.^^^- LETTERS TO COUNTRY NEWSPAPERS ON Radicalism and Socialism. H. STEICKLAND CONSTABLE, AUTHOR OF Hints to Country Bumpkins ;'' 'Wliat Science is Saying about Ireland, ' The Irish Land Bill ; ' * Fashions of the Bay in Medicine and Science ; ' ' Our Medicine Men ; ' dc. LONDON : HATCHARDS, 187 PICCADILLY. 1886. PREFACE. Most of these letters to newspapers have been printed during the few months preceding the late election of 1885. I now publish them together on the chance of their being useful in the future. Democracy carried beyond the point the nature, education, and develop- ment of a people will bear, means, according to history (and we have nothing else to go by), sundry very great evils, such as corruption, rogues for legislators, loss of liberty, a people being Government-ridden, meddling legislation, extravagance, crushing rates, crushing taxes, 'burdens too heavy to be borne,' revo- lutions, democratic despotisms, predatory legislation, and thence military despotisms, &c. Now the only hope in old countries to escape such evils lies in patient and unceasing instruction by the instructed of the uninstructed — instruction not only at election times but at all times, for ever and ever. Ignorance, barbarism, dishonesty, socialism and radicalism, will work with all their strength ; so the only chance will be for wisdom, liberalism, conservatism, civilisation, a2 IV PREFACE. and honesty, to work with all their strength on the other side. Wherever falsehood appears, exposure of it must follow, inasmuch as legislation founded on falsehood necessarily leads to national disaster exactly to match the degree of the falsehood. Every cause must have its consequences. Truth means the laws and facts of Nature, and Nature's laws are very stern things. They stand no nonsense, and have not the slightest respect for public opinion if it is a false one, let the majority that holds it be a majority of a hundred million on the one side against one single person on the other. This hundred million may hold the false opinion that it is right for a man to live on gin instead of food, but stern Nature has her way, and forthwith executes every one of them. Their being the majority makes no diiFerence whatever. So it is with every wrong or dishonest thing a majority does. Dishonesty or injustice means in- fraction of the laws of Nature, and Nature, as I say, must be obeyed, or ' she will know the reason why.' Thus we see how it is, that whenever the suffrage becomes very extended, instruction of the uninstructed must be unceasing, if a return to barbarism or low standard of life and conduct in more or less degree is to be prevented. In an old country a very extended suffrage is far more dangerous than in a new one like America, where there are infinite backwoods that serve as a , uiuc : PREFACE. V safety-valve to let off the superfluous scoundrelism that exists in all countries. Besides this, Great Britain is, at the present time, more democratic than America in its institutions. In America there is for four years a king, who vetoes the foolish and dishonest bills passed, and sure to be passed, by their House of Commons. This power the British Crown .does not possess. Again, the American House of Lords, or Senate as it is called, has more power than the British House of Lords. The fact is, the framers of the American Constitution were wise men, who knew the ruin a very extended suffrage was apt to bring upon nations, and therefore provided these safeguards. Radicalism (as distinguished from Liberalism) is founded in a certain measure, when it means well, upon ignorance of human nature. Radicals never ask, or, at any rate, never answer the question truly, ^ What is Man ? ' They have some very vague and very foolish ideas about his ' vox^ when it is lifted up, being ^ vox Dei^ but the real meaning of this saying they do not in the least understand. The truth about it will be learned by looking at p. 80 of this little book for a letter that appeared in the Yorkshire Post, entitled ' Vox populi vox Dei^ and then reading the letter. What, then, is the creature *Man?' The definitions are endless. 'Man,' says Sir James Stephen, ' is a half-beast of a creatm^e.' ' Man,' says Coleridge, ' is a beast-devil- angel.' ' Mankind,' Yl PREFACE; said Canning, ' is irrevocably mad.' ' The generality of mankind,' said Carlyle, 'are fools.' Now all such definitions of these come from the comparison always made unconsciously in Christian countries, and, since Christianity, between what men actually are and the Christian standard (rarely approached) of goodness and wisdom. Compared with the Christian stan- dard, of course such sayings are true. But this comparison apart, Carlyle' s assertion is nonsense. A ' fool ' means a person who is more foolish than the generality, so what Carlyle said was that the generality of men are more foolish than the generality. In the same way the idea, so common amongst well- meaning Radicals, that the generality of men are ex- cellent, is also nonsense. The generality are, of course, average, or they would not be the generality. The reason why the only chance for an old country, when the suffrage gets very low, lies in unceasing work on the part of Liberals (as distin- guished from Radicals), Conservatives, and wise men, to instruct the uninstructed, is that the Radicals have on their side nearly all of the most ignorant classes, the convicted criminal classes, the unconvicted criminal classes, the semi-criminal classes, the demi- semi-criminal classes, and the inhabitants of the lowest slums in towns : in fact, all those large classes whose development has been arrested at the barbarous stage, and who are below the respectable PREFACE. VU artisans and respectable working men, in the scale of creation. Men of science say, that in our parts of the world a vast part of these classes are descendants of low Celtic and other conquered races, even in- cluding the people of the stone age. Low races are more prolific and tenacious of life than high ones, so, wherever civil wars and active and fjree competition do not keep them down, they increase and multiply, sometimes to a ruinous degree. Mr. Galton, and other studiers of mankind, think that one explanation of the decadence of France is that the more Teutonic part of the population in that country has diminished, leaving only men of Celtic blood, whose moral and mental characteristics remain for ever the same, as we see by comparing them now with the accounts given by Tacitus and others two thousand years ago. The backbone of Radicalism in the British Islands lies in the remains of the old conquered races, — that is, the Celtic part of the population in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, &c. These races naturally want to destroy the Hberty and honesty so loved by men of Teutonic blood, and bring back the old socialisms of half- barbarous times that correspond to their own stage of arrested development. Herbert Spencer calls this aimed-at-return to despotic So- cialism ' the coming slavery.' Now to prevent this will require all the energy and all the wisdom of the honest and liberty-loving Vm PREFACE. part of the population, for they have against them in- finite cunning and the intense energy that comes of selfish ambition and Celtic vanity, self-love, envy, jealousy, and class-hatred. Bishop Magee defines cunning as ' intelligence without moral qualities ; ' that is, intellect with nothing but the selfish and evil passions to work it. The opinions and ideas this brings forth are necessarily stupid and false. George Eliot truly says that ill-will and want of sympathy necessarily lead to stupidity exactly to match what- ever the natural power of mind may be. Here we have one explanation of a vast amount of the Radical falsehoods that darkened the air for so many months before the election. When a man envies, and there- fore hates, he cannot see truth, even if he wishes to do so. And then comes the retribution for action founded on false ideas. ' The curse of the French Celt,' said Balzac, ' is vanity-begot envy and hatred.' Men of Celtic blood are, compared with real Englishmen, proverbially wanting in truth, honesty, justice, and righteousness. Of course one reason why our predatory statesmen and politicians want to destroy Christian churches is that the Christian religion inculcates truth, honesty, justice, and righteousness. Matthew Arnold elimi- nates from religious belief all faith in anything and everything that cannot be mathematically proved to the ordinary understanding of ordinary people, but PREFACE. IX even he says that the Church of England is a necessity, because it is the greatest organization for the encou- ragement of righteous conduct, and conduct or morals is six eighths of human life. He also says that the saying that ' righteousness exalteth a nation ' is ab- solutely true. Every nation, he truly says, that falls, falls from want of righteousness in conduct. Now Radicalism, Socialism, and Communism, in politics, mean, primarily, the desire for dishonest, unrighteous, and predatory legislation. They all mean, in more or less degree, envy-inspired war on ownership of property. But prosperity and civilisation are im- possible without security to property. Again I repeat that the only hope for Great Britain, as of all ad- vanced Democracies, lies in unceasing work on the part of all honest men to counteract the machinations of our predatory class of politicians working by false- hood upon the passions, prejudices, and natural wishes of ignorant, weak, and foolish people. If the orderly and honesty-loving part of the population are, as they were in France at the Great Revolution, too indolent to give this work, it will show that England's days as a prosperous nation are numbered — that her time has come, as it comes, according to history, sooner or later to all. In some leaflets I printed for distribution before the election I was obliged to include Radicals and Liberals under one head as Liberals, although the PREFACE. liberty-hating Radical is the extreme opposite to the liberty-loving Liberal of the true kind. The Radical or Socialist of the present day is much nearer to the nearly extinct Tory of the old despotic kind. Indeed, Herbert Spencer calls Socialism ' the new Toryism/ and ' the coming slavery.' In these pages I use the terms ' Radical ' and ^ Socialist' indifferently, for practically the words have now the same meaning. They each mean a man of the Celtic type, who hates and tries to destroy liberty because equality cannot co-exist with it. Both are reactionaries or retrogressionists, who want to bring men back to the Socialisms and Government meddlings of semi-barbarism before liberty was in- vented. Civilisation is a very slow-growing organism, that, after going through the stages of brutal, filthy savagery. Communism, mixed ownership of property, and infinite forms of Socialism, slaveries, and despotic governments, at last grows up and produces the flower of Liberty. This flower it is the aim of Radicalism and Socialism to destroy where it has blown, and to keep from blossoming where it has not. The Socialist's flag is a flag with the word ' Compulsory ' in large letters on a red ground. Socialism and Radicalism simply mean despotism. Perhaps one reason why Socialism wages war on Christianity is because Christianity put down and is opposed to slavery. CONTENTS. LETTER I. ' THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY ' . . . . II. THE NEW TORYISM . . . . . III. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM . . . . IV. CHRISTIANITY, SOCIALISM, AND LAND REFORM . V. PEASANT PROPRIETORS ..... VI. LAND . . . . . ... VII. COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND VIIL MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND HIS POLITICAL ' PRINCIPLES ' IX. THE CONFUSED RADICAL X. ' CONTRAST ' . . . XL MODERN RADICALISM . XII. ' VOX POPULI VOX DEI ' XIII. FREE TRADERS XIV. BOYCOTTING XV. SOCIALISM .... XVL A FEW WORDS TO WORKING MEN ON DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT OF THE CHURCH . XVII. ' THE LYING SPIRIT ' IN THE MOUTHS OF RADICAL PROPHETS ....... XVin. ' DOWN WITH THE CHURCH AND UP WITH THE DEVIL ! XIX. SOCIALISM, OR ' MEDDLE AND MUDDLE " XX. CELTS AND SOCIALISM . XXL MR. chamberlain's PROGRAMME . XXII. LIBERALISM AND RADICALISM XXIIL PRIMOGENITURE. PAGE 1 10 13 29 40 50 62 69 73 75 78 80 85 89 91 93 96 98 99 102 lie 125 127 Xll CONTENTS. POLITICAL LEAFLETS :— A FEW WORDS ABOUT ' RADICAL THUMPERS ' . A FEW WORDS ABOUT CHARLES GORDON RADICAL PROMISES ....... A RADICAL MEANS A TYRANNICAL DESTROYER OF LIBERTY RADICALISM 'THE.BOY BRITTLES'. ...... RADICALISM, SOCIALISM, AND IRRELIGION GO TOGETHER, AS A RULE ........ ARE THE CLERGY STATE PAID ? . THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES ...... PEASANT PROPRIETORS . . . . ENCLOSURE OF COMMONS ...... ' THE LAND FOR THE PEOPLE ' . PAGE 145 147 150 150 154 156 156 157 158 159 164 165 POLITICAL LETTERS. LETTER I. * T«E Socialism of the Day.' Sir, — In your paper of May 20th, after speaking of Mr. Chamberlain, you give some headings of the programme of what some people call ' the Socialism of the day.' ' Communism ' and * Socialism ' are, in ordinary talk, used indifferently, to express that wave of hostility to ownership of property or capital in its innumerable forms which seems to be rising in the civilised countries higher and higher. The word most commonly used for it on the Continent is ' Socialism.' And what is Socialism or Communism liistorically ? It is the social condition of savage, barbarous, and semi-barbarous people. Civilisation is the march from the extreme Communism — in females and property — of savages and the lower animals up through infinite varieties of the mixed B Z THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. ownership we find in feudal and lialf-barbarous states? of society, till at length we come to the clearly de- fined ownership of property and liberty with regard to it of high civilisation. This Modern Socialism means the endeavour to return to the restricted liberty, the management of the people by the Govern- ment, and the mixed ownership of property of feudal and half-barbarous times. Mr. Herbert Spencer (a Liberal) calls it in one place ' The Coming Slavery ; ' in another, ' The Xew Toryism.' I will say a word or two about some of the headings of the programme I have mentioned. 1. Government (general or municipal) buymg land compulsorily below its market value. What does this mean ? A working man, after much industry and savings invests a hundred pounds in a small plot of ground near a town that he thinks will some day become worth a thousand pounds in the market for building on. This increase of value ' Socialism of the Day ' would confiscate, or, to use a more familiar expression, ' steal ' from this poor man. This is one side of the question — the side of increment. But there is such a thing as decrement. A few years ago a working man gave forty pounds an acre for some land that he now could not sell for twenty pounds an acre. I do not see that Socialism proposes to make up to this poor working man this decrement or loss, but perhaps it does. This theft of increment must, of course, be followed up by corresj)onding treatment of all kmds of property. It is proverbial that after the first step THE SOCIxVLISM OF THE DAY. 6 in roguery the succeeding ones come easy. ' Facilis descensus,^ &c. Confiscation without full compensa- tion according to market value is theft, and, like all crimes, must of course be paid for by the nation that does it. Socialism, amongst other things, means Government fixing prices as in old barbarous times. This system was given up because it was found to be disastrous. Besides which, in these present times of easy transit between countries, such attacks upon liberty and property inevitably drive capital, brams, honesty, and energy, to other countries that are more honest and more free. 2. Legislation to bring about the old yeoman or peasant-proprietary system in order to stimulate the produce of the land ! Statistics prove that under the landlord-and-tenant system of England the produce per acre is nearl}-^ double what it is in France, where there is a peasant ^proprietary under infinitely more favourable circum- stances than it would be in England — an exceptionally parsimonious and industrious people with only one child to a family, and far better soil and climate. Besides this, the old yeoman or peasant -proprietary system has nearly died out in England, because it did not pay. ' The proof of the pudding ' is a better argument than the fancies of Socialists dreaming about a millennium. . A farmer, we will suppose, owns a farm. He finds that he has ^()l. a-year to live on, and the farm every year gets into worse order. He sells the farm and becomes the tenant. He now finds that he has an income from it of 200/. a-year, and 4 THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. every year the farm gets into better order, and be- comes more and more productive of food for the people. Now, I say that the last state of this farm is more an instance of ' the land for the people ' than the first state. But of course the Socialist does not agree with me. At the bottom of all political ques- tions comes human nature. Now, the reason that in England the landlord-and-tenant system pays best is because rich Englishmen, when they buy land, are satisfied with very small interest for their money, and because, as a rule, it is their nature to take a pride in their property and improve it for their descendants. 3. Sweeping away the Law of Primogeniture. There is no law of primogeniture when people make wills, as all sane people do. There is only the beneficial custom of primogeniture, proved to be good because it is human nature. The laws of God and Nature are wiser than the laws of Socialism. The French people, who wage war on liberty because it cannot co-exist with equality, destroyed the liberty to make wills. The consequences to France are terrible, and perhaps will end in her ruin as a nation. The best French authorities say that these consequences iH-e a decreasing population, deterioration of nature and character in those few who are born, and thence numberless evils — amongst others, loss of colonising power ; being out-competed everywhere by Teutonic peoples ; helpless subjection to Germany ; businesses having to be sold up on a death just when they are beginning to get into working order, and thence enormous pecuniary loss to the nation ; little interest THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. 5 taken in, and, therefore, little improvement made, in businesses and properties that the owners know must be sold up at their death, &c. &c. These are a few of the consequences of that disastrous form of Socialism destroying the liberty of bequest — the only way there is of destroying the beneficial custom of primo- geniture. Socialism, in fact, means the destruction of liberty. 4. State Regulation of Rents. This form of destroying liberty means returning to the old socialisms of feudal and barbarous times, when the governing power fixed the prices of things. Advancing civilisation substituted liberty of bargain- ing and of contract. In old, half- barbarous times, the private affairs of people were managed for them by the governing power. That is, they were treated like children, and, of course, that insured their remaining children. This was the system in ancient Peru, which ended so disastrously to that country. The people were managed by their Government, and treated like children, till the3" at last became mere helpless ' sheep for the slaughter.' Thus Socialism is the opposite thing to progress. It means retro- gression to the old custom of barbarism. 5. Taxing only the rich and comparatively rich. This means, unjust taxation. But ' injustice ' means ' indirect theft.' Now, ' righteousness exalteth a nation,' or, in other words, prosperity is impossible where property is unsafe. How the loss of prosperity comes cannot always be traced, but come it must in proportion to the unrighteousness. All wise men are 6 THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. agreed there. But hints can be given. If capital or property is unjustly taxed it flies to other countries, with the brains and energy of which it is the outward and visible sign, and the country it leaves becomes by so much impoverished. But a poor country means a country at the mercy of richer ones. If capital and property are unjustly taxed in all coun- tries equally, the onl}^ result would be to increase the cost of production all over the world. The buying value of money would become so much less. .Rich and poor would relatively be just where they are. But we will suppose this unjust taxation to be con- fined to England. If all great businesses are crippled by being overtaxed, there will be so much less wages for the working men employed in them, and the here- ditary workmg man cannot, according to the ex- perience of the world, work businesses without the capitalists, because the definition of the hereditary weekly wage-earner is ' a man (as a rule) hereditarily incapable of making money or keeping money to- gether.' Tliis definition must necessarily be true, for everybody wants to be rich ; so, if any one is not, it means he can't, and that his ancestors couldn't. The AYorking men may have other hereditary virtues to any degree whatever, but in these they must be wantmg as a rule. 6. Restitution of Commons. This means destroying every fence and filling up every ditch and drain in England, for the whole of England was once ^ common.' England, in its original state, was a waste covered with whins, THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. 7 Leather, scrub, forests, and swamps, and for the most part absolutely worthless, and the land could only be made valuable by removmg these whins, forests, &c., at a great expense, as well as by cutting drains and Tiiaking fences at a great expense. Turning the fiwamps about Thome and Crowle into agricultural land cost the capitalists who did it between 201. and 30/. an acre, spent in warping, fencing, draining, making roads, and building farm-houses. 6. Heavy Death Duties. This is only a form of unjust income-tax on the rich, and I have treated it already. I will merely add that a heavy death duty comes hard on poor people, who have been employed in a large business or any large establishment, as they have more or less to be discharged to enable the death duty to be paid. Old pensioners kept on from charity will have to go to the workhouse or die. 7. Repeal of the Game Laws. In France the Game Laws have practically been repealed. The consequences are disastrous. Any- body and everybody may shoot ; birds of all sorts are destroyed ; insects and grubs abound unchecked ; vegetation suiFers, vine disease rages, and the loss to the country is enormous. If the Game Laws were repealed, the Trespass Laws would have to be very stringently enforced and carried out, and no one would be able to move off the public highways. Men of envious disposition in all ages always have tried to destroy that capital by which wage-earners are saved from death by starvation. History tells us 8 THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. that tliey have succeeded in these attempts, and have succeeded at the same time in ruining a country. Doubtless they will often do so again. Human nature is for ever human nature. Where rich men take to Socialism it sometimes means class hatred, sometimes that ignorance of socialogical and historical science we so often find in half-educated and self- educated people, and sometimes the mere self-seeking political ambition of our old, old friend, so familiar to us from the times of ancient Greece, Hhe popular demagogue.' A word more about Socialism. It means, as I have said, State help. Now, of course, State help and self help are like buckets in a well — when one goes up the other goes down. Every bit of State help destroys, in the long run, self help by just so much, and each generation becomes more and more helpless according to the law of heredity. But a great nation means a nation where the individual persons that compose it are great and strong in character. If large classes of men receive the advantages of civilisation without paying any rates or taxes, such people are paupers. To be a slave is injurious to the character — to be a pauper is ruinous to the character. We all have heard of slaves showing the noblest self-devotion in sacrificing their own lives for their master, but who ever heard of a pauper sacrificing his life for the Board of Guardians? Finally, Socialism carried out will ruin any country, for it means ever-increasing rates and taxes, armies of inspectors, tyranny, despotism, and infinite jobbery. THE SOCIALISM OF THE DAY. 9 I myself have all my life been a Liberal in politics, and thus am strongly opposed to ' The New Toryism ' or ' The Coming Slavery.' I have taken in your excellent daily paper for many years, so I know that you admit to your columns the views of Conservatives as well as the views of Socialists. I think, then, that you will not object to printing the above views of a Liberal ; and by a Liberal I mean a man who, as far as he can be, is liberal-minded, or with a mind so free that he can see all sides ; a man who loves liberty, even though he knows that the liberty hitherto so dear to Englishmen necessarily destroys the equality so dear to the envy-ridden Celtic man ; a man who aims at reforms when new circumstances require them — not destruction ; a man who is for liberty of trade in all things — land included — so that every species of property may, as far as possible, be as easy to sell as a cow is : in fact, a man who is for liberty of contract, liberty to make bargains, liberty of bequest, liberty everywhere. 10 LETTER 11. The New Toiiyism. Sir, — A few weeks ago you printed some remarks of mine about the Socialism of the day, or what Mr. H. Spencer calls ' The New Toryism.' But those remarks were very concise. I propose therefore to enlarge a Httle upon each of the subjects on which I touched. I will begin with an egotistic statement to account for my being a Liberal, or lover of liberty, and therefore hater of the ' coming slavery.' My father was Sir George Strickland, for forty years or so Radical member for the West Riding, and afterwards for Preston. Thus I was not nurtured in the lap of Toryism. My father was from the be- ginning of his political life a strong advocate for that household suffrage in borouglis and counties whicli has, at last, been brought about by the united action of the two political parties. When I talk of loving liberty, and, therefore, hating Socialism, I well know that the term ' Socialism ' is not a definite one. Indeed, what term is ? Qiiot homines^ &c. Nature is indefinite and infinite, so all classification is, strictly speaking, false. Classes really dovetail imperceptibly into neighbouring classes, like the colours of the rainbow. Still, men must classify, THE NEW TORYISM. 11 or they could never talk about anything. Socialism ranges from the weakest ' gush ' to ' dynamite devilry,' from the warm - hearted foolishness of that most charming of all characters ever depicted by novelist, Colonel Newcome (whose only political opinions were that there should be no poor, and that every working- man should be provided by Government with 30.^. a- week, beer and beef ad libitum^ and easy work), to the purely destructive Nihilism of Messrs. Burton, Cunningham, and Eossa. Some Socialists are like M. Comte, that self-adoring French sentimentalist and ' grotesque pedant ' (as Matthew Arnold calls him), who worshipped the ideal fetish of his own imagination, ^ man in general,' whilst he hated men in particular, especially, as his defender, J. S. Mill confesses, ' his own familiar friends,' who exerted themselves most in his behalf. Some Socialists are for doing away with Throne and Lords, and leaving only one House of Parliament ; whilst an excellent man, by name George Lawie, who writes in Socialist newspapers, is an admirer of Thomas Carlyle, and quotes with approbation his saying to Lord Wolseley, on the departure of the latter for Egypt : ' I hope you will come safe back, and then find it your duty to go to the House of Commons, kick out the six hundred talking jackasses, and lock the door.' The Socialist, Mr. Henry George, whilst holding all ownership of property to be iniquitous, thinks owning a cotton-mill to be less so than owning land. But the Socialist, Mr. Hyndman, whilst holding all ownership of pro- perty to be iniquitous, thinks owning land to be less 12 THE NEW TORYISM. SO than owning a cotton-mill. Some Socialists have railways on the brain. They think the State should take them all. Still, though hardly any words (outside mathe- matics) are absolutely definite, they generally are sufficiently so for practical purposes. So, when I say that ' I wage war for liberty against Socialism,' I mean that I wage war for liberty against the French ideas supposed to be entertained b}^ Mr. Chamberlain^ of flooding the country Avith armies of despotic Government officials, forcing fancy legislation on the nation contrary to the economic laws of nature, and therefore necessarily disastrous, destroying the mdi- vidual liberty hitherto so prized by Englishmen, increasing rates and taxes till profitable production becomes so difficult that capital, brains, and energy are driven abroad, and meddling with every man, woman, and child in the country, till life becomes intolerable. 