention, and may, perhaps, be said to mark a turning- 
 point in the recent history of the Catholic party.' To those 
 who object, Mr. Hennessy might well say, * Why smile, why 
 envy me, why not let me enjoy that reflection ? ' as Mr. 
 Disraeli pleaded when the House, on the evening to which I 
 have referred, met with ' loud laughter ' his assurance that he 
 stood ' not formally, but in some degree virtually, as the repre- 
 sentative of a great number of members of Parliament ; ' and 
 for the present, until in due course we refer to the noble lord, 
 the Tory Catholic and Home Ruler, upon whom Mr. Hennessy's 
 mantle has, in these days, fallen, and who, with more sweet- 
 ness and less light than his predecessor, does his best to 
 preserve the solitary traditions of the party, we must leave 
 Mr. Hennessy in sole possession of the Tory Catholic repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 I do not propose to tarry long in the far-extending plains of 
 historical record ; but to touch Mr. Hennessy's ideas at their 
 fount, we must pass up the stream of history to the time of 
 Charles I., when that thing, so horrid alike to Mr. Disraeli 
 and Mr. Hennessy -when ' Puritanism ' had its origin. The 
 Catholics then fought in company with the Church of England 
 for the Crown. ' The faith that is associated with loyalty to 
 the Crown and an aversion to Puritanical tenets compelled 
 them to do so.' Mr. Hennessy, like Mr. Disraeli, is full of 
 finesse of this sort. You may infer, if you please, that the 
 Catholics of that period rather liked the Protestantism of the 
 Church of England, and that the Puritanism of the coming 
 
The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 193 
 
 Lord Protector was the only thing that their souls abhorred. 
 We shall probably do no wrong to Mr. Hennessy if we trace 
 his indebtedness to Mr. Disraeli for this stroke, so clever in a 
 country where Protestantism is powerful and Puritanism is but 
 a dim idea and a vague recollection. In 1844, the present 
 Prime Minister (Lord Beaconsfield) ascribed the then condition 
 of Ireland with, as he said, ' a starving population, an absentee 
 aristocracy, an alien Church, and the weakest Executive in the 
 world ' ' not to Protestantism but to Puritanism/ That Puri- 
 tanism, as a reaction from the unprincipled rule of Charles I., 
 and afterwards as a protest against the licentious reign of 
 Charles II., was marked with excesses, there can be no doubt ; 
 but Puritanism was the warden, the depositary, the very essence 
 and power of Protestantism. The two things were, in fact, 
 synonymous. Mr. Hennessy himself shows this in his complaint 
 that ' the Puritan Parliament was constantly quarrelling with 
 the King (Charles II.) on account of his attempts to protect 
 the Catholics/ ' Protect ' is a mild word to employ in this con- 
 nection. There would have been little Protestantism remaining 
 in the Church of England, had it not been for the Puritanism 
 of the period. Mr. Hennessy is all for the Merry Monarch and 
 against Puritanism. He says : ' No period of English history 
 has been so misrepresented as the reign of Charles II. ; even 
 Catholic writers have blindly copied the Whig calumnies against 
 the King/ We do not wonder at this ; the alliance is natural; 
 the Stuarts always, as Macaulay says of Charles, ' liked a Papist 
 better than a Puritan. The Protestant Church of England 
 would certainly have passed away, had it not been for the 
 strength of Puritanism. Mr. Disraeli, in apology for the speech 
 from which I have last quoted, has spoken of ' the heedless 
 rhetoric, which is the appanage of all who sit below the gang- 
 way/ but his ' historical conscience ' recognizes the sentiment of 
 that speech as ' right/ The same high court of appeal will, no 
 doubt, reconcile his abuse of Puritanism in times when men 
 like Laud, the greatest of Ritualists, ruled the Church of Eng- 
 
 O 
 
1 94 The Liberal Parly and the Catholics. 
 
 land, with his ardent support in 1874 of a Bill to 'put down 
 Ritualism ' in the Church of England. What was that period, 
 and who was that monarch of Mr. Hennessy's eulogy that 
 Stuart period when the alliance of Tory and Catholic was 
 cemented in blood ? If wasted opportunity be the truest 
 measure of failure, then Charles II. was the worst sovereign who 
 ever occupied the English throne. And I believe that he fully 
 deserves this title. His profligacy and prodigality have been 
 painted in that famous death-bed scene in which his sultanas 
 muttered 'Aves,' and gamblers counted their gold, while the 
 French Ambassador helped to smuggle the priest Huddleston to 
 his bedside in order that he might die a Catholic. He violated 
 the most sacred public law, in allowing more than three years 
 to elapse between the dissolution and convocation of a Par- 
 liament ; he encouraged fraud in the public service, and as 
 Macaulay says of his time 
 
 ' From the nobleman who held the white staff and the great seal down to 
 the humblest tide-waiter and ganger, what would now be called gross corrup- 
 tion was practised without disguise and without reproach. Titles, places, 
 commissions, pardons, were dai\y sold in market overt by the great dignitaries 
 of the realm, and every clerk in every department imitated to the best of his 
 power the evil example.' 
 
 I do not grudge the Tory party the fullest recollection of 
 the period in which Mr. Hennessy dates the foundation of the 
 Catholic alliance, an alliance the true basis of which was con- 
 firmed by the late Lord Derby ' the Rupert of debate ' 
 when that Cavalier politician said at Liverpool in 1859 
 
 * I am happy to say that I have for some time past perceived a growing 
 inclination [on the part of Roman Catholics] to alienate themselves from the 
 advanced Liberal party, and to unite themselves with those who are their 
 natural allies, the Conservatives of this country/ 
 
 As Mr. Pope Hennessy is a distinguished servant of the 
 
 Crown, I will not, though he has given us to understand that 
 
 there was but one Tory Catholic in Parliament at the time, 
 
 inquire too closely whether he is the gentleman who decorates 
 
 himself upon the birthday of ' King James III. ;' but, in follow- 
 
The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 195 
 
 ing the ' natural alliance/ it is instructive to notice that he and 
 Mr. Disraeli are at one in repudiating the settlement of the 
 Crown in 1688. The present Prime Minister [Lord Beacons- 
 field], in 1841, 'had not the slightest doubt that those [the 
 Liberals, who at that time had Lord Melbourne at their head] 
 who have twice tampered with the succession would do so a 
 third time, if occasion required it ; ' and Mr. Hennessy, who is 
 all for King James, writes of the defeat by Sarsfield of 'the 
 Whig usurper at Limerick/ 
 
 The ' alliance ' is by both assumed to have blossomed and 
 borne fruit in the time of Mr. Pitt. From 'the benignant 
 policy of Charles I./ Mr. Disraeli passed, in 1844, to tnat f 
 ' Mr. Pitt, the last of Tory statesmen/ who proposed ' mea- 
 sures for the settlement of Ireland, which, had they been agreed 
 to by Parliament, would have saved Ireland from her present 
 condition ; ' and Mr. Hennessy is at pains to make out that 
 Pitt's leaning towards the Roman Catholics of Ireland was the 
 result of natural friendliness and affection for their religious 
 system. He repudiates ' the language of O'Connell ' imputing 
 fear as the moving power with the Tory statesman, and, to his 
 own mind, satisfactorily rebuts this ' language ' by the demon- 
 stration, 'that it was not fear that actuated Pitt in making the 
 concessions which O'Connell says conciliated the Catholics and 
 separated them from the Republicans, is evident from the fact, 
 that at the very time he was maturing and carrying his plans of 
 Emancipation he was refusing to repeal the Test Act, that pressed 
 only on the Protestant Dissenters/ Now, I have no intention 
 of disputing the alliance between Pitt and the Catholics ; I am 
 much of the late Lord Derby's opinion, that Tories and Catholics 
 are ' natural allies ;' I am much of Mr. Disraeli's opinion, that he 
 and his friends are, in regard to the Roman Catholic religion, ' the 
 natural allies of the Irish people;' 1 but my 'historical con- 
 science' demands that the 'heedless rhetoric' of Mr. Disraeli's 
 Roman Catholic disciple shall not pass uncorrected ; and I 
 
 1 Speech on Ireland, Feb. 16, 1844. 
 
196 The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 must enforce my denial of Mr. Hennessy's assertion that ' Pitt 
 was really moved by his genuine friendship ' for the Roman 
 Catholic body. 
 
 Mr. Froude tells us that Burke's 'advice to Pitt, his advice to 
 the world, was to save his countrymen from the revolutionary 
 tempter by restoring to them the privileges of citizenship;' that 
 the prelates by whom ' the Catholic Committee in Dublin had 
 hitherto submitted to be guided,' 'terrified at the aspect of 
 France, were inclined to the English connection ;' and further, 
 that, in 1/90, 'confident in Pitt's disposition towards them, the 
 Catholic prelates published a letter condemning revolutionary 
 principles.' Now what was Mr. Pitt's disposition ? Mr. Froude 1 
 says that, ' in the well-disposed, loyal, and pious Catholics, he 
 was hoping to find a Conservative element to cool the revolu- 
 tionary fever.' But we have the best evidence of Pitt's dispo- 
 sition in the letters from his colleague, Dundas, to the Lord- 
 Lieutenant of Ireland. Dundas wrote that the Ministers 
 wished only ' that the Protestants should decide for themselves 
 how far a slight concession might safely be made;' and he 
 added, in a ' most private ' communication, 2 which has eluded 
 Mr. Hennessy's eye 
 
 'I have nothing further to say, except that I and all His Majesty's 
 Ministers have some reason to complain of the spirit and temper which 
 have manifested themselves among our friends in Ireland in this business. 
 If they had made no advances to us in the matter, we should have left it 
 to their own judgment. But all through the summer and autumn they were 
 expressing their fears to us of a union between the Catholics and the 
 Dissenters. They asked for our opinion, and we gave it. What motive 
 could we have, except an anxious concern for the security of the Irish 
 Establishment ? Whether we are right or wrong, time will show ; but 
 there is no imaginable reason why this opinion should have been received 
 with jealousy. 
 
 ' Mr. Pitt concurs in everything I have said. He and I have not a shade 
 of difference in our opinion.' 
 
 This at once ruins Mr. Hennessy's argument as to Pitt's 
 friendship, while it exposes the true motive of Pitt's action. 
 
 1 English in Ireland, vol. iii., p. 59. 
 f English in Ireland, vol. iii., p. 43. 
 
The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 197 
 
 He must have been ' moved by his genuine friendship/ Mr. 
 Hennessy contends, because, while he was promoting Catholic 
 Emancipation, he was refusing to abolish the Test Act. But I 
 have made it clear that the sense of justice did not enter into 
 his calculations. He indulged in a ' flirtation ' to use the 
 word of the Viceroy of the time with the Catholics, because, 
 as that high functionary wrote, ' it is good policy that the 
 Catholics should be attached to the English Government,' and 
 because he wished to baffle the Dissenters, from whom he had 
 no scruple in withholding justice, by maintaining the Test Act. 
 I have said that Mr. Hennessy appears as a Catholic Rip 
 van Winkle ; that, fortunately for his organization, to the heat 
 of the tropics has not been superadded the torrid atmosphere 
 of religious controversy, which has blown like a sirocco over 
 Europe. Take, for example, his innocent reference, as ' a 
 student of history' following 'the growth of Mr. Pitt's s.nti- 
 ments respecting the Catholics,' to the application made by 
 that Minister ' to the Universities on the Continent for those 
 authoritative expositions of Catholic principles with which he 
 showed that his clients were the best friends of order and of 
 a Conservative Monarchy.' What were these * authoritative 
 expositions '? Mr. Froude tells us, in the volume from which 
 I have already quoted 
 
 ' Pitt sought the opinion of the Universities of France and Spain on the 
 charges generally alleged against Catholics that their allegiance to their 
 Sovereign was subordinate to their allegiance to the Pope,' etc. ... * The 
 Universities had unanimously disavowed doctrines which they declared at 
 once inhuman and un-Christian ; and, on the strength of the disavowal, the 
 British Parliament repealed the Penal Acts of William for England and 
 Scotland, and restored to the Catholics the free use of their chapels, and 
 re-admitted them to the magistracy.' 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has reminded us, in his ' Expostulation/ that a 
 similar proceeding was adopted in the current century, when 
 Catholic Emancipation in England was the question of the 
 day; and he has recorded the 'declaration/ in 1826, of the 
 Vicars Apostolic 
 
198 The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 1 That the allegiance which Catholics hold to be due and are bound to 
 pay to their Sovereign and to the civil authority of the State is perfect and 
 undivided.' 
 
 He has also quoted the Bishops' ' Pastoral Address to the 
 Clergy and Laity of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland/ 
 in Art. xi. of which 
 
 'They declare, on oath, their belief that it is not an article of the 
 Catholic faith, neither are they thereby required to believe that the Pope 
 is infallible.' 
 
 Now, from Mr. Pope Hennessy asleep in the tropics, let us 
 turn to the Tory Catholic in the present Parliament, and see 
 how the opinions of the party bear upon these ' expositions.' 
 Lord Robert Montagu, a recent convert, now occupies the 
 place of Mr. Pope Hennessy; and this callow, candid Catholic, 
 has, in reply to Mr. Gladstone, expounded the Tory 
 Catholic creed, both political and religious. 1 ' We,' says the 
 Tory Catholic party of the present, 'owe the strictest allegi- 
 ance to the Queen, and yield to no subject of her realms in 
 loyalty ; we also owe the same to the Pope ; because the one 
 power is subordinate to the other, just as the end of the State 
 is subordinate to the end of the Church, and as the body is 
 subordinate to the sou]-;' 'thus the civil society which has 
 the care of one end is subordinate to the society which looks 
 after the other end ; ' ' and so the State is subordinate to the 
 Church.' ' Kings must be subordinate to the Sovereign Pon- 
 tiff/ says the Tory Catholic of this day, and ' in all questions of 
 disputed jurisdiction between Church and State, the head of 
 the Church must overrule the government of the State ; ' and 
 it is ' not,' as Mr. Gladstone thinks, ' an " exorbitant claim," 
 but most rational ; nay, a necessity wherever there is not to 
 be a chaos/ that the principles of the Papal Church should 
 recognise in the Pontiff ' the right to determine the province of 
 his own rights.' 
 
 No doubt Mr. Hennessy thinks the thing was better done in 
 
 1 Expostulation in Extremis. By Lord Robert Montagu, M.P. 1874. 
 
The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 199 
 
 his time, and perhaps it is a pity that he took to practising 
 instead of preaching the art of government. But much has 
 happened since he quitted Parliament, and Lord Robert 
 Montagu is, I can assure Mr. Hennessy, quite in the fashion 
 of the day. Lord Robert would deride, if he were aware of 
 it, the opinion of the Universities which reported to Mr. Pitt. 
 He tells us that our ( vaunt and glory in England is ' that we 
 have a 'limited monarchy,' and he implies that the Pope is 
 the proper limiting power. He says a king ' cannot be pre- 
 vented from falling into the practice of tyranny, except he 
 is regarded as subordinate to a superior authority. . . . Such 
 a Supreme Ruler has been provided by our Lord. He is 
 the ruler of the Universal Commonwealth of the Catholic 
 Church.' Yet something more has happened since the former 
 Tory Catholic party in Parliament accepted a Colonial Governor- 
 ship. This king of kings this infirm and aged man who had 
 far less acquaintance with the world (of which he beheld only a 
 few leagues) than the Seyyid or the Shah this Pope became 
 infallible. Against that assumption of all Catholic authority, 
 the illustrious statesman who was lately Prime Minister [Mr. 
 Gladstone] issued an eloquent and powerful ' Expostulation,' 
 and the line of our inquiry now leads us to consider how are 
 the relations of the two great political parties with the Catholics 
 affected by the new definition of this dogma. 
 
 The cardinal principle of Liberal policy is that the people 
 are the supreme ultimate authority of a State ; and there- 
 fore Liberals are the natural allies of those who seek to be 
 relieved from any questionable disability which prevents their 
 participation in this power. The Liberal political creed teaches 
 that civilization is concurrent, if not synonymous, with the 
 extension and the proper exercise of civil rights ; and instead 
 of declaring with Mr. Disraeli, 1 ' If government is not divine, 
 it is nothing,' a Liberal is disposed to say : ' If government 
 is not human, it is nothing.' It is because Lord Beaconsfield 
 
 1 Speech on the Irish Church, April 3, 1868. 
 
coo The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 believes that * ' an intelligent age will never discard the divine 
 right of government,' that he is a ' natural ally ' of Roman 
 Catholics. The Catholic power has been by the Vatican 
 Decrees constituted an absolutism, a despotism, so changed 
 in character that even Liberal Catholics cannot bend the 
 knee to its yoke ; how much, then, is it altered in the eyes 
 of Liberal politicians who are not Catholics ? Mr. Hennessy 
 is not yet awake to all this, and I strongly recommend him to 
 study the recent writings of the most acute of the princes of 
 his Church of that eminent prelate whose policy he has had 
 the presumption to condemn, though the name of Cardinal 
 Manning is never mentioned in his paper. No one has 
 laboured with more skill or with greater success than Cardinal 
 Manning to prove that the Vatican Decrees have not altered 
 the status of the Papacy. But he has failed, because he cannot 
 deny the existence of a vast body of opinion in his Church, 
 which formerly recognised a different authority in the Pope 
 from that which his Holiness now claims. Contesting the view 
 of his ' brother/ Mgr. Maret, expressed in ' Du Conseil General 
 et la Paix Religieuse/ that ' no judgments are certainly ex 
 cathedra except when the Pontiff acts with the concurrence 
 of the Bishops/ Cardinal Manning wrote, 2 * The Ultramontane 
 opinion is simply this, that the Pontiffs teaching ex cathedra 
 in faith or morals is infallible. In this there are no shades or 
 moderation. It is simply ay or no/ 
 
 This is the Ultramontane faith, which except a man believe, 
 he cannot partake in the most sacred offices of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. But it was not always so, and I hold Cardinal 
 Manning to have admitted this, indirectly in his laboured argu- 
 ments against 'the Gallican idea/ and directly in his Pastoral 
 Letter of a recent year (1875), in which he says: 'We are 
 now told that the civil powers of the world can hold no rela- 
 tions with a Pope who is infallible. No account is, however, 
 
 1 Speech on the Irish Church, April 3, 1868. 
 
 2 Postscript to Pastoral of 1869. 
 
The Liberal Party and tJic Catholics. 201 
 
 given of the fact that the civil powers have hitherto been in 
 concord and amity for a thousand years with an infallible 
 Church.' There is just the difference ; the justification of Mr. 
 Gladstone's ' Expostulation.' The government of the Church 
 has, by a revolution, been changed into the government of the 
 Pope. Perhaps we may measure the difference most accurately 
 by regarding the conduct of Pitt in 1791, and of the House of 
 Lords Committee in 1825, and by reflecting how absurd it would 
 appear, were Lord Beaconsfield to address inquiries to the Uni- 
 versities of France and Spain, or to interrogate Irish prelates 
 for ' authoritative expositions ' of the Vatican policy. The 
 response of the Universities, like that of Bishop Doyle, was in 
 flat contradiction to the Ultramontane doctrine. The Pope of 
 our day is infallible, and he dared to trample on the primary 
 duty of the German or any other State that of compelling 
 obedience to its laws in publicly declaring 
 
 * To all whom it may concern, as also to the whole Catholic world, that 
 those [Falck] laws are null and void, as being utterly opposed to the Divine 
 Constitution of the Church. For it is not the powerful of this world that the 
 Lord has placed over the Bishops of the Church, in all that concerns His 
 holy ministry, but St. Peter, to whom He entrusted not only His lambs, but 
 also His sheep, to feed.' ' 
 
 No Liberal can be in ' natural alliance ' with a power making 
 invasive claims of this sort. It would be the reduction of infalli- 
 bility to absurdity for the Pope to pretend that the German 
 Government, by imprisoning a bishop for contumacy against 
 laws of the State, deprives him of the spiritual quality, whatever 
 that may be, of episcopacy. The punishment, the severity of 
 which I deplore, relates to the misuse, in regard to the law of 
 the State, of functions and authority which he exercises from 
 and in the buildings of the State. The supremacy of the civil 
 power over any particular religious denomination in all that 
 affects the law, the property, or any disposition of the income, 
 of the State, is, as I have said in other words, the cardinal 
 
 1 Encyclical Letter to Archbishops and Bishops of Prussia, Feb., 1875. 
 
2O2 The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 principle of Liberalism ; and, inasmuch as Vaticanism invades 
 this principle in the most uncompromising manner, there can 
 be no ' natural alliance ' of Catholics with the Liberal party. 
 There can be fortuitous alliance, as there has been, but every 
 step by which the Catholic, in a State like ours, advances to 
 religious liberty and equality, diminishes the possible duration 
 of a common policy with the Liberal party. Mr. Hennessy's 
 contention is that it has been a mistaken course for the Catholics 
 ever to co-operate with the Liberal party. They might, he 
 argues, have trusted for enfranchisement to the friendship or 
 self-interest of the Tory party, which would have sought them 
 as allies against Radicalism. With regard to religious equality, 
 he indicates that in helping the Liberal party to convert the 
 remainder of the Irish Church property to secular uses, they 
 lost, for the time, at least, their chance of furthering the more 
 profitable Tory policy of concurrent endowment, and Mr. 
 Hennessy is evidently of opinion that, if the Catholics will 
 only return and remain faithful to their ' natural alliance/ 
 something of this sort may yet be theirs. He blames the 
 Irish Catholic policy which helped to drive * the Prelates of 
 the Anglican Church from the House of Lords ; ' he extols the 
 Tory support of the measure which, in 17/4, secured tithes to 
 the Roman Catholic clergy of Canada ; he lauds Charles II., 
 but has no words of praise for George III., who ' refused to 
 allow Pitt to complete emancipation and to establish concurrent 
 endowment' in Ireland. 
 
 The tactics of the Tories will be to strengthen the ' natural 
 alliance,' and to sever the Catholics from the Liberal party by 
 dangling before their eyes the possibility of a reversion to this 
 policy. The present Premier [Lord Beaconsfield] in 1844 
 commended Pitt's policy, and affirmed that it would have 
 'settled the Church Question;' in 1868 he vindicated the 
 proposal to grant a charter to a Roman Catholic University, 
 in affirming that ' in Ireland the wise policy is to create and 
 not to destroy, and to strengthen Protestant institutions by 
 
The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 203 
 
 being just to the Roman Catholics.' 1 In the same speech he 
 suggested, as superior to Mr. Gladstone's policy, the introduc- 
 tion of ' measures which would have elevated the status of the 
 unendowed clergy of Ireland, and so softened and terminated 
 those feelings of inequality.' He even argued that ' the prin- 
 ciple of property would be vindicated in a much higher degree 
 by the principle of restitution [of Church property to Roman 
 Catholics], and so it might be contended that there was no 
 violation of property at all.' This, however, we and the 
 Catholics must remember was said in his place as Prime 
 Minister before the crushing defeat of the Conservative party 
 in the election which carried Mr. Gladstone to power in 1868. 
 After that event we find the policy of Pitt, of Mr. Hennessy, 
 and, I believe, of Mr. Disraeli also, placed quite in the back- 
 ground. The people of the United Kingdom, and especially 
 the Conservative borough-voters had in many places fought 
 to the cry of ' No Popery ! ' 
 
 At this point, then, we shall do well to inquire what is the 
 strength, and what the weakness, of the undoubted ' natural 
 alliance ' between the Tory party and the Catholics. The 
 strength is the innate Conservatism of the two bodies, a 
 strength which brings them into close and continual alliance 
 in all the Catholic States of the world ; the weakness lies in 
 the fact that two eminently Conservative classes the shop- 
 keepers and farmers of England and Scotland are also the 
 most obstinately Protestant. The alliance is therefore ' natural ' 
 rather than 'kindly.' We have seen Lord North in 1774 
 trying to strengthen himself against the Liberal policy by 
 endowing the Roman Catholic clergy of Canada ; Pitt pur- 
 suing the same idea, and for the same motives, in 1791; and 
 Disraeli in 1844 and 1868 labouring to detach the Catholics 
 from the Liberal party by suggesting concurrent endowment as 
 preferable to religious equality. The ' natural alliance ' always 
 endures ; the co-operation or the kindliness between English 
 
 1 Speech on Irish Church, April 3, 1868. 
 
2O4 The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 Conservatives and Catholics depends upon whether the 
 Catholic demand menaces any institution dear to the superior 
 strength of Protestant ascendancy in the Conservative party. 
 Lately the two parties found a wide common ground of 
 action, and in several English boroughs the Roman Catholics in 
 1874 gave decisive aid to Conservative candidates because 
 of their concurrence upon the great question of education. 
 Mr. Hennessy points with glee to the occasion when 
 
 'The powerful party of the Church of England, and the small but 
 compact party of Catholics in England, made an open alliance on the 
 8th April, 1870, in St. James's Hall, when the Duke of Norfolk and the 
 Marquis of Salisbury, the Duke of Northumberland and the Chairman of 
 the Catholic School Committee, Lord Sandon, Mr. Beresford Hope, and a 
 crowded meeting of the leaders of both Churches, assembled in support of 
 religious education. They voted together at the Parliamentary elections in 
 1874, and they can now be seen every week assisting each other most cor- 
 dially at the School Boards.' 
 
 There they sit, and there they will continue in ' natural 
 alliance.' In Ireland, the alliance will probably be strength- 
 ened by the suggestion of concurrent endowment rather 
 than secularisation, when the surplus property of the Irish 
 Church comes to be dealt with. There is perhaps no rock 
 ahead in the way of the alliance in Ireland, except the great 
 stumbling-block of Home Rule. Mr. Hennessy, with the 
 political agility natural to one who has quitted the arena of 
 politics for more healthy intercourse with barbarous people, 
 jumps lightly over it, and writes of Mr. Butt as the leader of 
 the ' Irish Catholic party.' It is only a Catholic party in so 
 far as Home Rule would give ascendancy to the Catholics in 
 an Irish Parliament, and it would be in alliance with the 
 Liberal party if ever that party should promote a policy of 
 decentralization in the direction of Home Rule. 
 
 It remains only to consider how the great question of Dis- 
 establishment would affect the * natural alliance ' of Tories and 
 Catholics in this island. But for this question, the alliance 
 would certainly endure and grow stronger every day : will it 
 last when the superior status of the Church of England is 
 
The Liberal Party and the Qit/fltics. ' / 205 *7 - 
 
 / / '\ < 
 
 V / / * 
 
 seriously menaced when the disendowment of J 
 
 clergy is the demand of angry Churchmen, when 
 equality is the cry of the Nonconformist, and loudest perhaps/ i 
 of those Dissenters who, for respectability's sake, and to be all 
 things to all men, have feigned acquiescence in the existence 
 of the Establishment ? The Conservative party, prizing the 
 Establishment infinitely above the Catholic alliance, would 
 then repeat with approval the nonsense which Mr. Disraeli 
 uttered in 1868, when he defined 'religious equality' as 'that 
 state of things where a man has complete and perfect enjoy- 
 ment of his religion, and can uphold and vindicate his 
 religious privileges in the courts of law.' Yet, perhaps, even 
 more audacious was his statement on the same occasion that 
 the Dissenter * considers himself to be on perfectly equal 
 terms ' with the members of the Establishment. But what 
 would the Roman Catholic say ? Mr. Hennessy would have 
 him stand by the Church of England, opposing Disestablish- 
 ment and Disendowment, both or either, as anti-Catholic 
 policy. He censures the action of the Irish Catholics in 1868 ; 
 he declares that the agitation which preceded the passing of 
 the Irish Church Act 'was not for a Catholic object ;' and we 
 all remember Mr. Gladstone's quotation from the Osservatore 
 Romano, of which Mr. Hennessy speaks as ' the authoritative 
 Papal organ,' showing that the Pope preferred concurrent 
 endowment. It is for this that I believe Catholics, both in 
 England and Ireland, will intrigue and contend, and the 
 ' natural alliance ' will lead some at least of the Tory leaders 
 to look with increasing kindness on the * levelling up ' policy. 
 Mr. Hennessy reproves Cardinal Manning, among ' the leading 
 Catholic prelates in England,' for urging Catholic voters to 
 support Mr. Gladstone as a ' great Liberal statesman ' after 
 * his public announcement that Rome disapproved of his Irish 
 Church scheme ; ' and his Eminence has himself denounced 
 ' the desecration of the civil power by the rejection of the 
 Church,' and ' the impossible theory of a free Church in a free 
 
206 The Liberal Party and the Catholics. 
 
 State. 1 But then this applies to his own Church, and I cannot 
 affirm that Cardinal Manning would object to Disestablishment 
 if he were assured that would give the Catholics a prospect 
 of concurrent endowment. The Disestablishment and Dis- 
 endowment of the Irish Protestant Episcopal Church are 
 matters of history, and we are looking to the policy of the 
 future. Those events ended one of the common aims which 
 united Liberals and Catholics. The Liberal party and the 
 Catholics are now divorced ; whether they will come together 
 again is very doubtful ; it depends upon the attitude of the 
 Liberal party towards the question of Home Rule in Ireland, 
 and upon the attitude of the Catholics with reference to the 
 policy of Disestablishment in this island. 
 
 1 ' Cossarism and Ultramontanism,' 1873. 
 
207 
 
 X. 
 
 THE RAILWAYS AND THE STATE. 
 
 T VENTURE to predict that the Railways of Ireland will 
 be purchased by the State, and that the Railways of 
 England and Scotland will follow the same destiny. It is not 
 unlikely that, in this movement, as in others of no less magni- 
 tude, Ireland, from her peculiar circumstances, will lead Great 
 Britain, as she did to the adoption of Catholic Emancipation 
 and of Free Trade. It was in obedience to the demands of 
 Ireland that Mr. Gladstone adopted a policy of Religious 
 Equality which will in due time overspread the United 
 Kingdom, and which has already been so far adopted by both 
 parties in the State that proposals for sectarian endowment are 
 not well received in Parliament, and when new bishops are made 
 there is no attempt to add to the number of ' spiritual ' peers. 
 And it was to appease the long-existing warfare of landlord 
 and tenant in Ireland that the same great Minister introduced 
 a Bill for the establishment of tenant right upon the firmest 
 basis, the enactment of which was followed by a revolt of the 
 farmers in Scotland, and by the introduction to the English 
 Parliament of Tenant Right Bills for accomplishing the same 
 object. 
 
 On the 29th April, 1873, the House of Commons, on the 
 motion of Lord Claud Hamilton, discussed the purchase of 
 the Irish Railways, and the proposition was negatived by a 
 very large majority. The Prime Minister (Mr. Gladstone), the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lowe), the Conservative ex- 
 
208 The Railways and the State. 
 
 Secretary for Ireland (Colonel Wilson-Patten), all spoke against 
 the motion, which, upon a division, was defeated by a majority 
 of 132, the 82 members who voted or paired 'Aye' being, 
 with the exception of nine, Irish members. Yet it is partly 
 upon this division that I found the prediction with which I 
 started. I have not the slightest doubt, from what I have 
 since heard, that the Irish members upon that occasion saw 
 more in Mr. Gladstone's speech than was by himself intended. 
 It is natural with men of the temperament of Mr. Gladstone, 
 when placed in similar circumstances, to speak with a some- 
 what unreal vehemence, an effort directed to influence their 
 own minds as well as to modify the views of their hearers. I 
 believe Mr. Gladstone, in spite of his speech of April 29th, 
 1873, to be not unfavourable to the purchase of Railways by 
 the State ; I believe him to have been very much more of that 
 opinion at the moment when he was thought to have crushed 
 the expectations of the Irish people, than when he suggested, 
 as I presume he did suggest, the inquiries of Captain Tyler, or 
 than when he permitted Lord Hartington his subordinate 
 and Chief Secretary for Ireland to make in 1872 a speech of 
 which the Times said that it * encouraged the wildest hopes 
 in Ireland/ and which the same journal attributed to Lord 
 Hartington's want of skill * in the management of phrases 
 committing himself to nothing, because their meaning is lost 
 in a haze of words.' Mr. Gladstone is a master of that species 
 of phraseology, yet he did not, Jove-like, throw, as he might 
 easily have done, a cloud over the clear words of the Irish 
 Secretary. But later, in 1873, in the most precise language, 
 he discarded the proposal, and far from showing a readiness 
 to deal with the question of purchase, he made propositions 
 in support of the present system of private ownership. I wish 
 it to be understood that I know nothing directly of the mind 
 of Mr. Gladstone in the matter ; but this I know, that through- 
 out his career he has been faithful to the principle that free 
 locomotion is one of the concerns of Government : that in 
 
The Railways and the State. 209 
 
 public and in private he has always manifested the closest, 
 deepest interest in all that would promote the most easy and 
 economical circulation within the United Kingdom. As a 
 young legislator, he interested himself in passing the Act of 
 1844, which gave the Government power to purchase Railways 
 under certain circumstances ; as a railway shareholder, he bade 
 his directors ' stick to the democracy/ a policy which they 
 have not followed, and I believe that as a Minister in the 
 plenitude of power, he thought in the year 1872 of taking 
 the Irish Railways. Perhaps he was afterwards advised that the 
 experiment in Ireland would not be successful, and that it 
 need not be dissociated from a similar project in Great Britain. 
 I cannot doubt that Mr. Gladstone is very strongly im- 
 pressed by the unanimity of the Irish people in this matter. 
 He resists the Home Rule movement in Ireland because he is 
 confident that separation would not be for the benefit of the 
 sister island. But neither he nor any honest man can with- 
 stand a unanimous demand from the Irish people referring to 
 a matter of strictly internal concern, not inimical to general 
 laws, and of which they profess themselves willing to bear the 
 financial hazard. Mr. Gladstone cannot have even a shadow 
 of doubt that if Ireland were ruled by a native Parliament, a 
 Bill for the purchase of the Railways would become law in the 
 first Session of that body, and this being so, his conscience 
 would not exonerate him in permanently withstanding the 
 demand of the Irish people for such a transaction. Such a 
 veto would be a striking addition to that oppressive policy 
 recorded in the past history of Ireland, of which no one has 
 spoken with more indignant abhorrence, and would vastly 
 strengthen if it did not entirely justify the ' Nationalist ' 
 demands of the Home Rule party. We who oppose, or who 
 are passive in regard to Home Rule, must of course satisfy 
 ourselves upon one point ; we must be sure that the internal 
 affairs of Ireland do not suffer, but are rather benefited by the 
 Union ; and if Irishmen are unanimous upon any measure of 
 
 P 
 
2io The Railways and the State. 
 
 strictly local character, if they are moreover prepared to bear 
 its burdens ; and if we cannot reasonably allege that its enact- 
 ment would be prejudicial to the general government, we are 
 bound to remember that our functions are in strict justice and 
 honour limited merely to considering whether it fulfils these 
 conditions, and whether it is an act which in the best judgment 
 of the Irish people would be undertaken if Great Britain did 
 not practically just as much as when Poyning's Law was in 
 force exercise a veto upon the Bills of Irish members. I 
 believe that this sense of duty and justice does animate 
 Mr. Gladstone, and I have a strong conviction that the 
 contrast between the speech of the Irish Secretary (Lord 
 Hartington) in 1872, and that of the Prime Minister (Mr. 
 Gladstone) in 1873, is to be ascribed to the great advance 
 which in that interval the question of the purchase of the 
 Railways by the State made in England, and to the conviction 
 entertained by the most judicious promoters of that under- 
 taking that it would be inexpedient, and would not tend to 
 promote the purchase in Great Britain, if experiment were 
 made where it would be least profitable in Ireland. 
 
 We hear a great deal of nonsense talked about the functions 
 of government, and some people seem to imagine that we are 
 retrograding from an ideal standard. I entertain a quite oppo- 
 site opinion. I think that, in spite of much ignorance and of 
 much interested opposition, we are arriving at a truer know- 
 ledge than has ever yet been practised of the proper domain 
 of government. The earliest idea of government was the 
 infallibility of some wholly personal will, and still the Sultan or 
 the Shah could venture from mere caprice to put a barber or a 
 mule-driver at the head of affairs in their respective States ; 
 then it was held that the State should possess a monopoly of 
 religious truth, a function which has met with successful resist- 
 ance, and which, though its shadow survives in the institutions 
 of several States, is practically abolished in Europe. It has 
 been held to be a function of government to secure in a 
 
The Railways and the State. 2 r i 
 
 population the distinction of certain classes by privilege, and 
 this too seems to be fading away. But it has never been 
 doubted by those minds which are the beacons of progress, and 
 popular experience has only served to strengthen the conviction, 
 that it is a function of government to assert by the authority of 
 law, the equality, in regard to life and property, of the weak 
 with the strong ; it has never been doubted that it is the duty 
 of Government to secure for the people the means of inter- 
 communication. 
 
 When Railways were established it was assumed that they 
 would operate as auxiliaries to the traffic upon the turnpike 
 roads ; it was the idea of some that none but 'carriage people' 
 would use the new mode of travelling, and that each person 
 would have his own vehicle upon the Railway, his private 
 carriage being also adapted to the road. It was never dreamt 
 that Railways would become the highways of the country in the 
 sense which we see accomplished. Who, except some eccentric 
 tourist on wheels, or one of some dozen fanatical believers in the 
 good old days of posting, or one of a few commercial travellers 
 with a taste for horseflesh, now travels over a hundred miles of 
 highroad in England ? The thing is quite abolished. Practically 
 the only means of communication between the great towns 
 are the Railways ; and the Government, from the earliest con- 
 struction to the very recent enactment of the Railways and 
 Canals Traffic Act, has by a mass of legislation admitted and 
 accepted the function of securing for the people the best facili- 
 ties for intercommunication upon these iron roads. That this 
 is a proper function of Government cannot be questioned ; our 
 internal traffic being virtually limited to the existing Railways, 
 Government is bound to take care, as one of the most vital 
 necessities of the State, not only that the best means of inter- 
 communication are afforded, but that these could not be given 
 with greater advantage to the public. 
 
 There is no exit from this position. The country between 
 London and Manchester, or between Dublin and Belfast, might 
 
212 
 
 The Railways and the Slate. 
 
 as well be infested with brigands, or even occupied by hostile 
 armies, as the Railways remain in the power of those who, 
 through bad management or conflicting interests, impede or 
 forbid traffic. One-half the errors in regard to progress which 
 are made by Governments, arise from a mistaken estimate of 
 the losses consequent upon bad laws or misgovernment. All 
 good men are averse from war, but few understand that the 
 waste and ruin of war are inconsiderable in comparison with 
 the waste and the ruin which is perpetrated in times of peace by 
 error and ignorance. How trifling, for example, is the loss of life 
 in battle compared with that which is due to neglect of sanitary 
 laws ! If Lord Derby is right, and I firmly believe he is correct 
 in saying that the agricultural produce of the country might be 
 doubled, and if I am right in assuming that our laws and cus- 
 toms relating to the inheritance, the transfer, the settlement, 
 and the entail of land, form the chief material obstacle to this 
 increase, then clearly, from an economic point of view, the 
 ravaging of this country for twelve months by 1 00,000 Germans 
 would be a preferable evil to the continuance of these laws and 
 customs. If, putting ourselves in the position of Spain, those 
 were our Railways which were impeded by attacks of robber 
 bands, nobody would question that it was a function of Govern- 
 ment to keep the Railways open, and, at any cost to the State, 
 to attack and disperse those who hindered the traffic of the 
 country. And can it be denied that this duty does pertain to 
 the civil power in the State when the obstructions are caused 
 by interests which the civil power could satisfy and harmonise ? 
 The only question would be whether, in the exercise of this 
 authority, there would be any improper invasion of the rights 
 of citizens, and whether such action would result in permanent 
 benefit to the community. 
 
