PRACTICAL POLARITIES.
Fable of the shield—Progress and conservatism—English and
French colonisation—Law-abidingness—Irish land question—True
conservative legislation—Ultra-conservatism—Law and
education—Patriotism—Jingoism and parochialism—True
statesmanship—Free trade and protection—Capital
and labour—Egoism and altruism—Socialism and
_laissez faire_—Contracts—Rights and duties of
landlords—George’s theory—State interference—Railways—Post
Office—Telegraphs—National defence—Concluding remarks.
A well-known fable tells how in the olden time two knights were riding
in opposite directions along a green road overarched by the trees of
an ancient forest. It was a bright morning in early summer, with the
green leaves freshly bursting in contrasted foliage; the sun had just
risen over the tops of the trees in clouds of golden and crimson glory;
dewdrops were glittering like diamonds on every twig and blade of grass;
and the joyous birds carolling their loudest song to greet the opening
day.
Everything was fresh and cheerful as of a new-born earth, and so were the
spirits of the two youthful knights, who were pricking forth in search of
adventures. He whose face was turned towards the West, where the rising
sun had last set, wore a primrose scarf over his cuirass, and had on his
shield a quaint device, which, on closer inspection, might be seen to be
a tombstone with the inscription,
‘I was well, would be better, and here I am.’
He rode along musing on the heroic legends of the past, and wishing
that he had been a knight of Arthur’s round table to ride out with the
blameless king against invading heathen.
The second knight, whose face was turned towards the rising sun, bore an
azure shield with a different device. On it was depicted the good Sir
James Douglass charging the serried Paynim army, and, as he charged,
flinging before him into the hostile ranks the casket containing the
heart of Robert Bruce, and shouting for battle-cry—
Go thou aye forward, as was thy wont.
As he rode his fancy wrought the fairy web of a day-dream, in which he
saw himself delivering the fair princess Liberty from the fiery dragon
Prejudice and the stolid giant Obstruction.
The knights met just where an ancient oak of mighty bulk stretched
overhead a huge branch across the path, as some aged athlete might
stretch out an arm rigid with gnarled and knotted muscles, to show
younger generations how Olympian laurels were won when Pollux or Hercules
plied the cestus. From this branch a shield hung suspended.
‘Good morrow, fair knight,’ said he of the primrose scarf; ‘prithee tell
me if thou knowest what means this golden shield suspended here.’
‘I marvel at it myself, good Sir Knight,’ responded the other; ‘but you
mistake in calling the shield golden; it is of silver.’
‘Your eyes must be of the dullest,’ said the first knight, ‘if you
mistake gold for silver.’
‘Not so dull as yours,’ retorted the other, ‘if you mistake silver for
gold.’
The argument waxed hot, and, as usual in such cases, as tempers grew weak
adjectives grew strong. Soon, like the old Homeric heroes when Greek met
Trojan
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,
winged words of fire and fury darted from each mouth, and epithets were
exchanged, of which ‘stupid old Tory’ and ‘low, vulgar Radical’ were
among the least unparliamentary. At length the fatal words ‘You lie’
escaped simultaneously from both, and on the instant spears were couched,
steeds spurred, and, red with rage, they encountered each other in full
career. Such was the momentum that both men and horses rolled over, even
as the Templar went down before the spear of Ivanhoe within the lists of
Ashby-de-la-Zouch. But, like the redoubted knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert,
each sprang to his feet and drew his sword, eager to redeem the fortune
of war in deadly combat. Like two surly boars with bristling backs and
foaming tusks quarrelling for the right of way in Indian jungle, or tawny
lions in Numidian desert tearing one another to pieces for the smiles
of a leonine Helen, the heroes clashed together, cutting, slashing,
parrying, foyning, and traversing, until at length, bleeding and
breathless, they paused for a moment, leaning on their swords to recover
second wind.
Just then an aged hermit appeared on the scene, drawn thither by the
sound of the combat.
‘Pause, my sons,’ he said, ‘and tell me what is the cause of this furious
encounter.’
‘Yonder false villain protests,’ said the one, ‘that the shield which
hangs there is of gold.’
‘And that lying varlet persists that it is of silver,’ said the other.
The hermit smiled, and said, ‘Hold your hands, good sirs, for a single
moment, and use your remaining strength to exchange places and look at
the opposite side of the shield.’
They obeyed his words, and found to their confusion that they had been
fighting in a quarrel in which each was right and each wrong.
‘Father,’ they said, ‘we are fools. Grant us thy pardon for our folly and
absolution for our sin.’
‘Absolution,’ said the hermit, ‘is soon granted for faults which arise
from the innate tendency of poor human nature. Wiser and older men than
you are prone to see only their own side of a question. Come, then, with
me to my humble hermitage; there will I dress your wounds and offer you
my frugal fare; happy if from this lesson you may learn for the rest of
your lives, before indulging in vehement assertions and proceeding to
violent extremities, to “look at the other side of the shield.”’
The application of this fable to the polarity of politics will be obvious
to every intelligent reader. As the earth is kept in its orbit by the
due balance of centripetal and centrifugal forces, so is every civilised
society held together by the opposite influences of conservative and
progressive tendencies. The conservative tendency may be likened to the
centripetal force which binds the mass together, while the progressive
one resembles that centrifugal force which prevents it from being
concentrated in a rigid and inert central body without life or motion.
As Herbert Spencer truly says, ‘from antagonistic social tendencies
there always results not a medium state, but a rhythm between opposite
states. Now the one greatly preponderates, and presently, by reaction,
there comes a preponderance of the other.’ So it is with the antagonism
of conservative and liberal tendencies. In the societies of the ancient
world, and to the present day in the East, the conservative tendency
unduly preponderates, and they crystallise into inert masses in the
form of despotisms, and of sacerdotal or administrative hierarchies. At
times the pent-up forces which make for change accumulate, and, as in
the French Revolution, explode with destructive violence, shattering the
old and bringing in new eras. But unless the balance between liberty and
order is tolerably preserved in the individual citizens whose aggregate
forms the society, after a period more or less prolonged of violent
oscillations they crystallise anew into fresh forms, in which another
military dynasty, or it may be administrative centralisation under the
name of a republic, again asserts the preponderance of the centripetal
force.
