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Gold Chains at Manufacturers 9 Prices. 4?1 F% In return for POST-OFFICE ORDER, free and safe by post, one . 141 Obligations imposed thereby . . . . . . . 142 Examples set by the United States and our Dependencies . 143 Liability of the Church to State Interference . . .144 Difference in the Relations between Civil Courts and Free Churches on the one hand, and a Parliamentary Church on the other 147 Unworthy Current Views ....... 148 Spiritual provision for remote parishes under Disestablishment 149 Success of Voluntary Efforts 149 The presence of Official Clergymen results in the diminution of the sense of social responsibility among Lay Gentry . 150 Xll CONTENTS. Official Position impairs the Clergyman's Influence . .151 Hostility of the Agricultural Labourer to the Established Clergy 152 Freedom no excuse for Illiberality 153 Liberality will be forthcoming equally in voluntary and State Churches 153 Scheme for Disestablishment 154 Why it missed fire ; but the work not thrown away . . lo.3 Disendowment, not Disestablishment, the real difficulty . 156 A precedent for Disestablishment in the case of the Irish Church 156 The Solution of the Problems involved in 1869 . . . 157 Provisions to be avoided ; the Church of England must bo regarded as consisting of many Corporations . . . 158 No Corporate Body must be recognised as entitled to com- pensation 159 Commutation a possible expedient for regulating the com- pensation of Individuals . 160 Compensation of Private Patrons The Disposal of Endowments . . .161 161 Treatment of Ancient and Modern Endowments and Fabrics 162 Ancient Churches . Modern Churches . Cathedrals and Abbeys 163 164 164 Definition of Congregations ; their Interests paramount . 166 Union of Congregations with, and Transference of Property to, Voluntary Episcopal Church would be possible . .167 Minor Details 168 Centralisation may modify the benefits of Disestablishment . 169 The Probable Issue 169 Spiritual Freedom the only remedy 170 VIL FREE SCHOOLS. Position of the Education Controversy 172 Results of Education Acts ....... 172 Grounds for Reconsideration 173 Imperfections of existing System 174 Patience of the People . 174 Persecution not the Aim of Educationists . . . .174 The practical Grievance 175 Power of the People . . 176 Centralisation and Partiality of System 177 Centralisation exists on Sufferance 178 Interests of Parents 179 Special Tax on Parents 179 The View of the smaller Ratepayers 180 CONTENTS. xiii PAGE Principle of Free Schools acknowledged . . . .181 The Incidence of Taxation 181 Endowments taken from the Poor 182 Compulsory Education not enforced for special advantage of Poor _ 183 Arbitrary and unequal Manner in which Fees are levied . 184 A graduated poverty Scale . . . . . . .185 Scrutiny into domestic Affairs 185 Parents put on Proof of Poverty 186 Different Laws for different Districts 186 How the Power of Remission is exercised . . . .186 County Court Procedure 187 Many Schools practically free 187 Regulations of Guardians 188 Pauperisation without Relief . . . . . . . 188 Scales of Fees capricious Examples ..... 189 A chaotic System Injustice and Inequality . . . .190 Struggles of the respectable Poor 191- Distinction between Remission and Payment . . . .192 Exaction of Fees chief Cause of Irregularity .... 192 "Waste of public Time .193 Waste of public Money 194 Payment in advance, and exclusion of Children . . .194 The operation of Compulsion .195 Friction and Waste of Power harrying of Parents . . 196 Admission without Prepayment Wright's Case . . . 197 Waste of Teachers' Time 198 Persecution of Scholars .198 The pecuniary Loss of the System 199 Experience of other Nations 200 The United States 200 Our own Experience 201 Remissions in London and Birmingham . . . . 201 The Manchester Free School Striking Comparisons . . 202 Unhealthy Tone of present System 204 Struggles of Parents to escape Application for Fees . . 205 Remission of Fees bad in Principle ..... 205 The only Remedy the complete Abolition of Fees . . . 206 VIII. TAXATION AND FINANCE. Unpopularity of Taxation .... The Nation hitherto unrepresented The Radical Policy Magnitude of necessary Reforms Amount of Taxation in England 207 208 208 208 209 xiv CONTENTS. PAOK Poll Taxes . 209 Introduction of indirect Taxation . . . . . .210 Former Extent of indirect Taxation . . . . .210 Taxes popular with the Tories 211 Often a Source of Wealth to Governing Classes . . .211 Privileged Application of Taxes 212 Inability of Parliament to keep down Expenditure the Cause 213 Aversion of People to old System 214 Aims of the new Policy 214 All Classes should be taxed 214 Remissions by Mr. Gladstone 215 Incidence still unjust . 215 Local Taxation 216 The Case of the Land .217 The preliminary Question : What is the just Incidence of Taxation? 218 Necessaries should not be taxed 218 A graduated Income-tax ' 218 Mr. J. S. Mill's Views 219 Objects for which Taxes may be raised ..... 220 Economy in the Services 221 The general Principle stated 221 Tendency to enlarge Functions of Government . . . 222 Old Debts owing to the People 222 Educational Endowments ....... 222 The Remedy 224 Reform of Land Laws 225 Enclosure of Land 226 The General Enclosure Act, 1845 227 Operation of Political Economy no remedy . . . .228 The Financial Reform Association 228 Abolition of Customs and Excise 228 The Drink Traffic 228 Cost of collecting Indirect Taxes 229 Taxes on Food . 230 Vexatious Taxes 231 The House Duty 231 Recapitulation of Objects 231 Reduction in Cost of Services . . . . .232 General Conclusion ... . 232 IX. LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. Defeat of Liberal Cabinets in 1874 and 1885 . . . .233 Hope and confidence of Liberals 233 Devotion to domestic Legislation 233 CONTENTS. XV FACIE Extension of Local Government the work of reformed Parlia- ments ........... 234 Local Government the foundation of Citizenship . . . 234 The present conditions of Local Government .... 234 The Educational results 235 Imperfections of Machinery . . 235 Conflicting authorities ........ 236 Rural Districts are without Local Government . . . 236 Reforms required . . . . .-. . . . . 236 Partition for Administrative Purposes ..... 236 Household Suffrage the basis of Local Government . . 237 County Boards and Councils ....... 237 The Case of the Metropolis - . 237 Immense centralisation of Sir "Wm. Harcourt's measure . 238 Local Councils for Metropolis . . . ... 238 Division of the United Kingdom 238 The Scotch System 239 Proposal to establish a Scotch Secretary of State . . . 240 The case of Wales 240 Existing strain on Parliamentary Government . . . 240 Neglect of Colonial and Indian Topics 241 Irritation and Friction 241 Collision between Local and Central Authorities . . . 241 Evils intensified in Scotland and Ireland .... 242 The Irish People excluded from Management of their Affairs 242 Power and Influence of " the Castle " 242 Constitution of Imperial Government in Ireland . . . 243 The Disposal of Patronage 244 The Irish Prison System 244 Education, Constabulary, Magistrates 244 Irish Board of Works controlled in London .... 245 Extent of its Powers 245 The Fishery Board 246 The System a Badge of Supremacy . . . . .247 The Problem stated 247 The Solution proposed 247 County Boards 248 National Councils for Scotland, Ireland, and Wales . . 249 Work of National Councils .250 Private-bill Legislation . . . . . . . 250 Expense of private Bills as now conducted .... 251 Eesults anticipated 252 The Task of governing Ireland under present System a hope- less one 252 The Government is isolated 253 Eelation of unpaid Magistrates to the People .... 254 The stipendiary Magistrates 254 Evils of Centralisation 255 Want of Technical Education The Obstruction . . . 255 XVI CONTENTS. PACK Waste in the legal Establishment 256 The Interest of all Parties to settle the Question on broad lines 257 The Boot of Irish Disaffection 258 Reforms granted too late. Irish Legislation should have a domestic and not a foreign Origin . . 259 Advantages to Exchequer of Local Government 259 Powers of National Councils .... 260 A Separate Parliament considered ... 261 The probable effect of the scheme proposed . 261 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME, I. INTRODUCTORY. THE smoke of battle having cleared off, and the clash The revolu- v -J J M. -ui 4. ' *v tionof 1884. ot arms subsided, it is possible to ascertain the pre- Gains and cise position of the forces recently engaged, and to losses, compute the chief results of the conflict. Which side can claim the preponderating advantage ? Are the fruits of victory evenly divided, or has one of the combatants secured a present triumph only at the cost of future defeat ? Such are the questions which now rise naturally to the lips of the anxious spectators of the fray, and which, it may be frankly confessed, seem at first to admit of more than one answer. Neither party, it is clear, can vaunt a monopoly of nominal gains. Neither can boast an immunity from losses. Neither emerges from the fight quite scathless. Let an enumeration of the facts show to which camp the balance of fortune inclines. There are certain points that cannot be in dispute, The claim and for the purpose of estimating the character and Tories, probable consequences of the struggle little more is wanted than to specify these. The Tories profess B 2 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. to survey the retrospect not without complacency. Some places of apparent strength have passed into their hands. There are, as they may allege, prin- ciples which they have asserted and pretensions which they have resisted. Their leaders declared, six months ago, that within certain limits they would hold their ground. They may now con- gratulate themselves on having held it. Thus they can point to the unmistakable fact 1;hat they secured the production of the Redistribution Bill before the Franchise Bill was passed ; not, indeed, before it was safe, but two or three days before it. was actually added to the statute-book. This, if not a great is yet a definite achievement, and it may freely be put down to the credit of the Conservative cause. Again, although the Franchise Bill has become law precisely in the same shape in which it was originally intro- duced, the Tories gained a voice in the settlement of the provisions of the Seats Bill a measure that constitutes as integral a portion of parliamentary reform as the extension of the franchise. Conse- quently, they may argue, they have precluded the Liberals from vaunting hereafter that it is their hands alone which have placed the coping-stone upon the edifice of popular Government. Finally, it is open to the Conservatives to insist that by the judicious action of their leaders they have ended or postponed the agitation against the House of Lords. The Liberal This summary of the successes of the late Opposi- m tion would be acknowledged by Conservatives themr INTRODUCTORY. 3 selves to be accurate. Let us now look at the other side of the account, and see what reason the Liberals have for satisfaction. The first entry which meets one here records the one broad, simple fact that, upon the passing of the Franchise Act the Liberals obtained the necessary leverage for securing the settlement of the Redistribution question. But that is not all. The lines on which the question of Redistribution Kave been finally arranged are infi- nitely more in accordance with Liberal principles than if the Downing Street conferences had never been held, while the measure produced is far in advance of anything which the boldest of Liberal Governments could have dared to propose, in the face of the pronounced hostility of the Tories. When, therefore, we look at the ends rather than the meanSj we find that the advantages of the so- called compromise are, as far as can be judged, placed exclusively in the Liberal scale. If it could be contended that the policy of the Tories has modi- fied in a Tory sense the Redistribution Bill of the Government, as it was known to the world from the draft scheme published in October, 1884, the result would be different. It is the details and the general tendency of the measure which has now received the royal assent, as compared with the measure that one may suppose Mr. Gladstone was originally pre- pared to introduce, which form the real test of the situation. The Act indeed is not a final one, but it brings finality into no remote prospect, and its anomalies stand out in such sharp contrast to what THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. The case examined. Net resu't of Fran- chise Act. Changes under the Seats Act. Prospective gain to Radicalism, may be called its principles that they challenge or ensure removal at no distant date. Let us, however, take the two Acts as they are. If we do this, and if we examine them by the light which an ordinary knowledge of English popular feeling in town and country throws upon them, we shall perceive that they portend nothing less than a revolution, though a silent and peaceful one. The Parliament of 1880 was elected by three mil- lions of electors, of whom it was estimated one-third were of the working classes. The next House of Commons will be elected by five millions of men, of whom three-fifths belong to the labouring popu- lation. The next noticeable feature is the magnitude of the change effected by the Seats Act. The Reform Act of 1832 distributed one hundred and forty-three seats. The Act of 1867 dealt only with forty-seven seats. The Act of 1885 distributed one hundred and sixty seats. The increased representation conferred on the large towns of the United King- dom warrants us in anticipating a large increase in the number of Liberals sent by these constituencies to Parliament. London, which, has now a total of twenty-two members, and which, returns eight Tories, will have fifty-nine members, of whom statistics would seem to show that not more than a fourth, or, in other words fifteen members, are likely to be Tories. If we include in our estimate seven of the largest provincial towns (Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinbro', INTRODUCTORY. 5 and Sheffield) it may be reckoned that whereas forty-one members, among whom are thirteen Tories, are now returned by eight of the largest constituencies in England, a hundred and two members, of whom not more than thirty are likely to be Tories, will be returned by these same towns in the future. No pretentions to infallibility are advanced for this calculation, but impartial critics will be disposed to allow that it is not very wide of the mark. The gain to Radicalism is enormous. It is a gain not only of numbers but of proportion. It is more even than this. It points to the aug- mentation of Radicalism in a ratio of geometrical as well as of arithmetical progression. The great towns as they now are, constitute the The power source and centre of English political opinion. It is from them that Liberal legislation receives its initiative ; it is the steady pressure exercised by them that guarantees the political progress of the country. To enlarge the representation of these places is to magnify their authority. Leeds with five and Birmingham with seven members will not be merely twice or three times as powerful as they are now. The area over which their political force will radiate will be more than proportionately extended, and their political example will be looked to with an attention and followed with a fidelity that cannot be explained by the mere numerical gain they will acquire in the counsels of the nation. They will, in other words, have, as it has been often said in the past that London has, a prerogative vote, of the towns. 6 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. and their action will regulate that of scores of smaller constituencies. Abolition But this is not all the Radical gain. "We have vote! m >fl y a * la^ g^ r id f the minority vote, which was an insidious device to cripple popular strength, to throw the balance of power into the hands of the Whigs, and to create dissensions amongst the majority. The minority vote has done the only useful work of which it was capable. It rendered a high-class organisation imperative, and was in reality the parent of the caucus. But its offspring will survive it. A perfectly finished machinery to secure popular representation has become the per- manent condition of effective political strength, single- The second feature in the measure is the creation seats. ber f single-member districts. These cannot but serve still further to accentuate the democratic influence exercised by the large provincial capitals as well as by the metropolis itself. Prominent amongst the results which the existence of these constituencies will yield is the reduction in the cost of elections. This will induce many Radicals who would not ven- ture a contest on a larger scale to come forward. It will seem a less perilous, as it will certainly be a less costly, enterprise to fight a ward than to fight an entire borough. The member thus returned will be in closer connection with, and will be more directly amenable to, his constituents than is the case at present. If, therefore, the large towns show themselves on the whole Radical, we may be quite certain that the individual Radicals who represent INTRODUCTORY. 7 them will be of a more emphatic and exacting kind than those with whom the House of Commons has, save in rare instances, made the acquaintance. There is yet another aspect in which the operation Probable of the single-member constituencies must be re- t ion of garded. Granted that in some cases this system will secure all that is practicable in the way of minority representation, and that it will give us an occasional member returned in the interests of vil- ladom or plutocracy pure and simple, in others and this will be the rule it will remove the possi- bility which has hitherto existed of arranging, even where the majority of the voters may have been of a decidedly Radical complexion, for the return of one Moderate in conjunction with one Radical. There will be no room for those convenient under- standings, those amicable parliamentary bargains, under a regime of single-member districts, in which ultimately a majority that in the long run is likely to be Radical, is represented. Dual and multiple constituencies have always been the chosen oppor- tunities of the armchair politician. But the buffers on which timid Liberalism has hitherto relied against advanced Liberalism will henceforth disappear. In every case, or almost every case, the buttons will be taken off the foils, and the duel will be confined to the real principals. In boroughs and in counties, in every single-member constituency throughout the kingdom, parties will become more highly organised and the struggle will be proportionately more severe. It has been said that, as a consequence of the Re- 8 THE EADICAL PROGRAMME. distribution Act, the House of Commons will be transformed into an assembly in which the tradi- tional lines of demarcation between two parties in the State may be intersected by such a multitude of minor distinctions and subdivisions as to be no longer recognisable, and that parliamentary majo- rities will only be procurable by a fortuitous com- bination of heterogeneous groups. There is absolutely nothing to justify this prediction. We have to think not of what might be at Westminster, but of what will be in the constituencies, where the only division recognised is that into Liberals and Conser- vatives, Radicals and Tories. The Athenian legis- lator enacted that those who remained neutral during any civil disturbance should be punished. Neu- trality recommends itself as little to the British elector in these days of universal household suffrage as it did to Solon, and the visionary figment of a third party rests upon no other foundation than the purely hypothetical leaning towards neutrality with which the average Englishman is absurdly cre- dited. Prospects For these reasons it is safe to assume that the counties, sequel of the Redistribution Act must be, while emphasising its influence, to intensify the Liberalism or the Radicalism of the great towns of the United Kingdom. What is the prospect in the counties ? That the Conservatives may be the masters of many of the single-member constituencies into which the counties will be divided no one doubts. On the other hand, the principle on which county represen- INTRODUCTORY. 9 tation is arranged, the allocation of certain towns to certain districts as their centres and sponsors, will be of distinct advantage to Liberalism, which is likely to gain far more than Conservatism from this qualified fusion of the urban and rural elements of the English people. Add to this that in some purely rural districts, where the condition of the agricultural labourers is worst, it will not be found impossible to run a working man's candidate, who ex hypothcsi, will be hostile to the vested interests and privileges of landlordism, and it is plain that even in the counties the chances of the Liberal party will have greatly improved. But, it may be replied, the counties and the rural Position population will remain in the long run what they Lbourer now are, the strongholds of Conservatism. In ^ r r m *^ w villages and hamlets matters move slowly. Quieta non movers, is the motto engraved on the heart of the rustic, who is deaf to the allurements of the agitator and proof against the incitements of the demagogue. The church and the parson, the hall and the squire, are the natural and impregnable rallying places of Conservatism. May not senti- ment be as powerful as argument, and shall we not find that the instincts of the English masses, espe- cially when they are removed beyond the perilous and disturbing temptations of towns, are Conserva- tive above all things ? The obvious rejoinder is that, if such has been The answer, found to be the case to the present time, it is because the agricultural labourer has not been sub- 10 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. jected to the conditions which can alone test his allegiance to Toryism ; because no alternatives have been offered him to the grooves in which his supe- riors have held it to be desirable he should move. In the future he will be brought within range of those quickening and revolutionary influences which the advance of knowledge, educational and political, will supply. At the same time he will be approached more directly and perhaps more effectually than this. What are called his instincts may for some time prove superior to his interests, and the appeals made to the latter may be rejected by the former. How long will it be before the citadel of Toryism, en- shrined, as we are bidden to believe, in the bosom of every tiller of the soil, yields to the solicitation of Radicalism ? Or are we to believe that his attach- ment to the existing regime an attachment that is partly an affair of sentiment, and partly of life-long subjection to parochial authority will withstand the succession of shocks to which it will be exposed ? It is easy to understand that the territorialists and their champions should fervently believe in the impossibility of change. Having reduced the occu- pants of the soil to a condition of comparative ser- vility, and used the parliamentary votes of the farmers for their own purposes, why, they may ask, should they not be able to do the same with the labourer ? Enfran- Admitting that the labourer is at present an of lease 6 -" unknown quantity, let us attempt to look a little holders. ahead, and to appraise somewhat definitely the situ- INTRODUCTORY. 11 ation in which he will find himself. Here we have Restitution something else than mere conjecture by which to mons? go. Mr. Broadhurst's Bill for the compulsory en- franchisement of leaseholders is about to be supple- mented by a measure which Mr. Jesse Collings has in hand for the restitution of illegal enclosures. The object of this measure is to restore all common- lands, wastes, roadsides, and other enclosures and encroachments which have been made illegally and without the sanction of Parliament since 1800, and to provide that such lands be placed in trust of the local authorities of the districts in which they are found for the benefit of the labouring classes and other inhabitants of those districts. How many private properties are there in the United Kingdom whose estates would be unaffected by legislation proceeding upon these lines ? Yet Sir Charles Dilke, speaking at Aylesbury, avowed his belief that this Bill will pass. It may be that so cool- headed and clear-sighted a man, expressing himself with the knowledge and responsibility which the presidency of the Local Government Board gave to him, was wrong, and that the voters in rural dis- tricts have no wish to repossess themselves of those portions of the land of which they have been des- poiled that, in other words, they will be content to have a vote and not to use it. But, assuming Sir Charles Dilke to be right, there is further legis- lation of a kind which would lately have been deemed revolutionary that is inevitable. Thus, unless the agricultural labourer, in con- e mment V " prospects. 12 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. junction with the artisan, who, it must be remem- bered, is to be emancipated in almost equal pro- portion with him, is to swell the force of reac- tionary Conservatism, it is absolutely certain that, before two or three years have passed, there will come into existence a scheme of county govern- ment, securing the establishment of rural munici- palities throughout the country. This will be an innovation second only in importance to the franchise itself. The exercise of the municipal vote which it will give the labourer will be an exceed- ingly useful and instructive discipline for the exercise of the political vote. When county administration has once been organised on a new Free basis, the cry for free education will be raised. It Land re- will, always supposing that the newly -created form. citizens are not prepared to remain indifferent to their lot, be only one of many demands for their improvement. One may confidently anticipate that the whole aspect of the agricultural question will undergo a change, and that instead of such measures as the Agricultural Holdings Act, legislation will, under the pressure of the new force applied to it, be introduced for the purpose of bringing the land into the best use for the nation. Thus far the agricultural labourer has been regarded by the political economists as a mere machine an instru- ment to be used for the creation of wealth, deposited in the hands of the few ; not as a human being whose comfort, health, and home are to be con- sidered, and who has a claim to such benefits as IXTEODUCTORY. 13 were conferred by the Factory Acts upon the labourers in towns. If his welfare cannot be suffi- ciently protected without the taxation of property, then property will be taxed. But it is needless now to attempt to define the Socialist measures that may be necessary for these ends. It esis is enough to indicate their general character. They sound the death-knell of the laissez-faire system ; and if the agricultural labourer is not strong enough to look after himself, to take the initiative in the social reforms prompted by a rational estimate of private interest, there is an organised body of politicians in this country who will at least do thus much for him. If it be said that this is communism, the answer is that it is not. If it be said that it is legislation of a socialist tendency, the impeachment may readily be admitted. Between such legislation and com- munism there is all the difference in the world. Communism means the reduction of everything to a dead level, the destruction of private adventure, the paralysis of private industry, the atrophy of private effort. The socialistic measures now contemplated would preserve in their normal vigour and freshness all the individual activities of English citizenship, and would do nothing more spoliatory than tax if and in what degree necessary aggregations of wealth for the good of the community. That the working men of agricultural England Attractions will be solicited by the more advanced of their poli- tical leaders to move in this direction, and not to be ele c torate - satisfied till these claims have been conceded, is in- 14 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. disputable. Equally certain is it that the prospect thus opened to them, which, so far as votes can assure its accomplishment, it will be within their power to realise, will have powerful attractions for many of their number. What do What have the landed class to offer as an alterna- offer? tive ? Territorial Toryism has thus far had as its main principle the instinct of preservation, and, above all, the protection for property. But Toryism of this kind is not only moribund, it is actually dead. It is as much a relic of the past as the star of the Order of the Garter presented by the late Lord Hertford to Lord Beaconsfield, and recently on view as a curiosity at a jeweller's in the Haymarket. As the Redistribution Act, by its almost uniform sub- stitution of one-member districts for plural-member constituencies, will gradually result in the extinction of the Whigs, so it will announce the doom of the old-fashioned Conservatives. The name may remain, but it will signify the Tory democracy of Lord Ran- dolph Churchill, which is Radicalism tricking itself out in a fantastic dress, and not the Conservatism of Sir Robert Peel or even of Lord Greorge Bentinck. Obligations There are other liabilities attaching to land which, of property. un( j er a democratic regime, led by competent and resolute chiefs, the possessors of land are likely to realise in the not remote future. The new Reform Act, complete in both parts, will enable, or will compel, Parliament to give something like the same prominence to the maxim that property has its obli- gations as it has given almost exclusively in the past INTRODUCTORY. . 15 to the familiar postulate that property has its rights. Conservatives and Radicals, Lord Salisbury as well as Mr. Chamberlain, may accept with equal readi- ness the principle thus formulated. But how about its application ? When the President of the Board of- Trade wrote, costof as he did, in the Fortnightly Review for November, p^^fbe 1883, "The expense of making towns habitable for thrown on the toilers who dwell in them must be thrown on the land which their toil makes valuable without any effort on the part of its owners," was the corol- lary with which he followed the principle one that Lord Salisbury is likely to accept ? Again, would not Lord Salisbury stigmatise as revolutionary the other purposes to which it will be strenuously at- tempted to turn the democratic impetus imparted by the Reform Acts to the community? Let us glance at some of these. All land, as Radicals of the type of Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Trevelyan would allow, should beheld subject to the right of the community, as represented by the local authority, to expropriate the owner for any public purpose at a fair value. This fair value, as Mr. Chamberlain has repeatedly explained, is the price which a willing seller would obtain in the open market from a private purchaser, with no allowance for prospective value or compulsory sale. The pro- posal is one that would be legitimately resorted to in furtherance of all schemes of sanitary or general im- provement, in the creation of public works or public buildings, in the provision of artisans' dwellings in 16 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. towns, and of course in the provision of labourers' dwellings in the country, with a sufficient minimum of land attached to them. other obii- But there are other burdens than these which the landlords. l an d will hereafter have to bear. They may be abeta quit " P^ ace< ^ un( ler two heads. In the first place, a more tion. equitable taxation in connection with the revision of the death duties ; secondly, liability to full taxa- tion on value in the case of vacant ground in towns. As matters are, this ground, frequently of enormous present value, and held for a prospective rise, is taxed on its value for agricultural purposes But it is never destined for these. It is destined only for building. As such it would be bought ; the price which as such it would command is the criterion of its worth, and should therefore fix the standard of its rating. Finally, the question of rating and taxation cannot be raised in the new Parliament without the necessity forcing itself upon the minds of elected and electors of making the rateable value of all land and houses a self-acting test of real value. Once this was done, the local authority would acquire the right of at any time purchasing property at its rateable value. It would of necessity be an ante- cedent condition that the rating of the United Kingdom must undergo a revision. The rateable value is now nearly always considerably under the rental value. Provided only it were raised uni- formly, there could be no unfairness in or objection to raising it; and a full, fair value having been, arrived at all property being, in other words, INTRODUCTORY. 17 docketted with its legitimate market price there would be indicated a proper figure for purposes both of taxation and expropriation. The rating of mansions and parks would be immediately affected by the operation of this scheme, seeing that the sum on which the owners would have to pay rates would be that for which they were willing to sell. Upon such a legislative cycle as that described in Changes in the foregoing pages it would seem probable that we future" are shortly about to enter. The Reform Act of ^ ccele . ra ' oo " n 188-i-o, by creating a new electorate, will not per- legislation. haps revolutionise, but will produce many modifica- tions in the personnel of Parliament. There will be alike at Westminster and in the country a fresh legislative machinery. Members of the House of Commons, being chosen for the most part by wards or districts, will be brought more closely into contact with voters, and will be compelled to have a surer and more constant touch of those whom they represent. The goal towards which the advance will probably be made at an accelerated pace, is that in the direc- tion of which the legislation of the last quarter of a century has been tending the intervention, in other words, of the State on behalf of the weak against the strong, in the interests of labour against capital, of want and suffering against luxury and ease. We are sometimes told that another swing of the pendulum will shortly be witnessed, and that a reaction against the interference of Government in the relations of daily life between classes of the community will set in. Where are the signs of it ? They are not to C 18 THE EADICAL PROGRAMME. be found in the reception given to those public men who have spoken in the sense in which these remarks have been written, or in the welcome, to judge not only from the working men's papers, but from the- daily press, to a measure like that for the restitution of illegal enclosures. Those whom Gambetta styled the nouvettes couches sociales may possibly assimilate themselves to their superiors, may acquire their pre- judices, look at things from their point of view, mechanically subordinate themselves to their in- terests, and be content to remain the instruments of their effacement. But if like effects are generated by like causes, if there is any dynamic force in legis- lation, if the law of progress is not an imposture and the desire of self-improvement an unreality, the change of policy following the Reform Acts cannot fail to be yet more remarkable than the reduction of the numerical influence of Conservatism. This may mean a peaceful, but it will none the less mean a genuine revolution. The Conservatives may periodi- cally return to office, but they will have place and not power. They may profit by the blunders of their opponents, or they may strengthen themselves by outbidding them ; but unless the classes now enfranchised reveal an amount of Conservative im- mobility and obstruction to all change hitherto un- suspected, and unless they succeed in communicating the influence of these qualities to the remainder of the country, how is the onward movement to be arrested ? The House "Thank heavens!" some one may still be found of Lords, ^ exdaijj^ we have a House of Lords." For INTRODUCTORY. 19 the moment, indeed, the agitation against the House of Lords is at an end, but on what terms is it at an end, and what does its cessation prognosticate ? So far from recognising in it any omen of hope, the Tories would be wise to see in it reason for dis- couragement. No one now menaces the peers with legislative disestablishment, because they have ac- quiesced in the national will. So long as they are prepared on future occasions to reduce themselves to a nullity whenever it is desired for them to do so, no one will care to attack them. But it is quite cer- tain that with the House of Commons growing more democratic and more in sympathy with the people every year, the interference of the Lords the hostile action, in other words, of a Chamber which possesses a permanent anti-popular majority will not be tolerated with the same equanimity as heretofore. The country, indeed, would not allow any Govern- ment possessing its confidence to suffer such a thing, and the condition on which alike ministries and the hereditary and aristocratic branches of the legisla- ture exist, will be that the latter abstains from asserting itself. Nor, indeed, is it to be supposed that the Lords will fail to profit by experience. Looking at what has taken place already in the immediate past, and what may be expected to take place in the not remote future, the Lords will scarcely be encouraged to 'snatch another barren triumph, and for the sake of an empty victory to sacrifice the reality of everything for which they have fought. II. MACHINERY. Construe- EXCEPTIONS are sometimes taken to the writings and caiism. The speeches of Radicals on the ground that they are machinery wa ntins; i n the constructive element, and that while necessary * -, -, i> T T T to found a predicting the triumph of Radicalism, they do not clearly indicate the measures by, and the lines on, which victory is to be won. Such a defect, fortu- nately, admits of an easy remedy, and the object of the present series of papers is to state and examine in detail a comprehensive scheme of legislative action upon which the energies of Radicals may be concentrated, and which may form a rallying ground for the party. The main features of the programme will be those enumerated by Mr. Chamberlain several years ago in the Fortnightly Review, under the heads of "Free Church," " Free Schools," "Free Land," and " Free Labour." In the first instance it may be well to devote a few pages to specifying the changes in our political machinery which are the essential conditions of fulfilling a Radical Pro- gramme. If they are not all to be looked for imme- diately, their realisation within a reasonable time is as certain as it is necessary. The rapidity with which the political transformation wrought by the Reform Acts came about is the best augury for the success of other Radical proposals. No thought- ful person has ever imagined that, with an unre- MACHINERY. 21 formed Parliament, advanced Liberals could witness the execution of their political purposes. The mo- difications still to be desired are not conceived in any spirit of devotion to a theoretically perfect legis- lature. They are wanted not as steps in the direc- tion of constitutional symmetry, but as practical improvements which will pave the way to practical results. Parliamentary reform has no value or meaning except as a preliminary of political action,, and the reforms which Mr. Chamberlain delineated in his speech at the Bright anniversary, and after- wards in his address to the Cobden Club, are to be advocated, as they have been denounced, because they are calculated to influence the whole current of legislation for some years to come. If they were not likely to have that effect they would be valueless. The leverage which the Reform Acts will place Three ta- in the hands of the Democratic leaders will be conditions? immense, and will make them almost immediately Ob J. e ? tio > :ii ' * anticipated. the controlling party in the btate ; but before we have a political machinery which will give effect to the wishes of the majority, other important innova- tions must be accomplished. Manhood suffrage, equal electoral districts, and the payment of mem- bers, are each of them in their turn indispensable. That ultimately every male adult in the United Kingdom will receive a parliamentary vote no one doubts. It is as certain as was the extension of household franchise to counties. It is not a ques- tion of purely speculative interest, such as the sub- stitution of a republican for a monarchical form of 22 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Government, or even the disestablishment and dis- endowment of the State Church. Granted that this is so, many persons will feel tempted to say, let the evil day be deferred as long as possible. When Canning was told that sooner or later there must be war, he replied, " Then let it be later." But this principle of postponement does not apply in the case of contingencies which cannot in themselves be pronounced necessary evils. If it could be shown that there was something in our present social or political state which invested manhood suffrage with exceptional terrors, and which constituted a weighty reason against raising the subject now, the force of the argument in favour of delay might readily be admitted. But no one pretends that the universal diffusion of the electoral privilege or right is more dangerous to-day than it will be five, ten, or twenty years hence ; and once this step is taken, we shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing that we have got to the rock. When Mr. Disraeli brought forward his Reform Bill in 1867, he protested that, short of household suffrage, there was no logical or intelligible resting-place. He was not original. He simply adopted a view which Mr. Bright had always urged. Precisely the same thing may be said of manhood suffrage. It is the goal whither events are hastening ; and there is no reason to suppose that, if it be reached soon, it will portend more of danger and disturbance than if we travel in its direction by long stages and at a tardy pace. A pause must necessarily be made after the exacting MACHINERY. 