 Before proceeding to discuss some of the evils of the present 
 Railway system, it would be well to dismiss one fallacy which 
 is found alike in the arguments of those who favour and those 
 who are adverse to purchase by the State. Mr. Martin, an 
 
The Railways and the State. 213 
 
 intelligent advocate of purchase, apparently supposes it is a 
 ' logically true ' argument which asserts that if the State takes 
 the Railways it must also ' own and manage the cabs and 
 omnibuses ' as well as * the harbours and lines of steamers.' 
 The Statistical Society seem to have accepted this argument, 
 which, it appears to me, is very incorrect. If the State take 
 the Railways it is because the Railways exist and can only 
 be worked as a monopoly. There is no analogy whatever 
 between the cabs and omnibuses, the steamers and the Rail- 
 ways. There is no suggestion of an absolute monopoly of 
 wheel traffic in the streets ; still less can there be a monopoly 
 of service at sea. It by no means follows logically that if the 
 State take the Railways it should therefore take the cabs and 
 omnibuses. If there were but one track in the sea from Liver- 
 pool to New York, in which the ships of but one company 
 were allowed to proceed, then only would the * logical ' com- 
 parison be established. But there are as many tracks in the 
 sea as there are ships ; there are as many courses in the streets 
 as there are cabs and omnibuses ; there is no logical connec- 
 tion whatever between arguments relating to a road which is 
 monopolised and a road which is free not only to all comers 
 but to every description of conveyance. The same error was 
 apparent in the very illogical speech which Mr. Goldsmid made 
 against the proposal put forward by Lord Claud Hamilton. 
 He actually appeared to suppose that the transfer of the Rail- 
 ways was not to be thought of because some of the Railway 
 companies possessed hotels, some docks, others steamboats, and 
 so on. Whoever possesses the North-Western Railway has a 
 monopoly of the most direct and indispensable route between 
 the two chief centres of the English population in Middlesex 
 and in Lancashire. Monopolies are invariably, and obviously 
 must be, to some extent controlled by the Government, but 
 the question as to dealing with the railway monopoly is not in 
 the least complicated by the fact that this or that Railway has 
 accessories which form no part of any monopoly. The Govern- 
 
214 The Railways and the State. 
 
 ment would have no greater difficulty in leasing the Great 
 Western Hotel than they have in regard to receiving the 
 ground-rent of the Refor^n Club ; and with reference to the 
 delivery of goods by cart, or of the conveyance of passengers 
 and goods by sea, while it is likely that these things would be 
 best performed by a service in close connection with the Rail- 
 ways, this is by no means a necessary consequence, and in 
 neither case could there be, as upon the Railway, a monopoly 
 of transit or delivery. 
 
 The Railways of this country were formed in disunion, and 
 their formation was burdened by the ignorance and the dis- 
 graceful rapacity of the landowning and the governing class 
 which has benefited so enormously by their construction. The 
 Railway history of England would show that Norman barons 
 could defeat a popular right in the first half of the nineteenth 
 century almost as easily as in the twelfth. In no country have 
 I seen personal as opposed to public rights carried with so 
 high a hand as in England. One of the ancient highways of 
 the country passed before the house of a noble marquis whose 
 deer-park stretched wide and far in the rear of his mansion. 
 A town of ancient date and busy population stood by the way- 
 side nestled under the shadow of the great house. Powerful 
 as ever Norman baron was over the obsequious county, this 
 nobleman obtained permission to cut off the stream of life 
 to turn the highway before it entered the town, and con- 
 demned travellers by that road for all time to make a detour of 
 a mile round the outskirts of his park. I remember when in 
 Russia I thought it very cruel that the letter of a Polish 
 soldier addressed to his mother should be detained because it 
 was not addressed in the official Sclavonic language. But I 
 have met with something of the same sort in England. It is 
 not many years since a noble Postmaster-General, having re- 
 solved that it was an impertinence on the part of an eminently 
 respectable population to call their new town by a name 
 which formed a part of his title, decreed that all letters so 
 
The Railways and the State. 215 
 
 addressed should be delayed in delivery by an unnecessary 
 circuit. The same interest worked in the same direction the 
 overwhelming power of the landed interest has led in this 
 country to an excess of cost in the construction of Railways 
 which really forms a considerable part of the difficulty in re- 
 gard to purchase. In another paper contained in this volume 
 (Free Trade in Land), I have estimated this excess at 
 100,000,000, upon the basis of a calculation made by a 
 very eminent authority, the late Mr. Joseph Locke, C.E. 
 A certain share of this excessive cost, amounting to about 
 20 per cent., has been occasioned by the rivalry of competing 
 schemes. If it had not been for this needless cost, partly the 
 result of disunion, railway shareholders would have been at 
 present receiving a very handsome return for their investment. 
 It is, I am disposed to think, a very moderate estimate which 
 places this wasteful, inequitable, and unnecessary expenditure 
 in the construction of our Railways, at 6,000 a mile. Even 
 with such a deduction, the cost would appear vastly in excess 
 of that of any continental system. 
 
 Official returns show that the average cost of construction in 
 France has been 25,000 per mile against 39,000 in Eng- 
 land ; of this excess of 13,000 per mile, I think 6,000 at 
 least is fairly chargeable to the difference of our system. This, 
 upon 13,000 miles of railway, would represent a total loss of 
 78,000,000. But this does not represent the measure of the 
 defective economy of our system, though it is more than one- 
 sixth of the total sum expended in the construction of railways 
 in the United Kingdom. Of this defective economy, Bradshaw's 
 Railway Map is the best illustration that I know of. The 
 main highways of the kingdom, may be shown to have been 
 curved this way and that way in deference to the opposition of 
 some short-sighted but powerful landowner. It is of course evi- 
 dent that all highway improvements are fraught with pecuniary 
 benefit to the property to which they give approach. Instead 
 of receiving large sums by way of compensation, it would have 
 
2I 5 The Railways and the State. 
 
 been a very reasonable contribution on the part of the great 
 majority of landowners had they given the land required for 
 the Railways. I know no more signal example of how much 
 greater is the advantage of the property owners than that of 
 the constructors of such improvements than the results of the 
 temporary abolition of the Southwark Bridge penny toll. The 
 number of foot-passengers over Southwark Bridge paying a 
 penny toll was 257,616 during six months. By way of 
 experiment the toll was taken off, and though it might be 
 supposed that the public would not, without years of habit, 
 regard this as a free bridge, yet the number of foot passengers 
 rose during the six months of freedom from toll to 2,359,312. 
 There is a moral in this fact applicable to Railway companies 
 and Railway fares. 
 
 Comparison is often made with the Railways of Belgium, 
 and it is assumed that rates which are profitable in that State 
 would, with the same traffic, produce similar results in 
 England. This is, of course, incorrect, for while the average 
 cost per mile of the Belgian lines has been about 14,000, 
 the average expenditure per mile of railway in the United 
 Kingdom on the 3ist December, 1871, was no less than 
 35,943. The causes of this excessive cost are not solely due 
 to our extravagant methods of conveyance and transfer of land, 
 or to the greater value of the soil, of labour, and materials in 
 England. It must not be forgotten that for the most part the 
 north of Europe is a level plain, while in England the country 
 is very uneven and difficult. Any argument drawn from the 
 Belgian system must be taken for no more than it is worth. 
 If our Railways had been constructed at the same nominal 
 cost as those of Belgium, a net income of 10,500,000 
 would suffice to pay a dividend of 5 per cent, upon the total 
 capital : but in 1871 a net profit in the United Kingdom of 
 24,475,512 was not sufficient to pay more than 4'68 
 per cent, upon our Railway capital, then amounting to 
 552,682,107. This vast sum is the nominal cost of the 
 
The Railways and the State. 217 
 
 Railways of the United Kingdom. But it would be a great 
 mistake to suppose that any such sum has ever been received 
 by the companies from the stock and shareholders. We have 
 no means of ascertaining with precision what proportion of the 
 stocks and loans and nominal values of shares which make 
 this gigantic total has been actually paid, but there have been 
 many issues greatly below par, and the cost of construction 
 of many lines has been paid for in stock subsequently put 
 upon the market at rates which, though yielding large profits 
 to contractors, were greatly beneath par value. The issue by 
 the Metropolitan District Railway Company of 1,500,000 of 
 Preference Stock at 68, is an instance of the former, while 
 the history of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway would 
 supply striking examples of the latter. The profits upon this 
 capital are very unequal. In 1871 the year of greatest 
 prosperity, unblemished by the rising price of coal and labour, 
 which neutralised the increase of traffic in 1872 no interest 
 whatever was paid upon 8,139,701 of Preference Stock, and 
 of the 230,250,152 of Ordinary Stock 314 millions received 
 no dividends whatever. Of the remaining Ordinary Stock 
 
 4^ millions received dividends of less than i per cent. 
 io from i to a fraction under 2 per cent. 
 
 18 2 to nearly 3 per cent. 
 
 8i 3 4 per cent. 
 
 2 6 jj j, 4 5 ?> 
 
 30 
 
 9i 
 
 66 
 
 2 
 
 5 
 
 *7i 
 
 2 
 
 J million n 12 
 
 3 millions ,,12 ,,13 
 
 million of 13 per cent. 
 
 198 
 
 The profits of Railways are not very large. The Rail- 
 ways Act which was passed in 1844 provided that the 
 
218 
 
 The Railways and the State. 
 
 Ordinary Stocks of Railways constructed after the passing of 
 that measure, could be purchased in 1866 and subsequently at 
 twenty-five years' purchase, the price being definitely fixed 
 only in the case of those lines which should have paid a 
 dividend of 10 per cent, for three years ; if they were paying 
 less than that, the price was to be settled by arbitration. 
 At the time of the passing of the Act (1844), it seemed that 
 the profits of Railways would in thirty years become enormous. 
 In a paper read by Mr. Martin before the Statistical Society, 
 in 1873, he quoted the following list of prices, at which the 
 shares mentioned were selling in the autumn of 1845 : 
 
 f 
 
 Paid. 
 
 Price 
 per Share. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Great North of England 
 
 100 
 
 217 
 
 Grand Junction .... 
 
 100 
 
 242 
 
 Liverpool and Manchester . 
 
 100 
 
 217 
 
 London and Birmingham . 
 
 100 
 
 222 
 
 London and Croydon . 
 
 13 
 
 25 
 
 Manchester and Leeds 
 
 76 
 
 215 
 
 Manchester and Birmingham 
 
 40 
 
 9 
 
 North Union .... 
 
 100 
 
 225 
 
 Stockton and Darlington 
 
 100 
 
 275 
 
 This was at a time when Railways existed in comparative 
 isolation, before the Railway war broke out in which the waste 
 of treasure was probably equal to that incurred in the Crimean 
 struggle against Russia. But now the age of conflict has, we 
 may say, passed, and for years a process of consolidation has 
 been goingon. Not a single one of the companies named in 
 the above table has now a separate existence, and these are 
 only nine among hundreds which are no longer to be found in 
 the lists of the Stock Exchange. The railway history of the 
 past thirty years is, as the late Mr. Graves said, ' but one long list 
 of absorptions and amalgamations.' Some thirty of the defunct 
 organisms have passed into the mighty system of the London 
 
The Railways and the State. 219 
 
 and North- Western Railway ; the Lancashire and Yorkshire 
 Railway is made up of five or six extinct companies, and 
 upwards of three hundred and fifty companies have been re- 
 duced to twenty-eight. Sated with the spoils of war, the 
 survivors of the Railway men of 1846 have become wealthy 
 proprietors and directors, and the ground being for the most 
 part occupied, they have turned their arms against the public 
 instead of against each other. Amalgamation is only part of 
 the policy which has been pursued ; the more interesting matter 
 for the people has been the agreement as to rates which the 
 Railways have generally established for their mutual benefit. 
 But this latter is a subject which we shall pursue at a later 
 stage of the argument. Here we are concerned with amal- 
 gamation and the progress it has made and is making towards 
 that practical monopoly which Railway managers tell us to fear 
 if it should pass into our own hands. 
 
 When, in 1871, two of the largest Railways in this country 
 stood ready to knock at the doors of Parliament with a request 
 to be united, the public took alarm, forbade the banns, and a 
 conseil de famille, in the shape of Lords and Commons, was 
 assembled to consider whether in this union of the London and 
 North-Western and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways 
 might not be discerned the dreadful consummation of monopoly. 
 The mileage of the two is almost equal to that of all the 
 Railways of Ireland ; their united capital is almost thrice that 
 of all the Irish Railways ; they connect the two great centres 
 of population in England, and, with the Caledonian Railway, 
 embrace the chief seats of trade in the island. What is that of 
 which Parliament was fearful ? These Railroads are governed 
 by sagacious men ; they know that amalgamation will produce 
 great economies. The North-Western was very much afraid 
 of losing the hand of the Lancashire Railway, which the Mid- 
 land would have been very ready to seize. And why? Because, 
 Acts of Parliament notwithstanding, Railway companies have 
 within the admitted limits of their rates power to turn the trade 
 
220 The Railways and the State. 
 
 of the country this way and that way at pleasure. Fearful of 
 the spectre of monopoly, the Joint Committee assembled, and 
 what was the panacea offered by the most experienced wit- 
 nesses ? Sir Edward Watkin bade the nation trust to him ; he 
 would deliver us from the giant. Let amalgamation go on, but 
 preserve competition ; this was the burden of Sir Edward's 
 counsel. And how were we to preserve this competition ? Sir 
 Edward no doubt means, if he gets the opportunity, to show 
 us. He is Chairman of the South-Eastern Railway Company, 
 Chairman of the Metropolitan Railway Company, and he occu- 
 pies the same position with regard to the Manchester, Sheffield, 
 and Lincolnshire Company. He probably has a notion that 
 an alliance of the third company with the Midland or the Great 
 Northern would keep the giant North- Western in order. He has 
 himself perhaps in the interest of the South-Eastern Railway 
 been doing battle against monopoly. He knows what is the 
 effect of monopoly by comparing the price of coal consumed 
 by the Manchester and Sheffield Company with the cost of 
 that used by the South-Eastern Railway. He has, I believe, 
 been fighting for years to get cheaper coal-rates for his southern 
 companies, and perhaps he has an idea that with the help 
 of the Bridgewater Canal, competition throughout the North- 
 Western system may be maintained. Competition has been 
 the sheet-anchor of the people ; some of them remember when 
 mad competition gave a ticket to Manchester and back for a 
 few shillings ; but now they believe they see competition pass- 
 ing away into amalgamation. Their ' Committees and Com- 
 missioners/ says the Report of the Joint Select Committee of 
 1871, 'have for the last thirty years clung to one form of com- 
 petition after another ; but it has nevertheless become more 
 and more evident that competition must fail to do for Railways 
 what it does for ordinary trade, and that no means have yet 
 been devised by which competition can be permanently main- 
 tained.' The melancholy tone of this Report must be very 
 depressing to those who have put their faith in the upholding 
 
The Railways and the State. 221 
 
 of competition. In their despair, the Committee, however, 
 recommended the constitution of a Board. Baffled on land, 
 they look to the water, and the first duty relegated to the 
 Board is that of preserving ' the competition which now exists 
 by sea,' where, as we have seen, monopoly is obviously most 
 difficult if not impossible. Further, this Board is ' to give such 
 support as is practicable to competition by canal ; ' it is to let 
 the public know all about everything ; and it is ' to enforce the 
 harmonious working and development of the present Railway 
 and canal systems, so as to produce from them, in the interests 
 of the public and at the same time of the shareholders, the 
 greatest possible amount of profitable work which they are 
 capable of doing.' This was the last utterance of the dying 
 and irresolute Committee, and their Board has been set up. I 
 venture to say that no three men in the country expected less 
 in the way of remedy against the wrong of monopoly, from the 
 action of this tribunal, than the thoroughbred official, the clever 
 railway chairman, and the intelligent lawyer of whom it was com- 
 posed. What could they do ? Their chief business has been 
 to smooth the way of amalgamation, to help the Railway com- 
 panies to depart farther and farther from the old, vain, blundering 
 ideal of companies fighting with each other for the benefit of 
 the public, whose real want is economy of management and 
 cheap rates of transit for their persons and their goods. I will 
 not deny that the Board has been of some use in this matter. 
 There are still in being a number of small companies and some 
 great ones which it is well should pass out of separate existence. 
 Absorption is their best, their natural and inevitable destiny; 
 and perhaps the companies, with the help of the Railway Com- 
 missioners, will manage this business as well among themselves, 
 and with less waste of money, than if the State were the pur- 
 chaser in so many separate cases. 
 
 But what is the virtue in competition which makes it the 
 dear hope of Parliament ? It is all very well for Sir Edward 
 Watkin to like competition ; but why should the public like it ? 
 
222 The Railways and the State. 
 
 What is the meaning of it to them ? what has always been 
 its signification ? Waste, of course, and nothing but waste. 
 Are we to rejoice because by virtue of this worn-out idol, 
 two express trains are started, one from Euston Square, and 
 another from King's Cross, at the same hour, both bound for 
 Manchester, neither taking up more than twenty passengers, 
 and neither stopping at more than two or three stations on 
 the road. This is competition, to which, say the Lords and 
 Commons, we have long clung, and which they report is now 
 slipping from our grasp. Are we to feel happy and reassured, 
 to thank Sir Edward Watkin, and be quiet and contented, 
 because, more wasteful still than the express trains at which 
 we have been looking, there are started every day, at the same 
 hour, from Charing Cross and Victoria, continental trains, in 
 close agreement as to fares, the highest at which the two 
 Companies think the public will consent to travel, which rush 
 to Dover ; the two trains having no more passengers than 
 could be conveyed in one ? This is competition, and its expo- 
 sition accounts for high fares and low dividends. The Board, 
 influenced, no doubt, by such views as those which Sir Edward 
 Watkin has put forth, may try to realize the old ideal by a 
 masterly combination of Railways ; and perhaps competition 
 may yet contrive to prevent the southern railways from getting 
 coal at a reasonably cheap rate. Is that to the public advan- 
 tage ? Of course not. The Board has doubtless done all that 
 is possible to facilitate intercommunication between the allied 
 systems, though I suspect that the Committee of the Railway 
 Clearing House has been the more authoritative tribunal. But 
 the Commissioners cannot reduce the army of watchmen and 
 accountants, which is one of the drawbacks of the cherished 
 system of competition. Few have written with greater pre- 
 science upon the relations of the Railways and the State than 
 Mr. Arthur Williams, 1 and he speaks of * the delay, expense, 
 and inconvenience arising from the divided ownership of rolling 
 
 1 The Appropriation of the Railways by the State. (Stanford, 1869.) 
 
The Railways and the State. 223 
 
 stock.' One of the elements of competition is ' the daily 
 history of each carriage, waggon, tarpaulin or other covering 
 that passes off its own line on to a strange line.' Well may 
 Mr. Williams say, ' There is something painfully ludicrous in 
 this imposing array of 300 number- takers and 600 clerks, all 
 engaged in posting up the daily and even hourly history of 
 the carriages and vans which appear 700,000 times, and of the 
 tarpaulins which appear 140,000 times, on foreign lines during 
 the year.' 
 
 What else does this competition, which the Joint Committee 
 was so anxious to preserve, and which, in a more dignified and 
 therefore less dependent and more selfish degree, the new 
 Board has laboured to keep from death what else does it 
 display? It produces some 2,500 directors, most of them 
 dummies, pawns of the chairman or managing director, whose 
 salaries, amounting, say to 300,000 a year, are necessary be- 
 cause of the divided ownership of the Railways. The Secretary 
 of the London and North-Western Railway ought to be as good 
 a judge as any practical man of the value of amalgamation in 
 point of economy, and Mr. C. E. Stewart, who for twenty-five 
 years held that position, estimated that if competition ceased 
 upon the Railways, and if they were all to belong ' to one 
 proprietor, whether to a company or to the Crown/ the saving 
 which must result would be at least equal to 10 per cent, upon 
 the gross earnings. Mr. Graves, the late member for Liver- 
 pool, who was also a practical man, and who, as I well know, 
 never delivered an opinion in public, except after laborious 
 consideration, was of opinion that a reduction of not less than 
 25 per cent, from the present amount of the working expenses 
 would be accomplished by transfer of the Railways to the 
 State. Upon the earnings of 1871 Mr. Stewart's calculation 
 would give us a saving of 4,710,755, and upon the working 
 expenses of the same year Mr. Graves's estimate would yield 
 5,658,011. But financial economy is not the only sacrifice 
 we make to obtain this chimera of competition. We permit 
 
224 The Railways and the State. 
 
 the erection of bars and barriers, compared with which all the 
 turnpikes that ever demanded our sixpences, but not the hours 
 of our day, were as nothing. Lord Claud Hamilton's account 
 of the progress of the Belfast mail, which on the down journey 
 stops two hours, and on the up route one hour and a half, 
 might be matched by reference to the delays which beset 
 the traveller on every cross railroad journey in England where 
 the lines belong to different companies. Is it not plain that 
 competition is itself an evil a source of waste, and therefore 
 of loss ? Monopoly that is, beneficent monopoly is what the 
 interests of the public require. But there can be only one 
 beneficent monopoly ; self-interest or public-interest must 
 rule, and the people are not safe in the hands of companies 
 or of a single company. Competition is only a less evil than 
 private monopoly. The State should allow neither to rule the 
 roads of the country. 
 
 In Athens and in Madrid, I have heard statesmen of Greece 
 and Spain, embarrassed at the approach of an elected king, 
 discuss the question whether he was to rule or to govern. There 
 was a good deal of puzzled and involved argument, much of the 
 sort that one has heard in England as to whether the State 
 should trade or govern in the matter of the Railways. The 
 State has made an attempt at what may be called governing 
 in the establishment of the Board of Commissioners. As to 
 what will be the ultimate fate of that Board, I entirely 
 agree with the Quarterly Reviewer, who predicted 'a final 
 triumph for the Railway interests.' Let any one who holds a 
 contrary opinion peruse the scornful not to say rude letters 
 which a Railway Chairman addressed to a late President of 
 the Board of Trade ; let him study the indignant speech which 
 Mr. Bancroft, acting Chairman of the North-Western Railway 
 at a half-yearly meeting, fired off against the Bill by which the 
 Board was constituted. If these gentlemen had been licensed 
 victuallers, addressing ' Bruce ' at eleven o'clock on Saturday 
 night, they could hardly have been more vituperative. Under 
 
The Railways and the Slate. 225 
 
 the Board, amalgamation has made progress, the value of Railway 
 property has risen, the Companies have become more powerful, 
 and the agitation for transfer to the State has slumbered. 
 
 There is no instance of such a transaction as this purchase 
 would be ; but, in approaching the arguments of those who 
 oppose the transfer, I am struck by their weakness. I cannot 
 find a single point which offers any stout resistance in the way 
 of reasoning. One of two things appears to me certain 
 either all the ability of the country is on the side of transfer, 
 or ability can furnish no weighty reasons to the contrary. 
 Avowing myself an advocate of State control in this matter, 
 I shall endeavour to deal with all the arguments put forward 
 on the other side ; and first, I am surprised to find that we 
 are warned against the example of France. In that country 
 the main lines were laid down and partly constructed by the 
 Government, which was subsequently, by the inaction of its 
 lessees, dragged into assisting in the formation of the branch 
 lines. No doubt there was financial error in this, though 
 not to the extent of ; 100,000,000, which we have seen was 
 the sum expended in excess in this country ; but France 
 has very important advantages which we do not enjoy : she 
 has trunk lines, not warped hither and thither, as ours are, 
 to avoid the ignorant opposition of this town council or that 
 nobleman, who wish now to have the railway for a neigh- 
 bour ; and instead of facing, as we do, the prospect of a per- 
 manent monopoly, to which we must succumb or with which 
 we must deal, France is looking forward to the reversion of 
 railway property worth at least ^"400,000,000. If she wishes 
 to purchase, she has to deal with concessionaires whose leases 
 have in some cases but sixty years to run. What has been 
 done in Belgium is still more interesting. There we have seen 
 among a dense population State control and private ownership 
 working side by side ; and, says Mr. Williams, ' It is clear 
 from the evidence of M. Fassieux, Director-General of Posts and 
 Railways in Belgium, that even those lines which have been 
 
 Q 
 
226 The Railways and the State. 
 
 constructed and worked by private companies on concessions 
 for long terms a very different thing" from a mere lease are 
 not worked or managed so carefully with reference to the 
 convenience of the public as those lines which are owned and 
 worked by the State.' * The public,' says M. Fassieux, *' pre- 
 fers the management of the State.' The State Railways, too, 
 and this is a very striking fact ' though working at much 
 lower rates than any of the private companies, except one, 
 net a much larger profit than the latter.' ' This,' adds Mr. 
 Williams, 'is only a natural consequence of united, central, 
 and responsible management.' 
 
 The question, therefore, as to the possibility of the manage- 
 ment of Railways by the State with success and even popu- 
 larity may be taken as settled. I do not propose to tarry 
 on the objection advanced against the trading character 
 of the operation. I regard the work of the Railways as 
 only a magnified postage system : the carriage of men and 
 women, of boxes and bales, differs only in degree from that 
 of letters and packets ; as to the business of the State, it is 
 evidently as lawful to do one as to do the other. There is 
 one form of objection which should not be overlooked : I 
 refer to the general reference which is made to the position of 
 certain opponents as a guarantee of their authority. No one 
 has greater respect than I have for the permanent officers 
 the managers and secretaries of our Railway system. But 
 it is just because they are good managers that they are 
 wholly unfit to decide the main question. These gentlemen 
 are all men great men of detail ; they may properly and 
 most usefully be called upon to give evidence, and we must 
 take their speeches as such, on the matter. But to adopt a 
 phrase of Mr. Bright's the first twelve men who pass through 
 Temple Bar are probably more competent to decide the main 
 question. Specialists, particularly while they are still working 
 in their own groove, have always a tendency to see none 
 but their own side of the matter. These officers are special- 
 
The Railways and the State. 227 
 
 ists, and would make just as good servants of the State as 
 they do of any company. Of this useful body none is more 
 eminent than Mr. Allport, whose speech in 1873 against the 
 purchase of the Railways by the State, affords an oppor- 
 tunity of studying many of these objections in their most 
 practical form. One of the first subjects touched upon by 
 this experienced railway manager was that of accidents, and 
 he did all he could to show that in the year 1871 no fewer 
 than 1,042 males and 84 females smashed and burnt or 
 otherwise killed themselves in connection with Railways. 
 There appears to be no room in Mr. Allport's calculations 
 for fault on the part of the management, and diligent search 
 is only rewarded by something like an intimation that the 
 Board of Trade Inspectors may have had a hand in these 
 deaths. But where Mr. Allport unconsciously proved how 
 beneficial would be State control in regard to accidents, was in 
 his reference to the block and interlocking systems as means of 
 prevention. In one part of his speech, he suggested that such 
 preventive means are bad, because men would naturally ' take 
 less care with the -block system than they would without it;' 
 and in another he said that the Midland Company were 
 spending 60,000 a year upon one of these means for the 
 avoidance of accidents, and 20,000 a year on the other, and 
 he admitted that this large expenditure was but a portion of 
 what was requisite to make these systems universal upon the 
 Midland Railway. Was there ever anything so illogical ? Did 
 Mr. Allport mean us to understand that he was expending 
 80,000 a year in deference to an idle whim expressed by 
 officers whom the Railway companies are constantly proclaiming 
 have no authority whatever ? Of course not. The value of the 
 block and interlocking systems is universally recognised, and 
 they have only been partially established as the direct conse- 
 quence of the verdicts of the Board of Trade Inspectors, laying 
 time after time the death of passengers at the door of the 
 Board-room, as resulting from neglect to adopt such means 
 
228 The Railways and the State. 
 
 of prevention. There can be no doubt that the traffic 
 management of English Railways is generally very admirable ; 
 and if lives are now and then sacrificed to regard for economy 
 in wages and works, no one ought to wonder when they regard 
 the exigencies of shareholders. When Colonel Yolland once 
 told the Great Western Railway Company that the safety of 
 the public demanded the expenditure of 100, which they 
 had withheld, he indicated what is common enough in Railway 
 annals. When in fire and smoke and darkness, passengers 
 were killed in the Clayton Hill Tunnel accident, and Captain 
 Tyler attributed the disaster to its obvious cause the non- 
 adoption of the telegraphic system, the Brighton Board, with 
 their eyes and their hopes fixed on a surplus, doubted the 
 efficacy of the telegraphic system, as taking responsibility from 
 drivers. No intelligent manager has, I believe, in his own 
 mind any doubt as to the value of the telegraphic system ; 
 what he is disposed to do about it is what Mr. Allport said 
 he was doing adopt it in part ; spend some thousands a 
 year in prevention, and then calculate that to do the work 
 thoroughly would cost a very large further sum, and that there- 
 fore it is as well perhaps to go on without it, and to take the 
 chance of accidents. But who can suppose that the State 
 would be permitted thus to play happy-go-lucky with the lives 
 of the people ? Talking to engine-drivers, I have often heard 
 them narrate their ' narrow shaves ' and c near goes ' risks 
 which would have made many passengers start with horror 
 had they known that such were not unfrequent incidents in the 
 career of a night mail. This is the system of education which 
 Mr. Allport commended as making men take care of themselves. 
 But let a meeting of engine-drivers be called, and ask them 
 what is best for their wives and children and for the passen- 
 gers ; or let them vote by ballot block system or no block- 
 system, and if the companies acted on that result, the Railway 
 Inspectors would have no more need to urge the adoption of 
 these costly but imperatively needed provisions. With the Rail- 
 
The Railways and the State. 229 
 
 ways under State control we should not only have the 
 advantage of the universal adoption of such preventive mea- 
 sures, but by eliminating competition a frequent cause of 
 accidents would be avoided. 
 
 Mr. Allport used the political objection, though not to the 
 fullest extent. He feared having 300,000 men under Govern- 
 ment, and we will present him with the argument that to 
 obtain votes in a division the Secretary of the Treasury 
 might promise the construction of a Railway for which there 
 was no proper demand. I confess that neither of these argu- 
 ments alarms me. The influence of Government over employes 
 diminishes as the number employed increases, and is prac- 
 tically abolished by the operation of the ballot. Mr. Allport 
 said there were 12,000 employes of the Midland Railway 
 Company resident in Derby. No doubt it was to win the favour 
 of this class that Mr. Bass engaged in paper war, with whom 
 the Government ? No with the Chairman of the Midland 
 Railway Company, who himself sat, not for Derby, but for 
 Gloucester. Sir Edward Watkin is a great Railway potentate. 
 But even before the introduction of the ballot he was at times 
 unfortunate in his attempts to win a seat in Parliament. We do 
 not find that the large employers of labour command the votes 
 of their ' hands.' Think of the Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and 
 Midland boroughs by whom are they represented ? The 
 largest employer in a town is but rarely the man who represents 
 that place in the House of Commons. The Railway interest is 
 certainly strong enough in Parliament, but it does not get there 
 by the votes of employes so much as through the activity of 
 those who are but indirectly associated with the railroads. 
 Was it ever supposed that the thousands of Post Office officials 
 in London have been ' influenced ' in their votes at an election ? 
 In the good old times, when they were comparatively few, 
 coercion was, where they had a vote, certainly practised ; but 
 that is now a thing of the past. 
 
 I hold the opinion that the safety of the State demands in 
 
230 The Railways and the State. 
 
 these days the largest proper co-operation on the part of its 
 members, and that the State in accepting a transfer of the 
 Railways would be doing just what Mr. Allport thinks it is 
 undoing. He believes he is an instrument of what he calls 
 'self-government/ to which he attributes England's greatness. 
 I think that by transfer to the State the Manager of the 
 Midland Railway would for the first time become an instru- 
 ment of self-government. Against one evil I feel sure he and 
 his brother-managers hold that we are in any case secure ; 
 they have no more fear that any Lord Dundreary will be 
 appointed to their places than to the Judicial Bench. They 
 know very well that Railway managers must be made, not 
 born, and that to secure the proper administration of patron- 
 age Parliament would only need to be careful that the pay of 
 each class in the service was properly graduated, and that when 
 no special training is requisite the emolument should not be 
 unduly attractive. I regard this fear of Government suborning 
 the vote of 300,000 Railway employes as ridiculous. Would 
 any First Lord of the Admiralty like to stake his official 
 existence upon a plebiscite in the navy, or any Secretary of 
 State for War upon the vote of the army ? Both may have 
 done well, yet any ex-Minister of Marine or War might 
 perhaps get a larger vote. It would be suicidal for a Minister 
 in the face of a penny and halfpenny press to choose Railway 
 porters chiefly with reference to their politics ; but were he so 
 foolish, it must be remembered that his appointments are few ; 
 the vote which he would need is that of those who owe 
 him nothing, and who for obvious reasons are sometimes 
 disaffected towards the Minister in office. I admit that the 
 evil of State jobbery is far greater than that of company 
 jobbery ; yet both are evils, and the former is more easily 
 detected, while the other secretly spreads the germs of cor- 
 ruption. It would, I fear, be impossible to deny that there are 
 cases of bribery in the affairs of the State, but every one at all 
 acquainted with the concerns of Government will support me 
 
The Railways and the State. 231 
 
 in asserting that they are few and isolated. On the other 
 side, I am told by those who know, that in public companies 
 it is far otherwise ; that the half-a-crown for which a porter 
 crowds other passengers in order that an Eton schoolboy may 
 spread his small limbs and puff his cigar over six first-class 
 seats, is but a type of the bribery which, under the name of 
 commission, passes current in higher ranks of the commercial 
 world. The public of course regard this as a matter of purely 
 domestic concern ; it is no affair of theirs ; but would they be 
 so indifferent if the Railways were their own ? Have they 
 not taken to Co-operative Stores partly because they wished 
 to checkmate the system so common among tradesmen of 
 4 tipping ' their household servants ? Were they not greatly 
 excited when an Admiralty clerk was arraigned for accepting 
 a bribe of a few pounds ? How is it that we never hear of 
 such a case in this Railway business of 600,000,000 capital, 
 which men like Mr. Allport regard as too big for the State to 
 handle ? Is any one so silly as to answer that it is because 
 frauds do not occur ? Is it not the truth that they are not 
 exposed because being private concerns they do not interest 
 the public and the press ? Is not the tone of public morality 
 endangered because it is not the interest of every one to hunt 
 out these briberies, which no one suggests extend to the 
 Telegraph Service or to the Post Office ? With what im- 
 placable zeal public opinion would hunt down a Government 
 telegraph clerk who was detected in a fraudulent use of 
 messages, and how comparatively languid is the public interest 
 in a defaulting cashier of a Railway Company. What other 
 engine have we of sufficient force against misuse of power ? 
 When I was a child, Deans and Chapters sold leases of Cathe- 
 dral estates right and left, many of their transactions being 
 highly scandalous. To what is the change due in their case ? 
 Their successors have still some few powers of this sort ; they 
 do not pretend to a fuller knowledge of theology ; the im- 
 provement is accounted for by the fact that, as Mr. Gladstone 
 
232 The Railways and the State. 
 
 said of the Governors of Endowed Chanties, ' men are not 
 angels and archangels, and they need looking after.' We 
 cannot have local government upon Railways because, where 
 fitly managed, Railways are not local ; they are coextensive 
 with the limits of the island, and cannot be most effectively 
 used in sections. For which reason I hold that they fall 
 properly within the domain and function of the general govern- 
 ment of the State. 
 
 Regarding the money question as one of the simplest, I 
 propose to leave it to the last. The policy of taking the 
 Railways is really a more difficult matter to determine than 
 the payment, and against the policy one of the strongest 
 objections raised by so-called practical men has reference to 
 rates. Experts who are doubtful as to their own position 
 are prone to hurl stupendous figures at the heads of their 
 opponents when their stock of arguments is exhausted, and 
 Mr. Allport accordingly brought out his myriad rates on 
 the Midland as a climax. ' How was the Government to 
 deal with all that ? ' This is not a very strong obstacle, 
 seeing that it only needs competency to suppose that the State 
 is as able as the Midland Railway Company. The transfer 
 of the Railways, though it may be held to involve changes in 
 the scale of rates which would tend to diminish their number, 
 need not imply any alteration in the booking system. If the 
 State obtained possession of the Railways, it might happen 
 that some day uniform rates would be adopted as in regard to 
 postage ; but that is no necessary part of the matter, and I 
 shall assume that, speaking generally, the system of booking 
 both for passengers and goods would remain as at present. 
 Yet this view, though it settles Mr. Allport's reference to the 
 matter of rates, by no means exhausts the whole subject. 
 Many men of much experience in regard to Railways see in 
 the probable extinction of differential rates the chief hindrance 
 to the transfer. Let us take in illustration of this alleged 
 difficulty the circumstances of the three ports Liverpool, 
 
The Railways and the State. / /. _^ v 
 
 v ^'/ ^/ 
 Hull, and Hartlepool. The Railway companies rWvyfor 'th'e^r 
 
 own interest, facilitate a competition, say between HyrlJ ana J- 
 Liverpool, in regard to the supply of Manchester, and y tyH 
 and Hartlepool in meeting the wants of the London market?.. 
 They find, we will assume, that it answers their purpose that 
 it assists the development of traffic to charge the same rates 
 for the conveyance of certain goods from Hull and from 
 Liverpool to Manchester, though the distance to the eastern 
 port is nearly three times that to the great port on the Mersey. 
 They contend that this policy is full of benefit ; that, to the 
 great advantage of the people of Manchester and to the port 
 of Hull, it enables the latter to enter into competition with 
 Liverpool, which would be impossible if a fixed uniform 
 mileage rate were imposed. Similarly, with reference to 
 London, the metropolis is, they say, relieved from the danger 
 of monopoly at certain ports by the counteracting policy of the 
 Railway companies, which places a shipper or an importer in 
 regard to the supply of the metropolis in an equally good 
 position, whether he makes for Hartlepool or for the nearer 
 port of Hull. It is contended, and I concur in the contention, 
 that under a system of State management it would be difficult 
 if not impossible to maintain these differential rates arranged 
 on no system whatever. Each in their own interest, the people 
 of the ports would agitate for fixed, intelligible, and systematic 
 rates, and they would not be content with, nor would the 
 Government maintain, the method by which Railway directors 
 now manage the business of the ports with a single eye to the 
 present or ultimate advantage of their lines. The Hull people 
 would say that if Government made the same charge from 
 Hull and from Hartlepool to London, the Hull importers were 
 unfairly burdened with the cost of carriage for the longer 
 distance from the northern port, and rates of charge wholly 
 free from the present aspect of caprice would have to be 
 settled. And it is undeniable that the adoption of rates more 
 equitable with regard to distance would confer upon the 
 
234 The Railways and the State. 
 
 shipper to the nearer port that which would be equal to 
 freedom from an import duty, and that by so much the price 
 of commodities might be raised against the consumers. 
 