13 LETTER III. Christianity and Socialism. Sir, — I wrote the otlier day for your paper an €ssay on ' Religion and Christianity in their con- nexion with Morality, Righteousness, and Honesty.' But when I had done so it struck me that it would perhaps be not quite the right thing in the right place. The Briton, as a rule, likes to take his re- ligion once in seven days — that is, on Sunday ; but your excellent paper appears only on week- days, so I have torn my essay up, only retaining the following illustrations : — When some Atheists were defending their creed, or rather, negation of creed, at Voltaire's table, he sent his servants out of the room, saying after he had done so, ^I do not want my valet to cut my throat to-morrow morning.' The same thing happening at Dr. Johnson's table, he was seen on the departure of his guestvS carefully counting the spoons. Modern Socialism, says M. de Lavelaye, is atheistic and irreligious. Can we wonder at its advocating theft as one of its leading principles ? There are several classes of Socialists — -one is the scientific-atheistic class. In 1884 a meeting of Wesleyans was held to 14 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. decide upon ways, and means for spreading the Bible. A scientific gentleman got up and protested tliat this was all nonsense, inasmuch as the in- vention of gas was worth shiploads of Bibles. Upon this there was a great uproar. But the chairman calmed them down. He said : ' Gentlemen, we are Christian men, and Christian men should be tolerant, and let each person get to heaven his own way. Most of us if we were dying would, no doubt, send for the minister, but this gentleman would send for the gasfitter. My friends, be tolerant. Let him do so.' No doubt the chairman was right. If a man smcerely thinks that belief in gas will help him on the road to a moral and honest life better than a belief in God, he ought to be allowed to go his own w^ay. These three illustrations are all that I have kept of my essay ; nevertheless, I will still say a few words on the subject. France is the specially socialistic and irreligious nation. She worships pleasure to the senses. She ridicules everything higher than this. She worships equality. She seeks the destruction of liberty in order to get equality like our own Socialists ; and she seems every year more and more to cry out, as the Northampton orator did to the applauding shoe- makers, ' Down with kings, down with aristocracies, down with churches, down with the d d bishops, down with judges, down with the magistrates, down with the rich, and up with the Devil ;' all the former to be abolished because they are opposed to the last. CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 1 5 Thus in discussing Socialism it is impossible to avoid referring to France, whether she be looked on as a warning or as an example to follow. Honest Socialists sometimes live to confess their errors. M. de Lavelaje frankly owns that he is beginning to have doubts about the ' religion of progress.' ' But what other religion is left,' he asks, ' for France ? ' M. de Lavelaye thinks a return to Christianity might be best ; but as this seems hope- less he would teach children the stoicism of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. But conceive a Frenchman ever being a stoic renunciator of pleasure ! Besides, educated France has pronounced for Atheism. Xow Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius were Theists. Per- haps there is no hope for France. The connexion between religion and righteousness and worldly prosperity in nations was always insisted on by the Hebrews, who taught that the wrath of God was sure to be visited on the children of disobedience. The same connexion was seen by the Greeks with their ' Nemesis ' and ' avengmg Fates.' Their word for the higher faculties of human nature was ' piety.' Pausanias says, ' We see how those States which are most distinguished for piety are at the same time most favoured by the gods in the matter of prosperity and good fortune.' Thus was ^ survival of the fittest' taught more than two thousand years ago. But piety, religiousness, righteousness, duty, or whatever the word used, is jeered at by all French-type Eadicals and Socialists, as much as the word ' God ' itself Asserting the goodness of God seems to them absurd. 16 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. If there was goodness in nature, how could there be any misery? ' I had the toothache,' said a French- man, ' therefore there is no God ! ' No civiUsation has existed hitherto without re- ligion of some sort. But France wages a fierce war ao-ainst all reli2:ion. What will be the result ? A return, more or less, to barbarism, says history. And are there not symptoms ? Barbarism means, amongst other things, equality, only found among savages and animals — the level uniformity got, and only to be got, by destroying liberty. This is the great aim of France. Again in Rome, Christianity, and Christianity alone, put down the gladiatorial shows, of which Spanish bull-fighting is the modem remains. There are attempts to revive shows of the kind in France. Christianity put down torture in prisons; ' Torture,' says M. Guyot, is practised in the French prisons. Christianity teaches the punishment of wickedness and vice, and encouragement of virtue. In France it becomes more and more difficult to get criminals punished. In the matter of Nemesis, ' avenging Fates,' or ^ wrath of God,' modem science agrees with the Greek and the old Hebrews. ' That suffering,' says Sir J. Lubbock, ' is the inevitable consequence of sin, as surely as night follows day, is the stem yet salutary teaching of Bcience.' National sin, such as unrighteousness and dishonesty, are of course worse (that is, followed by more suffering) than sin in an individual person, just by so much as it is on a larger scale. I CHKISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 17 The Christian man agrees with science, only addmg that evil is eternally and absolutely hateful from being opposed to Divme will and Divine nature. I have just used the term, ^ survival of the fittest.^ There is stranore confusion about the scientific doc- trme of survival of the fittest ; some, even intelligent 23eople, thinking that it is opposed to Christianity. But history contradicts this. We can only judge by facts, for there is nothing else to judge by, and facts undoubtedly show that those nations survive or are most powerful and prosperous which are most religious and most Christian. ' Virtue and goodness,' says John Henry Newman, ^ tend to make men powerful in this w^orld.' Thus religiousness is one of the conditions of fitness to survive. Of course, re- ligiousness does not reach a high standard amongst people in general in any country. Still the fact remains, that the more Christian j^eople are stronger, richer, more prosperous, aud more fit to survive, than the less Christian and religious peoples. And surely it must be so. Christianity means at bottom likeness to Christ ; in other words, being inspired by the same Divine — that is, heroic and unselfish— j^assions by which He was inspfred. Now, surely, a nation whose people are inspired by hunger and thirst after righteousness, by honesty, duty, patriotism, reverence, energy, ' endurance of hardness,' truthfulness, hope, joy, and all the unselfish heroisms or strengths that are in human nature, is more likely to survive in the struggle of life than a nation whose people are only inspired by hunger and thirst after food for the body ; 18 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. selfish animal enjoyments and mere self-seeking personal vanities, or negations of vitality and strength, as Goethe calls them. Surely morality and sur- vival of the fittest go together! But ' morality,' said H. Heme, 'is simply religion expressed in conduct and habits.' Therefore, religiousness and fitness to survive go together. France has undoubtedly deteriorated and fallen since she set up the worship of Godlessness. The fittest to survive amongst men are the most energetic, courageous, intelligent, and righteous, and where there is liberty these do survive. In France, where there is no liberty, they do not survive. If our Socialists get their way and destroy liberty they will not survive in England. The French think they love liberty. But, as Napoleon said, they do not even know the meaning of the word. They think it means lawlessness, whereas it means such stern enforcement of the law that everybody can go about freely without fear of bemg murdered, and make contracts freely without fear of being swindled. The forces that are always pulling man down to the indolence and vice of savagery or brute life, and the forces that pull him in the contrary direction, seem pretty equal, so that nations are always going up and down. Thus, whenever Socialism by State meddling destroys energy, liberty, and independent efibrt, it encourages the survival of the unfittest (the least intelligent, energetic, and righteous), and then comes the down-hill journey. Herbert Spencer thinks that as many nations are always going down as going CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 19 up. ' Eighteousness exaltetli a nation ; ' in other words, national prosperity is impossible without honesty, justice, law, and safety to life and property, and hence that confidence in business without which business transactions would never be transacted. Thus is explained the historical fact that Socialism (or Eadicalism as distinguished from Liberalism) brings nations to the ground. The agitation for Socialistic unrighteousness in Great Britain has al- ready checked enterprise, increased the depression in trade, frightened capitalists from investing their money in England, and driven millions of it abroad. Of all plants, confidence in business is the most delicate. The smallest thmgs affect its health. I know a landowner who wanted, for the good of working men, to cut up a large farm into small holdings, with all the costly buildings necessary. The agitation for Socialistic unrighteousness arose, and at once his plans fell to the ground. No nation can stand up against even the probability of pre- datory legislation. Thus all capitalists — from a Kothschild to the man who has saved only 30/. — should fight to the death against Socialism. Indeed, the smaller a man's capital is, the more important to him its safety must be. Talk of burglars bemg the dangerous classes ! The dangerous classes are the predatory Socialists, whether the motive force that works them be envy, or political ambition, or ig- norant dreams about a coming millennium, when human nature is going to be no longer human nature. I say that, of all tender and delicate plants, confidence 20 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. in business doings is the most delicate. Here is an illustration. A man with great inventive genius, industry, foresight, and organizing capacity, made a fortune of 200,000/., which he invested in land. One day he attended a lecture by an eloquent Socialist and heard to his dismay that he was a land-grabber, and that he would have to disgorge without compensation. Terribly shocked, he at once sold his land, invested it in the Funds, and went to another lecture. To his horror, he heard that all national debts are to be repudiated. Upon this our friend sold out, and lent his 200,000/. on mortgage. Being fond of eloquence, he went again to hear his lecturer. But now he found that all debts are to be repudiated, because it is unjust that people should be bound by debts not incurred by themselves. Again he got his money, invested it in a cotton mill, and went once more to a lecture. But this time he sat under a different orator, and was told that he was a grasping, tyrannical capitalist, grinding the poor, and taking to himself by means of mere bram-force the wealth that ought in justice to belong to muscle-force. This was the last straw. He sold his mill and went with all his money, his wife, and family, to California. A rich acquaintance of mine has, in fact, sold his land in England and gone to Xew Zealand. There are no eloquent Socialists in :N'ew Zealand. The income from 200,000/. is 8000/. a-year. The whole of all incomes goes sooner or later into the pockets of working men of one kind or ;^nother. Thus, by our Mend taking himself off to CHKISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 21 California, England lost a man of exceptional brains, and English working men lost for ever 8000/. a-year. But the children of men with good brains have usually good brains also, so that these were lost to England too. A nation's most valuable possessions are great moral and religious energies. Next come great intel- lectual energies, and next the wealth that in fact comes from these energies. Socialism drives all these things abroad. Whenever in a country property becomes attacked and rendered unsafe by confiscation without full com- pensation, or by legalising the violation of contracts, promises, and solemn engagements, or by unjust taxation, or by threats on the part of influential men to agitate for such things, at once the confidence- barometer falls, enterprise is checked, energy relaxes, trade slackens, and capital sooner or later becomes invested in safer countries. Hitherto, England has all the world over been considered safest, and, there- fore, capital has flowed m rivers into England. How about the future ? Foreign writers say that since the Irish Land Act the waters must flow the other way, and that lost confidence cannot come back asfain ! Well, every nation's time comes sooner or later. Perhaps what produced confidence in England and English public honesty more than any otlier one thmg was compensating the West Indian slave- owners when the slaves were freed. Foreigners were astonished at such national honest}^, of which they knew themselves to be mcapable. But ' righteous- ness exalteth a nation,' and millions upon millions of 22 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. foreign money has flowed into England in consequence of that honesty. Is it, I say, destined to flow back again ? I read in a Radical paper not long ago that this honesty to the planters was a foolish expenditure of public money. Thome Waste is a desert as big as half a small county. It is worth as it is exactly nothing an acre for agriculture. In the natural course of things it would have been reclaimed like the land round it, within twenty or thirty years. Now it doubtless never will as long as the world lasts. Thanks to the Socialists, it is lost to England for ever. English land speculators are buying mil- lions of acres in America. Reclaiming land in England has been made by the Socialists too hazardous for them to risk anything in it. Thorne Waste is only one instance out of innumerable ones. But it is not only land speculators who invest abroad. Wealth of all kinds gravitates to security as surely as water runs down hill. English brains and English capital are more and more going to other countries. ' Then let them go,' says the Socialist ; ' we don't want wealth.' Yes, but poor countries become more and more at the mercy of rich ones as armaments get more costly. At the present time only one gun costs to make what most people w^ould regard as a large fortune. ' Oh, but,' the Socialist will say, ' the wage-earning working men will make their own capital after we have got rid of the capitalist, and then we shall be richer than ever.' But this is igno- rance of human nature. The hereditary wage-earner, as a rule, is a wage-earner because he is hereditarily CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 23 without the qualities necessary for making, keeping together, using, and increasing capital. The chief of these qualities are foresight, self-control, self-denial, prudence, enterprise, faculty of lookmg beyond the present moment, invention, energy, and power of managing or organizing men. And this is a very exceptional combination of faculties. ' It is hard,' says a wise man, ' to make a fortune ; it is harder to keep one together when made.' Some Socialists say that education will alter the nature of the wage- earner, so that he is on the point of acquiring the qualities necessary for making, keeping, and using capital. They might as well say that education will turn a dog into a sheep. Indeed, the real (that is, spiritual) difference between one kind of man and another kind is infinitely greater than that between one animal and another. There is so much more scope for difference. Man ranges from a Digger- Indian to an Isaac Newton. What class of men is morally best on the whole it would require omni- science to settle. But every wise man knows that the difference between classes, races, and kinds of men is enormous, though no doubt it is only the wise who know this. ' In proportion,' says Rochefoucault, ' as one has little intelligence, one sees little difference between one man and another.' Mere education of the intellect leaves the character the same, and it is character upon which getting and keepmg wealth depends. All the mere head education in the world will not make a man who is hereditarily thriftless, without self-control, and unable to look 24 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. beyond to-morrow, thrifty, self- controlled, and fore- providing. Indeed, the cleverer he is in brains, the more his natural hereditary character will show itself. The French Celt has often education enough, but his moral characteristics are exactly what the Komans described them to have been two thousand years ago. The pure-blood Jew, however educated, retains his moral characteristics for ever. All that the tricks of reading and writing alone can do to the hereditary pickpocket will be to give him more facilities than he had before for picking pockets with impunity. Every- body should be taught to read and ^vrite ; but more must not be expected from these things than they will give. Nothing can mend the character but spiritual, religious, and moral appliances. Many a Socialist, like the Jews, Karl Marx and Lassalle, are highly educated, but education did not prevent these men joining the criminal classes in waging war on honesty, right, and justice. When I say justice, of course I do not mean equality as the Socialists do. Universal equality would mean injustice in the greatest degree to which it could possibly be brought. It would mean consequences being tacked on to the wrons: causes in a most ridiculous manner. Justice says that he who works for spiritual excellence should have his rewards, such as peace of mind and happiness in its highest sense. Equality says that he should have no more peace of mind than the drunken scoundrel. And so in everything. Justice says that each striving should be followed by its own reward ; that each cause should be followed by its own con- CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 25 sequences. Equality says that each cause should be followed by consequences that belong to some other cause. Nature's just law is that the early bird should get the worm. Socialism says that the late bird should get, at any rate, half of it. I am afraid the poor Socialist is a very confused person. Indeed, he shows this confusion everywhere. He w^ants a country to enjoy the luxury of theft and escape the necessary consequences. The celebrated Socialist axiom is that ' jDroperty is theft,' but to steal, says the Socialist, is wicked. ' Then let us,' he says, ' steal all property.' Again, Socialists say they do not want to destroy civilisation. But they also say they want equality or sameness. But sameness is only found among brutes and the lowest savages. Then they do not want to destroy civilisation. Many Socialists and Radicals (as distinguished from Liberals) say they are not opposed to liberty and honesty. But this ao^ain must be confusion of mmd. After the Irish Land Act they cannot say so. Confusion apart, their tongues are tied for ever. The Irish Land Act may be good or bad, but it undoubtedly destroyed liberty, and expropriated property without compensa- tion, as the paraphrase runs. It was also reactionary legislation, re-establishing the Socialistic customs of barbarous times (governing power fixing prices), as well as the communistic customs of barbarous times (mixed ownership of property). Of course, there are endless degrees in Socialism as in all things. Most Socialists want their own kind of property to be safe. ' Nature,' says the author of 26 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. Supernatural Religion, describing evolution from low to high forms of life, ' Nature awakes from the equi- librium of repose, first to the conflict of mechanical forces, then to sensitive life, then to intellectual activities, and finally to the moral emotions of righteousness.' Is it possible that a ' Socialist ' means a man whose development has been arrested at a stage below that of the ' moral emotion of righteousness ? ' It almost looks as if it might be so. ' Theft,' says Kuskin, ' is the most complete and excuseless of human crimes. Many sins have passion to excuse them ; but theft involving deliberation, intellect, and absence of passion, is the purest type of iniquity in persons capable of doing right.' From a similar point of view, Plato said that to lie is worse than to kill. Another way of putting it is to say that to be a devil is worse than to be a brute. But devilish wickedness is condemned more than anything else by mankind on account of the extreme misery it has been observed in the course of as^es to cause. The ordinary Socialistic orator is an inciter to theft in some form or some degree. Inciting to crime is a greater crime than actually committing it ; that is, the sufi*ering that comes from it is greater. Consequences from causes are so complex that it is impossible to trace them. Still, some hints may be given. A burglar robs a house, murders the owner, is hanged, and there is an end of the matter. This is merely the crime itself. A Eobespierre incites successfully people to rob and murder ; life and property become unsafe ; honest men and capital go CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. 27 to other countries; revolutions take place periodically; virtue and righteousness of character or civilisation deteriorate: the country becomes a prey to some people that has not deteriorated in character, as we have seen in France ; poverty becomes increased infinitely from want of capital to pay and capitalists to employ poor men ; emigration is stopped from poor men being promised plunder if they stay at home — in fact, the retribution ' Nemesis,' or ' Wrath of God,' or whatever the phrase preferred, is some- times enormous in extent and endless in duration. Eetribution for dishonest legislation works in infinite ways. Here is an illustration. A thriving island had thirteen inhabitants ; namely, one rich man, or capitalist, to whom the island belonged, two shopkeepers, three honest working men, two Socialists or predatory working men, one tramp, two paupers, and two [ criminals who had served their term of imprisonment. Thus, when the blessing of universal suffrage was conferred upon the people, the Socialistic class formed a majority. At once they sent political science to the planet Saturn, instituted dishonest class legislation, destroyed liberty of contract — and liberty, in fact, everywhere- — and rendered property so unsafe that the capitahst, the two shopkeepers, and the three honest working men, were driven out of the island, taking their intelligence, energy, honesty, and what money they had, to some less dishonest country. Then the seven Socialists divided the land equally amongst themselves. Having no money, they could not buy ploughs, horses, or seed, but they 28 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIALISM. stole some spades and potatoes, and set to work to grow that nourishing root. But the definition of the working man of the poorer kind is (exceptions apart) ' a man who is, hereditarily from the time of savagery? incapable of looking forward in life, of laying up for the future, of keeping property if accidentally acquired, or of turning it to good use.' Thus our seven poor Socialists, in the first bad season, had nothing to eat, and died, and the island became a desert. 29 LETTER lY. Christianity, Socialism, and Land Reform. Sir, — Socialists want to force on the country, in opposition to the natural working and growth of civilisation, a peasant proprietary. They want to put the hands of the clock ' Progress ' back to where they were in England hundreds of years ago, and are in France now. The evidences of the miserable lives led by peasant proprietors on the Continent now, and in Great Britain formerly, is overwhelmmg. I could pour it into your columns by the gallon. But you would turn the tap off long before I had finished. Evidence is not lively reading, and newspapers must be read. Writings are to instruct. If nobody reads nobody is instructed. Still, I must give some of the evidence. I do it with apologies, but I suppose I must do it. France is a country of peasant proprietors. M. Yille is perhaps the greatest living authority on experimental farming in France. At page 36 of the preface to his book. Artificial Manures, he says, ' The great evil from which we suffer in France is excessive subdivision of land.' At page 199 he says, ' The example of France is lamentable and distressing, for the average production of wheat is only 14^ bushels 30 CHEISTIANITY, SOCIALISM, per acre.' At page 201 he says, ' I have no hesitation in declaring the agricultural situation in France to be lamentable and threatening m the highest degree.' Eeturmng to peasant - proprietor agriculture means returning to agriculture without capital or machmery, and answers to the re- adoption of cottage spinning- wheels in the place of the capital and machinery now employed in makmg cotton, linen, and woollen goods. In France, peasant-proprietor agriculture means (with exceptions) bad crops, manual labour amounting to slavery for man, woman, and child, sordid surround- ings, and subjection to money - lenders. Cottage spinning-wheels and peasant proprietorship are alike suited only to an undeveloped condition of society. Lady Yerney has published some essays on French peasant proprietary, showing the terrible consequences of that system, as well as of destroying liberty of bequest, in order to force on the country, contrary to the laws of nature, the equality that is only found amongst savages. Instead of copying out what Lady Yerney says, I will only recommend her book to be read. It is very interestmg. Still, I must make one or two extracts. In consequence, says Lady Yerney, of destroying liberty of bequest and compelling pro- perties to be subdivided at death, ' the peasants cannot live on the produce of their plots, and in a bad year they are reduced to starvation and live on charity.' ' My mother,' said a doctor to Lady Yerney, ' generally has to keep alive four or five families in winter.' An Englishman can hardly realise the degradation of the French peasant families. Instead AND LAND REFORM. 31 of liaviiig fires in winter tliey sleep in the cow stables for warmtli. ' Rommes, femmes, et hetes^ tout ca pele-mele' M. Renan saj^s that the French peasant proprietor lives the life of a savage. In fact, they seem to be, in civilisation, about on a par with Arabs of the lower sort. ' We had to cam]3,' says a traveller, ' in an Arab village. We could have slept in the largest house, but it was populous with vermin, and there was a family of goats in the only bedroom and two donkeys in the parlour.' Of course, the French j)easant cannot afford machinery. 'Women,' says Lady Yerney, ' are treated as beasts of burden,' and their cottages are filthy. ' The home of an English labourer is a paradise in comparison.' In an English village, where there is the usual admixture of classes, the squire, the parson, the farmers, the artisans, and the labourers, get up cricket clubs, school feasts, concerts, lectures, penny readings, &c. 'There is no one,' says Lady Yerney, 'in the dead level of a French village who can afford time or money for anything of the kind.' M. de Lavergne tells us that the result of a peasant proprietary is ' une indigence universelle.' And although France is immeasurably superior to England in fertility, yet France, he says, yields, acre for acre, only half the produce that England does. But in Kent, Gloucestershire, and Essex, where there are still many peasant proprietors, he found agriculture more backward and pauperism more prevalent than in other parts of England. The peasant-proprietor system, says a good writer, »32 CHEISTIANITY, SOCIALISM, 'has left one town in Belgium with 25,000 citizens and 13,000 paupers, and another in France with a third of its inhabitants dependent on public alms.' ' The earth brings the French peasant proprietor two per cent,' says M. Michelet, and ' the usurer demands eight for the money he has borrowed of him. He has escaped a considerate landlord only to fall into the hands of the money-lender, who exacts the uttermost farthing.' The cause of the superiority of English produce ^ of course, is capital — first, of the tenant, which, says M. Lavergne, is usually four times that of the French proprietor ; secondly, of the landlord. Two of my friends have each spent about 100,000/. in draming. Mr. Wooley calculates that m the last forty years English landlords have spent 60,000,000/. in draining alone, and draining is only one item. M. de Lavergne looks forward to the time when French peasants will see the advantage of tenancy over ownership. One evil result of a peasant pro- prietary is that a coiuitry becomes stripped of its trees, causing deterioration of the clunate, destruction of fuel, and loss of beauty. Woods and trees in old countries depend upon not only a landlord class, but a landlord class that practises the custom of primo- geniture. People plant trees for the good of their descendants. As to fuel, the absence of trees is in France so disastrous m some places that the peasants burn the manure that ought to enrich their fields. The French peasant cuts from a sheep just wool enough at a time to make himself a pair of stockings, AND LAND REFOKM. 