23 struggle and the great advance of the last two sessions, but when once it is seen that the step now taken is safe, there will be plenty of people, even amongst those who do not call themselves Radicals, who will be willing to go farther, in order to make " the bounds of freedom wider still." Manhood suffrage, be it remembered, is a political Manhood arrangement as to the working of which we do not suffra s e - lack the data of practical experience. It has been in force for years among Englishmen, our fellow- subjects, in that Greater Britain which lies beyond seas. It is acclimatised not only in France, Ger- many, Italy, Greece, and, with certain limitations, in Austria, but in Canada and in our Australasian colonies. It has not been followed in any of our dependencies b) 7 the grievous abuses which theo- retical pessimists declare are inevitable from it. On the contrary, the sentiment of order is noto- riously as strong in our Canadian and Australasian dominions as in any portion of the Empire. The political condition of France may be cited as an argument against manhood suffrage, and would certainly seem primd facie to discredit it ; but let us look at this matter a little more closely. What is the true cause of the instability of France? It arises not from the circumstance that every male of mature years has a vote, but from the deplorable lack of political education in individuals ; not, in other words, from the multitude of electors, but from the dearth of political training. A system of personal rule, with all its attendant corruptions and 24 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. enfeeblements, which dominated France for more than twenty years, is an evil preparation for popular government and the unrestricted exercise of poli- tical right. The advocates of manhood suffrage, however, must expect to be confronted with an objection which they will be told is not derived from foreign soil, but is indigenous to this country. Manhood suffrage in England, they will be assured, means the hopeless deterioration of the electorate. Once admit this charge, and a residuum worse even than that which Mr. Bright described eighteen years ago will be enfranchised. Now what are the grounds on which this apprehension rests ? In large There are some large provincial towns in England is already where manhood suffrage may be said practically to exist a Broach to a l reac ty- In Birmingham, Sheffield, and other cities manhood it is the rule for families among the working classes to live not in lodgings but in separate houses. This is not the case in London, and the influence which the change now contemplated would have in the metro- polis would unquestionably be far greater than it would exercise elsewhere. But is there any reason for saying, or believing, that either in London or in any other considerable centre of population, man- hood suffrage would introduce to the constitution voters who would, on the whole, compare unfa- vourably with those now on the register? Who are the men that are at present excluded from the suffrage ? The answer is that they are, for the most part, the younger and more intelligent members of the community the men who have grown up under MACHINERY. 25 the operation of educational reforms of the last fifteen years, and who illustrate, it is natural to believe, some of their quickening power. So far from the enfranchisement of the adult males of the United Kingdom affecting the constituencies for the worse, the probability, or the certainty, is that they would introduce into them a leaven of mental and moral improvement. What is true of manhood suffrage is true also of Equal dec- equal electoral districts. "Whether we like or dis- t ricts ; the like the arrangement, we are rapidly approaching ^{Jf'^ 6 more closely to it. It is the principle of the Redis- distribu- tribution Act, and has been approximately carried out by the Commissioners in the division of towns and counties. That improvements may be made is unquestionable, but for the first time in the history of representation an effort, attended with a large degree of success, has been made to equalise the value of votes by equalising the voting areas. The Tories take credit for this result. As a matter of fact, it is the outcome of Mr. Chamberlain's speech at Bir- mingham on the occasion of the Bright celebration, 1883. He then said, "It is no use to increase the number of voters if you minimise the political influ- ence which the political vote confers. It is no use to put a million in the place of 100,000 if the million has no greater powers than the 100,000 had before." The arrangements for redistribution, including Arr ange- the abolition of the minority vote, have mainly redistritm- f olio wed the lines suggested in the original article 26 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. lines sug- on the machinery of the Radical Programme con- fhese d m tained in the Fortnightly Review for August, papers. 1883. It was then written, " the relative merits of the principle of scrutin de liste and of scrutin d'arron- dissement, applied to the great English constituencies, may still be an open question. The ground on which M. Grambetta declared the former to be abso- lutely imperative for France was, that otherwise it was, and must remain, impossible to prevent an Scrutin importance and prominence being accorded to local dissement interests and their representatives, which would P reven * men ^ * ne highest mark and capacity from finding their way into the Legislature. But the advance which scrutin d'arrondissement, if adopted under a scheme of redistribution, would signalise, must be so great as to be accepted with satisfaction. An idea may be readily formed of its operation. Take the case of a town with a population of 400,000. That would be entitled to eight members. The method of scrutin de liste would make each one of its representatives a member not for a section of the constituency, but for the whole constituency. Scrutin d'arrondissement would assign a representa- tive apiece to the eight wards into which the whole constituency would be divided. There is much to be said in favour of the latter arrangement, and its special adaptabilities to English requirements are undoubted. One general condition must steadily be borne in mind and acted upon. An equitable system of parliamentary representation is absolutely inconsistent with the minority vote, and no sound MACHINERY. 27 Radical can acquiesce in such a device for minimi- sing, and it may be for nullifying altogether, the power of the majority." It may not be generally known that the first Payment of practical proposal brought forward in the House m of Commons for the payment of members proceeded from the grandfather of the present Duke of Marl- borough. In 1830 the then Lord Blandford, who represented Woodstock, introduced a Reform Bill in accordance with the tenor of an abstract resolution in favour of reform which the House of Commons had previously negatived. He proposed not only to transfer the franchises from decayed or corrupt boroughs to large unrepresented towns, to confer the franchise on all payers of scot and lot, all copy- holders and leaseholders, but to pay county members at the rate of 4 and borough members at the rate of 2 a day. It is stated in a late number of the Quarterly Renew that Mr. Chamberlain has declared The "Quar- himself in favour of a proposal similar to that advo- view " on cated by the sixth Duke of Marlborough, and one which adds to the expenditure of the country 658,000, " an amount exceeding the whole cost of Royalty, pensions, annuities, and every charge included." " Nothing is more easy than to deal with your opponent when you are able to state his case in your own terms. As a matter of fact, Mr. Cham- berlain proposes to do nothing of the sort. What- ever sum may be paid to the representatives of the people, it would be a charge not, as the Quarterly reviewer finds it convenient to assume, upon the 28 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Imperial exchequer, but upon the constituencies. As for the parliamentary stipend specified by the reviewer, it is needless to say that it is purely arbi- trary, and that the sum is selected with a view to prejudice Mr. Chamberlain's project. It would introduce no new principle into the House of Commons. Pepys writes in his diary, under the date of March 30, 1668 : "At dinner we had a great deal of good discourse about Parliament. All concluded that the bane of the Parliament hath been The ancient the leaving off the old custom of the places allowing wages to those that serve them in Parliament, by which they chose men that understood their business and would attend to it, and they could expect an account from, which now they cannot, and so the Parliament has become a company of men unable to give account for the interest of the place they serve for." The last payment of wages to members of the House of Commons took place in 1681, when Thomas King, after having given due notice to the Corporation of Harwich, obtained from the Lord Chancellor a writ de expensis burgensiitm lerandi. In his Life of Lord Chancellor Nottingham, Lord Campbell cites this case, and even declares that the writ might still be claimed without a new enact- ment to revive the old usage. "When, therefore, Mr. Peter Taylor moved fifteen years ago for leave to introduce a bill " to restore the ancient constitu- tional practice of payment of members," the lan- guage in which he described his measure was strictly accurate. MACHINERY. 29 The payment of members may be defended by Theprin- many kinds of analogy. All corporations in the payment present day have power to pay their mayors. Abroad adopted in , . r* -I T s\ municipal the custom is not confined, as the Quarterly reviewer affairs, assumes, to the United States. Mr. Chamberlain has borrowed, we are told, this expedient from America, where, " when it was first instituted, there was no wealthy or idle class able and willing to give up their time for nothing." The fairness and force of this sentence are on a par with its gram- mar ; the fact, of course, is discreetly ignored that in France and in other countries where the non- existence of a wealthy and idle class cannot be pleaded, the practice of payment prevails. The objections with which this plan is generally met are familiar. It would, we are told, if adopted, entirely revolutionise the personnel of the House of Com- mons. There would be fewer fine gentlemen, and more of those who have no pretensions to be con- sidered fine gentlemen. The House itself would be disgraced by frequent explosions of unmannerly behaviour, and by scenes and incidents of the most discreditable kind. Moreover, it would tend to- wards the creation of a class of men whose absence is conventionally regarded as a boon that of the professional politician, and of members who would be perpetually endeavouring to find an opportunity for doing some job in the interests of their con- stituency, which would be also their paymaster. These arguments may be looked into a little Pariia- more closely. "When it is said that payment of the behaviour, 30 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. as con- people's representatives would vulgarise tlie people's paymenTof Ho use an d would deteriorate its social qualities, one members. f s tempted to ask whether such experience as might be cited on the point justifies the apprehension. For instance, would a comparison between the social demeanour of Earl Percy and Yiscount Folkestone on the one hand, and of Mr. Burt and Mr. Broadhurst on the other, in the discharge of their parliamentary duties, be to the advantage of the former ? If it is asserted that the scheme would make the assembly less of an ornamental lounge than it now is, and would bring into it, on an increased scale, an order of representatives who would take a view of their functions very different from that taken by their superiors, the impeachment may be readily ad- mitted, and it may be replied that this is exactly what is wanted. The men who would be sent to St. Stephens would be men whom the majority of the constituencies trusted, and who came there to do the people's work. Their presence would have the effect of liberalising and bracing the assembly. They would, in a word, be the sort of legislators from whom measures that would secure the steady asser- tion of the popular influence in all matters of govern - ment would be forthcoming. Again, when it is affirmed that the plan would give us more profes- sional politicians than we now have, the remark which suggests itself is, that this is exactly what is required. Politics, as a matter of fact, are a pro- fession already, and if lawyers, doctors, and profes- sional men generally are paid, why not politicians ? MACHINERY. 31 Moreover, when it was once understood that busi- ness aptitudes were required in those who addressed themselves to the business of public affairs, an effectual protest would be made against the habit of sending to the House of Commons men who regarded politics as a pastime ; who, whether they are Liberals or Conservatives, are equally dilettanti, and who illustrate in the Legislature the indolence and languor of polite society. To return for a moment to the allegation that the Compo- payment of members, and the confusion of commerce House of and politics which it would involve, must vitiate the n -I i- i -, purity oi the parliamentary atmosphere, and must degrade the standard of public life. The present House of Commons might, without injustice, be described as chiefly composed of commercial in- terests. The landed interest has 267 members, the trading, commercial, and manufacturing interest 165, the railway interest 113, the banking interest 25, the liquor interest 18, and so forth. It is uni- versally recognised that the representative of each of these interests will do what he can to advance them upon every opportunity. An illustration of this may be seen in what occurred in connection with the Hull and Barnsley Railway. The project, in which a large capital had been embarked, and which was of extreme importance to many thousands of people, involved serious competition with the North-Eastern Railway. Sir Joseph Pease, the very type and model of a respectable and high- principled member of the House of Commons, did 32 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. not attempt to disguise the fact that he resisted the measure in the interest of the North-Eastern Rail- way. "With these facts before him, will any one seriously pretend that paid members of Parliament would be more accessible to commercial or mer- cenary motives than those who are the representa- tives of interest first and of their constituents after- wards ? "We have, indeed, at the present moment what is quite as much a house of interests as a House of Commons. Reason why The truth is, that the foregoing reforms are de- mTmbers hf Bounced and opposed, not from any sincere solicitude resisted. f or the dignity of Parliament or the integrity of our public life, but from an apprehension that, once effected, they would secure their object. This object is legislation in accordance with the desires and wants of the majority in the constituencies. Those who compose that majority derive no benefit from the monopolies and the privileges which have devoted champions in our existing parliamentary system. It is perceived, however, that their power of influencing the House of Commons is on the increase, and therefore the cry is raised that a certain number of politicians aim at the substitution of paid delegates for members of an Imperial House of Commons. The task of There is little ground for the belief that the new leaders. electorate will of its own motion take the initia- tive in demanding the changes now enumerated. The English masses are nearly impervious to poli- tical ideas. This is well for those who are concerned MACHINERY. 33 to impede and delay popular progress, for, were it otherwise, we might have advanced at a more rapid rate, and many ancient landmarks still left to us might have disappeared. The people know vaguely what they want. It is for the people's leaders to indicate to them the precise methods and instru- ments by which their wishes may be realised. There was never a time when instruction was more sorely needed on all these topics. Legislation swayed by considerations of class interests has been the habit in this country because the great bulk of the people have not had the power of communicating their will to Parliament. This is the power which has now been entrusted to them, and the creation of the machinery that has been briefly sketched in the fore- going pages, and that can alone suffice to do what is wanted, must be the starting-point in the new pro- gramme of the Radical party. III. MEASURES. The com- BY a certain order of political controversialists it objection seems to be thought a conclusive objection to any that reform gcheme o f reform which may be brought forward to English, say that it is un-English. That epithet is supposed to carry all before it. There is, or there ought to be, no resisting the accumulated power of the tra- ditions of eight hundred years. Are not English- men, it is indignantly asked, as tenacious of the national institutions which have sprung up during this period as they are of their nationality itself ? Advanced Liberals, when they sketch in outline the modifications which appear to them desirable in our existing arrangements, social and political, are solemnly assured that they are contending against a force as inexorable as destiny. To-day is the crea- ture of yesterday, as to-morrow will, in its turn, be the child of to-day. Governments rise and fall, parties triumph and are defeated, but the fidelity of the English people to the spirit of the Constitution remains unalterable. This is the conventional view. By the way of answer, it will be enough to say, that never yet, from the days of the first Reform Bill down to those of the Irish Land Act of 1881, was any drastic measure of reform introduced which was not accused by its opponents of violating that sacred MEASURES. 35 essence the spirit of the Constitution. But not only is the term " unconstitutional " purely arbi- trary in its application expressive of nothing more than of the temper, the prejudice, the associations of the individual using it ; there is really nothing to show that the British constitution commands the inalienable respect of those in whose hearts its foundations are said to be laid. Englishmen, one is told, though they go beyond English- seas and settle in remote countries, remain just as much abroad. Britons after as before their exodus, and are, there- fore, ex hypothesi, as deeply devoted to everything that is an integral part of the Constitution. A very little examination will suffice to show that this is an entire fallacy. Englishmen may, indeed, carry their patriotism and their love of fatherland from the British Isle to the Antipodes, and generally to the uttermost parts of the earth ; but do these qualities imply an unalterable attachment to each particular feature of that amalgam of venerable anomalies known as the Constitution of this realm ? They do nothing of the sort. Englishmen, what- ever climate they adopt, may never forfeit their national character. It is an instructive circumstance that they never make any attempt to perpetuate their national institutions. "With the single excep- tion that the colonies profess their loyalty to the Throne and acknowledge the supremacy of the British Sovereign, the contrast between the political regime of the colonies and Great Britain is complete. The opinion of foreign countries upon ourselves and 36 THE EADICAL PROGRAMME. Radical legislation in the colonies. The United States and Australia. our doings has been described as an anticipation of the verdict of posterity. By a parity of reasoning the experience of vast communities of Englishmen, governing themselves at a distance of thousands of miles from the capital of the British Empire, must be admitted to be a possible forecast of the contin- gencies which may be actually realised at home. There is scarcely an organic change which has found a place in the programme of advanced Liberalism that has not been accepted, and volun- tarily introduced, by the multitudes of Englishmen who during the last century have found homes for themselves at the Antipodes and across the Atlantic. Loyalty to the Throne as an historic and senti- mental force they may have transplanted, while they live under colonial governors, who are the reflection of the regal power at home, and who exist upon the condition that they do not interfere in the free government of the dependencies whose ornamental figure-heads they are. But our colonists have not transplanted the Established Church, which, we are sometimes assured, is as national as the monarchy itself,, nor have they transplanted the hereditary aristocracy, which, in the language of the orthodox, is the essential buttress of monarchy. Speaking at Birmingham in June, 1876, after his first return to Parliament, Mr. Chamberlain said of the objects aimed at by Radicalism, " There is nothing in them which has not its counterpart at the present moment in those homes of the English people across the seas, the United States of America, MEASURES. 37 and the colonies of the Australian seas. When," he continued, " an Englishman seeks a more prosperous and brighter future in the lands which are destined to hand down to coming ages the glories of the Anglo- Saxon race and the fame of British enterprise and daring, he seems naturally to leave behind him the relics of all our ancient superstition and feudalism ; and, therefore, if our opponents are right, these countries ought to be the opprobrium of our nation and the disgrace of civilisation. You know that these are lands where freedom loves to dwell, and where happiness, material prosperity, comfort, and intelligence are more equally diffused than in any other quarter of the globe. Meanwhile, England is said to be the paradise of the rich. We have to take care that it be not suffered to become the purgatory of the poor." The sentiment embodied in these words points a political and an historic moral which ought not to be missed. The colonies are loyal ; that is, they are thoroughly English. How comes it, then, that they have not reproduced those insti- tutions which are conventionally regarded as not only ideally suitable, but absolutely indispensable, to the English character ? The reason must be that no such necessary relation between the character and the institutions exists, and the simple circum- stance that British subjects living under what is practically a democracy with manhood suffrage, without a religious establishment, without a second Chamber composed of titular nobles is a conclusive proof that neither of these conditions is essential to 38 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. the development of qualities that are reputed pre- eminently English. Attitude of It is, therefore, desirable to look facts plainly in towardVthe ^ ne f ace > an &> stripping them of all overgrowth of monarchy, traditional sentiment, to see exactly how we stand. First, take the case of the monarchy. The attitude of the great majority of Englishmen towards it, and certainly of all Radicals, is the same as that of the English colonists generally. There is no reformer, however advanced, into whose practical purpose it enters to overthrow the Throne, any more than it does to restore the Heptarchy. The emotion of loyalty, if it were closely analyzed, would be found to consist in equal parts of respect for a traditionary principle and for a blameless sovereign. The poli- tician who would talk of leading an attack upon the Crown at the present time would be rightly spoken of as impetuous and rash. On the other hand, it may be said that if the monarchy were proved to be the cause of real political mischief, to minimise or to endanger the freedom of popular government, no Radical, and probably no large class of Englishmen, would exercise themselves to retain it. It would be impossible to rally either Liberals or the English public round an institution that did not work har- moniously with the democratic forces of the country. The Crown, therefore, is likely to remain undisturbed for a period which the practical politician need not take account of. The utmost that can be said against it is that it occasionally operates in a manner favourable to the opponents of political reform, and MEASURES. 39 that, as it promotes a good deal of sycophancy and snobbery, its social influence is of questionable value. Lord Sherbrooke was unable to substantiate his assertion that the Queen had formerly asked a Liberal Cabinet to introduce a Bill proclaiming her Empress of India, and that the request had been refused. But it can scarcely fail to happen that a Sovereign concerned in perpetuating and increasing the pomp and circumstance of his or her office should, from time to time, make suggestions to Ministers which it is not practicable to follow, and should indulge a tendency to control the affairs of State which is inconsistent with the free play of our popular institutions. But of these things no serious account need be T . h . e 8ta - taken. The welfare and duration of the Throne will Throne always be in the hands of the occupant of the Throne. The expense of monarchy cannot in a great on ita . ,, occupant. and opulent country be alleged as an argument against it. Speaking at Manchester in April, 1871, Mr. Disraeli declared that "Of all forms of govern- ment monarchy was for," he said, " I will use the vile epithet the most cheap." One thing, indeed, in the interests of the Throne is earnestly to be deprecated an imperial and especially a military policy under- taken at the royal instance and wish. For instance, had England proclaimed war seven years ago against Russia, and sustained, as it is at least possible she might have done, a grave reverse, it is conceivable that a state of feeling might have been produced in this country not merely hostile, but disastrous, to 40 THE EADICAL PROGRAMME. the existence of the Throne. The monarchy, it may at once be said, could not hope to survive the results of a great European struggle in which our army should be unsuccessful, and which should be under- stood to have been entered upon at the express wish of the Court. Short of this, however, and so long as the functions of royalty are recognised as being ornamental and consultative, the Throno has nothing to fear from Radicalism. Radicals have something else to do than to break butterflies on wheels. The Esta- The Established Church is regarded by Radicals Church, in a very different light. The monarchical senti- ment, let it be allowed, shows itself in the colonies in the attachment of the colonists to the sovereign. No one has ever yet discovered the signs of any similar affection in any of our colonial dependencies for the theory and practice of a religious establish- ment. The Anglican Church has its bishops at the Antipodes, as it has on the European and on the American continents ; but the idea of giving them the official position which they enjoy in England has never seriously suggested itself. That is, as it always has been, a peculiarity limited to Great Britain. The explanation is obvious. That the State Church has rendered in past time much national service no one denies. The Roman Catholic Church accomplished in its day a great mission. "Would any one there- fore argue that it was desirable to establish this Church in any one of our colonies ? With what may be called the religious case against the Establish- MEASURES. 41 ment we are not now concerned. The only case we care to recognise against it is the social and political. It has often been remarked that Conservatism Support stands in less need of organization than Liberalism, church 5 to 6 because it possesses a rallying centre in the chief Tor >' ism< institutions and interests of the country. Of these none has lent more effectual aid to Conservatism than the Establishment. The fundamental doctrine and uniform aim of Conservatism are the preserva- tion of class privilege. The Church is an organiza- tion of privilege, and the alliance between parson and publican, Bible and beer, which is always talked about at the period of a general election, is some- thing more than a phrase, and is not merely the alliterative invention of the malignant Radical. The two orders of men, parsons and publicans, stand upon the same political level. They only quarrel when one complains that he is deprived of his due share of patrons and customers by the other. Clergy and licensed victuallers have alike a large vested interest to defend. In the case of the former this interest is social as well as political. So long as there exists in England a priestly caste deriving its title and emoluments from the State, and, as a con- sequence enjoying precedence over all other ministers of religion, it is impossible that the latter should not be placed at a disadvantage, or that the former should not presume upon their position to a degree incon- sistent with the well-being of the community, and especially of the poorer and humbler section of it. In the majority of parishes the landed proprietors 42 THE EADICAL PROGRAMME. A political of the district, the clergyman, the farmers, and the terai." *~ publicans, constitute a political quadrilateral, which is the main obstacle in the path of all social improve- ment. They differ amongst themselves upon many minor matters, and, it may be, live together habitu- ally in a state of mutual distrust and disaffection. But when the period arrives for the householders of the neighbourhood to choose between a representa- tive who is in favour of, and one who is opposed to, social reform, they make common cause and unite their efforts to return the Conservative candidate. Unhappy It may be readily admitted that there are excep- Liberai tions to this rule. There are many clergymen of clergymen. fa e Establishment who sympathize with the mass of their parishioners in preference to the squire or the publican, who do not shrink from taking the initia- tive in the formation of Board Schools, when local conditions prescribe the step, through a fear lest they should impair their own ascendancy in edu- cational matters on the one hand, or incur the dis- pleasure of the resident or non-resident territorial magnate on the other. But such conduct as this on the part of the Anglican clergy is not only un- usual, it is resented by the representatives of privi- lege, who see in them men who ought to be their natural allies. The parson who dares to traverse the decrees, or to run counter to the wishes, of his squire, speedily incurs disfavour, and becomes the victim of a species of social ostracism. Advantages jf the t j e vhich binds the Church to the State to the clergy of were severed, is it not clear that the better sort of MEASURES. 43 clergy would find themselves in a position far less disestab- invidious, and far better calculated to enable them to give effect to their humanitarian views ? It is no secret that a few at least of the clergy themselves regret the position in which they are placed by the Legislature, and deplore the fact that their social status and obligations minimise their opportunities of moral and spiritual usefulness. Once leave the Anglican clergy free as the Nonconformist clergy are free, and the baneful effect which they exercise in a variety of political questions will disappear. The clergy of a disestablished Church might be con- fidently expected to help rather than to retard the cause of State education, not to think it a part of their professional duty to protest against every step taken in the direction of religious equality, or to memorialize Parliament with a view to defeat the measures giving effect to these principles. It is sometimes alleged that religious equality Keligious has been completely established in this realm, Were this so, Mr. Bradlaugh would not have been excluded for six years from the House of Commons. Moreover, though tests have been abolished, and Nonconformity is no bar to promotion and success in any department of professional life, it is in the nature of things impossible that, so long as the Establishment exists, there should be anything like complete religious liberty. "What Radicals dis- like and condemn on principle is the arbitrary selec- tion by the State of a single religious community, and the investiture of its officers with exceptional 44 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. dignity and emoluments. The Church of England was made by Parliament, and in the opinion of many thinking men who are not Radicals, scarcely even Liberals, the time has come when Parliament may reasonably be asked to unmake it. Because some of the State clergy are distinguished by an admirable spirit of liberality and justice, and are better than their cloth, is that an argument in favour of retaining their cloth as a State uniform ? No amount of patchwork reforms, no desire, how- ever earnest, on the part of the clergy themselves to treat their Nonconformist brethren with respect, can possibly crown the edifice of religious equality while there is a religion endowed and organized by the State. The reve- Nor is the pecuniary question unimportant. It is nues of the ., , , ,, , ,, Church, impossible accurately to nx the revenues 01 tna deaTwUh Established Church. They amount to between five them. and ten millions a year. Of this sum a large pro- portion would be available for purposes of national usefulness : for instance, for the endowment of edu- cation, a subject on which something will presently be said. Large as are the sums to be dealt with, the task does not present any particular difficulty. The precedent of the Irish Church would naturally be followed in some of its general aspects, and avoided in some of its special consequences. Thus it would be necessary to beware, lest after having disendowed the Church, there should be handed over to her such a sum, and upon such conditions, that it would prac- tically be equivalent to a re-endowment. The stale MEASURES. 45 cry of confiscation would of course once more be raised. If there was a living donor he might fairly claim that any property with which he had pre- sented the Church should revert to him. But failing this, and without saying any thing .of the manner in which the property was for the most part derived by its original possessors, to whom else can it go but to the State ? If all existing interests were compen- sated, and endowments given within a certain limit of time were to be exempted from the operation of the Act, no injustice would be done. It is certain that the Church of England will, some day or other, cease as an establishment to exist. The probability is that the events now foreshadowed will take place much more speedily than is generally supposed. In 1866 few people would have predicted that the Church of Ireland was in articulo mortis. The ques- tion of disestablishment in England will be no sooner actively raised than we shall have come within a measurable distance of realising it. This is one of those cases in which " the half is more than the whole." It is likely enough that disestablishment may be delayed a few years, but when it .does arrive it will be with a rush. Before the specific legislation to which Radicalism Radicals is pledged in the immediate future is surveyed, a House of few words may appropriately be devoted to the Lords - position and prospects of the House of Lords. The last thing which any Radical would desire, or would dream of doing, is to reform that Chamber in any way. Its defects are inseparable from its 46 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. existence. It does not indeed materially affect the course of legislation ; it may postpone the passing of important measures, but it does no more. It is a source of vexation and impatience to every earnest reformer ; it is npt, and it can never be, a perma- nent obstacle in the way of reform. A Second Chamber, composed as the House of Lords is com- posed, must necessarily be Conservative. Lord Redesdale is the true type of the Parliamentary peer. That everything is for the best in this best possible of all constitutions, that there is no subject in or department of our national life which admits of reform or of alteration, except for the worse, is the fixed belief of Conservative nobles fashioned after the pattern of Lord Redesdale. When Plato is discussing whether change is possible to the gods, he remarks that as all change implies a variation of quality, and as the gods are already perfect, it must in their instance imply deterioration. Absolute immutability, he concludes, must therefore be a divine attribute. Lord Redesdale would argue about our institutions in a similar way. To touch them, or, in the cant of the time, to reform them, must be to vitiate and degrade them. One may afford to regard with equanimity these displays of self-complacent stolidity. The House of Lords would almost, indeed, seem to exist for the special purpose of reducing Conservatism to an absurdity, and the utmost which the advanced Radical could wish is that it might place itself in serious collision with the House of Commons. Radicalism has MEASURES. 47 everything to hope and nothing to fear from the issue of such a struggle. But the Lords are too wise in their generation to do anything of the sort. They protest first and they register afterwards. Sometimes, by way of asserting themselves, they small throw out a measure or two of minor importance, or mar great measures by introducing vexatious con- power, ditions, as in the case of the medical relief clause in the Franchise Act. The summary way in which they treated Mr. Anderson's measure for the pre- vention of cruelty to animals was suggestive and characteristic. It had passed the House of Commons by an overwhelming majority ; it reflected the public opinion of the country; 'it embodied what may be called the average morality of the day upon the subject ; and it is significant that some of those newspapers which do not usually condemn the pastimes of polite society were vehement in their denunciations of pigeon- shooting as a sport. But the House of Lords, as if resolved to show that it was indifferent to these considerations, and that it lacked all sympathy with popular feeling, negatived the Bill by nearly a two to one majority. The Irish Registration and the Scotch Local niustra- Government Bills received the happy dispatch at b the hands of the peers because, as Lord Salisbury out put it, it was high time to show the country that their lordships were not a mere court of registra- tion. If they are not this, what are they ? If they are not willing to acquiesce in these functions, what do they themselves think will be their future? 48 THE RADICAL PEOGEA'MME. Recollect, it is not the Radicals who tell the Lords that they exist in a parliamentary sense only to confirm the votes of the Commons ; it is the Lords who, by loudly protesting against that view of their duties, unnecessarily bring the truth home to the public. If the hereditary legislators are well advised, they will say as little as possible about the exact pesition and influence to which they consider themselves entitled in the government of the United Kingdom. They will order their movements dis- creetly, and maintaining their reputation for ability in debate, sagacity, moderation, eloquence, learning, knowledge of diplomatic affairs, courtly conduct, and other excellent qualities, will not expose them- selves to any unnecessary attack. Surrender ^" ne pl ace occupied by the House of Lords in the upon the country was illustrated three years ago in the case of Bill. the Arrears Bill. There can be little doubt that when Lord Salisbury resolved to oppose it, he had, or imagined he had, reason to believe that he would be supported in so doing by a majority of the peers. It may even be that a majority of the peers did at first intend to follow Lord Salisbury. But when he convened his followers in Arlington Street, three-fourths of them did not see their way to give effect to his views. The peers, with their customary good sense, recognised that to defeat the Bill would be futile and would react mischievously upon them- selves ; that it would give Radicalism the cry which it just then happened to want, and that the sequel must be an agitation pregnant possibly with ruin- MEASURES. 49 ous consequences to the Second Chamber. In plain English, Lord Salisbury's followers preferred mak- ing Lord Salisbury ridiculous to the alternative of incurring the brunt of a popular assault. Such discretion may not have been dignified, but it was the better part of valour. Lord Salisbury, indeed, denounced the measure to the last. He upbraided, as well he might, his followers with deserting him, and the measure became law. Now, either this is a specimen of what must always occur in such episodes as these, or it is not. Upon the former hypothesis, the House of Lords is harmless ; upon the latter, it is not only harmless but useful. The popular im- patience of a Second Chamber is only held in check by the knowledge that, at the worst, it can but arrest the progress of legislation. If, however, it ' is to be an understood thing that the House of Lords is indefinitely to delay legislation, then simple toleration of it will pass into active resent- ment against it. Under any circumstances, it is needless to include the abolition of the House of Lords in the Radical Programme. Supposing that it exhibits in the future the same qualities that, on the whole, it has exhibited in the past, Radicals need not trouble themselves about it. Supposing, on the other hand, it insists upon asserting itself, it will of its own accord and by its own act be reformed out of existence. The measures to which it will be the duty of the Measures of Radical party to address itself as soon as may be, i 5 uture> will be conveniently ranged under three heads, E 50 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Education, Land, Taxation which, comprehending Land and Taxation under the same category, con- stitute two of the three points in the Radical charter, best known as the " three F's " free land, free church, free schools. One department of the land question, the social status and housing of the poor in town and country, will be dealt with in the next chapter. Other topics will be treated in a similar manner, and when the series is concluded the public will have in their hands something more than a mere outline sketch of Radical legislation something more than a floating body of Radical doctrine, or a congeries of abstract propositions. It is our aim to present our readers with a sufficient amount of definite information to enable them to .see not only what ought to be done, but how what is wanted must be done. Upon the present occa- sion it will be enough to indicate the general attitude and policy of the Radical party in various departments of legislation, subsequently to be explained in detail. Education. The first of these to which attention shall now be directed is education. The responsibility which the State formerly assumed by the Act of 1870 has not yet been fully discharged. A great principle was asserted fifteen years ago, and to that prin- ciple, thus far, only partial effect has been given. A step in the direction of State socialism was taken, but it was not more than a step, and a short one. The result of the education controversy that raged from 187-0 to 1876 was a compromise with which MEASURES. 