 This argument is to my mind by far the most powerful 
 objection of a practical character which can be raised against 
 the transfer of the Railways, and I hope those who generally 
 dissent from my conclusions will admit that I have endeavoured 
 to state it with candour and precision. I have never yet met 
 with it in print, and I think it is amply deserving of a full dis- 
 cussion. I conceive it possible that some day passengers and 
 goods may travel by railway as letters and parcels do by post, 
 at one uniform rate the same whether they be going thirty 
 miles or three hundred. It is obvious that this would settle at 
 once the question of differential rates and their consequences 
 at the ports. I will venture to say that until this is accom- 
 plished we shall never have really ' free trade ' within England. 
 But for the present we must put such plans out of our thoughts 
 as only embarrassing and hindering the solution of the pro- 
 blem. Yet we must make some advance in this direction, and 
 if the Railways become the property of the State it would 
 perhaps be necessary to impose mileage or 'zone' rates, steadily 
 diminishing as the distance increased, and we should have to 
 meet the complaints of those who paid short, and therefore 
 more expensive rates, with demonstration that such a policy 
 was a necessity of any general system of intercommunication ; 
 we should show them that the senders of letters from one part 
 of London to another, bear for the commonwealth, and for their 
 own occasional advantage, the extra cost of transmitting letters 
 for longer distances, and we should adduce the fact that once 
 the goods are loaded and upon the rail, the actual cost per rriile 
 of their conveyance very rapidly diminishes with the increase 
 of distance. I think th-at in this manner the difficulty as to 
 rates might be overcome. 
 
 The money question appears to me to involve the strongest 
 argument in favour of the transfer, because the improvement 
 
The Railways and the Si ate. 235 
 
 and increase in value of the property appears to be certain and 
 considerable. Within a few years the recent augmentation in 
 value of Railway Stock may be very moderately estimated at 
 ^"60,000,000, and we see in comparing the estimates of earlier 
 writers on this subject with the figures which are now brought 
 forth, that had the transfer been effected seven or eight years 
 ago the National Debt might already have been reduced by 
 many millions. For example, Mr. Arthur Williams in 1869, 
 when North- Western Stock was quoted at 117, assumed that 
 the owner would be perfectly satisfied to accept in exchange 
 a Government annuity of ^"5 is. 6d., or ^"145 in cash. Since 
 then we have seen this Stock selling in open market for 160, 
 and we have heard the Chairman, when a dividend had been 
 declared equal to 7 i$s. for the year, expressing a confident 
 hope that the profits of the undertaking would never fall below 
 that amount. 
 
 But it will be said that this prospective increment in value is 
 entirely the property of the shareholders, and that is a proposi- 
 tion from which I shall not dissent. I can, however, only infer 
 their estimate of this increment from the price at which Stock 
 in times of conspicuous absence of pressure is sold in open 
 market, just as, with regard to land, I can only infer its value 
 in like circumstances. If land is required for the common- 
 wealth, it is taken by power of Act of Parliament at a liberal 
 estimate of the price which it would fetch if sold by auction. 
 Then, I may be asked, why not take the Land as well as 
 the Railways, and pocket for the State the increment of 
 value in both cases ? Undoubtedly such a course may be 
 recommended, but I do not think it is expedient, desirable, 
 or even feasible, because the subdivision of the land, which I 
 hope to see greatly increased, tends rather to diversity than 
 uniformity of value ; and while value, which is due to situation 
 and other advantages, is fairly determined in private contract 
 by the eager self-interest of the seller, equity would demand, 
 if the State were the owner, that each parcel, however small, 
 
236 The Railways and the State. 
 
 should be let by public competition, a business which I think 
 would elude the checks which public supervision must maintain 
 upon the operations of officers of the State. 
 
 With regard to the Railways, I do not find on reviewing the 
 daily list of quotations that there is any lack of regard for the 
 possibilities of improvement. To-day men buy and sell, and 
 for years past they have bought and sold, the Ordinary Stock of 
 the Metropolitan District Railway, and of the London, Chatham, 
 and Dover Railway, at considerable prices. Yet even now there 
 is no certainty of dividend upon these Stocks for years to come. 
 Other Stocks would show a similar dealing in great expecta- 
 tions, and surely shareholders of whom it may not be imper- 
 tinent to say that I am one in regard to each of the Railways 
 I have mentioned would have no right to complain if the 
 highest market value of their property within the last five years 
 were taken as the price at which, with an addition for com- 
 pulsory sale, they might be transferred by authority of Parlia- 
 ment. But before we can fix a price in a Government Stock 
 at which transfer might equitably be enforced, we must inquire 
 what are the expectations of income from such Railway invest- 
 ments. And if we turn to the Railway Stocks which are 
 most steady in regard to dividends, and if we look to periods 
 when public opinion has been most settled and most hopeful 
 with regard to the future improvement of the property, we find 
 that 5 per cent, is indicated. This, then, I think, would afford 
 a fair basis for the transfer. Suppose the highest official price 
 of Chatham and Dover Ordinary Stock, now quoted at 23, to 
 have been 30 within the last three years, the shareholder might, 
 I think, with justice, be compelled to accept ^50 in a Three per 
 Cent. Stock, and that in nine cases out of ten he would be a 
 holder at those terms I have no doubt whatever. With regard 
 
 o 
 
 to the Preference and Debenture Stock and Loans it would 
 seem fair to offer Stock in each case to the value of the income 
 guaranteed. In the case of those Stocks upon which interest 
 is not paid, the earnings of the companies being insufficient, 
 
The Railways and the State. 237 
 
 the transfer might be arranged upon the basis of the highest 
 quoted price, as in the case of the Ordinary Stocks, the ex- 
 pected income being that fixed by the railway company. 
 
 Thus, in addition to receiving the highest price at which 
 their Shares and Stocks have been quoted in a time of great 
 prosperity, the proprietors would obtain, by way of compensa- 
 tion for compulsory transfer, the improved security of Govern- 
 ment Stock. At this rate the State would give about 266 in 
 Three per Cent. Stock for 100 ordinary Stock of the London 
 and North- Western Railway ; and while the eight millions odd 
 of the Chatham and Dover Ordinary Stock would stand in this 
 Stock at four millions, the thirty millions odd of the London 
 and North- Western Ordinary Stock would figure at about eighty 
 millions. It would take long to determine precisely the annual 
 charge which at this rate of purchase the State would incur. 
 But we know that the Railways distributed in 1871 about 
 24,475,512 of profits, and that upon the 230,000,000 of 
 Ordinary Stock, of which thirty-one and a half millions received 
 no dividend at all, this sum gave an average of 5*07 per cent. ; 
 and without prolonging this already too extended article, I may 
 assert this much that if the transfer were made under the con- 
 ditions which have been suggested, a certain profit would accrue 
 if only the average of the saving estimated by Mr. Graves and 
 Mr. Stewart as resulting from united management were accom- 
 plished. That is a reckoning which does not include the pros- 
 pects of the future, the certain increase in the value of the 
 State monopoly of Railway traffic ; the advantage to trade 
 and personal intercourse which must result from abolition of 
 the barriers which have been erected by company against com- 
 pany, and board against board. I have left myself no room to 
 speak of the Department, the Council, and the districts in which 
 I should propose to reorganize the Railways as the property 
 of the State. 
 
XL 
 
 THE INTOXICATING LIQUORS QUESTION. 
 
 BEYOND the necessary provision for the nutriment of the 
 body, and the renewal of its tissues, the great requirement 
 of vital heat presses upon people with increasing force as the 
 situation of their country declines from the equator. And 
 there can be no doubt, for we have the fact before our eyes, 
 that, wisely or unwisely, this demand is largely supplied by the 
 use of fermented Liquors. Therefore, we are not surprised 
 to find drunkenness, as a national feature, follow climatic or 
 zone conditions. We know it must be so. If the British are 
 not the most drunken people upon earth, we may be sure that 
 is a disgrace they share with the North Germans, the Scan- 
 dinavians, the Russians, the peoples of Northern Asia and 
 America. 
 
 Climatic or zone conditions are marked with other features. 
 A friend of mine, who is an occasional reader of the organ 
 of the Licensed Victuallers in the London Press, once asked 
 me, * How is it,' said he, ' that the English are earnestly Pro- 
 testant and sensually intemperate ? ' ' Consider/ I answered. 
 ' Cast your thoughts round the world, and you will find that 
 the zone of drunkenness is also that of religious liberty and 
 of the sacred, Protestant right of private judgment.' The 
 hardy races, whose weakness is alcohol, exhibit their mental 
 strength in resistance to superstition. Both are fostered by 
 the same circumstances ; but how different : one a miserable 
 craving for unnatural heat of the body ; the other an inspira- 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 239 
 
 tion of the spiritual life ; for, it is incontestably and securely 
 true that Protestantism has been the parent of religious liberty, 
 and that in exalting the right and duty of private judgment, 
 in renouncing the mediatorial influence of saints and priests, 
 it has promoted individuality and progress, and the true con- 
 ception of spiritual duty. Who are the most temperate 
 people of Western Europe ? Need we ask ? Should we be 
 surprised to find that they are the most southern, the nearest 
 to the sun, the gay people of Andalusia, the people of Xeres 
 whose sherry, with a large addition of brandy, we drink so 
 freely ? Their own drink is mostly water. In their towns, 
 they have, it is true, no Metropolitan Drinking Fountain 
 Association, but there the water-sellers with their monotonous 
 Cr 7> ' agua, agua / ' do a good trade. They send us largely 
 of the fermented fruit of their sunbeams ; for themselves, 
 there is heat enough to be had from their unbrandied wine, 
 from chocolate and coffee. 
 
 Again, in the East, we may ask the same question, and 
 shall receive a similar answer. The Turks are the least 
 drunken and the most southern. Even in the temperate 
 zone we observe slighter variations of climate affecting the 
 disposition. The evidence is unanimous that in the United 
 States of America the effect of Liquor is greater than when 
 taken in this country. I have heard a very eminent 
 American say that the only difference he finds between New 
 York and London is that here he can take wine at dinner 
 with impunity ; and English tourists in America seem to 
 view the Niagara Falls with fewer expressions of wonder, 
 and with less desire to communicate the facts of the pheno- 
 menon, than when they behold the long and pure array of 
 glasses for iced water and the absence of wine bottles at the 
 dinner tables of the American hotels. In a debate upon the 
 Permissive Bill, Mr. F. S. Powell said : ' In America such 
 was the invigorating character of their translucent atmosphere, 
 that but little desire was felt for intoxicating drinks. The 
 
240 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 amount of spirituous liquors which was drunk in this country 
 with impunity would produce powerful intoxication in 
 America/ 
 
 I do not bring forward geographical arguments to excuse 
 the vice of drunkenness in our country ; and, as my con- 
 clusions will show, I do not gather from the influence of 
 climate, and therefore, in a less degree, of race, upon the con- 
 sumption of Liquor, that as Mr. Bruce (now Lord Aberdare) 
 once put the matter, the advocates of the Permissive Bill 
 are setting themselves ' against what appeared to be a law 
 of nature- that is, a desire for stimulants.' I merely assert 
 and explain that which is indeed a very obvious fact, that the 
 craving for Liquor which has the power of intoxication is, 
 from climatic conditions, probably strongest in this country, 
 where geographical position and the course of the Gulf 
 Stream produce during many months of the year a damp, 
 chill air, for which, with the bulk of the population, the 
 favourite counteractive is fermented and heating drink. 
 
 But we have dwelt long enough upon the influence of 
 climate ; kt us henceforth confine our attention to the taxation, 
 the sale, and the consumption of Liquor, as all this may be 
 seen within the limits of the United Kingdom. And as that 
 is the very groundwork, and, with many statesmen, the initial 
 thought in regard to legislation, let us first look at the con- 
 tribution which the consumption of Liquor makes to the 
 revenue. It would be the height of folly to ignore the extent 
 to which a people like the English regard themselves as 
 slaves to whatever 'is,' in reference to their national income. 
 There could hardly be a greater contradiction than between 
 our professions of duty relative to the civilisation, through 
 the conquest, of the East, and our official vindication of the 
 opium traffic. We have gone, year after year our mouths 
 stuffed with fine phrases concerning the whole duty of man 
 pushing our way, with a sword in one hand and poppy juice 
 in the other ; the real object being, not the propagation of 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 241 
 
 sound morality, nor the extermination of the people by the 
 sword, but the sale of opium for the advantage of our 
 planters and of our Indian revenue. It is well to bear this 
 in mind before one looks at the income which is derived 
 from the drinking propensities of our fellow-countrymen. A 
 glance is sufficient to convince us of one extremely important 
 fact, which is this ; that the legislature has at no time re- 
 garded the consumption of Liquor as a necessity of life. 
 When the Committee over which Mr. Charles Villiers presided 
 took evidence upon the question more than twenty-five years 
 ago, men who had been actively engaged in the temperance 
 movement in Ireland produced figures which showed con- 
 clusively that the decline in the consumption of Liquor had 
 led to a vast increase in the sale of those elements of the 
 breakfast-table which were then very highly taxed, but upon 
 which, as alleged necessaries of life, the taxation has been 
 greatly reduced, and which the public welfare demands should 
 as soon as possible be made free altogether from taxation. 
 Those who maintain that Liquor is not only the quickest 
 producing agent of vital heat, but that it is necessary food, 
 have not found in the common sense of the people an affirma- 
 tive response ; for the enormous taxation levied upon Liquor 
 under which denomination, for the purposes of our present 
 argument, we will include beers, wines, and spirits could 
 only have been retained upon the universal admission that 
 its habitual consumption is not a requirement of life, that it 
 is in fact, like armorial bearings, an unnecessary matter which 
 may be very heavily taxed, without giving its consumers any 
 right to complain. Nay, more than this ; have not our ears 
 grown dull, from often repetition, to the unctuous lament 
 of Chancellors of the Exchequer, who seem to feel that, 
 although the taxation of Liquor is only a matter of fiscal 
 concern no one has ventured to rally English electors with 
 the cry of * cheap gin ! ' they ought not to take the millions 
 stained with blood, and ruin, and harlotry, and sloth, without 
 
 K 
 
242 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 muttering a few words of apology as they sweep the year's 
 gains into the public purse, before they are shot out upon the 
 sea of expenditure ? 
 
 I shall not look farther back than the commencement of 
 the century with reference to the duties which have been 
 levied upon Liquor ; the chief purpose of such a reference 
 being to show the influence of taxation upon consumption. 
 We levy duties upon malt, upon wine> and upon spirit. At 
 the beginning of the century the malt duty was 2s. %d. per 
 bushel ; it is now 2s. 8i<^. At the same period the duties 
 on wine were on French wines, los. 2\d. per gallon, and on 
 other kinds, 6s. g\d. The duty is now is. per gallon upon 
 wine containing fewer than 26 of proof spirit ; 2s. 6d. per 
 gallon between 26 and 42 ; and ^d. additional duty for 
 each degree of strength beyond 42. In 1802 the average 
 duty upon spirits was 6s. id. per gallon; it is now 10^. id. 
 Of these duties on Liquor, which produce one-third of the 
 entire revenue of the country, the malt-tax has been most 
 often attacked, and most near to falling. I think the malt- 
 tax is a bad tax. Lord Russell said in 1846 : 'If I were 
 Prime Minister, when protection to agriculture was abolished the 
 first tax I would repeal would be the malt-tax.' Mr. Charles 
 Villiers said in 1839, that <a ^ those who were injured by 
 the operation of the corn laws would be willing nay, would 
 be anxious to get rid of the malt-tax.' Mr. Cobden said in 
 1864: ' It has often occurred to me to compare the case of 
 the British agriculturist who, after raising a bushel of barley, 
 is compelled to pay a tax of 60 per cent, before he is per- 
 mitted to convert it into a beverage for his own consumption 
 with what I have seen in foreign countries, and I can really 
 call to mind nothing so hard and unreasonable. I am quite 
 sure that the cultivators of vineyards and the growers of olives 
 in France and Italy would never tolerate such treatment of 
 their wine and oil.' This may be very apt, but it is not so 
 apt as would have been a comparison between the farmer's 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 243 
 
 inability to make his own malt with a similar disability in re- 
 gard to the manufacture of spirits. Is it not just as hard that 
 he should not be allowed to distil a glass of alcohol from his 
 barley, as that he should not be permitted to convert his barley 
 into malt ? And if he were free to distil and flavour whisky, 
 why should he be protected against the competition of the 
 foreigner, to the disadvantage of his neighbour the tradesman, 
 by the imposition of a duty on foreign spirits ? We must be 
 careful how we reply to these questions, for thereby hang no 
 less than 25,000,000 of taxation. I cannot see how, with 
 our present expenditure, a Chancellor of the Exchequer could 
 spare the six millions derived from the malt-tax, and I cannot 
 find reasons for repealing that duty which do not apply, at 
 least in some degree, to the home-made spirit duties producing 
 1 2, 5 00,000 ; to the 5,000,000 raised from foreign spirits ; 
 and to the wine duties, which yield more than 1,500,000 to 
 the revenue. 
 
 I think it is not to be doubted that the consumption of 
 beer would be increased by the repeal of the malt-tax, and it 
 is probable that the great evil of adulteration would be lessened. 
 The beer of foreign countries, where no such duty is levied, is 
 undoubtedly purer and less intoxicating than that mixture, so 
 often impregnated with tobacco-juice, cocctdus indicus, nux 
 vomica, grains of paradise, and too much salt, which passes by 
 the name of beer among the poor of England. We are a beer- 
 drinking people, but it will surprise many to learn that we do 
 not, in the reign of Queen Victoria, consume one-half as much 
 beer per head of the population, as we did in the reign of 
 Queen Anne. The average consumption of malt per head was 
 it will be seen from the following table, taken from authentic 
 records considerably more than twice as great in the middle 
 of the eighteenth century as in that of the nineteenth. From 
 1740 to 1790 it was 
 
 1740 . . 378 I 1760 . . 4-29 I 1780 . . 3-94 
 1750 . . 4-85 I 1770 . . 3-38 I 1790 . . 2-57 
 
244 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 From 1 80 1 to 1871 it was 
 
 1801 . . . .1-20 
 
 1811 . . . .1-60 
 
 1821 . . . .138 
 
 1831 . . . .1-63 
 
 1841 . . . .1-35 
 
 1851 . . . .1*50 
 
 1861 . . . .1-61 
 
 1871 . . . .172 
 
 John Barleycorn is from this point of view less powerful in 
 the nineteenth than in the preceding century and why ? He 
 was greatly upset by John Chinaman. I think the fact is 
 indisputable. In the time of the Tudors, beer was taken at 
 every meal ; there was a steady drinking from breakfast to 
 supper. As compared with that time, the draught per head 
 of Malt Liquor has declined more than one-half, otherwise 
 there could not have been the enormous consumption of tea. 
 The British people now consume very nearly 4 Ib. of tea per 
 head per annum, an amount which has steadily progressed, 
 while the consumption per head of malt has been all but 
 stationary. This fact is interesting, if only because it shows 
 that it is possible, by the introduction of new drinks and by 
 legislation, to change the bibulous habits of a people. 
 
 With reference to the wine duties, which yield no very 
 considerable sum to the revenue, it cannot be said that they 
 press severely upon the people. Indeed, our legislation on 
 this subject seems generally to have had rather a political than 
 an economic significance, and the next change is likely to be 
 advocated upon similar grounds. The absurd treaty concluded 
 in 1703, and known by the name of its noble negotiator as 
 the Methuen Treaty, is not an unfair indication of arrange- 
 ments which had anything for their object but free trade. 
 England engaged by that bond, which remained in force until 
 1831, to levy on the wines of France duties higher by 50 per 
 cent, than those charged upon the wines of the Peninsula ; 
 and the consumption of French wines, which never under that 
 treaty exceeded 500,000 gallons in any one year, has since, 
 under Mr. Gladstone's shilling duty, amounted to nearly 
 5,0^0,000 gallons ; so that in regard to French wines, a 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 245 
 
 shilling duty is now as productive to the revenue as the ten- 
 shilling duty, which, under the Methuen Treaty, was imposed 
 at the commencement of the century. 
 
 The taxation upon spirits is a matter, so far as the revenue 
 is concerned, of the very gravest importance, for the annual 
 income thus derived is not less than .18,000,000. In regard 
 to all excisable Liquors, we have abundant and convincing 
 evidence of the effect of duties upon consumption. I will 
 mention but one. In 1800, a duty of us. id. on foreign 
 spirits produced ,1,382,718. Forty years later, the duty was 
 raised to the immense charge of i 2s. lod. per gallon, and 
 the sum collected, amounting to 1,354,079, was nearly 180 
 per cent, under that which would have been received had the 
 f duty-paid ' consumption per head remained unaltered. High 
 duties of course lead to smuggling, to illicit manufacture, and 
 to adulteration as well as to abstinence. I believe that the 
 last evil, that of adulteration, is now as rampant as were the 
 two former evils at the commencement of the century. It 
 cannot be doubted that smuggling and illicit distillation then 
 provided a large flow of alcohol upon which no duty was ever 
 paid. The first was especially the practice of England and 
 Scotland ; the second of Ireland. Very striking evidence as 
 to Ireland is given in the reports of the Inland Revenue 
 department, from which we find that in the year ending March 
 3 ist, 1866, the convictions for illicit distillation were as 
 follow : 
 
 England. Scotland. Ireland. 
 
 4i. ii. 3,557- 
 
 There is no question that even in Ireland this unlawful 
 practice is fast following the decline of smuggling int this 
 island. Adulteration, far more noxious to the health, and 
 therefore ultimately to the purse of the community, is far 
 more safe and easy. It cannot be doubted that a duty of 
 600 per cent, will produce such malpractices. Yet in spite 
 
246 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 of all this, the income from the spirit duties steadily increases ; 
 it is looked upon as the financial barometer of our prosperity; 
 and as no one appears to doubt that one-half of the consump- 
 tion is certainly injurious, because taken by persons already 
 more or less inebriated, it follows that to an amount equal to the 
 present cost of the Navy we take toll of drunkenness. Lord 
 Derby's friend, who said of the year 1872, 'We have drunk 
 ourselves out of the American debt,' put the truth in sober 
 language. The only serious evil which seems to arise from 
 the high spirit duties is that of adulteration, and I am not 
 disposed to think it a sufficient ground for diminishing the 
 charge. Rigid, scrupulous, and persevering inspection is a 
 remedy for the evil of adulteration, to be followed by severe 
 punishment in detected cases. So far as the interests of 
 temperance are concerned, there can be no doubt that these 
 are promoted by the imposition of high rates. We shall see, 
 when we pass to consider the sale of Liquor, that all restric- 
 tions upon the traffic have the effect of diminishing drunken- 
 ness. 
 
 The position of Liquor in regard to the revenue is not so 
 much the subject of dispute as the sale of Liquor, and the 
 control which may be exercised over the trade. No reason- 
 able persons can entertain any doubt as to the right of a 
 State to make regulations affecting any or all trades ; and 
 that the Liquor trade has long been regarded as one specially 
 liable to restricting regulations, it is easy to prove. An Act 
 of the 5 and 6 Edward VI., after reciting ' the intolerable 
 hurts and troubles to the commonwealth of this realm that 
 daily grew and increased through the abuses and disorders had 
 and used in common ale-houses and other houses called 
 " tippling houses," ' provided that none should keep an ale- 
 house without a licence from two justices of the peace. 
 Licences were issued on payment of duty in the reign of 
 Queen Anne. In 1736, a special licence was imposed on 
 retailers of spirits, and the punishment for non-payment of 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 247 
 
 penalty was committal to the House of Correction for two 
 months, and at ' his or her ' discharge to be * stript naked 
 from the middle upwards, and to be whipt until his or her 
 body be bloody/ From that time to the present, the con- 
 trol of the trade has never been abandoned ; it has always 
 been regarded as a traffic which must be carefully limited. 
 And there can be no doubt that this control has had refer- 
 ence to the possible hurtfulness of the trade to the social 
 well-being of the people. The licence fees have not simply 
 been demanded as revenue, but rather as caution money, 
 virtually in order that any disreputable house for the sale of 
 Liquor might be closed by the shortest possible process. 
 
 That control of the Liquor trade has always existed within 
 the memory of this generation need not be shown ; it is a 
 plain fact within common knowledge. Perhaps there is no 
 one more remarkable among the many anomalies of English 
 life than that under a system of permissive prohibition for 
 the control of the magistrates amounts to nothing less there 
 should have grown up an interest so vast upon a security, 
 legally, though not practically, so precarious. The goodwill 
 of such a public-house as the Royal Oak in Bayswater, or 
 the Elephant and Castle on the other side of the river, would 
 probably sell for many thousands of pounds, and it is no un- 
 common thing for a man, on taking a lease of such premises, 
 to expend 10,000 or 15,000 upon a reconstruction, in 
 perfect confidence that the tenure of the licence, which is the 
 chief element in the value of his lease, will not be disturbed. 
 A home trade which sells to the value of 100,000,000 must 
 engage a vast amount of capital, and we are not without an 
 estimate of that which is employed in the manufacture and 
 sale of Liquor, There are about 140,000 public and beer- 
 houses in the kingdom, of which 10,000 are in the London 
 district ; and, adopting the estimate of the brewers' advocate, 
 setting them at 300 each in the country and 1,500 in 
 London, their trade value would amount to 54,000,000. 
 
248 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of calculations which 
 place the sum involved in the trades associated with the 
 supply of these houses, in debts, in tenants' capital, etc., 
 at nearly twice as much more, and thus we get a sight of an 
 interest probably as powerful as any in the country, because so 
 thoroughly diffused among the people and so single-minded in 
 its object. ' Liquor knows no politics,' said an American 
 statesman, and we have had and shall have abundant con- 
 firmation of the opinion in this country. The doctrine has 
 moreover been notoriously proclaimed by licensed victuallers 
 in every direction. The Manchester and Salford Association 
 unanimously confirmed the report which pledged them 'to 
 vote as one man, regardless of political party,' and the 
 publicans acted in 1874 upon that platform. 
 
 It was against this trade, so united, so powerful, that Mr. 
 Bruce launched his famous Intoxicating Liquors (Licensing) 
 Bill, by which it was proposed to issue two classes of certi- 
 ficates ; one to the publican in lieu of the three licences for 
 beer, wine and spirits ; and one to the beer-house keeper, with 
 other privileges of sale than those he now possesses. Every 
 seller must have taken out one of these licences, with if his 
 house was well conducted a ten years' title to renewal, after 
 which he would be subject to refusal where the public-houses 
 were too numerous, or to the risks of competition in tendering 
 for a new certificate. We need not recall to mind the storm 
 which that Bill evoked. 'Confiscation' was the cry of the 
 Liquor-sellers, and they drove the Bill from Parliament. The 
 Quarterly Review, like other organs of the Tory party, eager 
 to make political capital out of a blunder so culpable, because 
 the attempt was so ill-advised, said of the measure, that, 
 ' stimulated by an insane desire of notoriety, or pricked by 
 furies in the shape of Welsh teetotalers, the unfortunate Home 
 Secretary, taking counsel, as is said, with some agent of a 
 London brewery and with some abstainers in his own office, 
 put forth the Bill.' Such was its ribald epitaph, and after 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 249 
 
 labouring another twelve months, the same department pro- 
 duced the Bill of 1872, which, in its enacted form, dealt with 
 adulteration, penalties for drunkenness, police inspection, hours 
 of closing, and valuation for licences the main provision 
 being that outside London wherein the hours for opening 
 and closing were fixed at five A.M. and midnight, with special 
 exceptions granted under certain conditions by the Chief 
 Commissioner of Police the licensing justices should be 
 empowered to alter the hour of opening from six A.M. to five 
 or seven, and the hour of closing from eleven P.M. to ten or 
 twelve ; on Sunday, the hour of closing from ten P.M. to nine 
 or eleven. This is what its ingenious inventor denominated 
 an ' elastic system/ Mr. Disraeli called it ' helter-skelter legis- 
 lation,' but his nickname conveyed no moral reprobation. 
 ' Elastic ' legislation upon a subject which, in the opinion of 
 all, is closely connected with the increase of crime, is worse 
 than ' helter-skelter.' It would be * elastic ' legislation to 
 decree that a man convicted of embezzlement might be sen- 
 tenced to two years' imprisonment or to receive for two years 
 a pension equivalent to the sum he had succeeded in convert- 
 ing to his own use. ' Elastic ' legislation is a deliberate and 
 cowardly betrayal of the functions of Parliament. 
 
 By the comments which that Act drew forth, we find the 
 ground strewed with fallacies, and in none was fallacy more 
 apparent than in those resounding sentences with which Sir 
 William Harcourt spiced the wine of his electors and fellow- 
 Druids at Oxford. Such men do not, we must believe, con- 
 sciously betray their higher instincts, do not consciously yield 
 their esprit to be, as it were, the gases in their tipsy neighbours' 
 wine. Yet Sir William Harcourt's well-known speech at Oxford 
 on the Licensing Act was of the stuff that fills a wind-bag ; 
 it collapses at a single prick. If he had made free trade in 
 Liquor freedom for all hours and in all places the basis of 
 his argument, that would have been substantial. If he had 
 sought to liberate the trade from the network of enactments 
 
250 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 forty since 1/36 in which it is involved, that would have 
 been logical. If, adopting the words of a great wit, he had 
 said : * There has been in all Governments a great deal of 
 absurd canting about intoxication. The best plan is to let the 
 people drink what they like, wear what they like, and to make 
 no sumptuary laws for the belly and the back;' that would 
 have been intelligible. But he did nothing of the sort. The 
 Act which he stood up to abuse had conferred ' elastic ' 
 powers with reference to the hours of closing ; it found the 
 hours of closing already fixed by enactments against which 
 this younger Druid had not a word to say. Looking to what 
 existed before the Act of 1872, Sir William Harcourt com- 
 menced his speech by saying there was ' no cause for legis- 
 lative interference at all, unless perhaps in respect of certain 
 alterations in the system of licensing.' Again he said : * I 
 can see no justification for interfering with the hours of closing 
 at all/ admitting that the pre-existing hours i.e., the average 
 of those of the ' elastic ' and obnoxious Act were not a 
 subject for complaint. It was upon this infirm flooring 
 strong enough, perhaps, for Oxford Druids that Sir William 
 Harcourt reared his speech and made his talk of nightcaps 
 and of the adjustment of such head-gear by the members of 
 Mr. Gladstone's Government. It was upon this illogical basis 
 that he stood up to declaim against restrictive legislation 
 and 'grandmotherly government.' The maintainer of highly 
 restrictive hours as they were defined in 1871, the maintainer 
 of the permissive prohibitory powers of the licensing justices 
 as they have existed and have been exercised ever since Sir 
 William Harcourt heard of the powers of a justice of the 
 peace, called upon the Liberal party to divorce themselves 
 from * restrictive legislation,' said it was no legitimate child of 
 theirs, and expressed a desire to ' argue it out.' Sir William 
 Harcourt can be grandly logical when he pleases, and seeing 
 the fallacy of his 'night- cap' talk at Oxford, he may develop 
 into that position which Mr. Lowe seems disposed to take up, 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 251 
 
 and become an advocate of free trade in the sale of Liquor. 
 Let him be warned in time. Let him ponder upon what was 
 the condition of a neighbouring country of Sweden under a 
 system virtually of free trade, and mark how it has improved 
 under a regime of careful restriction. It does not lie in Sir 
 William Harcourt's mouth to deny the possibilities of restriction 
 so far as they have reference to the decrease of drunkenness, 
 for he has gone farther than I am prepared to go in that 
 direction ; he has by implication contradicted all the evidence 
 as to the alleged failure of the Maine Liquor Law ; he has 
 gone beyond Neal Dow himself. Sir William Harcourt has 
 said to his constituents at Oxford : ' You might, of course, 
 make it impossible for any man to get anything to drink, and 
 then, of course, no man could be drunk/ Believing this, if he 
 looks to Sweden he will be less liable to fall into the enormous 
 error of free trade in Liquor. We have the high authority of 
 a leading Scotch journal for the opinion that twenty years ago 
 Sweden was ' probably ' a more drunken country than Scot- 
 land. In both, spirits, not beer, form the intoxicating medium. 
 In Sweden, every landowner was allowed to distil spirits for 
 domestic use on payment of a nominal licensing fee, and every 
 burgher in any town could become a publican without a licence. 
 More than twenty years ago, the Diet appointed a committee, 
 which in its report avowed that * seldom, if ever, has a con- 
 viction so generally or unequivocally been pronounced with 
 regard to the necessity of rigorous measures against the physical, 
 economical, and moral ruin with which the immoderate use of 
 spirits threatens the nation. A cry has burst forth from the 
 hearts of the people, appealing to all who have influence a 
 prayer for deliverance from a scourge which previous legislation 
 has planted and nourished/ and an Act for the regulation and 
 sale of Liquor, imposing statutory restrictions upon the traffic 
 in spirits beer is there unimportant as an intoxicating Liquor 
 was immediately passed. By the Swedish law it is now 
 conditional on a publican's certificate that he should also sell 
 
252 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 food. In boroughs, the councils ; in rural districts, the magis- 
 trates, decide on applications for additional licences, which are 
 reported to the Governor of the district, who can allow or 
 disallow, but cannot add to the number to be granted. The 
 sale is prohibited after ten P.M. on week-days, and more strictly 
 on Sundays ; drink debts are irrecoverable at law, and it is 
 forbidden to sell Liquor to drunken (ofver-laslad) persons, as 
 it is also to turn such persons out of the house without some 
 one to provide for their safety in the street. The licences are 
 tenable on good behaviour for three years, and the new cer- 
 tificates are publicly sold, the purchase-money being retained 
 for municipal purposes. Now Sir William Harcourt, who 
 believes that you may make such laws that * no man could be 
 drunk/ will not be surprised to learn that this advance in 
 Sweden from free trade to severe restriction has effected a 
 great reduction in the number of persons fined for drunkenness, 
 and that the number of cases of delirium tremens has been 
 diminished by one-third. 
 
 The Gothenburg system, which, upon the earnest recom- 
 mendation of Mr. Chamberlain, was provisionally accepted by 
 the Town Council of Birmingham, and discussed in Parliament, 
 is based upon this law. And, as we have seen, the Swedish 
 law offers peculiar facilities for its operation. Every third year 
 all licences are in the market, and, under these circumstances, 
 a company which could bid 20,000 a year for the monopoly 
 in the provincial town of Gothenburg, is not likely to find 
 many competitors. The Company, or Bolag, of Gothenburg, 
 had, as Mr. Chamberlain pointedly states, ' no vested interests 
 to deal with.' The Company has accomplished great results, 
 not merely in the ' enormous profits ' which have been 
 realised for the benefit of the municipal revenue, but in regard 
 to the decline of drunkenness. So conspicuous has been the 
 advance of temperance in Gothenburg that the attention of 
 the capital has been attracted, and a Special Committee of the 
 municipality of Stockholm have recommended the adoption of 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 253 
 
 the Gothenburg system. ' The Committee selected as periods 
 for comparison the twelve years 1851 1862, and an equal 
 period, embracing the years 1863 1874, in the first of which 
 there were three years of good harvests and trade, seven 
 average, and two bad ; and in the second, two good, seven 
 average, and three bad. They find that the proportion of 
 drunkenness to the population increased about 5 per cent, in 
 the latter period. But a similar comparison in the case of 
 Gothenburg shows a diminution of drunkenness of more than 
 50 per cent, in the second period of twelve years, during ten 
 of which the new system has been in operation/ 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain did not fail to perceive that the circum- 
 stances of an English town are very different from those of 
 Gothenburg ; that here we have to deal with a ' vested 
 interest ' at the corner of every street ; and he declined to lay 
 down any plan of compensation. He proposed that this 
 should be settled by Parliament. In my opinion, the Gothen- 
 burg system is impracticable in this country. It has been 
 proposed to * nationalise ' the land, and that visionary scheme 
 is defeated by the same argument which may be used to show 
 that the municipalisation of the public-houses is impracticable. 
 It may be asserted that it is impossible to carry on with profit 
 the business of any great class whose proprietary and trade 
 interests have to be paid for at fair and normal rates of 
 purchase and compensation. The Gothenburg system is 
 recommended because, under that system, the sale of Liquor 
 would not be pressed by self-interest. There might be some 
 successes in the way of economy of management, but these 
 could not equal the loss of profit due to the subtraction of the 
 personal interest of the publican. Yet he would have to be 
 compensated, not only for the loss of all profits those made 
 from the soddened drunkard as well as from sober thirst but 
 beyond this, he must have, and would be entitled to, compen- 
 sation for disturbance. Bearing a load of this sort, it would 
 be long before the community would drink themselves clear of 
 
254 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 debt. Even Birmingham is not so philanthropic as to be 
 prepared for a great deficit ; and I think it easy to show that 
 profit, which could accrue only through a vast extension of the 
 town, is vaguely remote, if not impossible. 
 
 Leaving that aspect of the question, I pass to the side of 
 Mr. Lowe in maintaining that the Birmingham Corporation 
 has no proper business in this matter. If Liquor was a 
 necessity of municipal life, if it was a commodity which did 
 not admit of retail competition, and if all the Birmingham 
 townsfolk required but one sort and quality if in these 
 conditions it resembled Gas and Water, then I should advocate 
 the monopoly. There is, too, an essential difference between 
 Scandinavian and English society, which appears to have 
 escaped the notice even of so shrewd an observer as Mr. 
 Chamberlain. Because he has done so much for the good 
 cause of public education in England, and is so sincere and 
 so earnest an opponent of the Church Establishment, I am the 
 more surprised that in attempting to transplant the Gothen- 
 burg system, he appeared to have taken no note of the differ- 
 ence of soil. The religious basis of society in Sweden is a 
 dead level of uniformity, and the acts of authority, whether 
 religious or secular, royal or local, are not questioned at every 
 step. It would, however, be unfair not to state that Mr. 
 Chamberlain put forth all the objections he could think of to 
 his proposal, and that Mr. Lowe in his comment, published in 
 the Fortnightly Review, did not do justice to them. Mr. Lowe 
 said he was ' not much moved by the objection that it is wrong 
 to enter into the Liquor trade, which appears to us just as 
 legitimate as any other/ No one supposed he would be 
 moved at all by any such objection. Yet it is one, the great 
 force of which Mr. Chamberlain fully appreciates, and it would 
 weigh heavily with . a large class of English people. It is 
 heard in Sweden, where Mr. Chamberlain told us that ' the 
 profits made by the Bolag, and now devoted to public uses, 
 are enormous, and the financial success of the undertaking 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 255 
 
 has actually formed part of the indictment brought against it 
 by the more extreme advocates of temperance.' Again, Mr. 
 Lowe was scarcely justified in assuming that the Permissive 
 Bill is only a measure for the suppression of the Liquor traffic, 
 and on that ground to ask, ' Will Mr. Chamberlain consent to 
 relieve the rates of the town by the profits of a traffic for the 
 forcible suppression of which he is, we understand, prepared 
 to vote ? ' But it must be admitted that Mr. Lowe's criticism 
 was on the whole very successful in its work of destruction. 
 He might have convicted himself of an acceptance of fallacy, 
 such as he alleged against Mr. Chamberlain, had he gone 
 farther in the direction to which he leans that of free trade in 
 Liquor. 
 