The happiest nations are those in which the individual character of
individual citizens supplies the requisite balance. An ideal society is
one in which every citizen is at the same time liberal and conservative;
law-abiding, and yet with a strong instinct for liberty of thought and
action, for progress and for individual independence. It is among the
Teutonic races, especially when they are placed in favourable conditions
as in new countries, or in old countries where for ages
Freedom has widened slowly down,
From precedent to precedent,
that this happy ideal is most nearly realised. Hence it is that these
races are more and more coming to the front and surviving in the struggle
for existence.
The contrast of English and French colonisation affords a striking
instance of this difference of races. A century and a half ago France
stood as well as England in the race for colonial supremacy. She had
the start of us in Canada, and her pioneers had explored the Great
Lakes, the Mississippi, and a large part of the continent of North
America west of the Rocky Mountains. To-day there are sixty millions
of an English-speaking population in that continent, while French is
scarcely spoken beyond the single province of Quebec. Political events
had doubtless something to do with this result; but it has been mainly
owing to the innate qualities of the two races, for even the genius of
Chatham might have failed to establish our supremacy if it had not been
backed by the superior intelligence, energy, and staying power of the
English colonists. The ultimate cause of the triumph of the English over
the French element in America and India is doubtless to be found in
the stronger individualism of the former. The character of the French
is eminently social, they like to live in societies, and shrink from
encountering the hardships and still more the isolation of the life
of early settlers. They like to be administered, and shrink from the
responsibility of hewing out, each for themselves, their own path in the
relations of civil life or in the depths of primæval forests.
It is so to the present day, and they fail conspicuously in creating a
large French population even at their own doors in Algeria; while in
their more distant colonies they conquer and annex, but to see their
commerce fall into the hands of English, Germans, and Chinese, as in
Cochin China, or to stagnate as in New Caledonia. As a witty French
writer puts it, the trade of a remote French colony may be summed up
as—imports, absinthe and cigars; exports, stamped paper and red-tape.
Individualism in this case has been fairly pitted against Socialism, and
has beaten it out of the field by the verdict of Fact, which is more
conclusive than any amount of abstract argument.
To return, however, to the field of politics. Where the essential quality
of being law-abiding is wanting in individuals, it is hopeless to look
for real liberty. The centripetal force in societies, as in planets,
must be supplied somehow, or they would fly into dissolution; and if not
by the integration of the tendencies of the individual units, then by
external restrictions. Socialists may be allowed to make inflammatory
harangues in a non-explosive atmosphere, but hardly to let off their
fireworks in a powder-magazine. In order, however, that a nation shall be
law-abiding, it is essential that the great majority should feel that,
on the whole, the law is their friend. It is not in human nature to love
that which injures, or to respect that which is felt to be unjust. The
volcanic explosion of the French Revolution was due to the feeling of
the French nation, with the exception of a few courtiers, nobles, and
priests, that the existing order of things was their enemy, and law a
tool in the hands of their oppressors. Even among English-speaking races
we find, in the unfortunate instance of Ireland, that under specially
unfavourable circumstances the same effects may be produced by the same
causes. What has English law practically meant for centuries to an
average peasant of Kerry or Connemara? It has meant an irresistible
malevolent power, which comes down on him with writs of eviction to
compel him to pay a high rent on his own improvements. More than half the
population of Ireland consists of tenants and their families occupying
small holdings, paying less than 10_l._ a year of rent. Of an immense
majority of these small holdings two things may be safely asserted:
first, that the total gross value of the produce is insufficient, after
paying the rent, to leave a decent subsistence for the cultivator.
Secondly, that this rent is levied to a great extent on the improvements
of the tenant or his predecessors. Throughout the poorer parts of Ireland
the greater part of the soil, in its natural state of bog or mountain,
is not worth a rent of a shilling an acre; but some poor peasant, urged
by the earth-hunger which results from the absence of other sources of
employment, squats upon it, builds a wretched cottage, delves, drains,
fences, and reclaims a few acres of land so as to bear a scanty crop of
oats and potatoes. When he has done so the landlord or landlord’s agent
comes to him and says, ‘This land is worth ten or fifteen shillings an
acre, according to the standard of rents in the district, and you must
pay it or turn out;’ and the law backs him in saying so by writs of
eviction and police. Put yourself in poor Pat’s place, and say if you
would love the law and be law-abiding.
It would take me too far from the scope of this volume into the field of
contemporary politics if I attempted to point out who is to blame for
this state of things, or what are the remedies. It is enough to say that
this is the real Irish problem, and to point to it as an instance of the
calamitous effects which inevitably follow when the instincts of a whole
population are brought by an unfavourable combination of circumstances
into necessary and natural antagonism with the laws which they are bound
to obey.
Conservative legislation, by whatever party it is introduced, really
means making the law correspond with the common sense and common
morality of all except the criminal and crotchety classes, so that the
majority may feel it to be their friend. For instance, the most truly
conservative measure of recent times was probably that which legalised
trades’ unions and gave working-men full liberty to combine for an
increase of wages. The old legal maxim, that such combinations were
illegal as being in restraint of trade, was so obviously an invention of
the members of the upper caste who wore horsehair wigs, to give their
fellows of the same caste who employed labour an unfair advantage, that
it could not fail to cause feelings of discontent and exasperation
among the masses of working-men. By its repeal the sting has been taken
out of Socialism, and the British working-man has come to be, in the
main, a reasonable citizen, on whom incitements to violence in order to
inaugurate Utopias, fall as lightly as the howlings of the barren east
wind on the chimney-tops. It has led also to reasonable and peaceful
adjustment of disputes between employers and labourers by arbitration
and sliding-scales instead of by strikes and lock-outs. In the United
States of America the law-abiding instinct is even stronger. We find that
strikes attended with violence are almost always confined mainly to the
foreign element of recently imported immigrants, and that the native-born
American citizen considers the laws as his own laws, and is determined
to have them respected.