3o and cuts it from black sheep to save dyeing. The pecuniary loss to France from the farming being that of a peasant proprietary must amount in a few years to untold millions. Now, the agriculturists in a country are the best customers of its manufacturers. So loss to one is loss to the other. If peasant ownership brmgs ruin to abstemious, parsimonious Frenchmen, what must it do to Enoiish- men ? ' All,' says Mr. G. Harwood (author of The Coming Democracy)^ ' who are acquainted with the working people of England know that they are generous and free-handed. Amongst no class will suffering find more sympathy or the needy more help, and in no class is there less chance of developing those habits of meanness which seem essential to the success of peasant proprietorship ; and it must be borne in mind that peasant proprietorship bears par- ticularly hard on women,' &c. ' Official statistics,' says M. Martm Nadaud, ' show that there are in France one million four thousand houses unprovided with windows.' ' In these houses,' he goes on to say, ' which are without chimneys and without light, whole families live, for the sake of cheap warmth, with the domestic animals for companions and with the pig as guest. They are too poor to buy fuel.' Mr. Boyd Kinnaird defends the peasant proprietary of undeveloped peoples because, where it still lingers, he has known it answer ' fairly well.' Well, a pig- answers fairly well on potatoes, but it thrives much better on barley meal. I am afraid Mr. Kinnaird is D 34 CHRISTIANITY, SOCIALISM, an enthusiast on the subject. Enthusiasm is charming in poets, but no one with an imagination heated over one side of a question ever sees the truth about it. The true question is not whether peasant proprietors do ' fairlv well ' sometimes, but whether farmers under the landlord-and-tenant system do not do better. Mr. Kinnaird quotes Guernsey. In Guernsey the farmers do without landlords because they have not got any, so they must do without them. They do ' fairly well,' because they are French Celts, with the thrifty, parsimonious, feminine qualities of the race; because they breed and export in enormous- numbers the fashionable cows, that command in England a ridiculous fancy price compared with the cost of rearing ; because the coast supplies them with vast quantities of seaweed for manure ; because the climate is such that fruit can be grown for the English market; and other reasons. Mr. Kinnaird says that there is no reason why peasant proprietors should not some day use machinery, as farmers do under the landlord-and-tenant system. But here again this is not the question. The question is, ' Do peasant proprietors as a fact use it as much ? ' or, ' Human nature being wliat it is, will they use it as much ? ' The actions of men must be founded on facts, not on dreams. They often, no doubt, are founded on dreams, but exactly in proportion as the dreams are false the results of the actions are disastrous. Now history proves all the dreams of Socialism to be false. They have been acted on over and over again ever since history has existed, and AND LAND REFORM. 35 always witli disastrous results. For instance : some of the more foolish of the early Christians tried Communism, with (as Eenan says) inevitable pauperism and appeals ' to relieve the necessity of the saints.' One grievance in France is country people flockmg to towns. Men are strange creatures. The English Socialist lifts up his voice and comj^lains about the way country labourers flock to towns, his sure and certain remedy being a peasant proprietary ; whilst all this time the French political writer lifts up his voice and complains of the way French agricultural labourers flock to towns, his sure and certain remedy being the renunciation of peasant proprietary and the adoption of the landlord - and - tenant system. It is like the cattle-plague times. England lifted up her voice and complained bitterly of the way those pestilent Continental nations would send us their terrible cattle-plague, whilst the Continental nations lifted up their voice with one accord and complamed bitterly of their healthy cattle being infected by the importation of beasts from England. Our reactionaries or Socialists aim at taking England back to the communisms and feudalisms of barbarous times, when the people were treated like children, when liberty was unknown, and when prices were fixed by the governmg powers. Still, they are not agreed together, and their plans are not definitely stated. How far back to barbarous ages they want to go none of them say. Every stage of development is at the present time found on the Continent, some of 36 them still the same as that in England four hundred years ago. In some parts of Europe the peasant pro- prietor has been seen scratching the soil with a crooked piece of wood for a plough, pulled by his wife and a donkey. Is it to this stage that the Socialists want us to go back? We read that formerly, when the Scotch peasant proprietor lost his half- starved horse he married a wife (if not married already) to take the animal's place. The wife cost less than a new horse. Is this what our Socialists want to see again in Great Britain ? ' Kerry cows know Sunday,' is an old saying that came from their owners bleeding the cows every Sunday by way of giving their half- starved families, at any rate once a- week, a taste of animal food. This is another of the habits and customs that belong to the old Socialistic days, when every return of bad seasons brought, for want of the landlord or capitalist class, its terrible famines, miseries, and disease. How can anybody be so simple as to expect farming to answer without capital and machinery, any more than cotton-spinning and wool- spinning ? In Russia the peasant proprietor threshes his corn in the good old antediluvian way of treading it out with beasts. Perhaps some of us will live to see this done again in England. The Socialists want to force peasant proprietary on England. Indeed, the mcreasing aim of Socialists is to counteract the laws of nature — to force water to run uphill. But Bacon's maxim is, that ' the way to conquer Nature is by obeying her.' Now, in England the natural free working of things had undoubtedly substituted hiring AND LAND KEFORM. 37 land for owning it. The Socialists disagree with Bacon. They think that water should never be allowed to run downhill. In fact, it would be liberty. 'Any attempt to force labour/ says Adam Smith, ' into artificial channels, to shape by law the course of commerce, or to promote special branches of industry in particular countries, is wrong to the workers and hurtful to the wealth of the State.' Socialists, as I say, are now working to force back ao^riculture into the hands of that class of small yeoman landowners of old time, who sold their land because it paid them better to hire than to own it. AVhat can come of this but ' wrong to the workers and hurt to the wealth of the State ? ' What is wanted is not this destruction of liberty and of the natural working of things, but increase of liberty, by removing restrictions and rendering land easy to sell. Legislation has at times made foolish laws of entail, to prop up landowners who have got into difficulties, to save their land to their families, and to prevent it from coming into the market, thus preventing the survival of the fittest. But what does it matter to the country, an impoverished landowner's precious land being saved to his family? Indeed, that it should be saved to it is good neither for the country, nor for liimself, nor for his family. What is wanted is liberty to buy and liberty to sell, as well as that liberty in bargaining that can only be reached by the stern enforcement of penalties for violation of bargains and contracts. I am afraid the poor Socialist is not always very 88 CHRISTIANITY, SOCIALISM, clear in his head. His cry is ' The land for the people ! ' But it is quite proved that the English landlord-and-tenant system, with machinery, brains, capital, and organization, gets in old countries far more produce from the land than a peasant proprietary. Thus, when Socialists shout out, ' The land for the people ! ' they really shout out, ' The smallest quantity of food for the people ! ' But they cannot see this. Again, even under the most flxvourable circumstances, it is hard for English agriculture to stand against foreign competition. In Fraiice and Germany they find it hopeless, and put on a tax on foreign food. But the English Socialists aim at taxing agriculture heavier even than it is taxed already, thus compelling the remaining small peasant proprietors to sell their bits of land to the large landowners, who can afford to be contented with very low interest. Thus we come to two curious Socialistic conclusions — (1,) that a peasant proprietary is to be encouraged in England ; (2,) that all peasant properties are to be merged mto and absorbed by the large properties. Many Socialists have much energy. So much the worse where there is only ignorance to direct it. ^ Nothing,' said Goethe, ' is so terrible as energetic Ignorance. In Ireland the aim of the Socialists is to substitute in the end a peasant proprietary for the landlords. But the Irishman's passion is to be an ' indepindent jhintleman!' living on his rents. ' Every Irishman,' says Mr. J. Bright, ' who has 100/. a -year, wants to spend all his time driving a jaunting-car.' Thus the AND LAND REFORM. 39 present low-renting landlords, if removed, would only- make room for a vast number of semi - pauper, rack- renting, squireen landlords. So the Socialist bill to diminish the number of landlords will be a bill to increase the number of landlords. ' Shure,' said Paddy, * whin the Land Bill has passed there's to be no more landlords ; we're all going to be tinnants.' Now which is most confused, this bright genius or our Socialist politicians ? 40 LETTER Y. Peasant Proprietors. Sir, — What says Charles Kmgsle}^ (who, besides bemg a man of great genius and wisdom, was a practical agricultm-ist) about peasant proprietorship ? ^ The landlord,' he says, ^ is a necessary element in civilisa- tion, because he ensures the presence and influence of an educated man, and (still more) of educated women, on each estate. For want of this, the French peasant is sailing into barbarism. By the landlord alone can larger works be carried on. Thus, drainage and improvement are at their lowest point in France.' The town artisan thinks that if he had a bit of land he could farm it. Charles Kingsley knew better ; he says, ' If a town artisan asked me for a bit of land, I should say to him, " Come in, my good fellow, and I will give you something to eat and drink, and then go your way back to your trade ; for if you settled down on this land you would either be in the work- house or the grave in twelve months." ' Again he says, talking of French peasant proprietors, ' The crops they grow per acre are small compared to those on an English farm. The immediate restilt of breaking up the present English farms into small allotments would be, to diminish the food-producing PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 41 powers of this realm by one half. The foreign land- owning peasant lives far worse than a good English labourer. Black rye bread is his staple food, and Iiis wife, from incessant-field Avork, becomes a haggard old woman at twenty -five. God forbid that I should ever see in England such wives and mothers as are common on the Continent. The peasant in France is, and must be, a slave of the Government, because there is no strong land -owning class to stand be- tween the poor man and the governing officials, who combine to oppress him. A French peasant grows up in barbarism and superstition. ' No gentleman — and worse, no lady — speaks to him from the cradle to the grave, and his civilisation is impossible. The only civilised persons he sees are the Government officers and magistrates, who trample on him . . . . ^ And this is the state of things down to which Mr. Chamberlain and our party of French Socialists want to bring England ! Charles Kingsley says he was an eyewitness of what he describes. There was no party bias in this evidence. Indeed, he was called a Radical. In Great Britain the landlord's house is a centre of civilisation, each in its little district. A peasant proprietary has no centres of civilisation, therefore there is no civilisation. 'French peasant proprietors,^ says Monsieur Benan, 'live the lives of barbarians.^ ' Any one,' says a writer about France, ' who knows anything of the French peasantry must be horrified at their brutishness, their gross superstition, their filthy habits, their utter ignorance, and the debaucher}^ of their very few children.' In few families in 42 PEASANT PROPRIETORS. France are there more than two children, and the population of the country is diminishing. A 'phenomhie,^ says the Revue' des Deux Mondes, 'qui tient au hi de partage force.'' It is not much better amongst peasant proprietors in Germany. The Economist newspaper of August 20tli, 1881, published statistics showing that the peasant proprietors of Germany are in a miserable condition. So much for agricultural population without the landlord class ; and the richer the landlords are, the greater the prosperity. ' In England,' says Dr. Jessop, ' it is on the large estates that the labourer is best housed.' Here is a description from the Agricultural Gazette of the peasant proprietors still left in England: — ' They suffer more from the depressed state of agri- culture than any other class of the agricultural com- munity. Their work is harder and their fare worse than that of any labourer in the kingdom ; their little properties are for the most part mortgaged up to the hilt. Many cannot pay the interest, and altogether their condition is deplorable.' And it is to this state of things that the Kadical and Socialist wish to bring back the whole of England. He wishes to reduce the food grown in the country by nearly one half, to bring back the old system of farming almost com- pletely without capital and machinery, to ruin the agricultural machine manufactories, to ensure the majority of the population living the hardest of lives on the worst fare, and in never- to-be-paid- off debt at high interest to money-lenders. PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 43 Perhaps the highest livmg authority upon agri- culture is Sir John Laws. He says, 'The peasant proprietor, the man who owns and derives his living from a few acres of land, will never be able to compete against the large farmer. In the neighbour- hood of railways and towns he might possibly grow fruit and vegetables at a profit, but this is not agri- culture. Those who live in towns and have little or no experience in regard to the cultivation of the soil are apt to think that more produce would be obtained if the cultivation were carried on by peasant pro- prietors. When, however, we compare the produce of other countries where land is largely held by this class the evidence is the other way.' ' The only way,' says Mr. Clare Eead, ' for a small peasant proprietor in England to succeed is for him to do the work of two labourers and Hve at the expense of one.' ' I have,' says Mr. Bence Jones, ' never seen a single line written by any one having a practical hioidedge of farming who advocated peasant proprietors, and who does not treat the plan as an impossible attempt to force now what only suits an earlier stage of civilisation.' Mr. Howard, an agri- cultural implement maker, seems to want something approachmg to a peasant proprietary in England, under the idea that more implements would be bought. But this must be ignorance. Experience m France shows that peasant proprietors, under the most favourable possible circumstances for the system from climate, soil, thrift, &c., buy very few imple- ments: they are too poor. 44 PEASANT PROPRIETORS. In the backward countries of Europe the transition is gradually taking place from peasant proprietary to the landlord -and -tenant system. Even in France, where from envy -begotten equality -worship the people forced on themselves the system of little ownership contrary to Nature's economic working of things, we learn from statistics that hirino; land is increasino\ This is also the case in Belgium. Scotch little farming without capital, in the olden time, shows the misery of that state of things to which our Socialists want to return. We are told that once in Shetland, some years ago, when a boatfull of shipwrecked peoj)le, having got a rope to the shore, were hauling them- selves to the land, the wretched crofters of the island purposely cut the rope, so that the crew were driven out to sea and drowned. And this was done for fear the wrecked people should consume their miserably small stock of whiter provisions. The starving class of crofters have, in certain parts of Scotland, happily diminished in numbers ; but the population of Scot- land has very much increased on the whole, and the riches of Scotland have eiiormouslv increased. Sutherlandshire formerly contained 21,617 people, mostly living in extreme destitution. Sutherland- shire now contains 23,370 people, amongst whom distress is little known. Such is the effect of that capital of capitalists against which the Socialists wage unceasing war. Socialists assert that tillage has de- creased in the Highlands. Statistics say that tillage has been very much increasing. It was a custom amongst the half- starving families in the last century, PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 45 in parts of Scotland as in Ireland, to bleed live cattle once a -week, and mix the blood with the oatmeal. There was an Irish saying, ' Kerry cows know Sunday.' Sunday was the bleeding day, the feast day. Pennant, writmg of the farming in Skye of a hundred years ago, says, ' The crops are most preca- rious, the poor are left to Providence. They prowl like animals along the shore to pick up limpets and shell -fish, which often afford the only chance of dragging through the season a wretched life. Numbers unknown fall beneath the pressure, some of hunger, more of putrid fevers that come from unwholesome food.' And this is the state of things the heartless Socialists and Radicals want to bring back. These constantly recurring famines and putrid fevers are found to be the inevitable accompaniments of Social- istic states of society in our northern chmates. Previous to emigration, or what Socialists call ' de- population,' in the Highlands of Scotland, the misery of the people was pitiable. ' They were always,' says Mr. Cosmo Innes, ' on the verge of famine.' The Socialist of the mere gushing class (who, wisdom apart, is sometimes the most excellent of men) thinks of the poor peasant and crofter, as he is called in Scotland, having to leave the spot where he and his ancestors have for centuries got their living, or rather starving, and his eyes become so full of tears that he can see nothing else — no other side of the question. He is right as far as he goes. It is sad. Every form of progress has its sad side. Machinery, capital, and doing things on a large scale, 46 PEASANT PROPRIETORS. lead on tlie whole to good — to an absence of famine s^ to comparative absence of disease and misery, and to well-to-do, orderly, civilised, clean people, increasing in numbers compared with the numbers of poor, half- starved people without order or cleanliness. But the immediate result of machinery often is loss of work to many. And very sad this is. Still it is in ac- cordance with the great law that is observed through- out nature — the law, namely, of survival of the fittest (in men most intelligent, energetic, and righteous), and extinction of the unfittest. This is Nature's way of bringing about progress, of lessening misery, and of preventing deterioration. Charles Kingsley, talking of evictions in Ireland, saj's, ' The country I came through yesterday moved me to tears. You cannot conceive what it was. But I suppose the thing had to be done. With poor-rates twenty shillings in the pound, and the people dying of starvation, the cottier system had to be stopped. But what misery! Still it had to be done. There are now magnificent farms growing up with roots and grasses, instead of the horrid potato and black bog.' The poor puzzle-pated Eadicals and Socialists want to bring countries back to the potato, the savagery, the starvation, and the misery. And these astonishing people call themselves ' The party of progress ! ' Is it possible for confusion of mind to be carried further ? The cry for a return to the peasant proprietary of half-barbarous times is, in fact, a good instance of Socialist retrogressionism. The Socialist, or Kadical, is miceasingly shouting out ' Progress ! ' but he really PEASANT PROPRIETORS. 47 works with all his strength to take the country back to ancient customs. Advanced Socialists are enthusiastic and passionate reactionaries. But they are not generally highly versed in history and science, and so they cannot see this. They call themselves ' advanced,' and think they are going forwards when they are really going backwards. Instead of pulling the coach on to higher and higher ground, they are backing her into the old swamps and morasses she left behind years ago. ' Progress ! pro- gress ! progress ! ' the}^ shout out unceasingly : ' let us work for progress and advance back from liberty to socialism, from freedom to slavery, from developed to primitive habits and customs,' when famines, diseases, and misery reigned supreme. One would think they were all Irishmen ; and perhaps they are in a great degree — at any rate more or less alien in blood. Towns are full of Celts and aliens. The future of English farming no one can tell. Dreaming about the future is proverbially the amuse- ment of foolish people. But an article in the Times of April 11th, 1884, indiilged in this amusement. The prophecy, with the reason for it, was as follows. Every year foreign competition renders arable forming in England less and less profitable. The time, there- fore, will probably arrive when the whole of England will be grass, and devoted to parks, pleasure-grounds, and dairy purposes. Of course such an idea as this is shocking to the ordinary Socialist, who dreams about peasant proprietorship and such things, but the economic laws of Nature never consult the So- 48 PEASANT PROPRIETOES. cialist. They pay no attention to liim. If arable farming ruins all the men who farm, whether peasant proprietors or not, in consequence of foreign com- petition, arable farming must come to an end. But, as I say, there is a certain idleness in prophesying. Nobody can foretell all circumstances. For instance^ agricultural labourers will perhaps sooner or later insist, whether rightly or wrongly, on protection. If they do, and political party success should seem to turn on it, there will be an interesting race between politicians for protection. No doubt Mr. Gladstone will win. He puts such admirable j^assion into everything, one thing one year, the opposite thing the next, like a good actor who plays one character one nio-ht, another kmd the next. Demosthenes said that the first thing wanted by an orator is the play-acting faculty, the second the play-acting faculty, the third the play-acting faculty. Passion, whether real or well acted, is very telling, wherever majorities of men are concerned. They understand it. Kea- soning confuses them, and wisdom flies over their heads. Thus comes the old saying, that in a de- mocracy the eloquent man is king. If the majority demands protection, Mr. Gladstone will be very elo- quent. He will appeal to the highest emotion of our common humanity. He will say, ' What ! Am I to be told that we are only to consult the selfish interests of the mere consumer, who produces nothing ? What is this consumer? I will tell you. He is a rich man, who lives an idle life in England upon the proceeds of investments made in other countries. And are the PEASANT PEOPEIETORS. 49 lives of honest British working men, with their wives and Httle children, to be sacrificed to benefit this small minority ? What is the working man ? Is he not of our own flesh and blood ? Do we — I repeat, do we — or do we not live in a Christian country? &c.' We all know this is what Mr. Gladstone will say ; and quite right, too (or, at any rate, natural), from the point of view of a politician in a highly democratic state of society. ' These air my opinions,' said the American orator on the stump ; ' but if they do not please you they can be altered.' Good elo- quence like all other good acting is very delightful, but it has one drawback — it ruins nations and brings them back to barbarism, as Froude says it did in Greece. Monsieur de Lavalaye says that ' the Greek demo- cracies, after going through the eloquent demagogue stage, perished.' Mr. Froude thinks that this comes to every nation as surely as a chrysalis turns into a butterfly when the time comes. 