 But, indeed, free trade in Liquor is not the demand of any 
 considerable party in any State. In England, we have seen 
 a provisional executive committee of the United Trades 
 Association of Licensed Victuallers inviting the whole trade 
 to a national council upon quite a different platform. 
 * Anxious,' their manifesto ran, ' to conform ourselves to, 
 and even to promote, legislation for the regulation of our 
 trade.' And in no place do we observe any well-grounded 
 denial of the benefits of restriction, as enforced by recent 
 legislation. To refer once more to Sir William Harcourt, 
 we have found him assuming at Oxford that the whole popu- 
 lation passes every evening in public-houses, and proceeds to 
 tie on night-caps when driven from those haunts. The 
 Secretary of the Manchester Licensed Victuallers' Association 
 gave similar testimony ; but it appeared that while Sir 
 William Harcourt's language won for himself an abiding 
 place in the hearts of Oxford vestrymen, this gentleman lived 
 high in the clouds, where the setting sun is visible long after 
 the sight of it is denied to the earthly scene of his labours. 
 He said that ' if the new Act had done anything, it sent 
 them home to bed like good boys, and in some places ' 
 (? clouds, or the Secretary's fancy) * in the summer months 
 
256 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 before the sun had gone down.' Indeed, although I am not 
 about to conclude with a recommendation of the Maine 
 Liquor Law, I have only less doubt than Sir William 
 Harcourt has naively expressed, that it is possible to make 
 men sober by Act of Parliament. Look at the operation of 
 that law as described by those who go to report what they 
 call its failure ! No one can question the sincerity of Mr. 
 Justin McCarthy's evidence against the Maine Law, as given 
 in the Fortnightly Review during the summer of 1871. But 
 for my own part, I wish to go no farther than his pages for 
 testimony to its considerable success. Mr. McCarthy is almost 
 as illogical as Sir William Harcourt. He, it seems, with 
 the best intentions, gets a friend or two to show him the trick 
 of how to get spirits in a town where the sale is prohibited, 
 and then says the law does nothing. In one part of the town 
 Mr. McCarthy was surprised to see bottles containing spirits 
 exhibited for sale ; ' in other streets,' he says, ' my friend 
 pointed me out various houses where, he assured me, drink 
 could just as easily be procured/ Elsewhere he says : ' My 
 friend asked the young man behind the counter, in a low tone, 
 whether he had anything to drink.' Mr. McCarthy ranged, 
 ' for hours one evening,' the lower quarters of Portland, 
 frequented by seamen, and saw ' nothing particularly riotous.' 
 The Mayor told him, ' The present permissive law is about 
 as good as could well be devised.' The Deputy-Marshal of 
 Portland held the same opinion. * The practice of the police 
 is to prosecute the seller of drink to a man found drunk in the 
 streets.' ' The trouble is always with the foreigners.' Mr. 
 M'Carthy thinks Mr. Thomas Hughes's evidence as to the 
 success of the law in preventing the sale of spirits was owing 
 to his not understanding the trick of how to find it ; acknow- 
 ledging the very great influence of the law in saying that 
 if Mr. Hughes had known that ' " sample room," and other 
 such names and titles,' meant Liquor, he would not have 
 searched for wine and ale without finding it. In fact, I look 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 257 
 
 upon Mr. Justin McCarthy as an unconscious Balaam, who, 
 evidently possessed with a call to curse the Maine Liquor 
 Law, unwittingly bears strong testimony in the opposite 
 direction ; and Mr. Mundella's argument, which is bound in 
 the same volume with Mr. McCarthy's, is very much of the 
 same sort. The clever Member for Sheffield had been to look 
 at Massachusetts, and 'he would be very sorry to see the 
 want of respect for law which he saw in the New England 
 States/ Now, Mr. Mundella has not been a ' home-keeping 
 youth/ and has not ' homely wit ' ; he knows the Continent, 
 and has some personal acquaintance with Nottingham ' lambs ' 
 and with Sheffield ' blades.' Can he tell us of any part of 
 the earth where the respect for law is so widely manifested as 
 in those New England States ? To find their equal in that 
 respect he will have at all events to name a country of which 
 I know nothing. 
 
 I will confine the few remarks I have yet to make to the 
 laws regulating the Liquor traffic in this country, and to the 
 changes which it appears desirable should be introduced for 
 the promotion of temperance. I shall not deal with the 
 blunders in the ' helter-skelter ' compilation by a thousand 
 hands in both Houses of the Act of 1872, nor with the paltry 
 gratifications which have been paid by the party in power for 
 the support of the Liquor trade in 1874. I will not take 
 upon me to decide whether the valuation clauses mean what 
 they say, or something different, nor deliver myself of an 
 opinion as to how the sale of Liquor at fairs was regulated 
 by that Act. I entirely approve of the increased gravity 
 which was given to the offence of the public exhibition of 
 drunkenness, and would gladly see strengthened the powers 
 to detect and the punishments inflicted in regard to adulte- 
 ration. The only points to which I shall refer are the licensing 
 authority, the investment of the publican, and the control of 
 the trade by the community. 
 
 We may consider it established from what has gone before 
 
 S 
 
258 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 that to the State pertains both the right and the duty of inter- 
 ference of regulation in regard to this traffic. We have seen 
 that this is admitted by the friends and even the representa- 
 tives of the trade ; and, of course, such interference can have 
 but one object and one justification that it is well aimed at, 
 and is successful in preventing the immoderate use of intoxi- 
 cating drinks, and therefore in reducing the vice and evil of 
 drunkenness. This being the object of control, it would be 
 difficult indeed it seems to be impossible to mention any 
 subject of greater importance to the people. It concerns the 
 social and civil life of every one of them ; not precisely in the 
 same way that the due administration of justice affects them, 
 but rather as sanitary regulations, the neglect of which will 
 favour the outbreak of epidemic disease. The State, century 
 after century, has made the sale of drink a monopoly, a share 
 in which it grants to certain persons on certain conditions of 
 locality, character, and payment. At the present time, while 
 the extension of this monopoly is determined by local autho- 
 rity, the scanty income from it, rendered to any but private 
 persons, is centralised in the Inland Revenue department, and 
 such of the profits of the enormously valuable monopoly as 
 are taken for the commonwealth say from somewhat drunken 
 Glasgow are shared equally by the heavily rated inhabitants 
 of that town with the total abstainer in some lightly taxed 
 village of the south. I think this is a part of the subject 
 which needs further consideration. But let us first examine 
 the claim of the local authority to which the power of 
 extending this monopoly is conceded I mean the licensing 
 justices. I wish to speak with all the personal respect they 
 deserve of the unpaid magistrates. For several successive 
 generations, I know not for how many, my fathers have been 
 licensing justices, and I have certainly no inborn dislike to 
 the class. Yet I think their functions involve much injustice. 
 I will set aside their ignorance of law, which is often grossly 
 manifested ; but it is neither just nor wise, nor will it long 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 259 
 
 be thought tolerable, that men who represent nothing but 
 property, whose qualification is the possession of property, 
 should sit as judge and jury to try, in many cases with- 
 out appeal, offences against the rights of property. Prince 
 Bismarck has contended against very similar feudal privileges 
 in Germany. Here and there only do they endure. Here 
 and there only is it a fact that the possession of land or the 
 rental of a house of certain pretensions is the qualification 
 for a rural justice ; and here and there only is it a fact that 
 the possession of an estate by a man of fair public character 
 implies elevation to the seat of justice. In boroughs, the 
 matter is a little different, but certainly not more advan- 
 tageous to the public service. There the only difference is 
 that we have less land and more license. I have watched the 
 intrigues by which in this or that borough the nomination by 
 the Lord Chancellor has been secured, and have observed that 
 when it has not distinct and undoubted reference to Brewster 
 Sessions with regard to which, in utter ignorance of the 
 borough, of course the Chancellor is blinded it is usually a 
 matter of party, of mere political colour. It is not to hands 
 thus qualified and thus chosen that the people of any town can 
 safely commit the regulation of a valuable monopoly, any more 
 than they would delegate the functions of their Local Board 
 or Board of Guardians to such a body. Mr. Bruce began 
 higher than this in his Liquor legislation ; he slid downwards 
 at the bidding of Parliament. Of course it was culpable in 
 him to propose, and in Parliament to enact, ' elastic ' legis- 
 lation, and we cannot be surprised that many scandals and 
 much irritation occurred in consequence ; scandals, of which, 
 perhaps, the case of the magistrates of a borough granting a 
 special licence in a postprandial session for the continuance 
 of their own mayoralty dinner was the most truly typical. It 
 is abundantly clear that the power vested in licensing 
 justices is not given to them from any conviction of their 
 absolute fitness, but rather because, for certain reasons which 
 
260 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 are not fully stated, it is not thought desirable that it should 
 be given to those who with full consent possess nearly all other 
 local authority the ratepayers. 
 
 Why have not the people control over this monopoly ? In 
 the Licensing Bill of 1872, Mr. Bruce proposed in the case 
 where there was already more than one licence to 1,500 of the 
 population, up to 3,000, and one for every subsequent 1,000 
 in towns ; and where in other districts there was more than 
 one licence for every 600 inhabitants, that a majority of three- 
 fifths of the ratepayers should have power to forbid the grant- 
 ing of any new licence ; and in the Bill of 1872, with reference 
 to hours of opening and closing, Mr. Bruce was prepared to 
 give to locally elected bodies the ' elastic ' powers which 
 were afterwards conferred exclusively upon the justices. Yet 
 in spite of this strong evidence of disposition to do justice to 
 the inhabitants' claim of control, it is yet unaccomplished. I 
 repeat, Why is this ? This denial is made, we are told, out of 
 regard for the vested interests of the Liquor trade, and for the 
 desires which we may also call the vested interests of the 
 public-house-going portion of the community, whose facilities 
 for obtaining intoxicating drink would, it is supposed, be 
 endangered if the granting of licences were controlled by the 
 ratepayers. So that if we wish with general consent to accede 
 to this claim for popular control, we have only to consider by 
 what means, if any, the alleged immemorial concurrent and 
 certificated rights of those connected with the Liquor trade, 
 and those who are its customers, can be secured against oppres- 
 sion or unjust extinction. All the arguments resisting such 
 control based upon comparison of the effects of similar regula- 
 tions upon trades or manufactures which are not already, and 
 have not been within present memory, the subject of such 
 control, are unworthy of attention. There is and can be 
 ' nothing in it/ If the trade is as everybody admits a fit 
 subject for control, and for regulation of hours of sale, it is a 
 fit subject for contraction. It is absurd to take any other 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 261 
 
 position. Parliament has refused to give the ratepayers con- 
 trol out of regard for the interests of the Liquor trade and of 
 the consumers, freely admitting the evils inseparable from free 
 traffic by maintaining a strict system of control, with a menace, 
 in case of bad behaviour, of confiscation. At present, the 
 licensing justices have a permissive prohibitory power, pro- 
 tected by their leaning to the interests of property, by public 
 opinion, and by the indefinite power of the Lord Chancellor 
 and the lords-lieutenant to add to their numbers. Can we not 
 give to the interests which would be at stake, if the ratepayers' 
 vote elected a Licensing Board, quite as efficient security ? 
 We can say that the sale of Liquor shall not be prohibited in 
 any district but by the vote of a clear majority of two-thirds of 
 the ratepayers, and we can require that within brief periods the 
 sanction of that vote should be renewed. ' What tyranny!' say 
 the ' rob-a-poor-man-of-his-beer ' party. Yet they say nothing 
 concerning the fate of a population of hundreds of thousands 
 of their ' own flesh and blood ' who, simply because they cannot 
 obtain a local majority, or it may be a parliamentary majority, 
 to do them justice, are compelled to drink liquid sewage. If 
 I must die of drink, I would rather be killed by adulterated 
 gin than by Thames water containing Windsor sewage and 
 the washings of the highly-manured lands of the Thames basin. 
 I think the millions who are drinking poisoned water in 
 London as in rural districts, because a majority resist, or are 
 apathetic in regard to the establishment of an efficient local 
 authority deserve at least as much attention as the possible 
 fate of this hypothetical minority of protestors against the very 
 improbable stoppage of the public sale close to their homes of 
 any fermented drink. But I would add something more than 
 the requirement of a vast majority to protect this minority, 
 and this I should propose to accomplish by a due regard for 
 the interests of the licensed victuallers. I have never been 
 able to support the Permissive Bill because I will not deny the 
 publican's claim to compensation for the extinction of his 
 
262 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 business on any other conditions than those assigned in his 
 certificate. I think the claim of the publicans, in such a case, 
 to compensation is quite as good as that of the proctors, and 
 better than that of military officers to over-over-regulation 
 prices as a consequence of the abolition of Purchase in the 
 Army. The country is full too full of evidences of the 
 sense of security in which their outlay has been made, and 
 if it were not unjust it would be highly unwise, in effecting 
 any moral improvement, to allow that it should be leavened 
 by any sense of injustice. Mr. Bruce himself said, in 1870 : 
 * It would be very unjust to deprive those engaged in that 
 [the Liquor] trade of their right to sell without giving com- 
 pensation. . . . The publicans were encouraged by Parliament 
 to make those investments, and they should not be deprived 
 of the value of those investments.' 
 
 I think that the ratepayers' control of the Liquor traffic 
 might be at once assumed, but that there should be no power 
 of depriving a well-conducted house of a licence except by 
 compensation, the amount to be settled in the ordinary way. 
 Yet it is evident that in an increasing community where there 
 was a disposition thus further to restrict the monopoly of sale, 
 the value of all existing licences would rise ; and this con- 
 sideration brings us to the matter of the Licence Rent, which 
 I believe Mr. Bruce once thought of imposing in addition to 
 the cost of the certificates. With the exception of a small 
 charge for certificates, paid to the Inland Revenue department, 
 the Licence Rent should always belong to the local authority, 
 and this charge, which should be imposed upon the fair rateable 
 value of the premises, ought to be proportionately raised every 
 ten years, if, upon the publication of the census, it was found 
 that the relation between the number of licences and of 
 inhabitants had altered in favour of the holders of the 
 monopoly of sale. It would only be just that this Licence 
 Rent should, together with the cost of Inland Revenue certi- 
 ficates, be equal to the difference between the value of the 
 
The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 263 
 
 premises for other occupation and their value as a licensed 
 public-house ; the landlord having clearly no claim whatever 
 to a value conferred upon the premises by a share in a public 
 monopoly granted to his tenant. These Licence Rents might 
 be passed to the receipts of the municipality in reduction of 
 their ordinary expenditure, or set apart to accumulate a fund 
 for the extinction of licences where that was thought desirable. 
 The ratepayers' control would thus be weighted with a heavy 
 responsibility. The elected Licensing Board would be cautious 
 how they granted new licences which would reduce the Licence 
 Rent they received from existing houses, and to the holders 
 of which they must pay compensation if they desired the 
 extinction of their business. The Liquor-selling part of the 
 population desire no stronger protection against the power of 
 two-thirds of their fellow-inhabitants, if those, together with 
 their votes, are prepared to pay their share of the value of 
 all licences in the district. The evil which could arouse a com- 
 munity to such an action must indeed be enormous. I have 
 endeavoured to prove, as I firmly believe, that such a policy 
 of extinguishing the traffic must involve very considerable 
 pecuniary sacrifice, which could not be wholly avoided by 
 adoption of the Gothenburg system. The Permissive Bill 
 would, I think, become a practical measure if to it were 
 added clauses such as have been sketched, altering the system 
 of licensing, imposing besides the Excise licence a Rent 
 belonging to the local authority, and providing compensation. 
 
 1 Rather free than sober ! ' Thus spake the Anglican- 
 Hibernian Bishop of Peterborough, and long will Dr. Magee's 
 words be rung in our ears. It seems to me hardly more 
 difficult to resist a feeling of contempt for a drunkard than 
 for a sober man who is not a free man. To be sober is to 
 be free ; to be intemperate is to be a slave. This agitation 
 has bred fanatics on both sides. Egged on one by the other, 
 they prove the most astounding things, to the immense satis- 
 faction of themselves and their followers. If Mr. Bass does 
 
264 The Intoxicating Liquors Question. 
 
 not exactly write a new Ebrietatis Encomium, he now and 
 then does all that figures can accomplish to show that people 
 do not drink enough. While one party expends real vigour 
 in the curious task of proving that wine is not commended in 
 the Bible, the other dilates upon * the intercourse and recrea- 
 tion of the public-house ; ' and Scotland is racked with doubt 
 concerning the great sacramental controversy, entitled ' Wine 
 or Must ? ' which is to determine whether a teetotaler can be 
 compelled, on pain of loss of Church membership, to sip the 
 cup of wine when he demands the unfermented must. But 
 above and beyond all the fanaticism, all the selfishness, and 
 all the strife, rests the sad truth, which I despair of putting 
 more forcibly, and more hopefully, than did Mr. Bright when 
 he said : ' If we could subtract from the ignorance, the 
 poverty, the suffering, the sickness, and. the crime which are 
 now witnessed among us, the ignorance, the poverty, the 
 suffering, the sickness, and the crime which are caused by one 
 single, but the most prevalent, habit or vice of drinking 
 needlessly, which destroys the body and mind, and home and 
 family, do we not all feel that this country would be so 
 changed, and so changed for the better, that it would be 
 almost impossible for us to know it again ? Let me, then, 
 in conclusion, say what it is upon my heart to say, what I 
 know to be true, what I have felt every hour of my life when I 
 have been discussing great questions affecting the condition 
 of the working classes let me say this to all the people, that 
 it is by the combination of a wise Government and a virtuous 
 people, and not otherwise mark that that we might hope 
 to make some steps to that blessed time when there shall be 
 " no complaining in our streets," and when " our garners may 
 be full, affording all manner of store." ' 
 
 1 Speech of the Right Hon. J. Bright, at Birmingham, January, 1870. 
 
26=; 
 
 XII. 
 
 TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT IN CASUAL 
 DISTRESS. 
 
 ~"*HE indigent poor, for whom the legal machinery of relief 
 *- exists, do not, in ordinary times, comprise many of the 
 working class, in which I include those regularly attached to 
 any trade or manufacture, with some special instruction in its 
 operations. But the vast capital, which, in the United King- 
 dom, is applied to productive industry, will sometimes over- 
 reach the demand for the products of a particular branch 
 of this manifold labour, and so occasionally necessitate the 
 partial or complete suspension of that employment, causing 
 a large number of the workpeople to become dependent upon 
 legal or charitable relief for the necessaries of life. A partial 
 cessation of demand in any trade may be caused by an out- 
 break of war, in which our country is neutral, an occurrence 
 which no human prescience can foretell ; and in any one of 
 our great towns such an event may cause a thousand able- 
 bodied men to be suddenly deprived of their ordinary 
 employment. In such a case, it is obviously the interest of 
 all to keep the men upon the place of their labour, ready to 
 resume their productive industry. 
 
 Their strength and skill form a valuable portion of the 
 capital of the country. If they are forced to migrate to 
 other localities, and pressed by hunger to find employment 
 in less valuable industry than that to which they have 
 educated themselves, there is to them an individual loss, and 
 
266 Temporary Employment in Carnal Distress. 
 
 there is national loss also, for the skill of a working man is 
 his capital, and a part of the national capital, just as much 
 as any sum of money which his employer has lodged at his 
 banker's. If the man degrade his skill or loses it through 
 long-continued rough labour, so that he never can resume 
 his customary work, an ignorant waste has been committed 
 which it is our present purpose to avoid, by suggesting the 
 means of providing local labour to be undertaken during and 
 only so long as the stoppage of production in any trade shall 
 continue. 
 
 I am of opinion that we shall never see that improvement 
 in the position of the working classes which is the most 
 urgent demand of our time, till labour is placed by its own 
 efforts and those of its enlightened friends in such a position 
 at home as to counteract the charms of emigration. I am 
 not of course alluding to the emigration of individuals who 
 have peculiar taste or fitness for colonial life, but of that in- 
 discriminate emigration which has been carried on and which 
 many have regarded with inconsiderate delight. For emi- 
 gration, whether patronised or voluntary, is national blood- 
 letting of a doubtful and possibly of a dangerous character. 
 I have observed that ' assisted ' emigration, which supple- 
 ments a working man's savings with a grant, deprives the 
 country of the very flower of the operative class, and takes 
 from that class those bright examples of thrift and pru- 
 dence of careful management and good household economy 
 whose presence in this country confers far wider benefits 
 upon humanity than any to be gained by their expatriation. 
 
 Voluntary emigration, which it should be our aim to 
 counteract by elevating and improving the life of labour at 
 home, has been letting out the life-blood of the nation and 
 leaving behind that which is less vital and healthy. I will 
 venture to exhibit this fact in its darkest colours by a refer- 
 ence to that part of the United Kingdom where emigration has 
 been most general comparing the two census years 1851 and 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 267 
 
 1 86 1 ; and it will be seen how by the deportation of the 
 able-bodied only the proportion of deaf and dumb, of blind, 
 of insane, of the idiotic, and of the lame and decrepit had 
 increased in Ireland : 
 
 PROPORTION TO POPULATION. 
 
 1851. 1861. 
 
 Deaf and Dumb ... ... I to 1,265 I to 1,026 
 
 Blind I to 864 I to 843 
 
 Insane ... I to 1,291 ... ... I to 1,821 
 
 Idiotic ' ... I to 1,336 I to 825 
 
 Lame and Decrepit ... I to 1,498 I to 1,408 
 
 I contend that it is in the highest degree dangerous to the 
 vital interests of the country to regard emigration as the ever- 
 ready panacea for distress. What our working classes most 
 stand in need of is education and that economy in the affairs 
 of common life which we trust will be its result. But if this 
 is only to lead to the departure of such as are most success- 
 ful in the acquisition, England, in bestowing this education, 
 will be performing an act of duty righteous and too long 
 delayed but suicidal. Therefore, it is our aim in considering 
 this subject of employment during seasons of temporary 
 distress, to make such provision as will not render the life 
 of labour less attractive, and to counteract the invitation of 
 friends across the Atlantic and at the antipodes. 
 
 It is a good symptom of moral health, that working men 
 thus accidentally deprived of employment, by causes which 
 they could neither foresee nor control, should be unwilling to 
 apply to guardians of the poor for relief ; because they are 
 in want of wages, not alms, and the Poor Law was not in- 
 tended to supply wages, and cannot afford wages without 
 danger of great disturbance of industry. The intention of 
 the Poor Law and its customary duty, is to provide for the 
 relief of the ' residuum ' ; of that most unfortunate class of 
 persons which is in a condition of chronic indigence, often 
 the result of a vicious and intemperate life ; often the fault- 
 less consequence of naturally feeble intellect left without a 
 
268 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 kindly effort towards development. But the more general 
 cause of application for Poor Law relief is sickness, incurable 
 disease, and old age, when work is impossible. In all these 
 causes, except the first, no shame should attach to the receipt 
 of Poor Law relief. Such are entitled by right to the pittance 
 which the law awards them, and, often present at its bestowal, 
 I have grieved deeply to feel the necessity for its insufficiency, 
 in regard to the provision of comfort. 
 
 But it is not likely that a working man, in full possession 
 of active and skilful faculties, whose rapidly increasing family, 
 it may be, has prevented any saving, would not feel shame at 
 being classed with such incapables. His pride in his strength 
 and his ability, so useful to himself and his country, revolts 
 at such association. I visited hundreds of poor homes in 
 Lancashire during the Cotton Famine distress, and I can 
 say confidently that the nearest approach to starvation 
 among that immense population was in those cases where 
 pride strove with want, unwilling to demand relief from 
 the Poor Law, which I am bound to admit was always 
 extended with readiness and consideration. What bankruptcy 
 is to the solvent, honourable men of the commercial class, 
 pauperism is to the best of the working class a surrender 
 of that which can never be regained. But the French 
 proverb, ce riest que le premier pas qui coute, is never more 
 true than in this matter, and I observed in Lancashire, how 
 that once ' th' relief was accepted, the proud independence 
 not seldom ceased to appear wounded, and that the same 
 people who had displayed so honourable a resistance, would 
 often prefer the 2s. or $s. per head of charitable relief 
 which allowed them to lie in bed half the day, rather than 
 five or six times the amount in wages, to be earned only by 
 regular and steady labour. It is therefore most desirable 
 for their sake and for the wider interests of the community, 
 to keep the operatives and workmen suffering temporary 
 distress from seeking the relief of the Poor Law. The Poor 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 269 
 
 Law has done all that is possible to prevent idleness by 
 demanding an outdoor-labour * test ' of every able-bodied 
 man who receives relief out of the workhouse. It is the 
 function of guardians to prevent starvation, not to promote 
 employment, and they cannot pay wages, or compete with 
 employers. The health of a man with a wife and a 
 family of six children will demand from them at least I2s. 
 per week as the barest sum upon which their life can be 
 maintained ; but a single man, equally valuable in respect of 
 his labour, may be equally well preserved against starvation 
 with a weekly allowance of 3^. 6d. 
 
 Guardians of the poor cannot undertake productive industry 
 without effecting much harm. If they engage the distressed 
 workpeople in the particular trade to which they t are ac- 
 customed, their stock would further diminish the value of 
 those, the too great accumulation of which has been the 
 cause of distress. And if, with operatives quite unaccustomed 
 to the work, they undertook the production of goods foreign 
 to the area of their jurisdiction, they could not compete 
 with the skilled producers of such articles, and they must 
 sell their badly made goods at a loss, making up the wages 
 of the poor out of the rates. So that in any case, if 
 guardians undertook productive labour, they must supple- 
 ment the payment with Poor Law relief. Probably, they 
 would be displacing labour in another locality, creating 
 elsewhere an equivalent amount of pauperism, and thus 
 doubling the extent of distress. Moreover it would be 
 necessary under such a system to guarantee a minimum of 
 wages, which would be given alike to idle and diligent, and 
 if these wages approximated to those which rewarded inde- 
 pendent labour as perhaps they would in the case of 
 men with large families the guardians would find them- 
 selves permanently charged with an immense population, 
 growing with embarrassing rapidity, the value of whose 
 labour would decline until, by the bankruptcy of the Union 
 
270 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 and their inability any longer to supplement the insufficient 
 earnings of the people, the system collapsed with a disaster 
 and famine and pestilence, the natural remedies of economic 
 error, made ghastly claim to interference. 
 
 Therefore in the test of indigence, the guardians of the 
 poor, as well as all voluntary associations formed for relief 
 of distress, have experienced great difficulty in providing 
 employment even for ordinary times, but, in extraordinary 
 seasons, such as it is my purpose to deal with, they have 
 wholly failed to meet the occasion. It must excite surprise 
 in the minds of those who have not given much consider- 
 ation to the subject, to hear that besides stone- breaking 
 and oakum-picking there are no employments extensively 
 used for the ' test ' of indigence. And this is the more 
 unfortunate, because it would not be possible to mention 
 any two kinds of labour more painful to unpractised hands. 
 Well do I remember seeing the blistered hands of hundreds 
 of cotton operatives who could scarcely bear to touch the 
 stone hammer for three weeks after they commenced the 
 labour ; and bleeding fingers with broken nails are always 
 the painful result of inexperienced attempts at oakum-picking. 
 Labouring with a spade or pickaxe ; quarrying and loading 
 stone, or even the work of roughly squaring stone, does not 
 ' jar ' the hands so cruelly as the task of breaking stones 
 for road-mending, and there is no labour which has so ex- 
 clusively bad, so peculiarly criminal a reputation as picking 
 oakum, and I think, from a good deal of observation, there 
 is none which men so much dislike. Such labour is used 
 as task work little or no encouragement is given to break 
 or pick a larger quantity. The man breaks a yard of stones 
 or picks so many pounds' weight of oakum, and then he is 
 entitled to a pauper's sustenance. 
 
 Labour of this sort is intended to prevent demoralisation, 
 in which it fails completely. I do not say that it is use- 
 less, but I am certainly of opinion that when applied to 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 271 
 
 unfortunate working men it promotes demoralisation by 
 degrading labour. If the best and most intelligent motive 
 of labour, the completion of some work worthy of the 
 labourer, or the acquisition of wages proportioned to the 
 skill and strength expended, be not fulfilled if the uninterest- 
 ing, uncongenial, and unrecompensed task is compulsorily 
 imposed, the workman if he be a true workman is 
 degraded. 
 
 But it is not uncommon for even a more demoralising 
 system than this to be practised with the victims of temporary 
 distress. Yet a worse method is the requirement of work for 
 so much time, perhaps one day a week, in consideration of the 
 relief afforded. I have several times watched such schools of 
 idleness. This system of labour is, I think, more injurious 
 than total and declared abstinence from work, because it 
 destroys, in the mind of the working man, any ideas he may 
 have formed as to the dignity of labour, and positively teaches 
 him idleness a teaching and a habit much more easily 
 acquired than thrown off. In order to make my meaning 
 more clear, I will relate the operation of Relief Committees in 
 two of the towns of Lancashire, during the Cotton Famine, 
 which, being unwilling to dispense the money entrusted to 
 them without some requirement of labour, undertook at fair 
 rates of payment earthworks of the simplest description ; in 
 one place, the easy formation, in a sandy soil, of roads upon a 
 field of building land ; in the other, the removal of a large 
 heap of dirt both works admirably adapted for the employ- 
 ment of unskilled labour. I watched the men, talking, lying 
 in their barrows, taking a long rest between every exertion, 
 and desired the local officers in charge of the works to com- 
 municate to me the results upon completion. By the figures 
 they sent me, I found that if, upon the road-forming, the men 
 had received only their daily earnings, each would have been 
 paid with less than \d. a day, and that the dirt-heap, for the 
 removal of which the other Relief Committee received from the 
 
272 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 landowner the just price of 17 Js. was not cleared away 
 for less than 476 6s. 6d. ; in other words, the Committee 
 undertook the work at 2d. per cubic yard, and its execution 
 cost them twenty-four times as much, or 4^. per cubic yard. 
 
 Upon the subject of the production by public authorities of 
 saleable commodities, it is useful to regard the results of prison 
 labour. I wish to give the Directors of our Convict Prisons 
 great praise for the manner in which they have endeavoured 
 to make the compulsory labour of prisoners remunerative. 
 For the first time, in the not far-reaching history of prison 
 economy, an English prison of the largest dimensions may be 
 said to have paid its cost to the country in the year 1867. 
 The convict prison at Chatham, employing a daily average 
 of 990 men, incurred expenses, during that year, amount- 
 ing to 35,315 1 8s. During the same period, the value 
 of the prisoners' labour, taken upon schedules approved 
 by the Admiralty and the War Department, amounted to 
 40,898 Js. v\d. ; so that the total sum earned by the con- 
 victs at Chatham, during the year 1867, exceeded by the 
 amount of 5,582 8s. n^d. the expenditure for their food, 
 clothing, and all the necessarily heavy cost of their training 
 and supervision. 
 
 This is a very important fact, and although convicts have no 
 connection with the class we are especially considering, yet it 
 has this association with our subject, that even under penal 
 compulsion this great result was never attained until the 
 introduction of the ' mark ' system, by which prisoners are 
 encouraged to work for the reward of privileges and small 
 gratuities which are found to act as sufficient incentives to 
 labour. The history of this success was told in the Report 
 of the Governor of Chatham Prison, and in the following 
 words : 
 
 1 A large number of the convicts, whose labour has been 
 classed under this head (Admiralty Works), have been employed 
 in the different descriptions of work connected with the manu- 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 273 
 
 facture of bricks on a large scale ; upwards of 1 7,000,000 
 bricks were made by them during the season.' 
 
 But in the employment of the indigent poor, no such pro- 
 ductive labour can be undertaken with a view of giving the 
 men, during the suspension of their proper trade, a fair day's 
 pay for a day's work. If guardians of the poor undertook the 
 manufacture of bricks, they would certainly fail in making 
 them at a profit if they paid distressed men the usual rate of 
 wages ; and the brick-makers in the union, whose stocks would 
 be depreciated in value by the guardians pressing their bricks 
 upon the market, would be taxed as ratepayers to assist the 
 guardians in producing bricks to their own further ruin, and so 
 on in all trades. 
 
 Stone-breaking and oakum-picking are adopted simply as 
 the basest occupations and for no other reason. But the 
 supply of broken stones or of oakum may be too great, and it 
 is obvious that these degrading employments, though they 
 may be fitted for a ' test ' with tramps and vagabonds, are not 
 suited for the class now under our consideration. I think it 
 follows from these premisses that the labour of such men must 
 be employed upon works of public utility, in actual relation 
 with the improvement of that which I will call the national 
 freehold. They cannot be employed in connection with their 
 own trade, for it is the stoppage of that trade which has 
 reduced them to want. I have shown that as men working 
 for wages they must not invade the area of any other industry 
 under the protection of the guardians or any local authority. 
 If they produce anything in their own trade, they defer the 
 time when they may resume their customary employment, and 
 if they attempt another, the operatives and workmen of that 
 trade have to be taxed to supplement their inexperience. But 
 if, by works of land-drainage, they can give the soil greater 
 fertility if, by providing for the storage of water, they benefit 
 the health and convenience of communities and promote the 
 fertilisation of crops in dry seasons if, by shortening, levelling, 
 
 T 
 
274 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 and improving highways, they can lessen the difficulties of 
 intercommunication and the cost of carriage if, by reclaiming 
 land from wastes, and swamps, and shores, they can increase 
 the area of cultivation if, by the execution of house-drainage 
 and sewerage works they can promote health and strength, 
 cleanliness and self-respect ; if, by these and many other such 
 useful works, they can earn wages, these wide fields of labour 
 are open to them, and when they resume their customary 
 industry, after assisting in such undertakings, they can look 
 with pride upon the useful works their hands have accom- 
 plished. 
 
 I have now, I hope I may be allowed to say, narrowed 
 the subject so far as to make it plain : 1st. That in seasons 
 of temporary distress, it is unadvisable to promote emigration. 
 2nd. That the production of saleable commodities cannot be 
 undertaken. 3rd. That in any employment of persons so 
 accidentally reduced to indigence, it is absolutely necessary to 
 provide such labour as that at which they can earn wages 
 sufficient for their maintenance. 4th. That no more than 
 the proper value of their labour should be given in pay- 
 ment for the execution of such work. 5th. That the labour 
 of indigent persons during periods of temporary distress, 
 employed by guardians of the poor or any other local and 
 corporate authority, must be confined to works which will 
 come under the denomination of 'public utility} or ' sanitary 
 improvement? 
 
 These words are extracted from Mr. Charles Villiers' Public 
 Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act, 1863, and the plan I 
 propose and recommend for the employment of the poor 
 during seasons of temporary distress, is founded upon my 
 experience in the administration of that Act. And generally 
 successful as that Act was in operation, I must say that it 
 could not possibly have been introduced among a population 
 less fitted for outdoor labour. Accustomed to work in mills, 
 purposely kept at a high temperature, the cotton operatives are 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 275 
 
 men of soft skin and loose muscles the last that would be 
 chosen for handling a pickaxe or a shovel. By that measure, 
 and by a subsequent Act of 1864, a sum of 2,000,000 was 
 devoted to such works, my connection with which, commenc- 
 ing in 1863, was not terminated until the beginning of 1867. 
 
 During each year that the works were in progress I made 
 more than two hundred official inspections, and after they had 
 been a few weeks on the ground I could never distinguish 
 factory operatives from * skilled ' men. Their faces reddened, 
 their muscles strengthened, and their whole frames were invigo- 
 rated by the labour. I have seen cotton operatives delighting 
 in their quickly acquired skill in the construction of sewers, 
 using the levelling staves and ' boning rods ' with complete 
 understanding of those appliances ; and I do not think that 
 land-draining could be better executed than some work I 
 saw performed mainly by the labour of cotton operatives 
 both in Lancashire and Derbyshire. If it be admitted that 
 only works of ' public utility and sanitary improvement ' can 
 properly be undertaken, and I am in a position to show that 
 under a system of employment which in conjunction with my 
 friend Mr. Rawlinson I watched, and with every detail of 
 which I am thoroughly acquainted, nearly 4,000 cotton opera- 
 tives, than whom no men could be more unfit for such labour, 
 found employment upon the works, and that their average earn- 
 ings, at fairly measured piece-work, were more than I2s. 6d. 
 per week, it seems sufficient to explain the operation of such 
 a system and how it can be made of universal application. 
 
 This is what I intend to do, proposing such amendments as 
 my experience suggests ; and some of these will have especial 
 reference to bringing the provisions of a Public Works Act 
 more quickly and easily into operation than was accom- 
 plished during the Cotton Famine . 
 
 I would propose that a Public Works Act should be passed, 
 applicable to the United Kingdom, limiting to 2,000,000 the 
 annual sum which the Treasury should be empowered to pay 
 
276 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 to the Public Works Loan Commissioners for the purposes of 
 the Act ; the special consent of Parliament being obtained if 
 any further sum was required in any one year. I think it 
 is desirable that a Minister should be directly responsible for 
 the reorganised business of the existing Public Works Loan 
 Commission ; but so long as that remains without a chief 
 directly subject to parliamentary control, the advances for the 
 purposes of the Act should be made by the Public Works 
 Loan Commissioners, upon orders bearing the seal of the Poor 
 Law Board and the signature of the President of that Board 
 for the time being. 
 
 As a matter of detail, it would be desirable that printed 
 forms of these orders should be kept in readiness at the office 
 of the Board, and printed deeds of security at the office of the 
 Public Works Loan Commissioners, in order to reduce as 
 much as possible the cost to the local authorities of obtaining 
 loans, and to avoid delay in passing the moneys to their 
 account. We found in practice, that delay and expense were 
 caused by the local authorities having to deal with two public 
 offices, and it would undoubtedly be desirable to concentrate 
 all the business of the loans under one department. 
 
 Loans should be made to any Local Board acting under the 
 Local Government Act 1858 to any local authorities in- 
 vested with powers of town government and rating under any 
 local Act, by whatever name such local authority may be 
 called to any commissioners or body of persons, or any 
 other authority having power to levy rates for general or 
 special purposes, and to any guardians of the poor who have 
 authority to borrow. 
 
 No previous limitation of borrowing powers, by any local 
 Act, should affect the claim of any local authority to borrow 
 under the Public Works Act a sum equal to one year's 
 rateable value of the property assessable within the district, or 
 parish, or place, in respect of which the loan is applied for. 
 Any local authority having borrowed to this full amount may 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 277 
 
 again mortgage their rates and obtain a further loan, an equal 
 amount of the original loan being already repaid. 
 
 The cost to the Government of the money advanced under 
 the provisions of the Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) 
 Act 1863, was 3i per cent., the rate of interest charged upon 
 the advances being 3^ per cent, per annum. If this advan- 
 tage of \ per cent, can be maintained, it should be applied to 
 the cost of inspection to which I will refer hereafter, and 
 the surplus in reduction of the costs of the mortgage deeds, so 
 that as nearly as possible the charge of 3i per cent, per annum 
 for interest should represent the total expense to the local 
 authorities. 
 
 The repayment of the loans under the provisions of the 
 Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act 1863, was by 
 thirty equal instalments of principal, the annually diminishing 
 interest being added. I think that a better plan would be to 
 calculate principal and interest together, in which case the 
 annual payment for thirty years of about 5 per cent, upon the 
 total amount of the loan would pay off both principal and 
 interest, with the advantage to the local authorities of paying 
 an equal sum every year. 
 
 The security for the loans would be upon mortgage of the 
 rates of the city, borough, district, parish, or township in 
 respect of which the loan was applied for, including 'any 
 property of which the local authority was possessed in that 
 locality. 
 
 It would be requisite that the works proposed to be under- 
 taken should be of public utility or sanitary improvement, and 
 the expediency of granting loans would be determined by the 
 department charged with the administration of the Act, the 
 Minister at the head of such department being responsible 
 for the loans, the grant of which would in every case bear 
 his signature as authority for the advance of money. 
 