The balance between the conservative and progressive tendencies is,
however, at the best, always imperfect, and inclines too much sometimes
in one and sometimes in the other direction. In England the conservative
tendency has had on the whole too much preponderance. I do not speak
of political institutions, for in these of late years the balance has
been pretty equally preserved; but in practical matters there is still a
good deal of old-fashioned stolid obstruction. This is most apparent in
law and in education. The common or judge-made law, though on the whole
well-intentioned and upright, is fettered by so many technicalities and
musty precedents, that it fails in a great many instances to be, what
civil law ought to be, a cheap, speedy, and intelligible instrument
for enforcing honest dealings between man and man. One of our greatest
railway contractors once said to me, ‘If I want to make an agreement
which shall be absolutely binding, I make it myself on a sheet of
note-paper; if I want to have a loophole, I send it to my lawyer to have
it drawn up in legal language and engrossed on sheets of parchment.’
Another man of large experience in commercial and financial matters laid
down this axiom: ‘If you want to know what is the law in a doubtful case,
reason out what is the common-sense view of it, and assume that the
direct opposite is probably the law.’ These may be extreme instances,
as all such epigrammatic sentences generally are, but it is undeniable
that they have a considerable basis of substantial truth; and that law,
with its dilatory processes, its enormous expense, and its uncertain
conclusions, may be, and often is, not an instrument of justice, but a
weapon in the hands of an unscrupulous adventurer or of a dishonest rich
man, to extort blackmail or to defeat just claims.
Again, what nation but England would tolerate so long a system of land
law, so bristling with antiquated technicalities, so tedious, and so
expensive, as almost to amount to a prohibition of the transfer of land
in small quantities; or could let the private interests of a mere handful
of professional lawyers stand in the way of a codification of laws and a
registration of titles?
Education is another subject which shows how difficult it is to move
the sluggish ultra-conservative instincts of the English mind in the
direction of progress, when not stimulated by political conflict. What
is education? The word tells its own story; it is to _draw out_, not to
_cram in_; to unfold the capacities of the growing mind, strengthen the
reasoning faculty, create an interest in the surrounding universe; in a
word, to excite a love of knowledge and impart the means of acquiring it.
For the mass of the population, education is necessarily confined in a
great measure to the latter object. The three R’s—reading, writing, and
arithmetic—are indispensable requisites, and the acquirement of these,
with perhaps a few elements of history and geography, absorbs nearly all
the time and opportunity that can be afforded for attendance at school.
For any culture beyond this the great majority must depend on themselves
in after life. But there are a large number of parents of the upper and
middle classes who can and do keep their children at school for eight or
ten years, and spend a large sum of money in giving them what is called
a higher education. What is there to show for this time and money, even
in the case of the highest schools, which ought to give the highest
education? On the credit side, a little Latin and less Greek, plenty of
cricket and athletics, good physical training, and, best of all, on the
whole a manly, honourable, and gentlemanlike spirit. But on the debit
side, absolute ignorance, except in the case of a few unusually clever
and ambitious boys, of all that a cultivated man of the nineteenth
century ought to know. No French, no German, and, what is worse, no
English. The average boy can neither write his own language legibly nor
grammatically, and, if he goes straight from a public school into a
competitive examination, stands an excellent chance of being plucked for
spelling. And, what is worst of all, he not only knows nothing, but cares
to know nothing; his reasoning faculty has never been cultivated, and his
interest in interesting things has never been awakened. What is the first
lesson he has had to learn? ‘Propria quæ maribus dicantur mascula dicas,’
that is, words appropriated to males are called masculine—a lesson which
elicits as much reasoning faculty, and creates as much interest, as
if he had been made to commit to memory that things made of gold are
called golden. Suppose instead of this that the lesson had been that two
volumes of hydrogen combine with one volume of oxygen to form water.
The exercise to the memory is the same, but how different is the amount
of thought and interest evoked, especially if the experiment is made
before the class and each boy has to repeat it for himself! How many new
subjects of interest would this open up in the mind of any lad of average
intelligence! How strange that there should be airs other than the air
we breathe, which can be weighed and measured, and that two of them by
combining shall produce their exact weight of a substance so unlike them
as water! Or if the exercise of a class were to look through a microscope
at the leaf of a plant or wing of an insect, and try who could best draw
what they had seen and write a description of it in a legible hand and in
good English, how many faculties would this call into play compared with
the dull routine of parsing a Latin sentence or writing a halting copy of
Greek iambics! Even grammar, the one thing which is supposed to be taught
thoroughly, is taught so unintelligently that it awakens no interest
beyond that of a parrot learning by rote. From ‘propria quæ maribus’
the scholar passes to ‘as in præsenti perfectum format in avi,’ without
an attempt to explain what language really means, how it originates
from root-words, and how these inflections of ‘as’ and ‘avi’ are part
of the devices which certain families of mankind, including our own,
have invented as a mechanism for attaching shades of meaning, such as
present and past, to the primitive root. Even the alphabet intelligently
taught opens up wide fields of interesting matter as to the history of
ancient nations, and their successive attempts to analyse the component
sounds of their spoken words, and to pass from primitive picture-writing
to phonetic symbols. But the instructors of the budding manhood of the
_élite_ of the nation, like Gallio, ‘care for none of these things,’
and the organisation of our higher schools seems to be stereotyped on
the principle that they are made for teachers rather than for scholars,
and that their chief _raison d’être_ is to enable a limited number of
highly respectable gentlemen from the Universities to realise comfortable
incomes with a maximum of holidays and a minimum of trouble. And the
parents support the system because so many of them really reverence rank
more than knowledge, and are willing to compound for their sons growing
up ignorant, idle, and extravagant, if by any chance they can count a
lord or two among their acquaintance.