50 LETTER YI. Land. Sir, — One of my labourers, whose wages are a pound a- week, invested his savings or capital in buying an acre of land, which he lets. Thus he be- came what the Socialists call ' a land thief.' Another labourer in my parish invested his caj)ital or savings hi a carrier's cart. Now, by some curious mental process, the Socialist comes to the conclusion that the acre of land must be taken without payment from the first and given to ' the people ' (whatever that may mean), whilst the cart is not to be taken and given to the people. All land is to be nationalised, but not the carriers' carts. ' Hi ! policeman ! ' cried out Mr. Henry George, ' some rascal has stolen my watch ! ' ' Xo, sir/ answered the policeman, ' he has not stolen it ; he has only nationalised it.' ' I,' shrieked a French Socialist, ' am an enemy of property. I cannot tolerate a man plantmg his foot on a portion of the soil, and saying, " This land is mine ! " The Government has seized my letters, and ' ' They are not yours,' interrupted a man m the crowd, ' since you do not admit the right of property ! ' And the orator was so disconcerted that he bolted out of the room. LAND. 51 The Frencli are called a specially logical -minded people. Making distinctions between different kinds of capitalists is, of course, only confusion of mind. Mr. Matthew Arnold thinks the special defect of the British mind is ' want of lucidity.' HoAv are we to account for this confusion? Perhaps the metaphysicians can help us. Professor Bain, talking of the difference between talent and genius, says that the former sees objects, whilst the latter, besides seeing the objects, sees the correct relation between them. Talent separates, analyses, and takes to pieces ; whilst Genius, in addition to this, puts together, compares, creates, and sees unity of principle where such exists. If this is true, we can easily imagine some, even very clever, man of talent, clearly seemg every minute and separate detail about any number of separate investments — such as a hundred pounds invested in a house, in a field, or in Consols, in a newspaper, in a railway, in a cotton- mill, &c., whilst he is unable to see the unity of principle throughout; namely, that in each case the investor is simply a capitalist to the amount of a hundred pounds. Another explanation is, class antipathy. George Eliot says that ill-will is always accompanied by stupidity exactly in proportion to the ill-will ; which is only the old teaching, that ' Love and knowledge are two parts of one thing.' If a man has no love for, or takes no interest in flowers, he never will be a botanist, and what ideas he has about botany will be stupid and false. If a class of men hates another 52 LAND. class, its ideas and knowledge about that other class will, according to George Eliot, be stupid and false, and hence any political action carried out upon these ideas must be disastrous to a country exactly in 23ro- portion as they are false. Again, the cleverer the man is who carries out this action the more disastrous the result will be, for he will, in proportion as he isr clever, have so many more false ideas. The cleverer a man is, says Archbishop Whately, the more harm he will do if he has not wisdom to match. A Socialist, perhaps clever, certainly shallow, sees miserably poor people. Pitying them, he forthwith proclaims to the world, as M. Comte did, that God has made the world wrong, and that if he had been consulted it would have been done much better. He then propounds his remedy, which is to repeal the laws of nature, remove capitalists from off the face of the earth, and destroy all existing things. But the wise man, who can compare, sees that in complete savagery everybody is a miserable, poor, dirty wretch, ignorant one daj^ whether he will have anything to eat the next or not ; and that exactly ua proportion as capital is formed by exceptional men, and kept when formed, the numbers of miserably poor creatures become fewer compared with the numbers of well-to- do people. As Herbert Spencer (who can compare) puts it, the advance from savagery to civilisation means the advance from homogeneity to heterogeneity — that is, from sameness to difference, or from equality to inequality. If this is true, it is manifest that the definition of LAND. 53 a Socialist is ' a man who strives to bring men hack to the savage state — the state where all men are equal or alike ; that is, where all are dirty, thieving, indigent, homicidal, and adulterous.' Here alone is equality found. Lnmediately some enterprising savage invents a spade inequality lias commenced. ' Landowners,' says Mr. Hyndman, ' are mere hangers-on of the capitalists.' ' Capitalists,' says Mr. George, ' are mere liangers-on of the landowners.' Doubtless the former has millowners on the brain, the latter landowners. But what charming confusion of ideas! Of course they are both capitalists, and both in the same boat — to sink or swim together. Indeed, as a historical fact, they do sink and swim together. Attacking one form of capital is attacking all forms. Civilised society is carried on by means of capi- talists. The towm artisan who buys a rood of land, and either cultivates it or lets it for a pound a-year, is a land-owming capitalist. The man who buys a horse and lets it out at five shillings an hour is a horse- owning capitalist. The man wdio has shares in a newspaper is a newspaper- owning capitalist. The man who buys shares in a railway is a raihvay- owning capitalist. The farmer wdio stocks a farm is a stock-owning capitalist. The landowner gets his pound a-year rent, or interest, for the use of his rood of land ; the horse- owner gets his five shillings an hour rent, or interest, for the use of his horse ; the railway- owner gets his four per cent rent, or inrerest, for the use of his railway ; the man with his money 54 LAND. in a newspaper gets liis percentage of rent, or interest, and so on. They are all capitalists, and attacking one is attacking all. Indeed, it is attacking every system of human life above savagery. My father. Sir George Strickland, owned many hundreds of acres of land that was nothino; but lins:, whins, and swamps — it was absolutely worthless. He spent 15,000/. in reclaiming them, building farm- houses, fold-yards, cow-houses, and stables, making fences, planting quick wood, and getting the land into a good state of cultivation. These farms belong now to my brother, and the leading Socialists pass their lives inciting people to take it from him without compensation — in other words, to steal from him 15,000/. My father's father had also reclaimed land, his father before him had done so too, and so on. This is, in fact, the history of nearly all the cultivated land in England. Unlike much land abroad, it was, in its original state, for the most part worthless. I think I had better explain here to those people Avho write the excellent articles in newspapers on agricultural matters, that ' whin ' is a prickly shrub that grows wild all over England, and that costs a great deal of money to eradicate. My father spent this 15,000/. in the 'plant' for the manufacture of food. Because this ' plant ' is to manufacture food it is to be stolen (according to one school of Socialists), whilst the plant in a town, costing 15,000/., for the manufactare of cotton goods, is not to be stolen. The more logical-minded French Socialist is for stealins: both. LAND. 55 Originally, I say, the greater part of the land in England had no value till cleared. There were vast forests, but trees then were worthless ; so, till they were cut down, the whin stubbed up, and drains and ditches cut — all at a great expense — the value of land for agriculture was, as a rule, nothing — the money, time, brains, energy and enterprise, everything. This money and energy spent durmg^ the ages have been enormous. When a man buys an estate, what he gets in exchange for his money is the result of this intelli- gence, foresight, energy, enterprise and capital, that have been spent during these ages — felling trees, cutting drains, making nnder-drains, warping low lands, making fences, stubbing whms, erecting farm buildings, keeping in repair cottages, lion's share in building and keeping up churches and schools, lion's share in making roads, &c. This enormous property the Socialist spends his life inciting people to steal. He virtually says, ' Wait till capitalists have made land valuable, and then steal it.' 'Give back,' as he puts it, to 'the people,' 'the commons that once belonged to them,' the commons meaning the whole of England, and ' the peoj^le ' to whom it once be- longed, meaning our savage ancestors, whose hunting- OTound Eno^land once was. Stealing the land itself, with the value it has acquired in the manner I have described, and stealing by taxation the rent, or interest, it brmgs, is, of course, practically the same thing. I do not say that all Socialists consciously advocate theft, but 56 LAND. onl}'" that what they propose is simply theft in the ordinary meaning of the word, and, of course, must, like all crime, be paid for by any country that commits it in proportion to the degree of the crime. There cannot be cause without consequence. Theft or crime, says Science, is condemned, because the experience of ages has proved that it is always fol- lowed by suffering in proportion to its degree. Hegel looked on the retribution as so necessarily following crime that he called them merely two asnects of the same thino;. 'In England,' said Jeremy Bentham, the high- priest of Radicalism, 'the greatest improvement is the enclosure of commons. When we pass over the lands which have undergone this happy change, we are enchanted, as with the appearance of a ncAV colony. Harvests, flocks, and smiling habitations, have now succeeded to the sadness and sterility of the desert.' The great aim of the Socialists is to bring back ' the sadness and sterility of the desert.' My quotations are generally from Liberal or even Radical writers, because hitherto I have agreed with them more than with the opposite party. But within the last four or five years the Liberals have ' ratted.' They have become reactionaries, and gone back from liberty to Socialism (Government fixing prices and managing the private affairs of people) and Com- munism (mixed ownership of j^roperty). ' The principle,' says Mr. G. Harwood, ' of the land belonging to the people, which is the basis of what is now called Communism, was also the basis LAND. 57 of what was once called Feudalism.' Thus, what the modern Socialists want is a return to that Feudalism against which the Socialists and Radicals rave unceasingly. ' It Avas not/ says M. Latourneau, ' till the break up of the feudal system that individual property became enfranchised ; that is to say, saleable and useable according to the will of an absolute owner.' The Socialist thinks he is in favour of progress. His favourite dogma is that each bit of what he calls progressive legislation is final, and there can be no going back. But Socialism means going back to old feudal laws and customs, or to earlier things still. Thus the Socialist says : — (1.) That we are not to go back. (2.) That we are to go back. ' The Irish Land Act,' says Mr. Bence Jones, ^ is simply a return to Feudalism.' Again, he says, ^ Whatever one's preferences may be, the world — (no doubt he means Great Britain) — has undoubtedly passed beyond Feudalism, whether for good or evil ; tenants cannot have the advantages arising from the right of free contract and the advantages arising from Feudalism too.' A child is cared for by nurses. He grows up to be a man. He gains freedom, but loses the irre- sponsible security of his infancy. He cannot have both. So it is with a nation. In its early existence it enjoys the protection of feudal and paternal govern- ment, but when it grows up it loses this and gams 58 LAND. liberty instead. The two things are mcompatible. Give the grown-up nation the feudal or paternal government the Socialist aims at, and, of course, its inhabitants will all become children and slaves aofain. More confusion. The Socialist says that much existing landed property does not really belong to the owners, because many years ago it was obtained by force, or in some other illegal way. This is the same as saying that some man at the present day is not legitimate because one of his ancestors a few hundred years ago was not legally married. The pickpocket, when he steals a watch, may say that the ancestor of his victim obtained his money by fraud or force, and he would say the truth. Go far back enough into barbarous times, and these were undoubtedly the ways all property was obtained. Nevertheless, when the pickpocket infers that the man from whom he took the watch had no ri2;ht to it, his inference is a false and confused one. A word about another confusion. Some Socialists talk a good deal about ' unearned increment.' A picture, when it left the hands of the artist 300 years ago, was worth 50/., it is now worth 5000/. This addition, or unearned increment, is not to be stolen. A bit of land, 300 years ago, was worth 50/., it is now in the middle of a town, and worth 5000/. Here the addition is to be stolen. Surely this is confusion of mind! Again, there is such a thing as decrement, as well as increment. A labourer of mine bought for LAND. 59 100/. an acre of land. But land has fallen since in value. This acre is now worth in the market perhaps 50/. Then this decrement of 50/. ought to be made up by the State. In consequence of the depression in agriculture this decrement is enormous. Whereas, according to Professor Fawcett, land in England was a few years ago worth two thousand million pounds ^ it is now worth, we will say, one thousand million pounds. Thus, our Socialists are bound in reason to say that the country should pay the landowners one thousand million pounds. Perhaps they do. Still, I do not happen to have come across any such statement. Talking of the nationalisation of the land. Pro- fessor Fawcett said : ' Peasant, peer, and artisan (with his house purchased by the agency of a buildmg society), would be alike expropriated by such a scheme, and the State (the new landlord) would be the worst and hardest of landlords.' I .wonder whether town agricultural writers have any idea of the amusement their lucubrations afford to us country-folk. There is a well-known story of a town agriculturist who had to turn his hand to writing articles in an agricultural newspaper. He was skilful and versatile, so, by strictly confining himself to the broadest generalities, he for some time escaped being found out, till one unlucky day he ventured on an explanation of how to get in turnips. He said that they should never be gathered by hand, but that the best way was, when they became ripe, to 60 LAND. send a boy up to gently shake the tree, and then the ripe ones would fall. This process was to be repeated every day till the crop was secured. Instances of town ignorance of country matters mio-ht be oiven without end. Truth o'ave us not lono' ao'o the followino' ^vonderful enunciations with reo;ard to tenant-farmers. Landlords, according to this print, ought to be abolished, because to be a landlord, ' living in a large house, a little lord over subservient tenantry, a justice of the peace, and one of a class in whom all local authority is vested, is entirely out of harmony with modern ideas ; ' the notion evidently being, that a tenant-farmer is a sort of serf ; also that he cannot be a magistrate or take any part in local business. What would one of our independent Yorkshire farmers say if he were told that he was under subjection to the man whose land he hires ? As for a tenant-farmer not being qualified to act as a magistrate, I suppose the Editor of Truth would be surprised to hear that I know an instance of a tenant-farmer not only being a magistrate, but being a magistrate who has attended to business as a magistrate much more actively and efficiently than his landlord has, who is also a magis- trate. Of course it is open to this Editor to discredit this assertion, but perhaps he will not do so when I assure him that I am m a position to feel certain about the matter, inasmuch as the landlord in ques- tion is myself, and the tenant-farmer in question is my own tenant. Then again, about large houses being ' entirely out of harmony with modern ideas.' What can he LAND. 61 mean by that ? The truth, of course, on the con- trary, is, that every year m England and America there are larger and larger houses built, and richer and richer men to build them, employing, thereby, bricklayers and workmen innumerable. I think few people will be able to avoid suspecting that the Editor of Truth is the very person men- tioned above who gave such clear instructions about gathering turnips. Town ignorance of country matters no doubt only matches country ignorance of town matters, and I only hope that, if ever I display any such ignorance on my side, some good Samaritan who lives in a town will take as much trouble to instruct me as I am taking to instruct him. If good Samaritanism is right where the pocket is empty, how much more right it must be where the mind is empty ! 62 LETTER YIL Communism and Socialism in Land. Sir, — Progress means, put broadly, the marcli from homogeneity to heterogeneity ; from Socialism to individualism ; from sameness and equality to difference and liberty ; from the communism of mixed ownership in women and property of filthy savages up through innumerable forms of Socialism (Govern- ments fixing prices and rents and managing the private aifairs of people), up to separate and clearly defined ownership and freedom from undue Govern- ment mterference. Such is the law of progress and nature. The aim of the reactionary Radicals and Socialists of the day is to return to socialistic and communistic customs. Li Ireland they have succeeded. The Irish Land Bill meant Communism (mixed ownership of property), and Socialism (Government fixing prices and managmg the private afi*airs of people). Of course foolish people can counteract the laws of nature, but all the foolish people in the world cannot counteract the sufi*erings that necessarily follow all such counterac tings. Bancroft says that ' the first emigrants to the United States started with common property in land, but soon they were obliged to assign it to individual COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND. 63 cultivators, though at first without the right of bequeathing it by inheritance, but afterwards they had to fifrant this also.' ' So ' savs Mr. Harwood, ' as all iD says kites have to come to the ground, all schemes must come to the level of the practical necessities of life.' Fools may propose, but God, through His irresistible laws, will dispose. The fools sometimes get their way, but when they do, the unbending laws of nature bring about national punishment exactly in proportion to the foolishness. Returning to Socialism and Com- munism means returning to barbarism, with all its filth, famines, diseases, and miseries. It is possible that a return to barbarism, in more or less degree, may be the fate of Great Britain. Human life on this globe means unceasing war to the death, for ever and ever, between civilisation and savagery, between progress and retrogression. If either side relaxes effort, the other at once gains ground. The opposing forces of civilisation, or pro- gress and barbarism, seem, according to history, to be about equal. One country progresses, another retro- gresses. If in a country the forces of civilisation cease to work, and the civilised classes (together with the Government) who love order, honesty, and liberty, become too effeminate and cowardly to struggle and put down crime, there can be nothing for it but victory to the forces of barbarism, Socialism, Radi- calism, and the criminal classes, as happened in France at the Great Revolution, and in Ireland in 1882. Socialists and Radicals are evidently going to work their hardest to bring; Great Britain back to 64 COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND. tlie feudalisms and communisms that belong to barbarous states of society ; and if the civilised classes indolently acquiesce, there will be nothing else for it. In one sense it will be the right thing, for it will be according to the laws of nature, which ordain that strong criminality shall get the better of weak righteousness. Energy is one of the three things that conquer the world, the other two being intel- ligence and righteousness. But if righteousness is indolent, energy, though of the criminal kind, must prevail against it, and then society must go back to its primitive condition, as has so often happened. Radicalism and Socialism have on their side all the criminal classes, both convicted and unconvicted ; the inhabitants of town slums, who doubtless are the descendants of low -type conquered races, besides the easily gulled ignorance that there is in all countries ; and these form an enormous force, inspired by the strongest of human feelings — covetousness, jealousy, envy, hatred, and all the vile passions that turn men into brutes and lower down into devils. Monsieur Sherer, an admirable French writer, thinks nothing will cure the world of predatory Radicalism but experience. A civilised country or two will be wiped out, but the world will learn. No doubt the world will learn, but there will be no cure, inasmuch as predatory barbarism will doubt- less for ever exist, ready to spring at the throat of civilisation whenever restraining influences are re- moved. Ants are wonderful insects. They live in communities which grow up from small beginnings. COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND. 65 They keep armies to fight for them, and then they lay up riches. At length the time comes when they lose their energy, disband their armies, and become luxurious and mdolent. They ' eat, drmk, and are merry,' living on their accumulated wealth, till some day a neighbouring community of ants, that has not become indolent, imbecile, and luxurious, makes war upon them, seizes their goods, destroys their dwell- ings, and either massacres or carries off to slavery the whole wretched community. This has always gone on, and doubtless always will go on, in the ant world for ever and ever ; and this may also be looked upon as a concise history of the human race, with its nations and communities, one going up and another going down, either by invasion from without or indolence and criminality, Kadicalism and revo- lution, within. When the time of each nation will come no mortal can ever tell ; so civilised men, whether they call themselves Conservatives or Liberals, should never cease working against the disintegrating and destructive forces of SociaUsm, Radicalism, dishonesty, disorder. Communism, crime, aAd savagery. Professor Balfour Stuart says that the physical universe is like a candle, which must burn itself out some time or other. So it seems, according to history, with nations. Each nation burns, as it were, a certain quantity of energies ; such as energies of war, of religion, of art, of patriotism, of righteous- ness, of industry, &c. At length comes a time when these energies burn themselves out, and nothing is F 66 COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND. left but the ' negations of vitality,' as Goethe called the selfish ambitions, vanities, envies, hatreds, dis- honesties, irreligionesses, and unrighteousnesses, such as we see amongst our destructive Radical or Socialist classes. Still, though this disintegration must come, to throw up the sponge and cease working to put off the evil day, as some people seem inclined to do, is the part of the coward. The evil day must come, says history, but no one can tell when, and courage and energy on the part of all lovers of order and civilisation may put it off for hundreds of years. There are many speculations to account for the Socialism, or liberty-hating and self-help destroying ideas, so common in the slums of large towns. Mr. G. Cantlie, F.R.G.S., says that 'towns want air, light, and ozone, and that, as a fact, the pure-bred dweller in large towns, after the third generation, is morally and physically a degenerate being — that he is ' a picture of physical decline, involving narrow chest, deformity of jaws, miserable appearance (squint prevailing), scrofulous diseases, small head, want of energy, loss of individuality, all the energy gone out of him, and in terror of what his neighbours will say.' Naturally such people, when they get votes, demand State help or Socialism. Another speculation is that the evil comes partly from the influx of Celtic and foreign blood — blood, that is, of the descendants of low-type conquered peoples, who in character belong to half-barbarous ages when Com- munisms and Socialisms reigned. Celts flock to COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND. 67 towns, wliere they can, and if Irish Celts, fill the jails. Supposing these speculations of men of science to be true, if these poor creatures get the chief voting- power into then- hands and use it, they must, one would thmk, bring about a return to the old Socialisms, Feudahsms, and Communisms, before liberty was, before capital was, before machinery was, and, therefore, before freedom from periodic famines, miser}^, and diseases was. And what can save a nation then.^ Dr. Dio Lewis, an excellent American writer, says that town populations would die from mental and bodily imbecility if they were not un- ceasingly bemg replenished from the country. Does this give us a hmt about the mysterious rise and flill of nations? 'Races,' says J. Rhys, M.A., 'lurk where languages slink away. The lineal descendants of the savages of the stone age are ever amongst us ; possibly those of a still earlier race. To men of these races, ideas of morality, liberty, law, and order^ are unknown.' Can we wonder at the ruin that comes upon nations when voting power gets down to the descendants of such peoples ? It is upon the inhabitants of town slums, and the low-type descendants of conquered races of men, in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, that the Radicals and Socialists depend for their political existence. Many people attempt to reason with the Socialistic leaders. But this is idle. Some Socialists are honest fanatics. But it is proverbially useless to argue with a mad person. Others are self-seeking rogues, who know already the misery that must follow Socialistic legis- 68 COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM IN LAND. latioii. It is, of course, just as idle to reason with tliem. The motive force of others is class hatred and envy. They, too, are necessarily dead to reason and truth. The right thmg to do is to explain in ever}^ way, by tongue and pen, clearly, simply, and un- ceasingly, to working men, that returning to the old. Socialistic State-helping and State-meddling inter- ference with liberty of four hundred years ago, as our Radicals aim at doing, means returning to the periodic famines, diseases, and miseries that belong to Socialistic states of society, and that the greatest sufferer of all must be the working man himself. 69 LETTER VIII. Mr. Chamberlain and his Political ' Principles.' ' Sir, — I have met with no mention of the most distinguishing characteristics of Mr. Joseph Chamher- lain, namely, that shallowness and that confusion of ideas we so often (though not always) find in half- educated and self-educated people, especially if they possess considerable activity of mind. Instances of this confusion might be found without end and number, but I mil give here only one or two. First, then, Mr. Chamberlain says that Socialism (prices fixed and private affairs of everybody man- aged for them by the governing power) and Com- munism (divided ownership of property) are the right things now, because they were the customs in more or less barbarous times, when people were serfs. Now this is like saying that women should now be in common because they were so formerly, and that men should wear skewers through the nose for ornament. Once upon a time, in Ireland, the inmate of No. 4 bedroom at an hotel rang his bell, and told the waiter that he had brought him a boot and a shoe instead of the two boots he put outside his door when he went 70 MR. CHAMBERLAIN AND HIS to bed. ' Bedad,' said poor Pat, ' and here's No. 6 rings and tells me tliat I have brought him a boot and a shoe instead of the two shoes he put outside his door ! Shure, but it bates me quite.' And there he stood, scratching his head, and utterly unable to infer the palpable truth about the matter. But Mr. Chamberlain is much more confused than this poor Irishman. The latter was only unable to infer the palpable truth, but Mr. Chamberlain infers the op- posite to the palpable truth. Socialism, or the State management of people's affairs as if they were slaves and serfs, is the natural, and therefore no doubt right, state of things in half- barbarous conditions of society, when, in fact, men were serfs, but only then ; so to talk in the same speech, as Mr. Chamberlain does, about wishing for progress and wishing to retrogress to old feudal or socialistic Government meddlings and fixing of prices, must be confusion. Political science teaches that liberty, as opposed to ^Socialism, is the right thing in advanced states of society, inasmucli as State help means pauperism, and pauperism ruins nations (as it did ancient Peru), by destroying energy and honest independence of character. A universal system of parish out-door relief is the aim of Mr. Chamberlain, but in his plans for carrying it out he seems again curiously confused. He wants to set up all over the country a complicated system for the letting of land at less than market prices, so that each working man may have his bit of ground POLITICAL ' PRINCIPLES.' 71 at, say, a pound a- year per acre rent, instead of the market price of, say, two pounds a-year. Then why not simply give each man in money a pound a-year for each acre he holds, and save all this elaborate and expensive machinery? Both would, of course, be exactly the same thing ; that is, the creation of pauperism by out -door parish relief: but one would be done simply, and the other would be done in a very complicated and costly way. There is plenty of land to let to labourers everywhere. The real diffi- culty is their inability to pay the market prices. It would be easy to give endless more instances of confusion of mind in Mr. Chamberlain's public utterances ; but no doubt your columns are wanted for more important matters. When we consider that, put mto plain language, Mr. Chamberlain's sole political principles are Socialism, or the destruction of liberty, theft from the wage- paying classes, and pauperism for the wage-receiving classes, we cannot be surprised at the hard things said of him by men who love liberty, honesty, and in- dependence ; but, as I have endeavoured to show in this letter, the explanation of the whole matter may simply be that confusion of mind we so often find in provincial men, who never had a really liberal edu- cation, whatever mere sharpness of wits they may have by nature. The greatness of a country means at bottom the greatness of character of each individual person who lives in that country. Pauperism, of course, soon produces helplessness and imbecility of character. 72 MK. CHAMBERLAIN S POLITICAL ' PRINCIPLES. With regard to theft, uneducated and fooHsh people think it can take place without suffering to follow ; they think there can be cause without conse- quence. But this is ignorance. If theft is national the punishment must be national. ' The State,' said Mr. W. E. Forster, ' must not be persuaded or tempted to rob any man or any body of men. Honesty is the best policy for the community as well as for the individual. " Thou shalt not steal " is a command the disregard of which has its punishment,' &c. Cause must be followed by consequence exactly in proportion to the cause. Tax directly capital unjustly, and capital, just in proportion to the injustice, will go to America or some other comitry where revenue is gathered by indirect taxation. Carry injustice and theft from capitalists very far, as it was once in Spain, and impoverishment, helplessness, and more or less return towards barbarism, necessarily follow. As to Spain, the helplessness, half- barbarism, and impoverishment, have lasted to the present time. But I am afraid poor Mr. Chamberlain is not deeply read in history. 