 The loans must be exclusively devoted to the actual works 
 in respect of which such sanction is given. 
 
278 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 The money would be advanced in such instalments as the 
 department charged with the administration of the Act 
 thought proper to sanction, and the payment of any instal- 
 ment might be postponed or withheld on notice being given 
 by the department to the local authority, that the works 
 were not being proceeded with in conformity with the plan 
 proposed. 
 
 But the department should have power to sanction altera- 
 tion of plans on the advice of their inspectors, being at the 
 same time free from all responsibility in respect to the design 
 and execution of the works, which, together with the requisite 
 superintendence, would be entirely committed to the local 
 authorities and their officers. 
 
 The Minister presiding over the department should have 
 power to appoint inspectors of public works, whose duty 
 would be to examine the plans, specifications, and estimates, 
 submitted with each application for a loan, and to report 
 upon these to the department ; the inspectors having full 
 power and authority, at all reasonable times, to enter upon 
 and survey the works or the site of the works, and to inspect 
 the accounts of any local authority engaged in the execution 
 of works, or in any expenditure of a loan obtained under the 
 provisions of the Act. 
 
 The /th clause of the Public Works (Manufacturing 
 Districts) Act 1863, abridging the times of notices requisite 
 for the adoption of the Local Government Act, I would 
 entirely incorporate. 
 
 With reference to the sewering, drainage, forming and 
 paving of private streets, I would recommend that every 
 proper facility should be given to local authorities in serving 
 notices upon owners of property, printed forms of such notices 
 being always used, the general plan of the works, together with 
 specifications and estimates, being deposited for examination. 
 In charging the cost of such works to owners of property, 
 the local authority should be empowered to include a fair 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 279 
 
 percentage of the general expenses for plant and superin- 
 tendence beyond the actual cost of the works ; and the 
 owners of property should be entitled, at their option, to pay 
 their debt at once, or with interest at 3$ per cent, in any 
 number of years not exceeding thirty. 
 
 With the sanction of the department charged with the 
 administration of the Act, any local authority should have 
 power to agree with any owner of land, not necessarily within 
 the area of their jurisdiction, but within the Poor Law Union 
 within the boundaries of which the local authority was vested, 
 to undertake works of improvement, the proprietor repaying 
 their expenditure, with interest at the rate of 3^ per cent, in 
 thirty (or less at his option) annual instalments. 
 
 Where such owner has but a limited estate, he should have 
 power by deed to charge the cost of such improvement works 
 upon the inheritance of the property, a certificate of one of the 
 inspectors of public works being attached to such deed, certi- 
 fying that the works had been duly executed, and that the 
 charge upon the estate is warranted by the improvement which 
 has been effected. 
 
 In case of the guardians of any union undertaking public 
 works in any part of their union, they must resolve at a 
 meeting, after special notice in writing sent to every elected 
 and every ex-officio guardian, that the execution of the pro- 
 posed works would promote the health or the convenience 
 of the inhabitants of such place, and the cost of the works 
 must be charged upon the place in which the money is 
 expended ; and if in two or more places, then in proportion 
 to the outlay in each place. The guardians may appoint a 
 committee, of which the elected guardian or guardians, and any 
 resident magistrates, should be ex-officio members, delegating 
 to it full power to direct and carry on the works. 
 
 There is no city, or town, or district in the kingdom in 
 which there is no need for the execution of works of public 
 utility and sanitary improvement. Many are wholly without 
 
280 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 sewers, or only supplied with old drains which are nothing 
 better than poisonous cesspools ; many have no other water 
 supply but from polluted wells ; many draw their contami- 
 nated supply from brooks full of sewage and other impurities ; 
 in many, old streets are badly paved, and new, or by-streets, 
 are impassable in winter, the surfaces covered with putrid 
 filth thrown out from the houses ; scarcely a river-bed is 
 properly and periodically cleansed of the accumulations 
 brought by storms, which, obstructed by the bridges and 
 buildings of towns, are usually deposited in their neighbour- 
 hood. 
 
 It may be said, that near every town there are undrained 
 lands injuriously affecting the health of the population, the 
 fertility of which would be greatly increased by drainage. 
 Upon the public highways there are, in every direction, hills 
 which might be levelled and valleys filled up with great 
 benefit to the public convenience and reduction from the 
 cost of cartage. I could mention two places where every 
 farmer, in a wagon-journey of six miles to the railway, has 
 to send two extra horses, merely for three hundred yards of 
 rising ground, which, with an expenditure of 200, might be 
 made as easy as the remainder of the road. 
 
 The permanent works of highway improvement executed 
 in several rural parishes under the provisions of the Public 
 Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act 1863, effected a saving 
 of 50 per cent, of the highway rates, the cost of repairs, 
 including the annual sum due on account of repayment of the 
 loans, being permanently reduced by that percentage. 
 
 About 68 per cent, of the sum advanced under the pro- 
 visions of that Act was applied to the execution of sewerage, 
 drainage, road and street works. 
 
 In the execution of sewerage works in the Borough of 
 Stockport, out of 200 men employed, 160 were cotton 
 operatives, who earned wages averaging 15^. %d. per man 
 per week. 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 281 
 
 In the borough of Bolton, in digging a reservoir for 
 water supply, out of 336 men employed, 280 were cotton 
 operatives, whose average weekly earnings were 1 2 s. jd. per 
 
 man. 
 
 In the Union of Glossop, where, through the Board of 
 Guardians, Lord Edward Howard (now Lord Howard of 
 Glossop,) expended 20,000 in reclaiming land, in land- 
 drainage and water-works, more than 400 cotton operatives 
 were employed, whose average weekly earnings exceeded 
 1 2 s. for each man ; and the expenditure of this large sum, 
 upon the completion of all the works, was found to be thus 
 proportioned for every pound: labour, 1 3^. n|^. ; materials, 
 $s. 2\d. ; team work, is. \\\d.\ plant and materials, iof</. 
 
 These are but fair samples of what was accomplished in 
 very many of the ninety places in which works were under- 
 taken under the provisions of the Public Works (Manufacturing 
 Districts) Act 1863. 
 
 The works executed under such an Act are all of so 
 beneficial a character that their commencement before the 
 occurrence of distress, or their completion after it has passed 
 away, are thoroughly advantageous and satisfactory. With 
 reference to works executed in the Union of Macclesfield, the 
 Clerk to the Board of Guardians wrote : 'It is a striking 
 fact that in one street in particular, where fever always more 
 or less existed, and where the labours of the Union surgeon 
 were in constant requisition, no sooner had the main sewer 
 passed each range of houses and provided for the surface and 
 house drainage, than the fever abated, and finally there was 
 not a single case in the street, an event previously unknown in 
 the experience of the relieving officer, and this too at a time 
 when the local relief committee was in full action, providing 
 for destitution, which generally under other circumstances is 
 the precursor of fever and other contagious diseases.' 
 
 It would be desirable that the department charged with the 
 administration of the Act should issue instructions and sug- 
 
282 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 gestions for the execution of works, drawn up by the in- 
 spectors, pointing out the most improved methods of designing 
 and carrying out works of sewerage, house and land drainage, 
 water-supply, and with reference to other public works ; these 
 printed suggestions to be always had on application to the 
 department. During the administration of the Public Works 
 (Manufacturing Districts) Act 1863, the local authorities 
 readily adopted the resident inspector's suggestions, and in 
 dealings with ninety local authorities nothing occurred to en- 
 danger the cordial co-operation of any one of them with the 
 Government. The local authorities were always glad to avail 
 themselves of his advice, partly because it was gratuitous and 
 presumably independent. 
 
 In order to bring the Act quickly into operation upon the 
 occurrence of sudden distress, local authorities should be 
 advised to prepare and keep in readiness plans and estimates 
 of such public works as they could undertake, preferring 
 those which would afford most employment for unskilled 
 labour. 
 
 At the commencement of operations, it would generally be 
 necessary to supplement the earnings of unskilled men for 
 a ' training ' of four weeks. From the first, they should 
 be employed upon measured or piece-work, and to the 
 married men with families a small supplementary allowance 
 might be given during this period. After four weeks' 
 training, able-bodied men will be able to earn fair wages, 
 and those who do not, being able-bodied, should be dis- 
 charged from the public works and left to seek Poor Law 
 relief. 
 
 The same men who, when employed by the Relief Com- 
 mittee to which I have referred, were loitering, lying on their 
 barrows, and earning less than \d. a day, earned more than 
 I2s. each in the first week they were engaged upon piece- 
 work under the provisions of the Public Works (Manufacturing 
 Districts) Act 1863. 
 
Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 283 
 
 The execution of the works should be entirely under local 
 superintendence, the Government Inspectors having no authority 
 to direct their progress. The unskilled men should be divided 
 into gangs with a skilled man at the head of each gang. 
 After a month's experience, and sometimes much less, the 
 cotton operatives ' ganged ' themselves, with one of them- 
 selves for leader, and I have heard men who earned less 
 than f d. a day upon the ' make-work ' system scold one of 
 their gang for losing a moment's time by laying down his 
 shovel to speak to a friend. Such is the effect of working for 
 wages upon piece-work. 
 
 The formation of public parks or cemeteries affords very 
 much opportunity for the employment of unskilled labour. 
 The cotton operatives of Oldham laid out a public park in the 
 neighbourhood of that borough, and I have many times heard 
 them allude with pride to their share in the labour of such or 
 such a part of that ornamental and useful work. 
 
 The weakly and aged men, who are capable of work, may 
 be provided with employment under cover in bad weather, in 
 preparing materials for the abler-bodied. 
 
 Charitable committees may very usefully co-operate with 
 local authorities by providing warm clothing and thick boots 
 for men engaged upon public works, and assisting those who 
 from sickness are not capable of such labour. But it has 
 been found impracticable for any voluntary association to 
 undertake the execution of public works, because such a body 
 cannot enter into binding contracts, having no sufficient 
 corporate existence, and the individual members refuse to be 
 personally responsible. Such committees may also very 
 beneficially co-operate by establishing schools for the men 
 who cannot find employment on the works, and night schools 
 for those so employed, encouraging the former with gratuities 
 sufficient for their maintenance, according to their progress in 
 the school, and the latter with smaller gratuities for their fewer 
 hours of study. 
 
284 Temporary Employment in Casual Distress. 
 
 They may also establish schools for boys whose fathers 
 are distressed by the suspension of their customary work, and 
 schools, with sewing-schools attached to them, for women 
 and girls who are able to attend, always accompanied, for 
 both, with instruction in household economy in cooking, 
 washing linen, in general cleanliness and good order. For 
 want of such training, I have seen in the ' pig-tubs ' of poor 
 cotton operatives such good food wasted, as in the houses of 
 their employers would never be thrown away. 
 
 It is probable that in any other county than Lancashire 
 a much larger sum would have been applied for, to be 
 expended in land drainage ; but agriculture is nowhere more 
 neglected than in the cotton district. About four hundred 
 miles of main sewers and drains were laid, and an equal 
 length of road and street works undertaken and completed. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the advantage of obtaining 
 money for the execution of public works at the rate of 3i per 
 cent, and upon such easy terms of repayment, would conduce 
 greatly to the sanitary improvement of the country, and would 
 ensure applications for loans being made in times of distress, 
 when it may be anticipated that local authorities would be 
 anxious to prevent the emigration or the pauperisation of un- 
 fortunate operatives and workmen, and also to avoid the heavy 
 poor-rates with which they must otherwise be charged. 
 

 XIII. 
 
 A REPLY TO CASSANDRA. 
 
 T3 ECALMED in the vessel of State, I was suddenly alarmed 
 -^ by a cry of ' Rocks ahead ! ' and on looking up in a 
 tranquil time, I felt tempted to say, ' It is only Mr. Greg,' and 
 to resume a careless attitude. I remember to have heard 
 Thackeray tell how that once on leaving London for Brighton 
 he purchased a number of a cheap publication called ' Mysteries 
 of the Court/ which was not calculated to sanctify the memory 
 of His Majesty King George IV. Seven years afterwards, 
 when about to re-travel the same journey, he bought another 
 number of the mysterious issue, and to his surprise he found 
 His Majesty ' still at it.' I have no hope whatever of detaching 
 Mr. Greg from his favourite role ; he is always pointing to 
 ' rocks ahead ' ; according to him there are, there always will 
 be, ' rocks ahead.' But now he appears as a seer as well as an 
 economist and as a politician. We must not suppose that 
 his cry is simply that of an amateur, spying distant rocks, the 
 mere sight of which of course bodes no danger. It is not as 
 a simple traveller that Mr. Greg must be regarded ; he is 
 Cassandra Cassandra beloved and maltreated by the gods ; 
 Cassandra heard and disregarded by inferior creatures. 
 
 I may be thought presumptuous if I attempt a reply to 
 communications of this sort ; our Cassandra's eyesight is so 
 superior to that of ordinary mortals. These ' rocks ' are 
 visible, but only * to an observant and forecasting mind.' 
 ' Englishmen never did look far before them ; but,' says our 
 
2 g5 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 Cassandra, ' I will signalise those dangers which I seem to see 
 coming/ It may well be thought audacious for one who has 
 no pretensions to prophecy to look straight in the face of 
 superior wisdom of this sort and smile with assured confidence 
 and contradiction. Mr. Greg having, however, brought the 
 rocks within the range of common sight, we may pause to look 
 at them with him. They are three, and are labelled : 
 
 1. The political supremacy of the working classes. 
 
 2. The approaching industrial decline of England. 
 
 3. The divorce of the Intelligence of the country from its 
 
 Religion. 
 
 As I do not intend to devote three articles to a reply, I 
 cannot equal Mr. Greg in expansiveness of argument. But 
 I should not have taken up my pen if I did not feel that 
 within the narrower limits to which I subject myself I could 
 make it plain that Mr. Greg's arguments and statistics are 
 confused, inconsequent, contradictory, and based upon error : 
 and I shall not fully attain my end if I do not still further 
 discredit as political guides the members of the school of which 
 he is a distinguished professor, whose critical and intellectual 
 eminence is ever vainly seeking the public ear, which is ever 
 heedless, because these gentlemen display their incapacity in 
 parading their belief that there is something magical and 
 recondite about human progress something which they alone 
 can guide and fashion, which they only can impart and 
 interpret a doctrine at which humanity has laughed success- 
 fully through all the ages of its history. One of their funda- 
 mental errors is that which we may see lurking around the 
 first of Mr. Greg's ' rocks/ and it -concerns the distribution of 
 political power. They have habitually and always viewed the 
 diffusion of power with suspicion and dislike. For my own 
 part, I have always looked upon men of this school as would- 
 be members of an oligarchy, which, if it held supremacy, 
 would drive me into revolt, probably sooner than any other 
 tyranny. Hating all oligarchies, I should decidedly prefer a 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 287 
 
 feudal oligarchy to one based upon self-sufficient intellect. 
 There would surely be more of human nature in the former, 
 and that is an excellent quality in rulers. 
 
 The diffusion of political power affects all matters of State ; 
 and if our Cassandra would not admit the right of men and 
 women to a directly representative share in the government 
 which they support by the payment of taxes, and to whose 
 laws they are prepared to render obedience, then I shall not 
 fear to fall back upon the inferior ground of expediency. I 
 will go on to show that this diffusion of power is indispensable 
 to the welfare of the people, to the enactment of just laws, 
 though we shall observe by the way that it is not only in the 
 attainment of their right as citizens, but in its civilising influ- 
 ences, that this diffusion is also valuable. I shall be prepared to 
 contend that the truest path of civilisation, and one which has 
 never led a nation to ruin, is to be found in the extension of 
 civil rights, and that the country most civilised is that in which 
 the largest proportion of the population is able in absolute 
 freedom to perform the political duties of citizenship. We 
 must be aware that there are at least two other definitions of 
 civilisation, and that our Cassandras would perhaps talk of 
 what they call 'culture/ and mourn the decline of culture as 
 an evidence of the decay of civilisation. Now I am far from 
 saying that they themselves are without no honest-minded 
 teacher is without real value and function in the State. 
 Mental culture is their proper work and duty ; and though 
 some trim their minds into strange and uncouth shapes, re- 
 sembling ' cultured ' garden shrubs of the Georgian regime, 
 and others force their intellect to unnatural and unwholesome 
 growth, while all suffer more or less from narrowness, from the 
 seclusion necessary to such culture, or, I should say, from 
 the exclusion of human infection, yet these evils are infinitely 
 preferable to the diseases incident to many callings, and may to 
 some extent at least be counteracted. These Cassandras will 
 say, perhaps, that the spread of civilisation cannot be con- 
 
288 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 current with the diffusion of political power because of the 
 decline of culture, which they allege is a consequence of that 
 diffusion, forgetting that under such circumstances culture does 
 not decline, but only appears to do so because of the large 
 number of persons, hitherto without its ken, who are suddenly 
 brought, not to the possession of culture, but within the sphere 
 of its influence. I cannot say whether our present Cassandra 
 would regard my view of civilisation as more ' unlearned ' and 
 vulgar than that third position, which, mistaking cause for 
 effect, looks up to civilisation as a huge and beneficent idol 
 whose head is the steam-engine, with the electric telegraph for 
 brain ; whose body is stuffed with paper money, with steam- 
 ships for hands, and whose legs are a compound of railways 
 and tramways. It is not this or that ; a State is civilised in 
 which the people are powerful, not for a moment but as a 
 permanent force ; and they are unlike the despot or the 
 oligarchy in this that they can only be powerful where the 
 reign of law is supreme, and where their intelligent sense of 
 self-interest guarantees the security of property and the main- 
 tenance of order. 
 
 Accepting, then, what Mr. Greg calls the ' Revolution of 
 1867,' as due to the highest interests of the country, and its 
 consequence, the numerical superiority of the lower classes in 
 the electorate, we have to consider whether the avowed bases 
 of Cassandra's warnings are substantial. We cannot be too 
 thankful for this change in the modus operandi of prophetesses, 
 though it may well be doubted if their reputation would have 
 survived had they in earlier ages made public all the grounds of 
 their dicta. But here we must pause for a moment to supply 
 an omission which is very conspicuous in Mr. Greg's papers. 
 Perhaps Cassandra, scanning the horizon, scorns to look back 
 upon ' folly at the helm,' but while I profess small reverence for 
 prophetesses, I will say that if I took to the business myself 
 and I am sure it is a very alluring profession, though its gains 
 are tenably reduced I should certainly prepare my judgments 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 289 
 
 by a careful study of the past. I want to know what we are 
 to lose by the alleged ' political supremacy of the lower classes;' 
 I want to know what we have gained by the prolonged political 
 supremacy of the upper classes. As to our country and its 
 institutions, I believe I am at least as much of a Conservative 
 as Mr. Greg ; but from his arguments it would appear that he 
 finds in the statesmanship and in the laws of the past some- 
 thing quite opposite to that which I see in them. 
 
 The ' concise ' and ' succinct ' statements from the Quarterly 
 Review, quoted by Cassandra, were, I believe, written by Mr. 
 Greg, and these would seem to assert as a fact that the golden 
 age of English history, in Mr. Greg's view, lies somewhere 
 behind 1832. This appears marvellous, but it is at least in- 
 telligible. One way of refuting the assertion that we are going 
 to ruin because of ' the political supremacy of the lower classes,' 
 is to show that the extension of the franchise has been followed 
 by universal improvement. There is to me something of in- 
 comprehensible self-delusion in a passage like this : * Previous 
 to 1832, in those old times when England was so great and 
 paramount a nation, when we were so proud of our institutions 
 when we were so exceptionally free.' I doubt if there is one 
 among the teeming millions in those ' lower classes ' of whom 
 Mr. Greg writes with such superb patronage, who, if he or she 
 were asked for an opinion on English history, would give one 
 so intrinsically ignorant, so blind, so mistaken, so utterly in- 
 correct as this, which Mr. Greg reproduces with something like 
 paternal pride. The period of his eulogy was a time when 
 from the profligate monarch on the throne to the knavish pauper 
 ' on the rounds,' corruption and disregard of right rise as it 
 were in a wall behind us. The Ministers, little more decorous 
 than those of a former time, bribed only with patronage ; the 
 Bishops, Deans, and Chapters trafficked for their own advantage 
 in leases of Church lands ; in the Army, purchase ruled where 
 nepotism did not ; in the Navy, the people were robbed by the 
 appointment and payment of the infant sons and nephews of 
 
 U 
 
2 go ^ Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 those who had power, many years before the vessels to which 
 they were nominated could be launched ; the Civil Service was 
 filled with the creatures of the governing class ; trade was 
 embarrassed by protective duties, designed to benefit the landed 
 interest ; the penal code was brutal and bloody ; the foreign 
 policy of England was rude, ignorant, and flagrantly extravagant ; 
 the people at large ' when we were so proud of our institu- 
 tions ' were, as our agricultural labourers yet remain, the most 
 
 miserable in Europe. In every one of these matters there has 
 been improvement, which I contend is chiefly due to the incor- 
 poration of the people in the government of the country. 
 
 It is well for the reputation of men like Mr. Greg, that they 
 are not tempted to set forth the national blessings of those 
 ' good old times.' Change had been slow in the 150 years 
 which preceded 1832, and it may be worth while to glance at 
 what Lord Macaulay has said of England in 1685, when 'the 
 finest of the houses in Bath, then a place of fashion/ resembled 
 'the lowest rag-shops and pot-houses of Ratcliffe Highway,' 
 when between the north and south of London there was no 
 communication save ' a single line of irregular arches, garnished 
 after a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomey, 
 with scores of mouldering heads, which impeded the navigation 
 of the river.' ' If,' wrote Lord Macaulay (who died when London 
 was almost mean and miserable, compared with its present 
 condition), ' if/ said that historian, ' the most fashionable parts 
 of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then were, 
 we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and 
 poisoned by their noisome atmosphere.' Then as now there 
 were Cassandras, who looked with fear upon the increase of 
 wages. In 1680, a Mr. John Basset, M.P. for Barnstaple } 
 remarked that the high wages paid in this country made it 
 impossible for our textures to maintain competition with the 
 produce of Indian looms. 'An English mechanic/ he said, 
 ' instead of slaving like a native of Bengal for a piece of copper, 
 exacted a shilling a day ! ' How wisely Macaulay censured 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 291 
 
 shallow reference to old times when he wrote : ' It is now the 
 fashion to place the golden age of England in times when noble- 
 men were destitute of comforts the want of which would be 
 intolerable to a modern footman, when farmers and shopkeepers 
 breakfasted on loaves the very sight of which would raise a 
 riot in a modern workhouse, when to have a clean shirt once a 
 week was a privilege reserved for the higher class of gentry, 
 when men died faster in the purest country air than they now 
 die in the most pestilential lanes of our towns, and when men 
 died faster in the lanes of our towns than they now die on the 
 coast of Guiana. We, too, shall in our turn be outstripped, 
 and in our turn be envied. It may well be in the twentieth 
 century that the peasant of Dorsetshire may think himself 
 miserably paid with twenty shillings a week ; that the carpenter 
 at Greenwich may receive ten shillings a day ; that labouring 
 men may be as little used to dine without meat as they are now 
 to eat rye bread ; that sanitary, police, and medical discoveries 
 may have added several more years to the average length of 
 human life : that numerous comforts and luxuries which are 
 now unknown (or confined to a few), may be within the reach 
 of every diligent and thrifty working man. And yet it may 
 then be the mode to talk of the reign of Queen Victoria as the 
 time when England was truly merry England, when all classes 
 were bound together by brotherly sympathy, when the rich did 
 not grind the faces of the poor, and when the poor did not envy 
 the splendour of the rich.' 
 
 Why are we in ' vital ' peril because of the numerical supre- 
 macy of the lower classes in the electorate ? It is not difficult 
 to find the soft spot to which Cassandra's warnings are directed. 
 She says : * In round numbers the population of this kingdom 
 may be divided into eight millions of persons who hold realised 
 property of some sort, and twenty-four millions who hold no 
 property, but subsist by the labour of their hands. These 
 twenty- four millions, or the householders among them, who may 
 be reckoned at one-fifth, have now votes, or will have very 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 shortly, or may have when they please, and they can, therefore, 
 when they please, outvote and overpower the householders among 
 the eight millions, who may be reckoned at one-fourth. That 
 is, to put it broadly, there are, or may be, and soon will be, 
 five millions of poor electors against two millions of well-to-do 
 electors.' The allegation is that these five millions of men will 
 wreck the ship ; that they will put their backs together and 
 form a rock upon which the vessel that bears our Cassandra 
 and ourselves must be broken. Why should this be ? Why 
 should 5,000,000 combine to ruin their country, and 2,000,000 
 to save it ? Because the majority are stupid ? Who says they 
 are stupid ? Cassandra. Ought not we, having by the hypo- 
 thesis, nothing but the good of the country at heart, ought 
 not we to promote the desire of the many to foster by honest 
 legislation the diffusion of property ? Is it not because we feel 
 the concentration of property to be dangerous that we need the 
 influence of these 5,000,000 electors to render property more 
 assured ? Property cannot be so secure when its ownership is 
 confined to a small minority, as when proprietorship is diffused. 
 Have the few shown the most intelligent appreciation of the 
 position ? No well-informed person, thoroughly acquainted with 
 the population of other lands, will dare to say, in the face of 
 facts, that the people of England are happier, that they have 
 more self-respect, that they are wiser, and more thrifty and 
 prosperous. Mr. Greg, in a manner which is to my thinking 
 odiously pharisaical, is ' satisfied ' that * properly trained, pro- 
 perly led, properly dealt with, they would make out and out 
 the best Proletariat in the world.' Mr. Greg, ' repudiating with 
 infinite disgust ' anything like flattery, is graciously willing to 
 admit that our lower classes are on the whole * more intelligent, 
 more fair, more sober-minded, and, but for their drinking pro- 
 pensities, more respectable than those of most other lands.' 
 My opinion is not so favourable ; I am inclined to think that 
 the mass of the people of England, while they possess unequalled 
 natural capacity for government, are inferior in the points Mr. 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 293 
 
 Greg mentions to the working classes of most other lands, and 
 that for their defects we have to blame such false guides as 
 this Cassandra, whose idea of a proletariat is closely akin to 
 ridce Napole'onienne, and who deprecates their partnership in 
 national affairs very much in the manner with which a head 
 master would refuse the voice of the first form on the question 
 of holidays. The truth is that Mr. Greg's ideas have had their 
 day, and that the real peril of this country is now seen to be, 
 not the participation of the labouring classes in the work of 
 governing, not the diffusion of property, but its restriction, due 
 to the supposed but mistaken self-interest of the extremely 
 small class to which in this country alone the possession of real 
 property in the agricultural soil is confined. The interest of 
 the masses in the hands of representatives elected solely by the 
 upper classes has been disregarded. We need no other proof 
 of this than the repetition of Lord Derby's statement, that the 
 produce of the country might be doubled. I have had some 
 personal acquaintance with the people of every European State, 
 and I never conceal my opinion that my own countrymen and 
 women are not the most happy. They do not want money, 
 but they lack that self-control which nothing that I have 
 observed will make general except the potential possession of 
 property in land, and the desire to accumulate savings, which 
 the careful possession of property of any sort engenders. And 
 that now they are entrusted with the suffrage, they will, with 
 that cautious, prudent nature which is their inalienable birth- 
 right, set to work to remedy the peculiar evils under which 
 they have laboured, owing to the long reign of privilege in this 
 country, is my earnest and confident hope. Their first act was 
 full of promise, and refutes at a stroke whole pages of Cas- 
 sandra's argument. Compulsory education was the first hr 
 work of their representatives. They are greatly inferior to the 
 working classes of other lands in that economic and social 
 training which the possession and management of property 
 affords ; and it seems to me that the safety and prosperous 
 
2 g4 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 progress of our country depend upon the acceptance of legisla- 
 tion which will promote the legitimate diffusion of property. 
 
 I wonder that men who have seen the peasants of Prussia, 
 of Saxony, and of Bavaria, perform the greatest national 
 work of the age, and then return, having secured peace, to 
 their fields ; who have seen French peasants, after fighting 
 their best to keep their belle France from the invader, save 
 the realm from the mad schemes of Parisian workmen, and 
 within a few weeks after they had decreed with their strong 
 arms the maintenance of a Conservative character in their 
 government, lend the State ; 100,000,000; I wonder, I say, 
 that men who have seen these things remain blind to their 
 lesson. Mr. Greg has to unlearn the error of all men who 
 believe themselves qualified to govern, rather than to serve, 
 the people. He has not a notion what good judges of their 
 own self-interest the people are. He regards them as infants 
 with dangerous tendencies. He would take them out walking 
 in the ways of politics, having first prepared the ground. 
 The paths that lead to foreign affairs they would find labelled 
 'No thoroughfare for Diplomatists only,' or 'No road this 
 way. Keep the Balance of Power.' If they turned their eyes 
 to right or left at home, they would find similar reservations. 
 The questions which affect property and taxation are announced 
 as ' fearfully complex,' and they would be at once warned off 
 from the close preserves of primogeniture, entail, and settle- 
 ment. In Mr. Greg's school it is held naughty to think 
 that all the children of a family have equal natural claims 
 upon their male parent, and his pupils have to torture their 
 rational powers to ' make believe ' that it is for the good of 
 the commonwealth that a testator should be empowered and 
 encouraged to put the largest possible area of land into life- 
 tenure, or virtual mortmain. 
 
 The leading principle of Mr. Greg's school is, that politics 
 are non-natural, and that simple ideas in public policy are 
 ruinous and deadly. The proletariat is to obtain the nearest 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 295 
 
 possible representative of Lord Palmerston, and having placed 
 him in Downing Street, is evermore to look with awful 
 admiration and unquestioning respect upon his mysterious 
 doings. Yet I doubt if it would be possible for a Foreign 
 Affairs Committee of working men to make two such blunders 
 as the jealous opposition to the Suez Canal and the invidious 
 and untenable exclusion of the Russian navy from the Black 
 Sea. Both have been reversed by a Parliament elected since 
 1 the Revolution of 1867,' and none are now heard to lament 
 the change. I recall an interview with one of Mr. Greg's 
 high diplomatists which amused me greatly. On the eventful 
 day, in 1870, upon which the Secret Treaty between Benedetti 
 and Bismarck, concerning Belgium, was published in the Times, 
 I was in the cabinet of the British Ambassador in Berlin. An 
 editor of the Cologne Gazette had shown me a summary of the 
 Treaty, which I believe reached the eyes of our Ambassador 
 by telegraph from London. He was full of Mr. Greg's ideas. 
 * Ah/ said he to me, with wonderful gaucherie, ' England is 
 declining ; would you believe it, I have actually received 
 to-day an application from an English viscount in the capacity 
 of special correspondent for a penny paper, and I dare say 
 he is paid as well as a secretary of legation!' I sighed, of 
 course, at the imminent downfall of my country, and reflected 
 that possibly special correspondents were the betes noires of 
 diplomatists of this sort, whose reputation could hardly sur- 
 vive the exposition of these ubiquitous observers. Knowing 
 what, in Mr. Greg's view, a ' true statesman ' is, can we wonder 
 he should give us as his opinion that * the very depth of a true 
 statesman's sagacity, the very forecast of a true statesman's 
 vision, will alienate from him the sympathies of the average 
 elector ' ? It is wrong, perhaps, to suppose that a prophetess 
 can be fallible ; but if Cassandra could only know how often 
 those whom she calls ' true statesmen ' have been saved from 
 terrible errors only by observing and by following the simple 
 expression of self-interest by the people, she might not perhaps 
 
296 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 altogether abandon a role so interesting, but she would certainly 
 abstain from giving the grounds of her judgment so fully in 
 future. Indeed, one prominent error in Mr. Greg's political 
 ideas is the supposition .that his ' lower classes ' are unable to see 
 what is good for them because they do not recognise ' fearful 
 complexity' in every question. The undeniable fact is that the 
 nation is the best judge of the self-interest of the nation. 
 
 Why does not Mr. Greg bring forward a list of 'vital ' errors 
 committed by enfranchised peoples ? He is candid, he is 
 intelligent, he is, outside English land and labour, fair and 
 courageous, and he must know that while such errors are hard 
 to find, the shores of the main stream of history are rendered 
 unsightly and horrible with wrecks due to the bad seaman- 
 ship of those ' true statesmen/ who were a guide unto them- 
 selves. He admits that ' for the future our main security will 
 be in the wider diffusion of property, and in all such measures 
 as will facilitate this result,' and yet he is so short-sighted as 
 to mistake the only possible means to that end for a * rock 
 ahead.' Is there any lesson so patent and so plainly written 
 in history as that the diffusion of property is concurrent with 
 the diffusion of political power ? Is it worth while to get one's 
 self up as Cassandra, and to write a book, of which one half is 
 a contradiction of the other half? Mr. Greg and I are at one 
 as to the course which the ship should take the direction 
 being the diffusion of property. But he throws a boom across 
 the open channel in order to drive the vessel on his ' rock 
 ahead.' He says : ' In a fair fight, unquestionably the Pro- 
 pertied Classes versus the Proletariat would have a quick 
 victory now ; they will have an easy victory if they open their 
 eyes and close their ranks in time.' As one who feels that the 
 ' propertied classes ' have very important duties in the nation, I 
 pray that they may exhibit no such folly. What can be more 
 absurd than this, to prescribe diffusion of property, and then 
 to tell the owners that they must close their ranks ? That 
 would be a course fraught with peril, and the only satisfaction 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. (: \ . 
 
 / v - A , 
 
 it could bring would be the justification of Cassanflrajs warrfirfg v ^ 
 The ship would soon be on the rocks. I write W$/ reply 7 ' 
 
 because I see that ' the political supremacy of the lowi/^ * 
 classes' will bring about that 'diffusion of property ' which ' /_ 
 Cassandra admits is our only safety, and which I shall show 
 could be accomplished by no other agency. The history of 
 property is, as any one would expect, a selfish record ; its 
 possessors have through all time only consented to laws which 
 promote its diffusion when they were constrained by the 
 supremacy of rising classes. William, England's Conqueror, 
 made large deer forests, and enacted that whoever killed a 
 hart or a hind should be blinded. The chronicle of the time 
 tells us that * the rich complained and the poor murmured, but 
 he was so sturdy that he recked nought of them. They must 
 will all that the king willed, if they would live and keep their 
 lands.' That was how the king acted when all was his. Then 
 followed the diffusion of property enforced upon King John at 
 Runnymede. Now let us pass on to a time when the owners 
 of land under our present system held unquestioned * political 
 supremacy ' a time just about two centuries ago. I will 
 make a brief quotation from a paper entitled ' Free Trade in 
 Land,' which is included in this volume : 
 
 ' About two hundred years ago the position in which the landowners and 
 the people find themselves to-day was reversed ; the former were mightiest 
 in Parliament. And what did they do ? They found a large taxation levied 
 on the land, of which it is not untrue to say that it was the purchase-money 
 of their estates ; they threw off these feudal dues, and substituted an Act 
 " that the people of England should pay a tax of is. ^d. per barrel on their 
 beer and ale," with a proportionate sum on all other liquors sold throughout 
 the kingdom. And it was enacted that a moiety of this tax " shall be settled 
 on the King's Majesty, his heirs and successors, in full recompense and 
 satisfaction for all tenures in capite and by knight service, and of the courts 
 of wards and liveries, and all emoluments thereby accruing, and in full satis- 
 faction for all purveyance." This tax was carried in a House of 300 members 
 by a majority of two. Then, again, when a land tax of 45-. in the pound 
 had been imposed, the landowners contrived, in 1697, so to frame the tax 
 (9 Wm. III., c. 10,) that it should not increase with the value of the land, as 
 was at first intended, but should be a fixed annuity without rise in value.' 
 
298 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 It must be admitted, I think, that the diffusion of property 
 can only be accomplished by the possession of power to 
 enforce that diffusion, and I have no confidence that the 
 owners of property, even in this enlightened age, would not 
 be ready to follow pilots such as Mr. Greg on to his * rocks 
 ahead.' If they do not commit suicide by ' closing their 
 ranks,' it will be, I am confident, because such a course would 
 be as ineffective as * a mop against the comet ' in face of ' the 
 political supremacy of the lower classes. 5 It is time, however, 
 that I should refer to the not less glaring folly of those who 
 suppose or suggest that it is the interest of the ' propertied 
 classes ' to ' close their ranks.' The blunder of the majority 
 of those who have held property throughout history has been 
 the assumption that the diffusion of property was synonymous 
 with the impoverishment of themselves. This is Mr. Greg's 
 error both in regard to social and international concerns. 
 How few of the ' propertied classes ' have ever comprehended 
 the irrefragable truth that property has this quality that 
 its volume and value increase, where increase is possible, 
 just in proportion as the ranks of the ' propertied classes ' 
 are not ' closed ' ; in fact, augment as these ranks are ex- 
 tended. 
 
 The safety of the British State demands the speedy increase 
 of the ' propertied classes ; ' not, of course, by the plunder of 
 those now in possession, for that would defeat one of the 
 two objects that we have in view: (i) the better security of 
 property, and (2) the more productive cultivation of land 
 Mr. Greg fears an invasion of the rights of property by (i) a 
 graduated Income Tax ; by (2) the imposition of all fiscal 
 burdens upon realised property ; by (3) the promotion of 
 Mr. Mill's claim for the ' unearned increment ' of land ; by 
 (4) the furtherance of such doctrine as that taught by Railway 
 Acts and by the Irish Land Act, which he thinks ' gave up the 
 entire principle of the sacredness of property.' And another 
 class of dangers to issue from this ' political supremacy of the 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 299 
 
 lower classes ' is, that they will seek, ' more or less through the 
 instrumentality of legislation,' such things as * higher wages, 
 shorter hours, more power of dictating conditions of work, and 
 less strictness in the interpretation of contracts.' Of course 
 they will consider their interest. But will they press this to 
 the point of national ruin, of self-immolation ? Of course they 
 will not. Where will they stop ; where should they stop ; to 
 what point does the national interest demand that they shall 
 succeed ? Mr. Greg shall give the answer : ' With the pos- 
 session of property will come Conservative instincts and dis- 
 inclination for rash and reckless schemes. It is not in itself 
 a political education, but it forms an excellent basis for it.' 
 Lately I met with curious corroboration of this. Some men, 
 who are members of the Agricultural Labourers' Union, are 
 also interested in the co-operative agricultural scheme of a 
 well-known friend of that method of production, and when 
 the accounts were overlooked the other day, the Union men 
 objected to the high price of labour, in their new capacity as 
 proprietors. Does not this show a way to avoid the ' rock 
 ahead ' ? I sail free of apprehension because, through ' the 
 political supremacy of the lower classes,' I see clearly the 
 channel to far greater prosperity than we have ever yet 
 enjoyed, in which, by the instrumentality of good laws, such as 
 will benefit both landowners and landless, by the wider distri- 
 bution and registered transfer of land, by the encouragement of 
 thrift that careful fruitful mother of property the incidence of 
 taxation, direct as well as indirect, will be more general ; the 
 enforcement of contracts will be easy, because of the nearer 
 equality of condition among all classes, and the value of realised 
 property will not only be vastly augmented, but will be 
 guaranteed by millions in place of thousands of owners. 
 