Mr. Francis Galton, in the course of his interesting inquiries as to the
effect of heredity and education on character and attainments, took the
very practical course of addressing a set of questions to some hundred
and eighty of our most distinguished men as to the hereditary qualities
of their ancestors, and the various influences which they considered had
done most to promote or to retard their success in life. Of course he
received a variety of answers, ‘quot homines tot sententiæ,’ but upon one
point there was a striking unanimity. ‘They almost all expressed a hatred
of grammar and the classics, and an utter distaste for the old-fashioned
system of education. There were none who had passed through this old high
and dry education who were satisfied with it. Those who came from the
greater schools usually did nothing there, and have abused the system
heartily.’
And yet the system goes on, and the Eton Latin grammar will probably be
taught, and hexameters written, for another generation. Surely the needle
swings here too strongly towards the negative or obstructive pole.
The instances are so numerous in social and practical life in which it is
necessary to look at both sides of the shield that the difficulty is in
selection. Take the case of patriotism. Patriotism is beyond all doubt
a great virtue—in fact, the fertile mother of many of the higher and
heroic virtues. Who does not sympathise with the legends of Wallace and
William Tell, and scorn with Walter Scott
the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own, my native land?
And yet how thin a line of partition separates it from narrow-minded
arrogance and insolent ignorance! Reflected in the latter form from
Paris, in hysterical shouts now of ‘À Berlin, À Berlin!’ and now ‘À
bas perfide Albion!’ we call it ‘Chauvinism,’ and recognise it as an
unlovely exhibition. But call it ‘Jingoism,’ and let it take the form
of the bellowings of some stupid bull, as the red flag, now of a French
and now of a Russian scare, crosses his line of vision, and we are
blind to its deformity. Still there is another side to the shield, for
even ‘Jingoism,’ which is only another word for patriotism run mad,
is more respectable than the opposite extreme of a sordid and narrow
minded parochialism, which shrinks behind the ‘silver streak,’ measures
everything by the standard of pounds, shillings, and pence, and, with
what Tennyson calls
The craven fear of being great,
groans over the responsibilities of extended empire. The growth of such
a spirit among prominent politicians of the advanced Liberal school
seems to me one of the most alarming symptoms of the day; but I take
comfort when I reflect that the most democratic community in the world,
that of the United States, is precisely the one which has shown most
determination to maintain its national greatness, if necessary by the
sword, and has made the greatest sacrifices for that object. If the
‘copperheads’ were a miserable minority in America, why should we be
afraid of our ‘English copperheads’ ever becoming a majority in Old
England?
In this, as in all similar cases, it is evident that true statesmanship
consists in hitting the happy mean, and doing the right thing at the
right time; and that true strength stands firm in the middle between
the two opposite poles, while weakness is drawn by one or other of the
conflicting attractions into
The falsehood of extremes.
When Sir Robert Peel some forty years ago announced his conversion by the
unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden, and free trade was inaugurated,
with results which were attended with the most brilliant success, every
one expected that the conversion of the rest of the civilised world was
only a question of time, and that a short time. Few would have been found
bold enough to predict that forty years later England would stand almost
alone in the world in adherence to free-trade principles, and that the
protectionist heresy would not only be strengthened and confirmed among
Continental nations such as France and Germany, but actually adopted by
large and increasing majorities in the United States, Canada, Australia,
and other English-speaking communities. Yet such is the actual fact at
the present day. In spite of the Cobden Club and of arguments which
to the average English mind appear irresistible, free trade has been
steadily losing ground for the last twenty years, and nation after
nation, colony after colony, sees its protectionist majority increasing
and its free-trade minority dwindling.
It is evident there must be some real cause for such a universal
phenomenon. In countries like France and Russia we may attribute it to
economical ignorance and the influence of cliques of manufacturers and
selfish interests; but the people of Germany, and still more of the
United States, Canada, and Australia, are as intelligent as ourselves,
and quite as shrewd in seeing where those interests really lie. They are
fettered by no traditional prejudices, and their political instincts
rather lie towards freedom and against the creation of anything like
an aristocracy of wealthy manufacturers. And yet, after years of
free discussion, they have become more and more hardened in their
protectionist heresies.
What does this prove? That there are two sides to the shield, and not, as
we fancied in our English insularity, only one.
Free trade is undoubtedly the best, or rather the only possible, policy
for a country like England, with thirty millions of inhabitants,
producing food for less than half the number, and depending on foreign
trade for the supplies necessary to keep the other half alive. It is the
best policy also for a country which, owing to its mineral resources,
its accessibility by sea to markets, its accumulated capital, and the
inherited qualities, physical and moral, of its working population, has
unrivalled advantages for cheap production. Nor can any dispassionate
observer dispute that in England, which is such a country, free trade
has worked well. It has not worked miracles, it has not introduced an
industrial millennium, the poor are still with us, and it has not saved
us from our share of commercial depressions. But, on the whole, national
wealth has greatly increased, and, what is more important, national
well-being has increased with it, the mass of the population, and
especially the working classes, get better wages, work shorter hours, and
are better fed, better clothed, and better educated than they were forty
years ago.
This is one side of the shield, and it is really a golden and not an
illusory one. But look at the other side. Take the case of a country
where totally opposite conditions prevail: where there is no surplus
population, unlimited land, limited capital, labour scarce and dear, and
no possibility of competing in the foreign or even in the home market
with the manufactures which, with free trade, would be poured in by
countries like England, in prior possession of all the elements of cheap
production. It is by no means so clear that protection, to enable native
industries to take root and grow, may not in such cases be the wisest
policy.
Take as a simple illustration the case of an Australian colony imposing
an import duty on foreign boots and shoes. There is not a doubt that
this is practically taxing the immense majority of colonists who wear
and do not make these articles. But, on the other hand, it makes the
colony a possible field for emigration for all the shoemakers of Europe,
and shoemaking a trade to which any Australian with a large family can
bring up one of his sons. Looking at it from the strict point of view of
the most rigid political economist, the maximum production of wealth,
which is the better policy? The production of wealth, we must recollect,
depends on labour, and productive labour depends on the labourer finding
his tools—that is, employment at which he can work. A labourer who cannot
find work at living wages is worse than a zero: he is a negative quantity
as far as the accumulation of wealth is concerned. On the other hand,
every workman who finds work, even if it may not be of the ideally best
description, is a wealth-producing machine. What he spends on himself and
his family gives employment to other workmen, and the work must be poor
indeed if the produce of a year’s labour is not more than the cost of a
year’s subsistence. The surplus adds to the national capital, and thus
capital and population go on increasing in geometrical progression. The
first problem, therefore, for a new or a backward country is to find ‘a
fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work,’ for as many hands as possible.