73 LETTER IX. The Confused Radical. Sir, — Radicals and Socialists are usually either half-educated men or men with some bias ; such, for« instance, as that produced by class antipathy. The consequence is, that instead of seeking truth they only seek some party success, which, if attained and founded on false ideas, necessarily leads to disaster and loss exactly in proportion to the falseness of the ideas. Truth is for ever shut out from the biased mind. Few men at once see the absurdities, confusions, and contradictions there may be in schemes put plausibly before them ; but, to those who take the trouble to think, the words of the Radical and Socialist are for the most part even as the words of an Irishman when he is three-parts full of whisky. Let us, for instance, look at what they say about land. Every poor man, says -the Radical, ought to become owner of at least two acres of land. But he also says, that as God made the land for all every landowner is a wicked monopoliser. Then the poor man ought not to become owner of two acres of land. Now, which of these two things does the Radical mean? We will suppose that he means the first — every poor man is to become a landowner. But the 74 THE CONFUSED EADICAL. Radical says there is to be no freedom of contract ; that landowners are to be taxed higher than other kinds of property- owners ; that the landowner is not to let his land for what it will fetch m the market ; that the management of it is to be in the hands of land courts ; that once having let his two acres, the owner (so called) must never take it into his own hands again, inasmuch as this would mean eviction ; and that the tenant is to have the power of selling the tenancy. Of course English working men will not buy land on such terms as these, so we come to two remarkable Eadical statements : ( 1 ), that poor men should buy land; (2), that poor men should be prevented from buying land. In practice, a poor man buying land means his borrowing at least half the money to buy it with. But no lender will lend money, except at enormous interest, on land that has no real owner but only an occupant at the mercy of arbitrary land courts. So here again the Radical says, (1), that the poor man should buy land; (2), that the conditions of landownino^ are to be made such that no j)oor man, who is not a born fool, will think of paying the interest on the money for doing so. 75 LETTER X. ' Contrast.' Sir, — I tliink political speakers do not make sufficient use of the figure of speech called ' con- trast.' They state their own opinions, but do not bring out their full force, for want of contrasting them, each in its place, with the opinions of the opposite party, and telling the hearers that what they have to do is to choose between them. I will give one or two instances of my meaning. If I were addressing a meeting I would first point out some general contrasts between the nature of the Radical mind and the nature of the Conser- vative mind. I should ^^erhaps say, * A Conservative means a mail with English ideas. A Radical means a man with French ideas,' Of all the words in the Eno;lish Ian2:ua2:e a Conservative's favourite word is ' Liberty.' Of all the words in the English language, a Radical's favourite word is ' Compulsion.' Those of you who wish to be governed by French politicians who hate individual liberty, will no doubt vote for the Radical follower of Mr. Chamberlain. Those of you who wish to be governed by men who hate despotic interference with libert}^, will no doubt vote for the Conservative candidate. 76 ' CONTRAST.' TJien I would go to particulars, and perhaps say, ' AVhat is the diiFerence between English or Conservative ideas, and French or Radical ideas about property ? I will tell you. Whilst both think that the more owners of property there are the better, the Radical followers of Mr. Chamberlain think that when a man has saved a bit of money, and bought an acre of land or n shop it is not to 1)6 entirely his property, and not to be managed by himself. A man is not to let his acre of land for what he can get, but the rent is to be fixed by some despotic governing power of the district. When once let, he is never to get it into his own hands again, for that w^ould mean eviction ; and instead of having the power to leave it by will when he dies, as he likes, the acre is to be sold, as is done in France, and the money disposed of according to whatever plan happens to be the fancy of the Government of the time. In France, at the present time, the money is compulsorily divided among the children equally ; that is to say, that if a man has two sons, one steady and the other a drunkard, the latter gets half the money, though he is certain to drink it all away in a month. Now, what is the English or Conservative view of property ? I will tell you. The Conservative chinks that when a man buys an acre of land or a shop it ought to belong entirely to him, and that he ought to have j)erfect liberty to manage it as he likes, to work it himself, to let it, to take it into his own hands again, aiid to leave it by will at his death exactly as he chooses. ^ CONTRAST.' 77 Now, it rests with jou to decide and vote according as you tliink the English and Conservative view is best, or the French or Kadical view.' In the same way I would treat all party questions that could be so treated. Very many of them can be resolved into contrasts between the English honesty, independence, and love of liberty, and the French envious craving for that equality which, of course, can only be got at the expense of liberty. 7R LETTER XL Modern Radicalism. Sir, — Bacon came into the world to teach men that the parent of false opmion is theory without knowledge. Now this theorising without know- ledge is the foundation of a vast amount of modern Radicalism. What, in fact, can be the results of active -minded - ness with no mental training and no knowledge of history, of political science, or of human nature, but false ideas and national disaster when the false ideas are carried out in practice ? This disastrous retri- bution is inevitable. Causes must be followed by consequences correspondmg to the causes, and so, whenever legislation is founded on falsehood, the consequences are evU exactly to match. For instance : prop up paupers and imbecile criminal-class people at the expense of well-behaved people, as the aim of Radicalism in all times is, and before long there will be exactly so many more paupers and imbecile crimi- nal-class people in a country, and so many fewer active, energetic, honest, and righteous ones. Carry this out far enough, and down topples a nation to make way for some more virtuous one. Thus one nation goes up and another goes down, like MODERN KADICALISM. 79 buckets in a well. Herbert Spencer says that as many are always going up as going down. Other inevitable accompaniments of mere activity of mind without traming or knowledge are confusion, self - contradiction, and incapacity to draw correct inferences. I will give one illustration of this confusion. The history of mankind means the history of the march from the Communism in property of savages through infinitely varied forms of Socialism and mixed owner- ship, up to the completely unmixed ownership of advanced civilisation, where the owner can do what he likes with his property. Copyhold tenure is one remains of the mixed ownership of half-barbarous times. Now the Radicals want to do away with this form of tenure. But they also want the three F's ; that is, they want ownership of property to be divided between the landlord, the tenant, and a land court. Thus we have come to two remarkable conclusions of the Radical mind — (1), That mixed o^vnership is a bad thing ; (2), that mixed ownership is a good thing. 80 LETTER XIL 'Yox PopuLi Vox Del' SiE, — On the 14th of October Mr. Chamberlam repeated the saying, handed down through the mouths of popular orators for thousands of years, that what the world in general, or ' the people/ says and does, is- always wiser and truer than what any mdividual person says and does. Thus, according to Mr. Cham- berlain, ' the people,' when they cried out for Jesus Christ to be crucified, were more right than Pilate, who wanted, instead of Christ, to execute Barabbas, the robber and murderer. In Eome that Emperor was always most popular with ' the people ' who spent the largest sums of money on burning Christians alive, and on combats between men with each other and with wild beasts. The Christian monk, Telemachus, opposed these shows, and for doing so he was torn to pieces by ' the people.' Here again, according to Mr. Chamberlam, ' the people ' were right and Telemachus wrong. Hundreds of years ago ' the people ' thought the sun went round the earth, but Copernicus thought the earth went round the sun. Which was most right ? Wise Goethe, of course, saw through this fallacy about 'the people.' It was ' the people,' he said, who burned Huss the 81 martyr, whilst it was exceptional individual men who were opposed to his being burned. According to Mr. Chamberlain ' the people ' were right. Only seventy years ago 'the people,' or the majority, tliought negro slavery was right. Exceptional individual men Hke "Wilberforce thought it wrong. According to Mr. Chamberlain ' the people ' were right and Wilberforce wrong. In the quarrel with our American colonies ' tlie people ' all agreed that they must be i3reserved at any cost. A certain Dean Tucker, as we are told by Whately, wrote a pamphlet to show that we had best give them independence. But he was called an idiot by everybody. Here again, accordmg to Mr. Cham- berlain, ' the people ' were right and Dean Tucker was wrong. Bishop Butler says that proved truth is not for man. He has only faith and probability to live on. So I must not, I suppose, say dogmatically that Mr. Chamberlain is wrong, but only that I do not agree with him in any of these cases. Mr. Chamberlain must say, if his ideas are not eonfused, that whenever a war is popular ' the people ' are always right. What will his friend Mr. J. Bright say to this ? The fact is, the ideas about the saying, ^Vox populi vox Dei^ are usually very confused. P ' The people,' or the majority, says Euskin, are usually most right in the long run, but they are 1^ always either wrong or totally ignorant in the short. HL It is, as he says, exceptional leaders of opinion who I 82 ^ vox POPULI vox DEI.' teach ^ the people ' that Titian was a great painter and Shakespeare a great poet ; that freedom is better than slavery, monogamy than polygamy, piety than impiety, hberty than SociaHsm, &c. In the course of years, or ages, as the case may be, such teachings become the general opinion, and then the ' Vox populi' becomes, according to the strong expression, ' Vox Dei ;^ or in other words, after it has become instructed in this way, the voice of the majority is more likely to be true than that of any one crotchety person who opposes it. Of course popular orators, when they address ' the people,' are certain to flatter them and tell them that their voice is as the voice of a god. It always has been so and always must be so, and very ludicrous are the confusions and contradictions that necessarily accompany such announcements. For instance : people like Mr. Courtney and Sir W. Lawson tell their hearers, when they belong to a certain class, that the lower we look among the poorer and more uneducated people the more truth and wisdom we find. Then, if this is so, education must be a bad thing, and we come to the doctrine taught by M. Comte, the head of the variety of Eadicals called Positivists. M. Comte said that education is apt to interfere sadly Avith health of mind (hygiene cerebrale), and he specially quoted his maid-of-all-work, Tincomparahle Sophie^ as ])eing a model of perfection in consequence of her " fortunate inability to read.' But do Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Courtney, and Sir W. Lawson, oppose general education ? And, in their own families, do they make 83 a point of bringing up their children with ' a fortunate inability to read,' in order to preserve the hygiene cerebralel If they do oppose all education, and if they do provide that their own children shall never be able to read, they are honest, consistent men. If, on the contrary, they encourage education, and have their children taught to read and write, they must be either rogues or so foolish that they cannot see their own inconsistency and confusion of mind. There is no third explanation possible. I always try to be charitable, so I suppose the second is the true one. Sharp, clever men, in fact, run thick as weeds upon the ground, whilst wise and really clear- brained ones are very rare. It will be said that now in England ' the people ' have, as a fact, the chief voice ; and therefore^ wise or foolish, they will have their way. There is truth m this, and so for the mere ambitious politician who wants to get on, honestly, perhaps, if he can, but at any rate to get on, to read what I am writing would be waste of time. But some men really wish to know the truth in order to use it for good, and to these I address myself, and say that the modern doctrine that the business of a leader of men is to be led by the men whose leader he is must, if carried out by states- men, end in national ruin ; that sending all political knowledge that has been attained to the planet Saturn because more may yet be learned, is like letting a man die for want of a surgeon because surgery may be improved ; that condemning what truth there is in political economy because the ignorant classes, whose 84 ' vox POPULI vox DEI.' votes are wanted, do not like its conclusions, must be followed by the Nemesis that necessarily follows the disregard of truth, exactly in proportion to the degree to which it is disregarded ; that good government by popular ojmiion of the moment is impossible ; and that the only hope for a nation under an advanced democracy is for ' men of light and leading ' to take upon themselves the part of patient instructors, in order to teach that portion of the population which has not leisure to gain knowledge and wisdom : that exactly as State help in a country goes up, self-help goes down ; that the greatness of a nation depends solely upon and varies as the greatness and indepen- dence of character of the individual persons in it ; and that liberty-hating, class-hating, religion-hating, honesty-hating Radicalism or Socialism ends, always has ended, and always must end, disastrously to all, but most disastrously to the working classes. 85 LETTER XIII. Ekee Trade. SIr, — What strikes me most about the Radical free-trader is his hearties sness. So lonfj: as he can get cheap goods he does not care how many of his fellow-countrymen are ruined, or how many of theni die of starvation. A man who cares no more for his own countrymen than for foreigners is like a man who cares no more for his own children than for those of other people ; that is, he is a man without natural affection, in other words a selfish scoundrel. ' The man,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'who is without patriotism is a wretch concentred all in self The Radical ridicule of patriotism, that is so common, Ruskin calls ' the eternally d d modern view about the matter.' The truth is that patriotism is a noble, natural passion, without which no nation can last long. Every great nation in the world is a great nation because it has been the most fit to survive in the struggles of life. And it has been the most fit to survive because its mhabitants have had most patriotism. Indeed, if it had not been for the patriotism of Englishmen in the past our poor Radical himself, who entertains us all so much with his ignorance and mendacitv, would never have 86 FREE TRADE. come into existence, and then what should we have done ? I repeat, that a Radical free-trader without patriot- ism does not care what country prospers or what country does not prosper. But a man without jDatriotism is not a man. He is only a fraction of one, and that a bad fraction. An English working man requires at least 16-^. a-week wages. Men of lower type, like Chinese, some of whom work very perseveringly, are content with much less — as little, sometimes, as 3s. a-week. The results are (now that science has almost done away with time and space), that the English working man is out-competed, that English capitalists take their capital to foreign countries, and that Great Britain is by so much impoverished. But what does the heartless Radical care ? There used to b^ a prosperous lead-mining business in England, but Spanish cheap labour has ruined it for want of a small duty on foreign lead. Thus there are so many more thriving Spaniards in the world, and so many fewer Englishmen. But what does the heartless Radical care ? In the iron trade English capital has left England and gone to Bel- gium. There are so many more thriving Belgians in the world and so many fewer Englishmen. But what does the heartless Radical care ? In the silk trade English capitalists have taken their capital to Erance. There are so many more thriving Frenchmen in the world and so many fewer Englishmen. But what does the heartless Radical care ? FREE TliADE. 87 British agriculture being half-ruined by cheap foreign labour and virgin soil abroad, millions upon millions of money are invested in buying land in America, all the interest of which money would otherwise have gone into the pockets of working men in England. But what does the heartless Eadical care ? Every penny of every rich man's income goes sooner or later into the pockets of the wage earner. Shallow Radicals, and all Radicals seem shallow, say that although the profits of capitalists have been small the wages of working men have kept up, and that this is the happiest state of things in a country. But how long can it last ? Capitalists will not keep their businesses at home at a loss, or even at a very, small gain, when they can get larger profits by taking them abroad. Hoping agamst hope for improvement, they may submit to loss or small profits for a time, but it can be only for a time. With free trade wages must come down towards foreign wages, or capital must go abroad. No third contingency is possible. ' Enthusiastic apostles of free trade,' says Gold win Smith, ' often seem to assume that all the world is one community, instead of the fact that it is divided into separate nations, rivals, and often enemies of each other. Each nation wants not only its own estab- lishment, but its own armaments. To maintain these each has to impose import duties, experience having shown the moral evil as well as the intolerable irk- someness of direct taxation on a large scale.' It is a hard wrench for a capitalist to expatriate 88 FREE TRADE. liis business, and he will submit to small or no profits for some time, ho23ing for better things. But, as I have said, this cannot last, and British capitalists are no^v every day more and more transporting their capital abroad, and thus impoverishing the country. But what happens to an impo^'erished country ? Xecessarily invasion and conquest, if it is worth conquering. In these days of costly armaments a poor nation cannot stand up for a moment against a rich one. To make only one gun costs what most people would consider a large fortune. Thus the free-traders are bringing about the certain invasion and conquest of Great Britain at some future time. But what does the heartless Kadical care ? 89 I LETTER XIY. Boycotting. Sir, — "What is tlie remedy for boycotting in Ireland ? I will not give an opinion, l)iit I will show what it ought to be from Mr. Gladstone's point of view, if he is logical. The Irish demanded the three F's, that is, fixity of tenure, and free sale (the Com- munism or mixed ownership of four hundred years ago), and fair rent (the Socialism of four hundred years ago, when liberty had not been invented and when the governing power fixed prices, and managed for them the private affairs of people). Thus, the Irish people virtually said to Mr. Gladstone, ' We are still in our ideas and stage of development the same as the people of four hundred years ago ; therefore, we de- mand the institutions and customs of those times.' Mr. Gladstone, as we all know, acquiesced and granted their demands. No doubt there was this to be said, namely, that the institutions of half-barbarous times and people are always suited to half-barbarous times and people ; having, in fact, survived as institu- tions because they were most suited and fittest to survive, under the circumstances, each in its place and time. But here is another institution that be- longed to those times. Four hundred years ago, if 90 BOYCOTTING. men systematically conspired against order, law, and the customs of the more civilised part of the popu- lation, they were proclaimed to be outlaws ; that is, inasmuch as they would not conform to the law, they should not have the protection of the law. They could not recover a debt or appeal in any way to the law, whatever any one might do to them. Of course, then, the logical thing for Mr. Gladstone to do if he comes into power is to proclaim as outlaws all Irish boycotters, and all those Leaguers who organize boy- cotting ; and there can be no doubt that the mere threat to do this will have a very great effect. The ordinary course of law in highly civilised states of society requires a certain correspondence to match in the nature of the people. Wherever there is not this correspondence, as shown by the people sympathising with the criminal against the law, or in other ways, juries are no use; the law ceases to work, and then there may very conceivably be nothing for it but some more primitive form of justice, such as outlawry. 91 LETTER XY. Socialism. Sir, — Foolish people sometimes say that it is idle to complain of Socialism, State help, and interference with liberty, because no one denies the principle, and then they quote the poor laws. This is as wise as to say that it is idle to complain of taking enormous quantities of medicine when not wanted, because the principle of medicine taken on occasion is acknow- ledged by all. The right thing in both cases is to reduce the principle to a minimum. Radicals or Socialists aim at the maximum. The rule should be never to interfere, except when interference is indisputably the least of two evils. Every case of State interference is an evil, but sometimes it is necessary to prevent greater evils. Take the poor laws, for instance. The poor laws are all terrible evils, for they increase drunkenness, pauperismx, and misery in a fearful degree. They prevent thrift, sobriety, and industry, for men know that, even without these things, they will always have parish relief and the unions to fall back upon. Be- sides encourai^ino; drunkenness and idleness in this way directly, the poor laws fill the country with the offspring of wretched people, who become every 92 SOCIALISM. generation more drunken, idle, and vicious, according- to the law of heredity. All these people, according to the natural order of things, would die in a ditch hefore they had an}^ children. Thus the evils and misery produced by the poor laws are incalculable. It may be safely conjectured that eight tenths of the idleness, pauperism, drunkenness, and misery, there are in the country, is the result of the State relief of the poor that has been going on since Queen Elizabeth's time. On the other hand, poor laws are no doubt a neces- fur Frencli-t37je politicians work tooth and nail to introduce the Atheistic and anti- Christian, Sociahstic, French ideas into England, but it is to be hoped the}- will not succeed. If they do, England must go the wa}' of Celtic France. Liberty will be at an end, and the running will have to be taken up by the more Teutonic peoples in the Colonies and elsewhere. It will onl}^ be a very old stor}^ ' Down the}' come,' says Matthew Arnold, ' one after another : Assyria falls ; Babylon, Greece, Rome, they all fall, for T^-ant of conduct, for want of righteousness .... nay, Judaea itself falls too, and falls for want of righteousness.' And again he says, ' Whether nations or men, who- ever is shipwrecked, is shipwrecked on conduct.' . . . 'Happiness,' says Mr. Arnold, in another place, 'is our being's end and aim, and haj)piness belongs to righteousness ;' not to ph}'sical ease and sense-pleasure, as the effeminate Celt and Radical sa} . Freedom and its necessary accompaniment, inequality, are Xature's laws and contrivances for raising men above savas^ery. or what in civilised countries is called the CELTS AND SOCIALISM. 103 manners and customs of the criminal classes. On the other hand, destruction of liberty for the sake of getting the equality of brutes and savages is the law of the Radical, the Socialist, and the weak Celt. Can we wonder that the Teutonic races are out -competing the Celtic races in peopling the earth? Celtic effe- minacy, envy, class-hatred, and war against liberty, may bring down nation after nation, but, take the world through, Teutonic manliness and libert}' must win, and does win. With godlessness, and thence unrighteousness, in the place of rehgion, and J. S. Millism or Bradlaughism for national habits and customs, how can the French or any people in the world escape degradation of nature or character as individual persons, and thence of loss of power and of prosperity as a nation? The typical Socialist or Radical has Atheistic proclivities, and, as M. de Lavelaj^e says, wages war on all religion. ^ Les esprits midiocres^ says Roche - foucault, ' condainnent d^ ordinaire tout ce qui passe lew fortee.' Is it possible that the typical Socialist or Radical is ^ un esprit mediocre?' It almost looks as if it might be so. Socialism, or Government despotically managing the private aifairs of everybody, is the Celtic idea. • Frenchmen,' said Napoleon, ' do not even know the meaning of the word liberty.' Xobod}' denies that the Celts have excellent qualities of some kinds. So have women. ' French Celts,' said Goethe, ' are the women of Europe.' But whilst a woman should be a woman, a man should be a man ; and the question 104 CELTS AND SOCIALISM. is, Will the feminine qualities of tlie Celts render them fit to survive on this globe in the struggle for existence against the German and English races? History answers that question. We read that, after his defeat at Waterloo by the Teutonic peoples, Napoleon I. said, * History tells us it always has been so, and I suppose it always will be so.' Perhaps x^apolepn III. said the same. Quebec is more favourably situated for progress than any town in America. It has water-power to drive ten thousand mills ; but its inhabitants are French Celts, and so the town is stagnant. ' What will happen ? ' asked Mr. Joseph Hatton of an Anglo- American there. * Nothing, ' w^as the an s wer . ' We shall remain as we are. The place will go smouldering on in the same way till the Day of Judgment.' And the British politician ignores questions of race ! ! ! The truth is that race, instead of being nothing, is everything. Darwin seems to have thought that the highest races of animals are superior to the lowest races of men, and W. R. Greg thought that many dogs and elephants were superior to many men. Greg, of course, was right. Nothing in nature is so low as the diabolic or malignant-minded man. No animal is malignant. One or two of our well-known Members of Par- liament with French names are interesting examples of the Celtic Radicalism, or Socialism manifesting itself in spite of English habits and education. When a Yorkshireman sees a horse his first question is, ' How is he bred?' and this not only CELTS AND SOCIALISM. 105 when he wants to buy him, but from his interep-t in the animal. In the same way, when I see a man I always try to speculate how he is bred ? Is he a pure Dane, like the Flamboro' fishermen ; or a descendant of the stone age, like some of the lowest of the low in our towns ; or a descendant of conquered ancient British and Celtic tribes ; or with a little Spanish {)lood in him, as is the case here and there in the Western parts of the British Isles ; or with Jewish blood, as we find amongst bankers, rich speculators, money-makers, cunning Caucus organizers, &c., in large towns? These speculations are very interesting. Xames, both Christian and surname, indicate much ; the physical characteristics more ; intellectual pecu- liarities more still, and moral peculiarities most. Mr. Gladstone must be a Scotch Celt. When he addresses a Scotch audience he tells them he is a Scotchman. When he addresses a Welsh audience he tells them he is a Welshman. Still a Celt is a Celt, whether in Wales or Scotland. Another man we find everywhere is the Jew. If ever we see a rich, town-bred man with dark hair, full lips, prominent eyes, and a non- Teutonic name or names, there we may be pretty sure is Jewish blood in some degree. The reputed parentage will often signify little. In some kinds of talent none can compete with the Hebrew. If he is not always a child ' of the light,' he is generally very 'wise in his generation.' He is a clever organizer and a great schemer. ' The Jewish race,' says a newspaper, ' shows lOG CELTS AND SOCIALISM. ever-increasing vitality. In Europe they increase faster in proportion to their numbers than Chris- tians ; they become masters in all they undertake : they get possession of the land in Germany and Hungar}', grow rich in Russia, and are the great bankers and centres of commerce in London and Paris.^ All this comes from those racial peculiarities the British politician is too ignorant and stupid to recooiiise. He neither knows nor cares about races and their characteristics. And 3'et knowledge on the subject is of the utmost importance. As to the Jews, they were civilised, cultivated people, when the English, Germans, and French were painted savages. Still he cannot compete with Teutonic peoples, either in war or colonizing. Mr. Gladstone's aim, successful so far, has been to get the votes of Englishmen swamped by those of the Celtic people of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales ; the descendants, that is, of conquered people who were not exterminated because these parts of the British Islands were mostly barren, mountainous, re- mote districts, not worth possessing. I wonder how long Englishmen will submit to this subjection to the more low- type and barbarous part of the population ? In former times prowess in arms would soon have settled the matter; but in these days all the prowess that is wanted is prowess enough to put a doubled-up bit of paper into a tin box. So it seems that, if this state of things continues, the world of the future is for the most prolific. But CELTS AND SOCIALISM. 107 tlie lower the race the more prolific, as a rule, it is — wherever there is neither war nor liberty of competition. So the world is for the lowest races I This, at least, is what Mr. Gladstone and the Radicals say. Xature, on the contrar}', or, to put it better, God Almighty, says (as we know by studying Nature), that the world is for the hio^hest instead of the lowest ; for the fittest instead of the unfittest — that is, for the most righteous, intelligent, courageous, and energetic; and, in fact, we find by history that whenever a race of men deteriorate, some race, more fit to survive, sooner or later conquers it, and subjugates it in more or less degree, as we have seen latterl}^ in France. This, no doubt, always will happen as long as men live on the earth. In tiying to j)ut all power into the hands of the most ignorant and barbarous part of the population, Mr. Gladstone proves that he prefers barbarism to civilisation ; in other words, that he thinks ignorance better than knowledge, disorder than order, unsafety to life and property than safety, idleness tlian industry, dishonesty than honesty, and dirt than cleanliness. Well, he may be right. Bishop Butler said that nothing outside mathematics can be proved, and that we have only probability and belief to live on. Still, I must say, I do not agree with Mr. Gladstone. I believe evil to mean that which sa^^ages, and barbarians, and criminal classes are, and that good means that which developed and civilised people are. But, I suppose, all Radicals agree with Mr. Gladstone. The manifest aim of French Radi- calism in France is to do awa}^ with punishment of 108 CELTS AND SOCIALISM. crime, and this is natural in people to whom evil means good. It is a common thing to say that, lower the suffrage as we may, Englishmen will never take to French Jacobinism, Revolution, Socialism, and war against liberty, in order to get equality. Perhaps not; but if, as Mr. Gladstone tries to bring about, the chief voting power gets into the hands of those conquered Celtic races of type still lower than that of the French Celt, what must we expect then? Surely still worse things than ever happened in France. Dynamite devilry has given a taste already. Law, order, honesty, and righteous lives, vary as civilisation. Therefore the lower or more barbarous a race is in type the more disorderly, dishonest, revolutionary, predatory, and homicidal it is certain to be. Foolish people, that is, very foolish people, say that it is no use talking about races because they are so mixed. This is just like saying there is no use using the words 'red,' 'blue,' or 'yellow,' because colours are so mixed ; or that it is no use using the words 'sheep-dog,' 'terrier,' 'greyhound,' or 'bloodhound,' because blood in dogs is so mixed. The objection is pure nonsense, and if carried out would mean that men should never use any words at all, and never talk. All talk means definite classi- fication of indefinite things that dovetail into each other. Nevertheless, for practical purposes these classifications answer perfectly well. The difference in racial characteristics amongst CELTS AND SOCIALISM. 109 men are infinitely greater tlian the difference between a sheep and a dog, because the room for difference is so much greater. The characteristics of men range from those of devils and brutes to those of angels. The characteristics of animals range from eating grass to eating flesh. The characteristics of a race of men where there is no war and no freedom of com- petition or admixture of blood with other races never change. 110 LETTER XXL Mr. Chamberlain's Programime. Sir, — Mr. Chamberlain's Programme means the Kadical Programme, and the Radical Programme ]neans the Socialist Programme. Mr. Chamberlain, not long ago, stated in one of his speeches that he was a Socialist. What, ,then, is the Radical Programme ? Well, it is in its essence or spiiit the Radical Pro- gramme of all the world over, throughout all time ; the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Aristotle accurately described tlie Radical of ancient Greece ; and Mr. Froude shows him to us as a man saying the same things, inspired by the same passions and am- bitions, promising the same promises, and bringing the same ruin upon civilised communities of men as he does in modern times, and as no doubt he will do in all time to come. There are two great opposite sets of forces in na- ture unceasingly at work. (1), The preserving, creating, and integrating forces ; (2), The destroying and disentegrating forces. In the affairs of men, Conser^\atism and true Liberalism belong to the lirst set of forces, whilst Radicalism, or Socialism, or French Jacobinism (whatever the name used), MR. CHAMBERLAIN S PROGRAMMK. Ill belongs to the second set of forces. These forces of nature, being forces of nature, are right, each in its place. When a country has grown old, and all virtue has gone out of her, then is the time for the destroying- forces to come upon the scene and finish the work. Wlien a worn-out lion's day has come, then is the time for the hyasnas, vultures, and beasts of ^^rey to make an end of the poor old creature ; and, of course, a necessary work in the order of nature it is. M. Taine says that the French Revolution was in its essence the successful risino^ of the criminal classes and Jaco- bins against order and law. All institutions that have lasted, have lasted because they were the insti- tutions fittest to survive under the circumstances. This shows why no nation can live without Con- servatism. But circumstances are always changing, so gradual reforms are always being wanted to match. This shows why no nation can thrive without Liberalism. But there is no place for Eadicalism, except as . a beast of prey, when a nation's case is hopeless. Is England's case hopeless ? Is she worn out ? Is the virtue gone out of her ? Has her day come ? Well, I for one do not believe it. Eadicalism and Socialism will work with all the energy of envy, hatred, and covetousness ; but English honesty, patriotism, Conservatism, and love of liberty, will win in the end. Still, there will be hard fighting, even to bloodshed. Indeed, civil war is far better then national dishonesty, crime, or loss of liberty. Any concession to crime whatever, say effeminate 112 MK. chamberlain's programme. Radicals in the old countries, is better than bloodshed. The Northern .States of America did not say this when the Southern States demanded concession to the crimes of slavery and treason. Such is the dif- ference between a vigorous young country and an old country, when governed by her womanish class of politicians. It is not only in the actual fighting of actual soldiers that manliness, honesty, and courage are wanted. They are wanted in every department of human life. A statesman who says that any conces- sion to wickedness whatever is better than civil war or bloodshed, is exactly like a man who, seeing a ruffian thrashing a helpless woman, says, ' I do not think that I should be justified in interfering, for it might lead to bloodguiltiness ; ' and so ' passes by on the other side.' Instead of human life on this earth meaning, as the Radical seems to think, peace, quiet, comfort, and money-making for ever and ever for everybody, it means a never-ceasing war to the death between the equal forces, pulling upwards and down- wards, of civilisation and barbarism — the war, that is, of cleanliness, order, honesty, energy, law, and right- eousness, against filth, sloth, disorder, lawlessness, and unrighteousness. When either side gives way, at once the forces on the other side gain, and thus we see why one comitry goes up and another down. Herbert Spencer says as many are always going up as going down. But the process is generally slow ; so the nation that is going down often thinks it is still going up. The above remarks refer to the character, as shown in all ages, of Radicalism in general, the MR. chamberlain's PROGRAMME. 113 miderstanding of wliich is necessary to the under- standing of Radical proposals in particular. I will now say a few words about some of these particular Radical proposals at the present time in England. The Radical of the day aims at what he calls ^Free Land, Free Education, and Free Church.' His ideas about these things are inconsistent and confused, but, as far as they are explained, I should say that the more correct reading would be ' Tied- up Land, Godless Education, and Robbed Church.' To begin with the land. I will suppose the case of an industrious working man who has saved a bit of money and bought an acre of land. Now Con- servatives and true Liberals wish him to be free to buy it, free to work it, free to sell it, free to keep it, and free to let it just as he likes. That is to say, the Conservatives and Liberals wish for free land, but the Radicals or Socialists wish to tie this bit of land up, and hamper the free use of it in all sorts of ways. Opposed to liberty as all Radicals are, they wish to prevent this working man domg what he likes with his acre. Instead of his managing it freely, it is to be managed by a despotic land court. Listead of letting it as a potato-garden for what he can get, the rent is to be fixed by this despotic court. Listead of the owner, after having let it, being free to take it into his own hands again, he is to be prevented from doing so, inasmuch as that would mean eviction. Instead of being able to borrow part of the purchase money at moderate interest, this is to be rendered I 114 MR. chamberlain's PR0GRA]\LAIE. impossible, inasmuch as the land belonging, as it will, partly to the purchaser, partly to the tenant, and partly to the despotic land court, no money could be borrowed on it except at a prohibitive rate. And this is what the Radicals call land heingfree! ! How can we account for such confusion of mind in men born with, at any rate, average intelligence? No doubt it comes in some cases from their having been only half-educated or self-educated. In some cases it will come from their having been brought up amidst mind-narrowing pursuits and surroundings, and in some cases from class antipathy and ill-will. ' Ill- will,' says George Eliot, 'necessarily condemns a man to corresponding stupidity, exactly in proportion to the degree of ill-will.' The fact is, the Radical pro- gramme about land is a mass of ignorance and ludicrous confusion. Still, though ludicrous in itself, it is no laughing matter in Democratic states of society. National ruin is not a thing to laugh at. Already millions of money have been driven to other countries by the feeling of insecurity caused by the Radicalism or Socialism of the day. Enterprise is checked, and a blight is on all business. To give only one out of innumerable instances, Thome Waste is a desolate district near Doncaster, nearly as big as half a small county. In its present state it is worth exactly nothing an acre, but by expending perhaps twenty-five pounds an acre on it it might, by warping, be turned into very valuable farms. A few years ago there were schemes on foot for doing this. Then came the Radical a2:rarian asritation, and MR. chamberlain's PROGRAMME. 115 now Thorne Waste will perliaps never be anything but a desolate waste to the end of time. This is only one instance to show what a terrible curse to a country an eloquent Socialist or Radical may be, by destroying confidence in the security and permanence of customs, laws, and honest dealing. The Radical may possibly in some cases have good motives, but this makes no difference. One part of the Radical programme is reform in local government. Local government carried beyond a certain degree means disintegration, loss of unity, and thence loss of power. In some parts of a country, where from isolation or other causes the development of the mhabitants may have been arrested at the predatory, or homicidal, or disorderly stage of half- barbarism, such a local government would perhaps repeal the Eighth Commandment. Another locality might object to the Seventh Commandment, and so on until the whole nation becomes a nation of little, weak, antagonistic communities, instead of one strong, just power, upholdmg liberty by stringently insisting on, and carrying out, in all localities, howe^xr remote, all the enactments of the Decalogue. Liberty, of course, implies stern enforcement of law. If murder is unpunished, I have no liberty to walk out of my house. If infraction of contract is not punished, I have no liberty to trade or do business. If theft is not punished, I have no liberty to possess property. Local government carried too far means disintegration and decay. Sometimes the organs of the body set up local government. When this takes place, unity 116 MR. chamberlain's programme. is destroyed, the great central governing organs are set at nought ; there is no healthy freedom of circu- lation ; there is congestion here and congestion there ; each part provides for its own diseased condition without regard for the whole of which it is part, and at last disintegration reaches such a pass that the wretched man dies. So it may he with a nation. The more ultra-democratic the basis of govern- ment, whether central or local, the greater the rates and taxes become. This is partly in consequence of meddling with matters that governing powers ought to have nothing to do with. The luxury of fussing and meddling cannot be had for nothing. Indeed it is a very costly luxury. Local government doubtless requires reforming in more or less degree. The fate of Great Britain, for good or ill, will depend upon this degree. If the reform leads, as many Radicals desire, to the legalis- ation in some localities of dishonesty and theft, Nemesis must come upon the nation to match. ' Of all devil worship,' says Carlyle, 'none equals the legalising of crime, and none brings upon a nation such terrible retribution.' One part of the Radical programme is the sub- stitution of State control for individual liberty of action. Common sense would naturally think that this must lead to the destruction of that energy, honesty, and independence of character in each per- son, on which national greatness and safety solely depend. As a fact, history proves this to be the MR. chamberlain's PROGRAMME. 117 €ase, one of the most remarkable instances being that of Peru. Solely from this cause the Peruvians became a miserable, helpless, womanish people, at the mercy of the first handful of men that invaded them. I quote Peru as an instance ; but I sadly fear that our poor friend, the Birmmgham Caucus, the supposed manufacturers of the Eadical ^yo- gramme, know very little about history, and perhaps never heard of the Peruvians and their Incas. As to political science, or the knowledge accumulated and taught by studiers of the evil consequences that have been in the course of ages observed to follow undue meddling and socialistic legislation, it is in their eyes Anathema Maran-atha. In judging of the future, men have nothmg to go by but history, and that knowledge of human nature which history of the past teaches. On the other hand, the man who thmks only about the past renounces the most im- portant use of history. One item in the Radical programme is war against primogeniture. This paj)er is getting long, so I will merely say that in Germany the evils of subdivision of property are proving so disastrous than an agita- tion is arising for the resubstitution of the beneficial custom of leaving a business, or a property, to one son, instead of its havmg to be sold up, perhaps just as it is getting into good working order. J. S. Mill wrote in favour of primogeniture, though in his old age, when under his wife's mfluence Sociahsm had grown upon him, he expunged from his works what he had written on the subject. 118 MR. chamberlain's progkamme. Anotlier item of tlie Eadical programme is gradu- ated, direct taxation. This simpl}' sends all rich men, and their money, to some country where taxation is got indirectly instead of directly; at the present day, any and every country in the world, in fact, except Great Britain. A few hun- dred years ago capital was unjustly taxed in Spain. Rich men went with their capital to England and other countries ; down fell Spain, and down she has remained. I now come to the cry of ' Free Education and Free Church,' or as it ought to be put, ' Godless education and robbed Church,' for I can see nothing in the cry but the innate negation of religiousness, and therefore innate immorality and dishonesty of the Eadical or Socialistic mind. M. de Lavalaye, the excellent historian of Socialism, says that, ex- ceptional persons and small classes apart, irreligious- ness is the characteristic of Socialists or Radicals, as distinguished from Liberals. We all know how true this is in the case of those Radical statesmen in France, who are the personal friends of our own statesmen of the French school. Men think their conclusions come from the profundity of their in- tellectual processes, whilst, in fact, they come from the way their inborn moral and intellectual qualities are balanced. If, as John Henry Newman truly says, there were two men with the same force of intellect, but different in the moral and religious qualities, then' opinions about conduct and the doings of men would differ to match. MR. chamberlain's PROGRAMME. 119 The Christianity so hated by Eaclicals is our sole safeguard against returning to Paganism, with all its slaveries, cruelties, and barbarities, together with those caste or class hatreds which we naturally see now reviving in that Pagan or Radical part of our population which has renounced Christianity and religion. I need hardly say that renouncing religion means in the end renouncing morality. ' Re- ligion,' said that man of great genius, H. Heine, in his humorous way, 'religion and morality are ham and bacon — two forms of the same thing. If in a nation one goes the other goes.' Some men, who renounce Christianity, are, no doubt, Christians in morals. They do not, for instance, hate their enemies. The reason is, they cannot at once get rid of eighteen hundred years of Christianity in the blood. But it is only a cjuestion of time. As a rule, the effective Radicals do hate their supposed oj^ponents. Take away class jealousy and hatred, and in England Radicalism would be nowhere. There would be a vast amount left in quantity, but the working force would l)e gone. Goethe said that there will never be anything higher than Christianity. Mr. Lecky says that it is Christianity that has given us our ideas of righteous conduct. Before Christianity, revenge and hatred of opponents were considered virtues. In Rome and Greece, when one of two great political antagonists succeeded in getting supreme power, he would banish his late opponent, and then send to 120 MR. CHAMBEELAIN S PROGRAMME. have him privately assassinated. This sort of thing does not take place in these days in Christian countries. After the death of Julius Csesar the antagonism between Marc Antony and Cicero ended in the de- capitation of the latter, whereupon Fulvia, the wife of Antony, gratified her vengeance by putting the head of Cicero on her lap, opening his mouth, and sticking her hair pins through his tongue. This sort of thing again does not go on in these days. When Mr. Gladstone came into power, he did not have Lord Beaconsfield beheaded, and Mrs. Gladstone did not stick her hair pins through his tongue ; and no reason for this change can be given except eighteen hundred years of strivmg after Christianity. There has been through all the ages (in spite of the remains of old primeval savagery in the blood, shown by such horrors as Inquisition tortures) one day in seven set apart to din into the slow heads and slower hearts of men and women, by unceasing repetition, that righteousness is better than unrighteousness, mercy than vengeance, faith, hope, and charity, than infidelity, despair, and hate, as well as such maxims as that ' Men should do to others as they would have others do to them.' In Eome, a rich man after dinner would entertain his guests with a fight be- tween a slave and a panther, in a railed-ofF end of his dining-room, or sometimes he would have a slave crucified just to show his guests how he did the thing. At the present time, in London, a rich man entertains his guests with music. This change must Mu. chamberlain's programme. 121 have been produced by Christianity. It could have nothing to do with education or culture, for culture was carried higher in Greece and Rome than it is in these days, and art was superior. Mr. Lecky says that Christianity put an end to the public contests between men with each other, and with wild beasts in the Roman arena. Nero was very popular, from his spending such enormous sums of money as he did to please the people in this way. He would light his gardens at night by burning Christians alive. Mr. Marion Crawford says, that if the Radicals or Socialists succeed in destroying Christ- ianity, these shows will be revived ; the masses in New York, London, and Paris, will flock to see them ; and, having the chief voting power in their hands, will insist on having them to see. Mr. Lecky says that Christianity, and Christianity alone, put an end to slavery. In Rome, after an insurrection of slaves, six thousand of them were crucified along the side of the road outside the city. Is any one born now who will live to see six thousand slaves crucified along the road between London and Richmond ? Why not ? Destroy Christianity, as the Socialists are aiming to do, and what will there be to prevent it ? Poor human nature is poor human nature at bottom for ever, and Herbert Spencer calls Socialism ' the coming slavery.' It may be said that eighteen hundred years of Christianity in the blood will not be elimmated so soon as in one lifetime. Doubtless not. Still, falling down is much quicker than climbing up, and 122 ME. chamberlain's rROGRAMINIE. Socialists are energetic, and work very hard, not only to destroy the higher Christian graces, but even to repeal the Ten Commandments. ' The answer,' said the Pall Mall Gazette to Mr. Henry George, is simple, but conclusive. The answer is, ' Thou shalt not steal.' But what is this when the Radicals have succeeded in getting the Ten Commandments repealed ? It will be none manifestly. That any of the above consequences of destroying Christianity can ever come true in oiu' modern civilisation will be inconceivable to the general run of people, who, being the general run, have necessarily mere average intelligence. But this ^vill be only an instance of the almost universal weakness of judging of others by one's self, and all things in heaven or on earth by one's own little surroundings, in one's own little time. It is like the ideas so universal in purely industrial states of society, that war will come to an end on the globe. The average mind cannot get away from its routine ideas. The following instance may be given to show how the human mind is tied to its own experiences : — An American President sent a commissioner to one of the Indian tribes to explain the wonders of modern science, and thus prove to them the hope- lessness of resisting a civilised people. First, the interpreter was told to explain how towns were lighted by gas. ' Well,' said the com- missioner, 'what do they say?' 'They say,' answered the interpreter, 'no believe; too big damn lie.' 'Tell them about the railroads.' The mterpreter did so. MR. CHAMBERLAIN S PROGRAMME. 126 'Well, what do tliey say?' 'They say/ answered the mterpreter, ' no believe ; too big damn lie.' Tell them I could talk along this wire two hundred miles, and get an answer in ten minutes.' But this was beyond the experience of the interpreter, so, after pondering a moment, he said, 'No, no. I myself no believe that ; too big damn lie.' This, perhaps, may be called a frivolous story ; but it is not so, for it is a good illustration of what I was saying about the human mind. No doubt the average Eoman in the height of Kome's prosperity was totally incapable of believing in the possibility of Rome's decline and fall. It may be said that the above remarks about Christianity have nothing to do with the Radical pro- gramme. But they have everything to do with it. The way to understand a thing is to go to the foun- tain head. And the fountain head of the Socialism of the day is, as M. de Lavala3^e says, war against Christianity and religion, and thence against mo- rality. This war is the fountain head, because every form of Socialism implies unrighteousness and theft in some degree (expropriation without compensation, the Radicals generally call it). But Christianity is the religion that especiall}^ enjoins that passion for, or hunger and thirst after righteousness, which is called in the Bible obedience to the will of God, and in the English tongue, when it has become crystal- lised into habit, ' duty ' or ' right,' as distinguished from 'wrong.' If at an election an elector, knowing what he is 124 MR. cha:\iberlain's programme. about, votes for the Radical programme, it will mean that he thinks Socialism is better than liberty, com- pulsion than freedom, high rates and taxes than low rates and taxes, dishonesty than honesty, insecurity to property than security to property, secularism than religion, and Paganism than Christianity. 125 LETTER XXII. Liberalism and Eadicalism. Sir, — ^ Within the last five years Liberals have ratted and gone over to the Radicals. Before that time Liberalism and Radicalism Trere opposite poles, inasmuch as the former loved liberty. Radicalism m all countries and in all ages hates liberty. IMacaulay was a Liberal. ' The business of a country/ he says, ' is not to give people wealth, but to give them liberty to get wealth, as well as security for it when got. The diligence and forethought of individuals will then have fair play, and it is only b}^ diligence and forethought that a community can become prosperous.' Thus says Macaulay. Now, Radicalism says that every word of this is false. Radicalism says that the business of a Government is to try directly by arbitrary legislation to make people rich ; to destroy liberty by substituting for it despotic courts for the fixing of prices and the management of people's private affairs ; to destroy by incessant meddling security of property when got, and to remove out of souls of men that diligence and forethought which come solely from men depending on themselves instead of on public charity. Put simply, Hadicalism or Socialism carried out means turnino; 126 liberalis:m and radicalism. everybody into a j^itiable, imbecile pauper, in life-long receipt of direct or indirect outdoor parish relief. Local authorities and land courts providing men with land, either to own or hire, on terms lower than market price, is nothing but a muddleheaded, elaborate, complicated, and very costly way of giving to each of such men so much a-week outdoor parish relief. I repeat, that the Liberalism which used to mean love of liberty has ratted, and gone over to Radicalism and Socialism, or hatred of liberty — in other words, love of slavery. Liberalism having ratted. Conservatism has stepped into her shoes, and now means liberty as opposed to despotism. 127 LETTER XXIIL Primogeniture. Sir, — Why does tile Eadical rage at tlie word primogeniture ? Does he know what it means ? Or is he hke the proverbial old woman to whom the word ' Mesopotamia ' in the Bible was such ^ a comfort? ' It may be so. ' Primogeniture ' is un- doubtedly a good mouth-fillmg word, and to hold forth against it seems to give Radicals very much ^ comfort ; ' and if this is so, I am sure I do not grudge it them. It is said that a certain ' tribune of the people,' during a quarter of a century, poured forth the vials of his wrath with entrancing elo- quence against the law of primogeniture ; and at last, when fifty years old, learned that it is custom, not law, that leads to its adoption. Xo custom arises amongst men without some good reasons. But what Radical ever learned the reasons for the custom of primogeniture ? I propose to act the part of good Samaritan and show him what they are. The object of a father in making his will ought to be, and generally is, the happiness of his children. It is agreed upon by all studiers of human nature, that riches beyond a moderate competence have nothmg to do with happiness, but that some engrossmg occu- pation has a great deal to do with it. Now, if a 128 PRIMOGENITURE . moderately rich man divides liis property equally amongst his sons, he provides each of them with sufficient to enable him to be idle, but not sufficient to occupy his time ; that is, he provides that all of his sons shall be unhappy. But if he leaves the bulk of his property to one son, that son is fully occupied in looking after it, and therefore he is happy ; whilst the others go into professions which fully occupy them, and therefore they are happy too. Paley said that the custom of primogeniture was good, because it results in only one son m each family being idle and good for nothing. But Paley was wrong. A rich Englishman, exceptions apart, occupies himself use- fully and actively. It is subdivision of property, not primogeniture, that leads to a country being full of idle, useless men. In France there are great numbers of such people with little independencies ; and this is in consequence of the envy-begotten law of com- pulsory division of property at death. If one of the sons of an Englishman is a scoundrel or a scamp, his father very properly disinherits him, more or less. In France he cannot do so, — the scoundrel or scamp is turned loose on society with a certain degree of independent means. Of course, in proportion to those means he becomes a nuisance to whatever neighbourhood he infests. Are we going to mtroduce this vile liberty-destroying system into England? If the Kadicals and Socialists get their way we shall. There is nothing they will not do to destroy liberty, if they think they can thereby get equality. PRIMOGENITURE. 129 The practice of primogeniture leads to per- manency. ' I am,' says T. Carlyle, ^ for permanency in everything. Even the horse does his work better if he sticks to the same work in the same pLace.' Trades remain permanently in families. We have hereditary tailors and hereditary shoemakers ; and the country is the gainer by so much, for it gets better coats, boots, and shoes, from these trades being hereditary. So it is in all things, from shoemaking to land-managing. Mr. Marsh, an American, in his book, 2Ian and Nature^ regrets the want of this permanence in America, calling it unfavourable for the execution of improvements. ' It requires,' he says, ' a very gene- rous spirit in a landholder to plant a wood or lay out a farm which he knows will pass out of his hands at his death.' The consequence is, the plantations are not planted, the farms are badly farmed, and the country is a loser by so much. Some people are so confused that they jumble up in their minds certain pernicious laics of entail (which prevent a man from selling an encumbered estate to some one with capital enough to enable him to do his duty on it), with the beneficial custom of primo- geniture, which enables a business, whether in land, cotton, wool, or iron, to be continued on the death ot the owner, instead of being sold up just when it is getting into good working order, as takes place in France, to the enormous pecuniary loss of that country. In Great Britain, landed proprietors usually K 130 pkimoge:n^ituee. during their lives spend much money in increasing the producing power of their Land. For this they get a very small percentage. If they could not leave their property to any one they liked, they would not (human nature being what it is) sj^end their money in this way. The land would deteriorate and the country would lose by so much. Mr. Banks Stan- hope's evidence before a Committee was, that he had spent 90,000/. in draming alone, for which he got two per cent interest. It is estimated that during the last forty years English landlords have spent sixty million pounds upon draining, and draining is only one item of the expenditure of landlords on their land. Mr. Chamberlain and our Socialist politicians aim at getting the land in England into the hands of local boards, to let out in allotments. I wonder whether they expect new landlords to spend sixty millions in forty years upon draining ! I dare say they do. Perhaps they also believe that there will be no difficulty in getting rates laid and paid to do it. ' Under the custom of primogeniture,' says the American writer, Mr. J. Bayley, ' a place is kept in the same family, and reaches that beauty and perfection which age brings to one management.' ' The effect, says Monsieur Le Play, ' of the partage force in France, or subdivision of property on a death, is bad all round ; it prevents improvement, for a proprietor will not spend money on what will be sold at his death, and it ends in properties being so small that the well- being of the owner depends sur la sterilite du manage et sur Vego'isme' Again he says, that ' the PRIMOGENITURE. 131 disorganization of manufacturing industry in France is owing in great part to the breaking up of establish- ments by our laws of succession. A father cannot leave his mill to a son capable of continuing his work.' ' France/ he says, ' has not taken her place m commerce to which she is entitled by her geographical position, because our law of division of property pre- vents the foundation of those powerful houses of com- merce which are essential elements in the prosperity of a nation.' In 1866, one hundred and thirty eminent manu- facturers presented a petition to the Senate, praying for the repeal of the law and the restoration of liberty of bequest. Mr. Henley in the House of Commons, defending the English custom of primogeniture, quoted a case in France where one walnut-tree be- longed to thirty-two people. And this is the state of things down to which our envy-hatred-malice- and- all-uncharitableness-ridden Hadicals, Socialists, and French-type politicians — who hate liberty because it cannot co -exist with the equality their souls yearn after — want to bring England ! This craving for the equality (only found amongst brutes and savages) that would, if reached, be so ruinous, is of course fomided on envy. The Spectatoi^ newspaper, talking of Mr. Matthew Arnold's notion of destroying liberty of bequest, says : ' What is the use of a suggestion like that ? Even granting — which we do not grant — that in- equality is an evil, what is the use of proposmg a remedy that could not be carried without a revolution. 132 PRIMOGENITURE. and for wliich not one elector in twenty would vote ? Perhaps, however, we do Mr. Arnold mjustice, and he is not caring so much for the equal distribution of wealth as for the opportunity of telling us that the upper class is materialised, the middle class ^' Philis- tine " and vulgar, and the lower class brutal. If so, we will make no more objection, for it is evidently a great relief to him to say this.' It is pitii^ble to see such a man as Matthew Arnold whining like a jealous school-girl at some people being rich, and striving through the destruction of liberty to bring back the equality and sameness only found amongst brutes and filthy savages. Civilisation means not homo- geneity but heterogeneity, and it varies as hetero- geneity. I suppose Mr. Arnold has some Socialistic blood in him — Celtic, perhaps, or Jewish. Destroy the capital (land, manufactories, money, or whatever the form) of capitalists, and production becomes so much less, and a country becomes by so much poor and helpless. Next to brains, energy, and honesty in business, the capital-lender is the great producer. The French destroyed that liberty of bequest which leads to the custom of primogeniture, in order to force on the country equality at the expense of this liberty. But civilisation varies as inequality. There- fore the French have by so much destroyed their civilisation ; and in fact M. Renan says, that in the country districts the French are as barbarous as the ancient Scythians. The working man, says M. About, ought, for his own good, to wish for as many rich men as possible ; PKIMOGENITUKE. 133 for the more there are, and the richer they are, the greater must he the demand for his work, and there- fore his wages will be the greater by so much. Statistics prove that the more and the richer the rich, the more well-to-do people there are in a country compared icith the numbers of indigent people. But the contrast between the rich and indigent of course becomes greater ; so the foolish, the envious, the class-hating, and the self-seeking politicians, use this fact to proclaim the falsehood that the indigent be- come more numerous instead of less so, compared with the well-to-do. Then leo;islation sometimes follows, founded on this falsehood, and a nation suffers by so much. Laws founded on lies must be paid for. There is no escape. The malevolent pas- sions, such as envy and hatred, are condemned |by mankind, because, says Science, the experience of ages has proved that they lead to misery. This they do partly, by first leading to stupidity. The way male- volence necessarily destroys the correct working of the intelligence is very curious. This question of primogeniture is an instance. Envy and class hatred make the Radicals wish to destroy the custom of primogeniture, according to which one son manages a property or business, whilst the others become useful members of professions. But the Radicals also say that everybody should work for his living. Thus we come to the two remarkable statements : (1), That everybody should work for his living ; (2), That a country should be filled with men with very small fortunes, who do not work for their living. George 134 PRIMOGENITURE. Eliot is right. Malignity in sufficiency would turn even a Shakespear or a Socrates into a gibbering idiot. Then what chance has the poor Eadical ? ' Con- science,' says Shakespear, ' doth make cowards of us all.' Verily we may parody this and say, 'Envy doth make idiots of us all.' A malevolent man cannot see truth. J. S. Mill was in favour of primogeniture. He says, ' It should be allowed to a proprietor who leaves to one of his successors the moral burden of keeping up an ancestral mansion, park, and grounds, to be- stow along with them as much other property as is required for their maintenance.' J. S. Mill confessed that he believed himself to be born to be a sort of saviour of mankind. Many people who live studious, theorising, isolated lives, have thought similar things of themselves. Some get to call themselves by name ' Jesus Christ,' and then they have to be shut up in asylums. In accordance with his idea about himself, J. S. Mill gives minute directions how men in the future are to live. Like Comte, he passed his life trying to reorganize society. In these attempts his sayings are sometimes wise and sometimes foolish. From their envy -born yearnings for equality the Radicals and Socialists aim at destroying liberty of bequest, liberty of contract, liberty everywhere. JSTature, on the contrary, loves liberty and abhors equality or sameness. ' Social life,' says Herbert Spencer, ' answers to animal life. Each demands liberty. Tie the legs of an animal together and it PRI^ilO GENITURE . 1 3 5 cannot get food.' Destroy liberty in a nation, as Socialists aim at doing, and it will be unable to gain wealth, and thus render itself safe from invasion and conquest. Without liberty progress is impossible. Of course liberty implies stringent carrying out of laws. If murder is not rigorously punished I ha^^e no liberty to move out of my house. Without rigorous punishment of dishonesty and breach of con- tract I have no liberty to buy, sell, trade, and transact business. Counteract the laws of Nature and retribution follows exactly to match. Cause must be followed by consequences. The French being, as Balzac said, an envy -ridden people, counteracted Nature by destroying liberty of bequest in order to bring about equality. Little did they foresee the retribution that was inevitable. Some of the conse- quences are manifest : (1), A non -increasing popula- tion ; (2), the deterioration in character, energy, courage, and enterprise, that must come where there is no pressure of population, and thence struggle for the fittest (most intelligent, energetic, and righteous) to survive ; (3), loss of colonising power ; (4), loss of commercial activity ; (5), disastrous invasion by the Germans ; (6), loss of millions of money spent in hopeless resistance to the Germans, indemnity, &c. ; (7), loss of valuable provinces ; (8), enormous loss of wealth from businesses having to be sold up just when getting into working order ; (9), enormous annual loss of wealth from land producing little more than half as much as land in England, where, in con- sequence of the landlord-and-tenant system, together 136 PRIMOGENITURE. with tlie custom of primogeniture, capital and ma- cHnery are largely employed. Sucli are a few of tlie lesser evil consequences. I call tliem lesser evils, inasmuch as they are material evils only. Spiritual evils are, of course, far worse. Deo'radation of character and of nature in the in- dividual persons who form a nation is the evil ot evils. The best French writers say that destroymg liberty of bequest is the undoubted cause of the stagnant population, and of the deterioration in the nature of those who do come into the world. ' How is it,' a great greyhound breeder was asked, ' that you are so successful ? ' ' It is because I breed a great many and hang a great many/ was the answer. The competition was great, so the survivors were so much the more excellent. Thus the French, under their present bequest laws, must become inferior in nature to the men of non-Malthusian nations. The wish of a Frenchman to prevent dispersion of his property at death is stronger than his wish to have more than two children. ' If,' says M. Latourneau, ' the present system continues, statistics show that in five or six centuries the French race will be ex- tinct.' The law of God and Nature says, ' Increase and multiply.' The English and Germans obey this law, and are spreading themselves over the earth and out - competing all other races. The poor envy- possessed Kadical and Socialist say, ' Multiply not ; let stagnation be the law.' And the law in France it is, with the results we see — a people becoming every year more godless and more helpless. PRIMOGENITURE. 137 The Frencli seem unable to turn out efficient rulers. Gambetta was a Jew, tlie Buonapartes are Italians, Waddington is an Engiisliman, &c. Pro- bably France has got too far down the hill of Radi- calism and Equality- worship to return. ' Quern Deus viilt 2^erdere prius dementat.^ — Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first turn into Eadicals. But there may be one chance for France. It is just pos- sible that, if she repealed the law that deprives men of liberty to bequeath their property as they like, France might in time progress instead of retrogress, — that is, if she also altered her system of government. Nothing is certain. To prove anything outside mathematics is impossible. We have, as Bishop Butler said, only probability to go on. Still all evidence hitherto goes to show that no people of Celtic blood is fit for what is called self-government. For this there must be a certain honesty, love of justice, reasonableness, and sympathy — not with the criminals, but Avith law. Xow we do not find these things even in the more civilised Celtic peoples. Of course, then, we cannot expect to find them amongst the less civilised ones. The idea, for instance, entertained by many Radi- cals, that the Roman Catholic aboriginal Irish Celt of the West and South is sufficiently developed to bear representative and self-government witliout falling into disorder, crime, and anarchy, seems to any one who has at all studied racial characteristics as ridiculously incongruous as one of Artemus Ward's topsy-turvey jokes, which are manufictured by 138 nUMOGENITURE. turning truths and facts upside down. Whatever ignorant worshippers of ultra-Democracy may think, no people that ever existed can, as Herbert Spencer told the Americans, do entirely without being governed : but there are degrees, and the lower the development of a people the more despotic the Government has of course to be. We are told by African travellers, that whenever they come across a tribe of negroes who are under the stern rule of some despotic chief, who cuts off heads right and left for the smallest offence, there they always hnd the greatest prosperity. The law is brutal, but still there is law suited to the nature of the people, who are thus saved from worse things still. Mr. Hammerton says, that by equality the French mean only equality before the law. But this is totally untrue. The French craving for equality comes from ' envy, the vice of democracies.' The law of subdivision of property comes solely from this diabolic passion. Lady Verney and other writers say that envy of the rich has reduced country life in France to a hideous dead level of poverty, squalor, filth, and barbarism. Kenan, as we have seen, says that the agricultural population of France is little above savagery. The fact is, subdivision of property has nearly destroyed those little centres of civilisation, the homes of country gentlemen, so what else could be expected but the squalor we find ? ' Physical squalor,' says Ruskin, ' means, at bottom, moral squalor.' The French tried to account for their defeat by the Germans in sundry ways, saying they were be- PRIMOGENITURE. 139 trayed, &c. ; but the real reason was inferiority in character, produced by years of socialistic or equality- seeking habits, and destruction of liberty of bequest, thence came, as I have said, a non-increasing popula- tion and the absence of healthy, energy-breeding competition. Then came racial deterioration, loss of manliness, and cultivation of the mere feminine qualities of thrift and parsimony, which qualities doubtless lead to saved-up riches, but loss of capacity to defend them whenever some neighbouring nation feels inclined to help itself to some of it. Before the Franco -Prussian war, Baron Stoffel stated that de- terioration of French character had advanced so far that their army was not to be feared. The war proved the truth of this. ' The seventy years since the great revolution,' said Tocqueville to Mr. Senior, ' have deteriorated the French intellectually and morally. They have de- stroyed our courage, our trust in ourselves, om' public spirit,' &c. And it is to this that our pitiable Radical and Socialist French-type politicians work with all the energy of class -hatred to bring down Great Britain ; and if the liberty-loving part of the popula- tion do not exert themselves they will succeed. ' The true Frenchman,' says Karl Hillebrand, ^ will always prefer equality with servitude to in- equality with liberty.' Herbert Spencer calls Mr. Chamberlain's Socialism ' the coming slavery.' And as a fact, the word ' compulsory ' is the Radical's shibboleth. The Socialist hates liberty with all his soul and with all his strength. ' I believe,' says Mr. W. R. Greg, ' that the startling inferiority of the 140 PKIMOGENITURE. Frencli of to-day to the French of two hundred years^ ago, is due to the dymg out of the old Frankish and Norman or Teutonic elements, and the growing pre- ponderance of the liberty-hating, equality -worshipping Celtic one.' ' Vanity, envy, and ambition,' says M. Thiers of the French, 'are our real passions.' 'In France,' says Karl Hillebrand, ' equality means hatred of those above, contempt of those below.' Celts are the same creatures all the world over ; so if the ideas of Celtic and other low-type conquered races get, by force of numbers, the upper hand in Great Britain, what will there be to prevent Great Britain gomg the way of France ? Formerly the strongest and best races got the upper hand by prowess in arms ; but all the prowess required in these days is prowess to put a doubled-up piece of paper into a tin box. If war and free competition cease, the world must be for the most prolific. Xow an Irish aboriginal Celt is a more prolific creature than an Isaac Newton. Mr. Gladstone and his party depend entirely for their political existence, (1), upon conquered races of men whose development has been arrested at a low socialistic stage, who were driven in former times to districts of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and then left there because the districts were too remote, barren, and mountainous to be worth taking from them ; (2), upon the lowest inhabitants of town- slums (people described by the Spectator as practically savages), who, when a drain-pipe is provided for them, tear it up and sell it to buy gin ; (3), upon people either quite or nearly unable to read. Of course there PRIMOGENITURE. 141 ^re others ; but it is, as I say, on these people that the party really depend for their political existence. It is Longfellow who speaks of ' envy, the vice of Republics.' Not very creditable, by the way, to Republics fostering this ' special quality of the Devil,' as Bacon calls it. But if Bacon is right, it might account for the fact, as stated lately by Sir Henry Maine, that advanced democracies do not last. Dia- bolic qualities are condemned, says Science, because of their disastrous results. What, indeed, can be expected of states of Society founded on the two greatest lies that it is in the power of poor human nature to tell, — (1), that 'all men are equal ;' (2), that the equality only found amongst brutes and the lowest savages is the right thing for a nation to aim at ? The retribution that comes upon communities of men for being founded on lies is their destruction as communities of men. The history of the world is the history of such destructions. Brutal savagery means homogeneousness, sameness, and equality. Civilisa- tion means heterogeneousness, differences, and in- equality. People use such words as ' good ' and ' evil,' but they are only convenient abstractions. ^ Evil ' really means on this earth, that which filthy, idle, disorderly, stupid, cruel, heartless savages are — whether dark-skinned races abroad, or white- skinned, low-type, and criminal-class people and races of men at home — men, in fact, whose development has been arrested at a low stage. ' Good ' means that which clean, active, orderly. Christian, pitiful, civilised people are. At the bottom there must be in all countries certain men who are idiotic, vicious, and 142 PRIMOGENITURE. destitute. This is the fixed condition at one end of the scale. No one can be more idiotic than an idiot, or poorer than a pauper. Now, instead of equahty, what is wanted is the greatest possible inequality ; or in other words, the greatest possible degree of the opposite things to viciousness, idiotcy, and destitu- tion. And yet the Radicals aim at equality ! No wonder Radicalism brings civilisation after civilisa- tion to the ground, as history shows us, from the old Greek communities down to the present time. It is impossible to discuss the agitation for de- stroying the custom of jDrimogeniture without taking'' account of that ' special quality of the devil,' envy^ with its necessary accompaniment class-hatred, inas- much as this vile passion, with its craving for equality at the expense of liberty, is the chief corner-stone of the agitation. Radicalism (as distinguished from Liberalism) is made up of ignorance, amiable, foolish ' gush,' millennarian Utopianism, and envy ; but the greatest of these is envy. Envy is the working partner m the firm. The envious Radicals form the minority in mere numbers, but hate gives the energy that makes Radicalism the force for evil and destruc- tion that it is. Majorities are never malignant. They are, on the contrary, good-natured. Still they will sometimes, from ignorance and indolence, follow some energetic, malignant minority. Then comes ruin. Men are self- deceivers ever. The active Radical or Socialist of the day talks about pitying the indigent, and he often does so like everybody else ; but if he could bring himself to look honestly into the bottom of his heart, he would generally find PKIMOGENITURE. 143 that envy of the rich is his real working moti^^e force. ' The Puritans,' said Macaulay, ' professed to put down bear-baiting from pity for the bears, but they really did it from hatred of the rich whose amusement bear-baiting was.' ^ La plus veritable marque^ says Rochefoucault, ' d^etre ne avec de grandes qualites^ c'est d^etrc ne sans envie.'' Is it possible that the poor Radical has the misfortune to be born without ' de grandes qualites f It really looks as if it might be so. The Socialists and Radicals seem always to be thinking themselves despised because they are not so rich, or so some- thmg, as other people. ' I am considered a plebeian,' said Mr. Chamberlain bitterly, in one of his speeches. But Rochefoucault says, ' II ny a que ceux qui sont meprisable qui craignent d'etre mejmsable.' Is it pos- sible that the poor Radical is meprisable? Indeed, when we consider the despicable nature of envy, as well as the fact that envy, with its necessary com- panion hatred, like every other form of ill-will, must, as George Eliot truly says, be accompanied by its corresponding stupidity, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Radical of the malevolent class is meprisable. There is not a living being in the world more to be pitied than this poor creature, — the working partner in the Radical firm, as I call him — whose sole motive forces for his actions are envy and class-hatred. ' Hate at last,' says Medusa, in the Ujjic of Hades — ' Hate at last Left me a Fury. Ah, the load of life Which lives for hatred ! ' 144 PRIMOGENITURE. The opposite to tins ^ load of life ' is what the Eible calls ' the peace of God/ which comes from 2:ood will instead of ill will. The former is bene- ficent, and causes untold happiness ; the latter is maleficent, and causes untold misery. ' The Devil,' says the proverb, ' was the first Eadical.' But the first Eadical actually mentioned in history was Cain, who murdered his brother from envy at his greater prosperity. If Cain lived in these days he would not kill his brother for fear of being hanged, but he vfould try to get laws passed to legalise theft ('expropriation' he would call it) and breach of contract ; to compel Abel to sell and to let to him property at prices fixed by himself ; to put cumulative taxes on his brother, till he was no richer than he was ; and to destroy liberty of bequest : thus despotically preventing Abel from leaving his land or money away from him — Cain. It is good for a country that businesses should not be broken up at death, whether the business is in cotton mills, land, breweries, or whatever it may be ; therefore, in cases of intestacy, the law should do what custom does m such cases. Customs are founded on what works best, and is most beneficial. Every established custom, where liberty exists, has become established, because it is the custom that, by sur- viving, has proved itself to be fittest to survive under the circumstances, for the chief circumstance being human nature as it is with all its good and evil. 145 Political Leaflets, distrihuted amongst Working Men during the Year 1885. A FEW WORDS ABOUT 'RADICAL THUMPERS/ Sir Stafford Northcote said that the Radicals carry on their political campaign by spreading lies over the country — not petty lies, but ' real big thumpers.' It is proverbial that 'history repeats itself.' When a nation reaches that degree of order and civilisation when wealth and distinction of classes arise, then springs up the breed of envious, class - hating Radicals, as surely as a butterfly, when the time comes, springs out of a chrysalis. Human nature is for ever human nature. In ancient Greece, two thousand years ago, the Radicals, as the historian, Mr. Froude, tells us, went about the country promising the same promises and lying the same lies as our own Radicals do. The people believed the lies : Greece fell ; and she has remained a nation of poverty-stricken, enslaved people, nearly up to the present time. It was just the same, hundreds of years before, L 146 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. amongst tlie ancient Jews. False prophets, as the lying teachers and speakers of those days were called, stirred up the people, and brought about infinite miseries. ' I will go forth,' as we are told in the grand old Hebrew mode of speech, ' I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit m the mouth of the prophets;' and, just as in modern times, civil wars, revolutions, and miseries, inevitably followed. A hundred years ago in France, this lying spirit went forth amongst the false prophets like Rousseau and Eobespierre, and then came disorder, anarchy, and revolution, off and on, up to the present time. France has now become a dwindling nation, peopled by weak- charactered men, and at the mercy of the strong- natured races around her. There is no escape from the retribution that follows the national dishonesty, plunder and crime, Radicalism in all times aims at. Absalom was David's son, who usurped the place of King's Chamberlain ; stirred up the people to revolt ; flattered, fawned upon, and lied to them as Radicals always do ; promised them every blessing under the sun ; told them they could expect no justice or prosperity till they had swept away all existing things ; and then came the disorder, civil wars, revolutions, crime, and misery. The customs of different nations at different times vary much, even when the expression of the same feeling is aimed at. In Europe, to express reverence a man bares his head ; in Eastern countries he bares his feet. In England, a man takes his hat off, and shakes his friend's hand ; in China, he shakes his own POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 147 hand, places it reverently across his stomach, and knocks his head nine times upon the ground. In each case the feeling to be expressed is the same, but the modes of expressing it are different. So it is with the breed of self - seeking Radicals. Their feelings and aims are the same in all time and in all countries, but the modes of expressing them are diiferent. The King's Chamberlain, Absalom, went amongst the people, fawning upon them, making them false promises, and kissing them on the face ; and thus, we are told, ' he stole the hearts of the people.' Corresponding people of the present day lick their feet. Men may come and men may go, but parasites go on for ever. A FEW WORDS ABOUT CHARLES GORDON. Chaeles Gordon was the noblest hero of modern times. Naturally, then, the Socialists and Radicals revile him. Here is what we read in a leading article of the Times newspaper : — * In the House of Commons a preliminary vote of 500/. was taken for a statue to General Gordon; and, notwith- standing the opposition of Sir Wilfrid Lawson and of Mr. Labouchere, there can be no doubt that the decision of the Government to erect this statue will be received with entire satisfaction by the pubHc. We cannot but believe that the 148 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. speeclies of Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Mr. Laboucliere were mistakes, even from the point of view of the Radical politician ; and that the desire to do honour to Gordon's memory will be as general beyond the walls of Parliament as it has been shown to be within thein. There is no more certain test of the superficial character of much that is described as cleverness and smartness than its want of power to appreciate or to sympathise with genius ; and thousands of people to whom the precise degree to which Gordon exercised or failed to exercise discretion will always be matters open to debate, will nevertheless hold him in reverence as a man of dauntless courage, of unshaken tenacity, of true piety, of absolute unselfishness, of un- swerving devotion to what he deemed to be his duty. These were the qualities to which Parliament, as the representatives of the people, were asked to do public honour. When the conflicts of to-day are forgotten, the statue which is to be erected will be looked upon with reverence by Englishmen who are yet unborn ; and the persistence of the Gordon spirit among us furnishes the best security that the mistakes of our rulers, even if they should be many and grievous, will not be permitted to alienate our heritage of empire. In raising a memorial to this great Englishman, we do but express admiration for the chief qualities which have made our coimtry what she is, and which, if they are duly esteemed and taken as examples, will effectually serve to restrain her from decadence.' Jacobinism is one and the same through all the ages. It is the destroying devil of history, and, amongst other things, means an incapacity to understand heroism, or, indeed, good of any kind as distinguished from evil. * Virtue and goodness,' says Shakespear, ' to the vile seem vile.' Destructive Radicalism is the spirit that, as Mr. Froude and the historians tell us, causes revolutions and misery, and POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 149 brings nation after nation to the ground. Of course it wages a never-ending war against all organizations for the spread of religion and Christianity, simply because they are organizations for the advancement of good, as distinguished from evil. Radicalism of this class lives and has its bemg in lies, and in electioneering times one can hardly move a step without stumbling over one. The last one I stumbled over was about Gordon. Charles Gordon, say the Radicals, went to Khartoum simply to make money. He went to the Government, and said, ' If you will give me Twenty Thousand Pounds I will go.' The Government promised to give him the money, and he went. Such is the kind of lie one expects the Social- ists to tell about Gordon, and such is the lie we find they do tell. Everybody must have a motive for his actions, and if a man has such a nature that he cannot believe in high motives, he must invent low ones. Unfortunately uneducated people believe the inven- tions and lies. Indeed, how can they help doing so? It is not that they, like Jacobins, cannot believe in good and noble conduct, for most people admire men of heroic and unselfish, or Christian character, but that they are uneducated or half- educated people ; so, of the things they hear, they cannot tell what is true and what is false. 