 Mr. Greg has really much to discover concerning the classes 
 of whose ignorance he is so certain. He has to learn that 
 which, by their enfranchisement, statesmen of both parties have 
 admitted, that in all great national causes they are the best 
 
300 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 possible jury. It is almost puerile on his part to lead his 
 followers headforemost on his first ' rock ahead/ by assuming 
 that the decision of the minute details of administration must 
 be submitted to the arbitrament of five million voters. 
 Mr. Greg sees far enough to notice that the degradation of the 
 House of Commons must ensue if the residuum choose their 
 members according to the length of their purse. But what he 
 does not see is that the remedy will come in the same way by 
 which his ' proletariat ' will learn to co-operate in the national 
 welfare by the diffusion of property. If the * propertied 
 classes ' were foolish enough to ' close their ranks/ and to go 
 on indefinitely as at present, I have no doubt Mr. Greg would 
 be right in predicting that ' a larger proportion than hitherto 
 of Ministers, especially of Cabinet Ministers, will in future be 
 members of the Upper House.' I am so ardently in favour of 
 associating the ' propertied classes ' with the government of the 
 country, that even if the House of Lords had not the high 
 qualities which so many of its members possess, I should be 
 devoted in upholding it ; I should say : Wherever you can 
 find five hundred men who are owners though they be only 
 nominal owners of one-fifth of the kingdom, place them by all 
 means in a Senate. But though I am thus steadfast in support- 
 ing the hereditary element in our legislature, I think it highly 
 perilous to rights of property, and a national danger of the 
 extremest kind, that this can be said of the ownership of our 
 soil. Of course it would never have happened if the wonderful 
 wealth of English manufactures had not concentrated so much 
 of the energy and intelligence of the country upon foreign 
 trade. But it must not endure. That would be certainly dis- 
 astrous, not only because it would involve the denial of that 
 doubling of agricultural production, which, in the opinion of 
 such a man as Lord Derby, the country might and therefore is 
 bound to accomplish. Mr. Greg does not yet comprehend that 
 his first ' rock ahead ' is a sure and safe stepping-stone to the 
 removal of this peril, and no one will gain so much by laws 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 301 
 
 promoting the diffusion of property as those who are now the 
 owners of property. Thrift, I think, would naturally be very 
 strong in the British character, yet we are the least thrifty of 
 European people. The reason is not far to seek. There is 
 no instance of a frugal people who, to use Mr. Cobden's 
 expression, are divorced from the soil. Mr. Greg must lend 
 a hand to pass such measures as those which I have indicated 
 in ' Free Trade in Land ' ; by those reforms rather than by 
 others such as have been adopted by less pauperised nations 
 of the Continent, diffusion of property in land must be accom- 
 plished, and then the wasteful expenditure of the mass of the 
 people will decline ; then artisans will learn from agriculture, 
 that great teacher of thrift, the value of saving, and the country 
 will be happier, richer, safer because of ' the political supre- 
 macy of the lower classes.' 
 
 I must deal more briefly with the second * rock ahead,' 
 which, however, can be disposed of without prolonged or 
 elaborate argument. I do not apprehend that I shall have 
 great difficulty in proving even to Mr. Greg's satisfaction that 
 the ' rock ahead ' which he has named ' the approaching in- 
 dustrial exhaustion, or decline of Great Britain,' is a phantom. 
 Mr. Greg has raised a spectre of alarm about the coal supply, 
 which I must not hesitate to say is built up of sensational and 
 arithmetical delusions. The method is simple, and likely to 
 deceive the unwary. He parades the coal-fields of the world, 
 and the glory of them those which are near the surface as well 
 as those which are deep, and he compares them with our own 
 in respect to the labour of getting the coal. It has been well 
 known that our main advantage was not only in the position of 
 our seams of coal, and in their proximity to our ports and our 
 mines, but also, and perhaps chiefly, in regard to labour. No 
 figures that Mr. Greg brings forward with regard to labour have 
 any relevancy in comparison with those which I offer to him 
 and his alarmed fellow-passengers in the vessel of State. He 
 quotes Sir Charles Lyell's well-known account of the Pittsburg 
 
3O2 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 seams, and if the inferences which in this and in other places 
 he apparently wishes us to draw, were really by themselves 
 accepted, he and all his friends ought, for decency's sake, to 
 appear much more frightened. Suppose Mr.* Greg had put 
 this part of the subject in another form ; suppose, after admit- 
 ting that labour and population are prime elements in this 
 question, he had put the matter thus : The population of 
 England is so much, that of the United States is so much ; 
 before the square miles of the States become as populous as 
 those of England, and land ceases to attract from mining, the 
 population must be nearly fifty times what it is at present. 
 Although the population of the United States has at one time 
 doubled in a quarter of a century, there are abundant signs in 
 that country, as in all others, that the rate of increase of popu- 
 lation is invariably subject to steady and continuous decline. 
 I cannot venture to predict the time when the population of 
 the United States will amount to fifty times its present total, 
 nor do I think that any amateur Cassandra, with a grain of 
 self-respect, would * put a date ' to this problem. And if ever 
 it should reach fifty times its present total, it may then be as 
 disproportioned as at present to the population of these islands. 
 Yet half the foundation of Mr. Greg's second ' rock ahead ' is 
 built upon the fallacy of the near approaching equality of con- 
 dition as regards the coal supply. In part, also, this ' rock ' 
 stands upon the approaching exhaustion of our own stores. 
 What I most complain of in Mr. Greg's work is that there is 
 a fallacious parade of care, with a show of calculation which 
 is not borne out upon anything like critical examination. In 
 this matter, after promising ' most sedulously ' that he will 
 ' state no facts or premisses that are doubtful/ we find him 
 writing in the following loose manner : ' It is obvious that 
 unless some great check should come to our prosperity and to 
 our increasing population and manufacturing productiveness, 
 our annual consumption of coal will go on augmenting, and 
 will soon reach, not 120 millions of tons yearly, but twice, 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 303 
 
 thrice, or four times that amount.' Now I want to know why 
 ft is 'obvious/ and which is it to be 'soon' 240 or 480 
 millions ? The climax of this rash and random statement is 
 that the available coal-fields may be worked out in ' a hundred 
 years' What is the ground for supposing that our consumption 
 of coal will increase by this arithmetical progression ? I know 
 of none. Surely, if Mr. Greg were himself, and not Cassandra 
 (who of course knew nothing about coal), he would never have 
 piled upon our credulity not only this arithmetical progression, 
 which is of course worthless, but all that plus the native re- 
 sources of all the earth. We are actually asked to contemplate 
 the decline of our coal supply by arithmetical progression, at the 
 same time that we are bade to behold the men of all lands 
 throwing out their own supply and manufacturing their own 
 goods. This * rock ahead ' begins to look very small indeed. 
 It is just the contrary law which governs the whole earth. 
 There is no such thing in real life as increase by arithmetical 
 progression. At our present most extravagant rate of con- 
 sumption it is estimated that the British coal supply will last 
 1,200 years, and in days when a 99 years' lease is hardly dis- 
 tinguishable in value from a freehold, is the exhaustion of coal 
 a ' rock ahead ' visible to ' an observant and forecasting ' mind ? 
 We may consider this part of the ' rock ' removed. 
 
 ' But these figures only represent half the facts wherein our 
 danger lies. The essential question is not how soon will our 
 coal be worked out, but how soon will our cheap coal be 
 worked out ? ' The answer to this is that our cheap coal 
 is in no danger of being worked out. The recent famine 
 price of coal was not due to the difficulty of getting it, or 
 else the miners' wages would have been forced up by a per- 
 centage closely equivalent to the increase of price. That coal 
 famine was due to a speculative and wholly unreal demand for 
 manufactured iron, which has left the peoples who were pur- 
 chasers of the iron such as those of the United States and 
 Russia far more embarrassed by unprofitable expenditure 
 
304 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 than we were burdened by the coal famine. One result of that 
 period was the opening in North Derbyshire alone of pits which 
 are turning out a supply of 60,000 tons a week, not an atom 
 of which was available before the coal famine. All through 
 Mr. Greg's second paper there runs a palpable fallacy which 
 appears and reappears with curious frequency a fallacy which 
 may be made very plain merely by asking him to consider that 
 his remarks about cheap coal were written in 1834 instead of 
 1874. They would have been just as true then as they are 
 now, but what he regards as cheap coal would have seemed 
 to the Cassandra of '34 ruinously dear. He spends page after 
 page upon this point : ' Cheap coal, we repeat, is obviously 
 and notoriously indispensable to the continuance of our mar- 
 vellous productions, and how is cheap coal to be secured when 
 every year we have to dive for it deeper and deeper into the 
 bowels of the earth, and to pay higher and higher wages to 
 the miners who produce it ? ' This would have been just as 
 apposite in '34 as in '74, and if we suppose it written forty 
 years ago, then our day supplies the true answer, and at once 
 the sensational calculations of Mr. Greg's second paper tumble 
 to pieces and fall to worthlessness. Mr. Greg is really the 
 victim of one of the most hoary and inveterate of economic 
 fallacies. There is hardly a simpler mistake to be made in 
 politics than to regard the wealth of one's own country rela- 
 tively to that of others as the test of prosperity. We are 
 more wealthy in '74 than in '34, not by virtue of the discovery 
 of internal mines of wealth so much as through the increased 
 riches of those who are our customers, our rivals, and neigh- 
 bours. Coal is relatively as cheap now as it was in '34, and 
 there is no reason to suppose that it will not be relatively as 
 cheap in 1900 as it is at present. The labour that wins it 
 may be rewarded with more money, but it does not follow that 
 the coal is relatively dearer, to the damage of our export 
 business. Mr. Greg has incautiously fallen headlong into the 
 fallacy that the increase of our neighbours must be our undoing, 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 305 
 
 but it would seem that he has decidedly undervalued the pro- 
 gress of economy both in production and in consumption, which 
 are more certain and inevitable in the future than any of his 
 lamentable figures. He quotes Sir W. Armstrong's words, 
 who said : ' Speaking generally of coal consumption in all 
 its branches, there can be little doubt that without carrying 
 economy to its extreme limits, all the effects we now realise 
 from coal could be attained with half the quantity we use.' 
 I could find it in my heart to welcome a * coal famine,' greatly 
 more prolonged than the last, if it were only to stimulate such 
 economy, for the sake of our atmosphere as much as for the 
 saving of our coal-beds ; and I have no doubt whatever that 
 the event which appears to Mr. Greg as the foretaste of a 
 scarcity which will soon be exhaustion, has in reality, even in 
 its short duration, produced a permanent economy in consump- 
 tion, the positive value of which has in the years that have 
 since gone by recouped the total extra sum which was paid for 
 coal in that time of artificial scarcity. 
 
 We pass now from ' the Exhaustion of Coal ' to ' the 
 Deterioration in the Character of British Labour,' in which by 
 ' character ' Mr. Greg means ' efficiency and conscientiousness.' 
 The general overlying error in this part of Cassandra's warning 
 is in the absurd assumption, from the minor warfare of classes, 
 that the industrial body will commit 'happy despatch' and ruin 
 the country in order to pay the salaries of Trade Union secre- 
 taries. No one but a man whose mind was full of conscious 
 condescension to a proletariat could be capable of the mistake 
 involved in this assumption, but Mr. Greg is resolved not to 
 see beyond the array of figures and statements which perhaps 
 will deceive no one but himself. The first point is, * Does a 
 reduction in the hours of labour involve a corresponding 
 diminution in the produce of that labour ? ' Mr. Greg asserts 
 that those who say, 'No' are theorists. I must be pardoned, 
 therefore, if I state in defence of my claim to be regarded 
 as practical that I have been to a certain extent officially 
 
 X 
 
306 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 responsible for the labour of 6,000 men in that textile 
 district which is directly affected by the Factory Acts, and 
 I deny, with a knowledge of factories in every town of the 
 cotton manufacturing district, that a reduction in the hours 
 of labour involves a corresponding diminution in the produce 
 of that labour. Mr. Greg does not put the matter fairly. He 
 says that the assertion practically amounts very nearly to this : 
 ' That of two equally able-bodied and well-fed labourers, the 
 one who lays down his spade and wheelbarrow at four o'clock 
 will have done as much work as the one who toils till six 
 o'clock in fact, that nothing at all is done in the last two 
 hours/ This erroneous statement is only another consequence 
 of Mr. Greg's view de haut en has of the workman, whose 
 labour he thus appraises precisely as that of a machine. The 
 matter can only be rightly regarded as one affecting the man's 
 whole life, and himself as one of the race and nation. If he 
 work, with two intervals for meals, from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M., will 
 he be a better workman and turn out more and better work 
 through every hour of the day than if he labour from 6 A.M. to 
 6 P.M. ? I say that undoubtedly every hour of his day would 
 be more productive, and that where he was not labouring in 
 connection with machinery over the motion of which he had 
 no control, it would very likely happen that he would produce 
 more in the nine than in the ten hours, while it is certain he 
 would be a more healthy, and, probable, that he would become 
 a more intelligent citizen. If a man cannot try this question 
 by uninterrupted daily labour from Good Friday to Christmas 
 Day, he may even get somewhat near the truth by noting how 
 he treats his horses, which are practically his slaves. If Mr. 
 Greg knows anything of horses, he would not think it at all 
 absurd to suppose that the aggregate hours of a horse's 
 working life would number far more if he worked nine than if 
 he worked ten hours a day. I have known many poor farmers, 
 but I never knew one who worked his horses at plough more 
 than eight hours a day. I am quite certain that horses could 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 307 
 
 not drag a plough for ten hours a day with anything like the 
 vigour they possess for eight hours, and as the farmer is the 
 owner of the horses and suffers by their incapacity, illness, or 
 premature death, he does not feel tempted to make the 
 experiment There must of course be a point at which the 
 advantage of a reduction of hours rapidly diminishes, and again 
 a point at which it ceases to have any benefit in regard to 
 the productiveness of labour and the bodily fitness of the 
 workman. I cannot say whether this natural limit is ten 
 hours or eight hours. It is possible to suppose that for 
 about half the world of labour it is ten hours, and that for 
 the other half, an eight hours' limit is better ; therefore 
 perhaps it is best for the permanent interests of production 
 to fix nine hours as a day's labour. 
 
 Of course the increase of the results of labour during 
 shorter hours cannot be great where machinery is the pro- 
 ducing agent. Yet there is an increase. Mr. Brassey said in 
 one of his interesting lectures on labour : ' As a general rule 
 it appears that in proportion as the hours of labour are 
 lengthened the rate at which machinery is run is reduced. In 
 Russia, where the longest hours of labour prevail, machinery is 
 run at a slower rate than in any other country in the world.' 
 I agree with Mr. Brassey as to the mode in which the loss 
 occasioned by idle machinery must be recovered. He asks : 
 1 Why should not the machine which never tires be tended by 
 two or three artisans, relieving each other as one watch 
 relieves another on board ship ? ' I am not going to contend 
 that it is under any circumstances possible that the produce 
 of all the factories of Lancashire and Yorkshire would be as 
 large under a nine-hour as under a ten-hour system, but with 
 all his knowledge of ' mules, looms, winding-frames, etc.,' 
 Mr. Greg is apparently not aware how small the difference 
 may become. He does injustice to accuracy in two points. 
 Regarding the human being as a machine, he speaks of 54 or 
 56 hours with no regard to the national cost and loss from 
 
308 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 sickness or premature decay ; but I am now dealing with his 
 estimate of the possible results of reduction of hours in the 
 statement that ' some attendants [upon ' mules, looms, winding- 
 frames, etc/] may no doubt, by greater energy and more 
 unrelaxing vigilance, get as much out of their machines in 
 (say) 54 hours as others will in 56 or 58.' That is four 
 hours ; if I could get Mr. Greg to allow but two more, the 
 case for reduction from 10 to 9 hours would, even in con- 
 junction with machinery, be conceded. What will he say then 
 with regard to the persons, of whom nearly every loom-shed in 
 the cotton and woollen manufacturing districts will furnish 
 examples, who by ' greater energy and more unrelaxing vigi- 
 lance get as much out of their machine in 401 hours as others 
 in 54' ? The ' three-loonier ' is by no means a phenomenon 
 among Lancashire and Yorkshire lasses ; most women can 
 attend two looms, but not a few can serve three. This class, 
 which simply by superior intelligence and quickness earn half 
 as much again as the majority of women in the same shed, 
 will certainly be more likely to increase with shorter than with 
 longer hours, for their swifter faculties are those which are not 
 extended in a population doomed to severely continued mono- 
 tony of life, and theirs are precisely those natures which are 
 soonest worn out by unduly prolonged labour. Of course in 
 this argument I am not expressing an opinion in favour of 
 legislation which operates to any extent as a restriction and 
 disability upon one sex, and thus tends to limit its powers of 
 participation in the wages' fund. 
 
 In treating of the contention of labour for increased share of 
 profits as bearing upon our national prospects, I think Mr. 
 Greg does the working class great wrong by persevering in 
 one-sided argument. I find throughout his work no appre- 
 ciation of the fact that in this country, by restrictions which 
 have the force of law, labour is deprived of that more equal 
 partnership with capital which exists in other lands. Why, 
 when in the opinion of great agriculturists and landowners such 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 309 
 
 as Lord Leicester and Lord Derby the food produce of these 
 islands could be doubled, why should English capital be wasted 
 in purchase of American ' mines ' which are metalliferous only 
 on the surface and in the prospectus, and in the purchase of 
 foreign bonds which may be worth only the paper they are 
 printed upon ? It is estimated by scientific agriculturists that 
 to produce this increase of food a highly profitable investment 
 of from 500,000,000 to 800,000,000 is requisite, and this 
 sum will never be applied until there is a vast diffusion of 
 property in land, and the use of the best machinery is uni- 
 versal. In Roumania, I have seen ten of Clayton and Shuttle- 
 worth's steam threshing-machines in a morning where no 
 farmer held more than twenty acres, and there is nothing to 
 prevent the steam-ploughing of ten farms at a single operation. 
 The real ' rock ahead ' is our land system, which the thing that 
 Mr. Greg mistakes for a ' rock ahead ' is destined to amend. 
 The diffusion of the ownership of land is the sure means of 
 diffusing the possession of capital ; and while capital is less 
 greedy in the distribution of profits when its possession is not 
 confined to the employing class, so labour becomes more ap- 
 preciative of the sensitive qualities and disposition of capital, of 
 its fearfulness and immediate flight from the neighbourhood of 
 dishonest or irrational power. As compared with continental 
 countries say with Germany we are undoubtedly at a dis- 
 advantage, because our legislature has proceeded upon the 
 monstrous and absurd notion that it is better for thousands 
 than for millions to have ' a stake in the country.' It is a 
 remarkable testimony to the natural advantages of our country 
 and to the ability of our race (which I believe to be superior 
 to all others in power of industrial production) that we more 
 than hold our own in manufactures against such a people as 
 the Belgians, in spite of the great advantage they possess in 
 the virtual immunity from pauperism and the partial insurance 
 against the fluctuations of industrial employment which their 
 diffused land system affords. In Belgium and in other 
 
3 TO A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 European States, the artisans are recruited from agricultural 
 districts in time of great industrial activity, and are in turn 
 absorbed in rural occupations and cared for by the sympathy 
 of agricultural friends and relatives when there is a glut of 
 supply in the manufacturing markets. Mr. Greg fears that 
 ' the political supremacy of the lower classes ' will induce them 
 all to live on the poor-rate. I see a time when the owners of 
 property, being then millions instead of hundreds of thousands, 
 will be strong enough to compel stern amendment if not the 
 virtual abolition of our Socialist Poor Law. Although very 
 far removed in the social scale, I believe it to be a fact that 
 primogeniture is the parent of pauperism. We have wit- 
 nessed a time of great trial in the battles of labour and 
 capital, but these we know are undertaken from a real or 
 supposed self-interest, and it is quite reasonable to promis 
 ourselves that as that sense grows more enlightened and the 
 many become wise as well as powerful, the wars will be fewer 
 and the arbitrations more numerous. This indeed is already 
 everywhere observed. 
 
 It is strange that any one should question if working 
 men have gained by the operation of Trade Unions ; but of 
 course it is difficult to decide whether they have or have not 
 thereby received a larger aggregate sum in wages. Yet it almost 
 surpasses belief that so clever a man as Mr. Greg should over- 
 look the facility which these Unions have introduced in settling 
 the rate of wages. Mr. Greg must admit it would be absurd 
 to doubt their effect in raising both the net average earnings 
 of the individual workman and the aggregate earnings of the 
 whole body of artisans, if we might assume that their endeavours 
 have always been directed with the utmost sagacity to effect 
 those objects. It would be simply imbecile to question when 
 there are two parties to a distribution of profits, each hag- 
 gling as to the share which shall be allotted, to the one in 
 respect of his capital and superintendence, and to the other for 
 his labour, that the tendency of advantage is on the side which 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 3 1 1 
 
 is most concentrated. But to concentrate the bargaining power 
 of the workmen is not all that the Unions have done. The 
 very first element of successful resistance to an inequitable 
 distribution is the possession of accumulations the power of 
 waiting. Labour which cannot maintain itself for a time in 
 idleness must be prepared to accept harsh terms, and we have 
 only to suppose that for the most part the Unions have been 
 actuated by a true sense of self-interest to establish incontestably 
 their utility, not only to the workman but to the community 
 which benefits by the results of shorter hours and higher wages 
 in the improved physical capacity and the higher intelligence 
 of the working classes. And surely there are many most 
 encouraging signs that this improvement is accomplished. I 
 wish I could conscientiously adopt Mr. Greg's silence as to the 
 faults of the capitalist class. Do they not now and then league 
 to limit supply ? For my own part, I am more afraid of the 
 sudden action of ' rings ' than of Trade Unions. I know of 
 half a dozen village wheelwrights' men who lately quitted the 
 neighbourhood of Exeter, and are now established as skilled 
 miners in North Derbyshire ; and from nearly every quarter of 
 England that ogre of Mr. Greg's fancy, the champagne-swilling, 
 dog-fighting collier, is finding competitors. I am sorry that 
 Mr. Greg should make so great a mistake as to put upon 
 artisans and labourers the responsibility for whatever there has 
 been of decline in our national reputation for the conscientious- 
 ness of British workmanship. This fault is surely rather to be 
 ascribed to that cardinal evil of our society, which Mr. Greg 
 appears to recognise but will not help to remedy the aggrega- 
 tion of property. It is the speculative manufacturers and con- 
 tractors, in too great haste to join the narrow and therefore so 
 envied ranks of ' aristocracy,' who, in order that they may follow 
 the lead in buying estates and riding to hounds, plaster their 
 calico with size, who deliberately steam their workmen in order 
 to make the worse sample of cotton seem better, who make 
 coats of shoddy and knives of iron, who supply guns and powder 
 
312 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 to our declared enemies, who will only pay for scamped work. 
 No artisan of any country deliberately prefers to do bad work. 
 With artisans trained as ours are, the quality of their labour is 
 mainly a question of materials and superintendence. Mr. Greg 
 twists and turns to their disadvantage and that of his country 
 every circumstance. Let us look at one of his statements. 
 There is none upon which he seems to stand more firmly than 
 that of Belgian competition in the iron trade. It is, I believe, 
 a fact that in the spring of 1874 Belgian iron-masters did 
 secure foreign orders for rails which had been offered to English 
 makers in the first instance, and shortly before I read Mr. Greg's 
 book, in which he prophesies our national ruin partly as a con- 
 sequence of this occurrence, I met a member of Parliament 
 who is chairman of a large iron company, and we at once began 
 to talk of the reports concerning Belgian competition. He said 
 he had examined some of these Belgian rails, and that he found 
 them of very inferior quality to those of English make. He 
 told me he had no fears whatever concerning Belgian competi- 
 tion [I shall be very glad to give Mr. Greg his name], and that 
 no railway company in the United States which required rails 
 for wear would have purchased such as those from which Mr. 
 Greg infers the downfall of our iron trade. It would be easy 
 to accumulate proofs that the conscientiousness and quality of 
 British labour stand relatively as high as at any period of our 
 history. 
 
 But it is not in coal and iron only that, according to Mr. 
 Greg, our trade is to be cut off ; on no subject does he make 
 more parade of statement, and upon none is he more lugubrious, 
 than in regard to ' our competitors in various textile fabrics.' 
 Now I shall have written to little purpose if I have not made 
 it clear that in regard to his statements and arguments con- 
 nected with trade and commerce, Mr. Greg's fundamental error 
 lies in confounding our relative position, which of course declines 
 as other countries approach a higher level of industrial and 
 mechanical industry, with our actual position as regards wealth 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 313 
 
 and comfort in the future. To understand this thoroughly we 
 must make a brief digression into remarks applicable to all 
 trades before we return to deal specifically with Mr. Greg's 
 observations upon the textile industries of the United Kingdom. 
 It appears to me, that in order to fathom the depth of Mr. 
 Greg's mistake, we must obtain his point of view, which I have 
 always regarded as that of a British Imperialist, one with whom 
 the external reputation of the Empire is well-nigh all-important, 
 one who thinks the leaders of the people should be Masters, 
 rather than, as they are, Ministers. I can fancy how hard it is 
 to Mr. Greg to believe in the greatness of his- country, when, 
 from a military point of view, he sees her dwarfed from the 
 equal authority she once held, and descended to be of little 
 account upon the Continent of Europe ; and I can well believe 
 that were it not for some lingering echo of * Rule Britannia,' 
 some vague but hopeful assurance, that if we could no longer 
 assault their inland towns, we could force half the world to keep 
 within their ports, Mr. Greg would not have heart enough to 
 assume the garments of Cassandra. I am sure he could write 
 a well-stocked essay, to show that we have miserably declined 
 since the days of Walcheren and Waterloo. In trade the same 
 theory haunts his mind. No foreigner must make a stocking ; 
 the increase of foreign spindles is deadly ; and as for Belgium 
 daring to increase her export of woollen yarns, it is enough to 
 make Britannia weep and tremble with fears of approaching 
 desolation. Now, regarding ourselves as a trading nation only } 
 having natural advantages, as to climate, soil, insular position, 
 and mineral wealth, it must be a benefit to us, as it is to 
 individual tradesmen, to live among wealthy neighbours. It 
 cannot be to our advantage that those with whom we do busi- 
 ness, with whom, in fact, we barter our productions, should 
 continue in a savage or semi-barbarous condition. The quantity 
 of labour which we have to put into an article of commerce, for 
 which some tropical people will most readily give, say, coffee, is 
 but one side of the bargain. The other side is their production 
 
314 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 of coffee, which becomes more easy as they grow richer and 
 their labour more intelligent and fruitful. It is quite conceivable 
 that increasing wealth, due to the demand of other countries 
 than our own, might enable the coffee-grower to produce two 
 pounds of coffee with the same labour which he formerly be- 
 stowed upon the production of one pound. If no one else 
 produced cloth, he must then give us two pounds of coffee for 
 the same piece of cloth which formerly exchanged for one pound. 
 But other people having common wants are also in the market, 
 and let us suppose that their competition keeps down the price 
 of cloth to the. old rate of exchange. Then the coffee producer, 
 through the increased wealth of his country, has another pound 
 of coffee to deal with, after the purchase of our cloth ; and, 
 presuming the second pound is for export, he must buy with 
 it something else, to the inevitable advantage of all industrial 
 peoples ; or, if there be nothing else that he wants besides cloth, 
 the price of that commodity must rise. Mr. Greg's error is so 
 patent, so simple, and in so able a man so startling, that one 
 is almost inclined to apologise for setting forth such elementary 
 facts in commercial science by way of refutation. Is it possible 
 he can suppose that 2,000,000 or 20,000,000 of people will 
 exist in any country who because they happen to look at 
 ' happy ' England from across the Atlantic or the Channel, and 
 to know something of her mines, and factories, and workshops, 
 will therefore have no thought of mining, of weaving, of fashion- 
 ing iron and hardware ? We cannot be spinners and weavers 
 for all the world ; we do not feed ourselves ; we cannot even 
 clothe the English-speaking race and the Indian fellow-subjects 
 of England. Time was when we could have clothed and fed 
 ourselves, and Mr. Greg evinces no small desire to do it still, 
 even at the cost of a protectionist policy. Why, in the name 
 of all that is commercial, are we to take alarm because Belgium 
 sends some woollen yarns to this country ? Directly or indirectly 
 she must send something, for she is an importer of British 
 materials and manufactures. She must pay for these in some 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 315 
 
 form or other. Is it any injury to us, whose cotton manufac- 
 turers are to a far greater extent engaged in supplying foreign 
 customers than in meeting home demand, that Belgium should 
 pay her debt partly in woollen cloth? and are we in consequence 
 to suppose that Belgium is therefore able to absorb a trade 
 which surpasses the powers of the greatest of industrial nations ? 
 There is no people of Europe of whom with any reason it can 
 be asserted that, within any conceivable time, their advantages 
 for manufacturing industry will equal our own. Much that is 
 said of the quarrels between labour and capital is of universal 
 application. We are terribly weighted in the race by the load 
 of pauperism and the cost of strikes, which will never be onerous 
 in countries where the ownership of land is associated with the 
 lower classes. But neither in regard to cheap coal, or iron, 
 or labour, have the nations of Europe at present, or in prospect, 
 advantages equal to our own. Mr. Greg will say this is not so; 
 but if he be right, why, then, is there need to shelter their own 
 industries by heavy protective duties against English manufac- 
 turers ? If foreign nations could compete with us on equal 
 footing, why do our goods enter those countries, and maintain 
 their place, notwithstanding that they are weighted with heavy 
 duties ? If our Cassandra were justified in half her prognosti- 
 cations, we should expect to see no great anxiety on the part 
 of foreign manufacturers to handicap the Englishman in the 
 race. Surely if we are as Mr. Greg represents us, there could 
 be no danger to the manufactures of these rivals and com- 
 petitors, if we were free to take our goods to Berlin, to Paris, 
 and to Vienna, and there compete with native industry. Has 
 Mr. Greg any doubt what would be the result if trade were free 
 throughout the world ? At all events I have none, and in this 
 confident opinion I am supported by that of all the practical 
 men of England who have studied the position of our foreign 
 trade. I will quote the opinion of a large employer in the 
 textile trade, which Mr. Greg regards as menaced with ruin. 
 If there is a practical cotton-spinner in the world, Mr. Hugh 
 
3 1 6 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 Mason is one ; and is he terrified ? Mr. Mason says : ' I have 
 not a particle of fear of ruin to our cotton trade by the adop- 
 tion of fifty-six hours a week. Not one of the great powers 
 could hold its own for a year in cotton manufacture apart from 
 the high protective duties which prevent the entrance of British 
 goods.' We may regard Mr. Mason, in his capacity as Chair- 
 man of the Manchester Cotton Supply Association, as the 
 highest and most conclusive authority ; and we must observe 
 that he says nothing about export ; he affirms that our com- 
 petition would kill in one year the home trade of any one of 
 the great powers of Europe. Incidentally, in the same letter, 
 Mr. Hugh Mason touches upon our possession of a permanent 
 advantage, one which appears wholly to have escaped Mr. 
 Greg's observation, and one which, happily for us, is inalienable, 
 and is our absolute and unique possession. It seems to me 
 to be a glaring defect in Mr. Greg's argument that he should 
 have made no allusion to the advantages of our insular position. 
 ' I think it idle/ says Mr. Hugh Mason, * to talk about foreign 
 competition, so long as the kingdoms of Europe are divided 
 into half a dozen vast camps for soldiers, and the claims of 
 commerce are subordinated to the strife for military glory.' 
 There is no prospect that this heavy tax upon the industry of 
 Europe will be removed. The avoidance of all imminence of 
 war will not lighten its pressure ; and however confident we 
 may be that the time will come when there will be a con- 
 siderable reduction of armaments, we can conceive no period in 
 which the manhood of Europe will not be largely engaged in 
 acquiring the art of national defence. 
 
 Mr. Greg's second 'rock ahead' is now seen to be nothing 
 but an inflated canvas painted by himself with mistaken 
 colours. Mr. Greg will perhaps take comfort in the reflection 
 that he is Cassandra, and that Cassandra had no credit however 
 faithful and accurate might be her predictions. But, in truth, 
 such arguments as Mr. Greg puts in her mouth must be tried, 
 and may be tested by the logic of facts and by the laws of 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 317 
 
 economic science. I have not, I must admit, demonstrated the 
 insecure foundation of Mr. Greg's arguments more clearly than 
 did a writer in the Spectator, who declared that : ' Mr. Greg's 
 error is really closely akin to that old Protectionist fancy that 
 one nation suffers by the development of the resources of other 
 nations, instead of gaining by it. Nothing is more certain, we 
 take it, than that it is for England's national advantage, to put 
 it plainly, that she should lose her commercial supremacy, if 
 she loses it by no wasteful blunder of her own, but solely by 
 the legitimate development of such of the resources of other 
 nations as were hitherto unknown or unused.' But I am far 
 from intending to imply that Mr. Greg's labour has been 
 entirely wasted. He does not appear to notice it himself, but 
 he has surely made it clear to others that the diffusion of 
 property by legitimate and well-ordered means is the one thing 
 which more than any other is the need of this country. To 
 strengthen and largely to recruit the Conservative classes, not 
 by such expedients as that recently in vogue, the drenching of 
 the residuum with beer and gin, but by directly counteracting 
 by diametrically opposing that dangerous tendency to the 
 aggregation of property in fewer hands, which is the great, 
 and, as I believe, the only peril of England ; this is the chief 
 legislative need of the future. I cannot regard it as a ' rock 
 ahead,' because the power to accomplish this end is already in 
 the hands of those who will partake the benefits of such 
 legislation. Indeed, that power which Mr. Greg has named 
 his first ' rock ahead,' is all that is requisite to liberate the 
 industry of England from the trammels of feudalism, and at 
 the same time from a social danger which it is a blunder to 
 regard as insignificant. We must spread a real, not a spurious 
 and delusive Conservatism, by making the many instead of the 
 few personally interested in maintaining the rights of property 
 So long as the agricultural soil of England is mainly held by 
 life tenants, who are but nominal owners, we are not sailing in 
 the race with Belgium, with France, with Germany, with any of 
 
318 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 our neighbours, under fair conditions. Let us but have this 
 ' diffusion of property ' by the reform of our land laws, by 
 affording the artisan class that highest encouragement to thrift 
 in the readiest and safest means of investing their savings, 
 and then we shall pass on over the stream of time in which 
 Mr. Greg fancied he saw these ' rocks ahead/ a nation more 
 united, more wealthy, and more powerful than at any period 
 of our history. 
 
 Mr. Greg's third and last ' rock ahead ' is one which people 
 will see, or will not see, according to their ideas of Religion. 
 My firm belief is that no two persons can contemplate Mr. 
 Greg's position from precisely the same standpoint, and to 
 those who concur in this opinion it is unnecessary to say more 
 with reference to his fears concerning ' the divorce of the 
 Intelligence of the country from its Religion.' If it be 
 accepted that Religion is, and always has been, and must of 
 necessity be, an exclusively personal affair, ' the Religion of a 
 nation ' becomes an inaccurate expression, and the fact is 
 admitted that the truths of Religion are perceived and accepted 
 as the truths of Science are received and accepted in a manner 
 which precisely accords with the mind of the individual. To 
 say that ' the Religion of a nation ought to be the embodi- 
 ment of its highest Intelligence, in the most solemn moments 
 of that Intelligence,' has a grand sound, but it can only be 
 received as truth with this proviso, that the Religion will be 
 accepted only in some personal or material forms by the many, 
 with an ever-changing vision of its spiritual aspect varying 
 from the lowest to the highest intelligence. This is true even 
 where Religion consists of ' Salvation formulas of Creeds and 
 Churches.' Though both accept the same formulas, yet none 
 of us doubt that between the Religion of Dr. Manning and the 
 Religion of a market-woman of Toledo, there is a difference 
 far wider than that which separates certain members of 
 different Churches. Mr. Greg has put a commonplace truth 
 into the language of culture that is all. From the foundation 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 319 
 
 of humanity, what he pleases to call a * rock ' has been dis- 
 cernible ; but no harm has come of it : those who have cared 
 to learn the truth have known that Religion, whether it be 
 regarded as of Divine Revelation or of human construction, is 
 in its acceptance relative to mental condition, and therefore, to 
 say that the ' highest Intelligence ' of a people is not in har- 
 mony with the Religion of the mass of the people, is merely to 
 say that which must be evident in every community to every 
 thoughtful man. In order to rear his ' rock ahead ' out of the 
 waters of fact, it has pleased Mr. Greg to assume that the 
 ' Christianity of the nations ' is one solid uniform body of 
 thought, severed from its head, which he places in a condition 
 of timid or blatant (according to culture) negation of all 
 Religion. There are, in fact, many Churches ; and there 
 are at least four Christianities, all useful, all progressing, 
 each attracting members by natural selection. There are 
 everywhere the Penal Christians, whose rude natures take 
 delight in the barbarous punishments of Scripture history, 
 and who find salutary discipline in the fear of hell, the fate of 
 Ananias, and the cruel sacrifice of Christ. There are every- 
 where Redemptionist Christians : these are especially the 
 people of ' Salvation-formulas ' ; Christ is not only their 
 Exemplar and Saviour, but their Judge ; and this milder 
 and more humanising creed has made them, and will, beyond 
 the time of my possible conception, continue to make them 
 an adornment of any community. Thirdly, there are the 
 Priestly Christians, including the Catholics and High Church- 
 men. With these, Christ is the Founder of a system of 
 theological government, which they claim the sole power 
 to carry on with the agency of saints and priests. And, 
 lastly, there are the Christians (and these, I suspect, include 
 most of Mr. Greg's infidels) who see in Christ's teaching 
 the highest morality, the truest principles of human govern- 
 ment, the ennobling hope of spiritual immortality ; they 
 find all this entangled and overlaid with Eastern metaphor 
 
320 A Reply to Cassandra. 
 
 and interpolated verbiage, which are to them not unintelligible 
 nor misunderstood ; and having thus submitted Christianity 
 to the severest rational test, they are pleased to call themselves 
 Christians. If there are any who seem not to be included in 
 these four categories, it is only those of the last, who in revolt 
 from what they regard as the gross and superstitious exaggera- 
 tions of others, can find satisfaction in nothing but momentary 
 expressions of contempt and abhorrence. I see no ' rock 
 ahead ' in this religious progress. We are safe so long as 
 we are free ; and not only are we free, but we are becoming, 
 and we must become, more free every day. Mr. Greg looks 
 fearfully to a day when men and women will be still more 
 harshly divided than at present; yet surely this is not the 
 terror of the time when the sexes are usefully co-operating in 
 all directions ; and whereas formerly the clergy were the only 
 class of men who sought women's aid, we now find a serious 
 conviction overspreading society that ' it is not good for man 
 to be alone ' in other spheres than those of the Church and 
 the family. 
 