The problem of making that employment the most productive possible is
a secondary one, which will solve itself in each case rather by actual
practice than by abstract theory.
This much, however, is pretty clear, that in order to secure the maximum
of employment it must be varied. All are not fit for agricultural work,
and, even if they were, if the conditions of soil and climate favour
large estates and sheep or cattle runs rather than small farms, a large
amount of capital may provide work for only a small number of labourers.
On social and moral grounds, also, apart from dry considerations of
political economy, progress intelligence and a higher standard of
life are more likely to be found with large cities, manufactures, and
a variety of industrial occupations than with a dead level of a few
millionaires and a few shepherds, or of a few landlords and a dense
population of poor peasants. If protection is the price which must be
paid to render such a larger life possible, it may be sound policy to
pay it, and the result seems to show that neither it nor free trade is
inconsistent with rapid progress, while, on the other hand, neither of
them affords an absolute immunity from the evils that dog the footsteps
of progress, and from the periods of reaction and depression which
accompany vicissitudes of trade.
Here, as in other cases, there are two sides of the shield, and true
statesmanship consists in seeing both, and doing the right thing, at the
right place, and at the right time. If free trade is, as we believe,
ultimately to prevail, it will be an affair of time. The real trial of
protection comes when it has stimulated production to a point which gluts
the home market and leaves a surplus which must be exported. Exports of
articles the cost of which has been artificially raised by protection,
cannot compete in the world’s market with the cheaper products of
free-trade countries. Vicissitudes therefore of prosperity and depression
must tend to become more frequent and more severe, and, if production
goes on, a point must be reached where, at whatever cost, it must either
be arrested or made capable of competing in the wider market. The United
States are probably not far from such a point, and it would have been
already reached but for the immense and unexhausted resources of that
vast continent. In France the point has apparently been reached, and we
find that, with a lower scale of wages than in England, it is becoming
more and more difficult every day to maintain that lower scale, and the
export trade of its manufactured goods to foreign markets.
Protection, leading to higher wages and profits than can be permanently
maintained, and artificially enhancing the cost of living to the working
classes, threatens, more and more every day, to introduce strained
relations between capital and labour in most countries of Europe.
The relation between capital and labour affords a good instance of the
inevitable error of applying hard and fast logical conclusions to the
complex and ever-varying problems of actual life. Ricardo and other
distinguished writers on political economy have assumed that the two
constitute a fundamental antagonistic polarity. Wealth, they say, is the
joint product of capital and labour, and, as in the case of a cake which
has to be divided between C and L, the more C gets the less is left for
L, and _vice versâ_. The theory sounds plausible: but what says fact? In
the most unmistakable manner it pronounces, as the outcome of practical
experience, that the profits of capital and the wages of labour rise
and fall together. High profits mean high wages, rising profits rising
wages, falling profits falling wages. It has been proved so in a thousand
instances, and not one can be quoted where the one factor has varied in
an inverse, and not in a direct, ratio with the other. It is obvious that
there must be some fallacy in Ricardo’s argument. The fallacy is this: he
assumes the cake to be of fixed dimensions, whereas in point of fact it
varies, sometimes diminishing to zero, or even to a negative quantity,
at others expanding to many times its original size. A new gold-field is
discovered in a remote country, and forthwith profits rise to cent. per
cent., and wages to a pound a day; a bad season and depression of trade
overtake an old country, and the gross value of the produce of many a
farm is insufficient to cover expenses and depreciation, even if the
labourers worked for nothing. The polarity is therefore confined to the
limited and temporary case of the division of the profit, where there
is a profit, in particular trades and in individual instances. And this
is regulated mainly by the accustomed scale of wages and standard of
living of the workmen, and their opportunities of finding employment
elsewhere if dissatisfied with the terms offered to them. On the whole,
it may be said that capital has the best of it on a rising, and wages on
a falling, market. A manufacturer or mine-owner’s profit may rise from
five to twenty per cent. without quadrupling the rate of wages; but, on
the other hand, it may fall from twenty per cent. to five, or even for a
time below zero, without a proportionate diminution in the price paid for
labour. Capital is, in fact, the great insurer of labour, the flywheel
which regulates the motion of the industrial machine. This will be best
illustrated by a practical instance. The Brighton Railway Company for
several consecutive years paid no dividend, or only a trifling amount,
on the shareholders’ capital, but during the whole of this time it gave
steady employment at good wages to upwards of ten thousand workmen.
The Blaenavon Coal and Iron Company in South Wales was for many years
a losing concern, and successive capitalists lost the best part of a
million pounds in it, until at length it was reorganised with a small
capital and became a fairly prosperous concern. During the whole of this
time it gave employment at fair wages to several thousand workmen. Which
had the best of it in these two cases, capital or labour, and where
would the workmen have been on any communistic or co-operative system?
In fact it will be apparent to any one who will study dispassionately
the statistics of any line of inquiry, such as the scale of wages, the
price of provisions, the accumulations of savings banks and provident
societies, &c., for the last twenty years, that the working classes have
had the lion’s share of the vast increase which has taken place in the
wealth and income of the nation. I am glad that it is so, for it is
better, both morally and politically, that the condition of the masses
should be improved, and their standard of living raised, than that
capital should accumulate too exclusively in large masses.
Still there is a good deal to be said for such large accumulations.
Let us go to the United States of America for an illustration, where
everything is on a large scale, and colossal fortunes have been made in
a few years. The _modus operandi_ by which most of these fortunes have
been made may be described according to the way we look at it, either
as railway jobbing or as pioneering the way in useful enterprise. The
construction of the first railway across the continent to California
is a typical instance. A clique or syndicate of wealthy speculators
make surveys and estimates of a line across deserts and over mountain
ranges, and ascertain pretty accurately what it will cost. They form
a company with a capital of double that cost, and by subventions from
the Government, grants of land, and sale of mortgage bonds, raise the
half really required, and hold the other half in shares as profit in
paper. The line is made, and if the traffic turns out well, and there
is a period of speculation in the money market, the paper is turned
into dollars, and, if the line really costs, say, 10,000,000_l._ or
20,000,000_l._, the promoters realise an equal amount as profit.
This has two sides to it: it is doubtless bad for the public to have
to pay rates which give a return on twice the actual cost, and the
possession of a close monopoly in the hands of a few millionaires may
be abused to the detriment of individual traders. But, on the other
hand, the railway could not have been made in any other way. If it had
been necessary to wait until the slow growth of population insured such
a traffic as would induce the ordinary public to subscribe for shares
at par, you might have waited for twenty years before a single mile of
railway was made west of the Mississippi. Nor is this all: the enormous
profit realised in the first of these enterprises led to a rush of rich
speculators into the lottery of pushing railways ahead of traffic, in
which there were such magnificent prizes. The continent was covered by
new railways built to create new traffic rather than to provide for
that which already existed. And the traffic was created, though, as
the lottery contained blanks as well as prizes, many of the original
promoters were ruined. The second great line spanning the continent—the
Northern Pacific—ruined two successive sets of promoters, and is only now
beginning to be moderately successful.
But the final result has been that while British India, which went on
what may be called the respectable system of getting a pound’s worth of
work for every pound raised, has only 12,000 miles of railway, the United
States, under the speculative system, has got 120,000 miles. I cannot
doubt that the national wealth of America is greater at the present day
than if there had been no Jay Goulds or Vanderbilts, and the construction
of her railways had been delayed on the average for twenty years.
The contrast between labour and capital or free trade and protection is
only a particular case of the larger polarity between what is called in
scientific language egoism and altruism, or, in more popular phraseology,
individualism and socialism. According to one theory, the best result
is obtained by leaving individuals as free as possible to act on
their own suggestions of their duties and interests, and confining the
intervention of the State to enforcing laws for the protection of life
and property, and such measures as are obviously necessary for the safety
of society. According to the other theory, the State ought to interfere
wherever the results of individual liberty lead to abuses, and should
endeavour to create a society as near to ideal perfection as possible,
by administering and regulating the public and private affairs of its
citizens. It is obvious that the question has two sides, that extreme
conclusions in either direction are, as is always the case, invariably
false. Individualism carried too far would disintegrate society. It would
be impossible to leave it to the short-sighted selfishness of every
citizen to say whether an army and navy should be maintained for national
defence, and taxes should be levied for their support.
Individualism also easily passes over into a hard and cruel selfishness,
which recognises no obligation beyond the letter of the law, and acts
practically on the principle of ‘Every one for himself, and the devil
take the hindmost.’ It is this phase of individualism which makes
enthusiasts and men of strong moral and religious sympathies declaim so
vehemently against _laissez faire_, and cry aloud, like Carlyle, for a
hero or benevolent despot who is to scourge humanity into the practice of
all the virtues.
On the other hand, Socialism, if not confined within rigid limits
of experience and common sense, is even more destructive in its
consequences. Civilised society is based on the security of private
property and the observance of contracts. If these are liable, not
merely to be regulated in extreme and exceptional cases, but to be
absolutely condemned in principle, as by Socialists of the Proudhon
school, who declare, ‘La propriété c’est le vol;’ or overruled and set
aside whenever they are thought to conflict with humanitarian scruples or
sentimental aspirations, society would be dissolved into its elements,
to crystallise anew about some military dictator or other strong form
of repressive government, who could restore it to a state of stable
equilibrium in accordance with these fundamental laws.
No society based on the community of goods has ever existed, except on a
very limited scale and for a very short time, under some strong temporary
influence such as religious excitement. In the early Christian Church it
only existed as long as its members were a handful of humble individuals
who were impressed with the idea that the end of the world was close at
hand, and that sacrifices made on earth would be repaid at an early day
with compound interest in heaven. They acted on what was almost as much a
principle of enlightened selfishness as if they had placed their money on
the best possible security at the highest possible interest.
The only existing society, as far as I am aware, which has everything
in common, is a small sect of Shakers in the United States, which owes
its limited success to two conditions—first, that there is no marrying
or giving in marriage; secondly, that a member invented a patent
rat-trap—conditions which are hardly likely to survive in the struggle
for life and become a type for general adoption.
The nearest approach to Communism in practical operation on a large
scale is that of the village communities of Russia and parts of India,
which certainly show no signs of being progressive types destined to
gain ground. On the contrary, they fail to fulfil what is the first
condition of an agricultural community, that of obtaining a fair average
produce from the soil, and the more enterprising and intelligent moujiks
or ryots invariably seek to obtain something which they can call their
own and are not obliged to share with the idle and improvident. A
conclusive objection to all schemes of Socialism or Communism is, that
they not only crush out all individual initiative and enterprise in
material life, but that they also destroy all incentives to individual
charity and benevolence. Why make sacrifices to help others, if they
are already helped at your expense by the State? This is no theoretical
objection, but has been proved practically by the history of the poor
laws. What scope for individual charity was there in a parish like that
in Buckinghamshire, where under the old poor law the rate had risen
to twenty shillings in the pound, and the cultivation of the soil was
abandoned? Or even in less extreme cases, any one who is acquainted with
remote rural parishes inhabited by cotters and small farmers must be
aware that the poor law operates strongly to destroy the feeling of manly
independence and family affection which induced the poor to support their
own aged and infirm relatives.
In many parts of Scotland with which I am personally acquainted men who
a generation ago would have thought it a disgrace to ask for help to
support an aged father or mother, now think it only fair play, after
having contributed for years to the poor rate, to try and get something
out of it in return.
Altruism, as Herbert Spencer well puts it, if carried to excess, defeats
itself, for in annihilating egoistic vices it annihilates egoistic
virtues, and the result is zero—a result which, as ‘nature abhors a
vacuum,’ can happily never be attained, and the precepts of the Sermon on
the Mount must always remain maxims of private morality, rather than of
State regulation.
It is of little use, however, to deal with such generalities; as long as
we confine ourselves to extreme instances on either side, it is as easy
as it is idle to refute them. Profitable discussion only begins when
we enter on the wide intermediate space which lies between the extreme
frontier provinces, and, instead of arguing for absolute conclusions,
endeavour to discover the happy mean in doubtful cases, where there
really are limitations of time and circumstance, and a good deal which
may be reasonably said on each side of the question.
Take for instance the case of contract, which has been so much discussed
with reference to the Irish question. Nothing can be clearer than
that the enforcement of contracts is one of the principal duties of a
government. The principle of _caveat emptor_ may occasionally lead to
results not altogether consistent with strict morality; but there will
always be fools in the world, and it is better they should pay for their
folly than that the State should be perpetually interfering in the vain
attempt to protect them. The bargain may be a bad one, but it is far
better that men should be held to their bargains than that every loser
should have a loophole provided to escape by appealing to some legal
quibble or State-provided tribunal of arbitration.
But there are limits to this salutary principle. The contract must be
a free one, freely entered into by parties who meet on equal terms. If
it is a compulsory one, which the weaker party has practically no option
of refusing, the case is altered. Thus, in the case of children, it is
absurd to say that they are free agents in contracting for the disposal
of their labour, and the State properly interferes by Factory Acts to
limit the number of hours for which they are to work. So in the relations
between landlord and tenant, whenever they meet on equal terms, and
the tenant has an option of either taking or refusing to take a farm
at the rent asked, both sides must be held to their bargain, however
disadvantageous it may turn out for either of them. But if the landlord
is practically omnipotent, and the tenant has no alternative but to
promise to pay an impossible rent or to be turned out on the roadside
and die of starvation, it is by no means so clear that the State should
enforce the bargain unless the landlord submits to equitable terms. Or
again, if the rent is not due to the intrinsic value of the land, but
is a confiscation of the tenant’s improvements, it is far from being
self-evident that the law should look only at landlords’ rights and
forget all about landlords’ duties.
It is a question rather of fact than of argument or assertion, whether
such a state of things does or does not prevail at any particular time
in any particular country. If the contracts were fair bargains entered
into by free agents, they ought to be enforced whether prices have risen
or fallen, leaving it to the humanity and self-interest of landlords to
make reasonable reductions. But if they were no more equal bargains than
those of slaves or factory-children, the State might fairly interfere to
attach equitable conditions to the enforcement of inequitable contracts.
The antithesis between the rights and duties of property, especially in
the case of land, is one which raises many nice and difficult questions.
Some theorists, like Henry George, are for solving it by ignoring the
rights altogether. According to them, private property in land is the
source of all the evils that afflict modern society; poverty, depressions
of trade, low profits, and low wages are caused by the constant drift
towards high rents, due to the possession by a small section of the
community of a monopoly in that which is as much a necessity of existence
as air or water. Abolish private property in land, and straightway you
will have the millennium.
In this extreme form the fallacy of the argument is obvious. You cannot
stop at land, but must have the courage of your opinion, and go the full
length, with Proudhon, of denouncing all property as robbery. For if the
right of individual property is the first condition of civilised society,
you can hardly exclude that form of it which, in all ages and all
countries, has been practically the most powerful incentive to progress
and civilisation.
Compare the United States of America under their homestead laws, with
Russia under a system of village communes; or the California of to-day
with that of fifty years ago under the Jesuit padres; and you will see
that the desire to acquire property in land has been what may be called
the high-pressure steam supplying the motive power to reclaim continents
and multiply population.
Nor in principle is there any argument for the confiscation of land
which would not equally apply to the confiscation of any other sort
of property, when theorists, philanthropic at other people’s expense,
thought that the owner had more than was good for him, or had acquired
it as an unearned increment, without working for it. Suppose two men, A
and B, employed as engine-drivers on an American railway, have each saved
a hundred dollars. The railway has been a failure: intended to reach a
distant terminus, it has stopped halfway in a desert, for want of funds,
and for years has paid no dividend. The hundred-dollar shares are only
worth ten, and the land at the distant terminus is only worth ten dollars
an acre. But A and B are sharp fellows, and see that if speculation
ever revives the line will probably be completed, and both shares and
land will become valuable. A buys ten shares with his hundred dollars,
and B ten acres of land. The boom comes, the capital is found, the line
completed, and the shares rise to par, and the land to a hundred dollars
an acre. A and B have each realised nine hundred dollars by what may be
described, as you like to put it, either as an unearned increment or as
providence and foresight. On what principle can you confiscate B’s nine
hundred dollars because it is in land, and leave A’s untouched because it
is in shares?