51 the Radicals were never satisfied, and which they pledged themselves to reopen at the first opportu- nity. It is demonstrable, and it will be shown hereafter, that our present educational arrange- ments are wanting in the two essentials of economy and efficiency ; there are signs that popular feel- ing against it is acquiring irresistible strength, nor can it be too strongly stated that in this matter the wish of those who are immediately interested, and who constitute the majority of the ratepayers, viz. the working classes, must in the long run be obeyed. It is within their power to bring the whole educational machinery of the country to a dead-lock to-morrow. They may refuse en masse, as the Quakers refused to pay Church rates, to pay school fees. They may be sent to prison for their refusal, and may do penance on the tread- mill. As it is, the working classes are dissatisfied with School fees. a state of things under which parents have no alternative but to beg, borrow, or steal school fees, or to accept the stigma of pauperism, under which they are subject to inquisitorial and offensive examinations in their household affairs, that lay bare the secret of their struggles and trials before school boards and guardians. Our educational cen- tralization cannot fail to operate as an exacting and an arbitrary despotism. It is arbitrary, because not even a penny school, much less a free school, can be opened in the largest town in England without the consent of the Education Department ; 53 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. because, too, in the majority of cases, this consent depends on the wishes of the clergy, to whom the matter is referred by the school inspector appointed to inquire into the case. It is exacting, because it compels parents either to pay what it is in the nature of things impossible they can afford, or else to confess themselves suppliants for the charity of the parish. It will be universally allowed that if it had not been for the opposition of the supporters of voluntary and denominational schools, free schools would, in all probability, have been established long ere this. Is it or is it not a duty which the State owes to the humblest of its subjects to guaran- tee their children a modicum of learning? If it is, then it must be a moral violation of that duty to perform it in a niggard and grudging manner, painful and intolerable to English feeling. If every school in England was thrown open to the children of the poor, the additional expenditure involved would be trifling. Some adjustment there would, of course, have to be, and the managers of the denominational schools might suffer. Hence their determined resistance to the scheme. But it must always be remembered that under no circum- stances would the actual cost of education be in- creased. The question is, not how much is to be paid, but in what manner it is to be paid. Free schools would simplify the distribution of the cost between parents and the State ; the educational rate chargeable on labourers would come, in some cases to more, in some to less, than they at present pay. MEASURES. 63 As any reforms in our educational system, if they Land are to be effectual, will involve the assumption and the discharge of fresh responsibilities by the State, so will it be with any reforms worth having in our system of land tenure. Whatever the direction in which we look, the tendency is in favour of the enlargement of the sphere of State action and of its multiplied interference in the relations between those who live under it. It is no exaggeration to say that the most characteristic principle of modern domestic legislation is that embodied in the Factories Act the principle, namely, that capital has acquired so predominant a power that it is not safe to leave labour to look after itself ; that the economical laws of supply and demand, which are merely generalisa- tions from experience, are not infallible in their operation ; and that freedom of contract may be employed as an instrument of oppression as well as . a weapon of liberty. As yet we have only advanced a short way com- Agrarian paratively towards the realisation of those agrarian reforms which were contemplated by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. Even when this programme has been completed much will remain to be done. The first steps to be taken are the abolition of settlement and entail. Next, the probate and succession duties must be altered. When these things have been accomplished, the programme of the older reformers will have been exhausted. This will be found in- sufficient. It may be accepted as an instalment, but as no more. Each successive year adds to the diffi- 54 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. culties, and increases the perplexities, of the case. It is well that, before relations between the owners and the occupiers of the soil, between proprietor and peasant, are fundamentally readjusted, arrears should be wiped off, but even thus we shall only have arrived at the threshold of the land question. The object of all land reform must be the muliplication of landowners. "When entail and settlement are done away with, a real impulse will be given in that direction ; but machinery will have to be provided for ensuring the requisite changes. Before indicat- ing the different methods in which it may be prac- ticable to accomplish the desired end, it may not be amiss to remind those who object to the multiplica- tion of landowners as a revolutionary step, that its tendencies are distinctly Conservative. The greater the number of those who have an interest in the soil, the deeper will be the popular attachment to it. The conflict of interests will disappear ; and our land system, instead of being, as it is now, the symbol of strife the embodiment of the privileges of the few as opposed to the rights and aspirations of the many will become a guarantee of class concord and harmony. Proposals Short ways of reforming our system of land tenure George and have recently been proposed by Mr. George and Mr. lace Wal " W" a ll ace ' There is no need to criticise them minutely now. Truth and error, fallacy and fact, are com- bined in the treatises of the two authors. That the masses have not benefited, as it might have been hoped they would, by the extraordinary prosperity MEASURES. 55 of the last half century is true enough ; but that the whole of the increase of wealth during this period has gone into the pockets of the landowners is con- spicuously false. Mr, "Wallace and Mr. George insist that certain remedies, not only drastic, but alarming, in their scope and magnitude, should be applied for the sake of a problematical gain. The least that might be asked is that they should show the advantages, which they declare would accrue if their scheme were adopted, to be absolutely certain. They fail to do anything of the sort. The total sum taken for rent in one form or another would be the same under the operation of the plan of Mr. George and Mr. Wallace as under the existing system. The only difference would be that the increase in the value of land would go to the new holders. Thus the evils which it is now proposed to cure would repeat themselves, and it would shortly be necessary for the State once more to interfere, and to apply another scheme of wholesale confiscation. The pro- position that, the land once nationalised, the in- creased wealth of the country will be distributed amongst all classes and individuals that is to say, that the 600,000,000 by which the wealth of England has grown during the last twenty years, would, if there had been no landlords, have passed in fair proportions into the hands of the thirty-five millions inhabiting this realm, rests on the assump- tion that the entire increment is eaten up by rent. This assumption is altogether unfounded. If therefore the land nationalization project, of 66 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. New dircc- which so much has recently been heard, is to be reform. rejected, in what direction is the reform to be looked for ? Entail and settlement swept away, what is the exact nature of the second step to be taken ? First, there is the proposal to create small owners by the assistance of the State. Of this it may be remarked that, whatever the practical difficulties in the way of giving effect to it, it is not likely to be condemned as contrary to the political spirit of the time. Another suggestion for placing our land system upon an equitable basis is the application of the Irish Land Act to England. The effect of this would be to make tenants owners, and, roughly speaking, to multiply landlords by ten. Thirdly, there are those who are in favour of a radically different method of procedure. In some of our colonies farms are pre- vented from growing beyond a certain size, and landed establishments are kept within certain limits by a progressive income- tax on the number of acres held. That this method would be effectual in Eng- land no one can doubt. A fourth proposal is of a somewhat cognate character. Why not, it is said, frankly recognise the fact that freedom of bequest should be subject to the same modifications as arc already in force in the case of freedom of contract. Supposing this were done, the law would in effect say to every owner of land : " Add, if you will, house to house, and field to field ; buy up a county, and become the lord of a province ; but understand that you do so at your own risk. You shall not indeed be debarred from bequeathing a vast estate to MEASURES. 57 a single heir, but this power shall only belong to you upon conditions which the State prescribes. When your property has grown to a magnitude that exceeds what, in the opinion of the State, is com- patible with the public interest should be possessed by an individual, it will peremptorily discourage you from going farther." There is one way in which the State can execute such a resolution. It can pro- vide for a graduated probate duty levied upon landed proprietors over a certain size. There is another method of dealing with the ques- The State tion of land tenure which combines several of the advantages inherent in the foregoing. The prin- ciple of all such legislation as is now being considered is, let it be repeated once more, the right and duty of the State to fix within certain broad limits the extent, and to control the conditions, of private ownership. What, therefore, must be done is formally to confer upon the State larger powers in these matters than she now possesses. Such an authority might, and necessarily would, be delegated to local autho- rities. It would be impossible for the central Government to manage all land transactions in every part of the country. It would vest in its representatives the power of expropriating for public purposes, on payment of fair compensation, and adequate securities being taken against the possi- bility of extortionate demands. The reform of our system of taxation practically Reform of comes under nearly the same head as land legisla- taxation, tion. Speaking on this subject twelve years ago, Sir 58 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Charles Dilke said : " A certain mininum of income sufficient to provide the necessaries of life to a moderately numerous family should not be heavily taxed, but only the surplus beyond this. Suppose this minimum to l>e 50 a year for each family, supposing the workmen to be five million families (which is not much above the mark), this would give 250 millions for necessaries. But their whole income is computed at 325 millions by Mr. Dudley Baxter, leaving only 75 millions of superfluities, which on this principle would be taxed ; on this 30 millions of taxes are raised. The rich are 2 millions of families, which give 100 millions for necessaries, but they have 500 millions, leaving 400 millions to be taxed, which bears little more than 50 millions of taxes. I repeat that the small incomes are over- taxed." No person will deny that a more equal distribution of wealth, if it could be effected without creating any revolutionary precedent, would be a gain to the whole community. Reduction Again, no one will deny either that a general reduction of incomes, once a certain point had been certain reached, would not inflict any appreciable amount of suffering. Twenty years ago a man with 10,000 a year was regarded as a prodigy of wealth. Now he is considered well to do, and no more, and one may walk through streets and squares for hours in London, each house of which represents probably a minimum income of not less than 8,000 a year. Has the happiness or comfort of life increased during these two decades in any proportion to the rate in MEASURES. 59 which wealth has increased? It is notorious that it has not. Let it not be supposed that the writers of these papers contemplate the reduction by law of all incomes to a common level. The remark just made is only intended to remind persons that, even were the extremely rich to find that a readjustment of taxation tended to diminish their wealth, no great amount of hardship would be the result. Here again we may refer to the precedents of that Greater Britain which lies beyond the seas. As Free Schools, a Free Church, and Free Land have been found practicable in the colonies, so has a progres- sive income-tax up to ten per cent, been successfully imposed in the United States. This will be called Socialism with a vengeance, Socialism but, as has been observed before, the path of legis- ^a, but'a" lative progress in England has been for years, and modem must continue to be, distinctly Socialistic. It is the pressing ' general business of the State, not merely in the cases reviewed in the foregoing pages, but in others like them, to convince the possessors of wealth, and the holders of property, whether in country or in town, that they cannot escape the responsibilities of trusteeship, and that, if the State is to guarantee them security of tenure, they must be ready to discharge certain definite obligations. Lord Salisbury, in his attempt to pose as the Lord pioneer of the Tory Democracy, has insisted upon the necessity of the better housing of the poor, housing of mi ' P t p the poor. This, he said, is the great question of the future, and one that the State cannot much longer shirk. 60 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. "We entirely agree with Lord Salisbury in his pre- miss, but we draw from it a conclusion which Lord Salisbury would reject. When a Tory peer, who is a great landlord in London and in the country, declares that the State is to blame for not attending more closely to the daily wants of those of its sub- jects who are at the mercy of the rich, one knows very well what he means. Lord Salisbury is, no doubt, kindly and humane towards his inferiors, but it would be too much to credit him with the inten- tion to benefit his inferiors at the expense of him- self. Let, he says in so many words, the State look to it. Exactly. And what does that mean ? Simply this : that the State should undertake to improve the property of Lord Salisbury himself and of other noble owners at its own expense. The workmen and the artisan will of course be benefited if their hovels and styes are made fit for human habitation at the initiative and at the charges of the State, but the owners, whose power of exacting rent would be proportionately increased, will be benefited quite as much. What therefore the Con- servative leaders define as the supreme question of the future is the expediency of the State undertak- ing to raise the market value of the buildings that belong to the rich by making them more tolerable for the poor. The Radi- We, on the other hand, say that the prime cost the same of these improvements must fall upon the owners. subject. This Y i ew w j]| b e illustrated and enforced in the chapter on the Housing of the Poor in Towns. One MEASUEES. 61 more remark shall now be made. That however extravagant and revolutionary may seem the reforms now foreshadowed, colonial experience proves that there is nothing alien in them to the national character. The era of purely political legislation is at an end for a time. The Reform Acts having passed into law, and a representative Government in counties being an accomplished fact, it is social legislation which will afford a field for the energy and constructive skill of Radical statesmen in the future. The problem they are called upon to solve is how to make life worth living for the tens of thousands to whom it is now a prolonged misery. The chief feature in the programme the indispens- able antecedent to all that must hereafter be achieved is the reform of our land system, and the read- justment of a scheme of taxation full of anomalies and injustice. The working classes are at last realising the true secret and source of their suffer- ings, and it is high time for Parliamentary Reformers to show themselves aware of the fact. IV. THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. Overcrowd- THE statement made by Mr. Bright two or three wholly ex _ years ago, " that more than 30 per cent, of all the plained by inhabitants of Glasgow had but one room in which low wages. to live, eat, and sleep, came to most people as a painful surprise. Yet neither can the truth of the assertion be questioned nor can the fact be ex- plained by the low wages of unskilled labour. Let us take a single instance. As the commerce of the port of London increases, the demand for dock- labourers increases also, and as the space devoted to workmen's dwellings was adapted to the require- ments of perhaps half a century ago, it has be- come less and less adequate, until now the work- man is forced to accept any accommodation he can secure, and to pay exorbitantly for even a single room. In other words, the material progress of the capital forces the workman and his family to live under conditions more and more injurious to health and morals. Competi- Two circumstances, indeed, tend to mitigate, in workmen some degree, the intensity of this evil the increased for lodgings facilities of transport and the advance in wages near their * . work. which the last half-century has brought with it. The workman of the present day can, if he chooses, live outside the city ; yet the hour or more lost in going to and coming from work constitutes a suffi- THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 63 cient reason why he should accept the most miser- able dwelling, provided it be near his work, rather than prolong the labour of the day. As a matter of fact, each and every room is eagerly competed for which is situated near the centres of employment. As is the house so is the inmate, and it is inevitable that his depressing and squalid environment should react upon the individual. How is a room in which a man and his family live and sleep to be kept sweet and clean ? Who could expect this to be done in a house often scarcely weather-proof, and the repairs of which fall generally upon the occupier ? The incoming tenant finds the room in a filthy con- dition. After, perhaps, a vain effort or two to im- prove it, it is accepted as it is, and given up in a worse condition than when it was taken. These facts must be borne in mind, or the following descrip- tion of the dwellings of the poor in London will be thought to be overdrawn, or, worse still, the reader may jump to the conclusion that the inmates of them have sunk below the reach of succour. Such an inference would do our common humanity an injustice, and would ignore the plain teachings of experience. Let us begin with the most highly paid of igno- A visit to rant workers, and take the stevedores of the docks. j In the East-end a meeting of these men belonging house - to a particular dock had been called together to assist one of their number to bury his wife, who had recently died. The gathering was held in a room above a public-house, and on passing through the 64 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. bar we noticed that five out of thirteen females who were drinking there had black eyes. By subscrib- ing liberally to the funds we made friends with one of the number, a short, thick- set man of honest but heavy countenance, and with his wife, a tall, strong woman, who seemed far more intelligent than her " man," and with them we passed into the street. On hearing that we were curious as to the manner of lives of his mates the man invited us to accom- pany him to his home. It Was after twelve o'clock. While walking together we asked him what his average wages were. " We earn sometimes as much as 3 a week. I've earned more as 4," was his answer. As " average " was a word whose mean- ing passed his comprehension, we asked what was the least he earned. " Often we's out of work weeks together, sometimes we earn but a pound in a week." " Taking one week with another what would it amount to?" The wife answered: " Perhaps 30s. or 35s." " How many children have you?" "Well, we still have three; two's died." We now turned into a street with houses on the one side, on the other the high wall surrounding the dock. At many doors even at this hour women are standing, frequently engaged in quarrelling ; not a few of them greet us as we pass and seek to detain us. The home ^ one ^ oor we 8 ^P ^ * 8 wide open and go of a work- j n to a narrow passage. On our right is a door ing from through the chinks of which light is streaming and 25s. to 30s. t* -i IT i per week, voices oi a man and woman quarrelling can be THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 65 heard, the man growling and swearing, the woman crying querulously and taking God to witness. " He's a bad 'un, he is ! " is the remark of our con- ductor. On one of the visitors stumbling, a light is struck and the walls, clammy with the dirt of years, and the rickety stairs come out in weird fashion. We note a disagreeable smell proceeding from dirt, from the washing of clothes, from the overcrowding of human beings. We stumble up the stairs and on the "/Ms-floor," as the stevedore proudly says, we enter his room. It is nearly square, some thir- teen feet by twelve, and about nine in height. " The best in the house," remarks the wife. Oppo- site the door are two windows, on the left the fire- place, on the right and in front a large svooden bed ; the dresser is behind us opposite to the left-hand window, another cupboard flanks the door upon the right. There is a clothes-line stretched from a nail above the window to another above the dresser, right across the middle of the space left vacant by the bed, and on this line are hanging all manner of gar- ments now nearly dry. Underneath the clothes is a deal table. There are but two chairs, so the husband sits on the bed ; talking still of the children, the wife recounts with pride that her boy Willie, ten years old, can read. " Wake him, Jim (to the husband), and let the gentlemen hear him." While one visitor takes the sleepy-eyed boy upon his knees and talks with the mother, the other looks about him and talks to the father. The husband is proud of his wife, and speaks of her, in a hoarse under- 66 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. tone, as "the cleanest, prop'rest woman I ever seed." Furniture, The bed-linen is, of course, dirty, yet cleaner AUowance' *^ an ^ 8 g enera lly to be seen ; the quilt is in a far of air. A worse condition. The husband being asked why, stevedore's , . , hospitality, with his wages, he does not get two rooms, answers confusedly that the rent of this one is 5s. per week, and that he would not pay so much were it not so near his work ; but the point of the answer is that, while he could perhaps pay for two rooms in good times, he must take only what he can pay for in bad times. " 'T won't do to run behind, ye see," with a grim chuckle, "credit here isn't good," and relapsing into solemnity, " wages isn't reg'lar ! Never knows o' Saturday night what '11 earn by next Saturday. So the most of us arter a good week has a booze ! " " Yes," says the wife, half apologetically, " they's hard 'uns, they are ; few on them like my Jim, what allus gives me some'at for clothes of a good week, afore he goes out takes me with him too, he does. Why, we've occupied this room for nigh on three years ; that's a good spell, now ain't it ? and that beddin' of ours we've had this eleven years, never parted with it, not once ; few on them can say as much, I warrant." All this she says while produ- cing the supper, consisting of cheese, which she presses us to eat, with a heartiness of hospitality that..would look on refusal as an insult. But it is in August, the heat in the room is rendered still more oppressive than it otherwise would be by the moisture given off by the drying clothes, and four persons THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 67 have been in the small space all day ; the bed of course has not been aired for months, and what with heat, moisture, and smell together, we are forced to retreat. The man insists on accompanying us a piece of the way, and hopes we'll come soon and see 'em again afore he goes a-hoppin'. " We starts hoppin' in September ! " As we go along the 15 feet of passage from the bottom of the stairs to the door, we hear by the snoring that there are two rooms on our left, and that the quarrelsome man in the one has sunk asleep. It is only on coming into the clear night air that we fully realise the heat of the room we have left, and how impure its atmo- sphere was. On reflection, some facts appear specially note- Noteworthy worthy : first, that wages which fluctuate so greatly ought to be considered as links in a chain, the weakest of which measures the strength of the whole. This man's condition was that of one who could fairly reckon on twenty-five or thirty shillings a week, the extra ten, fifteen, or even twenty shil- lings he might earn, benefited him little if at all. They were uncertain, and so went chiefly in " booz- ing." The second fact was revealed by the proud remark of the woman that they had occupied the same room for nearly three years that is, that they were more lucky or more provident than the majority of those in a similar condition. They, too, had never parted with their "beddin'," that is, the man had never been out of work so long that everything had gone to the pawnshop : a family and home far above 68 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. A house at MorajTand social sur- roundings. the average of the class we are considering, all will allow. Here, as elsewhere the rent ought to he noted. The next instance may he taken from the district lying round the Euston Station. "We enter a small s f, ree j; early on a Monday morning ; knots of men are * standing round the public-house at the corner, all unkempt, most of them half-drunk ; the whole street is loud with voices women talking from the win- dows into the street, and from the street shouting to friends who lean half-dressed out of upper windows. The language used is not to be described. The street-doors are all open, the filthy passages on view, not a window can be seen in which brown paper does not take the place of two or more broken panes of glass. We make friends with a dirty little boy who leads us into a house. In the passage two women are talking, one of them is the mother of our guide, and she asks us in a fretful tone of voice into her room. The room is on the ground floor and looks upon the street, the rent is 3s. 6d. per week. The- walls and ceiling are almost as black as the passage ; the window, only two panes of which have been broken and patched, seems never to have been washed ; the bedstead is covered with a straw tick ; there are no sheets ; pillow-case, however, blankets and quilts are all dirty; as are the few pieces of furniture. The sickening smell already noticed meets us on entering. We ask after the husband. " He's a bricklayer, is Mike," answers the woman. " Go, fetch your father," she interrupts herself to THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 69 cry to the child, and it being Monday he isn't at work. " His wages ? When times are good he earns 30s. a week, but then for long spells in winter he has nothing to do. I'm English, I am, and once upon a time was a servant in a big 'ouse never thought then to come to this." The querulous high-pitched voice was here rudely interrupted by a blow upon the partition which separated the back- room from the front one in which we were sitting, and a man's voice shouted : " Stow your jaw and let a man sleep ! " If the monotony of the daily labour and the absence of all amusements is not sufficient to explain the drunkenness of the working-classes, surely the overcrowding in their dwellings, when considered with the other causes, is enough to ex- plain the existence of the vice. What sort of people can be expected to grow up Effect of T n T -,1 -i o T overcrowd- in these conditions ? In every case it will be found ing on that the workman resembles his dwelling, for, as c aracter - regards his room, no choice is open to him, he must take what he can get. When the man is unable to alter his surroundings, his surroundings make the man. It was on a Bank Holiday that we finished a tour A visk to of two weeks in that part of London which lies around and behind Drury Lane Theatre. Again we take a dwelling above the average. In a congloinera- water lion of houses, which seem to be separated only by narrow paved passages and courts, we enter one through- way unguarded by any door which evi- dently leads to a back-yard. The yard is about ten 70 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. feet long by eight wide, shut in on all sides by high walls. In the corner stands a barrel serving evi- dently as cistern, the water being conducted down the wall by a pipe. Scarcely have we entered before a thin pale-faced woman conies out to ask what we're after. She is followed closely by her husband in his shirt-sleeves, just as dirty, as slovenly, as ansemic as is the woman. We say, apologetically, that we have come to see if they are satisfied with the water-supply, &c. "Satisfied!" they both cry, and become voluble in reproach. The husband places a ladder against the top and asks us to inspect the barrel. The top is but half a top, and when we lift it up we lift with it not a few spider-webs ; the water is thick and muddy, the sides of the barrel covered with a slimy deposit, the bottom with a layer of stones and mud seemingly a couple of inches thick. Further description in detail is im- possible ; suffice it to say that the air of the whole yard is at once loathsome. " I has to take care of that, I has," says the man, " for a-havin' my room so cheap, but no one can't keep it clean when it don't work even if the others (other inmates of the house, in number twenty) were partic'lar, which they ain't oh no, by no means when they comes home drunk." In order to get away from the smell, we ask whether we may see his room. " See it," he cries, " yes ; dear I calls it at three shillings a week." Before leaving the yard we cast one look upwards ; every window of the three stories Las linen hung out of it to dry, linen that cannot be THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 71 clean ; every window is open to receive the loath- some air escaping upwards between the four high walls as up a funnel. "We glance more closely at the woman ; the front of her dress is open, and there are sores on her neck and breast. The baby in her arms is so unhealthy that we are relieved by the thought that it will certainly not outlive the summer. The next moment we turn into the passage and Th . e in * . . . ^ tenor. Dirt, enter the room : it is on the ground-floor and looks smells, foul out upon the yard ; for this reason it is so dark that workman's it is some seconds before the different objects in it??*'* * . . " 1S land- Can be clearly distinguished. The room itself is lord. fully 14 feet long by about 10 wide and 9| high. The walls are almost black with dirt, as is the ceil- . ing. The bed stands along the wall ; there are a table and dresser, as usual, and two chairs. The framework of the bed seems to have a straw tick upon it. There is no linen, only some blankets over which is thrown a dirty quilt, a quilt which is not even grey but nearly black. And whether .we touch wall or table or chair or bed, we feel the same mois- ture, that seems to exude from every object. The smell of the room is penetrating, the air which knows no sun is made noisome with the staleness of old filth and with the breath of human beings. With four persons living in this den it would 'be a mockery to advise cleanliness. We ask the man his trade. " A tin-smith," he answers. " And what might your wages be?" "Well, that I can't say; sometimes I earn 30s. a week, but work is often 72 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. slack." " Reckoning it one week with another would you earn a pound a week?" "Why, yes! more nor that when I has full time." "Would you take a pound a week on a regular job?" "Ay, that I would ; it would be better than this yere if so be as 'twur quite reg'lar, week in, week out." " Why don't the rich help us ? " asks the woman, and the man answers with a mocking laugh, "Why don't our landlord help us by attendin' to that there yard ; why don't my master help ? He gets a pound for selling what he gives me three shillings for making ; why -- " We break in by remarking that all men are selfish. " Selfish," snarls the man, " ay, d 'em ! they'd see us rot afore they'd do the fair thing by us, they would ! " The slums On leaving the house we met an idiot child at the e- door, and within fifty paces another. The next ceptionof cases " are taken from that network of slums district- which lie between Blackfriars Road and Westminster Bridge Road. We pass from a street of evil renown " coster." into one of the blind alleys common in the neigh- bourhood. Judging from the outside the houses are worse than any we have yet described. A drizzling rain is falling, and the narrow pavement is slippery with black mud. We enter a house ; the passage is filthy with the mud of the streets, and so are the stairs. On the second flight at least the dirt is nearly dry ; but it is as dangerous as the first flight to mount, inasmuch as the banisters and one or two of the steps are broken. On the second landing we pause, meeting a woman's gaze, who seems too sur- THE HQtJSIXG OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 73 prised to do anything but stare. We are now dis- trict visiting, and on hearing this she quickly asks us to take a seat, but only one sound seat is forth- coming. " Ah ! we needs charity, we do, what's got five little children ! " From off the bed and from the corners they crowd to the mother to stare at the strangers all but one, a half-grown girl of about fourteen, who pays but little attention to us, so absorbed is she in putting some ribbons on a hat by the light of the window. The room is not large twelve feet by eleven feet and some eight and a- half feet high ; yet it seems large enough for the furniture it contains, viz., one large bed, one table, one sound and one rickety chair, one little deal box on which the girl is sitting. On the table stands a saucepan, three dirty plates, two tin mugs. The bed is evidently the place of rest by day as well as by night ; on it there are no sheets, nothing but a straw tick covered by a blanket and a dirty quilt, over the foot of which is thrown a rug, which has evidently some time or other served as a hearth-rug. The floor is marked with dirt on a straight line from the door to the fireplace. Near the window is a broad patch of water, which has come through the crazy casement. The table, bed, and the clothes of the occupants are filthy. The clothes of the children cannot be described. The woman goes on : " The youngest blessed 'un is but two months old." " What is your husband ? " "A coster." " And what may he earn ? " " Well, some days he brings home four shillings, generally two or three, often 74 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. but one ; and we as has all these to feed, and that lazy slut there what thinks o' nought but dress put down that this minit ! " she yells to the girl, " and come and thank the gentlemen for coming to help us." We ask whether there is not another 'room upon this landing. " Yes, there is ; the back 'un is rented to two as nice girls as you'd wish to see decent, too, they are." I'll show it you perhaps Fanny is in, but Jane is out, I know ; gone to fetch some work." Saying this, she crosses the landing, and, without stopping to knock, passes into the other room with a "Fanny, here's two gentlemen a district-visiting us, what wants to see you." " Come in," says Fanny, and as we hesitate she adds, brid- ling, " Well, I'm sure you needn't be afraid," and, laughing, "I'm not going to eat you." As we enter we see that " girl " simply means unmarried, for " Fanny " looks fully thirty-five years of age. She brings a chair forward for one visitor and motions the other to the bed with " Take that for comfort is my advice," and then laughs consciously. The room was nearly as dirty, nearly as badly furnished as the other, but, noticing a looking-glass of some dimen- sions, we admire it. " Oh," Fanny informs us, "the furniture is all mine, and I let Jane sleep with me." " Yes," says the young girl from the other room, " when " " You hold your tongue," breaks in the mother, " or I'll warm you." Pleading haste we beat a retreat to the landing. The coster's wife, however, gets in front, and although we give her a shilling she does not give place, but calls Joe to say THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 75 good-bye to the gentleman and receive a coin, and after Joe, Susie, &c. The shameless extortion is too much, and, as we The lod s- 11 i-v i^S 3 * a cannot descend, we point upward and ask, "Doeswasher- any one live there ?" " Oh yes," is the reply, a washerwoman, Mrs. Spearing, whose husband is sick i -,i ,T i , TMI i husband to with the rheumatiz. 1 11 show you the way. keep. And up we mount the rickety stairs not more than eighteen inches wide, and without any banister at all, to the garret. Our guide knocks, which some- what surprises us, as we have expected no thought- fulness from her. After a brief pause the door is opened by a thin, careworn, but evidently respectable woman. She seems astonished on seeing us, but asks us in, with a " John is sleeping now." We thanked her, and ask whether he is better, while looking into the garret ; it is about fourteen feet by ten, the ceiling slopes, and from a great part of it the plaster has fallen. The height ranges from nine feet to about five. All one wall of the room is wet, and the water, although dried up, has marked its course along the slanting floor to the doorway. Clothes-lines are stretched across one half of the room; in the right-hand corner stands the bed, far cleaner and far better kept than could be ex- pected under the circumstances. But the room seems bare, it is so destitute of furniture. " It's rheumatic fever ; the doctor says he should be took to the hospital," whispers the woman, " but then I couldn't nurse him, and me and John don't want to part. We've held it out twenty years together " 76 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. and with an attempt to smile " we'll hold it out the rest, please God ! Me and him won't part. 'Tis the medicine costs so much ; the doctor he comes for nothing; he's good, he is, and kind, and he says that he'll be well soon." We look at the bed, the thin fingers of the invalid are plucking nervously at the blanket which covers him, the air of the room seems cold and charged with moisture, and we can but echo the woman's words " Oh yes, he'll be well soon ! " Rents Have we seen enough, or shall we visit the Seven Dials. Dials, or go again to the East-end ? In both dis- \nj- house?" ^i^ 8 vou can ^ n ^ attics for Is. a week ; rooms to hold twenty people, wherein men sleep for 2d. a night, huddled together on the floor or on the forms and tables, the animal heat of whose bodies keeps them warm in winter and keeps them awake in summer awake while the night is passed in narrat- ing obscenities or describing fights ; there, too, are cellars at 6d. a week. Is it not a fact that men and women can be found sleeping together on filthy stairs and landings, ay, that men and women walk the streets all night, praying for the morning, when they will be allowed to enter the parks and sleep at peace, under a tree in summer or on the wet seats in winter ? What need is there to describe what all men know ? Take simply this last house ; the pros- titute, Fanny, lives mainly upon the earnings of the girl Jane, who has not yet fallen, although Jane now no longer goes out to work, but fetches work home ; that is, she too is getting tired of constant THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 77 labour without any amusements. This girl, on certain nights, is forced to sleep in the coster's room. That is, while Huxley says 800 cubic feet Number of are necessary for the health of an adult, and while C ^ r fe< the Poor Law enacts that 500 are needful, eight allied *l. f 1, 1 to eight persons, three of whom are grown up, sleep in one persons. room containing only 1,100 cubic feet of air. When human beings are herded in this fashion, The inevi- when in seven or eight rooms from twelve to twenty- disease, five persons are crowded together, they can neither be healthy, morally or physically. All who know physical. bear the same testimony, that under such conditions one girl of evil life corrupts a dozen others ; one drunkard or one criminal makes many. The ten- dency to fall to the level of the lowest is universal and irresistible. Let it be borne in mind that nothing has here been said of the dens in the East-end, where the 6,000 men and 15,000 girls employed by the "sweaters" live a bestial life; nothing of the criminal classes ; nothing of the misery of those thousands who have worked at " dangerous trades," as lithographers, paper-colourers, enamellers, arti- ficial florists, artistic colour-makers, paper-stainers, &c., and many of whom are carried from the work- shop to the hospital to be cured of poisoning by lead or arsenic, and who, aged in early life, leave the hospitals to take up again the burden of existence with shattered health. Those who think this picture over-coloured have but to read the reports of the certifying surgeons under the Factory Acts, or such accounts as that given by Dr. A. Carpenter before 78 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. the Croydon Board of Guardians. He tells of " a four - roomed cottage inhabited by two separate families, by the tenants and by prostitutes. There was not ' a single stick of furniture in the house, a door laid upon a few bricks being used as a kind of bedstead.' Nor was this the only place of the sort in Croydon by a great many." Interest of The evil effects of overcrowding upon the poorer munity^n classes of our large towns is now generally recog- the quea- nised, but it is not so widely understood that it is to the interest of all in the community to do away with these evils. Self-interest enforces the dictates of humanity. For under such conditions of life the workman, even- if looked upon merely as an instru- ment to produce wealth, is not nearly so valuable to the community as he might be. As Mr. Sidgwick puts it, " Competition does not tend to give the labourer the real wages required to make his labour most efficient." The vital statistics alone would prove this. The result of the improvements under- taken in Paris under Napoleon has been to reduce the mortality by one-half. But medical statistics show that for every person who dies in this way, six persons are ill, and the consequent loss to the com- munity of wealth-producing power is enormous. The interests of one class cannot be separated from those of another. "The advance of pathological knowledge," writes Dr. Bristowe, "proves that most, if not all, epidemic disorders spread by contagion." According to the same authority the contagion of some disorders, influenza, for instance, is remarkable THE HOUSING OF THE POOE IN TOWNS. 