 With his mechanical idea of the proletariat still in his 
 mind, Mr. Greg supposes that en masse they can suddenly 
 be turned from millions who are kept straight by fear of hell 
 into millions bent on the sensual enjoyment of lifelong lust 
 and rapine by the removal of that terror. Does not Mr. Greg 
 perceive that the hope or the fear of immortality being of those 
 things which he says are to the highest Intelligence * unknow- 
 able/ are therefore ineradicable ? To talk of a whole people 
 being ' convinced ' that there is no ' hereafter ' is an absurdity. 
 I cannot think that any man or woman was ever yet held 
 back from any crime by fear of hell, while I fully believe that 
 millions have been led to do good for love of Christ by such 
 virtues as He taught ; and as I cannot see how it is possible 
 that the ' highest Intelligence ' can ever be divorced from 
 the highest moral principles, I have not the slightest fear 
 that the progress of Religion will bring anything that is 
 
A Reply to Cassandra. 321 
 
 hurtful. Mr. Greg will see nothing that tells against his 
 miserable forebodings. Yet is there not every promise, in all 
 we see around us, that every day, more and more, the error, 
 which is made by Mr. Greg and by so many others that 
 Religion is an affair of nations and not of individuals is 
 being abandoned ? The nation is not less religious, truly ; 
 but it grows wonderfully tolerant, except to the law-breakers 
 of the law-established and nationally endowed Church, and 
 they can do exactly what they please when they cease 
 connection with the official service of the State. That 
 inequality of privilege which Mr. Greg says we must remove, is 
 doomed ; we have the promise of that in ' the political 
 supremacy of the lower classes.' I do firmly believe with 
 him that the well-being of our community demands 'that no 
 unwise or partial laws favour unequal distribution.' There are 
 such laws touching all departments of our social life ; some 
 which are cruel, others which are most strikingly unjust, and 
 some which are exasperating in their inequality. These were 
 our ' rocks ahead ' ; they were dangerous when we had no 
 power to avoid them. But they are no longer our peril ; the 
 people have acquired the political force which will bear us on 
 our course with safety. 
 
322 
 
 XIV. 
 
 WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. 
 
 I TASK my memory in vain to recall a time when it did 
 not seem to my humble judgment a self-evident propo- 
 sition that within the limits of the constitution, as defined by 
 law, the political rights of citizenship were the correlative of 
 the burdens of that condition. Again and again on my way 
 through life I have asked myself the questions : What is the 
 justification of law? Why am I bound by the clearest and 
 most cogent promptings of self-respect to obey and to accept 
 the authority of law ? My answer to these self-interrogatories 
 has never varied. I have felt that the authority of law found 
 its supreme and all-sufficient utility in making the weak to be 
 as the strong. When we speak of lawless men or lawless com- 
 munities, we indicate some who are oppressing others ; they are 
 men or communities who know no law but that of might in 
 their dealing with other people; they are brigands who, hardy 
 and well-armed, descend upon the defenceless traveller, or 
 upon the timorous villagers ; they are races who, valuing laws 
 for themselves, treat some inferior race with lawless cruelty. 
 Whenever or wherever a law can be found affecting the general 
 welfare of society which places a portion of the fully responsible 
 members of that society under disabilities, denying their equality 
 before the law, we may be sure that statute is imperfect, and 
 will in time give place to a more righteous edict. We know 
 that in this country there are nearly a million more of the 
 weaker than of the stronger sex. We are aware that no dis- 
 
Women's Suffrage. 323 
 
 tinction is known in those obligations which are not regarded 
 as privileges. A woman is equally liable to punishment with a 
 man. It is not Lady Burdett-Coutts' footman, but herself, upon 
 whom the tax-gatherer makes his demand. The office of poor- 
 law guardian has been much and very unwisely degraded ; the 
 woman householder may vote for him. Town councils and 
 local boards are not held in very high estimation ; the questions 
 upon which such elections turn are not of very apparent import- 
 ance ; they are rarely interesting to the higher mental faculties. 
 Women may vote at the election of such local officers, and, of 
 course, when the Education Act was passed, it was obligatory 
 to concede that franchise. It would have been too absurd 
 to maintain that women should vote in elections to a body 
 entrusted to some extent with the administration of justice, 
 with the regulation of footpaths, roadways, drains, gas-lamps, 
 and policemen, and yet should have been the only ratepayers 
 disqualified for voting or taking electoral part in the education 
 of young children. The political suffrage is still withheld. 
 
 Before passing to the grounds on which this denial is sup- 
 ported, I will say that in advocating the political enfranchise- 
 ment of women, I do not admit the existence of opponents. 
 There are those who are doing their utmost to retard that 
 amendment of law which in this world of ours is always going 
 on that approach toward the sole justification of its authority, 
 the equalisation of strength before the law. In this progress there 
 may be stumbles and faltering, turnings to this side and that ; 
 but there will be no rest, and every year will find us further on 
 the road to the goal which, the more successfully we labour to 
 approach it, appears ever the more distant. As striving to do 
 justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly, we get fuller and 
 fairer views of duty, so before us the horizon of thought and 
 the perception of right expand in the clearer atmosphere, and 
 our notion of the fulfilment of duty, which, as we toiled with 
 faces to the ground in the heavy air of lower life, was narrow 
 and selfish, becomes ever more wide and more comprehensive, as 
 
324 Women's Suffrage. 
 
 the clouds of prejudice and ignorance roll away. I recognise 
 no opponents, only hindrances in the path of progress to that 
 condition of society in which every person shall exercise his 
 or her faculties to the fullest possible extent, and to the utmost 
 advantage of others. I note that the idea which men in general 
 have of the character and position of women may be traced to 
 the earliest historical times. Painters have contributed largely 
 to this idea. I will not speak now of that grievous hindrance 
 to the spread of true Christianity which they, in their ignorance 
 of the realities of Eastern life, have perpetrated in so grossly 
 misrepresenting the life of Christ. How much nearer the hearts 
 of men and women would have been to-day to that glorious 
 example if painters had sketched Him as He was, who shall 
 say ? But, blind to reality and truth, they have taught, in their 
 pictures of Eastern women, that grace is compatible with sloth ; 
 that suppleness of body comes without training or exercise ; 
 that refined beauty can be the natural partner of ignorance and 
 indolence ; in short, that every perfection of form and face is 
 consistent with an existence and a diet of which the sure results 
 are obesity and inanity. Let us have done with all such false- 
 hood. Let us believe that figs will sooner grow of thistles than 
 the graces of life of sensual and sordid hours. 
 
 I do not care to argue the question of women's possible 
 fitness for enfranchisement, when I recall to mind the venerable 
 figure of one of the greatest mathematicians of this age Mrs. 
 Somerville. In every sphere of life in which women have been 
 allowed full scope and encouragement they have been admirably 
 successful. For literary brilliance, few men of our time have 
 been the equals of Caroline Norton and George Eliot. And 
 few are the Frenchmen to be compared with Georges Sand, 
 1 whose style,' says Mr. Mill, ' acts upon the nervous system 
 like a symphony of Haydn or Mozart.' The temple of 
 histrionic fame has been fairly open to women, and queens 
 of song have received in this country larger remuneration for 
 their labour than has ever been given by way of payment to 
 
Women's Suffrage. 325 
 
 any man in the State. I do not argue that women, who are 
 only disqualified by reason of sex, ought to have the political 
 suffrage ; for that I regard as a self-evident proposition. I 
 rather propose to remove by solution the hindrances which 
 retard the attainment of their right. I propose to show those 
 who obstruct this measure of justice that their policy is not 
 merely vain, but wasteful ; and I have thus glanced from one 
 phase to another of the condition of women with a double 
 intention. I wished to show that the progress of women 
 towards a fuller responsibility is desirable as well as inevitable. 
 I wished to exhibit the disposition of women to accept the 
 force of custom. When I hear it said of any women that they 
 do not desire change ; that they would rather ' rest and be 
 thankful ' ; that the path to which others invite them is 
 unwomanly and ' mannish ' I am not surprised. These are 
 the invariable objections of women all up the gamut of civili- 
 sation of which I am striking a few notes. In 1867 I spent a 
 week in a mud-built town upon an oasis in the Great Desert, 
 where every householder walked with the huge key of his house 
 and of his wives slung on his girdle. I am quite certain 
 that those women had no desire for English freedom. I have 
 heard a Turkish lady of rank scold her husband because he 
 admitted a strange man to her presence before she had adjusted 
 her face-veil. 'Tis 
 
 ' Custom that makes cowards of us all.' 
 
 That women are unfit for enfranchisement, and that all 
 women do not demand enfranchisement, are arguments which 
 we may now set aside. But still I hear that which the Member 
 for Edinburgh University so happily summed up as ' the old 
 " rib " theory ' ringing in my ears. The objector to my line of 
 argument says, ' True it is that the progress of women towards 
 fuller responsibility and fuller exercise of mental and moral 
 faculties is inevitable, but your chain of instances only shows 
 her condition relative to that of the man and always in subordi- 
 
326 Women's Stiff rage. 
 
 nation to the first-born of creation. The English woman is up 
 to my level as the Bedoueen wife to the standard of her 
 husband. You assert something more, and that which is un- 
 natural and wholly different from the phases of this equal 
 progress/ I am prepared to meet such a line of objection. 
 But I insist upon this : that the measure of that fuller happiness 
 which this Englishman thinks he has in his married life, the 
 superior joy which he believes himself to have in the society of 
 his wife as compared with the Bedoueen, who never regards 
 women as the intellectual companions of men, is, whether he 
 knows it or not, the degree of independence which the woman 
 has gained from the progress of that authority of law which, as 
 I have said, justifies its claims upon our allegiance only so far 
 as it tends to equalise the subjection of all to its behests. 
 
 Why in so many cases is there a painful contrast between 
 courtship and marriage a contrast never to be observed in the 
 long continuance of the closest and most affectionate friend- 
 ships ? I say that this decline of happiness is at least to some 
 extent caused by the decline from equality of condition. It is 
 with me a firm conviction that true love can only co-exist with 
 sincere respect, and that respect will be very apt to fail 
 when it is required of one who is independent, for another in a 
 dependent condition. Remember, I would say, that marriage 
 is a deliberate act, not of purchase and sale of human rights, 
 but of partnership ; and just as I believe that an Englishman 
 would find little happiness in the society of an Arab wife, so I 
 argue that the nearer the wife's state of legal and political respon- 
 sibility approaches his own, the greater will be his happiness 
 and his enjoyment of her society. I know I am at present 
 occupying low ground ; I might content myself with saying that 
 this enfranchisement is a right, and therefore should be granted ; 
 but I will not for that reason forbear from showing men that 
 their interest and happiness are involved in this progress. I 
 will not even use an argument so far removed from selfishness 
 as to speak of children, though it must be clear, I think, that 
 
Womerf s Suffrage. 327 
 
 the education of the young is at present greatly hampered by 
 the illiberality of thought which is so often instilled at the 
 mother's knee, and which leads to so much painful reaction in 
 after-life. I say, then, that if men will strive to place women 
 in a position of equality before the law with themselves, and to 
 promote an education for women equally fitting, they will be 
 in less danger of finding in marriage a disillusion. 
 
 But more than this. Many men nowadays groan beneath the 
 burden which the folly and extravagance of their wives brings 
 upon them. To the same cause, let me say in parenthesis, is 
 owing the rapid disappearance of the practice of polygamy in 
 Constantinople. It is in vain that the law of the Prophet allows 
 four wives, when the bills of French milliners and of the vendors 
 of articles de Paris permit but one. The allusion is not indeed 
 irrelevant ; for just as the irresponsible extravagance of the 
 women of Stamboul is helping to work out a great moral 
 improvement in their condition, so I believe the frivolity and 
 extravagance of many women among us the natural but evil 
 fruits of an idle and aimless life will turn men's minds to the 
 necessity for giving women a more serious training. Whatever 
 tends to inequality in the condition of women relative to men, 
 is favourable to household extravagance. Women who have 
 been accustomed to the expenditure of money and to the 
 observation of wise examples in regard to expenditure, are 
 the most frugal and the most successful in their housekeeping. 
 The objector to my argument says that the progress of women 
 is a menace to his position as head of the family. I say 
 that God only knows who is the ' head ' of a family. The 
 true headship of a family can only be determined and is 
 only settled in the same way in which leadership is adjusted 
 among men. Whether the wife be a tyrant or a slave, the 
 hardships of either position will be modified by conceding 
 her equality before the law. It is urged on the other side 
 that women ought not to be troubled with politics ; as if 
 in this London where probably not one in a thousand of the 
 
328 Women's Suffrage. 
 
 male population devotes a single hour in the year to his electoral 
 duties not merely the whole of the female voters, but every 
 woman besides, would give themselves up to political discussion ! 
 Finally, driven to his entrenchments, my objector says that 
 the possession of the franchise would be contrary to women's 
 natural position, by which he designs to indicate in a vague 
 and mysterious way, that the Creator specially formed women 
 with reference to their perpetual exclusion from voting at parlia- 
 mentary elections ; and he presumes to think that what has 
 been thus made, he or I can assist in unmaking ; for he says 
 that the concession of the suffrage will unsex women. Does 
 he suppose, then, that women are sexed by these disabilities 
 these unjust laws which are continually breaking from their 
 limbs like rotten thongs ? Let us get to a more wholesome and 
 intelligent doctrine than this. I would rather argue that because 
 the sex and disposition of men and women are what they are 
 we should not dare to put upon them unequal laws ; that we 
 might be quite sure that under a regime of equal laws women 
 could not be unsexed. Lately I heard a man a scholar and 
 a gentleman, the father of children, the husband of a good, 
 virtuous, and intelligent wife say, in objecting to women's 
 suffrage : ' Why should this talk be made about women ? They 
 have nothing to complain of.' I replied to him : ' Put yourself 
 in her place.' I took the liberty of speaking of his wife, with 
 whom I have had the pleasure of long acquaintance. I said : 
 ' She loves your children with an affection that we men can 
 hardly estimate ; from early training and conviction of principle, 
 the strongest sentiment of her mind, next to affection for your- 
 self and your children, is towards the Protestant religion. Yet 
 it will not be illegal for you to leave to the sole guardianship 
 of your Irish Roman Catholic footman the education and care 
 of your children, without any regard for her agony of heart 
 and mind. If her uncle were to die to-morrow, and his fortune 
 were by will bequeathed to her, the money would be hers 
 only to the poor extent of 200; she may not attempt to 
 
Women's Suffrage. 3-9 
 
 earn her livelihood without your permission ; if you strike her, 
 and she flies to my house for shelter, you can force her home 
 again and again ; if you starve her, she has no direct claim at 
 law against yourself, and even the Poor Law may refuse her 
 dying appeal for help. A few years ago, and but for agitation 
 of the same sort as that you now condemn, her condition before 
 the law would have been greatly more unequal. If you wished 
 to disgrace her name, you could bring an action for alleged 
 damages sustained by her dishonour; no evidence of vice or 
 profligacy on your part would then have given her claim even to 
 separation ; while, on the other hand, you could immediately 
 have obtained a divorce upon proof of her infidelity. Then, 
 her brains and fingers would have been yours ; if she earned 
 money, she could not own it ; you could take from her any 
 fruit of her labour.' Said I to my friend : ' If you care nothing 
 for your political privileges ; if you care nothing for your 
 parental privileges ; if you do not value the advantages which, 
 because you are a man, and for no other nor better reason, you 
 have enjoyed through life, in the way of public school or uni- 
 versity career, and in all the power to choose for yourself both a 
 career in life and the woman you loved to be your wife you 
 are a poltroon ; and if you cannot promise that those unjust 
 laws which I have indicated as yet existing with regard to 
 women shall, so far as your power extends, be at once set 
 aside, then you are bound, if you wish to escape the suspicion 
 of roguery, to allow and to assist women to help themselves.' 
 If I have expressed any contempt for those who retard the 
 passing of the Women's Disabilities Bill, it is owing to the 
 recollection of their frequent defeat. The Divorce Law may 
 not yet be perfect, but when it was shocking and shameful in its 
 injustice there were scores of lords and gentlemen to assert its 
 excellence. Mr. Gladstone then enunciated a grand doctrine, 
 to which, however, he now seems rather weak-kneed in his 
 allegiance. He said : 'When the Gospel came into the world, 
 woman was elevated to an equality with her stronger com- 
 
330 Women's Suffrage. 
 
 panion.' Well might the Hon. Mrs. Norton write bitterly of 
 this speech: 'The only text on the subject acknowledged by 
 Parliament is the Old Testament text, " And he shall rule over 
 her." We keep the doctrine of the Fall, not of the Re- 
 demption.' 
 
 Can women trust their interest to others ? It would seem 
 not. Were it not for agitation such as that which has now 
 compelled attention, every employment but the most menial 
 would be closed to women. The proper education of girls is at 
 least as important as that of boys, seeing that to women the 
 education of all is committed, at least during tender years ; but 
 most of the public endowments have been made or wrested to 
 the boys. Surely no one who has given fair attention to the 
 subject would pretend to say that the interests of women receive 
 even decent regard in the legislature ; and who can measure 
 the disrespect which their disability entails ? Miss Burdett- 
 Coutts was a person often referred to as one who had some 
 claims to the suffrage. I think her present disability is even 
 more marked. She is a baroness ; she has provided bishops 
 with endowments ; she has made great gifts, not to London 
 only, but to other towns ; yet she is far more removed now 
 from the political privileges of men of the caste into the borders 
 of which she has consented to step, than before she was made a 
 peeress. All her virtues, all her wealth, any further accession of 
 rank, cannot qualify her for the privilege which would come of 
 right to any peer, were he ever so incapable, drunken, or profli- 
 gate. See how the unjust principle has ruled even in the 
 highest places ! The same gifted lady who has written of 
 Queen Victoria as 'the only woman in England who cannot 
 suffer wrong/ has placed on record in this burning sentence the 
 different measure which has been meted out 'to sinful kings and 
 erring queens: 'We trace,' she says, 'the incontinence of the 
 former by successive creations in the peerage ; the faults of the 
 latter by records of imprisonment and death on the scaffold.' 
 
 When men better than the laws they do not lift their finger 
 
Women's Suffrage. 331 
 
 to alter say : ' Yes ; it is bad that a woman can have no 
 property in her child except it be illegitimate, but then, you 
 know, nobody leaves them to the law;' we know that the 
 truth is otherwise ; cases are often published which show that 
 women are left to the cruel operation of unjust laws. But 
 indeed men might just as well take credit for the fact that they 
 do not fall under the law against murder. The cardinal fault 
 of many laws relating to women is that they operate precisely 
 in contradiction of the principle which we have said justifies 
 the authority of law ; they oppress the weak for the benefit of 
 the strong. Do we want more proof ? Look, then, at the law 
 relative to seduction, the punishment for which is usually 
 awarded in an action by one man against another, to determine 
 the charge which he shall make for ' loss of services,' as the 
 seduction is called. See the consequences of the permissive 
 law of primogeniture. It would be mauvais ton for them to 
 complain, but I confess that any one in the society of high-born 
 dames may well be penetrated with sympathy for their peculiar 
 difficulties. In the middle class, that which people have is 
 generally their own ; but, although there is scarcely a nobleman 
 who is anything more than the life-tenant of his estate, that is 
 a position of dignity compared with the lot of a dress-loving 
 duchess or countess, whose jewels like a livery to which she is 
 no longer entitled will be stripped from her at her husband's 
 death. It is a wonder the dowagers have never yet had the 
 strength of mind to stand upright when their Juggernaut, 
 Primogeniture, passes by ! 
 
 Women have abundant reason to complain ; and, until much 
 is altered by their own exertions in their favour, they have 
 little means or allurement to qualify themselves for a more 
 independent life. It is to me amazing how, without any of the 
 baits and stimulants which cheer men on in their mental labour, 
 women do in so great numbers display a love for higher educa- 
 tion. Many of these ladies study without hope of appreciation 
 or external reward, a self-sacrifice which no man makes and 
 
332 Women's Suffrage. 
 
 the extent of which no man can fully conceive. In fact, whether 
 we regard women as weak or strong, their claim to the suffrage 
 is valid. If they are weak, they need representation, for the 
 history of every country and the existing state of our law prove 
 that only those who are directly represented get their rights ; 
 if they are strong, the country cannot afford to legislate with 
 one arm. 'Let male indignation/ writes the Hon. Mrs. Norton, 
 ' be appeased by the thought that for one " strong-minded 
 woman," one woman strong-hearted enough to bear ridicule, 
 and intelligent enough to argue a hundred at least are sitting, 
 feebly weeping, by lone firesides, or writing quires of letters to 
 brothers and friends, to " see them righted," without the smallest 
 inkling of comprehension of any law whatever except that law 
 of necessity which compels them to suffer ! ' 
 
 The political enfranchisement of women should be demanded 
 in the interest of the community for the advantage of both 
 sexes. But let us for a moment refer to the position of this 
 claim in America. There is no doubt that its acceptance is 
 retarded in this country to some extent by the slow progress 
 which it makes in the United States. People think that if the 
 go-ahead Republic of the West halts in the political enfranchise- 
 ment of women, how much more should a kingdom of ancient 
 lines and institutions, grown old under a one-sexed suffrage, 
 consider its ways. It is remarked, to the prejudice of this 
 movement in England, that on the other side of the Atlantic 
 no leading statesman has adopted the cause. But it is easy 
 to perceive that the question has a very different aspect in a 
 country governed by universal suffrage, and in a country like our 
 own, where the right of voting is the appanage of residential 
 qualification. In the United States the question is one of more 
 than doubling the electoral body ; here it is a question of adding 
 one-seventh to the electing representatives of the whole people. 
 I am profoundly convinced that the concession may be safely, 
 should be quickly, made. It cannot be for the interest of the 
 community that we should retain disabilities on the Statute 
 
Women's Suffrage. 333 
 
 Book which discourage one-half the people from the exercise 
 of their intellectual faculties, and that half acknowledged to be 
 the more liberally endowed with some most valuable qualifica- 
 tions. Mr. Mill asserted that ' with equality of experience and 
 of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a 
 man of what is immediately before her.' He candidly admitted 
 the tendency of women ' to build over-hasty generalisations ' ; 
 but ' the corrective to this defect is access to the experience of 
 the human race. A woman's mistakes are those of a clever, 
 self-educated man, who often sees what men trained in routine 
 do not see, but falls into errors for want of knowing things 
 which have long been known.' Is it no great loss, no crime, 
 to relegate to frivolity and fashion, to the unproductive con- 
 sumption of the world's wealth, such abilities as these ? Does 
 not our legislation show in a thousand ways, and with ever- 
 increasing force, the waste and injury which the community 
 sustains for want of female co-operation ? Not only is this 
 country distinguished beneath all the great powers of Europe 
 for the harsh injustice of its laws in their relation to the rights 
 of women, as touching their persons, their children, their pro- 
 perty, and their homes, but it is the one in which the bulk of 
 the people have perhaps the least ccmfort, together with the 
 largest ability to make themselves comfortable. As compared 
 with the poor of other countries, the English people know 
 nothing of economy in their homes. We are famed for a high 
 rate of infant mortality. Paupers swarm in the streets of the 
 richest cities in the world ; now and then they die of starvation ; 
 the Poor Law frequently breaks down and is set up again by 
 a peculiar process termed official inquiry ; the Marriage Law 
 is in confusion ; the Married Women's Property Law is in a 
 muddle ; we legislate on the drink question without the assist- 
 ance of those who suffer most in body and soul from the English 
 plague of drunkenness ; the Church and Education are both 
 questions of the hour. All these, and a hundred other matters 
 essentially important to women, as well as to men, will before 
 
334 Women ' s Suffrage. 
 
 long be submitted to the ordeal of a general election. I believe 
 it would be well for the country if women had a voice in the 
 national verdict. I am not one of those persons who are ready, 
 as they term it, to trace ' the purpose of God ' in every affair ; 
 but I confess I am unable to comprehend the religion of those 
 men who, believing that women have equal responsibility in the 
 sight of God, are resolved to take for their own sex the govern- 
 ment of the world, and leave subjection for the other half of the 
 community. Such stand self-condemned by the law of progress, 
 which teaches loud and louder to every succeeding generation 
 that man grows higher and nobler in proportion as he ceases 
 from violence, and learns to love justice. The pre-eminence of 
 mere physical strength in man has passed away. The age of 
 warriors was succeeded by the age of generals, when, as Macaulay 
 says, ' among the hundred and twenty thousand soldiers who 
 were marshalled round Neerwinden under all the standards of 
 Western Europe, the two feeblest in body were the hunchbacked 
 dwarf who urged forward the fiery onset of France and the 
 asthmatic skeleton who covered the slow retreat of England/ 
 Brute force among men has ceased to reign. Men are now 
 asked to make yet another advance to be victorious over 
 themselves. And though, as I have said, I do not profess to a 
 knowledge of the ways of Providence, yet I will contend with 
 Mr. Gladstone that much of the teaching of Christ implies the 
 elevation of woman to legal equality with her stronger com- 
 panion, and my reason forbids me to doubt that in every duty 
 of life in which co-operation is possible, the work of the world 
 will be best accomplished by the united efforts of men and 
 women. 
 
335 
 
 XV. 
 THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN! 
 
 AM inclined to envy the insensibility of those who can 
 * stand up before educated and accomplished women their 
 acknowledged superiors in mental attainments, in moral worth 
 and judgment and refuse the claim even of such to political 
 enfranchisement. For my own part, I find an apology rising 
 to my lips together with the advocacy of women's suffrage. 
 It seemed abasement enough when working men, the humblest, 
 but most numerous class of householders, had to sue the 
 tribunal to which our plea is addressed, with prayers for the 
 legislative right of citizenship. But it is surely shameful that 
 in a country which, for longer than the average period of one 
 generation, has been ruled by a woman in a country in which 
 against every obstacle, women have won such high place in 
 every path in which their endeavours could be directed where 
 they are the responsible owners of vast wealth, and where they 
 are exposed to all the rigours of the law where, though under 
 serious disabilities in regard to earning money, they are yet 
 liable equally with men to the demands of the imperial and 
 local tax-gatherer it is surely, I say, not without some sense 
 of embarrassment, that a man, who is not the mere slave of 
 precedent, can find himself engaged in advocating the political 
 enfranchisement of women. 
 
 Yet I am not disposed to think harshly of men who oppose 
 
 i An Address to the Members of the Association for the Promotion of Social Science. 
 
336 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 their futile resistance to this demand, because I doubt their 
 consciousness of wrong-doing. Half the errors of the world 
 would be cured in an instant if we could inoculate mankind 
 with the idea of progress. The friends of progress must not 
 deceive themselves. There is actually in the minds of a large 
 section of mankind a notion that humanity has from the 
 beginning always wandered far and farther from perfection, 
 though how they reconcile this inverted belief with a loudly 
 proclaimed trust in the providence of God I never could make 
 out. But if the review of progress affords no indictment of 
 the honesty of apathetic objectors to this demand, those can 
 hardly escape the reproach of stupidity if they do not now 
 observe how insecure has become the anchorage of their objec- 
 tions. If any one were to say of the ablest of the many 
 distinguished ladies whom I have the honour of addressing to- 
 night, ' Madam, you and your sex are born in acknowledged 
 inferiority to men ; you are only fit to be classed with reference 
 to political enfranchisement among lunatics, criminals, idiots, 
 and minors ' if he escaped the conviction of more than brutal 
 rudeness it could only be upon the ground of his folly. How 
 much more ridiculous than insulting would such an argument 
 be in our day, when women exercise every suffrage but that of 
 Parliament, and when a woman has sat by right of a larger 
 number of votes than ever were given for a man, in the chief 
 educational council of the kingdom. It is late, far too late, to 
 bring forward ' the old rib theory ' ; and though I will not be- 
 lieve that men who oppose the claims of women are directly 
 animated by selfish and unworthy motives, yet sure I am that 
 if they will fairly consider the matter, they will see nothing 
 but the old and dying law of mere might as the foundation of 
 their resistance. Feebly and unworthily as I shall handle a 
 few of the arguments on the side of concession, I have yet so 
 much confidence in the clearness and cogency of these argu- 
 ments as to have no doubt of the result upon the mind of any 
 one who is open to conviction. 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 337 
 
 Roughly speaking, we may divide those who withstand the 
 claim of women's suffrage into four classes : those who say 
 that women are unfit for the suffrage ; those who contend that 
 the suffrage is unfit for women ; those who maintain that 
 women do not want the suffrage ; and, lastly, those who assert 
 that women have nothing to gain, no wrongs to redress, by 
 means of the suffrage. 
 
 I shall not offend your ears by dealing at great length 
 with the objection that women are unfit to be entrusted with 
 the suffrage. Of course, no man in his senses would deny 
 the eligibility of some women. Among the members of the 
 National Society for Women's Suffrage, is a lady who is 
 nothing less than the most distinguished astronomical mathe- 
 matician ; there are two others whose acts of philanthropy in 
 Europe, Asia, and America, have made household words of 
 their honoured names ; there are few living writers who do not 
 acknowledge inferiority in her own department of literature to 
 George Eliot ; I know of no man whose services are valued 
 at so high a rate in hard money as those of Adelina Patti. 
 Few would like to deny the claim of Lady Burdett-Coutts to 
 enfranchisement. But do not these blind individuals who are 
 about to fall into the ditch of defeat, do they not see that in 
 admitting the claim of Mary Somerville they concede the whole 
 matter ? It is not to be expected that when by the rule of the 
 strongest, women have through all time been excluded from so 
 many opportunities for intellectual improvement, they should 
 all thus shine before men ; but if, owing to this rude law, which 
 it is the mission of civilisation' to banish, they have been 
 deprived, unjustly deprived, of advantages which, rightly used, 
 tend to make life higher and happier and nobler, they have 
 not had to contend to so great an extent with the vices which 
 together with learning and power, men have done their best 
 to monopolize. Rather than assert that all men were fit for 
 the suffrage, I would contend that all women are as fit as all 
 men for that privilege. 
 
 z 
 
338 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 But that is not necessary. Here the right of voting is a 
 question of property ; and there are very few men who will 
 venture to argue that if a woman is fit to be entrusted with 
 the rights and duties of property, she is unfit to vote in 
 respect of her possessions. If I buy a freehold for 100 it 
 yields me a vote plus the enjoyment of the property, and 
 any man should be ashamed to confess that such acquirement 
 of the suffrage is not a valuable consideration. Why then 
 should any woman have less than I obtain for my money ? 
 Is not this injustice ? If not, I know not what is just. Is 
 it because she is unfit to exercise a right which the most 
 drunken, and ignorant, and sordid clown may hold as the 
 appanage of his purchase ? This objection that women are 
 unfit for the franchise, I think, has fallen to the ground. 
 
 Let us give our attention now, for a moment, to those 
 gentler hindrances, who regard the suffrage as unfit for 
 women. I must confess to you that I always look with 
 suspicion upon an argument of this sort. When I have 
 heard people say : * This is unfit for children/ I have often 
 found they had no good reason to give in support of such 
 a limitation. The suffrage is not given to minors, because 
 minors cannot of themselves hold property cannot perform 
 the duties of citizenship, and are not amenable to the full 
 responsibilities of that condition. It is only on the paternal 
 theory of government we have a right to say of any privilege : 
 ' This is unfit for them ; let us keep it all to ourselves.' 
 Such, indeed, is the standpoint of these objectors. They, in 
 fact, assume a paternal authority over all women. They 
 assume that women have rights and responsibilities essen- 
 tially different from those of men. But I never heard that 
 this difference could be pleaded to bar the operation of a dis- 
 tress warrant issued against the furniture of a woman- 
 householder ; I never heard that it would excuse her from the 
 payment of rates and taxes. Surely if the suffrage is unfit 
 for women, they ought never to be troubled with the cost of 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 339 
 
 sewers, the wages of policemen, the maintenance of lunatics, 
 the provision for paving. ' Ah ! but that is not what I 
 mean/ protests the self-constituted protector of women. ' I 
 mean that women are unfit for scenes in which men are 
 brought together in hot excitement.' Well, I must say, I 
 think it is just then that their influence will be most bene- 
 ficial. Whether it be so or not does not of course affect in 
 the slightest degree the question of their right. They have 
 in respect of their property a right to the suffrage, and a 
 further right to consider for themselves, whether the circum- 
 stances under which they are called upon to exercise it are 
 such as invite them to record their vote, or to repel them 
 from the exercise of the suffrage. But I do maintain that 
 scandals of parliamentary election will be ended most quickly 
 by the adoption of women suffrage. I find no evidence of 
 this stronger than in the very instances which the upholders 
 of the argument that the suffrage is unfit for women bring 
 forward to refute my claim. They have pointed to the pre- 
 sence of disorderly women at the poll in certain municipal 
 elections. Yet the misconduct of those few women produced 
 more solemn and abiding resolution for reform, than the 
 grosser misconduct of men in all the century. What a pity, I 
 say, that we had not years and years ago a few ill-behaved 
 women at the poll, in order that men, shocked at vice to 
 which their eyes were closed in their own case, should so 
 resolve to make the conduct of elections orderly and respect- 
 able as the most important act of secular duty ! Who indeed 
 can fail to see that just in proportion as we have fewer places 
 of which it can be said that they are unfit for women, so 
 men become more self-respecting, more refined, more virtuous ; 
 in short, more fit for the performance of their own proper 
 share of the duties of life. When I hear it said that some- 
 thing is unfit for women, experience has led me to associate 
 more or less of drunkenness with the forbidden thing. There 
 is riot and revelry, rude license and improper conduct in the 
 
340 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 things from which fathers, and husbands, and brothers, desire 
 to keep women. But do they lose sight of the fact that the 
 admission of women to functions, the performance of which 
 has been stained with misconduct, is the surest antidote, 
 the most certain way of removing the gross accompaniments 
 of these public assemblies ? Why should they doubt this ? 
 Let them look to their own dinner-tables, and then ransack 
 their memories for records of the three-bottle men of their 
 grandfathers' day. If men have gained this advance by 
 'joining the ladies,' with more sense left in their brains than 
 their grandfathers thought necessary for the drawing-room, 
 why should it be questioned that the same result would be 
 produced at the poll ? For my own part, I think a further 
 improvement at dinner-tables would be total abolition of the 
 separate system ; the gain would be on the side of temper- 
 ance and of esprit ; for dreary as English dinners not unfre- 
 quently are, I confess I always look forward with positive 
 dislike to that most dreary period of the evening, when, in 
 obedience to the nod of the presiding lady, ' one shall be 
 taken and the other left.' I think the argument that the 
 possession of the suffrage would unsex women, is one of the 
 most ignorant, shallow, and thoughtless character. Men say 
 that the possession of the suffrage would be contrary to a 
 woman's natural position. This argument is generally put 
 forward by those who are assured that the existence of men 
 and women is the design of a personal Creator. Am I then 
 to suppose this indicates a belief that women are formed 
 with special reference to their perpetual exclusion from 
 voting not at contested elections to boards of guardians, 
 local boards, town councils, and school boards, but at parlia- 
 mentary elections ? Does the proposer of this objection 
 presume to suggest that he or I can unsex women that we 
 can undo the work of creation that Parliament can do that 
 which is most impossible ? I do not think it necessary to 
 continue argument upon this part of the subject. 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 341 
 
 I am now prepared to meet the third class of objectors, 
 those who assert that women do not want the franchise. I 
 admit that all women do not demand the franchise ; if they 
 did, there would be little need of such poor efforts as I can 
 make for their enfranchisement. But sure I am that every 
 day and every hour an increasing number of women will 
 join in this demand. Is it a new thing that the suffrage 
 should not be demanded en masse? After all, the work of 
 pulling down the park railings, and drawing a tear from 
 the eyes of good Mr. Walpole, were not the achievements 
 of a population. There is far more of real effort represented 
 in the petitions from women which have again and again 
 loaded the tables of the House of Commons. Now, the 
 advocacy of the Women's Disabilities Bill is becoming quite 
 fashionable, but it has been a different matter in years that 
 are but lately passed, and even now, for earnest, sincere 
 women, who feel the injustice of their disabilities deeply in 
 their hearts, it is often a far harder matter to brave the 
 silly prejudices of tyrant custom in the mere signing of a 
 petition than it could be for a man to bear a hand in the 
 removal of any length of Hyde Park railings. When I 
 hear it said that the majority of women do not demand 
 the political suffrage, I am not surprised. Of any unen- 
 franchised class the majority has always been found apathetic. 
 And think what special reason women have for apathy, or 
 seeming apathy ! Nine-tenths of them, and probably more, are 
 in some way or other, dependent upon men for the means 
 of subsistence. They are more obedient to custom, more 
 fearful of combating the opinion of the world ; they are 
 much ruled by fashion, and the leaders of fashion I mean 
 the leaders of fashion in dress and apparel of all sorts will 
 be slow in demanding for women a life of greater dignity 
 and more equal partnership. But I say this : that whether 
 the woman with whom he talks be frivolous or ignorant, 
 the gay butterfly who regards mere household work as a 
 
34 2 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 chrysalis state, or the poor drudge whose life is almost 
 breathless in the performance of the vulgar duties of the 
 most sordid home no man, be he the bitterest opponent 
 of this movement to be found within the walls of Parliament, 
 can fail to arouse in her mind an active demand for 
 justice, if he will honestly and truthfully set before her 
 comprehension even those few of the disgraceful anomalies 
 of our law with which I shall conclude my remarks. For 
 now, lastly, I am going to do battle with those who assert 
 that women have nothing to gain, no wrongs to redress, 
 by the possession of the suffrage, which would produce a 
 more active interest on the part of the sex in political 
 affairs. I ought indeed to have put the matter of women's 
 wrongs before that of their rights. It may perhaps be alleged 
 against me with some truth that, as a man, I naturally 
 shrunk from exposing to the discredit of my sex, laws so 
 outrageous in their injustice, so unkind in their cruelty, so 
 unparalleled throughout the whole world for their rank injustice. 
 Let us look at the life of a woman from her cradle as 
 affected by these laws. We may say of this country that ' all 
 men and women are born free and equal ' ; but directly the 
 educational process begins, then the injustice commences. 
 The boy finds ample endowments, many of them bequeathed 
 for the education of poor children, open exclusively to those 
 of his sex ; and in nineteen homes out of twenty, every 
 effort is made for his advancement as something upon 
 which the whole well-being of the family depends, while the 
 sister is often left as it were to feed upon the scanty herbage 
 which she may find growing by the wayside of the remote 
 bye-paths of her life. He is encouraged to be ' manly/ which 
 with many people means skilful at fisticuffs ; and rudeness to 
 those weaker than himself is not regarded as a high crime 
 and misdemeanour. When the lad is looking through the 
 pleasant paths of a university career towards that vague world 
 in which he will some day be an actor, free to try his strength 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 343 
 
 against the strongest and to win the highest honours in the 
 State, there is settling down upon the mind of the girl a haze 
 of uncertainty. Her common refuge is romance. She is 
 bound by every tie of affection and of interest to be conven- 
 tional, and to assure herself and her friends that she is very 
 happy. But is she so ? Is human nature so very different 
 that an active life can be as it were suspended without 
 emotion ? Do not believe this. Even ' girls of the period ' 
 set their little wits a-thinking occasionally. And what do 
 they see ? Nothing so ennobling as a certain career of active 
 duty inviting every man in a hundred forms. An aimless, idle 
 life, vivifying with the prospect of marriage or fading away 
 towards inferior comfort to that enjoyed in the paternal home 
 perhaps penury. They find consolation and hope in 
 romance and frivolity, and men find the consequence in the 
 extravagance and want of sympathy of their wives, We have 
 seen to some extent what is the position of women if they 
 inherit property and live unmarried. A million of women in 
 these islands cannot marry because their number is by so 
 many in excess of that of men ; but as for those who do marry, 
 they must at the outset of married life accept the imputation 
 from the law, of idiocy, or of a mild and as it were semi- 
 lunatic form of felony. They will not be allowed to retain 
 possession of their property. Either they must commit its 
 custody with the possibility of utter ruin to persons called 
 trustees, who ofttimes cannot be trusted, or the husband, who 
 has just vowed to endow them with all his worldly goods, 
 receives by the mere act of marriage a transfer of their 
 property. 
 
 ' Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient, 
 Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman's devotion,' 
 
 do not make the error of supposing that this lovely fruit 
 grows out of injustice and cruel wrong ! As you value this 
 sweetest prize of life, with its clasps, more dear, as an eloquent 
 
344 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 friend of mine has said, than those of Alma and of Inkerman, 
 as you are zealous for the dignity of true love and for the 
 fidelity of married life, set yourselves to right the wrongs of 
 women ! The time is long past when it was in the power of 
 the strong to force the physically weak to live a life of igno- 
 rance and subjection. All knowledge is open before women ; 
 a really learned woman has long ceased to be a curiosity. You 
 cannot look for the most conscientious regard for duty and 
 truth and honour from women who live under the thraldom 
 of cruelly unjust laws ; and for yourselves you must make 
 your choice, whether in this matter, you will so act as to 
 receive the respect, the aversion, or the contempt of intelligent 
 women. If you think I speak too strongly, bear me company 
 a few minutes while I pass but very superficially over some of 
 the iniquities of the laws of this country as they affect women. 
 Let us take the laws at their best. Two friends of mine 
 were lately married ; both the man and the woman were 
 possessed of property, which each had managed most admi- 
 rably and with great success. The man retains full command 
 over his fortune, but the woman was obliged on entering the 
 portal of marriage to pass her property either to her husband 
 or to trustees : she thought it her duty to choose the latter, 
 and is now thwarted and harassed in regard to every disposi- 
 tion of her fortune. So much for the good husband. Now 
 let us look at another everyday picture. I will repeat the 
 published facts of the case of a'woman who is now reduced to 
 selling oranges in the streets of Liverpool. Her first husband 
 died, leaving her a licensed public-house and 1,000. She 
 married again. In the early days of their married life her 
 second husband drew out the 1,000 from the bank in which 
 it was deposited and took ship with his legalized plunder for 
 Australia. Robbed with the approval of the laws of her 
 country, she made no revolt, but laboured and succeeded in 
 maintaining in comfort and respectability herself and the 
 daughter she had borne to her first husband. In a few years 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 345 
 
 the unpunishable rogue returned, miserable, ragged, and 
 destitute. She fed and forgave him. Happy in relieving his 
 distress and in ministering to his comfort, she felt a new 
 pleasure in life. One day he proposed a drive in the country 
 for the hard-working wife and daughter, and they took the 
 unaccustomed luxury of a carriage. On returning they found 
 a stranger in full possession of the bar and the business of the 
 inn. He produced a bill of sale, from the husband, of the 
 house with its contents and goodwill. Imagine the feelings 
 with which this woman found herself and her daughter home- 
 less and penniless, turned out to live a pauper or to die a 
 beggar in the streets of Liverpool ! Ladies and gentlemen, I 
 am overwhelmed with shame as I confess that in spite of 
 that legislative abortion, the Married Women's Property Act 
 such an atrocity as this is to-day possible under the laws 
 of my country. 
 
 Mark, too, while on the subject of property, that the law 
 gives a woman no claim whatever to any definite portion of her 
 husband's wealth. He finds her a girl, earning good wages in 
 service, or salary in a shop, or the inmate of a happy home, 
 and makes proposal to her for a life partnership. She accepts. 
 Her part of the work is to increase his time for money- 
 making employment, to be careful of their house, to nurse and 
 educate their infant children, to sustain and improve their status 
 in society by making their home respectable and respected. 
 But the wholesome doctrine that the labourer is worthy of his 
 hire does not apply to her. The law, which is so much a 
 respecter of persons with regard to the man's righ t to possess 
 himself of his wife's property, that it permits her to receive for 
 her own no sum exceeding 200, coming to her by bequest 
 after marriage, is extremely careless with regard to the main- 
 tenance of women. If a lady of the most delicate health and 
 refined breeding one whose very existence demanded that 
 which would seem luxurious to women of rustic mould if 
 such a one were the victim of a secret marriage, of the validity 
 
346 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 of which she was assured but could not prove, for herself she 
 could not directly obtain, if her husband were the richest man 
 in the State, even a share of such biscuit as he gave his sport- 
 ing dogs. She, his wife, the deluded unhappy wretch who 
 accepted his vows to love, honour, and cherish her, who was 
 mocked with the endowment at the altar of all his worldly 
 goods she is the one human being who has no power to 
 enforce her rights against him. But surely justice ? No ! 
 Though he may be spending her fortune with harlots, English 
 justice will not listen to her prayer for a mandate compelling 
 the husband to give her food. Some one must feed her, if 
 somebody pleases for even her claims as a pauper are merely 
 those of perishing humanity, and then he may recover the cost 
 of his bounty from the husband, whom, though she hunger into 
 slow consumption, the law will hardly brand as a criminal, 
 only regarding him as a trivial debtor. But in this condition 
 there is one joy ; the famished child she hugs to her poor 
 breast is her own, because its possession is shameful ; it is 
 thought to be illegitimate. She may have heard of the case 
 of Lady Helena Newenham, and while she loathes the coarse 
 food the Poor Law gives her, she may bless the injustice which 
 bastardizes her child. This daughter of Lord Mountcashell 
 had two little girls. Separated from her husband, their 
 father, the Rev. Henry Newenham, made application to the 
 Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland, for their delivery to him. 
 The younger was aged seven, the eldest sixteen ; the latter 
 an age at which the law regards the wish of a girl. Both 
 were earnest in their desire to remain with Lady Helena. 
 The Court respected the wish of the elder girl, but decreed 
 that the younger must be delivered to the father. Let me 
 quote a bit from what the reporter called the ' scene in court.' 
 ' An officer came in, bearing a pretty little pet with long fair 
 hair, and intelligent beyond her years.' Can we not fancy 
 an Augustine looking on her, and saying of the sisters 
 
 ' Non Angli, sed Angeli. ' 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 347 
 
 If happy ! But they were not happy. Something like the 
 horrors of a slave market were to be enacted with the sanction 
 of the Queen's Bench. * She screamed and struggled vio- 
 lently, exclaiming repeatedly, " Oh ! must I, must I ? Oh, 
 dear ! I won't go to my father ! Oh, please, do let me do as 
 I like ! Don't send me away ! Will mamma ever see me 
 again ? Grandpa ! Grandpa ! where are you ? " Then fol- 
 lowing the wail in childish treble, was heard the sonorous 
 voice of the humane Judge, evidently struggling against deep 
 emotion. ' I shall take care of that, my dear. Your mamma 
 will see you as often as she likes.' A ray of hope overspread 
 the child's face. ' Will it be every day ? Tell me will it be 
 every day ? ' To which entreaty the Judge replied, ' Oh, yes, 
 every day.' Mr. Justice Fitzgerald must have known this was 
 false ; but I dare hope with Sterne, concerning another piece 
 of falsehood, that the tear of the recording angel blotted out 
 his sin. Then the ' grandpa/ himself a peer of Parliament, a 
 member of that House which mutilated Mr. Russell Gurney's 
 Bill, then Lord Mountcashell, who, the reporter says, * was 
 much moved,' put in his word : ' Knowing what I know/ he 
 said of the Judge's promise, 'that is impossible.' Finally, 
 the Judge expressed the ' sorrow ' with which he administered 
 the law ; and the sobbing child, sent from mother and sister, 
 was handed to the father, who carried her out. 
 
 You who oppose this claim for the political enfranchisement 
 of women ; you who are touched to the heart for are you 
 not gentlemen and men of honour ? even by my halting and 
 imperfect recital of these wrongs you ask me, what would I 
 have ? I tell you I would have laws which should be distin- 
 guished for justice. I would have no legal disabilities. For every 
 employment open to competitive examination women should 
 be permitted to submit their claims. I think men are much 
 better fitted for ' up-country ' service in India ; while on the 
 other hand the clerical work of many of the public offices, 
 both at home and abroad, might be performed with far greater 
 
348 The Enfranchisement of Women. 
 
 advantage to the State by the admission of women. As to 
 property, the law I hold should give facilities for settlements, 
 while it should also allow the retention by a married woman 
 of her property just as though she were a feme sole. She 
 might reasonably be entitled to a moderate share of her 
 husband's earnings while fulfilling to the best of her ability 
 the duties of a wife ; and as for the children in legal infancy 
 
 at the death of the father, the mother should be their 
 
 guardian by right ; in the case of divorce, I think they should 
 pass from the care of the criminal parent, who, however, 
 should be compelled to make due contribution for their 
 education and maintenance ; when there was a separation, 
 the children of one sex should go to one parent, and those 
 of the opposite sex to the other. Such and other needful 
 reforms in the laws relating to women we should strongly 
 claim. We cannot trust to lawyers for justice. I lament, 
 not more the rudeness than the ignorance of men like Mr. 
 Justice Byles, who, scouting the claim of 1,600 women rate- 
 payers to the political suffrage, exclaimed indignantly, ' I 
 will not allow that woman can be man, except in a zoological 
 treatise, or until she is reduced to the condition of fossil 
 remains ' ; and proceeded from the seat of justice to liken 
 the position of women to that of the brutes, who, by the way, 
 are never 'brutal/ Yet he was sitting on what may to-morrow 
 be the King's Bench ; he had been a Queen's Counsel, when 
 the accident of a minute might have made him a King's 
 Counsel ; he spoke every day of mankind inclusive of the 
 entire race, of the Church inclusive of all worshippers, and of 
 a kingdom which he dared not say should not be ruled 
 by a queen. We may hope, however, that when the 
 English law is nobler, its professors will share the elevation. 
 And this our hope is based on no uncertain foundation. 
 For he who runs may read the lesson of the ages. The 
 decree, stamped upon the face of e.very people, ordains the 
 progress of each generation to a fuller exercise of individual 
 
The Enfranchisement of Women. 349 
 
 faculties for the greater happiness and responsibility of the 
 individual, and the more complete advantage of all. And 
 with this it is given to men and women, the children of all 
 time, to regard with lasting honour those who labour most 
 successfully to bring human law into harmony with justice ; not 
 those who make themselves the law and dispense justice to 
 the weak as to the strong, but the truer servants of right, who 
 in all their law-making have but one rule of duty, to deal 
 with others as they themselves hope to be dealt with. I 
 humbly advocate these reforms in the English law, not more 
 for the interest of women, than with true and dutiful regard 
 for the interests of my own sex, for to me nothing is more 
 clear than that the perpetuation of injustice implies the 
 degradation of mankind. 
 
350 
 
 XVI. 
 
 THE LEGAL POSITION OF MARRIED WOMEN. 
 
 IN the qualities of brilliancy and eloquence, Mrs. Norton 
 was the most distinguished literary woman of her time. 
 As a novelist she was chiefly known ; but Mrs. Norton's most 
 brilliant and eloquent compositions were not works of fiction. 
 Her style was not employed in its perfection to protest against 
 other wrongs or to depict other sorrows than those which 
 had pierced her own heart. This is not an imputation of 
 selfishness ; it is merely an illustration of the fact that the 
 highest and most successful efforts of genius are those which 
 have their inspiration from the deepest feelings. 
 
 Mrs. Norton's finest writings related to her condition as a 
 married woman, and these have been brought but little to 
 the notice of the public; not because she desired privacy 
 in a letter to the present writer she said, * I do not shrink 
 from publicity as to a single word I have printed' but because 
 of the personality with which those writings are pervaded. It 
 is not my intention to revive by any unnecessary allusion the 
 recollection of those wrongs the burden of which forced from 
 Mrs. Norton such passionate eloquence. It is to her legal 
 disabilities as a married woman, illustrated by herself, that 
 the present reference will be confined. No hope is more 
 anxiously urged in those appeals than that the outpouring 
 of her own indignation may, by producing amendment of 
 the laws concerning married women, have a useful result. 'I 
 do not consider this MY cause,' she wrote in her * Letter to 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 351 
 
 the Queen' 'though it is a cause of which (unfortunately for 
 me) I am an illustration. It is the cause of ALL the women;' 
 and as a knight devotes his sword, so she consecrated her 
 pen first and chiefly to enmity against those laws which still 
 deny legal equality and even legal existence to married women. 
 In some minor points, the laws relating to married women 
 have been amended; but the 'non-existence' against which 
 she protested, and, substantially, the status of a married woman, 
 remain unaltered. There has been no change since the time 
 when Mrs. Norton wrote when Sir Erskine Perry proposed 
 in the House of Commons to give them legal existence in 
 terms very similar to those of the Bill which Mr. Shaw-Lefevre 
 again introduced in a very able speech in 1868, and to those 
 in which Lord Coleridge made an equally ineffective proposal 
 in the Session of 1877. 
 
 A husband cannot now confiscate the earnings of his wife, 
 but he can paralyse her power of earning by prohibition. When 
 inquiry was made into the amount of Mrs. Norton's literary 
 earnings, which, as the law then stood, were the property of 
 her husband, she declared the proceeding had made her dream 
 that her 
 
 . . . 'gift of writing was meant for a higher and stronger purpose that 
 gift which came, not from man, but from God. It was meant to enable 
 me to rouse the hearts of others to examine into all the gross injustice of 
 these laws to ask the " nation of gallant gentlemen " whose countrywoman 
 I am, for once to hear a woman's pleading on the subject. Not because I 
 deserve more at their hands than other women. Well I know, on the 
 contrary, how many hundreds, infinitely better than I more pious, more 
 patient, less rash under injury have watered their bread with tears ! My 
 plea to attention is, that in pleading for myself, I am able to plead for all 
 these others. Not that my sufferings or my deserts are greater than theirs ; 
 but that I combine with the fact of having suffered wrong, the power to 
 comment on and explain the cause of that wrong, which few women are able 
 to do. 
 
 'For //j, I believe God gave me the power of writing. To this I devote 
 
 that power I deny that this is my personal cause ; it is the cause of 
 
 all the women of England. If I could be justified and happy to-morrow, 
 I would still labour in it ; and if I were to die to-morrow it would still be a 
 satisfaction to me that I had so striven.' 
 
352 The Legal Position of Married Women. 
 
 Mrs. Norton suffered because she was a woman. Had her 
 case been that of a man, the result could have left no such 
 trouble in the path of life. She had the personal sympathy of 
 the King (William IV.) ; the friendly aid of the King of the 
 Belgians : 
 
 ' He who learned perhaps to feel more, having suffered more than others ; 
 and who remembered me in my early girlhood, and in my mother's home ; 
 he who was husband and father to the heirs of the English Crown ; and who 
 in the pride and prime of his own youth saw the sun set one December 
 night on that triumphantly happy position, and saw it rise a childless 
 widower.' 
 
 She had with her 
 
 ' Public opinion and the good wishes of good hearts. To what end ? Vain, 
 though not valueless, has been this accumulation of kindness, from friends, 
 relatives, and strangers, for want of such laws of protection ! They could 
 
 pity, but they could not help It is a glorious thing that the Law 
 
 should be stronger than the Throne. It is one of dear boastful England's 
 proudest blind boasts. But it is not a glorious thing that, being stronger 
 than the Throne, it should be weaker than the subject : and that that which 
 even a king can only do within a certain limit (oppress or uphold) may be 
 done with boundless irresponsible power in the one single relation of hus- 
 band and wife/ 
 
 When Mrs. Norton wrote thus in 1855, the Law relating to 
 Husband and Wife was in a somewhat different condition from 
 that which obtains at present. It was different in regard to 
 Divorce, to the Custody of Infants, and to the Property of 
 Married Women. I propose to show, as far as possible in 
 Mrs. Norton's own words, but entirely in harmony, as I believe, 
 with her opinions, what has been the extent of those reforms, 
 and in what directions they have been insufficient. At that 
 time, divorce was a 'luxury for the rich, to be obtained only 
 by special enactment in the House of Lords.' But for women 
 there was neither justice nor divorce. Lord Brougham had 
 lately affirmed in his place in Parliament concerning a case 
 which had come before him as one of the Law Lords : * In 
 that action the character of the woman was at immediate 
 issue, although she was not prosecuted. The consequence 
 not unfrequently was, that the character of a woman was 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 353 
 
 sworn away ; instances were known in which, by collusion 
 between the husband and a pretended paramour, the character 
 of the wife has been destroyed. All this could take place, 
 and yet the wife had no defence ; she was excluded from 
 Westminster Hall, and behind her back, by the principles 
 of our jurisprudence, her character was tried.' 
 
 No Law Court could then divorce in England. A special 
 Act of Parliament annulling the marriage was passed for each 
 case. The House of Lords granted this almost as a matter 
 of course to the husband who could pay for it, but not to 
 the wife. In only four recorded instances (two of which were 
 cases of incest) did a wife obtain a divorce. Addressing the 
 Queen, Mrs. Norton wrote: 
 
 ' In an old-fashioned book (written by a favourite of your Majesty's 
 uncle, George IV.) the author says : " If a poor man were to appear in 
 the lobby of the House of Lords, praying to be divorced gratis from his 
 wife, it is likely that the Sergeant-at-Arms would take him for some poor 
 lunatic, and send him to Bedlam."' 
 
 The law on this great matter has since that time been 
 changed by four statutes. The Divorce and Matrimonial Act, 
 passed shortly after the publication of Mrs. Norton's eloquent 
 pamphlet, established the new Court ; and it was provided 
 that either husband or wife might obtain a divorce on the 
 ground of adultery, but the wife can only present a petition 
 for divorce upon allegation that the marital offence has been 
 accompanied by cruelty or desertion. By a subsequent Act the 
 power of decreeing divorce was given to the Judge Ordinary, 
 without reference to colleagues, with the provision that the 
 decree must be 'nisi,' and not final, for at least three months. 
 The third statute relieved the clergy of the Church of England 
 as by law established from obligation to perform the religious 
 office at the marriage of any divorced person. The supple- 
 mentary provisions of the law are : as to condonation that 
 parties who, after the offence charged, have consented to live 
 again as husband and wife, cannot obtain a divorce. Judicial 
 separation may be decreed on the ground of adultery (on the 
 
 A A 
 
354 The Legal Position of Married Women. 
 
 part of the man without desertion or cruelty), or upon proof 
 of cruelty or desertion. After such separation a woman is 
 as a single woman in everything except re-marriage ; and even 
 prior to a decree of separation, a woman may obtain legal 
 protection for any property which may result from her own 
 industry. The fourth statute, the Matrimonial Causes Act 1878, 
 empowers the Court or magistrate before whom a husband is 
 convicted of an aggravated assault upon his wife, to issue an 
 order which shall have the effect in all respects of a decree of 
 judicial separation, on the ground of cruelty, and the order may 
 further provide for the payment by the husband to the wife, of 
 such weekly sum as the Court or magistrate may consider to 
 be in accordance with his means, and with any means which 
 the wife may have for her support. 
 
 Mrs, Norton's infant children were taken from her under 
 circumstances which could be repeated to-day, the blameless 
 wife having power to reclaim them only by petition. The 
 natural claim of the mother to the care and guardianship of 
 her infant children is not acknowledged by the law. But there 
 was no power of petition when she wrote : 
 
 ' At that time the law was (and I thank God I believe I was greatly instru- 
 mental in changing that law) that a man might take children from the 
 mother at any age, and without any fault or offence on her part. There had 
 been an instance in which the husband seized and carried away a suckling 
 infant, as his wife sat nursing it in her own mother's house. Another in 
 which the husband, being himself in prison for debt, gave his wife's legiti- 
 mate child to the woman he cohabited with. A third (in which the parties 
 were of high rank), where the husband deserted his wife ; claimed the babe born 
 after his desertion (having already his other children) ; and left her to learn 
 its death from the newspapers ! A fourth, in which the husband, living with 
 a mistress, and travelling with her under his wife's name, the latter appealed 
 for a separation to the Ecclesiastical Court ; and the adulterous husband, to 
 revenge himself, claimed from her his three infant girls. In all these cases 
 and in all other cases, the claim of the father was held to be indisputable. 
 There was no law then to help the mother, as there is no law now to help 
 the wife. The blamelessness of the mother signifies nothing in those days, 
 as the blamelessness of the wife signifies nothing in the present day.' 
 
 It was upon the occurrence of this cruel addition to her 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 355 
 
 wrongs that the most eminent of the distinguished counsel 
 who had been opposed to Mrs. Norton's claims, stated con- 
 cerning her, that 'there never was a more deeply injured 
 woman.' She herself wrote of it: 
 
 ' What I suffered respecting those children God knows, and He only ; what 
 I endured, and yet lived past of pain, exasperation, helplessness, and 
 despair, under the evil law which suffered any man, for vengeance or for 
 interest, to take baby children from the mother I shall not even try to 
 explain. I believe men have no more notion of what that anguish is than 
 the blind have of colours ; and I bless God that at least mine was one of the 
 cases which called attention to the state of the law as it then existed.' 
 
 As it now stands, the English law defining the mother's 
 rights in regard to the care of the children is, as Mrs. Norton 
 has said, far from justice. The Matrimonial Causes Act, 1878, 
 empowers a Court or magistrate to give the legal custody of 
 her children, if they are under ten years of age, to a wife who 
 has obtained an order for judicial separation by reason of her 
 husband's conviction for an aggravated assault upon herself, and 
 by the Custody of Infants Act, 1873, it is provided that in any 
 deed of separation between the father and mother of an infant 
 or infants, the father may by such deed give up the custody of 
 such infant or infants to the mother. But no Court is to 
 enforce any such agreement unless satisfied that compulsion will 
 be for the benefit of the child or children. The natural claim 
 of the mother to guardianship on the death of the father is still 
 denied by Parliament ; and in case of separation or divorce, a 
 blameless, virtuous woman, the only proper and efficient guardian 
 of the children of a vicious and profligate father, is mocked by 
 processes of law which, being complied with, enable her to 
 obtain possession of her children, but only to the age of sixteen. 
 To get even this measure of justice she must exhibit the fact 
 that it is not hers by law; she must petition a Judge of the 
 Chancery Division, who 'may' thereupon order that her claim, 
 founded on natural right, upon most obvious equity, and 
 fraught with nothing but the clearest benefit to the infant 
 children, shall be acknowledged. When this claim is again urged 
 
356 The Legal Position of Married Women. 
 
 in Parliament, the following appeal by Mrs. Norton will surely 
 be remembered : 
 
 1 Ah ! how often in the course of this Session in the course of this year 
 will the same men who read this appeal with a strong adverse prejudice, 
 be roused by some thought in a favourite author ; struck by some noble 
 anecdote ; touched by some beautiful pageant of human feeling, seen among 
 glittering lights from a side box, chanted, perhaps, in a foreign tongue ! 
 And yet I have an advantage over these for my history is real. I know 
 there is no poetry in it to attract you. . . . There was none of the " pomp 
 and circumstance" of those woes that affect you, when some faultless and 
 impossible heroine makes you dream of righting all the wrongs in the world ! 
 But faulty as I may be and prosaic and unsympathised with as my position 
 might then be it was UNJUST, and unjust because your laws prevent justice. 
 Let that thought haunt you, through the music of your Sonnambulas and 
 Desdemonas, and be with you in your readings of histories and romances, 
 and your criticisms on the jurisprudence of countries less free than our own. 
 I really wept and suffered in my early youth for wrong done, not by me, 
 but to me, and the ghost of whose scandal is raised against me this day. 
 I really suffered the extremity of earthly shame without deserving it 
 (whatever chastisement my other faults may have deserved from Heaven). 
 I really lost my young children craved for them, struggled for them, was 
 barred from them and came too late to see one who had died a painful and 
 convulsive death, except in his coffin. I really have gone through much 
 that, if it were invented, would move you ; but being of your every-day world, 
 you are willing it should sweep pass like a heap of dead leaves on the stream 
 of time, and take its place with other things that have gone drifting down 
 " Oii va la feuille de Rose 
 Et la feuille du Laurier ! " ' 
 
 The third matter is that of the Property of Married Women. 
 When Mrs. Norton first wrote on this subject, a married woman 
 had no property, she could have no property as the result of 
 her own endeavours. Mrs. Norton said : ' the power of earning 
 by literature which fund (though it be the grant of Heaven 
 and not the legacy of earth) is no more legally mine than my 
 family property . . . the copyrights of my works, my very soul 
 and brains are not my own.' 
 
 In concluding her ' Letter to the Queen ' she wrote : 
 
 ' Let the Lord Chancellor, whose office is thus described in Chamberlayne's 
 State of England " To judge, not according to the Common Law, as other 
 Civil Courts do, but to moderate the rigour of the Law, and to judge 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 357 
 
 according to Equity, Conscience, and Reason ; and his Oath is to do right 
 to all manner of people, poor and rich, after the Laws and Customs of this 
 Realm, and truly counsel the King" let the Lord Chancellor, I say, the 
 " Summus Cancellarius " of Great Britain, cancel, according to the laws and 
 customs of this realm of England, my right to the labour of my own brain 
 and pen ; and docket it, among forgotten Chancery Papers, with a parody of 
 Swift's contemptuous labelling 
 
 " Only a Woman's Pamphlet." 
 
 But let the recollection of what I write remain with those who read ; and 
 above all, let the recollection remain with your Majesty, the one woman in 
 England who cannot suffer wrong, and whose Royal assent will be formally 
 necessary to any Marriage Reform Bill, which the Lord Chancellor, 
 assembled Peers, and assembled Commons may think fit to pass, in the 
 Parliament of this free nation, where, with a Queen on the throne, all other 
 married women are legally " NON-EXISTENT." ' 
 
 That plea for 'existence/ thus put forward in 1855, Mrs. 
 Norton renewed in 1874. But since 1873 no change whatever 
 has been made in the Law affecting the Property of Married 
 Women. In 1874, she distributed a few copies of a pamphlet 
 entitled Taxation by an Irresponsible Taxpayer, which bears 
 neither a date nor the name of any publisher. The brochure 
 deals with the grievances of the London ratepayer ; for humour, 
 it might have been written by her grandfather. 1 Still she was 
 ' non-existent as a married woman. Non-existent for protection, 
 but not non-existent for extortion. . . . Liable as a "female occu- 
 pier" to pay taxes, but not able as a "female occupier" to hold 
 my house except through trustees, or to compel by any process of 
 law the payment of an agreed income.' She had been libelled 
 and ' informed that being a married woman, I could not 
 prosecute of myself, that my husband must prosecute. There 
 could be no prosecution, and I was left to study the grotesque 
 anomaly in law of having my defence made necessary and 
 made impossible by the same person/ She was overcharged 
 in respect of her house, and the condition of the street in which 
 she lived was neglected. She set herself to work upon the local 
 authorities, and soon discovered that ' the ways of vestries (one 
 
 1 Mrs. Norton was granddaughter to R. B. Sheridan. 
 
358 The Legal Position of Married Women. 
 
 of those corporate bodies without a conscience of whom Sydney 
 Smith speaks) are past finding out.' At last, 'beginning to feel 
 that curly irritation attributed proverbially to " the worm that 
 is trodden upon," ' she insisted ' on knowing whose business it 
 was to survey.' In the endeavour to compel attention to the 
 second head of the complaint, she says : ' I tried the simple and 
 useful experiment of placing some waste sand, birdseed, withered 
 chickweed, and refuse from a cage in the centre of the street 
 opposite my door, where I had the satisfaction of seeing that it 
 remained for more than ten days without being swept away.' 
 She proposed to the Vestry ' that the elegant title of Chester- 
 field Street should be changed to Rumble Row, Oozy Lane, 
 Parish Passage, or some other appropriate title.' She asked to 
 be informed 'why music should be hawked without a licence 
 more than any other commodity ? ' She complained that while 
 the ' " place of settlement " of any one of the dirty loungers who 
 slouch along with greasy leather straps supporting discordant 
 organs on their shoulders is " no affair of the parish," another 
 man is incarcerated for spouting passages from Shakespeare's 
 Richard III. and bidding a policeman (in that esteemed dra- 
 matist's words) " take any form but that," while English children 
 " found begging " or " sleeping under archways " are (very 
 properly) packed off to schools and reformatories to learn 
 more regular habits of life.' She declared that ' the vigorous 
 grasp of justice which squeezes pence from penny earnings for 
 the compulsory education of the little truant who prefers the 
 furrows of the plough to the path of knowledge grows delicately 
 helpless and relaxed when dealing with aristocratic neglect : ' and 
 cited ' Lord Justice James, who in deciding a Chancery suit this 
 spring, observed : "A man may leave a good wife and deserving 
 children penniless, and bestow the whole of his fortune upon 
 the vilest companions of his profligacy and most wicked accom- 
 plices of his crimes, and the law cannot gainsay him." ' 
 
 The Law relating to the Property of Married Women has 
 been amended, not in the spirit of justice, but with a grudging 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 359 
 
 sense of expediency which has left it more full of anomalies 
 than before. It is doubtful if the power of a married woman 
 to engage in any remunerative occupation is not dependent on 
 the will of her husband ; it is certain he may prohibit her from 
 earning anything. But if her occupation bring profits, those 
 profits are now unquestionably her own. The payment due 
 for her brain-work or handicraft has, since 1870, ceased to be 
 legally due and payable to her husband. If she inherit property 
 by intestacy of the late owner, that is her own, but no bequest 
 above ^200 can belong to a married woman. No amendment 
 of the law has touched her status ; she is now non-existent as 
 she was before Mrs. Norton was born : she may be libelled 
 with impunity ; she cannot sue or be sued ; all her personal 
 property passes to her husband at the day of marriage, and 
 his by the same process is the rental of her real property. 
 When the Married Women's Property Bill was passed to the 
 House of Lords in 1870, it contained two harmonious and inter- 
 dependent provisions. One provided that a wife might retain 
 as her own the property she possessed before marriage; the 
 other, that a husband should no longer be liable for debts which 
 his wife had contracted before marriage. The House of Lords 
 held the former to be revolutionary, and struck it out ; but their 
 lordships, in their wisdom, retained the latter, and so left un- 
 married female traders with injured credit, and tradesmen 
 generally with no remedy against a defaulting bride. The 
 Act of 1870 thus provided women it has been suggested by 
 way of dowry with a mode of cheating creditors. Women 
 who could obtain goods on credit before marriage could avoid 
 payment by matrimony ; and one case is on record in which a 
 costly pianoforte was obtained in this way. The Act of 1870 
 absolved the husband from liability ; and the wife, remaining 
 non-existent, could not be sued. But this legislative blunder 
 had cruel consequences for women traders, who could obtain 
 no credit when there was ground for suspicion that by accepting 
 the non-existence of married women they might defraud a 
 
360 The Legal Position of Married Women. 
 
 creditor. That tradesmen electors and fathers should be 
 cheated, was to Parliament intolerable, and haste was made, 
 upon discovery of the defect in 1874, to put a patch upon this 
 loose place in the Act of 1870. It was enacted not that a 
 wife should be responsible for her debts incurred before 
 marriage, which would have implied the legal existence of a 
 married woman but that a husband should be liable for such 
 debts to the extent of the property acquired through the 
 marriage, the confusion being well preserved by the fact that 
 a wife's property in her husband's hands is not at present liable 
 for debts contracted by her before marriage in regard to 
 marriages which took place between 1870 and 1874. 
 
 When it was proposed, in 1870, that by contracting marriage 
 a woman should not forfeit her property, Lord Penzance, then 
 Judge Ordinary in the Divorce Court, made a speech, of which 
 the rechauffee was again served up in the last Session of 
 Parliament. His lordship suggested that if a married woman 
 could hold property, she would go into partnership with some 
 cousin ' who need not be a woman.' Lord Westbury had a 
 fear that if some one left her 20,000 she would spend it on 
 a diamond necklace. The Times, in a most liberal article, 
 ridiculed these absurd alarms, suggested that Lord Penzance's 
 judgment had been 'warped by the nature of his duties'; that 
 being ' accustomed to see nothing but the ugly side of matri- 
 monial nature/ he might ' be excused for taking a sort of Old 
 Bailey view of the marriage state, and particularly for looking 
 upon wives as a set of extravagant queans, with whom flirtation 
 is only kept short of adultery by the fear of himself and the 
 machinery he directs.' And with regard to all such arguments 
 the Times asked, ' Is there any reason to suppose that she will 
 be the less faithful to the marriage relation when she has the 
 responsibility of property, and when society looks to her to 
 advance the interests of her chilolren, than when she is depen- 
 dent for everything upon her husband ; and, on his failing her, 
 must^ look to some friend who, to use Lord Penzance's phrase, 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 361 
 
 "need not be a woman"? We believe that the case of a married 
 woman does not differ from that of all other human beings, in 
 the fact that a certain degree of pecuniary independence tends 
 to the promotion of morality and the proper fulfilment of the 
 duties of life.' 
 
 Lord Coleridge, in the past year (1877), introduced a Bill 
 which would have given effect to these sentiments, and full legal 
 existence to a married woman. But it was hustled out of the 
 House of Peers by the Lord Chancellor, who for the occasion 
 reproduced the ' Old Bailey view ' of Lord Penzance. Lord 
 Coleridge has the support in this matter of another very dis- 
 tinguished Judge. The Master of the Rolls has declared that to 
 him ' it is not intelligible upon what principle a woman should be 
 considered incapable of contracting, immediately after she has, 
 with the sanction of the law, entered into the most important 
 contract conceivable.' Sir George Jessel has further pointed to 
 the fact that 'the slavery laws of antiquity are the origin of 
 the Common Law upon this subject,' and has expressed his 
 astonishment ' that a law founded upon such principles should 
 have survived to the nineteenth century.' 'The rule in this 
 matter ' I am quoting the words of Mr. Mill ' is simple ; 
 whatever would be the wife's or husband's, if they were not 
 married, should be under their exclusive control during mar- 
 riage ; which need not interfere with the power to tie up pro- 
 perty by settlement, in order to preserve it for children. Some 
 people are sentimentally shocked at the idea of a separate 
 interest in money matters, as inconsistent with the fusion of 
 two lives into one. For my own part, I am one of the strongest 
 supporters of community of goods, when resulting from entire 
 unity of feeling in the owners, which makes all things common 
 between them. But I have no relish for a community of goods 
 resting on the doctrine that what is mine is yours, but what is 
 yours is not mine ; and I should prefer to decline entering into 
 such a compact with any one, though I were myself the person 
 to profit by it.' 
 
362 The Legal Position of Married Women. 
 
 In no point did Mrs. Norton find the Law relating to the 
 Property of Married Women more galling than in the nullity of 
 a contract, securing her income during separation, which was 
 ' repudiated on the legal technicality that " man and wife being 
 one, a man could not contract with his own wife." ' But at all 
 points she was met and injured by the laws. 
 
 When Englishmen beat General Haynau in rude recompense 
 for his alleged flogging of Hungarian women, a charge which 
 the General denied, Mrs. Norton asked : ' Is there no pain and 
 degradation except physical pain and degradation ? Is there no 
 indecency but in ideas of nudity ? No barbarity but in stripes 
 and blows ? The Haynaus of England are they who will not 
 help to change such laws ! Had I been a man, I would have 
 worked out their revision and reform ; but I am only a woman 
 and, in the land which my Queen governs, women count for 
 nothing in important matters.' Then, with reviving eloquence, 
 she resolved, ' woman though I be/ she would do what she 
 could ; and saying, 'This is not a day to smile at any boast of 
 what accidental circumstances or individual energy may bring 
 about/ drew this beautiful illustration : 
 
 ' Sixty-eight years ago, on the deck of a vessel struggling through a stormy 
 passage to the Isle of Martinique, sat the mournful mother of a little girl 
 only three years old. This mother was young, beautiful, forsaken. Her 
 husband, being weary of her, had become " a little profligate " and the wife 
 yearning as many a broken-hearted girl has yearned before, under such cir- 
 cumstances of neglect and disappointment for the old dear home of her 
 childhood, was returning to her parents and friends. There was no fierce- 
 ness in that woman's heart. Her grief was the gentle grief of Faust's 
 
 Margaret : 
 
 " Ich wein' ich wein' ich weine ! " 
 
 In love and generous devotion through life, she had scarcely her equal ; and 
 she had through life the fate those women who seem to deserve it least 
 oftenest obtain. For that mournful Creole weeping alone on the stormy seas 
 helplessly returning to her own family was Josephine de Beauharnais* 
 the neglected wife of the Comte de Beauharnais, afterwards the repudiated 
 Empress of Napoleon I., and that little child who sat trembling in the 
 storm by its mother's side was Hortense, afterwards Queen of Holland, 
 and mother of Napoleon III. 
 
 ' If, as that Creole mother wept, some voice had whispered, Your lot is 
 
The Legal Position of Married Women. 363 
 
 grief grief now, and grief in spite of splendour in the years to come but 
 you shall be Empress of France ; the little girl by your side shall be a 
 Queen, her son an Emperor, and the music of a chance love-song which that 
 child shall compose in after-years shall become the great solemn march and 
 national hymn of France ; for ever making melody of triumph in her son's 
 ears, whether sounding on his native shores among millions of electing sub- 
 jects, or played in the royal palaces of a rival nation, proud of reckoning 
 upon his friendship and alliance I say, if such a whisper had come in the 
 wild wind and mingled with the dash of the stormy spray, would not the 
 fervent-hearted Creole have shuddered with fear lest delirium not hope 
 had taken possession of her mind ? God only sets the measure of what may 
 be ; and I say my son or grandson may be Lord Chancellor, and may alter 
 these laws in favour of the lawless, at present in force in England.' 
 
 ' The greater part "of what women write about women is 
 mere sycophancy to men.' That was Mr. Mill's opinion, and it 
 is true to a certain extent even of Mrs. Norton. She resembled 
 Madame de Stae'l in this amiable weakness. ' Un homme peut 
 braver Topinion ; une femme doit s'y soumettre/ is the motto of 
 Delphine. The title-page of Mrs. Norton's boldest and best 
 work, ' A Letter to the Queen,' from which some of my quo- 
 tations have been made, has for a motto, ' Only a woman's hair.' 
 Injustice called from her eloquent and passionate protest ; she 
 claimed * protection ' from the law. The true right of women 
 that of equality before the law she never put forward ; she was 
 apt to confuse that claim with a plea for natural equality, which 
 can be no creation of Parliament, and has nothing whatever to 
 do with law. She declared her ' honest conviction to be ' that 
 ' women have one RIGHT (perhaps that only one). They have a 
 right, founded on nature, equity, and religion, to the protection 
 of man.' She was bitterly conscious that in her own case even 
 this pitiful claim had been denied. Had she been less unhappy, 
 less conscious of her personal petition, she would have been 
 more stubborn ; her claim would have been a larger petition 
 of right. She was over-weighted with the burden of her own 
 sorrows. She was the victim of bad laws. But her hope 
 that her sufferings would be the seed of reform, was a well- 
 grounded hope. Her belief that such examples are ' the little 
 
364 The Legal Position of 'Married Women. 
 
 hinges on which the great doors of justice are made to turn,' had 
 a sure foundation ; and the only prophecy on which she ventured 
 has been verified^ and will be further verified. It was this: 
 ' In our little corner of the earth where so much besides is busy 
 and fermenting for change the time is ripely come for alteration 
 in the laws for women. And they will be changed.' 
 
 Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury 
 
THIS 
 
 DATE 
 
 AN INITIAL PINE OP 25 CENTS 
 
 DEC 21 1943 
 
 8 Ja'53M/A 
 
 
 1953 
 
 S 
 
 
 LD21-!OOm-7,'39(402 
 
YC 07234 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY