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 |[he Opportunity 
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 THE OPPORTUNITY OF LIBERALISM
 
 FEEE TEADE LITEEATUEE. 
 
 THE STANDARD BIOGRAPHY 
 
 THE LIFE OF RICHARD COBDEN. 
 
 By the Right Hon. John Moklev, M.P._ With Photo- 
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 THE OPPORTUNITY 
 OF LIBERALISM 
 
 r%M<f<y^->-^) ^ 
 
 BY 
 
 BROUGHAM VILLIERS 
 
 LONDON 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 1904
 
 ^7/ Eiirhis Reserved.
 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 :2 This little book is not designed as a defence of Free Trade, 
 
 <^ nor as an attack on the military and other follies of the 
 
 ^ present Government. The Free Traders have easily held 
 
 *■ their own in the recent controversy ; as, indeed, they 
 
 could hardly fail to do with such a case. Their work 
 
 could not have been better done, and to attempt any 
 
 addition would be needless presumption. No ethical nor 
 
 economic argument can avail to defend the misdeeds of 
 
 Mr. Balfour's Ministry ; and if we had to wait for another 
 
 Tory reaction like that which we have passed through 
 
 until intelligent thinkers could justify it the prospects 
 
 of continued progress would be bright indeed. 
 
 But the final success or failure of any policy depends 
 
 % less on arguments of this kind than upon the relative 
 
 ^ strength of parties and groups, and of the unseen social 
 
 *- and economic forces of which these are the visible expression 
 
 ^and result ; upon forces, and not upon ideas. I have 
 
 endeavoured, therefore, to analyse the social forces which 
 
 rendered the long Tory reaction of the last twenty years 
 
 possible. Unfortunately, I fear, they are all still in 
 
 existence, and, this being so, the materials still exist 
 
 out of which a similar reaction may recur so soon as the 
 
 disasters of the last few years are forgotten. To render 
 
 tliis impossible, the Liberal party, if, as seems probable, 
 
 ^ it be given a lease of power, should use its opportunity 
 
 © to remove the sources of the evil, or, at any rate, to weaken 
 
 s^ them as far as possible. 
 
 aHH(56.'5
 
 Preface 
 
 As indicated in the text, I consider the reaction was 
 only possible because (i) of the apathy of the artisan 
 class, caused by the fact that latter-day Liberalism has 
 neither understood nor deeply sympathised with the pro- 
 gressive ideals in which these people are now really inter- 
 ested ; and (2) the existence of a vast class of voters, too 
 poor and hopeless to have any political ideal of their 
 own, and consequently ready tools for such men as Mr. 
 Chamberlain, who can offer them excitement, at any 
 rate. With a society containing such elements, the mass 
 of reactionary^ vested interests composing the Unionist 
 party have been able to do very much as they pleased. 
 They have, fortunately, moved too fast, and have made 
 the country realise the inevitable disasters, financial and 
 otherwise, that must follow a continuance in the policy 
 they have formed. 
 
 The remedies suggested are at once an alliance, won 
 by persistent and intelligent helpfulness on the part of 
 the Liberals, with the alienated artisans, and the better- 
 ment of the condition of the poorest so as to give at once 
 hope in life, and better leisure for thought. Our present 
 position is a just punishment for that indifference which 
 thinks the physical comfort and proper education of any 
 of its members can be neglected by society with impunity. 
 
 To find a remedy for the evil of poverty, as well as 
 for a certain instability in our economic position, I have 
 been compelled to devote a considerable amount of space 
 to the consideration of our vanishing agriculture. In 
 advocating the taxation of land values, I do not wish it 
 to be understood that I am in full accord with those who 
 support this reform on the ground of any " natural right " 
 of the public to the land. Forms of land ownership and 
 any other property rights are to me justified purely by 
 
 vi
 
 Preface 
 
 the circumstances of the time, they are relative to the 
 state of organisation in the nation. At present, private 
 ownership stands in the way of a co-operative development 
 better fitted to the circumstances of the time, and thus 
 lacks the justification it may once have had. But co- 
 operative and collective use of the land implies more than 
 public ownership, it implies the socialisation of the capital 
 required to work it, of houses and instruments of production. 
 To put the Community in the place of the landlord is 
 not enough ; the Community must be organised to admini- 
 ster as well as to own the land. To do this it is necessary 
 to enable the public to buy land whenever they have 
 developed locally an organisation capable of using it ; it 
 is of little avail, to hand it over to them when they have 
 not. A tax on land values is useful as a means of getting 
 a ready assessment of compensation for compulsory pur- 
 chase. If any other method equally effective can be 
 devised, I am equally willing to adopt it. 
 
 Ardent Socialists will doubtless complain of the poverty 
 of the programme suggested. Indeed, it is only a statement 
 of the things that seem to me most urgent and most practic- 
 able. A higher social life, however, demands a higher 
 social organisation, and it would be difficult to over- 
 estimate the importance of any tentative system which 
 compelled people to work co-operatively, and to find their 
 individual interest in that of the parish or the borough. 
 As the roots of the grasses knit together the loose soil 
 into firm and elastic turf, so the fibres of a complex co- 
 operation, voluntary and official, must have time to grow, 
 ere rural society can have the cohesion needed to bear 
 a higher social order. The average man does not think 
 outside of his social environment ; he learns his solid- 
 arity by being compelled to live it. 
 
 vii
 
 Preface 
 
 It must not be supposed that I abandon any part of 
 the democratic programme, however much I may think 
 part of it unsuited to the present task of re-converting 
 society to the progressive ideal. I had written a chapter 
 carrying the " Possibihties of a Progressive Majority " 
 further into the future, — the proposals here laid down 
 are only adequate for the work of the first session or two, 
 — but after finishing it, I felt that the result was too 
 technical for a slight work like this. If, however. Progress- 
 ives will grasp the fact that the beginnings of all reform are 
 t(j be found in the Budget, I hope it will not be long 
 before they will gain the real confidence of the people. 
 When they do, they should at once take advantage of 
 the position to complete the work of democracy, and grant 
 the suffrage to ever}^ adult of either sex. This has always 
 been a matter of justice ; Mr. Chamberlain has shown 
 us that it is one of social necessity. I feel sure that if 
 working men's wives could vote, food taxes would be 
 impossible. The fact is that food taxes press almost 
 exclusively on the housewife. Working men generally 
 retain a certain amount of money for their own pockets, 
 and hand the rest to their wives for housekeeping. A 
 rise in the price of bread, unless very heavy indeed, would 
 not decrease the former part of most men's wages ; and 
 the task of adjusting the household economy to the change 
 in prices would therefore fall on the women. It would 
 be hard to imagine a worse calamity for the nation than 
 a revival of the bread tax ; and in the interests not only 
 of the women, but of the nation, we should grant full 
 voting power to its most reliable opponents at the earliest 
 opportunity. 
 
 vni
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Great Reaction ....... i 
 
 II. The Town Problem . . . . . . • 17 
 
 III. Anomalies of our Economic Position . . -32 
 
 IV. British Agriculture — Critical 41 
 
 V. British Agriculture — Constructive . . . -59 
 
 VI. Reactions and Anticipations . . . . -71 
 VII. Possibilities of a Progressive Majority . . -85 
 
 IX
 
 THE 
 
 OPPORTUNITY OF LIBERALISM 
 
 CHAPTER i 
 
 THE GREAT REACTION' 
 
 The fiscal controversy, so ^•ehement last autumn, forms, 
 we may hope, the concluding chapter of a long Tory 
 reaction through which this country has been passing. 
 The indications of a Liberal and progressive revival are 
 not few nor unimportant ; and any immediate victory 
 for Mr. Chamberlain is now practically out of the question. 
 Nevertheless his campaign of last year is highly instruct- 
 ive. It is one phase, perhaps the last, of a much greater 
 movement than itself ; a movement which, at one time, 
 threatened to displace Great Britain from her honourable 
 position as one of the leading progressive nations of the 
 world. 
 
 It would be a mistake to consider, because the Pro- 
 tectionist movement was so suddenly sprung upon the 
 country, that it had no connection witli the general 
 reaction that preceded it. The general drift of things 
 for twenty years back has been more or less in the 
 direction of, and, if continued, must inevitably have led 
 to, such a movement. Personally, I am inclined to think 
 Mr. Chamberlain has unwittingly saved our Free Trade 
 system, at least for a time. We were in greater danger 
 of drifting into Protection, bit by bit, by means of Sugar 
 Conventions and shilling Corn taxes imposed by sincere 
 Free Traders, than we are of making so large a departure 
 as that suggested by Mr. Chamberlain, with our c3'cs 
 
 A
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 open. But the military extravagance and the Imperi- 
 alism of the last two decades, culminating, as they did, 
 in the South African war, were rapidly bringing about 
 a position in which Protection would be a financial 
 necessity. Liberal Imperialists and earnest " Free 
 Fooders " who are opposed to Mr. Chamberlain are like 
 those who would call the tune, but object to pav the 
 piper. They ma}'- now become aliv^e to the dangers of 
 their policy, and if so Mr. Chamberlain has done good 
 service. But it is well to regard his campaign as the 
 logical development of a far larger general movement, 
 the most striking feature of national politics for half a 
 generation. 
 
 Political movements and even the opinions of states- 
 men have their roots in economic change. To most people 
 Mr. Chamberlain probably appeared as a strong man 
 shaping the policy of the nation according to his masterful 
 will. Yet I believe that such an opinion is more than 
 usually false in his case, and that his mind and polic}'' 
 have, more than those of other men, been shaped by cir- 
 cumstances. This arises at once from the strength and 
 limitations of his political insight. Never a politician 
 of philosophic outlook, Mr. Chamberlain has ever been 
 deeply influenced by the popular feeling of the moment, 
 a fact that is more than half the secret of his undoubted 
 and dangerous popularity. For good or evil, he thinks 
 and feels as the man in the street thinks and feels, and 
 voices his aspirations for him in a manner thoroughly 
 modern. He is among statesmen what the 5'ellow press 
 editor is among journalists. The opinions of neither 
 are of much account to the political student for their 
 own sakes ; they are valuable only as an indication of 
 similar opinions among the multitude to whom these 
 leaders are psychologically akin. 
 
 This was true of Mr. Chamberlain in his Radical days ; 
 it is no less true now that he has become a Tory up to 
 date. He early felt the influence of that re^'ived civic 
 spirit which has since given us the triumphs of municipal 
 socialism, while in his " ransom " period he showed a
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 feeling of that discontent that has at last given birth to 
 the political Labour movement. Had he possessed the 
 insight of creative statesmanship, he might then have 
 obtained the leadership of the democracy ; but he never 
 formed a constructive social policy, and the opportunity 
 was lost. Again, when he was appointed Colonial Secretary, 
 he soon felt the influence of the various forces then making 
 Imperialism popular, and himself gained vast popularity 
 by flying in the face of all his older teaching ; but he 
 lamentably failed, in almost every instance, to understand 
 the problems or the forces with which he had to deal. 
 He could insult President Kruger, as he had formerly 
 insulted the aristocracy ; but when he left the Colonial 
 Office the position of the Transvaal Outlanders was 
 certainly far worse than when he entered it, while the 
 British hold on vSouth Africa was infinitely less secure. 
 The history of the South African business is but a record 
 of Mr. Chamberlain's miscalculations and mistakes ; but 
 when he erred, he erred with the multitude, thinking as 
 it thought, and acting as it would have him act, and the 
 multitude forgave him as it forgave itself. Responsible 
 as a Minister for all the mistakes of the Cabinet, chiefly 
 responsible for most of its graver ones, Mr. Chamberlain 
 alone among its members lost neither prestige nor popu- 
 larity, because his mistakes were those of the people 
 themselves ; his words, both in manner and matter, 
 gave utterance to their very thoughts. Mr. Chamberlain 
 the reactionary is, as was Mr. Chamberlain the Radical, 
 a sentimentalist and not a thinker, — he is in touch with 
 and swayed by the popular feeling of the moment. From 
 his speeches it would be hard to glean one striking thought ; 
 it would be easy to reap a vast harvest of popular ones. 
 
 n Mr. Chamberlain contrived to be so long popular, 
 it is because he had been travelling in the same direction 
 as many thousands of lesser men. The average party 
 man may regard the Liberal Unionists as renegades ; 
 but if they are, the last twenty years have made thousands 
 of the electors renegades also, A study of the results of 
 each general election during that time shows that the 
 
 3
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 Liberals were losing, rclati\-cly to tlieir opponents, all 
 along the line. It was not a mere " swing of the pendulum " 
 — the movement was too steady and continuous for that. 
 The Conservatives, long on the defensi\'e, became the 
 aggressive and victorious part^^ Even if, as seems probable, 
 the people punish the many errors of the present Govern- 
 ment at the next General Election, the result should not 
 be overestimated by wise men. It would prove that it 
 is still possible even for a Tory Government to try the 
 temper of the nation too far ; but it would not leave much 
 hope that the steady alienation of the people from Liberal- 
 ism, the most striking feature of the last twenty years, 
 has ended. 
 
 While the electors were thus, like Mr. Chamberlain, 
 changing sides, they, like him, were steadily changing 
 their outlook on politics. Imperial questions gradually 
 replaced national ones. The people ceased to take much 
 interest in their own affairs, and became greatly con- 
 cerned about those of the Colonies and foreign countries. 
 Mr. Chamberlain has overshot the mark this time, and the 
 mistake may be the death of his reputation ; but unless 
 we can stop the general tendency which is carrying the 
 people along the line his bold spirit has so rapidly travelled. 
 Protection will be heard of again some day, and some 
 day it will succeed. Chamberlainism will survive Mr. 
 Chamberlain ; it is a spirit he has expressed, but not 
 created. The defeat of its leader will not destroy it in 
 the nation ; for it can only be exorcised by another spirit 
 greater than itself. 
 
 The revolt of the Constituencies has put an end to 
 any fear of an immediate return to Protection ; but it 
 would be unwise to assume that this revolt is entirely due 
 to the Free Trade opinions of the people. On the whole, 
 perhaps, the Liberal revival has been more marked since 
 Mr. Chamberlain sprung Protection so suddenly on the 
 nation, but v.'e must remember that the revival had set 
 in in a very marked manner before, and that such things 
 as the Report of the War Commission and the proposal 
 to re-establish slavery have appeared since then. In 
 
 4
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 fact, general disgust with the Government seems the most 
 important factor in the electoral successes of the Liberals, 
 while the influence of the great personalities among the 
 Unionist Free Traders has also much to do with it. We 
 do not yet know the exact influence of the various factors 
 at work against the Tories, but there are many. Without 
 any threat of Protection, the wrath of the Nonconformists 
 alone might have destroyed the Government. But from 
 whatever cause, the immediate future is safe. Tliere 
 is now no fear that the Tories will be strong enough for 
 a number of years to carry Protection. 
 
 The real danger lies deeper. Mr. Chamberlain, as 
 has been shown, is a masterly exponent of the tendencies 
 of his time, and the fact that in this case he has moved 
 too rapidly is no proof that he has not correctly inter- 
 preted the spirit of his age. With more moral earnest- 
 ness and even greater ability, Mr. Gladstone, in like manner,, 
 developed with the last generation, and ail who see in 
 the recent Land Act a sign of the decay of anti-Irish 
 feeling in this country, the beginning of the end of land- 
 lordism in Ireland, and a basis for Home Rule in the near 
 future, will not think his last departure any exception 
 to this general truth. In fact, when he adopted Home- 
 Rule, Mr. Gladstone did not mistake the trend of things 
 — he anticipated its result. The Unionists have given 
 to Home Rule the most effectual fillip it has ever received, 
 by bu3'ing out its inveterate opponents, who alone could 
 be relied on to give it a consistent resistance. Hence- 
 iortli the question is merely one of party convenience, 
 and the first Tory Government which needs the Irish 
 vote will grant Home Rule under one name or another, 
 even if the party accord the same measure as of old to 
 any Liberal Bill on the subject. I fear it is the same 
 with tlie Zollverein. Mr. Chamberlain has been the inter- 
 preter of a mischievous and reactionary tendency, as 
 was Mr. Gladstone of a progressive one ; each is the ex- 
 ponent of the spirit of his age, and each is chiefly remark- 
 able for expressing with the force of genius the ideas of 
 the multitude in his day. It is this tendency we l:avc 
 
 5
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 to fight ; and in order tliat we may fight it effectually, 
 it is this we must understand. 
 
 Protectionists, advocates of '' Retaliation," Fair Traders, 
 ct hoc genus oninc, are prone to point triumphantly to cer- 
 tain mistaken prophecies of Richard Cobden. That they 
 do so is a tribute to his greatness ; for who cares to rake 
 togetlier the forgotten prophecies of the alarmed obscur- 
 antists who opposed him ? Nevertheless, the robust 
 optimism of the Free Traders went to strange lengths. 
 In particular, they seem to me to have been mistaken 
 •on two important points, and it is these errors that have 
 left the way open for a revival of Protection. They 
 :seriously underestimated the gravity of the danger from 
 which their policy of untaxed bread saved the nation 
 .at the time, while they equally overestimated the extent 
 to which the people had mastered the economic doctrine 
 of Free Trade. These errors gave them an undue con- 
 fidence, alike in the permanence of their victory and its 
 adequacy. 
 
 When people talk of England being " converted " 
 to Free Trade, I fear they show a lamentable misunder- 
 standing of what actually occurred. No such thing 
 ever happened. It is impossible to convert a nation to 
 an advanced economic doctrine unless you first educate 
 all the people in political economy. What actually hap- 
 pened was something like this : the people had before 
 them a manifest object-lesson in the evils of the bread- 
 tax, they suffered bitterly from it, and determined to do 
 -away with it. But the masses did not support the Anti- 
 Corn Law League because they had read Adam Smith, 
 but because they were starving. When, however, they 
 were relieved from its oppression, the people felt deep 
 gratitude to the men who had led the fight for the neces- 
 sities of life, and granted them a leading share in political 
 power. 
 
 Then, there being no strong vested interests opposed, 
 and the elasticity of the national income giving them the 
 opportunity, the Free Traders in power removed other 
 imposts which did not press so visibly upon the people. 
 
 6
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 After that, national pride did tlie rest. People are only 
 too willing to plume themselves on the superiority of their 
 laws over those of other nations ; and so long as there 
 was no visible difficulty caused by it, so long as we were 
 far ahead as a manufacturing country of all others, our 
 people were quite willing to pride themelves on their 
 superior enlightenment as Free Traders. There being no 
 serious competition in manufactured goods from abroad, 
 people who had never read a page of Adam Smith, and 
 who could no more have given an economic defence of 
 Free Trade than they could have proved the theory of 
 gravitation, accepted the one as they accepted the other — 
 on authority. At this moment not one Free Trader — 
 or Protectionist for that matter — in a hundred is so because 
 he has honestly studied the question. Men call them- 
 selves lifelong Free Traders who have not the slightest 
 idea how to answer the veriest clap-trap of the pothouse 
 Protectionist. They believe, as everyone but a specialist 
 must believe, in economics or in other sciences — on author- 
 ity. This may seem obvious, but Free Traders who are 
 such by intellectual conviction have never, it seems to 
 me, seen the fact clearly enough. We owe Free Trade 
 not to argument, but to an object-lesson ; and the con- 
 viction of the people, such as it is, is at the mercy of any 
 other object-lesson which seems to them to point the other 
 way. 
 
 When they imagined, then, that the people had become 
 converted to Free Trade, the heroes of the Anti-Corn Law 
 League were unduly optimistic ; they were equally so in 
 their anticipations for the future of the country under 
 a system of free imports, without any further economic 
 change. Most of us can remember the time when this 
 country was in a sense the " workshop of the world," 
 and when it was quite common to believe that such could 
 be its permanent place in the economy of the nations. 
 This seems so impossible an ideal now, that one feels im- 
 patient with the optimists of the last generations who 
 seem almost to have taken it for granted. Yet it is obvious 
 enough that, in the long-run, each nation must come to 
 
 7
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 manufacture for itself a great part of the things its people 
 consume. Wherever there is coal and iron — and in how 
 many countries do these minerals not abound somewhere ? 
 — they will, sooner or later, be developed, with all the vast 
 industries which depend upon them. This will happen, 
 in the long-run, even where the home Government does 
 not create the industries before their natural time by 
 protective duties levied at the expense of the general 
 public. Manufacturers on the spot will always, other 
 things being equal, ultimately beat those across the sea. 
 There is not, and there never can be, a permanent "work- 
 shop of the world," even if such a thing were desirable 
 in the interests of humanity. With or without protective 
 duties, a nation will thus in the long-run capture the bulk 
 of its home market for itself, while, of course, no protective 
 dutj?' can help it to capture a foreign one. Bounties may 
 do this sometimes, but no nation is likely to carry the 
 bounty system to any great extent. The Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer will always more readily give ear to 
 those manufacturers who propose import duties which, 
 however injurious, are a source of revenue, than to those 
 who advocate export bounties, which are an expense. 
 Thus it seems clear that all civilised nations must tend 
 to become industrial nations, as indeed they are doing. 
 
 The rapid progress of industrialism abroad is the root 
 cause of the Protectionist revival. Ev^erywhere reactionists 
 have been able to appeal to the people with some success ; 
 for, as we have seen, the nation as a whole has never under- 
 stood the theoretic basis of Free Trade. I believe at 
 the present moment, perhaps at any time during the last 
 fifteen years, had the proposal for an import duty on 
 foreign manufactured goods been put to the people as 
 a direct issue, unobscured by any other, a majority could 
 have been obtained for it. Of course it is impossible 
 for anyone to prove or disprove this, while the experience 
 of an individual goes for very little ; but I imagine the 
 reader will bear me out when I say that most people, not 
 students of economics, are very jealous of the quantity 
 of foreign manufactured articles they see come into the 
 
 8
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 country. I have hardly ever met a man, unless he were 
 a student of politics, who expressed approval of our present 
 policy as far as it affects manufactured articles. With 
 food it is different. Here, indeed, the town populations 
 are opposed to Protection, and the memory of the days 
 of dear bread is still a potent force to stem reaction. This 
 jealousy of foreign trade is a fruitful soil for the sower 
 of Protectionist ideas. The " man in the street " sees 
 the commercial supremacy of England rapidly vanishing 
 away ; he sees the kind of argument he can understand 
 — an object-lesson, and he turns eagerly to the person 
 who comes forward with a specious proposal for dealing 
 with the subject. Unfortunately, from the Free Trader- 
 he gets, too often, no assistance whatever. It is impossible 
 to explain the whole theory of economics to the average 
 busy man, with his mind all untrained, as it usually is, 
 to "scientific reasoning. The Free Traders, in fact, have 
 generally little to say beyond the optimistic platitudes 
 of the seventies. They treat the matter as though a 
 policy of free imports were the last word in economics, 
 a position almost as bad as that of the Protectionist. 
 Emphatically, this attitude will not do. I am convinced 
 that Free Traders must attain to a constructive policy, 
 or in the long-run they will be defeated. The cause of 
 the Tory reaction of the last twenty years is to be found 
 in the fact that the progressive forces have surrendered 
 the offensive, and have consented to adopt a defensive 
 position. In all political struggles ultimate victory will 
 rest with the attacking side ; and if reformers are content 
 to allow men like Mr. Chamberlain to decide what questions 
 shall be put to the electorate, while they sit still, or content 
 themselves with resisting his crude proposals, there 
 can be only one issue : we shall cease to be a progressive 
 nation. Free Traders must provide their own better 
 answer to the problems felt dimly by the people, or the 
 answer of their enemies will be taken, however unsound 
 it may be. 
 
 All commerce is barter, and any nation that imports 
 must of necessity have something to export in payment. 
 
 9
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 An}' nation, then, which, hke ourselves, depends chiefly 
 upon other countries for its food supply, must either have 
 an exceptionally good foreign trade for manufactured 
 articles, an abundant supply of some raw material scarce 
 elsewhere, or an unusually strong mercantile marine doing 
 much more than its share of the carrying trade of the 
 world. But whether artificially promoted by protective 
 duties or not, every nation tends to provide the vast bulk 
 of ordinary manufactured articles for itself. One country 
 after another is developing its railway system, its coal 
 measures, and its textile and metal industries. If a new 
 nat'on wants capital, it will be readily provided by the 
 investors of a more developed State, for capital is cosmo- 
 politan. Capital once obtained, the same development 
 goes on in each instance. One leading industry gets a 
 foothold, and others rapidly follow. Factories for textiles 
 attract the manufacturers of textile machinery, promote 
 a demand for dyes, and dye-works arise on all hands ; require 
 coal, and the mineral wealth of the new country is quickly 
 developed. Meanwhile the makers of machines are not 
 content to supply the cotton mills ; they tout for trade 
 among the farmers, and supply them with agricultural 
 implements specially designed for the conditions of the 
 country ; they build the railway engines and cranes for 
 the wharves and warehouses ; Ihey develop in every direc- 
 tion in which steel and iron can be used. In an incredibly 
 short space of time any populous country will pass from 
 a purely farming to an industrial community. Sixty 
 years ago modern industrialism was developed in England 
 alone ; now not only have Germany and the United States 
 attained to a manufactu ing greatness fairly rivalling 
 our own, but Italy, Russia, even such lands as Japan 
 and Servia, to mention only a few instances, are rapidly 
 travelling in the same way. 
 
 The process of economic development is everywhere 
 the same. The capitalists of an old and wealthy industrial- 
 ism invest money to develop the mineral or other resources 
 of some poorer country. Capital is thus imported at 
 first, and then there is for a time a brisk import trade 
 
 lO
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 for implements of production, for capital travels across 
 the ocean in the form of commodities. But the develop- 
 ment has not proceeded far when this importation receives 
 a check, and ships begin to carry back cargoes representing 
 the interest and proiit of the investors. Ere long, as 
 in the cases of Germany and the United States, the new 
 industries are saturated with capital, and wealthy men 
 exist, seeking, in their turn, opportunities to invest in 
 likely countries more backward than their own. The 
 exports now contain not only interest on money invested, 
 but instalments of the principal also ; in short, the country 
 has become capitalised, a nation with money to lend and 
 not needing to borrow. Thus it is we find the Germans 
 negotiating for railway rights in the East, the French 
 investing millions in Panama, and, strangest of all, the 
 United States, long a first class market for British invest- 
 ments, forming and financing syndicates and trusts in the 
 United Kingdom itself. 
 
 Now, all this is in the interest of humanity ; but it 
 destroys the hope of our own or any nation ever becoming 
 the " workshop of the world." In so far as the Cobdenites 
 failed to foresee this, they were wrong ; and it is well 
 for their friends to face the facts and their consequences. 
 In a dim way the man in the street, whose vote makes 
 governments, does recognise them, and it is a hard trial 
 for him. Two great nations, for long the foremost in 
 the world, have had during the last generation to face 
 the shattering of a national ideal by the despotism of 
 fact ; and it has been a bitter experience for each. For 
 centuries French patriotism centred round the military 
 greatness of the nation, round the undisputed fact that 
 France was the most influential power in Europe. But 
 her greatness was largely due to the dis-unity of Germany 
 and Italy, a thing which the forces of progress must one 
 day or other bring to an end. Sedan ended French military 
 supremacy for ever ; and however unworthy the purely 
 military view of French greatness may have been, it is 
 not to be wondered at that even a people that had so many 
 nobler claims to the gratitude of humanity took the matter 
 
 1 1
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 deeply to heart. In the same way, British people have 
 grown accustomed to consider themselves the leading 
 manufacturing nation of the world. As the dis-unity 
 of Germany left France the leading military power of 
 Europe, so the discords of the Continent and the unde- 
 veloped state of America gave England her exceptional 
 start in the race of industrialism. But neither the one 
 nor the other could last for ever. Both ideals were materi- 
 alistic, and unworthy of the greatness of the nations which 
 adopted them ; but we can hardly fail to sympathise 
 with the disappointment of the millions in either country 
 when their patriotic pride is dashed by the despotism 
 of fact, while we certainly should allow for the political 
 consequences of that disappointment. The unrest which 
 such disillusions occasion prepares the ground for men 
 like General Boulanger and Mr. Chamberlain. It creates 
 that spirit of hysterical assertiveness which led France 
 into the Dreyfus scandal, and ourselves into the South 
 African war. Men wish to vindicate the national superi- 
 ority over the foreigner in which they have long com- 
 placently believed, but which they now suspect is threat- 
 ened, and they have ready faith in anyone who suggests 
 a method of doing this. That statesman who shares their 
 discontent, who is nearest to the moral and intellectual 
 level of the discontented, can readily work upon their 
 passions ; they are in a mood to be deceived, not to criticise 
 the deceiver. The basis of the feeling being essentially 
 a revolt against fact, its victims are careless of fact. The 
 attempts to hide the original mistake in the Dreyfus 
 matter, and the unwillingness to face the magnitude 
 of the war in which we found ourselves involved, 
 are instances of this. Just as France, rather than face 
 the truth that she was now merely the equal of several 
 great Powers, could accept Boulanger on trust and at 
 his own estimate, so, there is reason to fear, multitudes 
 of Englishmen will be prepared to accept Mr. Chamber- 
 lain's nostrums rather than admit that it is impossible 
 for us to remain for ever the chief manufacturers of the 
 world. 
 
 12
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 The only way to prevent the British electors from 
 seeking some foolish policy of '' Retaliation," or trying 
 some quack method of retaining a supremacy that has 
 gone or is going for ever, is to fill their minds with some 
 more worthy ideal of national life. We must place before 
 them some great constructive policy, based upon a sym- 
 pathetic understanding of contemporary need. We must, 
 in short, discover a policy and a method that will draw 
 together the progressive forces of present day society, 
 as Mr. Chamberlain has gathered together the reactionary 
 ones. As he voices the discontent of the unthinking, 
 and gains popularity by uttering in the face of Europe 
 the anti-foreign follies which the average man speaks 
 to his neighbour in the tramcar and on the street, so we 
 must express the needs of the people in their soberer 
 moments, evolve a policy that will remove some of the 
 difficulties besetting their daily life, and draw to our side 
 the multitudes who are incapable of breaking up the 
 meetings of their opponents who do not go "on the 
 Maffick," the patient, average English men and women 
 not blessed with many ideas, but engaged in solving the 
 problem of life in an honest manner, and not incapable 
 of gratitude for help in their difficult task. But we must 
 take a leaf out of Mr. Chamberlain's book. We must 
 ally ourselves with forces, not merely with ideas, which, 
 however excellent in themselves, are not forced forward 
 by contemporary necessity. We must be as modern 
 as Mr. Chamberlain, if we are to appeal as effectually 
 to the progressive forces of modern life as he has done 
 to the reactionary ones. 
 
 The reforming party, at any time, is necessarily the 
 party of ideas. It is well that this should be so ; but 
 we should remember that ideas, even good ideas, are of 
 two kinds — those that have contemporary vitality, and 
 those that have not. To illustrate what I mean, take 
 the Republican ideal. Probably thousands of loyal 
 .subjects of King Edward would readily admit that there 
 is no valid theoretic defence of hereditary rule. Yet 
 there is no more stable institution than the British mon- 
 
 ^3 
 
 1^
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 archy. The reason is that, whether monarchy be defensible 
 or not, no man's practical liberty is a bit lessened by the 
 rule of the present House. As long as this is so, the natural 
 conservatism of mankind will preserve our monarchy 
 against any amount of abstract republican argument ; 
 for men will not sacrifice their ease for a theory, only to 
 remove a practical evil which they feel. Yet whether 
 the individual thing be good or bad, the abstract argu- 
 ment against the monarchy is sound, or otherwise, as you 
 will. The difference is that in the one case it arouses 
 a responsive echo in the hearts of men, in the other it 
 does not. As we have seen, it required an object-lesson 
 to make the English people adopt Free Trade ; and 
 probably the real reason why so few other nations have 
 followed our lead is that no other country has been com- 
 pelled to do so by an equally cogent necessity. Now the 
 fault of reforming parties is their tendency to pursue dead 
 issues as if they had contemporary vitality ; to advance 
 proposals because of their theoretic soundness, without 
 first considering whether they are practically necessary. 
 This is an entirely fatal course. No institution can be 
 attacked without arousing a very real party in its defence. 
 The conservatism of human nature, to say nothing of the 
 force of vested interests, will always make a good fight 
 for anything established, even when it is not only theo- 
 retically indefensible, but practically disastrous. In order, 
 then, that reforms may be brought about, it is necessary 
 to confront this real resistance by an equally real attack ; 
 and this, as I have said, can only be done when the wrong 
 to be righted is a practical one, felt widely, not merely 
 a theoretical one, understood by a process of reasoning. 
 King Edward understands his people, and those republican 
 arguments are dead which a few rash acts of a foolish 
 monarch could vitalise in a moment. 
 
 Now the Liberal party during the last twenty years 
 has delivered itself over to the enemy by electing to fight 
 on dead issues. Until women realise more fully than, 
 alas ! most of them do, the vital importance of politics 
 to them, there are many electoral anomalies, but no loudly 
 
 14
 
 The Great Reaction 
 
 asserted grievance. When Roman Catholics could not 
 vote at all, their religion was insulted ; when workmen 
 could not vote, there was an insult to their class ; but 
 mere inequality of electoral districts, or a slow system 
 of registration, causes no bitterness of feeling, arouses 
 no passion for redress. Disestablishment of the Church 
 is attracti\'e to ardent Nonconformists, but is of little 
 interest to the majority, growing yearly more indifferent 
 to all the creeds ; Local Veto, with the idea at the bottom 
 of it of ultimate compulsory total abstinence to all, is 
 not attractive to a people nine out of ten of whom 
 take alcohol more or less ; Home Rule is a reality to 
 the Irish people ; it will not be so to their neighbours 
 until Englishmen realise, by the dominance of the Irish 
 party at Westminster, what it means to be ruled by 
 another nation. All these things are open to the same 
 objection — the}^ draw only a half-hearted advocacy, 
 while they arouse a whole-hearted opposition. What- 
 ever their merits in principle, not one of them is a 
 political asset. 
 
 The growth of society is not the work of statesmen, 
 it is not caused by Acts of Parliament ; it is the work of 
 the people themselves, solving the problems of life in 
 the best manner they can, under pressure of contemporary 
 social and economic needs. This, wise and enlightened 
 Governments can render easy by removing obstructions 
 and by granting judicious assistance ; but they can neither 
 determine the direction of social progress at any time, 
 nor create a form of progress not actually demanded by 
 the conditions of the day. In order that statesmen may 
 do even this, they must understand what direction con- 
 temporary social progress is actually taking ; they must 
 comprehend the problems of life with which the average 
 citizen has actually to deal, and the manner in which 
 circumstances are compelling him to solve them. They 
 must, in short, be in touch with contemporary life, aware 
 of its every movement, and in actual alliance with its 
 forces. Programmes and ideas which are the remainder 
 of an earlier generation, when the progress and needs 
 
 15
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 of society were different, are of no avail to a progressive 
 party ; to attempt to base a policy on them is to court 
 destruction. This is what the front bench of the Liberal 
 party has done, and is, T believe, a root cause of the Tory 
 reaction. 
 
 16
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TOWN PROBLEM 
 
 The English working classes may be divided into three 
 cleady marked sections. These are (i) the Town Artisans, 
 mostly member of Trade Unions and Co-operators ; (2) the 
 unorganised Town Workers, below Messrs. Booth and 
 Rowntree's poverty line ; and (3) the Agricultural Labourers. 
 These three divisions are in reality three great social classes, 
 having little more in common than any one of them has 
 with the middle class. They have as yet no basis for 
 common political or social action ; and indeed the political 
 and social outlook of each of these divisions is essentially 
 d'fferent from that of the other two. That the great 
 Tory reaction captured a vast number of working class 
 vote -. goes without saying ; but I suspect these three 
 divisions were influenced in various manners by the re- 
 actionary movement. 
 
 I doubt whether the town artisan has ever, to any 
 great extent, voted Tory, unless there is, or has been, 
 some quarrel between his own particular Union and the 
 Liberal party. The Socialist propaganda has had its 
 chief successes among the Trades Unionists, and the 
 Unions are now strongly permeated with Socialism. It 
 is probable enough that the Trades Unionists have become 
 indifferent to Liberalism, and, in many cases, have ceased 
 to vote at all ; but I do not think that, with the exception 
 per] laps of the Cotton Spinners, they have ever largely 
 voted for reaction. 
 
 The fact is that the Trades Unionists are the most 
 
 definitely progressive section of the nation. No doubt 
 
 the delegates to the annual Trades Union Congress arc, 
 
 on the whole, more " advanced " than the branches that 
 
 B
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 send them there ; but the}^ could hardly pass, session 
 after session, such drastic proposals as they continually 
 do, if their constituents objected very strongly to pro- 
 gressive ideas. Nothing has been more emphatic than 
 the action of the Trades Unions on the tiscal question. 
 They have been virtually unanimous on the subject ; 
 wherever the fiscal " reformers " have made converts, they 
 have certainly not converted the Unions. It is the same 
 in other things. At the height of the War fever the Con- 
 gress passed a resolution condemning the war ; while 
 it seems almost superfluous to say that the wliole Trade 
 Union world is bitterly opposed to Chinese labour in the 
 Transvaal. 
 
 As far, at least, as the urban artisans go, it is an entire 
 mistake to suppose that, because the Tory vote has increased 
 and the Liberal one has declined during the last generation, 
 that England has ceased to be progressive. The decline 
 has been most marked in the large towns, is less in the 
 small ones, and perhaps hardly exists at all in the countr}'. 
 It is the defection of London and the larger cities that 
 has given the Tory part}^ their long lease of power. Yet 
 these very places, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birming- 
 ham, etc., where twenty years ago it was hardly worth 
 while for a Conservative to run, have been taking the 
 lead in a progressive movement, or series of movements, 
 which have already done much to alter the character 
 of British life, and promise to do much more. Along- 
 side of the steady increase of Tory voters, has gone on 
 the growth of the Co-operative movement, of Trades 
 Unionism, and of municipal activit}^ Politics have played 
 a smaller part in the lives of thousands ; and if the affairs 
 of the nation have produced at times more excitement, 
 the fate of parties has aroused a less steady and continuous 
 interest than these things, of the very existence, much 
 less the practical bearing, of which the Liberal leaders 
 seem hardly aware. Nevertheless, these three move- 
 ments and other allied ones have during the last generation 
 created a new English c'\-ic and industrial life ; they 
 have turned the lower, middle, and art'san classes from 
 
 18
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 a mass of individuals into an organised communit}' ; they 
 have trained the people in business habits, have taught 
 them to work together in various ways for a common 
 end, and have created a new public spirit. Taken togetlier, 
 they make a mighty force, which must shortly find its 
 voice in the nation, and is at the disposal of any states- 
 man who understands its needs and is willing to aid in 
 obtaining them. 
 
 The repeal of the Combination laws left the road open 
 for the growth of Trades Unionism ; the position of the 
 workman, left without capital to fight for his living among 
 the blind forces of modern industry, compelled him to 
 avail himself of the opening. Fundamentally, the basis 
 of Trades Unionism is the same as that of any social insti- 
 tution — the need for co-operation. Men found societies 
 and impose laws because they have to — because only 
 so can they avoid the weakness of the lower animals arrayed 
 alone against the world. Thus they obtain opportunities 
 for self-development impossible to pure individualism ; 
 they become free by organisation and law. It is the same 
 with Trades Unionism. The position of the unorganised 
 worker, without capital and without friends, would be 
 hardly better among the forces of modern life than that 
 of the solitary outlaw among the woods. Men organise 
 because they must, unless they wish to add to the numbers 
 of the submerged tenth. The cause of Trades Unionism 
 is not a double dose of original sin among the working class ; 
 it is practical necessit}^ 
 
 Driven by this necessity, then, men and women com- 
 bined, and the result is that Trades Unionism has become 
 an institution of the land, far more hrmly rooted than many 
 an older one. It has assured, or done much to assure, 
 for the Unionists at least a moderate standard of living, 
 and it has given the working classes a number of experi- 
 enced leaders, trained in the handling of concrete industrial 
 problems, and educated in politics, at least from a labour 
 point of view. But they have combined also for other 
 purposes, and through the Co-operative movement have 
 gained an insight into business, have freed themselves 
 
 19
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 from the credit system much more completely than 
 wealthier people, and have accumulated funds to the 
 amount of £25,000,000, earning a yearly profit for their 
 members of over eight million pounds. These are great 
 achievements ; but we have not exhausted their signi- 
 ficance until we remember that, at least in the case of 
 Co-operation, there is a cumulative rate of growth. E^^tend- 
 ing as it does in every direction, invading yearly some 
 new domain of productive industry, it would be difficult 
 to forecast what may be the position of Co-operation 
 twenty years hence. 
 
 But while these voluntary associations have done much 
 to develop the public spirit of the English working class, 
 -another movement has been playing an equally important 
 part in shaping the civic life of the nation. The Municipal 
 Reform Act of 1837 was the starting-point of the public 
 life of the modern town. The visits of the Cholera, which 
 followed one another during the middle of last century, 
 supplied the spur of necessity which seems needed to 
 stimulate all human organisation. The new Borough 
 Councils were faced with a formidable death rate, and, 
 urged on by an alarmed public opinion, and under 
 pressure from the Central Government, they applied them- 
 selves to the problem of sanitation. Anyone taking the 
 trouble to compare the death rates of the early part of 
 last century with the tables for the present day, will recog- 
 nise how well the work has been done on the whole. In 
 spite of the horrors of our city slums, in spite of the wear 
 and tear of modern life, modern sanitation has vastly 
 increased the normal length of town life. The extension 
 of the franchise to the workman left the way open for a 
 further development of municipal life, while the application 
 of electricity to tramways and the suspension of the 
 hostile Standing Orders of the House of Commons, have 
 enabled the larger cities to gain control of an important 
 necessity of modern life, and rendered it probable that any 
 future developments of electricity will fall under their 
 control within their own areas. No one can forecast 
 what this may mean ; but the desperate struggle of the 
 
 20
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 British Electric Traction Trust to retain the tramway- 
 rights in large towns, shows how important those far- 
 sighted capitalists consider the privileges which the towns 
 have fortunately generally retained for themselves. 
 
 But two at least of these mo\'ements, in combination 
 the great progressive movement of the present generation, 
 have gone about as far as they can in the present state of 
 the law. The Taff Vale and other legal decisions have 
 brought the Trades Unionists face to face with the fact 
 that their funds are at the mercy of any indiscreet official. 
 The Corporations find their projects of public service 
 frustrated by the hostility of capitalist groups in the House 
 of Commons, and rendered expensive by the necessity 
 of appl3dng to Parliament on every conceivable occasion ; 
 while those of their works which do not yield a revenue, 
 such as sanitary and street improvements, have to be 
 paid for by a most unjust system of rating. In either case 
 a new and vigorous social development finds itself pressing 
 against the laws and conventions of an older time. It 
 is not merel}^ a clash of political creed and vested interest, 
 it is a conflict of new and progressive facts with old and 
 dying ones. 
 
 Now the first duty of a really progressive party is to 
 put itself in touch, both sympathetic and intelligent, with 
 these growths of the modern progressive spirit. Such 
 a party would recognise the immense social importance 
 of the work they are doing, and would set itself to remove 
 the legal and other obstructions which hinder them. It 
 would deal with Trades Union law in such a manner 
 as to place it at least on as good a footing as was intended 
 by the legislation of thirty years ago, and as it was generally 
 understood to be before the Taff Vale decision. It 
 w^ould be prepared when opportunity offered to codify 
 and improve the Factory laws, so as to enforce stricter 
 regulations, especially in dangerous trades ; and it would 
 extend the Workmen's Compensation Act to all trades. 
 
 Nor would the course be less clear with regard to 
 the City Corporations. These bodies have already done 
 more towards the solution of many social problems than 
 
 21
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 Parliament is at all likely to do in fifty years. While the 
 Central Government has been wasting public money in 
 useless wars, and mismanaging the War Office in a way 
 to bring on us the contempt of the world, the cities of 
 Great Britain have been increasing their debts also ; but, 
 and this is an essential difference, they have been rapidly 
 adding to their assets. At the same time, they have been 
 conducting, in a way strangely contrasted with the incom- 
 petence of the Government departments, many business 
 undertakings for their constituents. And they will do 
 more. The Municipalities are making an attempt to 
 solve the Housing problem, one of the most pressing 
 practical questions of the day to thousands. The land 
 round our great cities is a profitable field for speculators. 
 The rapid increase in the population causes the land around 
 the towns to rise steadily in value, and enables wealthy 
 men to make fortunes by holding it back from builders 
 until the necessities of the public compel them to pay 
 a monopoly price. The effect on the health and happiness 
 •of the people is disastrous ; while the fact that land thus 
 held from its most ])rofitable use for speculative purposes 
 pa3^s no rates, or only those paid on its rent for agricultural 
 purposes, makes it easier to hold it for a rise in value. 
 If Corporations were allowed to check these land specu- 
 lations by levying rates on unoccupied sites, not only 
 would our rating system be rendered just, but both the 
 Corporations and private builders would be enabled to 
 deal much more rapidly with the demand for houses. 
 
 But, indeed, the Municipalities less need the help of 
 Parliament than a cessation of its hindrances. The 
 Central Government is a far less efficient governing body 
 than any Town Council, even the most backward. It 
 does not make for efficiency to compel a competent body 
 of public servants to submit schemes which they have 
 carefully studied out, and on which they and their con- 
 stituents are agreed, to a partisan body like the House 
 of Commons, whenever they want to borrow money. Surely 
 the great cities of England, whose municipal government 
 is the best feature of public life, may be trusted to manage
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 their own affairs, without consulting on every point of 
 any magnitude an assembly which can put no check on 
 the wastefulness of the War Office ! 
 
 English local government only requires freedom to 
 deal with most of the problems of town life effectually ; 
 but there is at least one which is beyond its powers. The 
 very poor, those thirt}' per cent, who, according to Mr, 
 Rowntree, are too poorly paid to secure enough food, 
 and who live below the poverty line, are a different class 
 of people from the progressive artisans on whose support 
 the movements we have been dealing with lean. I greatly 
 sympathise with these poor people, who have more humanity 
 in them than their superiors allow ; but, as compared 
 with the Co-operator, Trades Unionist class, they are 
 a mob to an organised democracy. They are also a serious 
 social and political danger. It was they who, assisted 
 by well-to-do loafers, broke up the meetings of those who 
 opposed the late war. Bitterly as they would suffer 
 by a tax on food, it is they, if any, of the working class 
 who will vote for Mr. Chamberlain ; for no progressive 
 propaganda influences them, and they have no social 
 centre except the public-house. They are recruited by 
 the steady flow of country people to the towns, and by 
 the unemployed among the artisan class. The thrifty 
 workers are well aware of their needs, and are wishful 
 enough to solve their problem, which adds greatly to 
 the difficulties of their own position ; but no merely local 
 organisation can undertake the task. Yet so long as a 
 vast slum population exists, the organisation of the city 
 community cannot proceed very far, and even the physical 
 health of the people cannot be maintained. I am per- 
 suaded that, if by removing the impediments that stand 
 in their own way we regain for progress the confidence 
 of the artisans, we shall have their hearty support in 
 dealing with this more difficult problem. If we can do 
 so, we shall not only do a great service to the community, 
 but we shall dry up one of the main sources of the re- 
 actionary vote, and so help to defeat Mr. Chamberlain. 
 During recent years the work of Mr. Charles Booth 
 
 23
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 in London and of Mr. Seebohm Rowntree in York, has 
 done all that the careful compilation of facts can do to 
 enable us to realise the manner of life among the poor 
 of our large cities. It is an appalling story they have 
 told us, in whatever light we regard the matter. That, 
 however careful they may be, one-third of our city popula- 
 tions are so badly paid that it is impossible for them 
 to buy enough of the plainest kind of food to maintain 
 them in health, is a fact in itself not only to arouse the 
 pity of considerate people for the victims of such poverty, 
 but their alarm for the future of our race and civilisation. 
 Before this terrible fact, rarely alluded to during the fiscal 
 controversy except to make political capital for one 
 side or the other, all other social and political problems, 
 to my mind, sink into insignificance. The lives of men 
 are so bound up with one another in the complex web 
 of society, that it is impossible for social want or disease 
 in any part of the body politic not, in the long - run, to 
 bring ruin to others. The sons and daughters of our 
 city slums will become the progenitors of the English 
 men and women of the future, and will hand on, perhaps 
 to remote ages, the diseases, moral and physical, acquired 
 in their dismal surroundings. It is impossible that a 
 nation, one-third of whom are habitually underfed, should 
 long retain a leading place in the world. It is hardly 
 less the interest of the community than of the individual, 
 that each citizen should receive from childhood sufficient 
 nourishment to maintain him or her in health. 
 
 But if the physical health of the millions below the 
 Trade Union and Co-operative level is so appallingly low, 
 their mental poverty is no less certainly a menace to the 
 nation. Mental poverty is, indeed, a general character- 
 istic of modern British life. The culture of our ci\-ilisation, 
 at its best, has made enormous progress since the beginning 
 of last century ; but that century of progress has only 
 served to emphasise a tendenc}-, in existence since the 
 revival of learning, to divide society into two classes, 
 a small one which has absorbed the new culture of science, 
 and a vastly larger one, which, while failing to do this, 
 
 24
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 has lost the older, simpler culture of tradition. The 
 rough, rule of thumb knowledge, wide-spread before the 
 over-grown modern towns, has disappeared among a 
 people whose lives are divorced from the fields ; the 
 great musicians have developed their art, but, with few 
 exceptions, the people know nothing of their works, and 
 instead of their folk songs and dances, are left with the 
 stupidities of the music hall and the barrel organ ; the 
 deft handicrafts, which make the art of less advanced 
 nations, have gone, and their places are taken by the 
 products of Birmingham and the German toy-makers. 
 In place of these, the people have gained just nothing. 
 The mechanical civilisation, created by science and in- 
 vention, surrounds them, and the uneducated masses, 
 rich and poor alike, play their parts in it ; but they rarely 
 understand more of it than is actually necessary in order 
 to enable them to do their daily work ; and they are utterly 
 ignorant of the thought and enterprise which have rendered 
 this civilisation possible. In a less complex society this 
 is not so. The civilisation of such a society is diffused, 
 there is a primitive communism in ideas as well as in goods ; 
 and more simple as the things of his age may be, the savage 
 is an educated man in a sense in which not only the slum- 
 dweller, but many a wealthy stockbroker, is not. 
 
 The importance of all this to our present inquiry is 
 the stupidity it engenders in the average mind. The 
 modern man is not curious as the savage, and the explana- 
 tion is not so flattering as he thinks ; it is less due to a 
 growth from mental childhood than to a relapse into 
 stupidity and self-satisfaction. He does not want new 
 ideas, and, in consequence, he never gets them. He has 
 no idea of the varied interest of the world in which he 
 lives. His work is a matter of routine, calling into play 
 but few of the powers of his mind, and the rest remain 
 in a crude, undeveloped condition. The result is an utter 
 inability to criticise for himself any political idea presented 
 to him ; and he is ripe for Chamberlainism. No matter 
 how self-contradictory a statesman may be, he is unable 
 to detect him ; for he docs not carry in his mind the con- 
 
 25
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 tents of one speech in hearing the next, nor remember 
 the absurdities at the commencement of a pamphlet 
 as he surrenders to contradictory ones at its conclusion. 
 Hence the deplorable intellectual confusion displayed 
 by Mr. Chamberlain does not prevent his success. As 
 long as a speaker is sufficiently cocksure of what he says 
 to-day, it is mattcrless if he were equally positive to the 
 contrary yesterday. 
 
 All this is naturally especially true of the unorganised 
 poor. To them politics, if they exist at all, are merely 
 a form of excitement. Religion reaches them, if at all, 
 through the Sah-ation Army, or some other body adopting 
 more or less a similar method. These people can, most 
 of them, read now ; but as the}^ cannot buy enough bread, 
 they can hardly be expected to spend money on books. 
 Their literature, as far as one can gauge it, is confined 
 to cheap sporting papers, from which, at least, they can 
 hope for the excitement of a successful " tip." The 
 power to reason out a question is not with them. It would 
 be unreasonable to expect it. 
 
 Now the politics of such a class present peculiar features. 
 Right through society there is a tendency for each class 
 to have a policital attitude of its own. The House of 
 Lords is predominantly Tory ; the middle class was, until 
 recently. Whig, and probably is so yet. True, many 
 middle class dissenters went over with the Liberal Unionists ; 
 but they took their Whiggism with them, and imposed 
 on Lord Salisbury's second Cabinet an essentially Whig 
 <:haracter. Now that Toryism is showing its teeth, it 
 is clear that large numbers of the same people are return- 
 ing to the Liberal fold. In like manner, the Trade Unionist 
 class is essentially socialistic in spirit, however much it 
 may fear the name of Socialism. But all these classes are 
 politically what they are by virtue of a certain amount 
 of stability in their way of looking at things. Class interest 
 at bottom determines their general attitude, and that 
 attitude is a more or less consistent one. The ideas of 
 a class permeate right through it ; they are communicated 
 by the leaders to the rank and file by means of organised 
 
 26
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 agencies. The press, the platform, and the pulpit form 
 the opinions of the classes to which they appeal ; and in 
 any stress of political conflict, each class will come out 
 on one side or other fairly consistently. 
 
 But the very poor have no organised opinion, no stable 
 view of politics. To them politics, if they appeal at all, 
 must appeal as everything else does, as a primitive emotion, 
 rather than as an intelligent body of thought. They 
 have no ordered and consistent thought about anything ; 
 for to them life is a grim struggle with the desperate facts 
 of poverty, alternating with some crude excitement. Hence 
 they can be appealed to only by the demagogue ; the man 
 who comes to them with the most startling idea is most 
 likely to obtain their support. Whether this idea is a 
 piece of flamboyant jingoism or a revolutionary appeal 
 against the t3a-anny of the rich, will be determined by 
 circumstances ; but until we can absorb the vast masses 
 of our city population who are too poor to organise, and 
 are almost outside of the social machine, their existence 
 will be a menace, justly merited by the neglect that has 
 permitted it to exist, to the body politic. 
 
 I am exceedingly anxious at this point to avoid mis- 
 construction. Organised society has, I am convinced, 
 deeply wronged these people ; and in the fact that they 
 are politically incompetent I see no special blame to them 
 as a class, but the inevitable consequence of social disease. 
 Individuals are virtuous or vicious, perhaps, by their 
 own special fault, but classes never. It is as certain as 
 can be, that had the members of the House of Lords been 
 born in the slums, they would have grown up, those of 
 them who survived, into an average assortment of the 
 slum class. One or two might have risen above their 
 surroundings, but it is morally certain they would not, 
 on the whole, ha\T differed very materially from any 
 other equal number of men placed in similar circum- 
 stances. Some of our learned professions, art, literature, 
 and science, demand a certain amount of selection, some 
 moral or intellectual superiority above the average, as 
 a condition of entr}', so that the same would not apply 
 
 27
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 with equal force in their cases ; but the a\-erage gentleman, 
 middle class man, artisan, or semi-Hooligan, is so by virtue 
 of the accident of birth and rearing. Only this way can 
 you account for the fact that nearly all country gentlemen 
 are Tories and believe in the Land laws ; that nearly all 
 lower middle class men are convinced that the backbone 
 of the country is its commerce ; and that the artisans, 
 more justly, have a marked tendency to idealise the work- 
 ing man. 
 
 But liowe\-er little they may themselves be specially 
 to blame, it is true that the votes of the poorest class are 
 not and cannot be intelligently given. In times of agita- 
 tion they will go in the lump to the side that makes the 
 most noise ; for, though unorganised, they are subject 
 to the laws that go\'ern the psychology of crowds. When 
 there is no special excitement, they will probably take 
 little interest in any election ; indeed, it is probably partly 
 due to their abstentions that municipal elections draw 
 so much smaller a percentage of the voters than Parlia- 
 mentary ones. Even then, however, there will be a 
 certain tendency for the slum dweller to follow the politics 
 of the nearest public-house. The history of the French 
 Revolution shows how devoted and dangerous they may 
 become when animated by a democratic ideal ; while 
 we have had recent evidence how readily they can be 
 made the tools of rampant militarism. The career of 
 Mr. Chamberlain shows the roughs of Birmingham equally 
 willing to riot in his favour in the name of democracy 
 or Empire. 
 
 It is a great political danger to have one-third of our 
 urban population in such a mental and moral condition 
 as this. Such a fact should be matter of the gravest 
 concern to men of all parties ; and the levity with which 
 Mr. Chamberlain, whether he was Radical or Tory at 
 the time, has connived at and even encouraged the passions 
 of the mob, is one of the worst features of his political 
 career. No true friend of the people can derive much 
 gratification from the mere conversion of these poor 
 people to his own side in politics. Such a thing may 
 
 28
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 happen any day, and the vote of the shims may become, 
 in a moment, a revohitionary instead of a khaki one. 
 But even so, it would be dangerous. Revohitionists, 
 as we know, of this kind can destroy, but they cannot 
 construct. On whate\'er side they are, the very humanity 
 in these poor people is likely to lead them into dangerous 
 error. The story of battle and heroism arouses their 
 sympathy and stirs their blood. Incapable of following 
 the movements of statesmen critically, they back their 
 own side, as the primitive savage backs his, without mis- 
 giving and without counting the cost. War gives to them 
 something of the excitement of the public-house ; and 
 much as I hate the passion of jingoism among those to 
 whom fortune has given the education and opportunity 
 to think, I recognise that a slum " on the Maffick " was 
 a thing far less degrading to human nature than the 
 calculations of financiers or the plots of statesmen. The 
 one was less degraded because less selfish. The ignorant 
 lodger, or poor uneducated workman, rioted and got drunk 
 because it was the only way he knew to express his sym- 
 pathy with the manhood of his own side. Of the heroism 
 of the Boers he knew little ; of the strength of their case, 
 nothing whatever. For him we may feel pity, and even 
 see in his errors a perverted evidence of his innate 
 humanity, even when we have nothing but contempt 
 for the scoundrelly Stock Exchange gamblers to whom 
 vv'e owe the tragedy of the South African war. 
 
 At present the poor are an asset of the Tory party, 
 and their numbers are sufficiently great to hand the 
 boroughs over to it in the absence of any very decided 
 Liberal faith on the part of the organised workers. This 
 latter does not exist ; and except to turn out some specially 
 objectionable Government like the present, I am con- 
 vinced the Trade Unionists will never again vote for the 
 Liberals until that party has learnt to understand them 
 and their work, and has proved itself a thorough-going 
 and reliable friend to it. Pending that, they have formed 
 their own party, the only reasonable course for them to 
 pursue. 
 
 29
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 The unorganised workers can only be permanently 
 won for progress by being absorbed into a class having 
 a definite and stable political idea of its own. The 
 j)olitical menace of their class is the direct result of their 
 condition, and can only cease with the permanent improve- 
 ment of that condition. Then, indeed, they will naturally 
 take a political complexion, and evolve political ideals 
 of their own, and the day of the demagogue will be over. 
 
 To sum up this chapter. The Liberal party, if it is 
 to retain the confidence of the progressive elements in 
 the nation, must be prepared to put itself vigorously on 
 the side of Municipalism and Trades Unionism. Its 
 leaders must recognise that both these agencies are doing 
 work of first class social importance ; that the preservation 
 of a large part of our population from the mere degradation, 
 physical and moral, of the unorganised, is due, in the main, 
 to Trades Unionism and Co-operation ; and that this work 
 is not merely in the individual interest of these members 
 of trades and Co-operative societies, but of the general 
 public, and of the stamina of generations yet unborn. 
 They must realise, as only some of them have realised 
 hitherto, that the municipal developments of the last 
 generation have been among the most progressive features 
 of modern life ; and that in the extension of the powers 
 of Corporations to acquire land for better housing, to rescue 
 public enterprises from private control, to enlarge their 
 open spaces and to find work for the unemployed, lies 
 always the true way of progress. On all those issues that 
 divide " Progressive " and " Moderate " Trades Unionist 
 and Free Labour man, they must recognise that the true 
 interest of society is with the former and not the latter. 
 
 Hence it follows that they must realise that under- 
 feeding and poverty are evils, not only to the immediate 
 victims, but to the whole of society. They must come 
 to understand that an unorganised population is an anti- 
 social population, a public menace. They must therefore, 
 as far as the central power of the State can do so, be prepared 
 to facilitate the absorption of the great population below 
 the poverty line in the better paid classes above it, and 
 
 30
 
 The Town Problem 
 
 this both for social and pohtical reasons, ^^'hat Parhament 
 can do directly in this matter is perhaps very little ; 
 but it can do much to free the hands of other agencies. 
 This the Liberals can do easily, as I hope to show ; and this 
 they must do if they wish to increase, and not to lose 
 the present wave of popularity which seems so likely to 
 carry them into power.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ANOMALIES OF OUR ECONOMIC POSITION 
 
 I BELIEVE that, were it not for the problem thrust upon 
 them by the vast population living below the poverty 
 line, the inhabitants of our towns could solve the other 
 difficulties now confronting them with but little direct 
 assistance from the State. Given a considerable enlarge- 
 ment of the powers of Town Corporations, especially in 
 the matter of acquiring land compulsorily at a fair valuation, 
 and an adequate amendment of Trade Union law, the 
 three great agencies of modern city life, the Local Governing 
 Authority, the Co - operative Society, and the Trades 
 Union, are quite capable of solving the legitimate problems 
 of a city population. That the Corporations are hampered 
 by inadequate powers and the Unions by recent judicial 
 interpretations of the law, are hindrances to their efforts 
 which it is needful to remove ; but, given their removal, 
 I think these agencies are adequate, on the whole, to 
 provide scope for the progressive spirit, for a good many 
 years to come, were they only faced by what I may call 
 legitimate difficulties. 
 
 By a legitimate difficulty, I mean one imposed on a 
 community by the course of progress within that community 
 itself. The progress of invention, in any city or State, causes 
 changes in employment, forming often a workless class. 
 The natural increase of population raises again the question 
 of employment, and makes necessary new housing accom- 
 modation. In places which, for any reason, become more 
 prosperous than those around them, there is in addition 
 a healthy influx of outsiders, who come to share in that 
 prosperity, and prevent the advantages of the city or 
 State becoming a monopoly. With the problems raised 
 
 32
 
 Anomalies of our Economic Position 
 
 by these means, a healthy social organism should be com- 
 petent to deal, as they arise. Destitution, insanitary 
 areas, overcrowding, and similar social evils, should, in 
 this case, not occur. Either by civic or co-operative 
 effort, a strong public spirit, such as is now growing in our 
 towns, can deal with these things, always provided the 
 extent of them is reasonably limited. 
 
 But when, for any reason, a community of limited 
 size is called upon, not only to deal with its own social 
 problems, but those of much larger external communities 
 also, the thing becomes very different. The natural in- 
 crease of a people, the steady immigration from prosperous 
 communities to others yet more prosperous, can be dealt 
 with because the scale of the increase is moderate, and the 
 rate of it is steady enough to allow of the growth of agencies 
 for dealing with it. But when, through very extensive 
 poverty and industrial decay in the larger world around 
 it, a community receives a more rapid influx of new inhabit- 
 ants than it can accommodate, the problem may easily 
 be beyond its strength. Under such circumstances, a 
 destitute population, such as unhappily exists in all our 
 towns, may spring up, and may rapidly grow too big for 
 any local effort to handle. 
 
 This is what has happened. The organs of the social 
 will within our towns, seeking the progressive improve- 
 ment of their peoples, are paralysed by the enormous 
 mass of poverty thrust upon them by the decay of British 
 agriculture. Trades Unions, fighting to maintain a decent 
 standard of life, are crippled by a vast mass of unorganised 
 labour hungering for employment on any terms ; rate- 
 payers willing to provide public employment for a reasonable 
 number of capable unemployed, and relief for their own 
 aged or infirm poor, cannot be induced to sanction such 
 a rate as would be needed to provide for thousands de- 
 moralised by hardships to such an extent as to be most 
 ineffective labourers. Nor could they if they would. Any 
 English town prepared to make the sacrifices needed to 
 provide adequately for the poor now within its borders, 
 would be instantly flooded with the wreckage of all its 
 c
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 neighbours eager to avail themselves of its generosity. 
 The problem of poverty-, in fact, is too wide for local dealing ; 
 national action is necessary if the thing is to be done at all. 
 
 Now the chief reason, perhaps, why this problem of 
 poverty has grown so unmanageable is the decline of 
 British agriculture. Every year thousands of English- 
 men lea\'e the fields for the streets in search of something 
 to do, at whatever rate of pay. In face of the enormous 
 problem created by this influx, local effort, as we have 
 seen, is helpless ; and even if we gave to the Municipalities 
 all the powers they ought to have, I do not think they 
 would be strong enough to deal with it. Each social 
 problem is connected with every other by invisible cords, 
 so that none can be considered fully alone ; and thus 
 it is that the problems of the city are connected with those 
 of the village. 
 
 Before, however, I deal with the problems of Country 
 life, it is desirable to make clear a national question, 
 arising out of the peculiarity of our economic position 
 as a nation largely living on imported food-stuffs, sent, 
 to a great extent, as payment of interest on investments 
 abroad. 
 
 I have pointed out how unjustified the early Free 
 Traders were in their assumption that this country could 
 be a permanent " workshop of the world." Our tem- 
 porary position as such was due to special causes which 
 have passed awa\^ and the pre-eminence is passing with 
 them. The effect of our exceptional lead is, however, 
 not yet exhausted ; we still possess a marvellous export 
 and shipping trade, while we have still a most exceptional 
 power to import. So great is this, that we are still able 
 to import nearly half our agricultural produce from abroad, 
 in addition to a vast import trade in other goods. In this 
 we are exceptional ; no other nation can draw such a 
 tribute from the outside world. Now, there is no need 
 for special anxiety about this — the fact that it is so has 
 saved us from national disaster ; but it is desirable to 
 remember that our financial position is as exceptional 
 now as our industrial one was formerly, when we were 
 
 34
 
 Anomalies of our Economic Position 
 
 the workshop of the world. I do not beheve in the per- 
 manence of any exceptional position in national affairs. 
 To do so would be to repeat, with less excuse, the mistake 
 of Cobden. We may rest assured that, however circum- 
 stances may favour one nation for a time, what I may 
 call the normal equation in the foreign trade of each land 
 will in the long-run tend to assert itself. What I mean 
 by the " normal equation " is this. As we have seen, all 
 commerce is barter, and in consequence any export implies 
 an import of equal value, and vice versa. Normally, then, 
 when we allow for the fact that imports are generally 
 reckoned at the freight paid price, and exports at the 
 price free-on-board, the exports and imports of any nation 
 will be nearly equal. When this is not so, some abnormal 
 factor exists, which disturbs the normal equation. 
 
 Now, this is notoriously not the case with our trade. 
 We import far more than we export, even when the 
 £90,000,000 a 3'ear earned b}/' our shipping is taken into 
 account. The reason we are able to import so largely 
 is also well known ; it is, that we are the largest creditor 
 nation in the world, just as we were once virtually the 
 only great manufacturing nation in the world. In fact, 
 we are still in an abnormal position ; and it is this abnormal 
 position which, however long it ma}^ take, I feel assured 
 we must some day lose. We draw an enormous tribute 
 from those nations that are still behind us in industrial 
 development, in the shape of interest and dividends on 
 our foreign investments, and this tribute reaches us in the 
 form of goods. Thus it is that we are able to import so 
 much of the produce of the soil in other lands. We are de- 
 pendent on our position as the leading creditor nation for our 
 food supply, just as in the early days of Free Trade we de- 
 pended on our manufacturing supremacy for the same thing. 
 
 Now, as already said, I do not believe that this state of 
 things can be permanent anymore than the former. Nations 
 have been compelled to borrow mone}^ of us, and to allow our 
 capitalists to exploit their resources because of the scarcity 
 of capital within their own borders. But this relative 
 poverty of other States tends to disappear as their indus- 
 
 35
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 trialism progresses. The United States is no longer a 
 good market for British investment ; and, indeed, as 
 Mr. John Hobson has recently shown, the new Imperialism 
 of the States is due to the fact that they, too, have be- 
 come over-capitalised, and have money to invest abroad, 
 France and Germany are in a like position — they, too, are 
 seeking investments in the poorer parts of the earth, 
 and no longer depend to so great an extent as formerly 
 on British capitalists. The same thing must ultimately 
 happen elsewhere. The development of industrialism in 
 each nation must bring into existence ere long a capitalist 
 class ; and as that class grows, there will be an increasing 
 supply of capital, a tendency to fall in the relative demand 
 for money, a reduction in the current rate of interest, 
 and a movement to repay or commute for cheaper loans 
 the debts both of the State and of individuals. In point 
 of fact, where our investments are good, we shall ultimately 
 get our money back ; while, of course, our bad invest- 
 ments will not yield a permanent tribute of interest. Save 
 in so far as the tendency for men who have made fortunes 
 in the United States or the Colonies to settle in England 
 and spend their money there, counteracts the general 
 rule, we cannot depend upon this country retaining for 
 ever its position as the home of capitalism. 
 
 Yet we are dependent upon this interest tribute almost 
 as much as we are upon our prominent position as a manu- 
 facturing people, for the fact that we alone of all nations 
 practically obtain half our food-stuffs from abroad. 
 I have tried to show that the means whereby we com- 
 mand this are in their nature temporary ; and if our 
 inability to supply ourselves with home-grown food is 
 temporary also, it is manifest that the nation is working 
 towards a distant but no less certain crisis. If we cannot 
 draw a large tribute of interest from abroad, nor command 
 an exceptional hold on foreign markets, one of two things 
 must some day happen — either we must level up our 
 agriculture to supply the population with food, or b}^ 
 emigration or otherwise the population must fall to the 
 limit of the food supply. 
 
 36
 
 Anomalies of our Economic Position 
 
 Now, to place a tax on foreign foods is merely to make 
 
 a distant crisis an immediate one. In itself it would do 
 
 little or nothing to increase the home-grown supply of 
 
 food-stuffs ; and its sole effect would be to transfer a 
 
 large amount of money from the pockets of the poor to 
 
 those of the landlords. Such a tax would be both a folly 
 
 and a crime, and might very easily lead to a revolution, 
 
 indeed that might not be the worst thing that could happen 
 
 as a result. There is little reason to suppose that the 
 
 total yield of our land is less now than it used to be. It 
 
 is true that Great Britain now supplies far fewer people 
 
 with corn than it used to do, and that the wheat area 
 
 is steadily decreasing ; but it does not follow from this 
 
 that the total produce of the land is less. Very little 
 
 decent land in England is left unproductive, and what 
 
 has been going on has not been so much a reduction in 
 
 the total yield of the land, as a change in the kind of produce 
 
 raised. Free Traders are, of course, perfectly right in 
 
 contending that the rise in the price of food due to an import 
 
 duty would amount to the taxation of the consumers 
 
 for the benefit of the landlords ; it would be quite ineffective 
 
 in increasing the produce of the land. 
 
 This cannot be douQ without a new method of agri- 
 culture ; and this in turn can only come with the end 
 of the power of English landlordism. The produce of 
 the earth cannot be increased so indefinitely as that of 
 manufacture ; but the extent of possible increase is very 
 imperfectly understood in this country. We support a 
 population of three hundred to the square mile, and are 
 compelled to import half our food-stuffs from abroad. 
 By more intelligent cultivation of the soil, the people of 
 Jersey are able to maintain a population four times as 
 dense, and yet export food-stuffs largely. Belgium is 
 almost independent of the foreigner, yet the population 
 of Belgium is considerably denser than our own. Nor are 
 these places blessed with a more fertile soil. That of 
 Belgium is not prolific, while, according to authorities 
 quoted by Prince Kropotkin, that of Jersey has practically 
 been made by human industry. The seaweed cast upon 
 
 37
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 the island has been used to supply natural deficiencies, 
 and Jerse}^ naturall}' in-fertile, is one of the most prolific 
 places in the world. 
 
 Now, while we may riglitly protest against the consumer 
 being obliged to support English agriculture by an artificial 
 inflation of prices, we should obviously be pleased to see 
 the home farmer able to compete successfully in a free 
 market with the foreigner. This at present he notoriously 
 cannot do. The Essex farmer, close to the finest market in 
 the world — that of London, is being ruined by the American, 
 who has to ship his corn across the Atlantic ; we buy our 
 butter and eggs, not from those who are nearest to us, but 
 from Denmark ; our apples come from France, and our 
 garden stuff from Jersey. There is evidentlv something 
 wrong here. Other things being equal, the producer nearest 
 to the market should always do the most profitable business ; 
 and even if they could not supply the whole of our demand 
 for food-stuffs, our farmers should at least do a \'ery profit- 
 able business in what they do produce. 
 
 The fact is, that just as in the early da3'S of our in- 
 dustrialism our manufacturers were able to take the trade 
 from the handloom weavers and other craftsmen of the 
 Continent by virtue of their more modern methods of 
 production, so the foreign producer of food-stuffs is beating 
 his English rival in our own market because of his more 
 flexible and in\-enti\-e methods. He moves with the 
 times ; and the time of our English system of large tenant 
 farms, with its rotation of crops, its cultivation by the 
 plough, and individualism, is passing away in favour of 
 small allotments, intensive culture, and co-operation in 
 distribution. While the rest of the world is applying 
 much capital and labour to small areas, in order to raise 
 heavy crops, we are star\-ing the land of both labour and 
 capital. In fact, while elsewhere agriculture is progressive 
 like everything else, here it is conservative. The early 
 development of British industrialism and our policy of 
 Free Trade have brought for English agriculturists the 
 finest market for food-stuffs in the world to their very 
 doors. It is not onlv a large market, but a steadilv expanding 
 
 ^ 3S '
 
 Anomalies of our Economic Position 
 
 one ; and they ought not only to have thriven by it, but 
 ought, by more modern and efficient methods of production, 
 to have retained virtually the whole of it in their own 
 hands, without the aid of any protective barrier except 
 that which nature has placed round us — the sea. That 
 they have failed to do this is a far more severe condemna- 
 tion of our land s^'stem than any that can be drawn from 
 the theories of land nationalisers. If, in practice, our 
 system of land tenure worked well, we might laugh at the 
 logic of " Social Statics " and " Progress and Poverty " ; 
 the fact that it is a practical failure condemns it. 
 
 The task before us is to free the village as we have 
 freed the town, to extend the powers of the Parish Council 
 so as to enable it to acquire land, whenever the people 
 wish to do so, and apply it to any method of small or large 
 culture, of individual or co-operative management, w^hich 
 the initiative of the people may suggest as most productive. 
 At present, unless where there is a sufficiently philanthropic 
 landlord, it is impossible to substitute any new method 
 of culture for that of landlord, large tenant farmer, and 
 wage labourer. And even with the most enlightened land- 
 lords, anything the}' may do is vitiated by the fact that 
 their schemes are not the natural outcome of the villagers' 
 own enterprise, but are imposed on or granted to them 
 by an external patronage. Allotments can generally 
 only be obtained at a very much heavier rental — often 
 five or six times as heavy — as ordinary farms ; while any 
 permanent improvement of the land, or any large increase 
 of production, involves through the workings of the law 
 of economic rent an increase in that charge which deprives 
 the enterprising tenant of the fruit of his labour. 
 
 Laying down as a first principle, then, that we should 
 learn to co-operate with the living progressive movement in 
 our large towns, strengthening the aim of Trades Unionism 
 as a beneficial social force, and extending the powers of 
 civic Corporations to enable them to deal in the same 
 effective manner with the Housing problem as they have 
 already done with Sanitation and other matters committed 
 to them, we find that these forces require more effective 
 
 39
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 help to enable them to deal with the vaster problem of 
 Poverty. That they should have this help is necessary, 
 unless we are prepared not only to acquiesce in the poverty 
 and degradation of one-third of our city population, but 
 in the continuance of a serious menace to our political 
 and social stability. Modern civilisation has created a 
 monster, which may be in favour of reaction or of revolution, 
 but cannot be expected, in either case, to assist the steady 
 forces of social betterment. 
 
 Again, we find that the decay of British agriculture 
 has been a great, if not the only cause of the growth of 
 this poverty-stricken city class. We see that, owing to 
 our exceptional position as the leading creditor nation of 
 the world, this decay of our agriculture has not prevented 
 us obtaining an abundant supply of food, in the form, to 
 a large extent, of interest on foreign investments. But 
 we have seen reason to doubt whether our position in this 
 matter can be permanent, and to believe that, apart from 
 its bearings on the problem of poverty, a revival of British 
 agriculture is a national necessity. 
 
 I purpose in the next two chapters, then, to deal some- 
 what fully with the Country problem, after which I shall 
 be free to deal with an aspect of the question, generally 
 too much ignored by reformers, the practical and constitu- 
 tional difficulties of drastic reform, at the same time 
 endeavouring to show a method by which they may be 
 overcome. . . 
 
 40
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 BRITISH AGRICULTURE — CRITICAL 
 
 The growth of society is normally a slow process, and 
 the reactions caused by such changes as do go on take 
 place easily and without visible disturbance. Every new 
 development in one thing, even then, causes numberless ad- 
 justments in many others ; yet in such times these things 
 go on, not without individual tragedies, yet without social 
 catastrophes. Men fairly quickly adjust themselves to slow 
 and regular modifications of their social environment, with- 
 out any very sudden changes either in their conduct or 
 characters. It is otherwise in times of revolution, industrial 
 or political. Then men and classes are suddenly forced 
 to deal with circumstances to which previous experience 
 is no guide. The problems of the new life are too vast 
 for sudden adjustment, and we have, alongside of things 
 modern and effective, survivals struggling for existence 
 in an environment unsuited to them. 
 
 Sudden changes of this kind may bring undeserved 
 poverty, or equally unmerited prosperity, to a class or 
 individual. In the former case, as we know, the victims 
 will suffer terribly, as the handloom weavers did at the 
 Industrial Revolution ; in the latter there will probably 
 be a certain amount of demoralisation, due to the temptation 
 unexpected and unearned wealth gives to extravagance, 
 and a tendency to shirk accustomed duties, now that an 
 easier manner of life has become possible. 
 
 The industrial revolution brought such a crisis to the 
 agricultural interests in the eighteenth century. For 
 ages the slow growth of the population had been met by 
 an equally slow growth in the produce of the soil, chiefly 
 obtained, not by improvements in method, but by enlarge- 
 
 41
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 ment of the cultivated area. Towards the end of the century, 
 however, this method of enlarging the yield of the land 
 had almost reached its limits ; and at the very time when 
 the sudden impulse given to the urban populations by the 
 extended introduction of machinery increased the demand 
 for food beyond all previous experience, all that was most 
 valuable in the old common lands had been appropriated 
 b}^ the landlord rulers of the nation. For years Britain 
 had been a corn-exporting country, with a limited demand 
 for food-stuffs from the farm, and, probably, next to none 
 from the garden. For we must remember that, two hundred 
 years ago, probably nine people out of ten grew their own 
 fruit and vegetables. Even in the mediaeval town there 
 were good garden spaces, while the custom in most parts 
 of England has always been to allow a certain amount of 
 garden ground with ever}^ farm labourer's cottage. It will 
 be safe, therefore, to conclude that the greengrocer's trade 
 is largely a modern one, and that ordinary vegetables were 
 not sold to any great extent before the development of 
 the large manufacturing towns. 
 
 One of the first effects of the industrial revolution, 
 with its rapid creation of an urban population entirely 
 dependent upon outside for its food supply, was to give 
 a tremendous advantage to the English country landlords. 
 The demand for corn, and, to some extent, that for meat,, 
 increased rapidly. The landlords suddenly found them- 
 selves living by a commodit}^ of which there was a scarcity 
 rather than a surplus ; and the British export trade in 
 corn and wool rapidly disappeared. Landowning became 
 more profitable than it had ever been ; and it would 
 perhaps not be too fanciful to attribute the extravagance 
 of the Regency to the suddenU-acquired wealth of a class 
 whose ancestors had confined their displays to the society 
 of the country. In the new inventions, the landlords, 
 as a class, had no part ; but, through the increased demand 
 of corn, they now gained a great one in the profits of them. 
 This they proceeded to enjoy in the way of idlers in all ages. 
 
 Though the landlords had thus done nothing to in- 
 crease the value of their lands, they, no doubt, enjoyed the 
 
 42
 
 British Agriculture — Critical 
 
 steadily increasing income from them ; and, not being 
 a class very mentally alert, probably expected their good 
 fortune would go on for ever. This could not be, how- 
 ever ; and it was not long before a new factor appeared 
 on the scene. The steady improvement in the British 
 corn market at last attracted the foreigner, who began 
 to pay for the goods he was buying from our manufac- 
 turers with corn, sold in competition with the English 
 farmers. From this point it was no longer possible to 
 raise rents with every lease without some artificial assist- 
 ance. There were two ways in which the competition 
 might be met- — by an improved method of agriculture 
 in England, or by keeping the unwelcome foreign corn 
 out of the market. The Tory landlords, then dominant 
 in British politics, are not remarkable for political insight 
 or economic knowledge, and they at once adopted the 
 more obvious course to them — they put a heavy import 
 duty on corn, and kept the monopoly of the English food 
 market for themselves. The Whigs and Tories exchanged 
 economic creeds ; and just when the former were out- 
 growing the mercantilist economy, their opponents 
 adopted it as the main plank in their politics. 
 
 I am not sure that from a purely class selfish point 
 of view they could do much better. The whole system 
 by which they lived was, in reality, threatened ; and 
 in order to make this country grow enough food for the 
 great increase of population, a totally different system 
 from that of which the}^ formed a part must be introduced. 
 Science and invention had invaded manufactures, and 
 were indefinitely increasing their productivity ; but only 
 by abolishing the mediaeval S3'stem of apprentice, journey- 
 man, and master craftsman, which was unsuited to the 
 new era. In like manner, science and invention could 
 only operate to produce a similar increase in agricultural 
 production by completely breaking up the method of 
 landlord, large farmer, and labourer, which had survived 
 from older times in the countrv. The Corn Law was a 
 clumsy expedient ; but, for a time, it made the landlords 
 wealthy at the expense of the nation. 
 
 43
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 Yet, had it been elastic enough to adapt itself to 
 the changed conditions, the general increase of wealth 
 and population had brought to British agriculture not 
 destruction, but an opportunity. That was happening 
 to it on a large scale what happens to the village shop- 
 keeper on a small, when his village suddenly develops 
 into a fashionable watering-place. Very possibly the 
 event destroys his business ; but only if he is unable to 
 adapt himself to the new conditions. He is the first man 
 established there ; and if he really realises that his many 
 new customers will not be prepared to content them- 
 selves with the narrow- choice of goods that suited his 
 old ones, that he cannot long keep up the high rate of 
 profit to which he has been accustomed on his small sales 
 now that there is a possibility of much larger ones, he may 
 do a vastly greater business than before. But if he cannot 
 get out of his accustomed method, he will soon be driven 
 to the wall by more enterprising strangers ; and, though 
 the trade done in the place be greater than ever, his share 
 of it will disappear. 
 
 Agriculture has at all times been essentially conservative; 
 and perhaps it was only in the nature of things that the 
 English agricultural interest failed to avail itself of the 
 great opportunity presented to it by the expansion of 
 the industrial market. The landlords were supreme in 
 Parliament, masters of one House, and nearly masters 
 of the other ; and they had a resource open to them 
 denied to our old-fashioned shopkeeper — they could pre- 
 serve the market from outside competition by clapping 
 a heavy duty on wheat. By this means they made it 
 pay to plough up much land, thoroughly unsuited to the 
 purpose, for wheat. Of this Mr. Rider Haggard gives 
 a striking instance. The farmers of Hampshire, in the 
 days of dear corn, thus treated the Down lands, which 
 then made excellent pasture for sheep. When corn fell 
 again, it became necessary to replace the grasses. But, 
 as Mr, Haggard tells us, this could not be done. " Once 
 destroyed," he tells us, " the Down grasses cannot be 
 replaced, at any rate for generations." Hence one of 
 
 44
 
 British Agriculture — Critical 
 
 the results of tlie old Corn Laws has been a permanent 
 injury to this excellent pasture land. But the injury 
 of the Corn Laws did not end here. They gave the land- 
 lords more extravagant ideas of li\'ing ; and, aided by 
 the development of the railway system, alienated them 
 more completely from the soil, making London, rather 
 than the county town, the centre of their social life. 
 Again, to some extent, industrial expansion brought in a 
 new set of landlords, who had bought land at an artificially 
 high price as an investment, and who were little disposed 
 to accept the amount of rent the land could afford to 
 bear when unsupported by Protection. 
 
 Meanwhile, the British agriculturist did little to develop 
 the opportunity afforded him in a really intelligent manner. 
 The market for the product of the soil had not only 
 increased in size, it had, through the vast increase of the 
 class who had no garden ground, or places to keep pigs 
 and poultry, altered much in character. The British 
 market was no longer one for the farmers only, but for 
 the farmer and market gardener combined. While, again, 
 it was a larger market, it steadily tended, just as did that 
 for manufactured goods, to become a cheaper one. It 
 was an age of enterprise, of science and invention, where 
 in everything, old metliods and old appliances were being 
 superseded by new. Business prosperity was impossible 
 except at the price of an endless adaptability, and of this 
 neither the farmer nor the landlord showed any signs. 
 Further, the market had ceased to be local and individual, 
 and had become national and social. The development 
 of the railway system had really rendered the local market, 
 with its farmers' carts, an anachronism. The day was 
 no longer for the individual selling in small quantities 
 and in the market town the product of one farm, but 
 for the large dealer, operating on a central exchange, 
 or for the Co-operative Association, selling the product 
 of many producers, where it could be quitted to the best 
 advantage. 
 
 There was one direction, however, in which the landlords 
 moved with the times. I have said that the railway 
 
 45
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 system tended to alienate the landlords from the soil. 
 In older days, the landowner was an integral, perhaps 
 an indispensable, part of rural society. The greater part 
 of his life was spent on his estate, all of it, perhaps, except 
 when he was a very rich man, or a member of Parliament. 
 He was the leader of county society, the administrator 
 of justice, and the general ruler of country life. He was, 
 indeed, a social fact, an integral part of society, with 
 functions with which rural society was not then sufficiently 
 developed to dispense, and, as such, entitled to his toll 
 on the produce of the land. The growth of the railway 
 system and the development of modern life tended steadily 
 to alter this. The centre of the modern landlord's social 
 interests was removed from the county town to London ; 
 the increase of general education fitted his social inferiors 
 more and more to fulfil his magisterial duties ; and the 
 same cause, combined with the extension of the franchise, 
 freed the country from dependence on his services as a 
 legislator. Everything, in fact, was tending to make a 
 rent-receiving class more purely parasitic ; till, if such 
 a class were ever necessary, it has now ceased to be so. 
 Sporting has tended to be more and more the sole country 
 interest of landowners ; and even the evolution of sport 
 shows how parasitic the landlord class is becoming. The 
 shooting-party, covering the ground itself, gives way to 
 the battue, with beaters to drive the birds ; the country 
 eleven, of which the Squire and his sons were active members, 
 and which they financed, is now carried on by the locals 
 themselves, while the Squire pla3'S for the county, or 
 tours with the I Zingari or his old school-fellows. The 
 divorce between the landlord and the village is becoming 
 year by year more complete. 
 
 These changes in material fact have their moral re- 
 actions. The Village, no longer the centre of the landowner's 
 interests, and left to its own devices, is compelled to take the 
 first steps towards organising society for itself. In many 
 districts this was to be seen first in the desertion of the 
 Parish Church, controlled by the Squire and the Vicar, 
 for the Methodist Chapel, ruled by the villagers themselves. 
 
 46
 
 British Agriculture — Critical 
 
 The increasing materialism of the landlord order, and the 
 centralising of its interests on outside affairs rather than 
 those of the estate, tends to aid this development by depriving 
 the clergy of their most potent all}-, who could add to the 
 shadowy penalties of another world material inconveniences 
 in this. The Village is driven to organise its own athletics, 
 with the aid of a subscription, but with no active assistance, 
 from the landlord, and does so on a democratic basis. 
 The lesson is valuable, and the Squire becomes less 
 and less an object of reverence every day. Less and 
 less is he an integral part of rural society, the loss of 
 which would leave a sensible gap in the life of the 
 Village ; and more and more is he a mere rent-receiver, a 
 tax-gatherer, whose disappearance would be a welcome 
 relief. 
 
 Now I am not, as the reader may think, at all inclined 
 to blame the landlords for this. In so far as they have 
 deserted the onerous life of village patrons for the more 
 pleasant one of gentlemen of leisure, they have merely 
 obeyed the dictates of ordinary human nature, which impels 
 men to live the most pleasant life possible to them. To 
 this the development of modern life opened the way, and 
 the landlords naturally availed themselves of it. I believe 
 the idea of " doing their duty by the land " has been 
 strongly felt by most landlords ; but the attractions of 
 modern life are too strong for this old-world sentiment, 
 and a landlord's " duty to the land " becomes, generation 
 by generation, less a duty to the land and its people, less 
 social, and more mechanical. The ideal life of Sir Roger 
 de Coverley becomes less and less adequate for the iiner 
 natures, the rusticity of Squire Western less attractive 
 to the coarser. London can provide ampler opportunity 
 at once for benevolence or dissipation than Sweet Auburn ; 
 and everything draws the country gentlemen to London 
 for society, and to the Scots moors or even the African 
 forests for sport. But however natural, this divorce of 
 the gentry from the soil has an inevitable consequence ; 
 it renders the class divorced a purely parasitic one, whose 
 continuance in the long - run is impossible. With the 
 
 47
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 absence of the Squire disappears his influence ; with his 
 function, his necessity. 
 
 But if the landlords naturally modernised their way 
 of life so as gradually to escape the duties of feudalism, 
 they could hardly be expected to realise that the new 
 movement must ultimately strike at its privileges also. 
 Yet it is a law of nature, both in biology and sociology, 
 that if an organism cannot throw off its parasites, it must 
 die ; and when the social function of the gentry ceased, 
 and landlordism became parasitic, the continued existence 
 of it could only be maintained at the expense of British 
 agriculture itself. The landlord and tenant fanner, between 
 them, have indeed been engaged in preserving an anachron- 
 ism — the system of the eighteenth century till the dawn of 
 the twentieth. In an age which constantly tends to enforce 
 co-operation, their agriculture has remained individualistic ; 
 under circumstances demanding a steadily increasing 
 application of capital and labour to a given area of land, 
 they have starved the land of both ; when no industry 
 could live, except by the greatest adaptability and the 
 constant application of new methods, they have continued 
 stolidly conservative. 
 
 It could not be otherwise, for any class naturally 
 struggles for self-preservation, and the system by which 
 these men lived did not admit of the alterations necessary, 
 without the virtual disappearance of one or both classes. 
 As I have said, the tendency of the age is towards co-opera- 
 tion. This takes place either by the concentration of 
 capital into large joint -stock companies and ultimately 
 into trusts and cartels, or by the public action of men 
 through their governing bodies and Co-operative Associa- 
 tions. But the normal British farm was of a size suited 
 to neither of these, which experience has shown to be 
 the most economic forms of business under existing con- 
 ditions. The average farm is large enough to enable 
 the farmer to keep his own horses and trap, to own his 
 own agricultural implements, and at least attempt to dis- 
 tribute his own produce ; but it is not large enough to 
 let him do so economically. The quantity of his produce 
 
 48
 
 British Agriculture — Critical 
 
 is not sufficient to enable him to make a good bargain 
 with the railway company for taking it to market, but 
 it is sufficiently large to relieve him of that absolute com- 
 pulsion which would make an allotment holder combine 
 with his fellows to make a collective bargain for their 
 joint product ; large enough to take him into market 
 with his produce every week, but not large enough to 
 enable him to open a store for its advantageous sale. 
 There are few enough farms to allow each farmer to live 
 without actual manual work as a superintendent of the 
 labour of others ; but too many to allow of each manager 
 being an expert of the calibre of our great captains of 
 industry. In fact, the British farm is a bad economic unit, 
 a survival of the time when it was more in harmony with 
 its surroundings than it is to-day. 
 
 It is even worse, when we consider the way in which 
 the land has been starved both of labour and capital. 
 The application of the law of increasing returns to agri- 
 culture varies with the circumstances of time and place. 
 When land is practically unlimited, far from the market, 
 and nearly valueless, the best returns should be obtained 
 by spreading a given amount of capital and labour over 
 the largest possible area of land. This is the principle 
 adopted on the Bonanza farms of the United States ; 
 but there, according to Kropotkin, their system is gradually 
 giving way to more intensive methods, as the area of 
 valueless virgin land decreases. With valuable land, 
 nearer the market, however, the exact contrary is the 
 rule. Here it should not pay to save capital and labour 
 at the expense, inevitable in such a case, of a reduced 
 yield per acre. The nearer to a city, the more like a 
 garden should the land naturally be treated ; we may be 
 sure, if in the neighbourhood of dense populations the land 
 is not cultivated to its utmost extent, then something 
 is wrong, either in the men or the system responsible. 
 Yet this is just what we see in these islands. Year by 
 year the town markets grow vaster in extent, and provide 
 more tempting opportunities to the producers of all sorts 
 of commodities. True, the progress of civilisation tends 
 D
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 to reduce the prices of most things ; but that is only 
 because civiHsation is in most things progressively more 
 effective in reducing the cost of production. What is 
 true of civilisation in most other industries, is true also 
 in the products of the soil. Here cheaper transport, 
 improved appliances, scientific methods of culture, and, 
 perhaps greatest of all, co-operative methods of distribu- 
 tion, more slowly, but no less surely, decrease costs ; 
 and, while the increase of demand widens the market 
 for producers, prices are cheapened to consumers. The 
 yield of British agriculture has not been increased to meet 
 this growing demand, nor has the cost of production been 
 adequately reduced. Hence it is that we hear wailing 
 about agricultural depression, and Mr. Chaplin cries out 
 for the obsolete weapon of Protection to defend that which, 
 if carried on on modern lines, could protect itself. 
 
 Again, the root of the evil is to be found in the defence 
 of a system which we may suppose to have been suited 
 to the social environment out of which it sprung, but 
 has become unfitted to modern conditions. The tenant 
 farmer, faced by foreign competition, finds his greatest 
 outgoings in rent and labour ; and when competition 
 reduces the price of his commodity, he struggles to recoup 
 himself at the expense of the landlord and the workman. 
 Creditably to the landlords as men, but, I think, on the 
 whole disastrously for the nation, hitherto he has been 
 very successful in obtaining reductions in his rent. Land- 
 lords have repeatedly, often when unasked, made reduc- 
 tions of rent in bad times ; and the effect has probably 
 been to make tenant farmers, as a class, rely upon these 
 concessions to get them out of trouble when in any pre- 
 ventible or unpreventible way they have got into it. 
 Landlords, finding their estates less remunerative than of 
 old, have turned to other means for improving their incomes, 
 and the farmers have been enabled a little longer to keep 
 up the struggle, and farm in pretty much the same way 
 as their fathers farmed before them under different con- 
 ditions. In their struggles to keep down the labour bill 
 they have been equally successful, if in a different manner. 
 