79 for its " amazing diffusibility," while that of others, such as scarlet fever, " remain dormant for months in articles of clothing." Now it must be borne in mind that the milk, the food, the linen used in the better classes pass through the hands of those who live in courts and alleys, and whose conditions of lives, although concealed, have the most serious influence upon the lives and health of those whose circumstances appear to place them above all danger, and who may live at a great distance from the source of contagion. Dr. Aubrey Husband, in his book upon "Forensic Medicine," after showing that the poison of typhoid fever may be carried by water and by food, instances the recent outbreaks in the West-end of London, where the carriage of the poison was traced to the milk used by those attacked. While re-housing may be looked upon as an in- Re-housing surance paid by the better class against disease, it ance^ may also be regarded as an insurance paid by the *g* iast . r * contagion rich against revolution. The Peabody Dwellings and revo- show that it is possible to house the poor properly, and to make the improvement, in a pecuniary sense, a fairly profitable investment. Two rooms in these dwellings are let at from 3s. to 4s. 6d. per week, three rooms cost from 4s. 6d. to 7s., but it must not be forgotten that the Peabody trustees require a larger return from their investment than would the municipality. It is useless to increase wages and to lessen the hours of toil so long as the workman is compelled to live in the pest-houses we have de- scribed ; nay, it is almost worse than useless, inas- 80 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. much as the extra wage and increased leisure operate as incentives to drunkenness and vice. The surplus wages would be used (this can be seen in the Pea- body and Ashley Dwellings) to make two or three rooms comfortable ; it is absurd to hope that they will be expended in a vain attempt to make one room habitable. It is to the interest of all in the com- munity that the workman should become a better instrument of production, that his dwelling should not be a hotbed of disease, that his degradation and misery should not be a constant source of danger to the State. The warning of Danton must be heeded, . " If you suffer the poor to grow up as animals they may chance to become wild beasts and rend you." The pro- The measure is in exact accordance with English anfimo* precedent ; it proposes to do for the dwellings of the ration in p 0or w hat has already been done for their workshops by the Factory Acts. Further, in many towns the scheme has already, although on a somewhat limited scale, been put into practice. It may be said that the mind of the country is made up as regards this question. Nor would it here have been treated at such length were it not necessary to show that the Act of 1875, passed at the instance of Mr. (now Sir) Richard Cross, and further amended in 1879, was not sufficient for the purpose. In truth, it could scarcely be expected that Tories would even consider an efficient measure of social reform. For the gentry have, as is well known, a fetish, viz. the rights of property, and the reverence they pay their idol is so unbounded as to exhaust all their surplus energy. THE EotrsiNG OP itefi POOR itf TOWNS. The simplicity of their creed / shall do ichat with my own rather unfits them to take part in the complex workings of an advanced civilisation. To mulct the community in the interests of a class,, or of individuals, seems to them right and proper ; to reverse the operation is, in their eyes, to be guilty of sacrilege. The railways of England cost more than the railways of any other country, and the ex- cessive price about 100,000,000 went to enrich the landowners at the expense of the community. Ex pede Herculem. Look at their action as regards the measure now under consideration. The Metro- Report of politan Board of Works reported in 1880 that the po iiun "main objections to the Act were that the mode of ^ procedure which it prescribes is dilatory and costly, and that the basis upon which the valuation of property is made results in such large compensations being awarded as practically to render it inexpedient to carry the provisions of the Act into effect." To put it clearly, the present possessors of such pest- houses as have here been described demand and obtain for their property far more than it is worth, and the cost of the improvements which have been made falls upon the community at large. The Metropolitan Board of Works reported in Conciu- 1881 that "the amending Act of 1879 was not found Select to diminish materially the obstacles which impeded o the Board's operations." Further, in 1881 a Select Committee was nominated by the House of Commons " to consider how the expense of, and the delay and difficulty in carrying out the Acts might be re- G 82 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. duced." Now, this Committee, presided over by Sir Richard Cross, came only to three conclusions, two of which were fairly reasonable. In the first place it strengthens the hands of the confirming authority, viz. the Home Secretary, who may " safely allow the immediate demolition of any house closed by the local authority, viz. the Board of Works, if the scheme has already been sanctioned by Parliament." . Secondly, with a view of lessen- ing the expense, " the confirming authority may well assent to the basement and ground-floor of any building being let as shops or workshops, and that considering the amount of accommodation to be provided for the working-classes displaced by any scheme, the confirming authority will be justified in considering facilities of transport, etc." The third conclusion, however, is altogether to be condemned. It reads as follows Short- "That the local authority should give every pdkM>f facility to purchasers by simplifying conditions of selling fee sale and otherwise, and should do all in their power to promote sales by public competition and other- wise for the purposes of the Act." Thereupon the Board took into consideration " the question of the desirability of selling in future the freehold of the sites, instead of letting them on building leases ; and in view of the opinion expressed by the Select Com- mittee, decided that in future it would be better to sell, imposing on the purchaser the obligation to erect wording-class dwellings, and to maintain the buildings for that purpose for ten years from the THE HOtJSlNG OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 83 date of the conveyance*" That is, in simple words, the same men who have been forced by the evils arising out of freedom of contract to interfere and limit that freedom of contract by law, now recom- mend that after a few years the restrictions which they themselves have imposed shall be removed. Such a conclusion is absurd in the extreme. If it is right to interfere at all, then it is right to pre- vent a recurrence of the evil. The Corporation, after obtaining the freehold, should in no case sell it, but should let the sites on building leases. It may safely be asserted that this third conclusion would never have been entertained, even by Tories, bad it not been needful to lessen in some way or other the cost of the re-housing. The question of cost, then, is the all-important one. The cost is All experience demonstrates that it is impossible obstacle to under our present statutory powers to acquire urban j^^' 6 " property, compulsorily, for public purposes, at prices which do not inflict a heavy fine on the community. The figures contained in Mr. Chamberlain's article on " Labourers' and Artisans' Dwellings," published in the Fortnightly Revieic for December, 1883, are conclusive on this point. The Metropolitan Board of "Works had, up to Experience that time, dealt with forty-two acres of land, occu- pied by 20,335 persons. The net loss on the im- provement was estimated at 1,211,336, or about 60 per head of the population assumed to be bene- fited. The cost of the land acquired was about 17s. per square foot. The price of the land for 84 RADICAL PROGRAMME. Immense profits of owners of insanitary property. Cost of re- housing in the City. Cost in Liverpool, Edinbro', Glasgow, and other towns. erecting workmen's dwellings would nave been about 3s. 4d. per square foot, while its value for commercial purposes was put at 10s. per foot. What does this mean, except that the owners of property pronounced by authority to be unfit for human occupation have received 17s. per foot for land which, after new approaches and improvements were made, could not be valued at more than 10s. for commercial purposes or 3s. 4d. for artisans' dwellings ? In other terms, the owners of these pes- tilent dens, whose criminal neglect necessitated State intervention, have made a profit of 7s. per foot on the market value of their property, and have re- ceived 13s. 8d. per foot more than their land was worth for the purposes for which they had been using it. In the City of London the cost of land for the same objects has been 43s. per foot ; the value for artisans' dwellings is estimated at 6s. per foot, while for commercial purposes it is put down at 34s. per foot. The owners have, therefore, received 9s. per foot more than they could have obtained in open market, and 37s. per foot more than the sites were worth for workmen's houses. In Liverpool the Corporation gave 67,000 for a little more than four acres of land, or between 16,000 and 17,000 per acre. In Edinburgh and Glasgow operations have been in progress under local Acts. In the former city a rate of 4d. in the , and in the latter a rate of 2d. has been necessary to meet the expenses. The schemes for Swansea, Wblverhampton, Derby, Nottingham, Newcastle-on- THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 85 Tyne, all show a loss to the ratepayers, while the real offenders, the owners, have made immense profits. In Birmingham, where extensive operations have The ex- been carried on with conspicuous benefits to the general health, and with large prospective advantages to the community, the deficiency to be borne by the rates up to the end of 1883 was estimated at 550,000, to provide which a rate of 4d. is required. In one instance the Corporation was obliged to give 6,300 for houses which three years before had been bought for less than 3,000. From these premises two conclusions come out A premium 1- i n t t p offered to in the strongest light : first, that the cost of pro- neglect and ceeding under the Artisans' Dwellings Acts is an e nce insuperable obstacle to improvement ; and next that the Acts offer a premium upon neglect and indiffer- ence to sanitary precautions. The exorbitant charges do not represent the legitimate expenses of improve- ment, but the enormous overprice given to those whose avarice and laches have created the mischief. Mr. Chamberlain estimates that at least half, and probably three-fourths, of the deficiency now charged upon the rates has been allowed in compensation over the fair market value, which the owners would have received if they had been selling voluntarily to private purchasers, and not under compulsion to the public. It is perfectly clear, then, that if the country is A Radical to have a reform proportionate to the extent and required, urgency of the evil, the cost must be lessened ; and that not by haggling with owners about prices, but 86 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. by such radical changes in principle and procedure as will alter the incidence of the burden, and save the community from being plundered in the interests of undeserving owners. Apart from the main ques- tion of the provision of wholesome habitations, the present charges inflict a hardship upon the small shopkeepers, and artisans which they will not be content to bear much longer. The real All parties are agreed that reform is indispens- te ' able, and cannot be postponed. But two important issues arise between parties : first, how can the expense be brought within reasonable limits ? and next, by whom is the main brunt of the burden to be borne ? A contest ^y e w ^ consider the second point first, as it between _ i i i i T " rights of involves the principle upon which the dispute must anTrights be settled. The issue, as stated by the late President of the com- O f the Board of Trade, lies between the "rights of mumty. property and the rights of the community." The Tory Lord Salisbury's view is that the obligation of Salisbury's reparation lies upon the public. He admits a qualified tion P s S1 responsibility of ownership, but limits it to the removal of sanitary mischief arising from structural defects. Beyond this he appeals to charitable or- ganisation, to the employers of labour, and to State intervention the latter to take the form of loans at low rates to irresponsible bodies. But if there is to be taxation for the provision of houses for the poor, then, in his opinion, there is no ground "for charg- ing it upon the occupiers of land and houses only." Incidentally we may say that we agree that it should THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 87 not be charged upon occupiers ; there is another class, as will be shown, much more able to bear the burden. Lord Salisbury goes on to say that " in- comes of all kinds, whether they come from consols or foreign stocks, from debentures, ground-rents, or mortgages, ought equally to bear such a burden, if it is to be borne by property at all." * In brief, his proposal is that the persons who have been enriched by the possession of insanitary dwellings, and whose property will be enhanced in value by improve- ments, shall go practically free, and shall shift the onus on to the general shoulders of the community. A widow with a few thousands of consols is to be taxed to restore the insanitary property of great landlords. This is the Tory view of the obligations of ownership. The alternative proposition which the Radical ca i e prop< ^ party will put before the country is that " the ex- sition - pense of making towns habitable for the toilers who dwell in them must be thrown on the land which their toil makes valuable, without any effort on the part of its owners" f The argument is put in a forcible way by Mr. E. G^ys Re- D. Gray, M.P., in the memorandum which he P rt on & appends to the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor, the Housing of the Poor. He writes, "The evil can never be effectually abated so long as owners of land in towns are permitted to levy a tax upon the * "Report of Royal Commission on the Housing of the Work- ing Classes," p. 61. t Mr. Chamberlain's article in the Fortnightly Review, December, 1883, p. 775. 88 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. The "un- earned in- crement." How are unsanitary areas to be acquired ? A rate on owners. whole community by way of an increase of rent porportionate to the increased value of that land, due not to any efforts of theirs, but to the industry and consequent prosperity of the community as a whole. This in reality is a constantly increasing tribute by the whole community of the town to the individuals who own the land." * In order to insure that the " unearned incre- ment " should find its way into the pockets of the inhabitants instead of the owners, Mr. Gray advo- cates that local authorities should have power to acquire the fee simple of their entire district, pay- ing a fair purchase price for the property, and with power to lease for suitable periods and on statutory terms. This, he reasons, would not only eventually supersede the necessity for local taxation, but would yield a constantly increasing surplus for the benefit of the community. So far-reaching a proposal will bear much discussion, but in reality it is based upon the principle of the Artisans' Dwellings Act, which permits the taking of an area. It does not, how- ever, meet the necessity of a special tax upon the owners of insanitary property. The next point is, how are unsanitary areas to be acquired without paying exorbitant prices for them ? Mr. Chamberlain's answer is contained in a series of propositions, the chief of which we proceed to enumerate. The cost of a scheme for the reconstruction of an unhealthy area should be levied on all owners of * " Report of the Royal Commission," p. 67. THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 89 property within a certain district wherein the im- provement is to be made, in proportion to the value of their holdings. A contributory district should be defined, which might be the whole of the metro- polis or the whole of a borough ; but if the im- provement were essentially local, and for the advantage of an immediate district, the cost might be thrown on the owners within that district. The Artisans' Dwellings Act, 1882, already provides that where the demolition of property dealt with adds to the value of other property belonging to the same owner, an improvement rate may be levied on the increased value. The local authority should be empowered to Local acquire lands or buildings compulsorily, at a price *" to be settled by an arbitrator, who shall be instructed without to give in all cases "the value tvhich a willing seller for prospec- would obtain in the open market from a private pur- o^co^pu 6 !- chaser, with no allowance for prospective value or sor . v sale - compulsory sale." The arbitrator should have power to deduct from Fines for the ascertained value a sum in the shape of a fine property. for the misuse of property, or for allowing it to become a cause of disease and crime. Other essentials are that it should be made an An offence offence, punishable by heavy penalties, to hold p r0 pe r P ty in property unfit for human habitation ; that greater unsanitary .-,-, i -, . conditions. independence and power should be given to sanitary Larger and medical officers, and that their responsibility sanitary^ should be enlarged ; that powers to destroy un- officers, healthy buildings without compensation should be 90 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. vested in local authorities, and that they should have more stringent and summary provisions for abating nuisances at the cost of proprietors. The alter- It is between these pointed, definite, and it may submitted ^ e admitted, drastic proposals, based on just prin- tothe ciples, and conceived in a generous spirit for the advantage of the community, and the weak, short- sighted, half-hearted and selfish conceptions of the Tory Prime Minister that the new democracy will have to choose. Answers to ^he proprietors of the pest-houses will, of course, the remon- . r r strances of exclaim loudly against these proposals ; but their remonstrances may be answered with, " Salus populi suprema lex." Not only does this measure formulated as above make for the welfare of the community by improving the public health and by increasing the productivity of labour, it also aims at a more equitable distribution of wealth ; it makes for Justice. One would wish that it were superfluous to bring forward these obvious considerations, that it were sufiicient to appeal to humanity alone ! The Peabody and Ashley Dwellings show what may be done towards the humanisation of the poorer classes while increasing their independence of character. In these dwellings "the rent is always paid wil- lingly," and " there are always many applicants for each vacant room." There can be no doubt that the poor appreciate at its full value the boon of a healthy, pleasant home. After paying one visit to these noble institutions, after noticing the mats and carpets placed before the doors, and the flowers THE HOUSING OF THE POOR IN TOWNS. 91 tended in the windows, all the touching evidences of the pride the humblest inmates take in the improvement of their abode, it becomes difficult to excuse the continued apathy of the State where sympathy has proved so successful. The State has too long made itself the champion The duty of ? the State. of the rights of the individual ; it must now assert the rights of the many of all. It is apparent that in open competition the fittest obtain more than they deserve, and the less fit come too near perish- ing. If co-operation is not to supersede competi- tion, the worst effects of this struggle for existence must be at once mitigated. The generation of workmen now coming to manhood will at least be able to read ; no doubt they will quickly learn that their claims were long ago admitted to be right and equitable. For the privileged classes long to refuse payment of these claims is impossible ; to refuse to pay by instalments is equally impolitic and unjust. Y. THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. structure of THERE is a striking simplicity in the work of reform system. as applied to the rural labourer, for it has to be steward^ ' begun from the beginning. The first step is to and farmer, emancipate him from that servile condition to which ages of class legislation have reduced him, and which violates every principle of social and political free- dom. On the strong but labour-bent back, of the labourer is reared the antiquated structure of the English land system, a system long since discarded by every nation in Europe except England, and which has at length hopelessly broken down in our own country. At the head of the complicated arrangements connected with land tenure in England is the landlord, who figures as the chief protector of agriculture, but who as a rule, with some notable exceptions, is a mere rent-receiver. Being most frequently only life owners of the property, it natu- rally follows that rent, together with the social and political importance attached to the possession of land, are paramount considerations with the small class of territorial magnates who possess the soil of the country. Next to the landlord, rendered neces- sary by an artificial system, and constituting a further charge on agricultural industry, is the agent or steward, a sort of deputy landlord, who is often the real power with whom the tenant has to deal. After THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 93 him comes the farmer, whose position is that of almost absolute dependence on the good-will, the interests, or necessities of those above him. "With much legislation ostensibly in his favour, but with little real security for the fruits of any enterprise he may embark in, hampered and restrained by condi- tions and restrictions which would speedily and effectually ruin any other industry in existence, the English farmer is called upon to compete, and is beaten in the competition, with the cultivating owner in America and in continental countries. Last of all in this intricate system, so full of The obsolete features and conflicting interests, comes the t he tiller of agricultural labourer, the real tiller of the soil. The ploughing, sowing, reaping, hedging, and all other dispensable work connected with the land, are performed by agricultural him. Whatever drawbacks to agriculture might result from the abolition of the landowners, tenant and poli- farmer, steward, bailiff, gamekeeper, or any other t l on . class who live and thrive on the land, it is certain that non-production and barrenness would imme- diately follow the withdrawal of Hodge. Of his social and political condition it might be briefly said, that the ancient injunction preached in so many village pulpits, " that the husbandman shall be partaker of the first fruits of the soil," is to him a mere mockery, while the more modern maxim that " taxation and representation should go together " has been up to the present time, so far as he is concerned, an empty phrase. Perhaps there is no section of the com- munity so little known to the average Englishman 94 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. as that of the agricultural labourer. After a long and bitter struggle the urban working classes have won their political freedom and rights of citizen- ship, and they have now their future destiny in their own hands. As a consequence their success is applauded and their opinions deferred to by speakers and writers. They determine the results of elections and have measures passed in Parliament in their interests, and it needs only political educa- tion and union to make them masters of the situa- tion. The class opposition and brute force which so long deprived the working classes of their rights, being no longer successful, are conveniently ignored or openly condemned by the very political party who exercised them so long as it was possible to do so. With the agricultural labourer, however, it is altogether different. Formerly When the working classes are spoken of, the rural a cipher^T labourer is as a matter of course excluded from the our poiiti- term. He is a cipher in rural society, and has been cal system. ,.., .,.,.,, till now a political pariah in this free country of ours. The case is stated not by himself but for him. In Blue Books, agricultural newspapers, or at farmers' clubs, the position and standing of the labourer are described and descanted on by his masters. The descriptions of his nourishing condition evoke asto- nishment in the minds of those who know his actual status. Unfortunately in the battle of life, as in real war, it is woe to the vanquished, and in all com- munities especially in the well-to-do sections there- of there is a tendency to accept, without sufficient THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 95 investigation, the loud and oft-repeated statements of a dominant and influential class respecting those who are condemned to silence and subjection. Any attempt even to reveal to the general public the real condition of the labourer is resented by the " agricultural interest " with almost savage indigna- tion, while to demand for him the full rights of citizenship has been as a rule regarded by the representatives of those " interests " as a species of insanity. It is true he is often treated with condescending An object kindness, and as a deserving object of charity and ^ \ *gM benevolence, so long and only so long as he is docile |} e 1 and subservient, but any attempt at self-assertion or persecution independence is punished and put down by the many ILerted 6 forms of social persecution which are in the hands himself - of his superiors. Property less, and with no security for house or home, he has no means of helping him- self, and any attempt of others to help him except by social or benevolent means is felt to be, and is frequently described as, a criminal attempt to un- settle the minds of happy and contented men and to set class against class. For his wrongdoings he is judged by a rural magistracy who feel themselves set in authority over him, and who now and then award punishments so severe and unreasonable as to attract the attention of the Press and the passing con- demnation of the public. It is painfully instructive to read in country newspapers of the proceedings of that seat of justice, the "Petty Sessions," where the labourer is brought face to face with his betters. 96 !THE RADICAL PROGRAMME!* Of many of these proceedings it might be said with truth we " look for judgment but behold oppression, for righteousness but behold a cry." A case in In a recent trial even the "Employer's and point. The Workman's Act " was put in force against a labourer Employer's and Work- with considerable ingenuity. The man was sum- moned by his employer for leaving work for one day without notice, and damages of 20s. were claimed, though it was admitted that no damage had been sustained. It was shown in evidence that the labourer was receiving 10s. per week, out of which Is. was deducted for rent, leaving 9s. for the main- tenance of a family of five. For the defence it was urged that he had asked for a shilling per week advance in his wages, and on being refused had given notice of his intention to seek a better situa- tion, and had accordingly absented himself for that purpose. A merciful consideration of the case was asked for on account of the miserable condition of the man, his small pay, his young family, and of the admitted fact that the farmer had sustained no loss. It was all in vain, however, and the Bench, com- posed of a noble lord, a clergyman, two military men, and a squire, held that they had nothing to do with the man's condition or his wages, and that the master was not compelled to prove a loss. They awarded the farmer 5s. for damages, and inflicted a fine of 5s. for costs, allowing the man a fortnight in which to pay the whole amount. The wages We are constantly reminded how much better off labourer ^ e labourer is now than he was years ago. We are THfi AGRICULTURAL LAfcOtJRM. 97 assured that, though every branch of the agricul- Report of tural industry has suffered from bad seasons during c^m^ission the past few years, yet the labourer has suffered n Agri- least of all that his wages have been but slightly reduced, and that altogether his condition leaves little to be desired. The " Royal Commission " on Agriculture appointed in 1879 have in their Report largely dwelt on this view of the labourer's position. When this Commission was appointed there was an effort made to place at least one agricultural labourer on it, but the attempt was successfully resisted by the then Government. In the Report of the Commission issued in 1882 Conclusions the general conclusions arrived at with regard to % ~ the labourers are, that " the labourers were never in towages, a better position ; " that " they have better cottages, higher wages, and less work ; " that " during the recent depression the labourer has had the best of it ; " that there has been " considerable deterioration in quality in spite of the improved position of the labourer ; " that " there is not the same sympathy, and not the same inclination to do anything he is not obliged to do for his employer," and that " the labourers' union and delegates have not only suc- ceeded in disturbing, but have destroyed, the good feeling which once existed." With regard to the Education Act, the Report Conclusion dwells on the injurious effect it has had so far as the Education farmer is concerned, not only by taking the children Acts> from agricultural work, but by obliging the women to remain at home to look after the younger chil- li 98 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. The evidence one-sided and unsa- tisfactory. dren, through the eldest daughter being compelled to attend school. As a consequence, a man at 11s. a week has to be employed where formerly a boy at 3s. 6d. did the work. These favourable conclusions, however, are hardly warranted by the facts given, in the evidence on which they are founded. Though the sources of information are landowners, tenant farmers, factors, land surveyors, and employers of labour generally, yet a close examination of the mass of evidence given reveals a state of things of a painful character, and which could not fail, if studied by the general public, to awaken feelings of pity and sympathy. In two or three cases only in these bulky volumes the witnesses represent the labourers themselves ; and here the evidence is plain and unvarnished. It declares that the labourers are badly housed, their wages insufficient to keep a family or provide for bodily wants, to say nothing of sickness and loss of work. Perquisites are gradually being taken, from the men, and no compensation given ; young men of eighteen working for 6s. per week, and first-class labourers for 12s. and 14s. ; families suffering severely, and their physique degenerating for want of sufficient food, and so forth. The Report, on the other hand,, declares that " the cost of labour has increased one-third," that " the condition of the labourer is considerably improved ; " and a curious piece of evidence with respect to the " three profits " of Lord Beaconsfield is adduced to the effect " that the labourer has had the chief profit ; that is to say, THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 99 has had a larger proportional share of the profit than formerly." These apparently conflicting statements can be, Personal however, easily reconciled by any one who has had ^ a long personal experience of the labourers, and who is enabled to look at his position from an inde- pendent, and not from a territorial point of view. It is a question of comparison. Thirty or thirty- five years ago the wages of the labourer in the middle and southern parts of England were 8s., sometimes 9s., and in many cases 7s. per week. At the present time in the same districts the wages vary from 10s. to 15s. per week. It is, therefore, quite true that wages have increased " one-third and more." In those days, however, many articles of diet were cheaper. Butter was 6d. and 7d. per pound ; cheese and bacon, eggs and poultry, were lower in price ; milk, and especially skim-milk, was plentiful at a merely nominal cost. Now, when railways have opened up distant markets these articles, as articles of diet, are almost unknown to the labourer. The extent to which the children of the rural poor are deprived of milk is one of the most serious considerations in -connection with their health and growth. In former days the plentiful supply of milk and skim-milk largely compensated, as far as children were concerned, for many other privations. At the present time in thousands of our rural parishes infants are weaned and brought up on bread and water and sugar, and milk is known only as a luxury used in small quantities and at rare 100 THE RADICAL intervals. The conflicting accounts as to the wages of the agricultural labourer are calculated to some- what bewilder the general reader, who has no per- sonal experience of the lives of the rural poor. The modes of payment vary in different parts of the country. Some have perquisites differing in value, others have no perquisites at all. Theordi- There is the stockman, teamster, the dairyman, nary scale of wages, and the ordinary labourer, all varying in the scale of wages. Farmers near large towns and in the neighbourhood of mines, pits, quarries, or factories have to pay higher wages. Taking, however, the midland and southern parts of the country, in the agricultural districts unaffected by the exceptional circumstances named, the labourers' regular wages will be found to range from 10s. to 15s. a week. Besides this there are often, but not always, per- earnings in quisites of various kinds. It is to be regretted that time. the men are not paid the whole of their wages in money, as the value of these " perquisites " is in- variably over-estimated. Great stress is also laid on the increased wages and extra earnings at har- vest time. Here again is the same variation in custom and remuneration. In some parts the farmer pays 10s. and 11s. per acre for cutting and carrying corn, he finding machines and tools. By hard work the labourer can here earn about 5s. or 6s. per day. In other parts his weekly wages are increased during harvest, these rates varying from 18s. per week to 30s., with beer or cider. In certain dis- tricts 15s. per week is given, with meat, drink, and THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 101 lodging. To win this extra pay, however, it must not be forgotten that a corresponding amount of work is given ; indeed, during the five or six weeks of harvest the working hours of the labourer are long and his toil excessive, and he is obliged to have more food and nourishment. As a rule these extra sums are disposed of before they are earned. To use the words of a labourer, " They are spoken for long ago. The shoemaker, the tailor, and the rent has to be paid." On a careful calculation of these extras and per- value of quisites, in whatever form they may be given, it p will be found that they average about 2s., or at the outside 2s. 6d. per week for the whole year. There- fore it might be taken as a very liberal estimate that the wages, all told, of an agricultural labourer in regular work, in the districts named, range from 12s. 6d. to 17s. per week. This is under the most favourable circumstances, and supposing that a man has perquisites and has no sickness or loss of work. There are unfortunately thousands of poor fellows who, from advanced age, broken health, want of regular employment, and other causes, do not realise anything like these sums. An addition to the family income is frequently secured by the labour of children when old enough to work. A strong healthy lad, however, though he may earn from 5s. to 7s. per week wages, yet needs the larger share of the amount for his own food and clothes. It would be cUfficult for any one to adequately 102 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Privations describe the privations of the labourer, or state of labour- IT /-> ers. Daily clearly how he lives. One item in his expenditure is never-failing that for bread. The bread-bill of a labourer with a family ranges almost invariably from 5s. to 7s. 6d. per week. Bread and potatoes and raw onions, .with a little lard, and bacon as often as he can get it, with a small quantity of tea, may be said to be the daily food of the household, fresh meat of any kind being a rare luxury. The possession of a piece of land as an allotment, in many parts difficult to get, makes all the difference in many cases between semi-starvation and a barely sufficient diet. We have seen mothers comforting themselves, in their sorrow for the death of a child, in the fact that " there would be one less mouth to feed." In a small and miserable cottage, a few months ago, was a labourer whose wages were 10s. per week, sitting at his supper of bread and potatoes after his hard day's work. The man, with tears in his eyes, spoke of his child, then lying dead from " abscess in the back," privation being, no doubt, the truer cause. In another there is a sick child, feeble and querulous from disease, sitting on a hard chair, and with comfortless surroundings, the mother trying in vain to tempt his appetite with the only luxuries at her command bread with a little lard, and a cup of weak, milkless tea. The pa- The hard lot of our peasantry is, as a rule, ac- tl6IlC6 of labourers, cepted by them patiently and in silence, and their sufferings are but little known outside their circle. The life of the labourer may be said to be one long THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 103 grind of human toil, unrelieved by holidays or re- creation, happy if he escapes sickness and loss of work. With no pleasure in the present, and the horizon of his future bounded only by the work- house and the grave, he works on to the end, to escape " the parish," which he dreads. Strength, however, fails at last, and he then has to rely on a scanty " out-door relief," or he go'es into the " House." In due time he is reported dead, and so ends a long life of toil, in which he has added who shall say how much to that stock of national wealth, so small a portion of which has fallen to his share. One result, and a natural one, of the condition of ^^ion of the labourer, is the extent to which he is leaving the the land, land. The decrease in our rural population is a serious feature in our social life, and full of grave consequences to the prosperity of the country. The one idea of the young agricultural labourer is to get away from the land. His love for the soil is not diminished, but he is driven from it by the whip of poverty and privation. The following extract from a letter of a respectable man, who after twenty years' experience as a labourer has recently obtained a more lucrative employment, well describes the situation: " I know many families where the whole of the children have left the land, and not many of them have gone back. Our father used to say to us boys, ' Don't you keep on the land any longer than you are forced to ; you see how we have to. live ; ' and we have all taken his advice. We have had to live day after day with nothing but onion and bread, and not enough of that, and my poor mother has fainted many a time from want of enough to eat. I have had ten children, and six of them at home not earning a 104 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. penny and the wife ill in bed, depending on kindness of neigh- bours. 1 now earn double twelve shillings a week, but I know labourers who don't average more than eight or nine through the winter. The landlords and farmers have their meetings, which art published in the papers, and we read them and smile to ourselves." Decrease of The recent census shows that the rate of increase FnrSai 1011 of population in England and Wales during the districts, decade was fourteen and one-third per cent., being i he conse- . . quonce of a higher rate "than in any other ten years since 1841. iuto"towns. I n the purely agricultural districts, however, not only no increase, but a general decrease in the population has taken place. In many parts this decrease is of .an alarming extent, amounting in many parishes to ten and twelve and a-half per cent, of the whole population. Referring to this state of things, a clergyman in a midland rural parish writes : " I fear nothing will lessen this evil. The land of England will gradually go out of cul- tivation, &c., our villages will become impoverished and empty, till the country is all urban, and the population effeminate and demoralized. Then may follow a great war, and disaster will ensue." Many of the labourers emigrate, but the great majority go into the large towns. "Wages are lowered or kept low by the steady influx of men into towns, factories, mines, and workshops. This migration is the direct outcome of a vicious land system. The poverty, pauperism, overcrowding, and many other social evils which result from it, are outside the scope of this paper, but invite the most serious consideration. The question naturally follows : How is it that, with this depopulation going on, the rural labourers are THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 105 not more scarce and their wages higher? The answer is that fewer are employed on the land. In all parts farms are seen badly cultivated, in a foul condition, or out of cultivation altogether. Nume- rous individual cases could be cited, where, a few years ago, ten or twelve winter hands were con- stantly kept, now three or four are made to suffice. To this cause more than to want of sunshine should be attributed the deficient production of the soil in recent years. The land throughout is labour-starved, and with the fullest allowance for the use of ma- chinery it would be no exaggeration to say that at least twice the number of labourers could be profit- ably employed under a proper land system, to the great benefit of the cultivator and to the nation generally. It is a relief to turn from this picture to consider Radical for a moment what, from a Radical point of view, for the im- are the measures to be adopted for the permanent o t h e e ment improvement of the condition of the labourer. The labourer's report of the Royal Commission of 1882 contains no recommendations on the subject worth noticing. That of 1869, while honestly and fully revealing the condition of the rural poor, is halting and timid in its suggestions for reform. It declares that ten hours a day is as much as ought to be required of a boy under twelve ; that the same child should not be employed on two successive Sundays, and that it should be forbidden by law to take a child to work on foot beyond a distance of two miles. With regard to the labourer and his earnings, the conclu* 106 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. sion seems to be pretty much that things must work out their own remedy. " It is to the employer that the public must look for that more correct apprecia- tion of his own interests which will lead him to place the labourer in a better position, so far as it can be done by better wages." There seems to be in the Report no sign of any adequate conception of the gravity of the position, or of the sweeping re- forms necessary to put it right. It is a "waste of time, from a Radical point of view, to discuss the relative advantages of 8s. and 15s. per week. So long as the increase leaves the labourer inside the starvation circle all sums are unsatisfactory. The object to be aimed at is for the tiller of the soil, in return for his labour, to get from the land by some means enough to enable him to be well fed, well housed, well clad, properly educated, and to have a fair share of the advantages of modern civilisa- tion. The first First in order among measures of reform comes step, the fo e possession of the franchise, without which the franchise, ...,* now at last labourer cannot be regarded as a free man. After a long struggle this right has been secured by the " Representation of the People Act " of last year, and the agricultural labourer will exercise his newly- acquired power for the first time at the coming general election. The full value of the labourer's vote will not, however, be felt until reform is car- ried still further in this direction. Pending the adoption of a final measure based on manhood suf- frage, it is absolutely necessary that the franchise THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 107 should at once be simplified by sweeping away all non-residential and property qualifications, retain- ing one general and, uniform household and lodger franchise. But the franchise, after all, must be re- garded as the machinery rather than the work ; as a means to an end and not the end itself; and it is well to consider what are the reforms in the imme- diate future which the newly enfranchised electors are likely to demand. One of the earliest measures for the relief of the The next rural poor should be to secure free education for f r ^T y ' their children. The remarks of one of the Com- schools - missioners in the Report of 1868 are applicable at the present day : " The agricultural labourer's wages are never up to the mark that can allow of his sacri- ficing the wages of his child to higher considera- tions." At that time children of all ages were in general employment on the land. " In many vil- lages," to quote the Report, "they have gone to work as early as six, but eight is the usual age." At ten they were found constantly employed throughout the year on the farm. Complaints are now almost universal as to the injury farmers have suffered by the withdrawal of child labour through the operation of the Education Act. It is stated also that the labourers themselves have suffered severely through being deprived of the earnings of their children, but it is doubtful if this is the case, seeing that men and lads are now employed on work which children were formerly compelled to do. As a class the labourers are anxious for the education 108 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME, of their children, and are sensible of the domestic advantages of having wife and children at home instead of in the fields. Hardship The real hardship, and one which calls for speedy of fees. l ' removal, lies in their being liable for the payment of school fees out of their scanty wages. Unfortu- nately this liability is enforced with vigour, and often with harshness, in the rural parishes, and doubtless adds to the distress and privation of the labourers and their families. It is true that a parent cannot be summoned for the non-payment of school fees, nor can arrears of fees be recovered at County Court or by any other proceedings, but inasmuch as sending a child to school without the fees is not deemed to be school attendance within the meaning of the Act, the parent may be, and is, prosecuted and fined technically for not sending his child to school (although the child might be in regular attendance), but indirectly for neglecting to pay the fees. A study of the report of the proceedings at Petty Sessions in the agricultural districts will show how often parents are thus indirectly punished for non-payment of school fees, which their circum- stances make it almost impossible that they can pay. The following case among many illustrates the hard- ship involved in the compulsory payment of these Warrant fees. A warrant for distraint was issued against a train!. rural labourer for the payment of a fine of 5s. for not sending his children to school. The man had not, however, goods in his house of sufficient value to make distraint lawful, and he was consequently TfiE AGRICULTUBAL LABOURER. 109 summoned before the magistrates. It was shown in evidence that he was earning but 11s. per week, and had a wife and seven children to keep. One of the magistrates with indignant astonishment asked the man's wife why she had no money to pay her children's school fees, and had no furniture on her hearth. The woman's reply seemed conclusive, " I have six children to keep, and another sucking babe, and I have no money to send the children to school." The eloquence was, however, of no avail ; fine and costs were enforced, and a month allowed for pay- ment. "With just a shilling a head per week, after deducting rent, to provide for the whole family, the domestic economist will be puzzled, in spite of the judgment of the rural justices, how any surplus for school fees could be provided. One thing is certain in this case, that a month of still smaller supply of bodily wants, of more than even the usual privation and discomforts both of parents and children, would have to be endured in order that the " fine and costs " may be forth- coming. One of the most important and pressing questions The un- connected with the agricultural labourers is that of of tion of these hovels, called homes, of the agricultural poor, given in the Report of the Royal Commission, 1867, though painfully familiar to these who have lived among the labourers, is calculated to rouse serious attention, if not indignation, in the minds of the thoughtful readers who dwell on it for the first 110 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. time. Nothing can be stronger than the language used by the Commissioners in reference to these dwellings in the various parishes visited. They are described as "detestable," " deplorable," as " a dis- grace to a Christian community." To use the words of one of the commissioners (Rev. J. Fraser, the present Bishop of Manchester), " It is impossible to exaggerate the ill effects of this state of things in every aspect, physical, social, economical, moral and intellectual." With regard to the difficulties in the way of modesty and decency, the Commissioners remark, " With beds lying as thickly as they can be packed, father, mother, young men, lads grown and growing-up girls all together ; where every opera- tion of the toilet and of nature, dressing, undressing, births and deaths, is performed, each within sight and hearing of all, &c., &c. It is a hideous picture, and the picture is drawn from life." Cottage Even when the cottage accommodation is spoken accomtno- r dation. of more favourably, the same report adds : " It will generally be found that if adequate in quality they are generally inadequate in quantity, and that some rich landowner, 'lord of all he surveys/ and having exercised his lordship by evicting so much of his population as were an eyesore or were likely to become a burden to him, still employing their labour, but holding himself irresponsible for their domicile, has built a number of ornamental roomy cottages which he fills with his own immediate dependants." The difficulties in the way of reform are ascribed to causes which exist some of them in greater force THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. Ill at the present time. They are ascribed to the " pecuniary position of small proprietors and of embarrassed landlords," to " owners living at a dis- tance, poor or utterly careless," and in open parishes " often to speculative builders." One Commissioner writes : " One of the principal causes of the bad state of the cottages is absenteeism, in which I include not merely non-residence of the owner in the county in which his estate is situated, but that which is equally bad, namely, non-attention to the outlying portion of that estate." At the present time in most of the open villages improve- and districts things remain in pretty much the which have same state as before. On many large estates and ^^ ^^. close villages real improvements have taken place, rent than though in some of these the improvements, in their effects on the labourer, have been more apparent than real. In some cases many old cottages have been pulled down, often to avoid the expense of repairs, and replaced by a few good ones, leaving the accommodation deficient as regards quantity. In others good and substantial dwellings have been erected, but the rent is beyond the means of the labourer. The result is that men have been driven into the nearest town or open village, at a consider- able distance from their work, to seek some cheap and miserable dwelling suitable to their means. The casual visitor to a rural village is deceived by Deceptive the outside appearance of the cottages, the bright *f the^x- 6 flowers in the windows, the ivy-covered walls, and terior of COttelfKJS" the picturesque look generally. He does not realise illustra- tions. THE RADICAL PROGRAMME". the true character of these hovels when considered in connection with the requirements of human dwell- ings. Take, for example, a southern village at the present time, remarkable for its beauty and that of its surroundings, and which leaves pleasurable im- pressions on the passers-by. The whole spell is destroyed on entering and examining the accommo- dation, and by finding that it violates every require- ment of comfort, health, and decency. Take two of the cottages and by no means the worst as a fair sample of the whole. There is one room downstairs 12 ft. by 15 ft. by actual measurement ; over this the same space, minus the opening for the stairs which springs from the lower room, is divided into two rooms. In this dwelling a large family has been brought up. It is now occupied by a worn-out old woman who is finishing her days alone on 2s. 6d. per week and an allowance of bread as out-door relief. In the other cottages there are two so-called rooms on the ground-floor, one 12 ft. by 10 ft. 6 ins., the other 7 ft. 6 ins. by 9 ft. 3 ins., both 6 ft. 6 ins. high. Over these are two bedrooms occupying the same space. Here live a man and his wife with five children under ten years of age. In such dwellings as these, small as they are, lodgers are frequently taken, in order to add a trifle to the income. It says much for our agricultural poor that morality and decency are preserved under conditions like these ; and it is pleasant, though also painful, to notice the efforts made in this direction by divisions and semi-divisions made in these boxes called bed- THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 113 rooms, by means of curtains and rough board- ing. In dealing with this state of things there are diffi- culties no doubt, but not of an insuperable character, necessary. To begin with the open villages and places subject to the operations of the speculator and to "the law of supply and demand." The first want is that of a representative local government in counties, into whose hands the necessary powers may be given to be rigidly enforced in the interests of the poor and not in that of the property owners. At present those principally concerned, the labouring classes, are practically without any share in the management of local affairs, and until the necessary machinery is supplied in the form of rural municipalities on the representative principle, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to carry out effectively the necessary reforms in agricultural districts. This power of local self-government is, in the interests of the rural labourers, second only in importance to the Parlia- mentary franchise. The extension of the Artisans' Dwellings Acts (1878 to 1882) and of Mr. Torrens' Acts to the rural districts, with such additional clauses and modifi- cations as may be necessary, would place in the hands of these local authorities remedial powers with regard to water supply, removal of nuisances, cleans- ing, repairing, &c., together with the improvement, or removal altogether, of cottages reported by an efficient officer as dangerous to health or unfit for human habitation. Land should be acquired where I 114 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. necessary by the authorities by compulsory purchase at a fair market value ; that is to say, at the price it would realise in the open market if the owner were a willing seller. Powers for This land should be let for building cottages on hmd^or 6 pl ans an{ l conditions approved by the local autho- cottages. pities, one essential condition being that half an acre of land at least should be attached to each dwelling. Any scheme of this sort should be compulsory, and the duty of seeing that it was faithfully carried out should be placed in the hands of the Local Govern- ment Board, and any expenses connected with it should be provided by a rate levied on the owners of property in the district. Cottages on These difficulties, however, with regard to open villages would largely disappear if the cottage ac- commodation in close villages and hamlets belonging to estates were dealt with. In these districts, which comprise an enormous portion of the whole coun- try, there is some one on whom the responsibility rightfully rests, and the problem becomes much clearer. On estates which include within them villages, hamlets, and outlying dwellings, where in times gone by cottages have been pulled down and the labourers forced into neighbouring towns and villages a process by no means discontinued the owner should be compelled to improve or demolish all dwellings unfit for human habitation, and to rebuild and provide sufficient accommodation under laws and conditions to be enforced by the local authorities. It is difficult, no doubt, to prescribe THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 115 exactly what is " sufficient " in all cases, but glaring insufficiency could at any rate be at first dealt with. It would be quite safe and just to demand, for instance, that on every estate of the kind under consideration there should be for the labourers em- ployed on the estate 2 cottages to every 100 acres of pasture land, and 3 to every 100 acres of arable and pasture land mixed. If this provision were carried out, open villages and neighbouring towns would be relieved of overcrowding by a population who are now forced to go there against their will and con- convenience. There remains the consideration of rent. A good cottage with conveniences suitable for a family would cost, say, 200, and to pay 3^ per cent, the rent should be about 2s. 9d. per week, a sum quite beyond the power of the labourer to pay. In every parish, however, in which he can do so, Land the labourer is eager to rent an allotment of ground. 8lloul against a clergyman for offences in doctrine or ritual. Without the Bishop's permission the courts will be closed entirely to a layman, and he will have no right of appeal from the absolute decision, however great the wrong which he may conceive himself to have sustained. We do not argue this matter. We are only showing that the Royal Com- 140 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. mission brings not peace but a sword. For on this very point so good a churchman as Lord Coleridge, himself a member of the Commission, dissents em- phatically from his colleagues, and declares himself to be clearly of opinion that " the active interfer- ence of the Bishops to prevent the law of the land being enforced against those who have deliberately broken it is indefensible, as I must confess, it seems to me to be fast becoming intolerable in prac- tice." Transfer- Again, the Report transforms the courts of first mation of instance that is to say, the diocesan and provincial first in- courts into purely ecclesiastical tribunals. They eccteslasti? are no l n g er to be presided over by a lay judge, c.-ii tri- k u t by the Bishops, and instead of Lord Penzance we are to have one of the Archbishops. How little this is likely to commend itself either to the evan- gelical or to the Erastian party of the Church, may be foreseen in the criticisms made, not by Lord Coleridge this time, but by Lord Penzance, upon the recommendation of his brother Commissioners. "An ecclesiastic," says Lord Penzance, "is not by his training and acquirements well qualified for the administration of strict law. It is, I think, to be apprehended that a Bishop would not be careful to follow decided cases, with which, perhaps he would be little familiar ; that he would be apt to import into his enunciation of the law considerations of policy and the elasticity of discretion, while in con- troversial matters of doctrine there would be a startling divergence of decision in the different dio- RELIGIOrS EQUALITY. 141 ceses, which, by rendering the law uncertain, would bring it into discredit and impair its efficacy." Let us quote one more recommendation from the Limitation Report, and then we will leave it. No amount of straining could enable the Commissioners to keep a clerical defendant from falling into the hands ofasticai a lay and secular tribunal at last. He might escape the law as administered by a sympathising bishop, but that would not prevent his persecutors from the right of appeal, and the constitution of the court of appeal has always been found the sharpest pinch of the whole position. According to the Report, the final court of appeal in ecclesiastical causes is to be a permanent body of lay judges. Of course this is a fatal blow to the contention of the High Church party that ecclesiastical offences should be tried by strictly ecclesiastical tribunals. The sacerdotalist is to have the conformity of his teach- ing tried by a layman after all, and to see the mysteries of the faith as coldly and as boldly handled as if they were items in a charter-party or a policy of insurance or a deed of partnership or any other sublunary matter. But the Commissioners have done what they could for him by insisting that every judge appointed to the court of appeal shall pre- viously make a solemn declaration that he is a member of the Church of England as by law esta- blished. The objections to any such limitation are obvious, and even from the point of view of the partisans of Establishment, they are overwhelming. It imposes a special disqualification on Noncon- 142 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. formist, Catholic, Jewish, or agnostic occupants of the judicial bench ; it might exclude the most com- petent judges from settling most important legal points ; it leads logically to the intolerable absurdity of reserving every dispute about a Catholic or Non- conformist trust to a Catholic or Nonconformist judge ; and finally, it explodes the whole contention that the Church is identical with the nation, and brings it down from all pretensions as a national institution to the level of a special community and a private sect. Obligations g mu ch for the last desperate attempt to invent thereby. new bottles that shall hold the old wine, and to reconcile perfect spiritual freedom in the Church with temporal supervision by the State. If the established clergy insist on being freed from special secular restraints, they will have to abandon special secular privileges. If they are bent on spiritual independence, they must take with it the full con- sequences of temporal emancipation. So long as the nation secures great privileges to those who hold a particular set of religious opinions, for so long it possesses a right to see that these conditions are honestly and carefully observed. So long, we may add, as Englishmen are Englishmen, this is a right which they are not at all likely to pretermit. Neither of the two great ecclesiastical factions needs to look to Parliament for new legislative weapons wherewith to strike a deadlier blow at its antagonist. Parlia- ment is hardly more likely to pass another Church Discipline Act or Public Worship Regulation Act, RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 143 than it is to repeat the votes of 1818 and 1825 of a million and a-half of the national money for the purpose of building Episcopalian churches. The legislature is busier than it ever was, it is more resolutely averse than it ever was to meddling with ecclesiastical problems, and those problems them- selves are more difficult and intractable than they have been since the era of the Civil Wars. If those churchmen to use part of Chatham's description of this great composite system who hold by the Cal- vinistic Articles, are too much in earnest to tolerate those who hold by the Popish Liturgy; if the foundations of compromise on which the whole fabric of establishment was reared no longer exist, then there is only one thing for it. The privileges must be withdrawn in order that the restraints may be removed, and the more rapid the growth among religious men and women of moral scruple, intellec- tual sincerity, and spiritual earnestness, whether in Calvinist, in Anglo-Catholic, or in Armenian, the more intolerable will be found the mechanical yoke of our gross and leaden Erastianism. In this, as in so many other parts of the social and Examples political field, England is, half unconsciously but united very powerfully, influenced by the working out of stat ^ and her own problem by her kinsfolk in new worlds, pendencies. The example of the children is not despised by the parent, and those who began by building on the precedents of the old country, are now repaying the precious gift by new and fruitful precedents of their own. Keligious equality in the United States, 144 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. whatever else it brings, at all events brings peace. Now that slavery has gone, and in spite of the dis- turbances of Ultramontanism, as a rule politics are kept clear of religion. " Much as we have heard of the two candidates for the Presidency " so wrote a keen and a competent observer six or seven years ago " we could not at this moment tell to what Church either of them belongs. Where no Church is privileged, there can be no cause for jealousy. The Churches dwell side by side, without disturbing the State with any quarrel ; they are alike loyal to the Government ; they unite in supporting a system of popular education which generally includes a certain element of unsectarian religion ; they com- bine for social and philanthropic objects ; they testify, by their common celebration of national thanksgivings and fasts their unity at all events as portions of the same Christian nation. So far as we know, controversy between them is very rare ; there is more of it within the several churches between their own more orthodox and more liberal members. In none does it rage more violently than in the Episcopal Church, though, under religious equality, irreconcilable disagreement on religious questions leads to secession, not to mutual lawsuits and im- prisonments." * The same moral is drawn and the same example set by the experiences of free churches among our nearer kinsmen in Australia and in the Dominion. Liability of The reader does not need to be informed that the Church * Mr. Goldwiu Smith, RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 145 neither disestablishment nor any other known process to f Ute in - ten c rence . could absolutely and unconditionally withdraw the affairs of the Church from liability to interference and control by the law of the land and the secular courts appointed to administer that law. A free church can no more than a free citizen escape the obligation to keep contracts and respect the civil rights of others. When a minister of the sect of Particular Baptists was dismissed by his congrega- tion and violently excluded from his chapel by them, he indicted them for rioting, and they sought an injunction to restrain him from acting as their minister ; and the court decided for the minister, on the ground that the trust-deeds of the chapel did not give the congregation the right of dismissal. The voluntary nature of religious association could not oust the civil jurisdiction. When a fund was left for the benefit of the "poor and holy preachers for the time being of Christ's Holy Gos- pel," and when a dispute arose among those who claimed a share in the fund, the court might have been called upon to examine and to define what is, and what is not, Christ's Holy Gospel, and what constitutes the preaching thereof. There was a rough but prudent intervention by the State in the affairs of a free church when Parliament passed the Dissenters' Chapels Act (7 & 8 Viet.), providing that usage for a period of five-and-twenty years should be conclusive evidence of the doctrine and worship proper to be observed in a meeting-house, in spite of orthodox contention that such usage had L 146 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. drifted away from the original purpose of the founders. Trusts for religious purposes may re- quire, as unreservedly as any other, to be interpreted and enforced by the judges of the land, and in that interpretation the judges may have to define what is, and what is not, the doctrine legally imposed by the constitution of a free church on those who claim to belong to it. The title to property may depend upon adherence to the doctrine of the Thirty-Nine Articles or the Apostles' Creed, and in case of dis- pute arising at any time among the members of a disestablished church, the courts might be called upon to examine and declare the meaning of either of those famous instruments. The disputes concern- ing Father O'Keefe and the Callan Schools in 1873, raised the whole questions of the relations between a free church and the civil power, both as judiciary and executive. In the case where the cure of Mon- treal refused burial to Gfuibord because when alive he had been excommunicated, the courts laid it down that even in the case of a private and voluntary reli- gious society, resting only on a basis of consent, they, the court, were bound, when due complaint was made that a member of the society has been injured in any matter of a mixed spiritual and temporal cha- racter, to inquire into the laws and rules of the tri- bunal or authority which has inflicted the alleged injury, and to ascertain whether the act complained of was in accordance with the laws and rules and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. It is easy to see how this interpretative power in the courts RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 147 limits that boundless freedom and unmeasured inde- pendence which is the dream alike of the purest spiritual enthusiasm and the grossest ecclesiastical arrogance. Although, however, relations must in certain con- P tingencies arise between the civil courts and the most tions be- voluntary religious associations, those relations will courts and not be what they are in respect of a parliamentary ^ e church. Various points of difference have been on the one pointed out by writers on the subject. 1. For in- P aiia- n( stance, the minister of a free church comes into court ou nta i7 Church on as a complainant, suing for damages on a breach of the other, contract, or asking the court to forbid the breach, while the minister of an established church figures as a law-breaker and an offender. 2. In the case of a free church, proceedings can only arise from a conflict with the authoritative tribunal of the church, whatever that may be; in an established church, the promoter may be a person practically indifferent to the ecclesiastical authorities, and acting contrary to their wishes. Hence, " in the disputes of inde- pendent churches, the courts have at any rate in evidence the action of such church and the decisions of its tribunals on matters of discipline or doctrine, while they have no such evidence to guide or influ- ence them in the ecclesiastical causes of the Esta- blished Church."* 3. If the decision of a court discloses an unsuspected flaw in the doctrinal or dis- ciplinary position of a free church, such a church * " A Summary of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission's Re- port," by Spencer'L. Holland, p. 304. views. 148 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. may easily set to work to amend either its creed or its ordinances. An established church, on the other hand, is bound to accept such definitions and inter- pretations as the civil courts think it their duty to impose. The decision of the court can only be modi- fied by act of parliament, and the high court of par- liament is just as secular, as unspiritual, as little fitted to regulate the mysteries of faith and belief as any other high court. Unworthy It would, as we began by saying, be waste of time to go into all the abstract arguments that have been used in favour of the establishment of the episco- palian body in England. Nor do some current con- siderations, professing to be urged from a practical point of view, deserve more attention. When a writer tells us that Yoluntaryism cannot help " gravitating towards wealth and numbers," * we can only say that such a proposition is partly unin- telligible, and, so far as it is intelligible, is wholly untrue. Why wealth and numbers? Are wealth and numbers the same thing ? We should have supposed them to be opposite to one another. In any case, is it not a merit that a religious system should gravitate to numbers, and is it not the glory both of the Nonconformist Churches here, and of the Catholic Churches in this country and in Ireland, that they have ministered to numbers apart from wealth ? Is it a voluntary or a State Church that * " Disestablishment ; " by George Harwood, M.A., p. 331 ; a well-meaning writer, who wholly misses the point of argument after argument, with an honest gravity of which we do not know many similar examples. RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 149' does most for the spiritual needs of the peasantry of Connaught and the Irish in Liverpool ? One of the strongest arguments in the minds of Spiritual some of the best of men is that if you destroy the for remote Establishment you will leave scores of remote coun- parishes . . . . . T> under dis- try parishes without spiritual provision. Jout can establish- anybody really suppose that a nation which spends m tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds a year on all manner of missionary societies, will be unable to spare out of such a purse the very moderate sum necessary to provide ministers for these remote flocks ? Nobody can doubt that this is what would be done the very day after the Disendowment Act had received the assent of the Crown. The rate at which the formation of Anglican endowments is going on at the present day is prodigious. No less than 300,000 were spent in new church endow- ments in the single year 1873. In the diocese of Manchester since the year 1840 we are told that nearly two millions of money have been contributed to church repairs and building. In the diocese of Bipon the contribution in the same time was up- wards of a million pounds. In the diocese of Liverpool we have it on the Success of Bishop's own authority that only five-and-twenty churches are supported by public endowments, while all the rest, amounting to no less than seven-eighths of the entire number, are wholly and absolutely supported by fees, pew-rents, offertories, and the other resources of a purely voluntary system. In a period of fourteen years ending in 1876 voluntary 150 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. religious effort contributed upwards of five hundred thousand pounds towards the erection and enlarge- ment of churches and schools in the diocese of Dur- ham. Between 1858 and 1875 nearly five millions were voluntarily contributed to the building of churches in newly erected ecclesiastical districts. When compulsory church rates were abolished, we were'warned that the fabrics in country places would go to wreck and ruin. Nothing of the kind has happened, and the repairs of parish churches are as abundantly provided for by voluntary aid as they ever were by legal exaction. Twenty years ago the Bishop of London's Fund was opened, for the pur- pose of building and repairing churches and schools, and otherwise furthering the parochial work of the metropolis. In that time it has amounted to no less than three-quarters of a million sterling, entirely the fruit of voluntary effort and free subscription. Who can suppose that the zeal which has done so much to fill up the void in the capital would be less successfully appealed to in order to prevent spiritual destitution in the rural -districts ? The pre- One or two short remarks may be made on the senceof favourite plea for the Establishment, that it secures official * clergymen the presence of a gentleman in every parish. For theTdiminn- one thing, the fact of there being in the parish a senseof the person ofiicially charged with the duty of taking an social re- interest in the humbler people is apt to make the lay a-mongia/ gentry far less inclined than they would otherwise gentry.- ^ e fo s ^ ar Q that duty. It would have the air, or they often feel that it would, of interfering with the BELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 151 rector's province ; and we may be quite sure that, if the layman should happen to be a dissenter or a rationalist, half the rectors in England would resent any such active participation as impertinence. In so far as this is true, the advantage of having one man in every parish officially charged with the per- formance and supervision of good works, is more than counterbalanced by the check which it may put upon the active and personal friendliness of the lay- men of the parish, and what is still more serious, by the diminution of their sense of social responsibility in the concerns of their neighbours. Secondly, the very fact of the clergyman being official an official, like the constable or the tax-collector, p^re'the 1 " actuallv impairs his influence. Everybody knows ciergy- -I-IPT man s m- that in country places where the element of dissent fluence. happens to thrive and to be strong, the minister of the chapel occupies a very different position, and a much more powerful and popular position, than that of the rector or the vicar. This brings us to a third remark, namely, that the civilising agency happens as a matter of fact not to civilise. Our best authority for this is to be got from the country clergy them- selves, who will tell you frankly enough, perhaps even in language of excessive censure and needless despondency, the dismal tale of the barbarism of the rural poor. Heaven forbid that we should say that this is wholly the fault of the clergy. So long as the housing and the pay of the labourers remain what they are, they will come up to no exalted standard of social being. This much, however, 152 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. must be said, that excepting the Bishop of Man- ' Chester and some other men of exceptional cha- racter, too few of the clergy have ever shown much readiness to do anything to help the labourer to get better houses or better wages. Too many of them have been for driving the rural reformer out of the parish, and ducking the village Hampden in the village horsepond. " In the rural contro- versy between capital and labour," said Mr. Glad- stone in words that are not over-coloured, even if they are not studiously under-coloured, " the parochial clergy have not always been able to abstain from partisanship, and where they have been partisans, it has not commonly been on the side of labour. Notwithstanding their general and exem- plary devotion to parochial duty, this has tended to stimulate a feeling in favour of the disestablishment of the Church. Of this sentiment I cannot measure the breadth or depth ; but it may be found to form a real ingredient in the general question." Un- doubtedly it may, and it will. Hostility of We see the consequences. Dr. Jessop, whose turana- CUl " remarkable papers on the condition of our English bourertothe Arcady have attracted so much attention, tells us of clergy. the " blatant tirades of the Arcadian against the Church," how unmeasured the language, how " furi- ous the cruelty of hate with which he seems to hurl himself body and soul against the parsons." What- ever the secret may be, the fact is certain that the only writing in England that imitates, in the in- tensity of its bitter passion, the invective of the RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 153 Irish nationalist press against the landlords, is to be found in the references in the organ of the agricul- tural labourers to the clergy of the Established Church. A word must be said on another plea for establish- Freedom no ment as establishment, namely that it is a security miberaiity. for an expansive, liberal, and tolerant way of think- ing on the most important of subjects. One very plain answer to this argument is, that when the Episcopalian sect becomes a private church, there is no reason why the teachers of this broad and liberal theology should not be just as free to find a con- gregation sympathising with their views as they are now. Are our people so fanatical and narrow that they cannot be trusted to encourage liberality and moderation of view when they have the opportunity ? The point and essence of State control is that it is lay control. Parliamentary control is only valued from this point of view, because it represents the common sense of the average lay mind, but why should the average lay mind be less tolerant, less open, less enlightened, or less sensible in a dis- established than in an established church ? As a matter of fact and plain observation, for Liberality every conspicuous theological liberal within the forthcom- establishment, we will undertake to name a con- ! m volun- spicuous theological liberal among the ministers of tary and dissent. It is public opinion that protects men of churches. this stamp, and public opinion is more powerful, not less powerful, in voluntary churches than in stereo- typed state churches. Finally, do not let us forget 154 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. how many broad churchmen have, in order to remain where they are, and in order to justify this panegyric on the establishment on the ground of its mild tolerance, to strain their consciences and sophisticate their understandings by signing articles and formu- laries which they either do not believe at all, or else only believe by the help of unnatural interpretations which it is outside of our present province to describe as they deserve. Let all men be free to move in these spiritual things as they will. But let us be honest. And if we are honest, whether Dissenters, or Catholics, or Anglicans, or nationalists, can we help seeing that these evasions, these non-natural interpretations, these queer intellectual tricks, are a debasement of all that honest men most value, and a source of inevitable demoralisation alike to those who dupe and those who are duped ? II. Scheme for Some seven years ago the outlines of a scheme of ment. " disestablishment and disendowment were drawn up, with a view of giving to the discussion a more pre- cise and practical shape. The suggestions were framed with great care and after deliberations that extended over three years. Men of recognised eminence in various schools of thought and various walks of life took a part in the work. Politicians and divines, learned lawyers and hard-headed men of affairs, orthodox and heterodox, gave time and thought to the project. The result could of course BELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 155 be no more than a rough draft, provisionally and tentatively shaped, but as the only attempt of the kind, the sketch that was given to the public in 1877 is of real importance and well deserves atten- tion. At the time it may be said to have missed fire, for Why it the intelligible reason that the Eastern Question at bufthe " this very moment burst out in full conflagration. . . . thrown The English public threw itself into the controversies away. arising out of the war between Russia and Turkey with a passionate interest that was natural enough under circumstances so dangerous, but it effectually displaced all other subjects of less immediate urgency. Still the work that had been done remained. The pains that had been taken with the scheme were not thrown away. "Whenever the topics of disestablish- ment and disendowment are discussed in a practical manner, and apart from the mere speculative generalities of the question, the disputants will, if they are wise, have these suggestions in their minds. It will be enough for our purpose here to reproduce some of their principal features.* Nobody would pretend that they overcome all difficulties, or dream that they are in every detail minutely practicable. To some they will appear too lenient to privilege, too scrupulous towards vested abuses, too tender of doubtful rights. However that may be, the least that can be said for them is that they point where the * They were presented, by the way, to the readers of the Fort- nightly Review in a paper by Dr. Crosskey, of Birmingham, in the number for June, 1877. 156 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. difficulties lie, and direct us to the quarters where the problem will demand most resolution and most skill. Disendow- The legislative process of disestablishment, when- - ever Parliament shall be called upon to take up the task, offers few difficulties. It is not disestablish- cuity. ment but disendowment that will perplex opinion, will open vast gulfs of controversy, and will try statesmanship by an almost unexampled ordeal. It is computed that the settled revenues of the ordained servants of the Establishment are not much, if any- thing, below six millions sterling per annum. If disendowment were to be conducted on the same rules of equity and liberality as were adopted in the case of the Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone has made out (May 16, 1873) that " between life incomes, ^ private endowments, and the value of fabrics and advowsons, something like 90,000,000 sterling would have to be given in the process of dises- tablishment to the ministers, members, and patrons of the Church of England." That would indeed be a sovereign triumph of injustice, and a political catastrophe of unmeasured magnitude. A precedent Disestablishment, as we have said, may pretty iSiSSrt*" safelv be left to follow the Precedent of the year in the case 1869. The measure of 1869 enacted that, on and Church. after the first day of January, 1871, the union cre- ated by Act of Parliament between the Churches of England and Ireland should be dissolved, and that " the said Church of Ireland should cease to be established by law." Every ecclesiastical corpora- tion, whether sole or aggregate, was dissolved. The BELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 157 jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts was made to cease, and the ecclesiastical law of Ireland was repealed. Irish bishops were removed from the House of Lords, and no new appointments to offices in the Church were to be made after the passing of the Act. So simple were the provisions required for the mere transformation of a State Church into a free church. The disposal of the property of this great corpc- The soiu- ration involved problems of very different dimen- ^^k^ 6 sions. They were solved in the manner following, involved in Three commissioners were appointed, and in them all the property of the Church of whatever kind was vested. A Church Body, to be incorporated by royal charter, was authorised, and was recognised. To this Church Body the commissioners were directed to pay half a million of money in compensation for private endowments. To it also were transferred churches, parsonages, and glebes. Disestablished ecclesiastics, from archbishop to curate, were to receive their former incomes, not only so long as they lived, but on the condition that they continued to discharge such duties as they had been accustomed to discharge, or such duties as might be substituted for them, with their own consent, and that of the new representative body. These annuities were subject to commutation, but a peculiarity of the Act was that it made commutation a transaction, not between the compounding clergyman and the State, represented by the Commissioners, but between him and the Church Body. An inducement, moreover, 158 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Provisions to be avoided ; the Church of England must be re- garded as consisting of many corpora- tions. was held out to general commutation, on a large scale, in the shape of a bonus of 12 per cent, on the commutation money, if three-fourths of the whole number in any diocese commuted. Into the abuses and scandals that were the exceedingly unspiritual fruit of these provisions we need not enter. They furnished a savoury mess for the cynic of the period. It is enough here to say that the chief pre- cedent in the Irish Act to be most avoided in an English Act was the re-ereation and re-endowment of that Church which was supposed to have been dissolved into its original and constituent atoms. Hence one of the cardinal pleas in the outline of 1877 turned upon the fact that, whatever the Church of England may be ecclesiastically, it is not one great corporation, holding property and exercising authority as such, but consists of a num- ber of corporations. This is of vital importance, in spite of the blow that, as we have seen, was dealt to it by a sidewind in the statutes appointing the ecclesiastical commissioners. The Bishop of Man- chester described the state of the case with as perfect precision as if he had been a lawyer instead of an ecclesiastic. " Materially and legally speaking," he said, " there is no such thing as the Church of England. There is an aggregation of corporations sole which have certain churches vested in them, but no body of the Church of England is in pos- session of the land. I as a bishop of England am a corporation sole, and I get a certain income which is secured to me by law. Every rector or vicar is in RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 159 the same way a corporation, sole, and each, has his income secured ; but the Church, as an aggregation of these corporations sole, has no property." Starting from these recognised principles, the ^ T <> corpo- authors of the scheme that we are now describing must b y laid it down that, though an Episcopal Church may afterwards be organised on a different basis, when to compen- disestablishment is determined on, there will be no body having a legal existence capable of either claiming or receiving compensation. Only the bishops, clergy, and other individuals having, by virtue of their office, a special beneficiary interest in the Establishment, together with the owners of advowsons and next presentations, will be entitled to compensation on its abolition. While, of course, no legal impediments would prevent Episcopalians from organising themselves, and managing their own affairs with the same freedom as is given to all other religious communities, no facilities would be granted that would result in the revival of a privi- leged ecclesiastical body. Compensation would be given to individuals. All the holders of ecclesias- tical office in the Establishment would be released from obligation to the State to discharge their present duties, and they would be dealt with in the same way as other public officials whose services are no longer required by the State. In fixing the compensation to be paid to individuals, regard might equitably be had to the fact that their further services would, as far as the State is concerned, be no longer required. They will have been deprived 160 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Commuta- tion a pos- sible expe- dient for regulating the com- pensation of indi- viduals. of offices held by a secure tenure, and will be entitled to compensation for such deprivation. But they will be free to contract any obligations in con- nection with an Episcopal or any other Church organised by voluntary arrangements. The scheme briefly mentioned some of the principles that might regulate, compensation, but into these we need not enter. Commutation was recognised as an expedient to which resort might be had with advantage both to the State and the parties, and no doubt the thought was not absent from counsellors, who may be taken to have united to their other qualities a touch of the Avisdom of the serpent, that this was a feature that might conciliate some hostile prepossessions. The commutation, as they suggested, might be effected by the payment of either a capital sum, or of an annuity for life. The objection naturally occurs that the general commutation of the clerical an- nuities would require funds far in excess of those at first derivable from the ecclesiastical property avail- able for the purpose. This difficulty was met by suggesting an issue of bonds for the payment of the annuities due to individuals, and legalisation of the sale or transfer of such bonds. This would place the annuitants in an advantageous position, and relieve the State from any financial embarrassment. It need not be said that the clergy would be at liberty to hand over to any church they might select the amounts which they might receive from com- mutation; but it would, in that case, be in the RELIGIOUS EQUALITY. 161 nature of a private transaction, and involve no responsibility on the part of the State. Ought private patrons to receive compensation ? Compens*- Xo doubt private patronage is a sacred trust, and in ".* its original purpose and destination not a piece of patrons, property. But the legislature has sanctioned the sale of advowsons in more than one enactment. For instance, since 1863, more than a quarter of a mil- lion of money has been paid by the purchasers of small livings sold under the Augmentation Act. It would be impossible now to deny compensation for the deprivation of what was acquired with full par- liamentary sanction. The Act of 1874 giving to congregations in Scotland the right of choosing ministers, compensated the patrons by a sum not exceeding a year's stipend in amount, to be raised in the shape of four annual sums to be deducted from the minister's stipend. We now come to the great question of the fabrics The would be impossible to put the first proposition in such a light as to secure its general acceptance. It would not be easy to convince an intelligent work- man, who frequents our free libraries, that he is quite fairly treated in this matter. Some forty millions of the revenue are still raised by indirect taxation, which bears with unequal incidence against the poor. While the wealthy are taxed out of a surplus of riches, the poor are taxed out of the necessaries of life. As a rule, any deduction from their narrow earnings encroaches on necessary food, clothing, and shelter. They are taxed to protect property which does not belong to them. They are taxed to pro- vide military establishments which were formerly a charge upon the land, and were transferred to the general taxation by a Parliament of land- owners. Endow- ^ or i g it to be forgotten that there still exist ments taken enormous endowments which were left for the edu- poor. cation of the poor, the accumulated wealth of which has been for centuries appropriated for higher edu- cation. There are few school districts in which there are not some charities of this kind which have been diverted from their original channels. In Bed- ford, for example, the education endowments are worth 15,000 a year, nine -elevenths of which go to the higher schools, while poor parents are sent to the parish for their fees. We do not argue for the appropriation of these funds for primary education, but we say it is a confession of great meanness that FREE SCHOOLS. 183 they should be enjoyed by the sons of gentlemen, clergymen, merchants, and professional men, and that the poor, to whom they were given, should be obliged to sue for fees to the school board or the guardians, and be put upon strict proof of their qualification of poverty. Then what are the special advantages which the Compul- poor derive from public education ? If they are tu^not^n- asked about it they will generally admit that the forc ? d , f J ,..-.. . special ad- benefits can hardly be over-stated ; but their con- vantage of viction rests largely upon intuition and hope rather t e poor> ' than upon experience. The advantages to them are prospective, and call for present sacrifice. But it is not upon any grounds of special class benefits that education is forced upon them ; they derive no gain in which the whole nation does riot participate, and where all are educated up to a certain standard they get no advantage over each other. The in- creased protection afforded to person and property affects them least of all. Their poverty and their general regard for law are their best protection. They participate in the general improvement in the social condition of an instructed population, but their share is not of a character to justify the im- position of a special tax. If we look back over the period during which increased popular intelligence and partial education have been making themselves felt in the industry, commerce, and productive power of the country, it is obvious that there has been a general improvement in the social condition of the people ; but there is high authority for saying 181 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. that the rewards of labour have been small in com- parison with the growth of riches through the application of labour. Arbitrary But the injustice and hardship of the system are quai U man- &!* most in the arbitrary, unequal, uncertain, and wi^chfees tyrannical manner in which the school fees are are levied, levied. The fees in the board schools for each scholar in average attendance amount in Birming- ham to 6s. 5d. per annum, in Hull to 9s. 7d., in Liverpool to 13s. Id., in London to 8s. 4d., in Man- chester to 14s. 10d., in Sheffield to 12s. 8d. As a rule the fees in the denominational schools are con- siderably higher. There are about 7,000 free scholars in Birmingham, and the numbers in other towns vary, according to the policy of different boards. This is unjust both to ratepayers and parents. It may be said that it is a matter for local adjustment between rates and fees, and that it is no ground of complaint that a workman in one town has to pay double the fee which is exacted elsewhere. But there is no such isolation of interests as this argu- ment assumes. On the contrary, there is a close interdependence between all the school districts of the country. The amount of the school rate is determined by the scale of fees and the Government grant. The grant varies according to many condi- tions, but all experience proves that, other things being equal, the best attendance will produce the highest results, and consequently the largest grant. Therefore it has only to be shown that a low scale of fees secures a more regular attendance to establish FKEE SCHOOLS. 185 a general connection. For instance, the average fee in Birmingham is lower by nearly 3s. than the average for England, while the average grant is about Is. 3d. higher than the general average. Con- sequently, if the better result in Birmingham is due to a more regular attendance, depending on easier admission, the whole nation is paying extra for the low fees and the large number of free orders in the Birmingham board schools. This, however, by no means explains the extent A gra- to which the inequality comes home. There are poverty necessarily a certain number of free scholars, while scale - Scru ' f, , . . tiny mto the zees of others vary according to circumstances, affairs of There are very few districts in which the school famihes - fees are uniform. The proportion of free scholars is at present comparatively small, but is always on the increase. About 15 per cent, pay Id. per week; 38 per cent, pay 2d. ; 27 per cent. 3d. ; and so on in a decreasing ratio up to 9d. So that in all school districts there are parents who are paying their own fees and contributing to the fees of their neighbours who are in the same rank of life, but from whom they are divided by artificial lines created by the regulations of the school boards. Artisans and labourers are classified according to a graduated poverty scale. A man earning 3s. per head of his family has a free order, but a man earning 3s. Id. per head has to pay fees. In one place the exemp- tion scale is 3s., in another 2s., in others 4s. or 5s. The school boards adopt one scale and the guardians another. The principle upon which the law pro- 186 THE RADICAL PEOGEAMJIE. ceeds, that the fees shall be adjusted to the means of the parents, cannot be carried out with any degree of impartiality and fairness. It is also mischievous in itself. It is the inquisitorial principle of the income-tax, with the highly objectionable difference that the poor are required to expose not their wealth but their poverty. And, since fees can only be re- mitted or paid for limited periods, this scrutiny into family affairs is periodical. Parents put The law presupposes the ability of the parent to poverty. P av > an( ^ ^ esca P e compliance he is put upon proof Different o f his inability. Under the most favourable condi- different tions the practice is degrading and humiliating. It cts ' works, however, with much less friction in some places than others, so that virtually there is a dif- ferent law for different school districts. Again, the custom varies according to the colour and constitu- tion of the school boards as determined at each election, so that scholars who are free under one board may be ordered to pay under the next. HOW the In London, Manchester, Birmingham, Hull, Ports- remission mouth, and other . towns, the power of remission is freely exercised, sometimes to the extent that the parents of one-half of the children in board schools are contributing to the fees of the other half. Other school boards, amongst them some of the most im- portant in the country, wholly refuse to remit fees in their own schools, under section 17 of the Act of 1870, and send all the children to the guardians to have their fees paid, under section 10 of Lord Sandon's Act. It has been decided that it is optional FREE SCHOOLS. 187 with school boards to remit fees, while payment by the guardians is compulsory. In the city of Liver- pool, with its swarming population of necessitous poor, the power of remission is never made use of by the school board, all persons who cannot pay the fees having to apply to the guardians. The practice is defended on the ground that it contributes to regularity of attendance, though why it should do so is not clear. But many school boards throw these payments on the guardians in order to keep down the school rate, that they may stand in a better position with the ratepayers. Others refuse to remit on account of an alleged injustice to deno- minational schools. Some boards have used the power of remission County sparingly, and allowed large arrears of fees to accu- cedurel mulate, which have had to be periodically cancelled or proceeded for in the County Court. In the latter case their recovery has hitherto depended upon the view which each particular judge might take of the law. The majority of the judges in the metropo- litan courts, as well as some able lawyers in the provinces, have decided that arrears cannot be re- covered. This view of the law has been confirmed by the recent decision of the High Court in the case of the London School Board v. Wright, but as it is understood that the judgment is to be appealed against the law cannot yet be regarded as settled. So great is the difficulty of securing prepayment Many of fees and of getting in arrears that many board s ^ ; ls * schools become practically free on this account. In free on 188 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. account of fact, the recent judgment of the High Court will cuit d 'in leave it in the option of the parents to say whether collecting the schools shall be free or not in all districts where prepayment is not strictly enforced. They will be encouraged in their opposition to fees by some mem- bers of the boards. Complaints have been made at the London Board that the members of one division seemed determined to bring in a system of free schools through a liberal use of the power of remis- sion and of cancelling arrears. In Wales, where the farmers bitterly complain of the injustice of paying both rates and fees, remissions are sometimes made where the parents are assessed at 50, and even 150 per annum. The regulations of the guardians as to paying fees are quite as irregular. In some towns, such as Sal- guardians. f or( j encouragement and facility are offered to the I aupenza- ' tion of poor applicants, and the orders are on a liberal scale. But relief! 111 the reverse is more frequently the rule. The highest duty which the poor law guardian recognises is to save expenditure and keep down the rates. In the majority of unions every kind of incivility and obstruction are used to discourage applications for fees. In some unions the guardians resolutely refuse to comply with the statute, and when the poor have run the gauntlet of the relieving officers, their appli- cations are often refused. After seven years' painful, experience of Lord Sandon's Act, in which the road to pauperism has been opened to thousands of re- spectable families, the solution of the difficulty as to the school fees of the poor, in any way short of their SCHOOLS. total abolition, seems to be as far off and as imprac- ticable as ever. The scales of fees adopted by different school Scales of boards, under the guidance of the Education Depart- different ment, afford a fine example of the capricious exercise P lace ?-. r . r Capricious of authority. In some localities the amount of the examples, fee depends upon the situation of the school, espe- cially upon contiguity to a denominational school ; so that parents of the same class, in the same town, often pay at different rates for precisely the same education. In another district the charge is fixed according to the standard the scholars are in, which is a tax upon intelligence ; and in another it depends upon age ; in another upon the number in family ; in another upon the assessment of the parent ; in another upon the condition of prepayment, or other- wise. Sometimes the parents are divided into classes, those in receipt of wages being distinguished from traders on their own account. Under this plan a prosperous mechanic may pay half the sum which is taken from a struggling greengrocer. In many districts the parents and fees are classified as follows : tradesmen, 6d. ; artisans, 4d. ; labourers, 2d. In one town pointsmen and engine-fitters are charged 2d., and skilled artisans 4d. Sometimes there is a sliding scale adapted to wages, a father who earns 18s. per week paying 4d., and one earning less 2d. In parts of Wales a poundage system is in operation, under which deductions for school fees are made from wages, irrespective of the fact whether the workmen have any children. 190 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. A chaotic It is impossible to defend such a chaotic system as itsi^ this on grounds of common justice or equality. That justice and an attempt is made to adiust the demand to the inequality. r J means of the parents is not questioned, but the manifold circumstances of millions of households make the difficulty insuperable. Take the case of the smaller tradesman. No class in the community is much worse off than the little shopkeepers, who have to pay high shop-rents and rates. The day labourer is often in more comfortable circumstances. Under the best systems which can be devised, short of free schools, injustice is inevitable. At a meeting of the Birmingham School Board Mr. Dixon said, " There was in Birmingham an unquestionable in- justice. Some schools were penny schools and others threepenny schools, and it could not for a moment be said that there were not children in the higher schools who should have the benefit of the penny fee, and vice versa" The general testimony of members of school boards is that the most vicious and undeserving get the advantage of the existing law, to the exclusion of numbers who are equally necessitous but more self-respecting and independent. In the Forest of Dean, where extensive remissions are inevitable, strong protest has been made against the grievous partiality of remitting fees in favour of the improvident and idle and withholding assistance from respectable poor parents. It is sometimes urged against free schools that the industrious and thrifty would have to pay for the education of the idle and worthless. That is precisely what happens now. It FREE SCHOOLS. 191 is generally acknowledged that the dissipated and thriftless readily secure assistance from guardians by facing out the degrading treatment which appli- cants are subject to, but which poor people not lost to self-respect cannot be persuaded to encounter. At the Worcester School Board it was stated that the steady and industrious were paying for the education of the improvident. At Keighley it was admitted that the parents of the children whose fees were re- mitted were the least deserving part of the com- munity. Not the least part of the grievance is that the struggles of respectable poor are so dependent upon circumstances a y e r poor, over which they have but small control that they are constantly liable to fall into the ranks of the indigent. So narrow is the margin which separates them from want that a parent who can pay school fees one week may be quite unable to do so the next. They live in vast numbers on the borderland of sub- jection and dependence. A hard winter, a poor harvest, loss of work, a strike, a lock-out, an acci- dent, illness in the family, death of father or mother, makes all the difference in their ability to provide daily bread for their households. How small a thing turns the scale is illustrated by the fact that the teachers at Wolverhampton attributed a decrease of 8 in the monthly fees to the parents being locked out from work during the Whitsuntide holiday week. We may be sure that while the law requires fees to be paid most parents will make sacrifices to find them, but there are not many families which can 192 THE RADICAL fROG&AMME. feel permanently secure that the time may not come when their ability may cease, and they may be obliged to suffer the misery and degradation of applying for remission or payment. In either case it will be felt as a humiliation, and their children will become marked children in the schools. Distinc- Some nice distinctions are sometimes drawn be- tween b re- tween remission by school boards and payment by mission and guardians. In practice, no doubt, remission is made payment. .. . , , ..-,., pleasanter for the applicant, but the principle is the same. It must be remembered, too, that the power of remission is limited, that there are only a certain number of vacant places in the board schools, and that when they are filled up other candidates must be driven to the tender mercies of the relieving officer, by virtue of one of the most oppressive and degrading Acts that ever received parliamentary sanction. Exaction of II. If the final decision of the country is to bo caused *kat the tax on parents shall be perpetuated, it absence ought to be made independent of attendance. At and irregu- . * i i. i 1 larity. present the amount of the lees paid is determined by the number of attendances. It naturally follows that their exaction is the greatest cause of absence and irregularity, and is responsible for most of the inefficiency and waste in our school system. It is the cause, too, of a great wrong towards the children. In the conflict between public duty and parental duty the child often slips between two stools, and his school-days go by while the contention as to who shall pay his fees is going on. FREE SCHOOLS. 193 But it is not only that the school-time of the Waste of children is wasted. A great part of the elaborate ma- ^g lc chinery which is now directed by school boards and guardians, teachers and public officers of various grades, is occupied, not in giving instruction, but in getting the children into school. On the one hand the law orders the attendance of the children, and makes rigorous provision for effecting that object ; on the other it offers a premium to non-attendance. It supplies to the parents an urgent, direct, and daily temptation to evade and resist its provisions at every point. Legislative absurdity could not go farther than this. It is surprising that a practical people, who have seen the development of free trade, and watched the gigantic strides which commerce made when it was relieved from its shackles, should persist for a day in an experiment which is contrary to common sense, and condemned by its results. The superintendent of the Chicago schools, in his report for 1882, says, " The old standard question of how attendance may be improved and tardiness prevented may well give place for a while to that of how our schools may be made such that children will be glad to attend and parents find it for their interest to send them." This is exactly the question for England : how to remove the causes of conflict between the people and the schools ; how to replace opposition and antagonism by co-operation and sympathy ; how to engage the interests and good- will of parents and children on the side of the schoolmaster ; how to secure that the ample pro- o 194 THE RADICAL PKOGBAMME. vision we have made for education should be fully employed ; how to get the best return for our large expenditure. Waste of True economy suggests that we should not drive money. the children from the schools, but entice them in. There are now a million and a-half vacant places in our schools every day, representing an unproductive sum of fifteen millions sterling for schoolhouses alone. But besides school-buildings we supply machinery, staff, and teaching powers which would be nearly equal to the education of all the children who are absent. Look at the enormous waste of force which lies here, the greater part of which, it can be shown conclusively, is caused by the exaction of fees. Law as to The law, as laid down in the case of Richardson v. advance. Saunders, is that fees must not only be paid, but Consequent prepaid an( j that the children may be excluded if exclusion r r J of children, they do not take their fees. Since this decision the practice of excluding children has increased enor- mously. The Education Department encourages the regulation requiring prepayment and refusing admission. The School Board Chronicle, which is a high authority on this subject, says that thousands of children in the country are every morning turned away from school for the lack of the fees in advance. When they are sent home for their fees they gener- ally remain away, frequently they play truant, and truancy leads in time to the industrial school. At Willenhall seventy children were turned away on one morning, after the guardians had exercised their FREE SCHOOLS. 195 power of payment to the full extent which their regulations authorised. In another town the children of many families were shut out of school for the whole winter because their parents could not pay the fees. In one instance eight children in one family were sent home, although a letter was sent to the teacher explaining that there was no money in the house. At Wellingborough thirty-four children were sent back from one school. At Newcastle- under-Lyne a hundred boys were sent back in a week. At Walsall there were three hundred applica- tions for remission on a single Monday morning. This process goes on all over the country all the year round. The parents have not got the fee on Monday morning when it is wanted. Commonly it is all they can do to scrape the rent together, often with the aid of a pawnbroker. If the children are sent back on Monday they generally stay away all the week. Meanwhile those who are at school are marking time, and waiting for the absentees. What is the use of elaborating new codes and administer- ing stimulants to teachers when this drag is left on the wheel ? Having sent the children away, or tempted the The opera- parents to keep them at home, the process of gather- ing them in begins. This varies in different towns, but it is always complicated and troublesome. First the parents have to be hunted out, then notices are sent to them ; then, usually after some evasion on their part, there are applications to the board for remission, or to the guardians for payment, or some- 196 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. times to both. There are visits from attendance officers and relieving officers, followed by investiga- tion into circumstances, hearing of appeals, notices to parents and teachers that fees will be paid or remitted, or the reverse ; then there are accounts to be kept, the fees to be collected, and finally audited. Or there may be a prosecution for breach of bye- laws, and a small portion of the fine and expenses may be recovered, the remainder being charged against the rates. In the last alternative there is imprisonment. But very often the law is made a laughing-stock, for many magistrates will not con- vict where the children have been excluded for not taking their fees. This is regarded as a victory over the staff of boards, teachers, officers, policemen, paid and unpaid functionaries, and the education law becomes the object not only of odium but of derision. Friction ; The waste of precious hours in all these proceed- power. * n g s i g a painful and obvious feature. It is a rule of Harrying sc hool boards and of many unions that the father must himself apply for the payment or remission of the fees. For this purpose he is obliged to leave his work, and: perhaps loses a larger sum than that in dispute. In the conflict of administration be- tween school boards and guardians the poor parents are harried and worried between the two authorities till they are at their wits' ends. The anomalies created by the overlapping of the poor- law and education systems have induced many school boards to petition for the re-enactment of the 25th clause, not because they approved of its principle, FEEE SCHOOLS. 197 but because it was less intolerable in practice than the present law. The relief of conscience, if con- science has been relieved by transferring payments out of the rates to denominational schools from one local authority to another, has been purchased at the sacrifice of the convenience and welfare of the poor. After all their trouble they very often fail to get the relief they appl}- for. In one large town where applications are investigated by the school board and passed on to the guardians, it is said that not more than 40 per cent, of the cases recommended apply, and of the latter not more than 10 per cent, get relief. Instances could be brought forward of hundreds of parents tramping many miles to work- houses from remote parts of unions, and after wait- ing many hours being sent away empty handed, or offered the alternative of " the house." There are many school boards which admit chil- Admission dren without prepayment. The London board has pre pa y- adopted a regulation that no child shall be turned away for non-payment of fees ; and many provincial case. boards have rescinded their resolutions requiring prepayment. How these regulations may be affected by the judgment in Wright's case remains to be seen. If that decision should be upheld by the Court of Appeal, either prepayment must be insisted upon or no fees can be recovered. * But suppose the * Since this was written we learn that the London School Board has been advised not to appeal in Wright's case. The matter has become of little importance, as far as London is concerned, since the Board has passed a resolution in favour of the entire abolition of fees. The step was inevi'able, and the agitation must now go on. 198 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. judgment should be reversed, and the right of recovery should be authoritatively declared, what would be the substantial gain ? The world of trouble involved in keeping the numberless petty accounts and in collecting the arrears would more than outweigh the small pecuniary result which might be obtained. Waste of One of the most wasteful features of the system is time, C and that this unthankful and unproductive labour is distraction thrown upon the masters, who ought to be doing from legiti- mate work, other work, and who have been trained as teachers, and not as accountants and debt-collectors. In any case, whether fees are abolished or not, the teachers ought to be relieved of this tiresome duty, and allowed to keep their minds free for higher work. Instead, they are held responsible for fees, or their salaries are partly dependent upon what they can collect. As a consequence, besides the distraction from their legitimate work, they are brought into . conflict with parents and children, and instead of dealing with receptive minds they are met by sullen ness and resistance. Effect of The effect of these contentions on the progress of e scholars must be harmful. If they are ever so Petty per much interested in their studies, continued irregu- larity will make them careless, and the more intelli- gent they are, the quicker they will be to understand the struggle which is going on between their homes and the schools. They will suffer from the taunts of their comrades, and will become an isolated class. They are often subject to slights in the schools. FEEE SCHOOLS. 199 Sometimes there are separate entrances for those whose fees are paid or remitted. At one school board it was proposed that the children whose fees were in arrear should be excluded from the school- treat ; in another place they were not allowed to receive prizes ; in another they were locked in after school-hours as a punishment for not taking their fees. In some schools they are publicly reminded, as their names are called out, that their fees are in arrear. There is no reason to suspect the general impartiality and fairmindedness of the teachers, but it is not in human nature that they should take equal pains with scholars who are constantly harass- ing them, and whose irregularity prevents their own advancement and helps to keep the school at a low standard. It is not easy to set down exactly the pecuniary The pecu- loss which is caused by the exaction of fees, but it is O f the fee evident that it must amount to a formidable item. s y stem - Dr. John Watts estimates " that 25 per cent, of the Government grant to primary schools is thrown away by the necessity of extracting fees, and that 25 per cent, of the fees paid by the parents is also thrown away." If this estimate is reliable, and it seems to be a moderate one, and if the proportion holds good throughout the country, it accounts for an annual loss of a million sterling. The Rev. "W. Wood, formerly chairman of the Leicester School Board, states that it costs 10s. to get in every shilling of arrears. A visitor in that town was occupied all day in collecting 4d. To collect the fees of 9,000 children 200 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. it takes the entire services of seven teachers all the year round. In addition, the school board employs seven visitors, five of whom might be dispensed with if the schools were free. Experience Fees have been abolished in other countries for nation" two reasons : because they were not worth the The United trouble of collection, and because they operated against attendance. In the United States they get a much better attendance without compulsion than we do with all our irritating compulsory machinery. It is true that it is the fashion amongst the opponents of free schools to discredit the results in the United States. A clergyman stated at a meeting of the London School Board that the average attendance in the eight principal cities of America was only 58 per cent. Such a conclusion can only be explained by assuming that the speaker had been imposed upon or had been loose in his inquiries. On examining four reports for 1882-3 it appears that the average attendance in New York was 90 per cent., in Philadelphia 89 per cent., in Chicago 93 per cent., and in Baltimore 82 per cent. There is no doubt that the attendance in Boston, Cincinnati, and St. Louis is quite as good. But in quoting American figures some allowance must be made for dissimilar conditions, and also for the fact that we are not always sure that the calculations of attendances are made up in the same way as our own. But one solid fact about American experience remains, which cannot be explained away by any manipulation of figures, and which any candid man may satisfy him- FREE SCHOOLS. 201 self about ; that is, that the attendance has largely increased since fees were abolished. Fortunately, however, we need not go from home Our own to learn a lesson which common observation and ex P enence< daily experience enforce in our own work. The simple lowering of the fees results in an increase of income derivable from the fees themselves. This was the case in Bradford and in Birmingham. In Liverpool also it has been demonstrated that the proportion of attendance is directly affected by the rate of the fee. Teachers also know that the reduc- tion of the fee increases the Government grant. They often ask poor scholars to come without fees in order to help make up the grant. Some of the London teachers pay a certain proportion of fees to add to their own incomes. In eight schools at Rochdale it was found that teachers were paying 2s. and 3s. per week to keep the children at school. At Dalton the fees in the higher standards were raised with the result that a class of thirty-five in the Fifth Standard was reduced to fifteen, incur- ring a prospective loss of grant amounting to 20. In another parish it was estimated that a threepenny rate was lost by absence from school. The percentage of attendance in Southwark, Lam- Effect of beth, and other parts of London is in favour of the London D1 scholars whose fees are remitted. The same result has been observed in Birmingham. Dividing the scholars of the Birmingham board schools into three classes : 1, those who pay regularly and without trouble ; 2, those who pay irregularly and give THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. trouble ; 3, those whose fees are remitted or paid, the percentage of attendance in each class is as fol- lows: Class 1. Boys, 88 per cent.; girls, 78 per cent. ; infants, 87 per cent. Class 2. Boys, 74 per cent. ; girls, 60 per cent. ; infants, 63 per cent. Class 3. Boys, 86 per cent. ; girls, 75 per cent. ; infants, 85 per cent. The advantage in favour of those whose fees are remitted, and who belong to the poorest class in the community, over those who pay irregularly, is boys, 12 per cent. ; girls, 15 per cent. ; infants, 22 per cent. The Man- J) r . Watts makes some very instructive com- Schooi. parisons in Manchester. The qualification for ad- - mission to the Manchester Free School is the total inability of the parents to pay fees. The pupils are of an inferior grade to those in the board schools. From the report for 1882-3 it appears that the average attendance was 98 per cent., while the per- centage of passes was 99 - 6, Out of 450 possible attendances, ten boys made all but three, fifteen boys made all but two, twenty-nine boys made all but one, and 150 boys made every possible attend- ance. The report says, " In the board schools of Manchester every child who makes 350 attendances in a year receives a prize. If the same standard were accepted in the Free School, no less than 278 boys, or 82*7 per cent, of the average number on the roll, would be entitled to prizes." In a paper read before the Manchester Statistical Society, Dr. Watts compared the attendance at the Free School with that of three board schools, all of them produc- FREE SCHOOLS. 203 ing good results. The average attendance was in favour of the Free School by 37 per cent., 25 per cent., and 22 per cent. Of the children who had made a sufficient number of attendances to qualify them for examination, the comparison shows 43 per cent., 27 per cent., and 17 per cent in favour of the Free School. There is one very significant fact showing how attendance depends on fees. It is well known that Monday is the worst day in the week for paying fees. The attendance at the Free School on Monday is 38 per cent., 38 per cent., and 35 per cent, better than at the three board schools selected for comparison. The attendance at the Free School also extends over a longer period. The length of attendance at the three board schools was 1*7 years, 2'50 years, and 2- 9 years, while at the Free School it was 3'75 years. Dr. Watts says that he believes " the difference is entirely due to the absence of fees and the annoyances connected therewith." These figures are convincing that a great improve- ment in attendance would result from free admis- sion, and the attendance would not only be larger but steadier. Strict compulsion would still be neces- sary for a few ; but if our school system were re- lieved from its fetters it would take an astonishing leap forward. The teachers would throw off a dis- heartening burden ; the regular scholars, who are now kept back by the desultory and erratic attend- ance of others, would have far better opportunities, and the productive power of the schools would be increased incalculably. At the same time an 204 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. inestimable boon would be carried into countless homes. Unhealthy III. The tone of the existing system is unhealthy. exUing he -^ supplies incentives to corruption and induces Astern. pauperism. It is eleemosynary in spirit. It is a paternal government of the most offensive descrip- tion which is coddling where it is not oppressive. It is patronising towards the poor, and offers them education as a favour and privilege for which they must appeal, and not as a right. It is a charity system, and the schools are widely regarded as charity schools. The partial remission and payment of fees is demoralising, and has a tendency to cor- rupt both parents and children. There is no differ- ence in principle between remission and payment. The qualification of the candidates is the same in both cases. They must come cap in hand and prove their poverty. They must expose their empty cup- boards, and submit to cross-examination by sleek gentlemen about their struggles and wants. They must repeat this at short intervals, and thus accus- tom themselves to make appeals for public relief. Remission is generally made tolerably easy, but it is very questionable whether, in point of public policy, and quite apart from the desirability of getting the children into school, it is wise that it should be so. Dr. R. W. Dale, when he was on the Birmingham School Board, said that he had sat on the Appeal Committee, and that the whole system was essentially pauperising. " He thought that a woman who had shrunk from appearing before a relieving officer, FREE SCHOOLS. 