150 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. EADICAL PROMISES. To get votes there is nothing Radicals will not promise. They are now going about the country promising every one of you working men three acres and a cow for nothing. In America, when votes were first given to the negroes, the Radicals went amongst them and pro- mised each man forty acres and a mule. They got the votes, but of course the poor negro never got even a yard of land, nor so much as a hair of a mule's tail. And the English Radicals think that you will be as easily taken in as the poor stupid black negroes were in America ! ! A RADICAL MEANS A TYRANNICAL DESTROYER OF LIBERTY. It cannot be too often repeated that the aim of our Radical or French Socialistic Statesmen, who call themselves the heads of the Liberal party, is to drill and organize all Englishmen as if they were French- men, and to destroy that manliness, independence, and self-help, which the great German poet, Goethe, admired so much in Englishmen. Still, if you want to become a Frenchman in leading- strmgs, you have POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 151 only to vote for the Liberal, and you will find your- self one before you can look round. There is no meddling too petty for our con- temptible French party. Here is a portion of a letter printed a year or two ago in the Pall Mall Gazette : — ' To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. * Sir, — The Lords of the Privy Council have passed a law that all little girls between the ages of three and five attending the elementary schools shall sew their own pinafores. I am the parent of a large family, and have little girls of my own. I do not know why the children of the poor should be favoured above the children of the middle classes, and I do hope that the Lords of the Privy Council will pass a law that all little girls alive below the age of five shall sew their own pinafores. While they are about it, could they not make another law that little boys' trousers shall not wear out in the seat, where they always go first ? ' I am, Sir, your obedient servant, * A Parent.' I am sure that Mr. Chamberlain and our French party will thank me for reprinting this letter. The suggestion it contains cannot but be useful to them. ' The individual liberty/ says Herbert Spencer, ' and independence of Englishmen, as distinguished from the subjection to official control of Continental nations, are signs of our more advanced social state.' Thus our French Socialists (the Liberals of the present day) are retrogressionists, who want to bring us back to the Continental condition. The Radical or Socialist is simply a despotic tyrant of the old- world kind, though he goes by new names. 152 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. Temperance is good, but desjDotic tyranny is bad. A man is had up by Radical laws before the magistrate. What has he been doing ? ^ Drmking a glass of beer, your worship,' says the policeman. Then he must be fined five shillings. But he hasn't got the money. Then he must be sent to prison as if he were a felon. Such is Socialism or modern Liberalism. Education is good, but despotic tyranny is bad. A woman is taken before the magistrate. ' What has she done ? ' ^ She kept her eldest girl at home to help her to nurse her little sick sister, mstead of sending her to school, your worship,' says the police- man. Then she must be fined five shillings. But she hasn't got the money. Then she must be sent to prison as if she were a felon. Such is Radicalism or modern Liberalism — despotism and tyranny every- where. I think, my friends, you know better than to vote for a Radical, or Liberal as he calls himself. I say, ' calls himself,' for, in truth, the Radical or Socialist is the extreme opposite to a Liberal as he used to be, that is, a liberty-loving man. The Radical is an intolerant despot. The one aim of our French statesmen, Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, is to fill the country with meddling and tyrannical state-paid ofiicials, to drill the people, and turn them from free men into slaves. Mr. Herbert Spencer, the greatest living political writer, calls Socialism ^ the coming slavery.' Weak, efi'eminate, vicious, idle people, are always crying out for Government help. POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 153 ' Oh ! ' cries one man, piteonsly, ' do make a law to prevent any one selling me a glass of gin !' Or, ' Do make a law to permit iis to compel ourselves to prohibit us from drinking beer ; we do like beer so much, and yet it makes us so very drunk, and is so bad for our health. Oh, do, please, pass a permissive-compulsory-prohibition Bill ! ' All the foolish, weak, cowardly, lazy, vicious people everywhere, are always crying out, ' Oh, do make laws to prevent active, industrious, honest, sober people, from getting on better than we do! "We do like drinking and idleness so much, and it is so very much trouble looking forward beyond the present moment, and it is so very unpleasant seeing other people better dressed and cleaner than we are ; do make laws that will make everybody as dirty and idle as we are ! &c.' And the aim. of the Socialist or Liberal of the day is to make these laws. If this political party had their way liberty would be at an end, and an Englishman would become a drilled machme, unable to move a step for the points of compulsory enactments bristling on all sides of him. In fact, an Englishman would become a slave. Besides this, every generation will, according to the law of heredity, become less self - dependent, more drunken, more idle, and more imbecile, till, at length, an Englishman will be as pitiable a creature as the ancient Peruvian was, and from the same causes. 154 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. RADICALISM. Mk. Froude, the historian, says that ' Radicahsm knocked down the ancient Greek communities.' This was about two thousand years ago. They never got up again, as you know. Mr. Trevelyan was reported to have said in a speech, that ^ Radicalism may have ruined Greece,. and Rome, and France, but that was no reason why it shoukl ruin England.' How does he know that? Pluman nature is very like human nature. Whatever Liberahsm has meant, it means now the French Socialism of Mr. Chamberlain. Rousseau, and his disciple Robespierre, started Socialistic ideas in France. Spain and the South American Republics followed. In fact, they come naturally to Celtic and Lathi peoples. What is the result ? Since the time of Rousseau the French Government has been three times overthrown by town mobs, three times by the army, and three times by foreign invasion, the invasion having each time been provoked by French aggression, and approved of by the French people. Look at Spain. Since 1812 there have, in that country, been forty military risings, in most of which the town mobs took part. Look at the republics of Central and South America. Here we see almost continuous anarchy, civil war, and revolution. This is what history (and we have nothing else to go by) teaches about Socialism and Radicalism in modern times. In all revolutions all classes suffer, but the wage-earning POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 155 a working men suffer far the most. They get no wages, and therefore, of course, they starve to death. In the coming election you will have to choose. If you want revolution, loss of wages, and starvation, you will doubtless vote for the Radical followers of our French politicians. If not, I think you will vote for the Conservative candidate. You have been so accustomed to law and order that you will say there is no chance of revolution in England. But people said just the same before the great revolution in France, with the terrible misery it produced. They went about their pleasures and business as usual, pooh-poohing all warning, till one fine day they found themselves with their heads in the guillotine basket. Possibly, in England, revolution would lead to less bloodshed. Still there would be the ruin. England is a great country. You think it cannot become a small one. Many years ago Home was a great country. At that time no one be- lieved it would ever be a small one. But the Radicals came, waged war on ownership of property, just as the same people are doing now in England. And Rome at once began to go down, till it became a very small country. In Rome, just as now, the Radicals attacked capital or ownership of money. When the money was invested largely in land they called it ' latifundia.' It was successfully attacked by the Radicals, and down came Rome. If property and money in a country become unsafe, down comes that country. There is no exception to this law. 156 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 'THE BOY BRITTLES; A Radical candidate upon being asked whether he was in favour of disestabhshing the Church, said ' that he would be guided by Mr. Gladstone's opmion with reo-ard to that matter.' One of Dickens' best books is Oliver Twist. When Oliver was wounded a judicial investigation took place, during which the butler Mr. Giles and ' the boy Brittles ' under him (who, though called 'the boy,' had long ceased to be one) were examined. ' Now, Brittles,' said the ma- gistrate, 'answer me truly, Are you a Protestant?' ' Lord bless me ! ' stammered Brittles, in great tre- pidation, 'I — I'm — I'm the same as Mr, Giles, ^ What knowledge of human nature Dickens had ! How often in life we come across ' the boy Brittles ! ' If a man confesses that he has no opinions on political questions he confesses himself to be a fool, and, therefore, unfit to be a Member of Parliament. If he has opinions and is an honest man he ' tells the truth and shames the devil.' RADICALISM, SOCIALISM, AND IRRELIGION GO TOGETHER, AS A RULE ! BefofvE Christianity, says the historian, Mr. Lecky, manual labour was considered only fit for slaves. POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 157 Thus it was Christianity alone that ennobled manual labour. If the Eadicals and Socialists get their way and destroy Christianity, manual labour will return to where it was : all working men will be looked on as no better than slaves. How would you like to become slaves and serfs a2:ain instead of free Eno-lish- men? If Socialism and Radicalism get their way nothing can prevent this. Mr. Herbert Spencer is the greatest writer, on political subjects, of the day. He calls Socialism ' the coming slavery.' Now ' a Radical ' means a Socialist, and even Liberals have now gone over to Socialism. Till ^ve years ago, ' a Liberal ' meant a man who loved liberty, and there- fore hated Socialism. ARE THE CLERGY STATE PAID ? The Radicals tell you that the Clergy are paid by the State. I need hardly tell you that there is no truth in this.^ A correspondent of the Nottingham Guardian writes : — ' Having heard almost all my life from those who are opposed to the Church that the Bishops and Clergy are State paid, I undertook to ask some leading authorities the question as to the payment of the Bishops, &c. I received the following in May, 1884 : — " In reply to your letter, Mr. Gladstone desires me to inform you that the Bishops and Clergy 158 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. are not paid , directly or indirectly, by taxes. ' ' Writing to tlie Marquis of Hartington in February, 1885, I received tbe following : — " In reply to your letter of the 20tli inst., I am desired by the Marquis of Har- tington to inform you that no money received by taxation is used towards paying any income or stipend received by any Bishop or Clergyman of the Church of England as such." Sir C. Dilke and Mr. H. Gladstone confirmed what Mr. Gladstone says. What more do we need to convince those who believe that the Bishops and Clergy are State paid that it is not so ? Now, I want your readers to take note. I had to write " twice " to Mr. Bright before I could extract an answer from him. Then he sent me word to write to the Secretary of the Liberation Society for the information I wanted. I have written " three times " to Mr. Chamberlain, asking the same question, but have received no reply. Your readers may draw their own conclusions as to the reasons why they decline to answer. I have drawn mine. I THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES. The Radical unceasingly tries to excite amongst you class hatred, by talking about the ^ privileged classes/ meaning the wage-paying classes. But what says the great writer, Charles Kingsley ? Kingsley said, POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 159 ^ The only privileged class in England are the paupers, for they have neither the responsibility of self- government nor the toil of self-support.' The fact is, the Radicals' talk about the privileged classes is, in these days in England, absolute nonsense. Except the paupers, there are no privileged classes. Another way the Radicals have of stirring up class hatred is by telling you that all great nobles in civilised countries have originally come by their property unjustly, and without having in any way earned it. But here, again, we see that ignorance on which, in addition to the class hatred, Radicalism is founded. What says the great writer, M. De Tocqueville ? He says, ' In feudal times the nobility formed the government, and without them the country would have returned to anarchy and savagery. They maintained public order, they administered justice, they caused the law to be executed, they came to the relief of the weak, they conducted the business of the community.' : Never you believe a word the Radical and Dema- gogue say to you. PEASANT PROPRIETORS. Some Radicals tell you that you should buy land, and become, like Frenchmen, peasant proprietors. This sounds plausible, but where are you to get the 160 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. money to buy it, implements to work it, and stock to stock it ? England used to be full of peasant proprietors. The system has almost died out, because it did not pay so well to own land as to hire it. A man, we will say, was owner of a hundred acres of land. He found he had forty pounds a-year to live — or rather starve — upon, and that his form got into a worse state every year for want of capital to farm it well. He sold the land and became the purchaser's tenant ; then he found that he had 100/. to live on every year, and his land kept constantly improving in condition. This sort of thing has been going on in England for many years. There is a peasant proprietary in France, a country with a far better soil and climate than England ; but the thing is a failure. Little more than half the produce comes from the land per acre compared with the produce in England, and the peasant proprietors live lives of dirt, penury, and slavery to man, woman, and child (if there is a child). The women have to work unceasingly in the fields ; they have no time to attend to their cottages, which consequently are filthy. These landowners are so poor that they cannot afi'ord fuel, so for warmth in winter they sleep at night in the cow-houses with the pigs and beasts. They are too poor to afford to have children, so they have scarcely any. The French are extremely penurious, and they are content to live on sour bread, sour weak wine, and nothing else. But you are not content with such fare. You are not penurious and cheese - paring skinflints. You are POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 161 Englishmen, and you want a good dinner every day, and a good glass of beer with it. Mr. Boyd Kinneard defends a peasant proprietary, because where it still lingers he has ' known it to answer fairly well.' Well, a cow answers fairly well on straw and water, but it answers very well on turnips and oil-cake. There is, I need hardly say, nothing new in the Socialist's aim at a return to the peasant proprietary of half- barbarous times. Feargus O'Connor tried it. But the deluded peasants were soon ruined, and ended by cursing poor Feargus and all his schemes. In fact, they had no capital, no stock, no implements, and no manure. Mr. Cham- berlain is, I believe, a town gentleman engaged in trade, so one cannot be surprised that he does not know that stock, implements, capital, and manure, have anything to do with farming. But this being so, surely he might make inquiries of people who do understand about these things. Still, though for a labouring man to own a bit of land does not pay him nearly so well as hiring it, some seem to prefer owning to hiring. Therefore it is desirable that the means of becoming an owner should be put within your reach. With this object a company has been formed, called ' The Small Farm and Labourers' Land Association,' which may do good work ; but whatever you do, resist Government meddling in such a matter, as I hope you do the Devil and all his works ; for whenever and wherever a Government meddles it always muddles. Jobbery, roguery, and extravagance always come of it. The Socialists aim M 162 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. at this Government meddling. But what it really means is this. It means trying to force on the country an army of Government officials and an 'enormous increase of rates and taxes to pay their salaries. It means unlimited bribery and corruption. It means political parties giving appointments to men and thus bribing them for their votes and political support. Government officialism is one of the many curses of France, and our own French politicians want to force this curse, as well as all the other French curses, on England. If you wish to be meddled with by Government officials every hour of every day, I think you had better vote for the Liberal candidate. Some few exceptional working men will do fairly well as peasant proprietors so long as they themselves are alive. Therefore, all impediments to such men becoming possessors of bits of land ought to be removed by making land as easy to sell as a cow is, as far as it is possible to do so. The cry for a peasant proprietary is got up by the Caucus. You know what the Caucus is. It is an lorgankaition set np by Birmingham Jews for the destruction of British liberty. If they get their way, a working man will no longer have liberty to sell his pig for what he can get- All prices of all things are to be fixed by the Government, just as they were in barbarous times, when the people were slaves and serfs. In fact, there is to be no liberty to bargain, no liberty to give away property, no liberty anywhere. But these Jews are supposed to have another object POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 163 in advocating the peasant proprietary of barbarous times. It is found that abroad, where there are many peasant proprietors, the way it is worked is this. The peasant buys his bit of land, and borrows the money to buy it with, at very high interest, from Jew money- lenders. The Jews all over the world are the great money-lenders. Now it is easy to imagine these cunning Jews, who manage the Caucus in Birming- ham, Avanting to establish a peasant proprietary in England, in order to get this enormous money-lending- business into the hands of themselves and their brethren. A peasant proprietary would practically end in peasants having instead of their present landlords, who ask 2^ per cent interest, or rent, for the use of their land, Jew landlords, who will force you to pay something between 6 and 20 per cent interest. If it is not paid they seize the land. The Birmingham Caucus is supposed to have been instituted by men of Jewish blood. All true English- men call it (in the way it is conducted) an un-English kind of organization. Large towns are full of cunning Jews. If a sharp money -making town -dweller is called Moses, or Joseph, or Jacob, or Abraham, you may be pretty sure he is a Jew in blood more or less. 164 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. ENCLOSURE OF COMMONS. What do you think the crazy Radicals, who rave against the enclosure of commons, have done? In the South of England there is an enormous district called ' The New Forest.' Much of it is bad land, and not worth cultivation ; but about thirty thousand acres are good. In the natural course of things this would have been enclosed, cultivated, and covered with thriving farms, and happy homes of working men, and England would have been, by so much, greater and richer than she is, and therefore more able, by so much, to resist invasion. But the Radi- cals interfered, and all this addition of happiness, prosperity, and population, is lost to England — per- haps for ever. This is only one instance out of innumerable ones of national loss from Radicalism. No wonder that Radicalism has destroyed and ruined nation after nation, as history tells us — Radicalism is the destroying devil of history. It means war against civilisation and happiness. England was once all common : the hunting- ground of savages. If commons had never been enclosed and cultivated all England would still be the hunting-ground of savages. A savage, as you know, means a miserable, thieving, murdering crea- ture, ignorant one day whether he will have any- thing to eat the next day or not. There are many such people in all civilised countries, where they are called the ' criminal classes.' In a savage POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 165 country they are the only people. Thus, what the Radicals aim at is to turn us into savages again. They succeeded in Greece and Rome, and if you do not take care they will succeed in England. Human nature is human nature, for ever and ever. Every village should have its little common or village green and playground, and every town should have its public parks or playgrounds : but, beyond this, pre- venting the enclosure of commons, and restoring land to commons again means making less, just by so much, the population, the wealth, the power, and the greatness of England. Thus, when the Radical cries out, ' The land for the people ! ' he is really crying out, ' Less food for the people, less wages for the people, and fewer people to get wages, food, or any- thing else ! ' At last there would be nobody in the deserted and desolate country but vagabonds and wretched people, trying to live as the gipsies do ; in fact, we shall all be savages again. ' THE LAND FOR THE PEOPLE ! ' Some Radicals, who must have strange ideas about the commandment, ' Thou shalt not steal,' tell you that all land must be stolen from the present owners and given to the people. Now, what does this mean ? If it means any- 166 POLITICAL LEAFLETS. thino:, it must mean that all land must be divided equally amongst all grown-up Englishmen, and in the course of a few years it must be further divided equally amongst their children, and so on for ever. Now, if any assertion could be invented more absurd than this, I should like to hear it. All the land- divided equally amongst ' the people ! ' Sailors, tailors, barbers, bishops, dukes, princes, shoemakers, colliers, criminals, paupers, tramps, and beggars — each to have his little field ! Fancy a barber's ap- prentice in a London back- street, who has passed his life shaving chins at a halfpenny a chin, waking up some morning and finding himself a landed proprietor, and owner of a field of turnips on the top of the Yorkshire Wolds ! Now it is easy to laugh at all this, but it is not a laughing matter ; for Radical thievings and lyings have brought countries down to ruin time after time. The great historian, Mr. Froude, tells us, that in Greece, two thousand years ago, the Radicals went about telling the same lies as they do now in England, making the same promises, in order to get votes at elections, and uttering word for word the same plausible clap-trap, and what was the consequence ? The Greek people believed the lies and gave their votes to the Radicals. Property everywhere was plundered, and gradually the neces- sary consequences followed : the Greeks lost all their power, became a poor, helpless, enslaved people, and have remained so nearly up to the present time. Men may come and men may go, but Radicalism remains for ever and ever — the great destructive POLITICAL LEAFLETS. 167 principle in the lives of nations. If Radicalism gets the upper hand in England, nothing on earth can prevent England going the way of ancient Greece. Land in England was once all common land ; that is, it was the common hunting-ground of savages, covered for the most part with forests, swamps, gorse, and heather, and worthless till the swamps were drained, forests cut down, gorse and brushwood cleared away, farm-buildings built, fences made, &c. ; all this costing an enormous amount of money. It is reckoned that the landowners have, in the last forty years, spent sixty miUion pounds in draining alone ; and draining is only one small item in the money that has, in the course of ages, been spent on giving value to the land, which before that had no value. Thus, what the Radicals, who cry out, ' The land for the people ! ' in fact say, is this : they say to you, ' Wait till rich men have made worthless land valu- able by spending a vast amount of money, brains, and energy upon it, and then steal it from them.' It is like the rogue and the pig. A man had a sucking- pig, which his neighbour coveted. But he said to himself, ' I will not steal the pig now for it is worth nothing, but I will wait till much food has been given it, and then, when it has become a very large pig, I will steal it.' And he did so. THE END. LONDON: Printed by Stra.ngewat & Sons, Tower Street, Upper St. Martin's Lane.