 50
 
 British Ao^riculture — Critical 
 
 By abandoning wheat, and laying their land down; for 
 permanent pasture, they liave driven the great bulk of 
 the labourers off the soil into the towns, being responsible 
 thus for a great deal of overcrowding, low wages, and 
 unemployment. 
 
 Next to low prices, rent and wages are the bugbears 
 of the farmers. Accustomed for ages past to supply a 
 small population with cereals and meat only, they have 
 never realised that there are other customers for the pro- 
 ducts of the soil than the miller and the butcher. There- 
 fore the increasing English demand for eggs is supplied 
 by Denmark, and the London market for vegetables is 
 captured by Jersey. The neighbouring island of Guernsey 
 supplies the same city with cut flowers ; while even Belgium, 
 peopled twice as densely as this country, can not only 
 maintain itself, but export provisions to England. 
 
 I will now make a short comparison between our 
 agriculture, carried on under an effete land system, and 
 some which have been evolved under the stress of modern 
 life itself — that is, which are fitted to the conditions under 
 which they have been evolved. I will begin by quoting 
 from Mr. Rider Haggard's Rural England the history 
 of a Wiltshire farm of lOO acres. "In 1812," says Mr. 
 Haggard, " it was sold for ;^27,ooo. . . , Time went on, 
 and again the farm came into the market, on this occasion 
 in 1892. Now it sold for ;^70oo, a drop of ^£20,000 on 
 the glorious total of eighty years before. When our host 
 built it twenty-seven years ago he paid £600 a year in 
 rent, and £196 a year tithe. In 1901 he paid 1^250 a year 
 rent, and the landlord pays the tithe. So far as I can see, 
 therefore, after he has discharged all the customary outgoings 
 with repairs and sundries, that gentlemen must be fortunate 
 if this property puts £100 a year into his pocket. Even 
 on a purchase price of £7000, plus the cost of the new house 
 which he has built for the tenant, this return does not seem 
 encouraging to such as contemplate investment in Wiltshire 
 acres." This may be compared with the instance, given by 
 the same writer, of the sale of 2i|- acres in Jersey for ;^576o 
 for agricultural purposes, and his statement that land in 
 
 5^
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 the neighbourhood of St. Peter in that island is worth about 
 £225 per acre. Yet Wiltshire is not further from the London 
 market than Jersey, if we remember that that island is 
 not easy of access for ships, and the climate is no worse, 
 while the soil is probably equally good. The difference 
 is that between an effective and ineffective system. 
 
 Let us turn now to another writer, equally interested 
 in the problem, though of a very different school. Prince 
 Kropotkin tells us, in Fields, Factories, and Workshops, 
 popular edition, p. 59, that " (i) If the soil of the United 
 Kingdom were cultivated only as it was thirty-five years 
 ago, 24,000,000 people instead of 17,000,000 could live on 
 home-grown food ; and that culture, while giving occupa- 
 tion to an additional 750,000 men, would give nearly 
 3,000,000 wealthy home customers to the British manu- 
 facturers. (2) If the cultivable area of the United Kingdom 
 were cultivated as the soil is cultivated, on the average, 
 in Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at 
 least 37,000,000 inhabitants ; and it might export agricultural 
 produce without ceasing to manufacture so as freely to 
 supply all the needs of a wealthy population. And finally, (3) 
 if the population of this country came to be doubled, all 
 that would be required for producing the food for 80,000,000 
 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is cultivated 
 on the best farms in this country, in Lombardy, and in 
 Flanders, and to utilise some meadows, which at present 
 lie almost unproductive, in the same way as the neighbour- 
 hoods of the big cities of France are utilised for market- 
 gardening. All these are not fancy dreams, but mere 
 realities ; nothing but modest conclusions from what we 
 see around us, without any allusion to the agriculture of 
 the future." 
 
 Now let us compare some English land, worked and 
 held on a different system from our ordinary one. I am 
 indebted again to Mr. Haggard. The land in question 
 is the Rew Farm at Winterhouse St. Martin, near Dorchester, 
 which in 1888 was sold in allotments of one to nine acres 
 each. So far from poverty and depopulation in this case, 
 the result of the experiment was highly satisfactory ; 
 
 52
 
 British Agriculture — Critical 
 
 and we owe something to Sir Robert Edgecombe, the en- 
 lightened landowner, who made it. This is what Sir Robert 
 at the end of his report tells us. " When I bought the 
 farm the farmer dwelt on it with three labourers and a 
 boy — a population all told of 21. The population on 
 the farm now is close on 100 ; and this number is likely 
 to be further increased, as more houses are to be built. 
 The area of the parish of Winterhouse St. Martin is 3546 
 acres. Rew Farm is a fair sample of the pasture and arable 
 land of which the parish consists. When I purchased 
 Rew in 1888, its outgoing tenant was in financial difficulties, 
 and could not make it pay. He was rented on an old 
 lease at £240, but the general opinion was that the farm 
 could not be let for more than £200. Since that time the 
 rateable value of the parish has steadily declined, while 
 the rateable value of Rew Farm has steadily risen. In 
 1888 the rateable value of the whole parish was £28oy, 
 and now the rateable value is £2073, a fall in fourteen 
 years of 20 per cent, in value. In 1888 the rateable value 
 of Rew was £215, and to-day it is rated at £346, a rise of 
 60 per cent." 
 
 I should like to point out the direct bearing of this on 
 the present fiscal controversy. The tenants of Rew Farm 
 compete in the same markets, and sell at the same prices, 
 as those on other farms in the parish ; yet they grow richer 
 and prosper, increasing the population till it has multiplied 
 nearly fivefold in fourteen years. Obviously there is no 
 agricultural depression, and no need for Protection with 
 them. It is therefore not British agriculture, but the 
 British agricultural system, that demands Protection. 
 If we were to penalise ourselves thus artificially to make 
 the present system profitable again, we might preserve 
 it a little longer ; but the fields of England can be made 
 profitable to the cultivator without any such sacrifice. 
 Even if we were disposed to submit to an increase in the 
 price of bread for the sake of preserving our country 
 population, we can hardly be expected to do so to prevent 
 the substitution of an effective for an effete system. But 
 the Rew experiment shows clearly that the Protectionist 
 
 53
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 movement amounts to nothing more than this. It is 
 not social, but class interest to which, here as everywhere, 
 it appeals. 
 
 Again, and before passing on, I may note the significance 
 of this object-lesson on the general social problem. By 
 supporting — and profitabl}^ — a hundred people on the soil 
 at Rew, instead of a smaller number who were losing 
 money, a check w^as put to the rural exodus, and a new 
 home market created for our manufactures, without 
 anything being added to the cost of living in our towns. 
 It will be part of my task, later on, to develop these reactions 
 on the general social problem of the towns ; for the present 
 it will be enough to call the reader's attention to them 
 in passing. 
 
 But though, perhaps, more prosperous than those on 
 arable lands, British dairy farmers have been very hard 
 hit by foreign competition, and are also crying out for 
 Protection. Here, perhaps, we have most to learn from 
 Denmark. Let us first take the broad facts of the case. 
 Denmark is a small country, not differing very widely 
 in climate, and probably, on the whole, rather less fertile 
 than our own. For purposes of our argument, then, Denmark 
 is not unlike an equivalent area of England, very unfor- 
 tunately situated as regards some of the English markets, 
 and not very convenient for any. Yet no portion of these 
 islands of similar size commands anything like the amount 
 of British trade in dairy produce that Denmark does. 
 There seems no reason in the nature of things why Yorkshire 
 or Devonshire should not do proportionately as well ; 
 but the fact remains that prices at which the Dane prospers 
 ruin the Englishman. If there be no reason in the nature 
 of things, however, there may be and is in the system under 
 which the two sets of dairy farmers compete. To quote 
 from the EncyclopcEdia Britannica : — " During the last 
 forty years of the nineteenth century, dairy farming was 
 greatly developed in Denmark, and brought to a high degree 
 of perfection by the application of scientific methods and 
 the best machinery, as well as by the establishment of 
 joint dairies. The Danish Government has assisted by 
 
 54
 
 British Aorriculture — Critical 
 
 o 
 
 granting money for experiments, and by a vigorous system 
 of inspection for the prevention of adulteration." The 
 Government has also developed a milk post, by which the 
 milk supply of the country is collected and sent to market 
 cheaply, thus avoiding the expense incurred in this country 
 by every individual farmer sending his milk to the 
 station in his own cart, and perhaps delivering it to 
 customers himself in the town. The " vigorous system 
 of [inspection " mentioned above has had the effect of 
 gaining for Danish butter an exceptionally good name 
 in England, so that it can always command a better 
 price than any but the best fresh butter in the English 
 markets. 
 
 To what extent the Danes live by their dairy and egg 
 trade with this country, the statistics of their exports 
 show. There are practically no manufactures in Denmark ; 
 and the great majority of Danish exports consists of this 
 class of goods to Great Britain. The reason, as shown 
 in the above quotation, is the superiority of their system. 
 Not only is the industry fostered by Government aid and 
 inspection, but the methods of Danish dairy culture present 
 other striking contrasts with our own. There is a systematic 
 education of the people in scientific dairy work. According 
 to an article in the Fortnightly Review (vol. xlix. p. 707), 
 " Agricultural Colleges are numerous and well attended ; 
 professors of agricultural chemistry and of the science of 
 husbandr}^ are active as lecturers, busy in the wide diffusion 
 of their knowledge. . . . After 1870 the agricultural 
 Societies went so far as to send instructors from farm to 
 farm to teach the people, and their instructions were 
 gratefully welcomed." The land is not only differently 
 cultivated, it is differently held from ours. Whereas here 
 increasing quantities of land are yearly laid down to 
 permanent grass, in Denmark only one-fifteenth of the 
 total area is so treated, most of the rest being in crops 
 under rotation, chiefly, no doubt, growing food-stuffs for 
 cattle. Again, the English landlord and tenant method 
 has been almost entirely abandoned. Seventy-two per cent, 
 of the land is owned by peasant farmers, while such landed 
 
 55
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 gentry as are left are practically, all of them, active farmers, 
 making their living off the land itself. 
 
 Danish dairy farming is successful, in spite of the sea, in 
 our markets where ours fails ; and it is successful because 
 it is better educated, because there is a co-operative 
 organisation for the economical delivery of its products, 
 and because it is conducted by men whose enterprise 
 is not cramped by the knowledge that, if they become 
 prosperous, their profits will be taken from them by a rise 
 in rents. I do not believe that the Danes are men of superior 
 natural aptitude for dairy work to ourselves, Denmark 
 is certainly not a richer pasture country than many parts 
 of Great Britain ; and the marked difference in the success 
 of the two countries must be found in the varying factor, 
 not in the constant ones, not in race or climate, but in 
 system. There is an inherent conservatism in human 
 nature, which compels men to pursue the methods and 
 believe the creeds of their fathers until they are driven 
 from them by the stress of circumstances. This conser- 
 vatism is, perhaps, strongest in the country, so that 
 agriculture moves more slowly than other industries, at 
 any time. Again, the interest of an established class 
 will, as we have seen, always impel it to fight for itself. 
 It is no wonder, then, nor should we blame them, if the 
 landlords and farmers of England are slow to alter their 
 methods in accordance with modern requirements. The 
 changes required would upset all their established ways 
 of life, and strike at their existence as classes in the com- 
 munity. Their system cannot adapt itself to the new 
 conditions, only a new one can do that. No longer will 
 the land support three rents, one for the owner, one for 
 the farmer, and one for the labourer. The nations which 
 are driving us out of our home market pay no such charges 
 for superintendence and rent. Differing in many things, 
 evolved by the peculiar and differing circumstances of 
 each country, agriculture is either coming into the hands 
 of great capitalist undertakings, where one expert manages 
 a great area, or into those of small cultivators, working 
 themselves, and depending on some co-operative arrange- 
 
 56
 
 British Agriculture — Critical 
 
 ment for the distribution of their produce. The present 
 race of farmers cannot welcome this, because it means 
 their supersession by the working small holder or the 
 expert. Any class naturally struggles to maintain its 
 financial and social position, and one can fully sympathise 
 with the farmers' attempt to do so, even while seeing clearly 
 that such an effort could only succeed for a time, and 
 might, as indeed it is doing, result in the destruction of 
 agriculture altogether. 
 
 Nor can the landlords, as a class, be fitted into a better 
 system. It is not so much the actual amount of rental, 
 now largely reduced, that they draw from the soil, it is 
 that the law of economic rent renders the adoption of 
 improved methods impossible, so long as the results of 
 such improvements will go into the landlords' pockets, 
 rather than into those of the men who make them. We 
 must remember that it is only in the country, whose staple 
 industry is declining, where the landlords are losing rent. 
 So soon as any land is wanted for factories or building 
 sites, it immediately becomes valuable. The landlord 
 does nothing ; but, in selling his ground to the builder 
 or the manufacturer, he is enabled to take toll, before 
 anything has been made, of their future earnings, in the 
 shape of an added price for his land. It would be the 
 same if we had a better agricultural system. The profits 
 of the new method would be exploited by the landlords ; 
 who would secure the increment due to more advanced 
 husbandry in the form of extra rent, leaving the tenants 
 poor as before. Under these circumstances it is not 
 surprising that British capital is not attracted to farming. 
 Not only so, but until recently the capital invested by 
 new tenants had practically no security, but permanent 
 improvements made by the farmer and left on the land 
 became the property of the landowner at the close of the 
 lease. They were of no profit to the outgoing tenant, 
 but could be used to increase the rent paid by the incoming 
 one. In addition to this, there are evidently great, though 
 somewhat obscure, difficulties in the way of dividing 
 English farms among small holders. Land let out in 
 
 57
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 allotments, even now, commands higher rents than when 
 divided into large farms ; and it is rather difficult to 
 account for this being so, for the fact that few landlords do 
 thus subdivide them. Farmers, however, are very jealous 
 of any system that relieves the agricultural labourers 
 of dependence on themselves. The allotment labourer 
 is in a comparatively independent position ; and landlords 
 are frequently deterred from letting allotments by fear 
 of the objections of their farmers. A slight increase of 
 income, obtained by letting off one farm at a higher rent 
 to cottagers, would not compensate a large landlord if 
 all the farmers on his estate took umbrage at the change. 
 In selling land to allotment labourers, also, a curious diffi- 
 culty arises. Most large estates are mortgaged pretty 
 heavily. Landlords are not able to pay off these mort- 
 gages except by selling land in large lots at a time. To 
 cut the land up into parcels, and sell in detail, is therefore 
 impracticable. It is, however, signiiicant that there is, 
 in the South of England at least, such a demand for small 
 holdings, like those of Jersey and Denmark, even in these 
 days, when good large farms go a-begging. 
 
 58
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 BRITISH AGRICULTURE — CONSTRUCTIVE 
 
 English land reformers may be divided into two 
 classes, for the old cry of "' free trade in land " is now 
 practically dead, namely, those who advocate what is 
 known as the " Single Tax," and those who desire the 
 purchase of the land by the State. Each of these schemes 
 is supported by the authorit}' of a great name, and the 
 active propaganda of a distinct society. I am convinced, 
 for my part, that we shall never get either one or the other. 
 The followers of Henry George, w^ho propose to confiscate 
 rent by taxing land values to the extent of twenty shillings 
 in the pound, are simply advocating what the British people 
 will never do. The same applies to any wholesale scheme 
 of land purchase by the State, as advocated by Dr. 
 Alfred Russel Wallace, in spite of the Irish Land Act 
 of last Session. People who argue that private property 
 in land is essentially worse than any other form of property, 
 can only carry conviction to ethical and economic theorists, 
 that is, to a very small minority. We may have revolution- 
 ary Communism or Anarchism on the great scale, because 
 these ideas are primitive, involving in themselves no 
 critical demand on the intellect. The simple craving 
 for brotherhood and equality reappears in all ages among 
 the simplest, while Tolstoi has learnt from the most ignorant 
 peasantry in Europe his ideas of the inherent evil of all 
 authority. But the logic by which Herbert Spencer and 
 others have divided private property in land from property 
 in capital demands a critical faculty, and it can never 
 be so universal. All such reasoning belongs to the sphere 
 of the political student alone ; it can never persuade 
 the vast majority to undertake or permit any great revolu- 
 
 59
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 tionary scheme. Land purchase will, I am persuaded, 
 never be attempted in a wholesale way in this country ; 
 and if, as I believe, land is to become social property, 
 it will become so in detail, each acre being purchased 
 for some definite purpose, and each acquisition will be 
 accompanied by the socialisation of an adequate amount of 
 capital to develop it. 
 
 But there is another subtler objection to these pro- 
 posals which renders them, even if they were tried, likely 
 to be failures. It was an old idea of the individualist 
 Radicals, that private enterprise is in the nature of things 
 more successful than public. Men, it was urged, work 
 best when working for themselves, public bodies are apt 
 to mismanage things, and socialistic schemes fail because 
 of the lack of incentive to enterprise. No doubt it was 
 easy enough to find instances in favour of these ideas, 
 just as it would have been easy to point to failures among 
 private traders, or, as Socialists have since been able to 
 point to, successes. Corruption in State departments 
 and in public bodies is no new thing ; and all large under- 
 takings which must be governed by bureaux, whether 
 public departments or railway companies, tend to red- 
 tapeism. But the true state of the case is, that the superi- 
 ority of public over private enterprise, or the reverse, is 
 determined, not on a priori grounds, but by the state of 
 development in the organisation of the particular industry 
 in question, and by the public spirit, or lack of it, among 
 the people. The public enterprise of a nation is the outer 
 manifestation of its collective enthusiasm, and the extent 
 to which it can be carried on at any given time successfully 
 is determined by this moral factor among others. Thus 
 the vulgarity of our modern town life, public and private, 
 is a reflex of the lack of aesthetic culture and enthusiasm 
 among the people. It is the outward and visible sign 
 of an inward lack of grace. The public enterprise of Athens, 
 with its splendid developments in the drama and in art, 
 was only the outward manifestation of an equally splendid 
 civic spirit. Societies, though infinitely complex, are 
 governed bv ordinary natural law. Where a woman 
 
 60
 
 British Agriculture — Constructive 
 
 takes a deep interest in her house, not only will the ordinary- 
 work of it, the cooking and absolutely necessary cleaning 
 and mending, be carried on promptly and well, but many 
 other things will be undertaken for pure delight in having 
 things " nice," which a less enthusiastic housekeeper 
 would neglect altogether. The general appearance of the 
 house, the quantity of things undertaken, and the thorough- 
 ness with which they are carried out, are, other things 
 being equal, indices of the spirit of the woman herself. 
 It is the same in the work of a community ; according 
 to the volume and quality of its public spirit is the quantity 
 and quality of its public enterprise, A growth of the 
 civic spirit not only manifests itself in the more thorough 
 performance of accepted duties, but in the rapid develop- 
 ment of new public enterprises hitherto unattempted ; 
 for the new spirit reveals itself both intensively and ex- 
 tensively, I have in my mind the cases of two large 
 English towns, each of which is divided into sixteen wards. 
 One of them was, until recently, perhaps the most back- 
 ward city of its size in the land ; the other is one of the 
 most progressive. On one particular November, the 
 borough elections in the two places presented a curious 
 contrast — in one, the progressive town, there were fifteen 
 contests in the sixteen wards ; in the other there was 
 onlyTone 'contest, and in fifteen wards the electors were 
 too 'indifferent to civic affairs to contest the seats 
 at all. This difference in the public spirit of the 
 two I places was exactly reproduced all through. In one 
 case, the Councillors, chosen by cliques or by themselves, 
 shared ' obviously the general apathy — the streets were 
 ill tended, the sanitation was imperfect, as shown by 
 the high death rate, and new developments of public 
 enterprise were rare. In the other, not only were the 
 former things done well, but municipal socialism was well 
 advanced. The vigorous public spirit was manifest both 
 in the'thoroughfares and variety of the public enterprise. 
 
 Individualistic theorists fail to recognise this ; and 
 hence they are continually trying to raise a boundary 
 line between the so-called " spheres " of private and public 
 
 6i
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 enterprise — " this," they say, " should be left to the one 
 and that to the other." But such mechanical checks 
 to the growth of a community are in practice impossible, 
 A vigorous City Council, chosen by a public-spirited people, 
 will continually be trying to discover new opportunities 
 of public service, just as a woman who loves her house 
 will always be trying to discover fresh means of adding 
 to its comfort and beaut\'. It is no use devising a formula, 
 however logical, to check the enterprise of either. The 
 acts of each are simply the external manifestation of an 
 inner spirit, a thing organic and living, that cannot be 
 controlled by mechanical rules. Public spirit and public 
 enterprise are mutualh' interdependent, the success or 
 failure of the one is dependent on the extent of the other ; 
 they grow and decline together ; they are related like 
 the soul and body of the collective life. 
 
 A new public life can therefore only grow with the 
 growth of a new public spirit, the one conditions the 
 other, from the village to the nation. But this is not 
 the only essential of any great new development. The 
 growth of a social order is conditioned by the growth 
 of social organisation. Men have to acquire not only 
 the feeling of brotherhood, the enthusiasm for the common 
 good, but they have to create the means for its expansion, 
 and work out in detail the method of its manifestation. 
 In this work the idealist has little part. It consists of 
 countless petty adjustments, tried, not by any standard 
 of abstract principle, but by utility and experience. It 
 is, and must be, the work of the people as a whole, settling 
 each practical difficult}^ as it arises, being far too complex 
 to be the outcome of any prearranged plan, the work 
 of any one mind, however great its grasp. 
 
 A healthy society is characterised by the ability to 
 create effective instruments for dealing with the problems 
 to which its progress gives rise. Thus, the opportunity 
 being there, the men of our cities have met the problems 
 of low wages and credit by creating Trades Unionism and 
 Co-operation, and are doing battle with the monopolist 
 b}' the extension of municipal trading. By these agencies 
 
 62
 
 British Agriculture — Constructive 
 
 the towns have become during the last two generations 
 highly organised communes, the collective will expressing 
 itself through various channels. Incidentally a large 
 number of men and women have learnt the details of public 
 business, and become filled with a single-minded enthusiasm 
 for the public good. As in the world of nature, so in that 
 of society, each new variety of public effort has to struggle 
 for its existence, and to adapt itself to fill its peculiar 
 place in the immense complexity of its surroundings. 
 When once, however, any new form of social effort has 
 gained a footing, it may spread with great rapidity by 
 imitation. Co-operation was tried in many forms before 
 the Rochdale pioneers hit upon a workable one ; since then 
 it has rapidly spread over the whole manufacturing districts 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 Now it is just such a spirit, just such an organisation 
 as we already have in our towns, that we want to arouse 
 in the rural districts. If it were the work of the State 
 to create such a thing, we might well despair, the immense 
 complexity of the problem would make it hopeless of 
 solution. But the work of the State is much more modest. 
 As by breaking down the monopoly of the old Corporations 
 the State enabled the people to create the modern muni- 
 cipality, and by cheapening the cost of living through 
 the repeal of the Corn Laws rendered it possible for men 
 to subscribe to Trades Unions, so the State should remove 
 those hindrances which prevent the true development 
 of rural life. If we can do that we may fairly expect that 
 the new collective enthusiasm will invade tlie rural districts, 
 creating fit forms for its expression as it has already done 
 in the cities. We have noted the beginnings of such a 
 social order in the village chapel and the village cricket 
 and football clubs. These things are trivial in themselves, 
 but small as they are, are not without value as a training 
 to the civic spirit. Anj^thing that takes men and women 
 out of themselves, and interests them in some public or 
 semi-public manner, is, so far as it goes, an education in 
 democracy. 
 
 The first thing to do is to remove the chief hindrance 
 
 63
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 to the people, the difficulty of acquiring land for any other 
 purpose than an ordinary tenant farm, to be conducted 
 on the present system. Allotment culture has proved 
 itself to be far more effective than ordinary farming — 
 it increases vastly the produce, and, as we see by the cases 
 of Jersey and Rew, to mention no others, enhances the 
 value of the land. The farmers' average for wheat, in 
 England, grown on ploughed land of the very best quality 
 for the purpose — and only exceptionally good land is 
 ploughed for wheat in England now — is twenty-eight bushels 
 to the acre. The allotment average, grown on spade dug 
 land, is forty bushels to the acre ; and as much as fifty or 
 sixty bushels has, ere this, been grown. I suspect, also, 
 that the land devoted to allotments has not been specially 
 selected, as the farming arable land is now, for its fitness 
 for wheat growing. Small holdings are so sparingly granted, 
 that allotment holders will generally be only too glad to 
 get what land they can, without being able to select special 
 wheat soils. This increase in quantity is remarkable 
 enough ; but we should never allow ourselves to slide 
 into speaking of the food problem as though it were a 
 wheat question altogether. I think cereal crops are perhaps 
 those in which the cottager has the smallest special advantage 
 over the larger man, while wheat is the leading food-stuff 
 with which it is least certainly to our advantage to supply 
 ourselves. Our climate is so uncertain, that English grown 
 wheat is, I believe, often inferior in quality to foreign 
 wheats. It is therefore important to remember that 
 there are other food-stuffs than wheat, and that the money 
 value of the wheat consumed in these islands is but a small 
 part of the total value of our food-stuffs. 
 
 This, however, is a digression. The total produce 
 of British agriculture, carried on as it is to-day, does not 
 amount to more than about four pounds per acre in value, 
 as an average, taking the whole acreage of the country. 
 Probably there is less land in proportion in Jersey unfitted 
 for culture than there is with us, but the average yearly 
 produce of an acre of that island is worth /50 in the market. 
 Could there be a more startling contrast ? Vast areas 
 
 64
 
 British Agriculture — Constructive 
 
 of this country are just as well fitted as Jersey for this 
 food culture ; and the only real advantage the island has, 
 is a better land system. Land in the Channel Islands 
 is generally either owned by the small farmer who works 
 it, or let at a fixed rental, which cannot be increased at 
 any time, on a perpetual lease. Under these conditions 
 the farmer knows that the full value of any improvements 
 he makes will be his own, and that improvement in the 
 culture of the soil will not mean a fine for the renewal of 
 his lease, or an increased rental for his land. Under these 
 circumstances he works like a slave, is enterprising and 
 inventive to a degree, and sticks to the soil, so that, with 
 practically no- industrialism outside agriculture, the popula- 
 tion of the Channel Islands is nearly three times as dense 
 as our own. There is no rural exodus from Jersey ; but, 
 on the contrary, the island attracts labour from Brittany 
 and other parts of Northern France in considerable 
 quantities. 
 
 People must be enabled to gain access to the land 
 without being compelled to pay exorbitant compensation 
 for its actual value to the landlord at the time of purchase. 
 A strange phenomenon is to be seen around all our large 
 cities. There land is leased to the farmers at little more 
 than country rates, though the same land would fetch 
 in the market many times its farm value for building 
 sites. This land is being held speculatively, for a greater 
 rise in its value. The landlord is content, for that time, 
 with a small rental, on which, and not on the selling value 
 of the land, he pays taxes meanwhile, until the growing 
 needs of the neighbouring city gives him an opportunity 
 to make a large profit out of the public. There has been 
 for years past a steady decline in the value of British 
 land for agricultural purposes ; but this has not decreased 
 the amount of income tax contributed by the landowners 
 as a class. While the country landlords have been growing 
 poorer, those of the towns have been growing richer, and 
 at an even greater rate. Again, in the country, when 
 Parish Councils have endeavoured to obtain land to be 
 let out for allotments, they have generally found that the 
 E
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 landowners take the advantage of the position to exact 
 an extortionate price. I have heard of cases where as much 
 as 130 years' purchase on the old rental was demanded 
 for land for this purpose. The Duke of Northumberland 
 asked no less than 1000 years' purchase for land required 
 by the Tynemouth Corporation for a new waterworks 
 not long ago ; and though the Arbitration Courts reduced 
 this very greatly, I belie\'e the Duke got something like 
 100 years' purchase as compensation for compulsory sale. 
 That these things are possible, is due to the monopolistic 
 character of land itself. Public bodies, or private persons 
 commencing any enterprise demanding land, labour, and 
 capital, can generally choose the capitalist who shall lend 
 the money, and the workman who shall do the labour ; 
 but they are frequently confined, by the nature of the case, 
 to one particular piece of land. If a new public building 
 is wanted, the brickmakers and timber merchants will 
 compete together who shall get the orders for material, 
 so that there is little fear of the public being overcharged 
 for any of these things. Again, at the current rate of 
 wages, masons, bricklayers, plasterers, and any other 
 needed workmen, can be got in abundance. And this 
 because the contractor is not tied to any particular work- 
 man or manufacturer. Capital and Labour will approach 
 the contractor, asking him for employment, and giving 
 him abundant choice. It is otherwise with the other 
 factor in production — Land. Here there is no competition ; 
 here it is probably a necessary part of the scheme that 
 one particular site should be used ; while, of course, no more 
 land can be made to reduce the price demanded by an 
 extortionate owner for that already in existence. The 
 position is such that powers of compulsory purchase have 
 to be obtained by public bodies buying land, a thing quite 
 needless when they are investing in anything else ; and 
 the amounts paid by public bodies are usually many 
 times any fair estimate of the capitalised income the land 
 has yielded to the vendor. 
 
 In fact, new enterprise, public or private, is perpetually 
 having its future earnings anticipated by being compelled 
 
 66
 
 British Agriculture — Constructive 
 
 to pay monopoly prices for the land needed, a fact that 
 greatly hinders the development both of town and country 
 life in England. Our railways are complained about as 
 the dearest in the world. Whether this is an exaggeration 
 or not, at least they are much dearer than in many countries, 
 yet the dividends paid by them are not large. The reason 
 is, that our railways are vastly o^•er-capitalised. The 
 companies have been, from the first, compelled to pay 
 vast sums as compensation for compulsory purchase to 
 landlords in excess of any fair estimate of the income the 
 landlord was really getting from his land. The landowners 
 round the Underground Railway obtained compensation 
 for damage to their property, and immediately raised 
 their rents when the railway was made, because of its 
 convenience to tenants. In this way the public has to 
 be charged higher fares and rates to pay dividends on 
 the swollen prices extortionate landlords have been able 
 to extract for their land in the past. 
 
 Now a tax on land values, accompanied with a law 
 or legal method of assessing all compensation paid for 
 compulsory purchase on the amount of the tax, would 
 enable public bodies and private persons in effect to obtain 
 land practically as freely as they can now get goods and 
 labour^ — at a fair valuation. It would, in fact, create 
 competition to sell among landlords. The land is the 
 only thing almost that can be held for a rise for an indefinite 
 period, since it does not lose its value by time. Commodities 
 perish, and must be sold ; and if unsold the}^ yield no rent, 
 but cost warehouse room ; labour time must be sold as 
 time passes, or the labourer will starve ; but the landlord 
 can wait. By taxing urban land, not on its farming rent 
 but on its building-site value, you can force it into the 
 market as soon as social needs call for its use in that manner ; 
 by taxing land wanted for allotments in the country, on the 
 price the people are willing to buy it for that purpose 
 and not on the farming value, you can rapidly cause it 
 to pass into the hands of men who will use our soil, as tliat 
 of France and Jersey is used, to produce the highest food 
 value it will vield. 
 
 6;
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 At the era of the Revolution, France was nearly bankrupt, 
 and during the Napoleonic wars the nation was drained 
 by the enormous effort they demanded of it. After they 
 were over, the new land system had over fifty years' free 
 play, until the needs of 1871 showed how vastly France 
 had prospered in consequence. The peasant proprietors, 
 descendants of the eighteenth century serfs, astounded 
 the Germans by tlie promptness with which they paid 
 off the great war indemnity out of their savings. It would 
 be the same, I have little doubt, with two generations of 
 a similar system in this country, even though agricultural 
 competition has grown greatly since the middle of last 
 century. Yet it is not exactly a reproduction of the French 
 method, which is already partly out of date, that enlightened 
 policy demands in Great Britain. I have said that the 
 Jersey people work like slaves. The statement is founded 
 on the remark of a Jersey gentleman to Mr. Rider Haggard, 
 for which he gives ample evidence. The system of peasant 
 ownership attracts to instead of repelling the labourer 
 from the soil, and increases the productivity of agriculture. 
 But, left to itself, it does not develop a liberal type of 
 humanity. The peasant lives a healthy and simple, but 
 a hard and narrow life. It is vastly better than being 
 driven into a city slum, for at least it is healthy and human ; 
 but such a life leaves little leisure for the joy of living, 
 for culture and for art. 
 
 For these things we want not only access to the land, 
 but co-operation and the growth of the civic spirit. Only 
 with men like Thoreau or an Indian mystic can the merely 
 individual life be fine, though it may be decent. Average 
 man finds his spiritual kingdom in the life of society. If, 
 during the last seventy years, we have begun to build 
 up a new corporate spirit in our cities, one task of the 
 next generation should be to develop the same in the 
 villages. It has been done before. Relieved by feudal 
 custom, which fixed the landlord's dues and prevented 
 the work of the individual or the parish community being 
 confiscated by a rise in rent, the English serfs of the Middle 
 Ages built up for themselves a simple but beautiful life, 
 
 68
 
 British Agriculture — Constructive 
 
 both corporate and private. Of this hfc the Rev. Augustus 
 Jessop has lately given us a most interesting and well- 
 attested account. What with the poor means at the 
 disposal of the fifteenth century was possible, can surely 
 be surpassed in the twentieth ! 
 
 The work of Parliament is to render access to the land 
 cheap and eas}^, and to augment steadily, and in every 
 way shown by theif progress to be desirable, the powers 
 of the Parish Councils. If this be done steadily and wisely, 
 the natural forces of village society, tlie force of self-interest 
 among the people, and the human tendency to co-opera- 
 tion will do the rest. The opening up of the land to the 
 people would probably start a new struggle for survival 
 among various new methods of ownership. That best 
 fitted to survive would, no doubt, tend to do so ; and 
 we might easily have land worked by individual peasant 
 proprietors, as indifferent to co-operation as the hermit 
 of Walden, voluntary co-operative associations, estates 
 held by Parish Councils and let out to allotment holders, 
 and landed estates worked on the present method, all 
 living side by side and competing together. Nor should 
 I be surprised if one system ultimately tended to survive 
 in one district, while a very different method came out 
 victorious in another. I am not advocating any parti- 
 cular method so much as the freeing of all methods, so 
 that all may be tried. Parts, large parts, of England 
 are perhaps better suited even than Jersey to the Jersey 
 methods of culture ; the vast sheep-fells of Northern 
 England are perhaps just as well under the present system 
 as they could be under any other. Districts near to 
 large towns are at once suitable for intensive scientific 
 market gardening like that carried on around Paris, where, 
 according to Courtois Gerard, quoted by Kropotkin, the 
 smaller market gardeners raise as much as £480 in value 
 per acre of produce, and also for large farms, worked 
 by the Co-operative Society of the neighbouring city, 
 with, of course, a direct market without middlemen's 
 profits to the members of the society. What I hope 
 from an improved Land Law is, not so much a stereo- 
 
 Ccj
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 typed system as a new freedom, an opportunity to the 
 inventive faculty of mankind, such as has been enjoyed 
 with such wonderful results by the manufacturer, but 
 has been denied, through cramping Land Laws, to the 
 agriculturist. 
 
 70
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 REACTIONS AND ANTICIPATIONS 
 
 We have got to a point at which it may be profitable 
 to consider the probable social and political reactions 
 of a new construction of British agriculture on other 
 sections of the community. The more closely we study 
 social science, the more we come to see that the solidarity 
 of humanity is not a dream of the poets, but a scientific 
 fact. No great change can be made in the condition 
 of one industry or of one class, without great corresponding 
 effects on society as a whole. To begin with, if we were 
 to imagine only an indefinite extension of such experi- 
 ments as that made on Rew Farm, which, it will be 
 remembered, resulted in causing that acreage to maintain 
 nearly loo people instead of 21 as before, it is easy to 
 see what an immense effect that would have on the rural 
 exodus. The country, in so far as the new system was 
 put into operation, would cease to have a surplus popu- 
 lation. Like the peasant owners of France and Jersey, 
 the English countrymen would be anxious to stay on 
 the land rather than to leave it, and would no longer 
 hurry in thousands to swell the overcrowded cities. One 
 great stream swelling the ranks of the millions now living 
 below the poverty line would be checked at its source, 
 and the great problem of urban poverty would be simplified 
 in proportion. Mr. Charles Booth, dealing with London, and 
 Mr. Rowntree with York, have proved conclusively that one- 
 third of our city population is so badly paid that even if 
 there be no wasteful expenditure and no drinking, it is im- 
 possible for the unfortunate people who compose this class 
 to buy enough food to keep them in bodily health. But the 
 great difficulty of this problem almost entirely consists 
 
 71
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 in its immensity. Private charity, Trades Union effort, 
 and corporate action, together constitute an agency quite 
 competent to deal with a moderate mass of poverty. If 
 the numbers below the poverty line were within reasonable 
 compass, there is enough in the organised life of our great 
 cities to deal with it in relief works, the Poor Law, Trades 
 Unionism, and private charity, at least if assisted by 
 the State with an adequate system of old age 
 pensions. 
 
 But neither as ratepayers, as private pliilanthropists, 
 or in any other way are the people of our cities likely 
 to take on their shoulders the immense task of raising 
 to a reasonable degree of comfort one person out of every 
 three among them. They should, perhaps ; but I am 
 afraid they will not. Nor should they be required to 
 do so. It is most unjust that in a wealthy nation these 
 poor people should not have enough to live upon, and 
 should be worse fed than a tribe of savages ; but it is 
 socially desirable that their food should be earned by a 
 useful contribution to the national wealth, not by a greater 
 division of the wealth already possessed by more fortunate 
 workers. Each one of them is a potential creator of new- 
 wealth ; but not, in the terms of the case, in the cit}^ 
 where he now lives, otherwise he would be able to find 
 better employment. Elsewhere, and by creating some 
 new wealth in demand, he can and should be employed. 
 
 The creation of a new agriculture, then, would tend 
 to simplify the problem of town poverty by stopping 
 the rural exodus ; but I am much mistaken if it did no 
 more than this. Every day, and especially during times 
 of depression, the country roads are dotted with tramps, 
 travelling from workhouse to workhouse, many, perhaps 
 most, of them no doubt mere loafers, but not a few honestly 
 on tramp in search of work. At present they pass through 
 miles of pasturage where there is but little demand for 
 their labour ; and it probably hardly occurs to the most 
 eager of them that there is any hope of getting employ- 
 ment except at some town. But were he passing through 
 a country like that of Jersey, eager for more labour to carry 
 
 72
 
 Reactions and Anticipations 
 
 on an increasing culture, the tramp would get plenty of 
 chances of odd jobs, perhaps of permanent employment, 
 by the way. Many suggestions have been made for 
 planting colonies of the unemployed upon the land. It 
 is a good idea, and experiments in this direction might 
 well be made. There is no doubt, however, something 
 in the contention of adverse critics that the town workman 
 is unsuited by his inexperience, if not by his stamina, for 
 agricultural work. We must remember, too, that we 
 are dealing on the whole with the least effective of the 
 town population. Against this it has been urged with 
 some force, that not a few of our town workmen have 
 really begun life on the land, and that in any event it 
 is no greater task for an inexperienced townsman to work 
 on the land than it is for a rural labourer to work at any 
 town job. Yet this latter is just what the countryman 
 who comes to town is continually doing. Direct emplo}^- 
 ment on the land, then, might well be tried, whenever 
 possible, though I fear such methods are rather like building 
 the house from its roof downwards, while the very nature 
 of the case makes such a plan too spasmodic to be really 
 satisfactory. In times of trade depression, the British 
 Government might be roused to do something for the 
 unemployed of this description, but only as yet at a very 
 low rate of wages. Then, with improved times, what 
 would happen ? The men thus employed would naturally 
 go back to their ordinary work, the relief works would 
 be stopped, and the whole agitation would have to be 
 done over again the next time there was serious depression. 
 A steady demand for labour, such as draws the Breton 
 peasants to the populous fields and thriving agriculture 
 of Jersey, seems better, as it does not depend upon the 
 state of that spasmodic thing — the British political 
 conscience. Mr. Keir Hardie might some day — we will 
 assume this for the sake of argument — induce a Liberal 
 or Conservative Government to attempt some scheme 
 of public employment ; but it would take his continued 
 presence in the House of Commons and more to keep the 
 thing going, so soon as public attention was, for the moment, 
 
 71
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 taken up by something else, or as soon as a spurt to trade 
 had removed the immediate problem. 
 
 But it is not only in the very poor of the towns that 
 the beneficial results of agricultural development could 
 be seen. I have contended in a former chapter, that 
 our present ability to import far more than we export 
 must, in the nature of things, end some day ; and that, 
 as other nations develop their industrialism to the fullest 
 extent, they will cease to require any manufactures from 
 us, except those few in which nature has given us a real 
 and decisive natural advantage. Whether there are any 
 such manufactures may be a matter of doubt ; but, at 
 any rate, they form a small part of the total volume of 
 our exports. Again, I have shown, I hope clearly, that 
 as new nations become freely capitalised, they will, on 
 the whole, tend to be less dependent on loans from us, 
 and to pay back such money as they have borrowed ; and 
 from these facts I have drawn the inference that, in the 
 long-run, our commerce must tend to the normal equation, 
 namely, a balance of imports and exports. The Protec- 
 tionist is quite right in believing that our trade supremacy 
 is threatened ; he is only wrong in the absurdity of his 
 remedy, and in his panic fears of an immediate collapse. 
 
 But the fuller development of our country life, and 
 the absorption of part of the underpaid town population 
 in it, would open up for British manufacturers a splendid 
 new market at their very doors. It is rightly argued 
 by the Free Traders that imports imply exports ; and 
 the importation of a new class of goods from abroad 
 implies an impetus to some new trade at home. There 
 is thus, in the long-run, an equation between the imports 
 and exports of a country. But what applies to the 
 relations between one nation and another, applies equally 
 to those between different districts and different in- 
 dustries. If London imported its corn from Essex, it 
 would have just as much to pay for it as it does now ; 
 and this payment also would have to be made in com- 
 modities. The total amount of our imported food-stuffs 
 in 1902 was ;{i58,904,ooo, if we count only those that 
 
 74
 
 Reactions and Anticipations 
 
 could have been purchased in this country. This, of 
 course, impHed a very large export trade ; but had our 
 foodstuffs all been produced at home, the consumers would 
 nevertheless have had to pay for them. Now, though the 
 facilities of transit invented since his day have greatly 
 modified the advantages which Adam Smith allows to 
 home as distinguished from foreign trade, these advan- 
 tages are still real. There is less need for expensive middle- 
 men, and more chance of a high reward to the producer. 
 Again, home trade, once established, is easier to keep 
 than foreign ; no device of the foreign Protectionist can 
 close the market, while the home manufacturer has the 
 advantage over his alien competitor in transit. There- 
 fore, I have already argued, that as the industrialism 
 of foreign countries develops, we may expect that nations 
 will, on the whole, tend to retain their home trade and 
 lose their foreign. The vast importance of our foreign 
 trade is partly, indeed mainly, due to our early start in 
 modern industrialism, and only in a degree to better 
 methods of transit. Our manufacturers will have the 
 same natural advantage in a new home market that foreign 
 nations have in their own ; and that advantage should, 
 in the long-run, be decisive. 
 
 Political parties are an expression of economic facts, 
 and as the economic conditions change, such change is 
 inevitably reflected in politics. Political changes, then, no 
 less striking than the social and economic ones, may be 
 expected. And here it is that any progressive party 
 conferring such a boon of social reconstruction upon the 
 nation might fairly expect its reward. Let us look, in 
 the first instance, at the influence such a change would 
 probably have on the fiscal policy of the people. The 
 strength of the Tory reaction depended largely on the 
 strength of vested interests, and the large proportion of 
 the working classes, whose mental and material poverty 
 was too abject to permit of their having a politic of their 
 own, and who were therefore a ready prey to any demagogue, 
 since they were entirely incapable of analysing his proposals. 
 Now, in proportion as a policy of restoring the land to 
 
 75
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 the people were successful, one of the greatest of these vested 
 interests would die. As the development of country life 
 went on on the new lines, the landlords, as such, would 
 cease to exist ; and even before they disappeared their 
 political influence would be greatly reduced in the rural 
 districts. To destroy the landlords' political influence, 
 it is not perhaps necessary to buy them out, it is enough 
 to place in the hands of the people the power to buy them 
 out when they choose. Had it not been for the increased 
 importance of the towns, where the people, however they 
 may suffer by increment of rent, are not influenced in 
 voting by the opinions of the man who owns the land on 
 which they live, I doubt whether the extension of the 
 franchise would, to any extent, have reduced the real 
 political power of landlordism. The basis of all power 
 is economic ; and so long as the economic basis of class 
 government exists, you cannot destroy its practical control 
 of politics by any constitutional tinkering. Deprived 
 by the Reform Bills of their political monopoly, the landlords 
 have recovered an immense amount of power, so that Lord 
 Salisbury's late Cabinet contained sixteen Tory landlords 
 out of twenty members ; and this, because their social 
 influence has not been reduced with their political privileges. 
 But land reform implies something more effective than 
 electoral reform — it strikes at the political power through 
 the economic basis of landlordism, and in so doing destroys 
 the strongest prop of historic Toryism for ever. And 
 this, be it observed, not by any elaborate code of law 
 making, which might take generations to fashion into 
 shape, but by letting free those economic forces before 
 which feudalism has already fallen in many other countries. 
 For though vested interests may be too strong for any 
 direct attack, they can be dissolved like ice in summer 
 seas, by setting free the forces of society which are every- 
 where tending to build up the new democratic world. 
 
 And as such reform destroys one of the most dangerous 
 powers whose tendency is to seduce the masses back to the 
 ways of militarism and Protection, so it tends also to absorb 
 that section of workers most liable to seduction. I have 
 
 76
 
 Reactions and Anticipations 
 
 noted, sadly enough, the lower parts of a town at election 
 times, particularly during the General Election of 1900, and 
 can answer for it that it was not where the better paid 
 and organised workman lived that the Tory colours hung 
 out from every window. In the slums the Tory flags 
 were everywhere. These poor people could not understand 
 the relation of politics to their own lives ; and to them the 
 Khaki policy meant only a new sensation. That they 
 felt an instinctive sympathy with the valour of their own 
 side I think entirely creditable to them. Of all the war- 
 mongers of that time, for them only have I real sympathy. 
 Their enthusiasm was instinctive and human, neither 
 selfish nor the result of any cold calculation of the ultimate 
 results on progress. But reason, and not untrained 
 instinct, is the proper ruling force in human life. I look 
 forward, therefore, with hopefulness to a day when this 
 unhappy class may be absorbed into those immediately 
 above it in the social scale. Then we may anticipate 
 they will take on themselves the temperament and the 
 attitude towards life and politics of those more thoughtful 
 and progressive sections to which they then belong. The 
 influence of economic status upon ideas is the deepest 
 and strongest of all. With economic improvement comes 
 leisure for culture and reflection ; and these are the forces 
 against which such irrationalism as that of Mr. Chamberlain 
 is helpless. 
 
 And more immediately in its bearing on the fiscal 
 question, we may note that when British agriculture can 
 effectively compete with foreign, the reason for Protection, 
 as far as it is concerned, will be gone. The present private 
 landlord and tenant farmer system is dying anyhow ; 
 the present race of landlords and farmers can only be 
 preserved by Protection. To them foreign competition is 
 deadly. But with a better system, one able in the field of 
 free competition to drive the foreigner out of our markets, 
 by producing as cheaply or cheaper than he can, this would 
 be changed. The most dangerous competitor is not 
 generally the man at a distance, but the one next door. 
 If, then, we had such a system indefinitely extended as 
 
 17
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 that so successfully begun at Rew Farm, the cottars of 
 Dorset would have far more reason to fear the competition 
 of Devonshire than of America. From Protection they 
 would have nothing to gain, but everything to lose, since 
 it would mean dearer clothes, agricultural implements, 
 and other things they required for production and for 
 living. Their numbers, too, would be a far better counter- 
 poise to the town vote, and I think we may rely upon it 
 that the countrymen would effectively check the protection 
 of manufactures, and the townsmen would defend us 
 against the artificial scarcity of food-stuffs. 
 
 For, indeed, we should always require some foreign 
 trade in both. The uncertainty of climate will always 
 render it necessary for food to be imported in bad years ; 
 while it is necessary for a sound society to prevent any 
 danger of its own manufacturers gaining a monopoly in 
 its own markets. These ends can best be secured in a 
 community where all the interests are well balanced, 
 not by the artificial fostering of some, but by the productive 
 efficiency of all. 
 
 Human society progresses on natural, not on theoretic 
 lines. It moves towards its destination not in a straight 
 line, like a canal, but by devious courses, like a river. 
 Here it is that the doctrinaire politician is so apt to lose 
 touch with things. He is brought up in a certain school 
 of thought, itself the product of the conditions and ten- 
 dencies of his youth ; and because his ideas are in the 
 then track of progress, he finds society increasingly 
 responsive to them. That he formulates these ideas 
 in finer phrases and according to a more logical theory 
 than the mass of men, matters little. People are quite 
 willing to be told that their desire for cheaper bread is 
 justified by economic theory, whether they understand 
 what economic theory means or not. They are, in fact, 
 willing enough to hear of a universal justification for their 
 particular requirements. Hence Protectionist landlords 
 and manufacturers, following Mr. Chamberlain at bottom 
 in the interests of their rents or trades, are very willing 
 to hear appeals to their Imperialist sympathies. There 
 
 78
 
 Reactions and Anticipations 
 
 is no conscious hypocrisy in all this. It is simply ordinary 
 human nature. 
 
 For a time, then, as long as he is moving with the stream 
 of contemporary things, the doctrinaire gets on very well ; 
 but as soon as the pressing problems of the moment have 
 received a practical as distinct from a logical solution, 
 the doctrinaire suddenly finds the force of public feeling 
 no longer with him. The stream of progress has taken 
 a turn, and he is left in an eddy. The old appeals to 
 principles no longer avail him, for they no longer have 
 their old bearing on the felt necessities of the time. It 
 is this that is the matter with present-day Liberalism. 
 The ideas of the old Radicalism are not so much unsound 
 as they are for the present irrelevant, they are not in the 
 direction of present-day progress ; it is not so much that 
 they are untrue, as that they do not matter. Nobody 
 outside the few political students of their school really 
 cares whether they are true or not ; and this because, 
 however true they may be in theory, they have no felt 
 bearing on contemporary life. 
 
 I shall perhaps be justified, then, in attempting to 
 give some idea of the direction in which I believe the 
 tendencies of present-day progressivism are moving ; 
 of the society which, assuming them to be successful in 
 their struggle with reaction, may be possible as the outcome 
 of the twentieth century political and social movement. 
 This is not to construct a Utopia, but, like Mr. Wells, to 
 indulge in an " anticipation," which may be useful to 
 progressives in its bearing on practical politics. That 
 the general trend of human evolution is towards an ever 
 wider and closer solidarity, I firmly believe, since the 
 progress of civilisation is nothing more nor less than a 
 history of the displacement of disorganisation and instinct 
 by organisation and reason. But there are many eddies 
 in the general stream ; and many nations get left behind, 
 making no progress, or even declining for centuries. Such 
 has been the case with Spain ; and such may, quite 
 possibly, be the case with this country. I hope better 
 things, however, and that tlic Tory reaction of the last 
 
 79
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 two decades is merely like that so admirably analysed 
 by Buckle at the close of the eighteenth century, a 
 temporary halt in our national progress. The earlier 
 reaction was due in the main to the inability of traditional 
 Whiggism to adopt the progressive Liberalism of the 
 nineteenth century ; as soon as society had evolved a 
 party strong enough to supersede the Whigs, the reaction 
 ceased, and gave way to the reform era of last century. 
 The Liberalism which found its most emphatic expression 
 in the leaders of the Manchester School has in turn grown 
 effete ; its ideas, having no root in popular necessity, have 
 failed to retain their hold on the people, and again we have 
 had a Tory reaction. I see no reason why history should 
 not repeat itself. If the fight between Liberal and Tory 
 is not so keen, and divides men only at election times, 
 that between Labour and Capital is real and continuous, 
 A strike or lockout excites far deeper interest than an 
 election ; for in the one case the actual forces of society 
 are in conflict, the other too often is merely an echo of the 
 genuine antagonisms of the past. Within the shell of 
 society itself have been shaped the organisations fitted to 
 form and support a new and living party, which, combined 
 with the Radicals of more modern type, may in the near 
 future be strong enough to shape the reforms of the 
 twentieth century. 
 
 First, then, I imagine that either by the taxation of 
 land values, or^ if such can be devised, by some other 
 method, the land will be made accessible to the local 
 authorities at its actual present-day selling value. The 
 powers of Parish Councils will be so enlarged that they 
 will be able to acquire land, either to develop on a large 
 scale themselves, or to let out on terms securing fixity 
 of tenure to small holders, thus enabling a more efficient 
 agriculture gradually to replace the present. This will 
 be done rapidly or slowly according as the inhabitants 
 of any district are Progressive or Conservative. In some 
 cases one system, in others another, will be tried ; while 
 in many the present method may continue as a survival 
 for an indefinite length of time. But, done this way, 
 
 80
 
 Reactions and Anticipations 
 
 the socialisation of the land will be the outward index 
 of the local development of the social idea, the phenomenal 
 expression of a moral fact. Where that fact does not 
 exist, a mere addition of powers to the local governing 
 body will not produce any effect ; where it does exist, 
 new powers will be widely used. 
 
 But humanity is imitative, and the success of one 
 parish will mean the adoption of similar methods by 
 neighbouring ones. In this I think the growth of the 
 Co-operative movement may be useful. Co-operators have 
 already entered into farming ; though, I believe, for the 
 most part only on the lines at present carried on by private 
 enterprise, and not as yet with any brilliant result. Co- 
 operators are the very people, however, to profit by an 
 example, while they are freer from legal restraint, and 
 better able to provide money than small local authorities. 
 Again, they have means to bring the produce of then- 
 farms direct to their customers without middlemen's 
 profits, and in large quantities at a time. Especially, 
 then, in districts near our large manufacturing towns, 
 the Co-operators, who now manage a tea plantation as 
 far away as Burmah, may be expected to adopt any pro- 
 fitable new method of developing the land ; and even 
 when they feel their way to initiate some fresh departures 
 of their own. Capital in Great Britain is superabundant, 
 and labour is also ; and to a new method of making money, 
 both will be readily attracted. 
 
 With access to the land, freedom from the patronage 
 of landlords, and increased powers of local self-govern- 
 ment, I look to the gradual reconstruction not only of 
 English agriculture, but of English rural life. Normally, 
 the solidarity of a small community should be more intense, 
 more deeply conscious, than that of a large ; for in a \'illage 
 every man knows his neighbour, and the common life 
 is a more personal thing, less of an abstraction, than it 
 is in the town. But since the pillage of the mediaeval 
 parishes by the ruffians of Edward vi.'s time, tlie English 
 villagers have had little chance to develop a communal 
 life of their own. They have been dri\'cn to depend for 
 F
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 assistance in trouble, for pastime and for culture, on their 
 social superiors. With freedom this should pass away ; 
 and the latent admirable genius of the British people, 
 as evinced by their mediaeval successes, for local self- 
 government should fmd free play. Already I have noted 
 the first beginnings of a new social life in the village 
 cricket and football clubs, in the organisation of the village 
 chapels, and other matters where the patronage of the 
 Squire is absent. There is plenty of room for it in other 
 things. Small holdings, apparently the most effective 
 form of agriculture, demand co-operation in selling ; and 
 either by voluntary co-operation or by the action of the 
 people in their corporate capacity, distribution will have 
 to be organised. Either method is an education ; it 
 brings the individual in touch with the common life. Again, 
 a revived system of agriculture creates a demand for 
 knowledge not possessed by the farm " hand," and perhaps 
 not coveted by him. This again can only be attained 
 by common action, by voluntary or corporate manage- 
 ment of lectures and classes. But the ways in which 
 a new society realises itself cannot be summed up in a 
 word ; they are past counting. 
 
 Parish Councils have already the power to adopt the 
 Free Libraries Act under certain conditions ; and here 
 intelligent action by the Central Government may be 
 of great use to them. The Free Libraries Act has not 
 been a complete success, owing largely to the backward 
 state of English education. Only in the largest cities 
 is it possible to get librarians competent to select the 
 valuable from the rubbish of the press, and the smaller 
 towns would have been greatly helped by official guidance 
 in the choice of books. The village library should be 
 federated with a larger one belonging to the County Council, 
 placed in some central situation ; and should itself 
 consist in the main of a model collection of books, 
 affording an introduction to the study of literature, 
 philosophy, and science, drawn up by competent authority. 
 The county library should be a first-class one, and the 
 village should have the power of borrowing books from 
 
 82
 
 Reactions and Anticipations 
 
 it, either to illustrate some current course of lectures, 
 or to aid individual students. Every English man and 
 woman should have at least the possibility of access to 
 all the knowledge of the time. 
 
 The Parish Council should be trustees of the village 
 Institute, and this should include a lecture hall, concert 
 and dance room, adequate sleeping rooms for strangers 
 spending a night in the village, and a refreshment room, 
 where the needs, both of inhabitants and strangers, could 
 be supplied. In it should be the news-room, library, and 
 billiard-room. In fact, the village inn should pass from 
 private hands, and become the centre of the social, secular 
 life of the place. Nor do I doubt that, if we grant freedom 
 to the people, it will ere long become so. The British 
 are not teetotallers, but they don't like rates, and they 
 are not all drunkards. Give them the power to turn 
 the village inn into a rate-saving, public institution, and 
 ere long they will do so. 
 
 With regard to the towns, I look for the yet more rapid 
 development of the modern movements of Municipalism, 
 Co-operation, and Trades Unionism, under conditions in 
 which land can be more easily acquired for housing or 
 for open spaces, and where the slum population have been 
 raised into the class from which Co-operators and Trades 
 Unionists are drawn, or have returned to the country, 
 now hungering for more labour. Under these conditions, 
 the cities of the present century should grow less and 
 less like those of the past. The increase of trade between 
 them and the country, which should be then the main 
 source of their food supply and the market for their 
 products, should develop, what the bicycle, excursion 
 trains, and the growth of cricket and football, have already 
 begun, a more frequent intercourse between the village 
 and the town, and a better acquaintance with natural 
 beauty. Such culture - contacts are the most potent 
 source of new improvements in civilisation, of new ideas, 
 and of yet higher culture. 
 
 These developments of local life will have their reactions 
 on the Central State. The diffusion of the democratic 
 
 S3
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 idea and the break-up of adverse vested interests should 
 help on the realisation of the democratic programme in 
 the State ; and the continual devolution of functions 
 to the local bodies should relieve Parliament of its present 
 congestion, enabling it to tackle the problems by nature 
 fitted for State management, the railways, banking, 
 commerce, education, and those industries which evolution 
 makes economically manageable as large monopolies. The 
 develoi>ment of State action on these lines, accompanied 
 by the complete democratisation of its form, will bring 
 the State also into closer touch with the Nation than ever 
 before. A State largely managed by a privileged class, 
 and chiefly concerned with matters that do not enter 
 closely into other lives than those of the criminal, military, 
 and a few other classes, can be regarded as latter day 
 individualism has come to regard ours, as something 
 outside of the ordinary life of man, an artificial contrivance 
 for the maintenance of order, a necessary evil. A State 
 that is closely in touch with the whole people, and whose 
 action enters largely into their lives, on the other hand, 
 becomes a thing, separation from which is to the individual 
 neither desirable nor conceivable. It is not something 
 outside of and alien to the individual life, but the means 
 by which that life can alone attain full freedom of ex- 
 pression, the effective agent of the Nation, the organ of 
 its collective will. 
 
 84
 
 ^ • CHAPTER VII 
 
 POSSIBILITIES OF A PROGRESSIVE MAJORITY 
 
 The reader who is in agreement with the views I have 
 expressed, will perhaps wish to see some estimate of their 
 prospects of success. What chance have we of turning 
 the English parties from the reactionary direction in which 
 Mr. Chamberlain has led and travelled with them, and 
 directing the stream of tendency into a progressive channel ? 
 To do this, Progressives must obviously get to understand 
 how to use every opportunity that chance or the logic 
 of circumstances places in their hands. They must sum 
 up the existent forces for and against progress without 
 either fear or undue optimism, for it is by forces and not 
 alone by arguments, however sound, that the battle will, 
 in the last resort, be won or lost. They must face the 
 facts as far as they can be ascertained, and, without parting: 
 with their enthusiasm, bid good-bye to all illusions. 
 
 As already stated, I see little reason to fear an immediate- 
 Protectionist victory at the next General Election. li 
 I am here too sanguine, then for the present this book 
 has been written in vain. In that case we are in the hands 
 of the Tories, and are left only the melancholy hope that 
 their misdeeds and their consequences may arouse such 
 indignation that they and their bread-tax will, ere long, 
 be swept away by the deluded people who have voted for 
 them. In such a case, we can, for the present, do nothing 
 except prepare by vigorous propaganda for better days. 
 
 But there are two alternative results of the next 
 -election, both more probable than this : (i) Neither 
 party may be able to command an adequate majority 
 in the next House of Commons ; or (2) the Progressive 
 forces, Liberal, Labour, and Irish, may outnumber the 
 
 85
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 Tories, — that, in fact, we may have a Progressive majority. 
 The difficulties facing such a Liberal Government as we 
 may hope to see next Parhament are both numerous and 
 great. They arise not only from the fact that the Govern- 
 ment will depend for its existence upon alien groups like the 
 Irish and Labour men, but from the inherent weakness of 
 the Liberal party itself. It has been claimed that Mr. 
 Chamberlain has united the Liberals, and in a negative sense 
 this is true. He has raised an issue to which the whole party 
 is at present opposed, and for purposes of opposition they 
 are thus united ; but he has done nothing to enable them 
 to agree upon a constructive policy. Whatever individual 
 Liberals may approve, the policy of the party, as a whole, 
 is that of Lord Rosebery — the clean slate. The disruptive 
 forces within the party only await definite action in almost 
 any direction to revive all the discords which Mr. Chamber- 
 lain has silenced for the moment. No permanent unity 
 can be created until the underlying causes of disunion 
 have been removed. 
 
 Can anyone, for instance, imagine the result of any 
 attempt on behalf of the present Liberal party to pass, 
 :say, a Home Rule Bill or a real amendment of the Educa- 
 tion Act ? How many of the party leaders are sincere 
 Home Rulers ? Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Mr. 
 Morley, and some others have not abandoned this idea ; 
 but the Liberal Imperialist section are either hostile, or 
 at least indifferent, while avowed opponents of the measure 
 are being accepted willingly as candidates in many con- 
 stituencies. Probably these may all fall in with Home 
 Rule when they find that it is, in the long-run, inevitable, 
 and discover, as they certainly will, that if Liberals don't 
 grant Home Rule, their opponents will ; but that time 
 .has not arrived yet, and at present the reintroduction 
 of Home Rule would almost certainly be followed by a 
 revival of Liberal Unionism. Education reform is hardly 
 in a more hopeful position, as the next Liberal Govern- 
 ment cannot hope to stand independent of the Irish 
 members, and the Irish are far too well pleased with the 
 Education Acts to permit any drastic alteration of them. 
 
 86
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 But even if the Progressives were more united, that 
 fact would not enable them to do anything vital in the 
 way of legislation ; for, behind their efforts, there is no 
 real popular enthusiasm for reform. This latter is an 
 essential. Unless a Progressive majority is sure of the 
 people, it is well-nigh helpless against the opposition of 
 the House of Lords and obstruction in the Commons. 
 Progressives have too long deluded themselves with the 
 idea that the Commons are much stronger than the Lords. 
 In constructive legislation this is simply not true. In 
 any difference between the Chambers, the stronger House 
 is that which is in favour of the status quo and against the 
 proposed legislation over which the dispute has arisen. 
 The House of Lords may safely exercise its constitutional 
 right and reject any measure sent up to it by the Commons, 
 unless the country is really in earnest in its favour. Then, 
 indeed, a contumacious House of Lords would be on danger- 
 ous ground ; but that is not because the Commons them- 
 selves are formidable, but because the people are. It 
 is the people, not the Commons, who are the masters of 
 the Lords in the last resort. If the nation were in the 
 habit of deciding matters on grounds of democratic theory, 
 no doubt they could be generally depended on to support 
 their own representatives against hereditary obstructives ; 
 but the people, as a matter of fact, do nothing of the kind. 
 If the nation feels little interest in the measure in question, 
 it will take equally little in any action of the Lords ; and 
 if it does care, it will decide purely on the merits of the 
 measure in dispute. It is this that renders futile such 
 a policy as that known as " filling up the cup." It is 
 worse than useless sending up to the Lords measures, 
 however excellent in themselves, to which we have not 
 first converted the country. The Lords may reject such 
 Bills with perfect safety, and will only gather prestige 
 with every successful rejection. 
 
 A Progressive victory at the present moment would 
 certainly prove that the people are tired of the Tories, 
 not that they are converted to any constructive reform 
 whatever. Hence, it would be impossible to send up 
 
 3;
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 to the Lords any measure with the certainty that, if they 
 rejected it, the country would resent that rejection at 
 the polls. This is evident when we remember that there 
 is no measure on which Progressives are all united, 
 and all lay stress. The next General Election will be fought 
 on the faults of the Tories, not on any proposal of their 
 opponents ; and, while victory will mean much in a negative 
 way, it will, as I have said, have no constructive signi- 
 iicance whatever. 
 
 It is not only the difficulty of the Lords that will face 
 the next Liberal Ministry, too probably rendering them 
 impotent, their troubles will hardly be less in the Lower 
 House itself. During the last generation the House 
 of Commons has become steadily less effective as an agent 
 of reform. This is due to a variety of causes, chief of 
 which are the vitality of the Irish Question, and the con- 
 gestion of necessary parliamentary work by the growth 
 at once of the new Imperialism and the functions of 
 local government. The first of these causes is too obvious 
 to repay comment, but the working of the other two 
 factors deserves consideration. Parliament is now called 
 upon every year to deal with an increasing number of 
 matters for which it has no special fitness, and for which 
 it was not designed. Every social organism, a city, nation, 
 or federation of States, naturally evolves an instrument 
 of government on the whole fairly well fitted to its stage 
 of development. The Constitution of an independent 
 State, and the institutions, the king, aristocracy, or 
 democratic assembly, by means of which it works, are 
 expressions of the actual state of social growth. Liberty 
 and popular power increase with the progress of such 
 a society ; reform movements urged on by the advance 
 of the people amend the Constitution, which thus at 
 all times expresses not an abstract theory of justice, but 
 an actual achievement. National governments, in fact, 
 are a product of social evolution, roughly fitted by ex- 
 perience to the work they are called upon to perform. 
 The government of a free State may be criticised by the 
 doctrinaire as theoretically defective ; it is generally, 
 
 "88
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 however much better suited to tlie needs of the nation 
 that has evolved it than anything we could devise to 
 take its place. 
 
 But when by conquest or by any other means the 
 nation State has developed into an empire, the national 
 government has to deal with many things for which it 
 is not thus fitted by evolution. A free constitution is least 
 fitted of all forms of government to the exigencies of 
 empire. This and the reason for it will be seen, if we 
 consider the sort of check the British House of Commons 
 keeps on the Indian Budget. That measure is submitted 
 .yearly to the criticism of the Commons, but the whole 
 proceeding is little more than a farce. Nor could it be 
 otherwise. It is safe to say that not one member in ten 
 is competent to give an opinion about Indian matters ; 
 it is quite certain that not one in a thousand of their 
 constituents knows anything about them either. In 
 theory the Indian Government may be responsible to 
 Parliament and hence to the British people, but in practice 
 it is a pure bureaucracy. A popular check on Government 
 implies a public opinion, and there is simply no such thing 
 as British public opinion on Indian affairs. 
 
 The increasing intrusion of extra-British questions, 
 such as the Indian Budget, the Uganda railway, the 
 boundaries of Alaska, and the relations of Russia and 
 Japan, is tending to reduce the authority of that body. 
 The average member knows nothing about these questions, 
 and his vote is guided entirely by specialists and the Whips 
 of the party. It is not a dignified position, and tends 
 steadily to sap his independence, even on matters in w4iich 
 he is competent to form an opinion of his own. The same 
 thing is happening to us as did to Rome, The government 
 of the Senate and People was quite suited to the small 
 city State, and, conservative as it was, was even capable 
 of slow improvement as the Plebs gained in power ; but 
 it was utterly impotent to rule the Roman Empire. The 
 true explanation of the rise of the Caesars is to be found 
 in the unsuitability of the old Constitution to the new 
 conditions. The Senate and People simply could not 
 
 89
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 rule the provincials ; and, though Roman jealousy pre- 
 served the forms of the Constitution, this was only done 
 by reducing the Senate to dependence upon the emperors, 
 whose decision it registered but did not control. This 
 arose from the fundamental fact that, while a free people 
 can understand the problems forced upon them by their 
 daily life, they must depend for guidance in those of other 
 nations upon their agents — in other words, on a bureau- 
 cracy. But though tliis is the logical outcome of empire, 
 Imperial nations are slow to see it. The people, forced 
 to surrender the reality of power, insist upon rule being 
 carried on in their name and under the forms of freedom. 
 This can only be done by reducing the control of the 
 people in Imperial affairs to a matter of form, and by the 
 steady increase of the power of the Executive. 
 
 While Imperial questions have thus been sapping the 
 authority of Parliament and the independence of members, 
 they have been reducing the amount of time available 
 for the true business of the nation. Things have to be 
 rushed through somehow, and expedients invented to 
 control discussion, yet the arrears of business accumulate 
 session by session. One considerable m.easure is enough 
 to occupy the attention of Parliament for a whole session, 
 and year by year the amount of business actually finished 
 becomes less and less. As the quantity of Imperial 
 business augments, so our Progressive local government 
 adds yearly to the mass of private Bills, and increases 
 the congestion of the legislative machine. Governments, 
 again, have hardly yet grasped the significance of this, 
 and time is wasted over Bills which never get further 
 than their second reading. The prospects of obstructives 
 are good, and there is everv inducement for the Opposition 
 to avail themselves of every means of delay ; for however 
 hopeless their minority, they can always compel Ministers 
 to abandon all but their most vital measures. In fact, 
 Parliament is rapidly becoming the most ineffective 
 legislative m.achine in the world. 
 
 It is easy to see what immense difficulties all this places 
 in the wa}^ of a weak and more or less discordant party 
 
 90
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 like tlie Liberals, doubtful how far or in what measure 
 the country is in favour of it, and dependent for its majority 
 on Labour or Irish votes. We may be sure the House of 
 Lords will realise the position, even if the new Ministry do 
 not, and will be prepared to amend or reject any measure sent 
 up to them if it intrenches on the privileges of the wealthy 
 class, that is, if it is of any use. Yet it is most important 
 that the next Progressive Ministry should be a success, 
 A Liberal Government that did nothing would simply 
 keep their places warm for another reactionary Ministry 
 like the present ; it might delay, but it could not end the 
 Tory reaction. At the present moment the drift of things 
 is strongly against Toryism, as mistake after mistake 
 is brought home against Ministers. Under such circum- 
 stances, good propaganda is being done by Socialists and 
 other reformers, and the ground is being prepared for more 
 genuine Progressivism than exists at present. The 
 Tories are looked upon with contempt, thousands of people 
 are tired of them, and are prepared to listen to what the 
 most advanced people have to say. Now nothing could 
 check this advance of ideas in the country so quickly 
 as an ineffective Liberal Ministry. Unless the new Govern- 
 ment showed itself from the lirst a distinct improvement 
 on the old, its advent to power would only stay the present 
 adverse criticism of the Balfour Ministry. Instead of 
 the growing enthusiasm for progress of angry Noncon- 
 formists, Free Traders, Teetotallers, and Trades Unionists, 
 we should have these groups growing cold at the disappoint- 
 ment of their hopes. As we have said, such a Ministry 
 would merely act as a temporary check to the long Tory 
 reaction of the last twenty years. 
 
 We have seen that the prospects of passing any really 
 important measure through either the Lords or Commons, 
 much more both, is at present very slight ; but there is 
 one Bill to which hardly any of our criticisms apply. If 
 the annual Budget can command a majority in the House 
 of Commons, it is certain to pass. Mere obstruction here 
 is of no a\'ail. From the day on which the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer introduces it, it is certain that one of 
 
 91
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 two things must happen — either the Government will 
 be defeated on a straight vote, or the measure will pass 
 the House of Commons, A Budget of some sort must 
 be passed, or the business of the nation cannot go on ; 
 and any Government that met with organised obstruction 
 upon it would be justified, nay compelled, to use the 
 closure as drastically as was found necessary. Any 
 opposition in a minority against the Budget is absolutely 
 helpless. If it cannot defeat the measure, it cannot even 
 delay it. In the Lords, too, the position is here equally 
 strong. The Lords cannot amend the Budget, and they 
 dare not reject it ; however unpalatable to themselves, 
 they are bound to see it through. The Budget, in fact, 
 is the key to the position ; with it everything can be done, 
 without it, nothing. 
 
 And there is another aspect of the matter which deserves 
 attention. We have spoken of the discords within the 
 Progressive ranks, and shown that because of them the 
 Liberals cannot come back to power with a direct mandate 
 from the people for any constructive measure. Education 
 reform, Home Rule, Local Veto, on none of these are the 
 Progressives united, and consequently on none does 
 the election of a Progressive majority imply a national 
 mandate. But on finance some unity exists, and here 
 a Tory defeat does imply an instruction to the new Ministry, 
 The Liberal party is quite united in its opposition to Tory 
 finance, to the coal and sugar duties, as well as to the 
 protective taxes proposed by Mr. Chamberlain. The 
 same is true of the Labour party ; and though it might 
 be possible to buy them over by favours to Ireland, it 
 is true also of the Irish. In opposition to these taxes, 
 proposed and imposed, the Progressives have been all in 
 accord ; and it is clear that by returning them to power 
 the nation endorses that opposition, and equally so that 
 they are pledged to adopt another financial policy. Here 
 then we have a position as strong as we are weak in con- 
 structive legislation. Neither the Lords nor anyone 
 else can compel us to continue the coal and sugar duties, 
 or to impose any new protective taxes. A Liberal Chancellor 
 
 92
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 of the Exchequer is not only able, he is morally pledged, 
 to drop these taxes, and the first test of his sincerity 
 demanded of him by Radicals and Labour men should 
 be that he does so in the first Budget he presents to the 
 new House of Commons. 
 
 But the surrender of these duties would cost £7,000,000 
 at least, and this would cause a deficit which must somehow 
 be made good. To entrench upon the Sinking Fund would 
 be especially bad policy at the present time, with Consols 
 at their present low figure sound finance dictates that we 
 should redeem as many as possible, and it is clear that none 
 of the existing taxes can be increased to the required ex- 
 tent. Indirect taxes are always objectionable, and unless 
 we were to substitute other protective duties for those re- 
 moved, it is very doubtful if anything like the amount of 
 revenue required could be thus obtained. The income tax 
 payer is not likely to submit to a further incrrease in time 
 of peace ; and, indeed, those who pay under Schedule D 
 should, at the earliest convenient date, have a reduction. 
 There remain the death duties, and these are capable 
 of a still further development, but not in such a manner 
 as to yield a steady and reliable income. At present 
 the death duties are graduated up to estates of ^^1,000,000 
 and over, such estates paying 8 per cent. We require 
 a method for the further graduation of the few estates 
 which exceed the million. There should be an increase 
 in the rate of duty charged on each million after the first, 
 till, say the tenth million, in an estate of that size, should 
 be all impounded. By this means a definite maximum 
 would be fixed, which no private fortune could exceed 
 for longer than one life, and a considerable, though irregular 
 increment would be added to the national revenue. 
 
 But this irregularity in the yield of such a tax would 
 prevent it being of use for our present purpose. There 
 are, of course, very few multi-millionaires, and the law of 
 averages which secures a steady income from the death 
 dues on a multitude of smaller estates, would hardly 
 do this on the few higher ones. This is the chief objection 
 to such a tax, and, indeed, it would probably be best to 
 
 93
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 capitalise the product of it, and compel Governments to 
 spend annually only the revenue derived from the invest- 
 ment each year. Otherwise, when one or two great nobles 
 or their American wives died in the same year, an extra- 
 vagant Chancellor might find his circumstances much 
 easier than was good for the stability of national finance. 
 An automatic method, whereby large accumulations of 
 money become public property, is reasonable and socially 
 desirable, but the thing should be so done as not to make 
 the yearly income of the nation too irregular. 
 
 Some new tax, then, is necessary, and, consistently^ 
 with Liberal and Labour principles, it can be found only 
 in one thing — land values. This is a form of taxation 
 to which all Progressive parties and groups in the country 
 are more or less committed, and even many Tories are 
 prepared to support. A majority even of the present 
 Parliament are in its favour, and in any Progressive House 
 of Commons it should easily pass. Such a tax appears to 
 me the one really important reform the next Liberal Govern- 
 ment can certainly carry, at least, until Progressive opinion 
 in the country has been much more fully ripened than 
 at present. The next Liberal Government is therefore 
 doubly bound to pass it at once. If they fail to do this, 
 then the strongest criticisms of Independent Labour 
 have been amply justified. There is no excuse here, such 
 as exists in most other important matters, on the score 
 of the House of Lords ; for in a matter of money the Lords 
 are really weaker than the Commons, and on a Budget 
 they are quite helpless. I contend that if, in its first 
 session, the next Liberal Cabinet removes the coal and 
 sugar duties and substitutes for them a tax on land values, 
 it will have done the chief thing at the moment actually 
 practicable, and Liberalism will have justified its existence ; 
 while, if it fails to do this, present-day Liberalism is a sham, 
 and the sooner the Radicals and Socialists break up the 
 new Government the better, even if the Tories get in 
 again for a time. 
 
 It is worth while to consider here the proper attitude 
 from their several points of view of the various groups 
 
 94
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 which compose the Progressive party towards this proposed 
 tax on land vahies. The Liberal party has now been 
 in opposition for more than eiglit years, and, but for 
 the blunders of its opponents, might readily have been 
 deprived of office for as long again. But, indeed, for the 
 demoralisation of the Unionist party, proceeding from 
 over-confidence in its strength after the last election, and 
 the reaction raised against it by the mismanagement of 
 the war, it is an open question whether there would ever 
 have been a Liberal Ministry again. The Unionists might 
 have remained in office until the growth of Socialism ousted 
 them for ever. As it is, however, the Liberals may easily 
 regain power, and we are at present considering how they 
 may best utilise their opportunity if they do. Now 
 nearly all Liberals are more or less strongly in fa\-our of 
 this reform, Vv^hile the party as a whole is pledged to it. 
 How far many Liberals are in earnest, and how far many 
 of them understand the matter, are open questions, as 
 there is a very large landlord and reactionary element 
 in the party ; but that Liberalism is pledged to tax land 
 values is certain. And it is the party interest to do it. 
 The path of the next Liberal Government, whatever they 
 do, will not be easy, and it will be practically impossible 
 if they attempt to play a waiting game and do nothing. 
 vSuch a course would mean another Tory reaction, and 
 another prolonged exile from office. However indifferent 
 wealthy supporters of the party may be to progress, one 
 thing at least is sure — the most lukewarm Liberal is 
 tired of being in opposition, and will make some sacrifice 
 rather than see the Tories in again, at least for a time. 
 
 Of the Radical section, of course, much more may 
 be said. These men really desire progress, though their 
 conception of progress itself is too frequently behind 
 the times, is too individualistic, to be a sure guide at all 
 points. Again, their devotion to the party is far too great. 
 They are very apt to identify progress with the triumph 
 of their party, and may be little disposed to insist upon 
 an advance when the Whips threaten them with another 
 Tory administration. They do not grasp the fact that 
 
 9S
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 if we are not to have a really Progressive administration, 
 we are better without one which professes to be Progressive. 
 There is an element of superstition in their devotion to 
 their own side, or in their dread of their opponents. Still, 
 they are, most of them, thoroughly at one on this question 
 of taxing land values. On their enthusiastic support 
 Ministers could rely ; v^-hile the Whigs could be managed by 
 making it clear that the long-deferred sweets of office would 
 be sacrificed unless the Budget as introduced were passed. 
 The Labour party, if numerous enough, however, will 
 hold the key to the position. The elections at Woolwich 
 and Barnard Castle, and the number of candidates under 
 the auspices of the Labour Representation Committee 
 already in the field, seem to point to a Labour party of 
 not less than twenty, possibly considerably more, in the 
 next Parliament. These men are absolutely Progressive ; 
 many of them ha\'e spent their lives, and several of them 
 have devoted very brilliant talents, to the cause of the 
 people. With them there is no danger as with the Liberals 
 of lukewarmness in reform. Indeed, the danger is all 
 the other way. There is a very real danger that in their 
 enthusiasm for progress, the Labour men may fail to 
 realise the constitutional and other conditions which 
 determine the rate at which progress is possible. If it 
 is to be feared that, rather than let the Tories in again, 
 the Radicals may be inclined to allow the Government 
 to let slip real opportunities for advance, it is equally 
 likely that the Labour men may refuse all support to the 
 Liberals except on conditions which it would be impossible 
 for them to fulfil. Either policy is suicidal. Any real 
 friend of the people, especially at the present juncture, 
 should be ready to aid in turning out a Liberal Government 
 which is letting any fair opportunity for advance slip 
 by ; and, equally, true democrats should recognise the 
 rather narrow limits within which progress is at present 
 possible, and provided Ministers are really doing all they 
 can, however little that may be, should abstain from 
 embarrassing them. The democratic policy should be 
 to keep the Government in so long as we are getting full 
 
 96
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 value in return for our support ; but to turn them out at 
 the first opportunity so soon as they attempt to substitute 
 promises for performances. 
 
 For this reason, I am convinced Labour men should 
 excuse the Government from any ambitious programme 
 of new legislation, which would, as already pointed out, 
 merely bring about a useless conflict with the House of 
 Lords without any guarantee of victory, and insist upon 
 a practical but satisfactory Budget. If they get that, 
 they should keep the Government in at least until it is 
 passed, using the evenings which fall to them in the ballot 
 for advancing new ideas and educating the people. Whether 
 they will do this or not, is unfortunately doubtful. It 
 is only too probable that the new party, if it finds the 
 Liberals dependent upon its vote, will be more willing 
 to grant them temporary assistance in return for some 
 large measure of social reform, probably excellent in itself, 
 but, for reasons already stated, impracticable at the present 
 moment. The Labour men might readily enough induce 
 the Liberals to introduce such a measure, and even the 
 Whigs might be persuaded to vote for it. The Whigs 
 would know perfectly well that the Lords would throw 
 the Bill out, and consequently the support of Labour would 
 be cheaply bought at such a price. At the end of the 
 session, Labour would hnd it had gained nothing in return 
 for its support, and the Liberals could plead that they 
 had done all that was in their power by passing the measure 
 through the only House where they had a majority. On 
 the other hand, if Labour demands only what the Liberals 
 -can actually carry out, whether the Lords like it or not. 
 Budget reform and better administration of the State 
 departments from a Labour point of view, together with 
 such a programme as can be carried without provoking 
 a vain, because premature, conflict with the Peers, they 
 will really get value for their votes, and can at once con- 
 vict the Liberals of hypocrisy if they fail to redeem their 
 pledges. For this reason they will probably find it far 
 harder to get pledges of this kind from the Liberals ; but 
 if they make it perfectly clear that whether the newly- 
 G
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 victorious party is to have their friendly neutrality or 
 their uncompromising opposition in the House and in 
 the country depends entirely upon whether land values 
 are taxed in the iirst Budget or not, I fancy they will get 
 their way. 
 
 It is more difficult to assure ourselves of the support 
 of the Irish party, necessary as that may be. Except 
 in so far as they have too frequently subordinated the 
 interests of Nationalism to those of the Roman Church, 
 the Irish have quite rightly regarded every British measure 
 purely from the point of view of its bearing on Irish Home 
 Rule. In this they are amply justified. The Irish 
 members are at Westminster against their will, and are 
 forced to take part in English legislation, while they are 
 not allowed to frame the laws of their own country. Under 
 such circumstances they would be excusable if, in the 
 spirit of revenge, the}^ were to use their votes purposely 
 for the injury of the British people who treat them with 
 such injustice. In any case it is simply the duty of the 
 Irish members to make themselves a nuisance, and they 
 cannot be accused of neglecting this duty. The Irishman 
 does not want to be at Westminster, and it is not his 
 business to make his enforced stay there pleasant to those 
 who detain him. He is therefore perfectly right in up- 
 setting the arrangements of English parties, in harrying 
 Ministers, and making the life of the private member 
 a burden to him. He would be perfectly justiiied, in 
 case he could get more for Ireland from them, in bringing 
 the Tories back to office, however disastrous such a course 
 might be to British interests ; he is in no way bound to 
 pay more attention to the interests of our island than 
 we have done to those of his. 
 
 We may be perfectly certain that the Irish will look 
 at the matter purely from an Irish point of view, and 
 the question we have to consider is what bearing, if any, 
 the taxation of land values can have upon the Nationalist 
 cause. I have said that it is a duty of the Irish member 
 to make himself a nuisance in our Parliament. This 
 he has hitherto only been able to do in one Chamber, as
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 the Nationalists have no representatives in the Lords. 
 During the long debates over the Coercion Act of 1881, 
 while the members of the House of Commons found life 
 a burden, when their nights were deprived of rest, and the 
 voice of Mr. Biggar must have haunted them in their 
 dreams, the Lords could go home in comfort each day 
 to dinner, or even afternoon tea. To them the whole 
 affair was no hardship, and we are not surprised to find 
 that the idea of Home Rule made no progress among 
 them. We should remember that political ideas are rarely 
 adopted from pure reason alone. If a member of the 
 House is bored to death by such a question as the Irish 
 one, there is a very strong likelihood that nature will, 
 ere long, reconcile him to any conceivable settlement 
 of the question that is sickening him. This will only 
 appear fantastic to those who imagine that our legislators 
 are above the level of ordinary human nature. I believe 
 that among the factors making for Home Rule in the 
 'eighties was the simple fact that the eternal Irish 
 Question was wearing members out. Both sides, as we 
 know, were prepared to negotiate with Mr. Parnell ; and 
 if it was the Liberals who managed to arrange with him, 
 the fact that both parties were ready to treat is eloquent 
 as to the effect of Irish obstruction. Now, the two greatest 
 obstacles to Home Rule are Protestant prejudice and 
 the vested interests of landlordism. The progress of 
 the Anglo-Catholic party and the decline of Bible worship 
 are steadily weakening the strength of the old no-Popery 
 feeling in this country. People are becoming either 
 Catholic or secular in sympathy, and the Orange party 
 is getting more and more out of touch with average feeling 
 on this side of the Irish Sea. The Education policy of 
 the present Government has revived the anti-Papist feeling 
 for awhile ; but this cannot last for long, it is against 
 the spirit of the age, and sooner or later the old English 
 horror of Popery will die out, giving place to a tolerant 
 indifference. Mr. Kensit was one of the last champions 
 of a dying cause ; and already it is difficult for most people 
 to feel the horror with which so many worthy folk regarded 
 
 99
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule measures, comparati\-ely 
 recent as the^^ are. 
 
 Thus one of the main hindrances to Home Rule is 
 dying out with the decline of militant Protestantism ; 
 and it is no less true that the present Government itself 
 aimed a deadly blow at the other. If the Irish Land Bill 
 is a success, the influence of the landlord in Irish politics 
 is nearly over. There will soon be no reason for land- 
 lords to struggle for the preservation of the Union in 
 order to preserve their interest as a class. When this 
 is so, the bitterness will be taken out of the Irish Question, 
 and, as I said in a former chapter, the grant of Home 
 Rule will be a mere question of party convenience. Yet 
 traditions, especially traditional hatreds, die hard, and it 
 will take something to get Home Rule through the House 
 of Lords, unless the Irish member can make himself a 
 nuisance to the Peers as he has done to the Commons. 
 Then, indeed, we may be sure the day of Home Rule will 
 not be long delayed. With the settlement of the Land 
 Question and the death of the old generation of Protestant 
 Peers, the Irish have only got to make their presence at 
 Westminster inconvenient to the Lords, to make the 
 latter quite willing to see them transported to College 
 Green. 
 
 Now the Irish are as helpless as the Liberals to make 
 the Lords pass democratic legislation. The Lords have 
 only got to turn up in numbers, as they did on the occasion 
 of the last Home Rule Bill, and it does not matter how 
 good the measure, they can turn it out with impunity 
 until a thorough revival of politics has taken place in 
 Great Britain. But as the Liberals can attack the Lords 
 through the Budget with effect, so can the Irish. In 
 the last two decades the Union has been a means of preserv- 
 ing landlordism in Ireland, of which the Irish people would 
 have made a speedy end had they possessed a national 
 Parliament. This is so no longer, and the Irish have only 
 got to show that their presence at Westminster is a menace 
 to English landlordism to convert every landlord in 
 England into a Home Ruler. It is hence, I conclude, 
 
 lOO
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 a clear gain to their cause for Irishmen to assist in taxing 
 English land values. We may be sure that the Lords, 
 so soon as they find the Government attacking their mono- 
 poly with success, will be only too willing to export eighty 
 of its majority to Dublin. 
 
 Now, if we proceed with the question of land taxation 
 by the method usually proposed, that is in a special Bill 
 for the purpose, we lose half the strength of our position. 
 The Lords, it is true, cannot amend the Bill, but they 
 can reject it without taking upon themselves the responsi- 
 bility of upsetting the finances of the nation. Probably they 
 would not venture to reject most money Bills, as the Lords 
 do not usually go beyond spoiling measures of which they 
 disapprove by amendments. But the taxation of land 
 values strikes at the existence of the landlord order. As 
 soon as we have this, the transfer of the land to the 
 community through the progress of the local public bodies 
 is only a question of time. They might, therefore, reject 
 such a Bill as that recently introduced by Mr. Trevelyan, 
 even in face of a large majority in the Commons ; and 
 it is probable enough that if they did, a Ministry containing 
 Lord Rosebery and other Liberal Imperialists would take 
 the opportunity to drop the subject, and proceed to less 
 disturbing business. But to include the idea in a Budget 
 disarms all opposition once it is done, and achieves three 
 important objects : (i) It demoralises the Lords themselves, 
 who will then begin to understand that it is useless rejecting 
 ordinary Bills likely to be costly to their order, since the 
 Commons can take as much of their income from them 
 as they like by means of the Budget ; (2) it sets free the 
 sources of social evolution by forcing land into the market 
 at its actual value, and enabling the people to acquire 
 it ; and (3) it affords a means of adjusting the disorganised 
 finances of the nation, and letting the class who have most 
 profited by militarism feel how expensive their policy 
 is. 
 
 Before concluding, I may briefly indicate the few other 
 things which I think might be achieved without provoking 
 a conflict with tlie Lords, before Ministers were in a position 
 
 lOI
 
 The Opportunity of Liberalism 
 
 to carry it to a successful issue. The Lords have no control 
 over the administration of the departments of State, and 
 a great deal can be done by a right spirit in the manage- 
 ment of them. If it be impossible to carry a measure 
 extending the powers of Borough Corporations, it is at 
 least feasible to check all contentious opposition to the 
 Bills they promote. In the course of a few sessions a 
 favourable Ministry could so discourage such organisations 
 as the British Electric Traction Trust, that outside opposi- 
 tion to the measures of Local Authorities would virtually 
 cease. Ministers could adopt a friendly attitude to the 
 London County Council, refusing to allow Parliament 
 to be made a means for obstructing their work, and could 
 create a tone or attitude in Parliament which it would 
 be very difficult for subsequent Governments to break 
 down. Again, it would be possible for Government to 
 become a model employer, insisting upon reasonable hours 
 and wages for its servants ; it could abandon the stupid 
 attempt of the present Ministry to discourage volunteering, 
 could largely democratise the basis of the army, and break 
 down the influence in it of fashionable society. It could 
 refuse to re-enact the doles granted by Lord Salisbury's 
 Government to the squires and parsons, and could ad- 
 minister the Education Acts in a thoroughly impartial 
 manner. In fact. Ministers, should they so desire it, 
 could introduce a democratic method into administration 
 which no Government following them dare disturb. 
 
 Some legislation also would be possible. The agitation 
 against the Education Acts of the present Government 
 would probably enable even a weak Liberal Ministry to 
 add to the amount of public control over denominational 
 schools. It was on this point that for once the Liberal 
 and Irish forces agreed, and it is probable that a short 
 Bill increasing the representation on denominational 
 schools from two to four out of six, as proposed by Mr. 
 Dillon, would be accepted by the new House of Commons ; 
 and if so, would probably be agreed to by the Lords, who 
 would not like to risk a contest except on a question vitally 
 affecting their vested interests. In the same measure powers 
 
 102
 
 Possibilities of a Progressive Majority 
 
 could be granted for women to sit in borough and county 
 councils, thus regaining for them their lost influence on 
 education. An amendment to Trade Union law, placing the 
 Unions' funds on the same footing they were supposed to be on 
 before the Taff Vale decision, would also in all probability go 
 through. The Trade Union vote will certainly be recognised 
 as a practical force after next election; and the Tories, whether 
 in the Lords or in the Commons, will be very foolish if 
 they run the risk of handing so potent a political force over to 
 their opponents for good. Such a result would very likely 
 follow either a strong Tory opposition to the amendment 
 of the law in, the Commons or its rejection in the Lords. 
 Whatever the attitude their opponents took up. Liberals 
 would have everything to gain by attempting to put 
 the matter right. If the Tories accepted their measure, 
 the question would be settled ; if not, whatever Trade 
 Unionist vote the Conservatives have at present would be 
 permanently lost to them. The Parish Council Act could 
 be amended so as to restore to it those clauses removed b}^ 
 the Lords in 1893, and generally to augment the powers 
 of the Councils, especially in acquiring land. Other 
 non-contentious but useful measures could be passed, 
 and got out of the way before the fighting sessions with 
 which the Parliament should close, came on, and thus 
 valuable time would be saved when it would be most 
 wanted. 
 
 In this way the finances of the nation could be steadil}^ 
 retrieved ; the power of the House of Lords, which largely 
 depends on prestige, could be reduced ; and the confidence of 
 the nation could be regained for a more heroic Liberalism 
 in the future. 
 
 103
 
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