205 after she had been before the Appeal Committee would be far more likely to go to the parish on the first pinch of poverty in order to get assistance." That the parents recognise the degradation is struggles evident from the struggles they make to escape . r a e pe 8 from it. It is frequently necessary for the teachers Application to write notes for them stating that they wish for free orders, but this often fails to induce them to apply. Their repugnance is in the highest degree honourable to them, and ought to be encouraged. The objection to go before the guardians is more insurmountable, and many parents prefer to suffer partial starvation. There is often a double investi- gation, first by the school board and then by the guardians. The earliest is preparatory. The poor are invited to familiarise themselves, by gradual steps, with the shifts and expedients of pauperism. And although the first plunge is difficult, rapid pro- gress is soon made. Example is contagious ; it is hard to see children suffer ; the attendance officer is behind ; and so in various ways, and by degrees, the spirit of independence is broken, and the victims are partly drawn, and partly driven, into a situation from which they may easily drift into the per- manent ranks of pauperism. The contagion passes from parents to children, and the seeds of life- long subjection and dependence are sown in many families. Experience has also demonstrated that the making Remission of free orders is a great temptation to fraud and n p ^_ a misrepresentation of circumstances. This danger is c 'P le - the greatest in the case of school boards, the mem- 206 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. bers of which have not the relieving officer's in- stinct, practice, and acuteness in probing the private affairs of the poor. The custom of allowing 'the parents to get into debt, and then of wiping off their arrears, is also demoralising. The dunning of the children, the visits of the attendance officer, the summons before the magistrate, all harden a large proportion of the people against the school system, and make them regard education not as something to be pursued and embraced, but as a nuisance and infliction to be repelled and evaded in every way. The only All this want of sympathy and co-operation, complete which gives the teacher such an up-hill fight, would abolition of ^ e remedied if the parents had full proprietary rights in the schools, if they were open without badge or ticket, and if they were in a larger degree under their own control and the management of their own class. Then the time would soon come when the schools would be regarded not as charitable institutions, with their absurd and mischievous distinctions between tradesmen, mechanics, and labourers, but as the people's schools, in which the whole community would join, on equal terms, in the pursuit of a great national object. VIII. TAXATION AND FINANCE. MR. LOWE once described the Chancellor of the Unpopu- Exchequer as a mere taxing-machine, " intrusted with a certain amount of misery which it was his duty to distribute as fairly as possible." This harmonizes with the national sentiment that taxa- tion, at the best, is a great evil ; an opinion which gave rise to the school of economists of which Mr. Joseph Hume was the founder, and who has been followed by Mr. Peter Rylands, Dr. Pankhurst, and others, all of whom are persuaded that, whatever form taxation may take, it is necessarily unprofit- able, unproductive, and a mere dead weight on the population. That this view is fundamentally un- sound is proved by the case of the Post Office, where the State performs a service more efficiently and economically than it could be otherwise done, to the succour of the revenue, and without the slightest perceptible pressure on the community. Looking back, however, over the long history of extortion practised on the nation, it is easy to understand how opinion has been forced into one channel. There has not been even the alleviation of fair distribu- tion. Some sportive fictions have helped to gild the pill such as the alleged privilege of the people to be taxed only by their representatives ; but our code of finance has had no basis in honour or con- science. 208 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. The nation The National Debt, the charges on which ahsorb represented". a third of the revenue, was contracted, almost in its entirety, when the masses were wholly unrepre- sented in Parliament. In their case the supposed protection of denying the Lords the right to inter- fere with money bills was no safeguard whatever. So far as their interest, comfort, or convenience went, they might just as well have been ruled by King Log as by King Stork. Even now, on the eve of their complete enfranchisement, so deeply is our fiscal legislation rooted in the past, when a small minority made laws for their own advantage, that Parliament still clings to its old ways, and to methods of raising revenue grossly unfair to the bulk of the taxpayers. That under such conditions the expenses of Government should be viewed with toleration is hardly to be expected. The Kadi- Jt will be the business of the Radical party to extend the range of view on this subject ; to intro- duce a higher ideal ; to reform the methods of tax- ation, correct its incidence, simplify its collection, and enlarge its application. By these means a public opinion may be created, in which taxes ought to be considered as an investment for the general good, and should be cheerfully, and, in the main, easily borne. Magnitude To many this may seem a romantic notion, and reform re- a ^ w ^ recognise the magnitude of the undertaking, quired and which will not be accomplished without some rough strength of r . obstacles, collisions with precedents and received nostrums. Nothing is more convincing of the strength of the TAXATION AND FINANCE. 209 obstacles to reform than the fact, that notwith- standing all the pains given to the subject by Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Lowe, so little has really been done to make national finance har- monize with national wants. In a great measure, however, this is explained by the necessary limita- tions of action under a restricted franchise. It is said, probably with truth, that England is Amount of ., r , / . taxation in less heavily taxed than many other countries, but England, the gravamen of the charge against our taxation is not so much its gross amount as the way in which it is levied and appropriated. It is also urged that the load cannot press very severely on the people or they would mutiny against it. Because taxes often lead to revolutions, and as this country is not given to revolutions, therefore it is concluded that the imposts cannot be oppressive. The long-suffering of the people, their submission to law, the absence amongst them of seditious tendencies, are all taken against them in considering the necessity for re- form. But the real explanation of their patience is that they have never known what they were actually paying. Early in history our rulers had experience of the Poll taxes, results of heavy direct taxation. It was a poll tax which caused Wat Tyler's rebellion, and it was never afterwards found possible to collect a tax of this character. Our financiers therefore resorted to the cunning device under which a bloated revenue may be raised without its pressure being directly felt. A system of indirect taxation, levied upon p 210 THE RADieAL PROGRAMME. necessaries, has great charms for a finance minister whose object is to obtain the largest return with the least resistance. Then, if the people have nothing to do with the laws, except, as Bishop Horsley said, to obey them, and if they are carefully blind- folded and kept in ignorance, there is hardly any limit to the burden which they will sustain without flinching. It is by means of this policy that twelve hundred millions sterling for war purposes have been saddled on the nation within the last two Theintro- centuries. The way in which the new system was fndfrect f carr i e( l into effect involved a piece of dishonesty taxation, which hardly has any parallel in history. The military expenses of the Government were origin- ally borne by the land, and they took the form of feudal services or payments, which were in the nature of a rent charge " a portion of the rent reserved from the beginning by the State." The Parliament of Charles II., by a deliberate act of repudiation, removed this burden from the land to the duties upon customs and excise, collected from the whole community. In this way the principle was established that industry rather than property should bear the main cost of Government. To crown this violation of justice, the taxes collected from the people were appropriated for the benefit of the small ruling class who had a direct interest in the spending departments of the Government. Thus necessaries are taxed to provide luxuries, and toil to create wealth. Extent to By degrees, every article of general consumption, which in- TAXATION AND FINANCE. 211 everything which had to pass a port or a custom- house, or could be valued or assessed, came to be formerly taxed. To look over a tariff list fifty years old is a convincing proof of the stolid patience of our ances- tors. In these days, by a sparing use of indulgencies, taxation may be largely evaded, but less than half a century ago no one could exist and escape his daily contribution to the revenue. Every meal was heavily taxed ; everything that could be consumed, worn, or used; fire and shelter, and the light of heaven. There was a tax for learning trades, and a tax for following trades, some of which still remain. The chief reliance, however, was upon the tax on neces- saries, because it was the most productive, and could not be easily evaded. The extent to which the method of indirect taxation was carried may be gathered from the fact that, previous to 1820, some two thousand Acts of Parliament had been passed in restriction of free commerce. It would be a mistake to suppose that this system Taxes was regarded with universal disfavour. The people {^t^the were densely ignorant, and it was a well-defined Tories. A policy to keep them so. They knew they suffered, wealth to but did not know why. They knew that bread was dear, but did not know the cause. But with the class which made the laws this form of raising revenue was decidedly popular. Even in our own times the Tories have not generally been opposed to increased taxation, except where it touches land. But formerly taxation was the frequent origin of wealth not of national wealth, but of those treasures 212 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. which, as Mr. Ruskin says, are " heavy with human tears." The early mode of borrowing under which Government Stock was issued at large discounts, was a source of affluence to many, and was encouraged by Parliament as a profitable means of speculation. The gigantic wars waged from the reign of Anne to that of George IV. laid the foundation of many splendid fortunes, and meant for one small class, which was supreme in the legislature, wealth, glory, promotion, and social distinction. For the poor they have meant nothing but bitterness. Private soldiers who have distinguished themselves in action have been left in their old age to languish in work- houses. If there are still a few survivors of Water- loo, the officers will probably be found in one of the Houses of Parliament the privates in the other great national "house." The costliness of public servants, their extravagance and corruption, the provision of sinecures and perpetual pensions for the descendants of court favourites or successful generals, have all fallen in their heaviest incidence upon the mass of the people, and have been wrung from the toil of the mechanic and labourer. The National Debt has been described by some authorities as representing so much wealth, or, as Burke says, "the purchase of commerce or conquest ; " while by others it is esteemed as a providential provision for safe investment by the classes called "respectable." For the poor it may be taken as a measure of want and misery, of short supplies and extra labour. Another characteristic of our national finances has TAXATION AND FINANCE. 213 been the narrow groove which they have kept, and leged ap- the limited range of purposes for which they have [axes! 101 been appropriated. The gross expenditure has always - been advancing, but without, until recently, any expansion of the objects for which taxes may be profitably raised. Every extension of the revenue has been more than counterbalanced by the growth of expenditure, which has been confined within the same contracted borders the management of the debt, experiments in the military and naval depart- ments, and organization of the civil service. Each new war has added to the debt and the cost of military equipments, and when peace has arrived the charges have never returned to the former peace footing. The inability of Parliament to keep down Govern- inability of ,. . , Parliament ment expenditure is owing to the preponderating to keep influence possessed by the class which is interested pg^jiture. in lavish outlay. The State is constantly accepting The cause, new responsibilities, which find work and pay for a few at the cost of the rest. It is doubtful whether our national expenditure can now be largely reduced. "We cannot repudiate our obligations. The doctrine of repudiation is not a part of the Radical programme. "What we first want is a searching inquiry into the cost of the great spending departments. Nothing is more certain than that Parliament has never seriously undertaken the reduction of expenditure. There has been a little paring now and again ; a few small votes have sometimes been attacked with success from the outside ; but that is the most that has been 214 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. attempted. The system of party Government, which throws upon ministries a daily fight for existence, is in some degree responsible. The preliminary con- dition of retrenchment is, that instead of vague charges of extravagance and inefficiency, as a rule unsupported by evidence, we should have fuller and clearer information as to the constitution of the various departments, and the possibility of reorgan- isation with a view to economy. Aversion of These being the chief historical features of our old system, financial code, a general aversion to all schemes of ra isi n g or expending revenue is a natural result. It is the inevitable consequence of a system of Govern- ment under which the taxpayers are only partially represented. But when the Government is brought into full accord with the whole nation there ought to be no reason why taxation, based on sound prin- ciples for the advantage of the entire community, should not be just as popular with the people at large as it has hitherto been with the minority who have almost exclusively benefited by it. The aim of the future will be to reverse the principle which has held sway in the past ; to rectify the incidence of the levies for the relief of industry ; to reform the methods of collection ; to enlarge and multiply the channels of appropriation ; to investigate the cost of administration in the three chief services, and to reduce their expenditure to the extreme limit con- sistent with economy and efficiency in the business of the State. AH classes No plea is put forward for the exemption of any should be taxed. TAXATION AND FINANCE. 215 class from a fair contribution to the cost of Govern- ment. Everyone who is able should subscribe something, and, as far as possible, should know what tke amount is. Foi* this reason direct taxes are preferable to indirect taxes. Besides, there can be no better check on the extravagance of Government. When the whole nation votes the taxes there would be no difficulty in collecting even a poll-tax. "With an ignorant population, or under autocratic forms of Government, there are many excuses for indirect taxation, but they lose their force when the people are instructed and have a full share of representa- tion. Then the more closely they are brought into relation with the administration, the greater will be their interest in the affairs of the State. Nor is it intended to disparage the large reforms in the tariff laws which have been effected partly by Gladstone. Sir Robert Peel and Mr.' Lowe, but in the main by ' the financial skill of Mr. Gladstone. But notwith- standing the great remissions on articles of general use, the incidence of taxation continues to be unequal and unjust. It is not controverted that the contribu- tions of the working classes trespass to a serious and painful extent on the simple necessaries of life. The three Chancellors of the Exchequer of real note, within the last half century, agree that the customs and excise, which still make up five-sevenths of the revenue, fall heaviest upon those who have the smallest means. The figures of the late Professor Stanley Jevons, of Professor Leone Levi, and other eminent statisticians, show that those families which 216 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. have the smallest incomes pay the largest proportion of taxes. Mr. Bright has said that the amount con- tributed by the working classes, in proportion to their means and income, exceeds the contributions of other and richer sections of society. Mr. Gladstone also has acknowledged that three-fourths of the customs and excise are raised from people so poor that the great majority are compelled to spend all their earnings on the bare necessaries of existence. Again, referring to the taxes on the earnings of the people, he said, "They formed in no small degree a deduc- tion from a scanty store, which was necessary to secure them a sufficiency, he did not say of the com- forts of life, but even of the prime necessaries of clothing, of shelter, and of fuel." Local n i s remarkable that in the last three Parliaments, taxation. in two of which the Liberals have had large ma- jorities in the Commons, importunate resolutions have been passed demanding the relief of local taxa- tion. One of the first acts of Mr. Disraeli's last Government was to transfer several millions from the local rates to the Imperial exchequer, which was, as far as it went, a relief to the rich at the expense of the poor. This proves the enormous ascendancy which the landowners still possess in Parliament. Some readjustment of local burdens may be desirable, but there has been an unreasonable impatience on both sides of the House to have the matter settled before there is any extension of democratic power. Too much haste, however, will defeat its own ends. No readjustment of local rates will be accepted as TAXATION AND FINANCE. 217 complete which is not accompanied by a thorough inquiry into the incidence of Imperial taxation. The case of the land is not so urgent that it can- The case of not wait until the subject can be considered in all 1 e ant ' its bearings. When that is convenient something must be taken into account for the obligations which the land has thrown off, as well as for those which it bears. The land tax, where it still exists, is col- lected on a valuation made in the reign of Wil- liam III. It now yields a little over a million, but if it were based on present value, it would produce nearly twenty millions. In other words, the value of land has multiplied twenty-fold since the last assessment for the land tax. It would be interest- ing to know what proportion of this extra value belongs to what is called unearned increment. Clearly a revision of local rates should be attended by a revaluation. The land also escapes probate and legacy duties, and the small succession duty which it pays is calculated, not, as in the case of personal property, on the capital value, but on the life interest of the tenant. Even this trifling charge is often evaded by settlements. Care will have to be taken that any relief which may ultimately be granted to local rates shall not be a gift to the land- lord, in the shape of increased value, but that it shall find its way into the pockets of the occupiers, who really bear the rates. The relief of property, to the inevitable increase of the burden on industry, is just the opposite direction which the reform of taxation should take. 218 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. A prelimi- nary ques- tion: What is the just incidence of taxa- tion? An allow- ance for necessaries not to be taxed. A gradu- ated in- come tax. The cardinal point to be decided before any com- prehensive or beneficial changes can be made is, What is the just incidence of taxation between rich and poor or between wealth and labour ? The man- ner of raising and of appropriating taxes, though questions of great importance, can only be deter- mined when the first principle is agreed upon. The maxim which will probably find acceptance is that a reasonable allowance should be made for necessaries of existence, ancl that only the surplus of earnings and accumulations should be taxed. This is not a recent suggestion ; it was proposed by Bentham and supported by Mill, and it is really the principle upon which the reforms of Mr. Gladstone have proceeded, so far as they have gone. After making this deduction, realised property in Borne cases, and incomes in others, should be taxed according to a graduated scale. Neither is this a new proposal. In Mr. Pitt's time there was a tax of ten per cent, on incomes of 200 and upwards, while diminishing rates were attached to smaller incomes down to 60. A graduated income tax has long been advocated, both in England and on the Continent. In some parts of the United States it has been successfully adopted, and has been recently introduced into Germany by Prince Bismarck. The maxim put forward by Mr. Mill is that in taxation there should be equality of sacrifice. It is very difficult to carry out such a theory with absolute perfection, but the leaning towards generosity of construction ought to be in favour of the poor, in- TAXATION AND FINANCE. 219 stead of, as it has hitherto been, in favour of the rich. How can the practice of taxing small incomes, dependent on health, skill, and industry, in the same proportion as large incomes proceeding from realised wealth, be defended? It is admitted that the greatest number of persons who pay income tax pay on the smallest incomes. Under a mixed system like ours, partly direct and partly indirect, the most oppressive weight falls on the large and struggling intermediate class, who, besides their proportion of indirect taxation, have to pay the direct tax on income. A special tax on realised property is opposed on the ground of its alleged injustice ; yet the middle classes are required to pay a tax on their savings, even before they become productive. It is argued that a graduated income tax would hold out motives for dissipating instead of saving. The sentiment may pass for what it is worth; the practical point is, How would it work ? It would be foolish to impose a tax which would destroy the incentive to exertion, but an income tax of 10 per cent, has been borne in England, and might be levied again without the result, so often prophesied but never realised, of driving capital out of the country. Mr. Mill was in favour of applying the principle Mr. Mill's of a graduated tax to legacies and inheritances. He V1 also advocated a distinction between incomes de- pending on personal skill and industry, and those derived from realised property. It was, too, a favourite project of his to tax the spontaneous in- 220 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. crease of rent. The latter principle has been con- spicuously departed from in England, while in most countries the land tax forms a large proportion of public revenue. There may be some nice points for reconciliation and decision, but a direct progressive tax on income and property is the lever to which we shall have to look for the social reforms of the future. Objects for Having satisfied the preliminary condition that ma y be the revenue shall be fairly raised, the extent to legitimately ^-hich taxation may be carried and the objects for which it may be legitimately appropriated are open for consideration. Here we part company with the school of economists whose views are expressed in the invariable formula " reduction of the estimates," as the one universal and infallible panacea for all the evils of the State. It is possible to say this without any derogation of the eminent services rendered in the past by a few members of Parliament who were the sole intercessors between the people and the legislature, and who found that the only way to keep the grossly extravagant expenditure of Govern- ment in check at all was to attack it on all occasions and at every point. Mr. Bright has always held that the cost of Government was scandalously exces- sive. Mr. Cobden also was of opinion that our expenditure could be largely reduced without dimin- ishing the efficiency of the services ; but he recog- nised a great difference in classes of expenditure. For instance, he was in favour of liberal taxation for education. " "We cannot afford," he said, " to have a little national education." TAXATION AND FINANCE. 221 By all means let us have the most severe economy Economy in every branch of the service ; let us be careful to ^ rv ices. have a pound's worth for every pound we expend. But safeguards being taken for this, it is a mistake to conclude that the magnitude of the estimates is even primd-facie proof that the expenditure is unre- munerative. Let it be repeated with emphasis that we must have a substantial return in labour, talent, service, or materials for every farthing we spend; k but as long as we secure this, taxation, on equitable principles, for objects which the nation approves, cannot be on too liberal a scale. Wherever the State can spend money for the The gene- public advantage better than individuals, the power pt e stated, of taxation may be legitimately exercised. The principle has already justified itself in the postal department, where a quarter of a million laid out in 1869 produced in the course of a few years a million and a quarter. But it is not necessary that there should be a direct pecuniary return in order to justify taxation. The education grants bring nothing directly to the exchequer, yet no one ques- tions their general advantage. Payments for public works, for sanitary purposes, for the regulation of mines, factories, railways, and shipping, for the supply of water and the administration of justice, are equally advantageous to the community at large, and justify a general assessment. Expenditure of this class on a much larger scale than at present would yield a good return in the shape of better health, increased comfort and security of life, and 222 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. national contentment. The bulk of our outlay in the past has been mischievous where it has not been mere waste. The immense war bill of the last two centuries is of this character. The taxation of the future ought to take the character of insurance, or of investments for the general welfare. Tendency It is not intended to discuss here the wide subject legislation ^ ^ e P r P er limitations of the -functions of Govern- to eqiarge ment ; but it is evident that the tendency of modern functions ,.,.. ~ i of Govern- legislation is to give Government more rather than ment less to do. The objections to State undertakings and interference become of diminished force when the Government is by the whole people, and when every citizen is a partner in the affairs of the State. There are many operations which have to be con- ducted on an extensive scale, which a Government, by reason of its resources and comprehensive powers, can undertake much more economically than indi- viduals or private associations. It would be better for the State, either through Parliament or municipal authorities, to assume these functions more often than it does, rather than to encourage the creation of huge private interests and monopolies, which are always fighting and combating for their own hands against the community. Take as an illustration the railway companies. old debts For the present purpose, however, it is sufficient the 1 people, to point out that there are some old debts owing to - ^ e P eo pl e which the Government will have to dis- dowments. charge. The first subject is education, which becomes more urgent every day. It may be taken as a general TAXATION AND FINANCE. 223 maxim that we cannot have too much education, whether it be primary, secondary, higher, or of a technical or special character. In time the cost of the whole of it will fall on the nation and on national funds. The first step to he taken is to make our ele- mentary schools wholly free. There is a long-stand- ing obligation to the poor in this matter. If they could recover all the endowments which have been left to them, with arrears of interest, it is probable that there would be little taxation required for ele- mentary schools. We shall never ascertain the total amount of funds given for this purpose, but we can form some idea of it from the charities which are left, and also from the scale of spoliation which was going on when the first investigations of the Charity Commissioners were made. In the City of London alone, if compound interest were calculated on the cost of entertainments provided out of funds be- queathed for the use of the poor, there would be a sum which, if realised, would afford sensible relief to London ratepayers. The apprenticeship charities, which were really for technical education, amounted to at least 50,000 a year, or a capital value of a million. But for half a century, or since the repeal of the apprenticeship laws, there has been no demand on these funds. What has become of them ? They ought now to represent a principal sum of at least fifteen millions. Either they have been lost or dis- sipated, or they have fallen into the common fund, which has been sequestrated for the education of the middle classes. But they formed but a trifling part 224 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. of the endowments left for the instruction and ad- vancement of the poor. Lord Brougham's Commis- sion found that great numbers of these charities had been appropriated beyond the possibility of pursuit or recovery. But there are thousands which still remain, and are administered under the Endowed Schools Act for the benefit of the upper classes. It is noteworthy that this Act, which was nothing less than legal spoliation of the poor, was passed just after the extension of the franchise in 1868, and that it was immediately followed by the Education Acts, which increased the payments of the working classes for education, and drove them to the relieving officers for their school-fees. This is striking evidence both of the partial character of the Reform Act of 1868, and of the general " want of conscience " amongst the ruling classes in considering what is due to the people. The There are some politicians who are in favour of the reclamation of these charities ; but that is hardly worth while. To make the restitution complete all the back interest would have to be recovered. There is a much simpler way of meeting the equity and necessity of the case, that is, by paying the whole amount of the school fees out of the national revenue. And quite apart from justice there could be no better investment of a million and a half. The establishment of technical and art schools, and the gradual provision of secondary education, are other channels in which the collective funds of the State may wisely be allowed to flow. Under any circumstances we are bound to face a large TAXATION AND FINANCE. 225 annual addition to our national expenditure upon education. The reform of the land laws, with powers for the compulsory purchase of small holdings, with the assistance of the State, on fair terms to landlords, will also make demands upon the revenue. It is too frequently assumed by Liberals, in discussing the land question, that it will be sufficient to repeal the laws of primogeniture and entail, and other enactments and customs which restrict sale and transfer, afterwards leaving the land to the natural influences of collection and dispersion, and the rules of political economy which regulate supply and demand. But no such partial amendment would have a practical result within a period which living men may venture to look forward to. The laws of political economy and natural division have been violently assailed and outraged in the case of land, and if there is to be any redress some strong remedy of an opposite character will be required. The land hunger in England, or the hunger for power, social distinction, and political influence which the pos- session of land has conferred, has led to its aggre- gation in the hands of a few, and has contributed to the fancy value which keeps it out of the reach of the poor. So eager has been the pursuit that land almost worthless has been reclaimed and enclosed at a cost exceeding its value. The poor have been deprived of their interests in the commons and waste lands. It is no palliation of these proceed ings that they have been generally effected by 226 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. legal process. The owners of common rights have been practically powerless, and have been compelled to look on in silence, or even to affect a cheerful acquiescence, while their privileges have been con- fiscated. What possible power of resistance can be exercised by a few poor village commoners, when the lord of the manor, his solicitors and land agents, the clergyman and the largest farmers, have resolved that it is desirable to enclose the common or the waste ? They have had no one to represent them in Parliament or to urge their rights before the Private Bill Committees or the Enclosure Commis- sioners. The Rev. Henry Homer, rector of Bird- ingbury, in Warwickshire, who wrote on the En- closure of Commons more than a hundred years ago, says of the private bills, then the usual method of enclosure : "The whole plan of them is for the most part settled between the solicitor and two or three principal proprietors, without even letting the rest of them (the commoners) into the secret till they are called upon to sign the petition. They are, in many instances, not so much as indulged with a sight of the Bill, or the privilege of hearing it read, till it is tendered to them to he signed, and for that purpose they are taken separately. This leaves them exposed to be practised upon by agents in regard to the choice of Commis- sioners, who have thereby an opportunity of serving their friends, which creates expectations, and has the effect of being served again in their turn. Many times the business is hurried on and concluded without a single meeting of the parties concerned, to consult about their common interest, though perhaps the whole property of many is at stake." Enclosure Frequently the lands have been enclosed by the of land. | , . J . f -,- . T . , , f lord in exercise ot his manorial right or power ot approvement. The process began as far back as the statute of Merton. An author whose pamphlet is TAXATION AND FINANCE. 227 preserved in the Harleian Miscellany says : " I have known of late a dozen ploughs, within less compass than six miles about ine, laid down within these seven years, and where threescore persons or upwards had their livings, now one man with his cattle hath all." The chief wrong has been done with the express sanction of Parliament, and osten- sibly in the interests of labour. The process of enclosing by private Acts of Parliament began about Queen Anne's time. There are four thou- sand of these Acts, authorising Commissioners to parcel out the waste in allotments. But this means was too slow and too expensive The Gne- for the squires, and in 1845 the General Enclosure sure Act. Act was passed, under which a permanent Commis- sion was constituted, with large powers for the enclosure of commons and wastes. A distinguished legal writer describes the effect of this Act as follows : " No impediment any longer remains to the bring- ing of every estate in England and Wales within a ring fence, an important advantage to every land- owner whose estate is the subject of inconvenient rights, or who has small outlying plots which pre- vent the regular cultivation of the farms." At last Parliament seems to have awakened to some sense of responsibility towards the people, and it was made a condition of future enclosures that certain reser- vations should be made for recreation grounds, and for garden allotments for labourers. The concession was not a very valuable one, as may be judged from the fact that out of 614,800 acres enclosed under the 228 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Act up to 1869, only 3,965 acres had been set out for both purposes. Enclosures are still frequently made without the intervention of the Commissioners, by virtue of special customs, and in exercise of that sovereign power dating back a thousand years, and supposed to reside in the lord of the manor. Operation It is vain to hope that the operation of the rules economy* 1 ^ P^*ical economy will restore to the people their no remedy, rights in the soil. Nor is it feasible to require the restoration of the land, even where it has been taken without legal sanction. The proceedings for its recovery would be too dilatory and expensive. It would also be a very partial remedy. In the largest number of cases the wrongful possession has been sanctified by time, and prescription makes as good a title as an Act of Parliament. The more simple and direct way will be to give the people compulsory powers of purchase, and to assist them by Govern- ment loans at small rates. In this manner some redress may be offered for an ancient and grievous wrong. The Finan- Finally, we have to notice some of the practical I'ssoci'a'- " 11 reforms urged by the Financial Reform Association. tion. Abo- About some of them, as, for instance, a strict economy customs in the administration of Government, there will be The drink universal agreement ; but other proposals are of a traffic. more debatable character. Such is the suggested abolition of customs and excise, and the complete substitution of direct for indirect taxation. Have those who insist upon this reform fairly faced the difficulty of the drink traffic ? It is sometimes TAXATION AND FINANCE. 229 made a reproach against Parliament that so large a proportion of revenue should be derived from this source. But what would happen otherwise ? Either we must have the compulsory abolition of all alco- holic liquors, or we must allow free trade in drink. The first is impossible, and the last would be ruinous. The very success of our experiments in remitting duties on other articles of consumption makes it im- possible to abolish, or even greatly to lower, the duties in this case. Nothing is more striking than the rapid recovery of the revenue after every re- duction of taxation on articles in general use. It is sometimes asserted that if drink were free the people would drink less, but what evidence is offered to justify so hazardous an experiment ? All our ex- perience goes to prove the contrary. The reduction of the tea duty caused a large increase in the consumption of tea ; the same observation applies to coffee and to light wines. It is appalling to think what might be the consequences of per- mitting the free importation and manufacture of alcoholic liquors. It is frequently urged as a strong objection to Cost of indirect taxes that they cost so much to collect. Mr. f Wilson, in his able review of the National Budget, writes : " The cost of the Customs department, how- ever, must tend to appear large, measured by the income it collects, so long as that income diminishes. It takes the same army of watchers, collectors, and superintendents to prevent the revenue being de- frauded when the taxes arc small as when they are 230 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. large. No port can be left unwatched, and the fact that so many ports do not yield enough in duties to pay the cost of the staff in charge is an argument used by many for the total abolition of import duties. But it is difficult to subscribe to that doctrine." * But is it not worth consideration, whether by some reorganization the services of these officers might not in many cases be utilised in other branches of Government duty, such as the super- vision department of the Board of Trade ? Already their duties are not confined to mere revenue pur- poses. They act as quarantine officers, as registrars of shipping, as wreck officers, and superintendents of mercantile marine. The legislation of the future, that for instance relating to shipping, will undoubt- edly call for other services on the coasts, for which the present staff may be made partially available. However this may be, it is impossible in the present state of public opinion wholly to remit the drink duties. If they are ever abolished it will be by gradual steps, warranted by the spread of education and the improved habits of society. The food Without wholly abolishing indirect taxation, there are ways in which its pressure may be light- ened, both with addition to the comfort of the people and the expansion of trade. The food taxes still amount to four millions annually. Such are the duties on tea, coffee, chicory, plums, currants, and other articles of consumption. It can only be a short time before the country will insist that these * The "National Budget," p. 113. TAXATION AND FINANCE. 231 charges shall be repealed. The distinction which is now made between the taxation of the luxuries of the rich and of the poor is indefensible. Take the case of tobacco. Mr. Wilson says, " The poor man's ounce of tobacco, for which he pays threepence, would cost less than a penny were there no duty upon it. He, therefore, pays a tax of, say 400 per cent, on the amount he consumes, while the rich man who buys cigars pays a tax of but from 15 to 50 per cent." The tax on light wines is about 25 per cent., while spirits pay 200 per cent., and beer, and common teas used by the poor, 100 per cent. These are anomalies which ought to be corrected. There are other vexatious and restrictive taxes vexatious which press heavily upon industry ; such as licences * axes - The for various trades, the tax on patents for inventions, and the stamp duties on the transfer of small pro- perties. The house duty needs to be thoroughly re- vised. It is now evaded at both ends of the scale. Many houses which let for 20 escape assessment alto- gether ; but the most scandalous evasions are those of large establishments, which are assessed at imagi- nary rents, having no relation to cost, value, or the rate of expenditure incurred for them. The taxation of ground-rents and of vacant land held for a rise in price are also matters deserving attention. It is, however, not so much our intention to examine details as to state principles. Briefly recapitulated, the points to be insisted upon are these : To secure the highest degree of tlo economy and efficiency in the public service ; to 232 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. readjust the incidence of taxation, throwing upon property the duty which it acknowledges but evades ; to improve and simplify the method of levying and collecting taxes ; and finally, to make a liberal ap- propriation of State funds on sound principles for the social advancement of the people. Under any circumstances it is certain that the gross expenditure of the country will increase rather than diminish. Deduction There are doubtless certain economies which may service?, be effected in the services, but to expect too much Army and from this source will probably lead to disappoint- General ment. The cost of the army may be reduced if it is one usion. ma( j e a mere defensive service. A good deal might be saved by the abolition of the Government estab- lishments at Woolwich and elsewhere ; but savings in this direction will be more than counterbalanced by the increased pay which it will be necessary at no distant date to give to our private soldiers. In one way the nation may save on its military expen- diture, and that is by putting an end to useless, offensive, and costly military expeditions into every quarter of the globe. The cost of the navy will probably increase ; but there is no party of any weight in the country which denies the duty of the Government to keep this arm of the service in the highest state of preparation and efficiency. Under these conditions the difficulties of retrenchment to a degree which would be a sensible relief to tax- payers will be found to be very great. It is by readjustment as well as by retrenchment that the people must be reconciled to taxation, IX. LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. THERE is a striking dissimilarity between the cir- Defeat of cumstances attending the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's eaWnet in Government in 1874 and the eclipse of the Liberal J874 and administration in 1885. In the former case the similarly of Cabinet fell because the Liberal programme, as it co was then propounded, had been exhausted. The nation declined to entrust it with another commis- sion in the absence of work definitely marked out for it to execute. The Conservatives acceded to power, not so much because they were led by a man of genius like Mr. Disraeli, as because there was no practical alternative to a Conservative regime. To- day everything is different. The Liberals are not Hope and defeated or discredited in the constituencies. They have simply retired from office in consequence of a hostile vote, accidentally snatched in a parliamentary division ; their prospects in the country were never brighter, their scheme of political action in the future never more clear in its outline, or more copious and hopeful in its contents. It will be now generally admitted that the subjects of paramount attraction to the English democracy belong to the Devotion to department of domestic policy, and that outside these limits it is difficult to kindle the genuine and permanent fervour of the people. If we ask what, within this region, is the subject of the widest 234 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. interest at the present moment to all classes of the country, and what is calculated to exercise the napst vivid and direct ^influence upon our national develop- ment, the answer must unquestionably be the reform of local government, using that expression in its widest sense, and not restricting this reform to any one of the three kingdoms. Extension The great work of the renovated Parliament of government 1832 was the establishment of local government in the natural towns ; the great work of the Parliament of 1868 was work of re- . formed Par- the extension of the sphere of local government in the business of national education. The great work of the Parliament to be elected after the organic change of the constituencies in 1885, will be the crowning of the edifice of local government in some parts of the United Kingdom, and the foundation, as well as the completion, of its structure in others. Local go- Then, and not till then, shall we be able to say that the founda- * ne rights of citizenship exist, and are exercised, tionofciti- equally in all parts of Great Britain and Ireland, zenship. _ ^ _ ~ r . that the forces inherent in the various classes of the whole community, the free and regulated operation of which is essential to a happy and self-governed people, are operative, and that the relations on which alone the inhabitants of England and Wales, Scot- land, and Ireland can live happily together, are equitably settled. Before we examine the basis on which local government ought hereafter to exist, let The present us see what it now means. It is concerned at present, cHoca'] "!)- as usua lty understood, with the administration of vemment. the Poor Law, the Education Law, the Sanitary LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 235 Acts, the provision of public baths, parks, cemeteries, lunatic asylums, free libraries, and other institutions conducive to the well-being of the ratepayers. In the large towns no serious fault can be found with the working of the system. In addition to its having accomplished the exact reforms which it was intended to effect, it has proved an educational its educa- agency of the highest value. It has elicited and g^ 1 re ~ nurtured qualities in the case of individuals which might otherwise have languished for lack of opportu- nity ; it has opened the way from parochial politics to Imperial statesmanship ; its discipline, its competi- tion, its stimulus, have invested those who have actively taken part in it with a dignity of a solid and energising kind. The great corporations, con- ducted as they are with marked intelligence, have been instrumental in bestowing the utmost advantage on the population. The field of their responsibilities has been for years steadily on the increase, and at each step their functions and powers have been proportionately enlarged. Much, however, yet re- mains to be done. In the first place, it is only a section of the inhabitants of Great Britain itself which enjoys the benefits of local government at all. In the second place, the machinery, where it is at work, still suffers from imperfections. To take the latter point first it is essential to imperfec- effect an economy of municipal force. This can only machinery. be done by the unification of local work. At present the Poor Law, the Education Acts, and the Munici- pal Acts are administered by three separate authori- 236 THE EADICAL PBOGKAMJIE. ties. If they were placed under one body, not only would there be a great simplification, an invaluable utilising of energies now often unprofitably dissi- pated, but the governing body itself would gain appreciably in dignity and in importance. The same confusion exists in an aggravated form in urban districts, where the principal authorities are Conflicting local boards, and where there are in many cases, ies ' separate rating authorities for highways, burial purposes, health, school boards, poor law, and other in rural objects. But the most grievous defects of our Ioca"ca- n0 P resen * system are to be found in the rural districts, vernment where local government properly so-called hardly name? exists at all, where a restricted franchise and artifi- cial method of voting are added to the evils of complicated jurisdictions and divided responsibility, and where the paramount authority that of the Quarter Sessions has no representative character. Hence we are confronted at every turn by a three- fold chaos of area, rate, and authority. Such, then, so far as England is concerned, is the problem for which the new Parliament must find a solution. Reforms We may proceed briefly to indicate the chief Partition features in the reform to be desired. As for political foradminis- p urp oses the whole country has now been partitioned trative pur- r r , ' . poses. into electoral districts, so must it be arranged for administrative purposes. Of the divisions thus created, some, like the new Irish constituencies, will be purely rural, others purely urban, others again will partake of the characteristics of both. In each there will be a single authority based on household LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 237 suffrage, and dealing with all subjects locally apper- Household taining to the area over which it has jurisdiction, p r0 pef e the and the limits of which must be regulated by the basis< necessity of investing the work to be done with importance, and of justifying the expenditure of time and labour which it involves. These primary local bodies will, however, be signally incomplete County unless they are supplemented by county councils councils' dealing with interests which extend beyond the boundaries of the smaller districts, and which these districts may be said to share in common with them. They will include high roads, lunatic asylums, and prisons, and the county councils charged with the responsibility of these might be composed of repre- sentatives sent to them by the local bodies whether urban or rural, or they might be directly elected by all the ratepayers in the county. In this way we should have a complete system of local government administered by men on whom, greatly to the general advantage of the community, it would be possible to devolve a considerable amount of additional work. The granting of licences, the power of acquiring land for the purpose of providing labourers' dwell- ings and allotments, and under specified conditions for aiding in the establishment of peasant pro- prietorships, would all come legitimately within their province. It would of course be necessary to deal with the The case of metropolis by itself. The principle of Sir William f* } *{ t Harcourt's measure of London reform may be de- William ^ scribed as a proposal to treat the whole of the measure. 238 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. Immense centralisa- tion in- volved. Local councils N Division of the United Kingdom. metropolitan area very much after the fashion of the large provincial towns, to create one great munici- pality with all the powers enjoyed by provincial corporations except the control of the police. The central corporation was to be empowered to delegate some of its functions to local bodies. It may be doubted whether such a proposal affords the best prospect of a really successful local government. It involves an immense centralisation, since practically between four and five millions of people would have to be governed directly by a single authority. An alternative plan would be to create separate councils in each of the parliamentary divisions, with all the powers of provincial councils, and to reserve for a central body, formed by delegation from the various district councils, such work as is essentially metro- politan in its nature. Thus to the local councils would be left all the local sanitary work, the pro- vision of libraries, baths, and parks, and other similar details, while the central body would deal with the main sewage, with lunatics, police, and possibly with main roads. By the second proposal greater importance would be given to the local coun- cils, which would thereby obtain the services of better men. The work would be decentralised, and the details would be more effectively looked after by persons conversant with the locality than if they were entrusted to a central body. These are only instalments, and the question of Local Government Reform will not be satisfactorily disposed of before it is dealt with on a scale more LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 239 comprehensive than has as yet been indicated. The United Kingdom consists, if we give a separate place to the principality, of four countrie^_to none of which are identically the same municipal methods applicable. Let us now, therefore, look at the matter from what may be called the national point of view. TKe problem here ia .lo entrust Wales, Scotland, and Ireland with the free and full adminis- tration of those of their internal affairs which do not involve any Imperial interest. As regards Scotland, The Scotch that problem has been, to some extent, solved already. y Practically under a system which is not sanctioned by the constitution, but which the good sense of the Scotch members has established, Scotch legislation is arranged without the interference of English or Irish members of Parliament. There prevails, that is to say on the other side of the Tweed, a separate system of laws and administration suited to the needs and prejudices of the Scotch, and having little or nothing in common with that in force for England and Ireland. Bankruptcy, education, land laws, and many other subjects, are each of them treated on an entirely different basis. And yet, notwith- standing that the Scotch practically control their legislation, they have two grounds of dissatisfaction with the administrative conditions under which they live. They complain, first, that the supply of their wants is delayed owing to the pressure-of, workjn the Imperial Parliament ; and secondly, that the administration of the law after it is made is super- vised in London by English officials. Hence the 240 THE RADICAL fKOGRAMME. Proposal to establish a Scotch Se- cretary of State. The case of Wales. The exist- ing strain on parlia- mentary govern- ment. proposal, recently made and largely supported, for the establishment of a Scotch Secretary of State. The sole motive of this suggestion is the hope that if effect be given to it, greater attention will be secured for Scotch legislation, and greater indepen- dence of English control be attained. What has been said of Scotland holds equally true in the case of Wales. The peculiarities of the Welsh people, and the difference between the circumstances under which they and the English exist, give them a clear claim to exceptional domestic legislation. To some extent this claim has been conceded. The Welsh Intermediate Education Bill is without an exact parallel in English or Scotch legislation. It belongs, however, to that class of measures necessarily placed on one side when the pressure on the Imperial Legislature of other public business makes itself felt. In all probability, Wales, which is just as much entitled to such treatment as Scotland, would gladly accept any proposal designed to secure the same measure of autonomy for itself as Scotland already enjoys. Before dealing, as we presently shall at some length, with the case of Ireland, it seems well to say a few words on another object of the first im- portance, which can be accomplished only in connec- tion with some such extension of the principles of local government as we are now considering. Re- cent experience has made it perfectly clear that parliamentary government is being exposed to a strain for which it may prove unequal. The over- LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 241 whelming work thrown upon the Imperial Legis- lature is too much for its machinery. The enormous complexity of modern legislation, to say nothing of difficulties caused by obstruction and party politics, indefinitely postpone many measures of reform, no matter how imperatively they may be called for. The imperial evil is not less than the domestic. What, for instance, can be more deplorable than Neglect of the systematic neglect at Westminster of Colonial amHndian and Indian topics of the highest moment. It is to P ics - obvious that no mere extension of local government upon the ordinary and restricted lines will relieve the parliamentary congestion which has long since become a national calamity. Nor can it be too strongly insisted on that the supervision and control now exercised by the central authority in London 1 involves, not only delay and difficulty in the trans- action of Imperial business, but an amount of irri- irritation tation and friction which is altogether superfluous. In the great towns, indeed, the municipal councils are so powerful that in the long run they accom- plish what they want and get their way, breaking through the fetters of redtapism and surmounting the petty barriers of official pedantry. The smaller local authorities are less fortunate, and are bound down by the traditions and routine of an exaspe- rating officialism. Such an arrangement can do no good, though it undoubtedly does much evil. The constant collision between the local and the central authorities means a waste of force that might under authorities. Other circumstances be usefully and happily ex- 242 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. pended. Nor is it less to be regretted that those who find themselves perpetually interfered with should sustain a perceptible loss of authority and respect. It is scarcely to be expected that, under conditions which are always precarious, and which are frequently humiliating, the best men should consent to serve the State. Another result, equally unfortunate and equally unavoidable, is that local administration is stamped with the impression of a mechanical uniformity, and runs in grooves fatal to healthy experiment and honest progress. Evils inten- Palpable as are the evils arising from undue inter- s'cotiand ference by the central authority with local govern- and Ireland. men t in England, we find them intensified when we come to deal with the question of local government in Scotland, and still more so in the case of Ireland. f There the interference is not merely that of a supe- rior or of an official, it is moreover the interference of an alien authority. "We have an additional factor of irritation in the prejudice of race and nationality. A control which in any case would be borne with some impatience becomes odious and intolerable when The Irish it is the badge of a foreign supremacy. It is difficult ciuTed from for Englishmen to realise how little influence the ment of people in Ireland have in the management of even their affairs, the smallest of their local affairs, and how constantly influence of the alien race looms before their eyes as the omni- Castie" present controlling power. "The Castle," as it is called, is in Ireland synonymous with the Govern- ment. Its influence is felt, and constantly felt, in every department of administration, local and cen- LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 243 tral ; and it is little wonder that the Irish people should regard the Castle as the embodiment of foreign supremacy. The rulers of the Castle are to them foreign either in race, or in sympathy, or in both. The Lord- Lieutenant is rarely an Irishman ; and if Irish in race, he is sure to be selected from a class having no political idea or sympathy in common with the great bulk of the people whom he is to rule. The same observation applies to the Chief Secretary, and to the Under- Secretary and Assistant Under- Secretaries. These are the rulers of Ireland, and, as Irishmen keep constantly reminding us, these rulers owe their position, not to the favour or confidence of the Irish people, but to the favour and confidence of one or other of the English parties. The sanction which the Castle seeks, or is believed Constitu- te seek, is to Irishmen that of a foreign race. The imperial sanction which almost every branch of administra- government in Ireland. tion in Ireland seeks is that of the Castle. The Irish Local Government Board controls the Boards of Poor Law Guardians, and in some respects it also controls all the corporations and town commissioners throughout Ireland. The members of the Local Government Board are appointed by the Castle, and the Chief Secretary, one of the principal governors at the Castle, is their president. The entire control of the fiscal affairs of each Irish county is vested in the Grand Jury, a body consisting of twenty- three gentlemen selected by the High Sheriff, who has himself been nominated by the Viceroy, or, as 244 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. the Irish people would say, by the " Castle." The Grand Jury, a body of which it has been truly said that, "instead of being selected for business capa- city, it is a barometer for the measurement of social claims," meets twice a year for one or two days at a time, votes taxes to the amount of about a million and a quarter sterling, and exercises out of public rates a patronage representing over one hundred The dis- thousand pounds per annum. The mode in Iwhich P atrouLe ^is patronage is distributed is not calculated to lessen the belief of the Irish people that the entire system of county government in Ireland is under Irish prison the control of an alien race. The Irish prisons fvstem. system is managed by a board consisting of three members, all appointed by the Castle. The boards who have control of lunatic asylums in Ireland are nominated by the Castle ; the resident and visiting medical officers, and the inspectors attached to these Education, asylums, are appointed by the Castle. The entire system of primary education in Ireland is confided to a central board in Dublin, every member of which is nominated by the Castle. The board in Dublin which presides over the system of intermediate edu- cation for all Ireland is selected by the Castle. The metropolitan police in Dublin are managed by a com- Constabu- missioner who is appointed by the Castle ; the entire *"y system of rural police, known in Ireland as the Constabulary force, and numbering about 13,000 men, is under the control of a commissioner who is Magis- appointed by the Castle. All the stipendiary magis- trates throughout Ireland are appointed by the Uau-s. LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 245 Castle. The unpaid magistrates are usually ap- pointed on the recommendation of the Lord-Lieu- tenant of the county, who is himself appointed by the Castle. The. magistrates, paid and unpaid, throughout Ireland in any case of difficulty send up queries to the Castle, so as to be advised by the Attorney or Solicitor- General, both of whom have offices in the Castle; and prosecutions, instead of being undertaken by the magistrates or by private individuals, as in England, are instituted invariably in the name of the Irish Attorney -General, and under his direction. The Irish Board of "Works, a department possess- The Irish ing powers far more extensive than those vested in \v'orks its English counterpart, is practically irresponsible managed in to Irish public opinion. It is under the direct control of the Treasury in London, and is managed as a branch of the Treasury. Its mouthpiece in Par- liament is the Financial Secretary of the Treasury, usually a gentleman who has never in his life set foot in Ireland, and of whom it would generally be true to say that he never had occasion to consider any problem of Irish administration until he found . himself nominated to the official post which vested in him the control of perhaps the most important administrative department in Ireland. For it is to be remembered that the sphere of the Irish Board of Works is not, as in England, confined to the maintenance of public buildings. Its functions are of the most varied and far-reaching character. In Extent of addition to duties such as are entrusted in England lta P ower3 - 246 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. to the Board of Works, the Irish Board undertakes the construction of royal harbours and the mainte- nance of inland navigation and water-ways, as for example that of the Shannon Navigation and of the Ulster Canal ; it supervises the maintenance and tariffs even of private navigation works, such as the Royal Canal and the Newry Navigation. It has the entire control of advances of public money in con- nection with loans for land improvement, loans for arterial drainage, loans for sanitary works, loans to railway companies, loans for the erection of glebe houses, loans for the erection of artisans' houses, and advances for the erection of teachers' residences, reformatory and industrial schools, and of residences in connection, with local dispensaries. The Fishery The Fishery Board of Ireland consists of four Board. members three paid officials and one honorary member all appointed by the Castle. To this tribunal is intrusted the important duty of selecting the situations in which fishery piers are to be erected ; and when the board appointed by and responsible to the Castle has decided upon sites for the piers, the .Board of Works, appointed by and responsible to the Treasury in London, undertakes the entire con- trol of their construction. The more critically the system of Irish administration is examined through- out all its branches, the more clearly will it be seen that it is an incarnation of the principle of govern- ment laid down with indiscreet candour by Bishop Horsley early in this century, when he declared that for his part he could not see what the mass of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 247 people of any country had to do with, the laws except to obey them. If the object of Government were to paralyse local The whole effort, to annihilate local responsibility, and daily to b^dge^f give emphasis to the fact that the whole country is supremacy, ' r . unjust, use- under the domination of an alien race, no system less, and .could be devised more likely to secure its object than angero that now in force in Ireland. We hold that the \ continuance of such a system is unjust to Ireland, j ; useless to England, and dangerous to both. To England it is worse than useless, for while it has succeeded in irritating Ireland almost beyond endurance, it has resulted in preventing the Imperial Parliament from giving its attention to many useful reforms which England stands in need of. English- men will not long consent to neglect their own affairs merely in order that they may meddle in other people's business. It has been well said that a problem well stated is The pro- half solved. The problem in relation to the govern- ment of the empire which now confronts statesmen is this How can the work of legislation and ad- ministration in the United Kingdom be so adjusted as to secure the integrity of that kingdom, while giving to each of its component parts the best means of providing for its own public wants and developing its own resources ? Such an adjustment must involve division and sub-division of labour. The Imperial Parliament cannot satisfactorily attend to its legiti- The sola- mate work as the great legislative body of the empire without delegating to some other authorities the task 248 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. of dealing with all matters which possess a local character. But when we come to consider the nature of those matters which should be included under the term local, it will be found that they again are capable of division into two classes, viz. those which affect only a small area, such as a county, and which may most properly be termed local ; and those which, while affecting several counties, do not concern more than one of the four countries England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales comprising the United Kingdom, and which matters might more properly be called domestic than local. A National Council in Edinburgh or Dublin would be unable to under- take all the petty details of administration for every Scotch shire or every Irish county ; but, on the other hand, County Boards would not be bodies of sufficient weight or authority to deal with matters affecting the entire of Scotland or of Ireland, nor from its essentially local character could a County Board deal even with any matter affecting an area wider than that over the administration of which it would preside. To make the legislative and administrative ma- chinery of government for the United Kingdom workable it will be necessary to establish both County Boards and National Councils. Both bodies should of course be elective. On the County Board there might be representatives of owners and repre sentatives of occupiers, and the proportion in which owners and occupiers respectively should be repre- sented might follow the proportion in which local LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 249 taxation falls upon each of the two classes. To County Boards so elected should be assigned all the fiscal duties and the powers now entrusted to Grand Juries in Ireland, and also all those vested in the several Boards of Poor Law Guardians within the county, and all work connected with licensing for the sale of intoxicating liquors. To the County Boards should also belong the right of managing either by themselves or by their nominees all lunatic asylums within the county. Powers analogous to those vested in the School Boards in England ought also to be conferred upon the County Board. In short, the County Board should, within the limits of its jurisdiction, undertake the entire administra- tion of all public affairs for which the county and it alone is taxed. But in administering the affairs of any county it? ation .f l . J . Councils for would soon be seen that there are many matters in Scotland, which the co-operation of other counties might be required, and for the accomplishment of which it would be necessary to impose taxes over an area wider than that of a single county, or even to assess a national rate. This necessity proves that in addi- tion to the County Boards bodies of national autho- rity and jurisdiction must be called into existence. Of these bodies, which for the sake of convenience we have called National Councils, one might sit in Edinburgh, one in Dublin, and, if the people of Wales desire it, one should be established in Wales. The National Council might either be chosen directly by the ratepayers of the kingdom, or it might con- 250 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. sist of members elected by the County Boards, or rather by the representatives of owners and occupiers respectively on these boards. Thus assuming that each County Board were to send to the National Council three members, and that on the County Board the owners' representatives were to the occupiers' representatives in the proportion of one to two, the former would return one member to the National Council while the occupiers' representatives would return two members. Work of To the National Council so constituted might be Councils, entrusted all the control of local administration which is necessary : the audit of accounts, the dis- tribution of the respective shares to which the several counties might be entitled out of Imperial grants, and the contributions which such counties might be required to make towards expenditure of national importance. The work which is now per- formed by the Home Office, the Local Government Board, and the Education Department for Scotland and "Wales, and by the Irish Local Government Board, the Irish Education Boards, the Irish Board of "Works, the Fishery Board, and similar bodies in Ireland, might with advantage be transferred to a National Council responsible to the people of the country. Private bill Both for the sake of relieving the Imperial Par- kgWatipn liament from an undue pressure of work, and for should be . Jr . i- Y T i. transferred the sake of redressing a grievance or which irish- C^ncUs 1 men an( i Scotchmen justly complain, the business of private bill legislation for these countries should be LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 251 transferred to Edinburgh and to Dublin. The annoy- ance caused to Scotchmen by the present system of dealing with private bill legislation is keen enough, but the circumstances of Ireland render that system exceptionally oppressive and irritating to Irishmen. For years past Irish politicians, even of the mildest type, have been emphatic in condemning an arrange- ment which entails upon both promoters and oppo- nents of Irish private bills an expense which they regard as prohibitive. Ireland is a very poor country, England a very rich one. The scale of fees for parliamentary procedure is no doubt suitable to England, or it would long since have been altered. Manchester and Liverpool may be satisfied to spend huge sums in promoting or opposing projects in themselves of enormous magnitude. But the fact that large sums are spent by Englishmen in pro- moting or resisting large projects is no reason why Irishmen should be content with a system which compels them to spend large sums in promoting or resisting small projects. The Corporation of Dublin Expense of complained in 1871 that "there has been expended in the nine years ending in August, 1869, 36,400 ** now out of the Borough Fund and out of the rates col- lected in the City of Dublin, in promoting and opposing bills in Parliament.'' The small town of Sligo, in the west of Ireland, spent in a parliamen- tary contest respecting a private bill for local improvements in the town, 14,000 ; and in the same year the township of Kingstown, a suburb of Dublin, spent in a similar contest 6,000. These 252 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. sums may seem to us small, but they do not seem small to Irishmen, whose incomes are to ours as hundreds are to thousands; and however widely politicians in Ireland may differ on other points, they are unanimous in insisting that Irish private hill legislation should be dealt with -in Ireland and not at Westminster. Results The establishment of a National Council, elected ' by the Irish people and endowed with national authority, would enable the Imperial Parliament to delegate to a body of sufficient weight, capacity, and power, duties which Parliament now endeavours to perform, but the performance of which necessitates the neglect of other and more important matters upon which the attention of the great legislative assembly of the Empire should be concentrated. By the creation of County Boards and National Councils we should secure in the United Kingdom a rational division of the duties and labours of government. The Imperial Parliament, the National Councils, and the County Boards would together form, so to speak, a hierarchy of legislative and administrative authority, all based upon the only true principle of government, free election by the governed. For all parts of the United Kingdom the establishment of such a system of government would be advantageous. For Ireland it would mean the beginning of a new life ; it would substitute a government founded upon trust of the people in the place of one founded upon distrust and coercion. The task of It would be as great a boon to the governors as to LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 253 the governed. We, of course, dismiss as absurd governing the suggestion that the evils of the present system of government in Ireland flow from any desire on present sys- ' /~t -i -i tem a hope- the part or the (Jastle rulers to oppress or to annoy less one. the people whose affairs they administer. No rea- sonable and unprejudiced man can doubt that the honest wish of those rulers is to devise and carry out the best measures for promoting the well-being of the Irish people. But the task is a hopeless one. A nation of serfs may for a time be ruled by a mild despotism, but so soon as a nation has begun to think for itself no system of government can suc- ceed which does not take into account and follow the wishes of the people. The plain fact is, that The Go- the Castle in Ireland is in a state of hopeless isola- hoisted! 1 tion. There is no channel of trustworthy communi- cation between the people and the Government. Where is the Castle to seek for information as to the wishes and wants of the Irish people on any one question of the many which constantly have to be dealt with ? Is the opinion of the country to be gathered from the Grand Jury of twenty-three gentlemen selected by the sheriff, assembled for one day, or at most two days, each half year, and then dissolved into space ? Is the opinion of a district to be learned from the inspector of police, who is probably not on speaking terms with any local man of a lower social grade than that of a J.P., who speaks of the police force as " the service," regards the people as fit objects to be kept down by the semi-military force under his command, and would 254 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. be shocked at the suggestion that he is the servant Relation of and not the master of those people ? Is it to the magnates unpaid magistrates that the Castle is to apply for to the trustworthy information as to the wants and wishes people. y of the Irish people ? Unfortunately, it happens that of these magistrates the majority are opposed to the people, differing from them in interests, in religion, and in politics. Of a total of over four thousand magistrates, the majority are landlords or landlords' agents, and about four-fifths of them are Protestants; while the majority of the people are tenants or connected with the tenant interest, and of the population the Catholics form a proportion about as large as that which the Protestants muster on the list of magistrates. Nor can the stipendiary magistrates be relied upon by the Castle as a very sensitive index of Irish public opinion. A couple of years ago there were in Ireland about ninety stipendiary magistrates, of whom thirty- five were military men, twenty-two were ex-Consta- bulary officers, two were ex- Constabulary clerks, and of the remainder nineteen held only temporary ap- pointments terminable at the will of the Viceroy. Since that time we believe that the Castle has made earnest efforts to improve the personnel of the stipen- diary magistracy ; but the reform of such a body must necessarily be slow, and it may well be doubted whether reports of the stipendiary magistrates of Ireland are likely yet to be a faithful reflex of popular opinion in that country. But the Castle must rely upon the sources of information which we LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 255 have indicated. The bishops and priests stand aloof from it, popular members of Parliament will not ap- proach it ; there is a wall of adamant between the Irish Government and the Irish governed. A system which places the entire administration of Evils of a country in the hands of a central Government, and which divorces an entire people from sympathy with or influence upon that Government, must result in misunderstanding on one side, followed by misrepre- sentation and unmeasured vilification on the other. The rulers of the Castle blindly striving to do their best for the country, which they do not, and which under the circumstances they cannot be expected to understand complain, not unjustly, that the Irish people are unreasonable ; the Irish people retort that the rulers at the Castle are tyrannical and corrupt. Under such a condition of things an intelligent and an economical administration of the country is impossible. Reforms most urgently needed are riot even attempted, abuses the most glaring pass unchallenged. The public money now spent in Ireland, if intelligently and honestly applied, would probably abundantly suffice for her public wants. But it is in a great measure misapplied, and it will continue to be misapplied until the system of government shall have been so amended as to place in the hands of a national body elected by and responsible to the Irish people the application and distribution of the funds now contributed by the Imperial exchequer to Ireland. Take a couple of examples. The Irish people Want of 256 THE RADICAL PROGRAMME. technical complain, and justly complain, that the manufac- ThTob- 011 ' turing industries of Ireland are fast fading away, struction. owing to the absence of any technical system of education there. The Irish Government retort by saying that, if the Irish want technical education, the localities in Ireland must contribute funds for the purpose ; to which the Irish answer is, that the localities will not contribute anything so long as they are to have no local control over the educa- tional system. This will to Liberal politicians seem a very reasonable answer, but the Irish Government will not give up its control over the system of primary education in Ireland, and accordingly the Central Government Board of National Education continues unaltered, and the Irish people have to do without technical education. This is a sample of how the present system of government in Ireland results in hindering useful expenditure. The legal The legal establishment in Ireland affords a good menf-" 1 illustration of how that system results in preventing waste in. a use ful saving of money. The Irish Government, on examining the estimates, finds that there is in Ireland a superfluity of judges, and that their salaries are paid on a scale so large as to be quite out of legitimate proportion to the earnings of barristers at the Irish bar. They further find that around the judicial establishment in Ireland there has grown up an official establishment so numerous and so costly as to represent a criminal waste of public money. Of its costliness some notion may be formed from the fact, that while in England the LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND. 257 suitors' fees pay all the official expenses of the legal establishment except the judges' salaries, and leave an annual surplus of 15,000, the Irish legal estab- lishment, also exclusive of judges' salaries, costs the country nearly 80,000 a year over and above the suitors' fees. The Irish Government, having ascer- tained these facts, introduces into Parliament, as it clearly ought to do, a Bill to curtail this costly establishment. Thereupon the Irish popular mem- bers assail the Bill as an attempt to deprive Ireland of some money which she now receives from the Imperial exchequer, and by their opposition they succeed in shelving a reform which would save as much money as would probably establish and maintain a complete system of technical education in Ireland. Each side can prevent, neither can carry, reforms The interest in themselves plainly useful. A certain amount of partie money is each year contributed by the Imperial settle the L i T -L a i M.