On the other hand, there is no doubt that when we come to more complex
cases, in which land is held in large masses, fenced in, not by the
natural right of a man to the produce of his own exertions, but by
artificial legal systems of inheritance and settlement, we are on
neutral ground, where fair discussion is possible as to the limitations
and conditions under which the State may afford its protection. Landed
property is more the creature of law, and runs greater risks in case of
revolution or communistic legislation, than personal property, which is
more easily concealed or transferred. It is not unreasonable, therefore,
that it should pay a higher insurance in the form of taxation, and
especially when it passes by inheritance or settlement, when the new
owner’s title is to a great extent artificial and the creation of the
law. No one can dispute the abstract justice of a succession duty on
all property, landed or personal, in proportion to its amount, passing
by operation of law: the only question can be as to the amount, and
the expediency of confining it within limits that shall not trench on
confiscation or impair the desire to accumulate capital. And in the case
of land, there is no doubt that there are a good many instances in which
the question of the ‘unearned increment’ is raised more forcibly than in
the case of ordinary property. Take a practical instance within my own
knowledge, for an illustration is often better than an argument. There
was a mountain property in Wales which, as a sheep or cattle farm, might
be worth at the outside 800_l._ a year. Coal and iron were discovered
under it, capitalists sank pits and erected works, two or three sets
lost their money; but the works were carried on, a large amount of
labour was employed, and in course of time a town of some eight or nine
thousand inhabitants, sprang up. The proprietor’s 800_l._ a year grew
into 8,000_l._ from fixed rents and royalties, which he has enjoyed for
the last thirty years, through good times and bad, without being called
on to contribute a penny towards schools, churches, roads, sewers, water,
or any of the local objects necessary for the civilised existence of the
population of eight thousand whose labour has added to his wealth. I do
not blame him: the law told him to do what he liked with his own, and
it probably never occurred to him that he was under any moral obligation
to go beyond the law. But I do think that the law would have been more
just, and better for the interests of the community, if it had made
some portion of this unearned increment of 7,000_l._ a year liable for
a contribution towards the sanitary and other objects essential for the
decent existence of the town which had grown up on this property and
given it this increased value. I cannot help thinking that centuries of
landlord legislation, and of a public opinion based mainly on that of the
wealthy and specially of the landed classes, have made our laws in many
respects too favourable to the predominant interests, and that the swing
of the pendulum now is, and properly is, in the direction of recognising
the duties as well as the rights of property.
We must take care, however, not to let it swing too far in this
direction, for of the two evils it is better to put up with occasional
cases of hardship and oppression on the part of bad landlords than to
endanger the security of property by reforms pushed to extremes at the
dictation of impulsive masses, designing demagogues, or sentimental
philanthropists.
Herbert Spencer, in his works on Sociology, often dwells with great
force on the evils which arise from State interference. There can be no
doubt that it is very undesirable that the State should become a sort
of Jack-of-all-trades, and undertake branches of business which can be
conducted by private enterprise. It is undesirable for two reasons:
first, because the work is certain to cost more and be worse done;
secondly, for the still more important reason that it tends to extinguish
individual enterprise, strangle progress with red-tape, and teach a
nation to look, like children to outside guidance, rather than, like
men to their own. Still the question has two sides. Whatever individual
enterprise can do should be left to it; but there are, in the complex
conditions of modern society, a number of things which cannot be done by
individuals, and which must either be left undone or done by the State,
or by some local authority, joint-stock company, or other quasi-monopoly
sanctioned by the State. Thus, if it were a question of bringing coals
from Newcastle by sea, no one would suggest that the State should
interfere with the private enterprise of individual shipowners. But to
bring them by land requires railways, and railways can only be built by
capitals beyond the reach of private individuals. If the State had not
delegated a portion of its powers to joint-stock companies, not a ton of
coal would ever have been brought by land to London.
And if the State may thus occasionally delegate its powers with advantage
to the community, there are cases in which it may, with equal advantage,
undertake itself branches of the nation’s business. For instance, the
Postal Service. The advantages of a cheap and uniform system for the
collection and delivery of letters throughout the whole kingdom are
so great that they far outweigh any theoretical objections to State
interference. Possibly some of the larger towns might have been as well
or better served by private enterprise, but no non-paying district would
have had a post-office, and the enormous commercial and educational
benefits of the penny post would have been in a great measure lost to the
community.
The case of telegraphs is not so clear. Probably, on the whole, the
advantages of a uniform State management preponderate, but there are
drawbacks which make it doubtful. Even at a sixpenny rate a great deal
of the telegraphic communication of the large towns and active centres
of business is taxed to make up for the deficiency of the rest of the
kingdom. And invention and improvement in telegraphy are no doubt checked
to a considerable extent by creating a State monopoly whose first duty it
is to try to satisfy its masters at the Treasury by making the system pay.
When we come to railways we are on debateable ground, and it is fairly
arguable that they should be worked by the State for the public good.
But the objections here outweigh the advantages. Every one who has any
practical experience of the working of railways must be aware that
the simplicity and uniformity of the penny postal system are totally
inapplicable, and that the traffic of the country requires, above all
things, great freedom and elasticity in meeting, day by day, the varying
contingencies which arise. Here is an illustration: In a certain town
in France, on a railway worked by the State, it was determined to have
a _fête_ in order to raise funds for a hospital, and, as an attraction,
to bring down from Paris a small troop of actors and have a play in the
evening. The question turned on the railway consenting to give them a
reduced fare for the return journey. The manager of the railway was
quite willing, but said that he had no power to alter the tariff without
permission from the Minister of Public Works. The permission was applied
for, and the result was that it arrived exactly on the day twelve months
after the _fête_ had been held.
Contrast this with the case of the general manager of the London and
North Western Railway sitting in his office at Euston and receiving half
a dozen telegrams asking him to quote special rates, one perhaps for beef
from Chicago to London, another for emigrants from Hamburg to New York
_via_ Liverpool, and all requiring telegraphic answers then and there, if
the business is to be done at all.
Again, if railways had been in the hands of the State, I do not suppose
that we should have had half our present mileage; for the Treasury would
never have sanctioned the outlay of public money on lines which could
not show the prospect of a fair return on the capital, and it would
have vetoed any multiplication of trains or reduction of rates which
threatened loss to the exchequer. I can speak with some authority on this
point, for I have been both Chairman of a railway company and Secretary
of the Treasury, and I am certain that, in the former capacity, I have
introduced important innovations, such as excursion trains and cheap
periodical tickets, by which the public have greatly benefited, which I
should have vetoed in the latter capacity.
Still there may be exceptional cases, as that of Ireland, where an
unreasonable number of poor companies, in a poor country, wrangling among
themselves, and giving a bad service at an excessive cost, intensify
social and political evils, where the arguments in favour of a State
purchase may outweigh the objections; and the extent and nature of
State control over British railways is always a question fairly open to
discussion.
In other departments, the supply of articles such as water and gas, and
the enforcement of sanitary conditions, are probably best left to local
authorities: in the latter case, under some central supervision to see
that the duty is not evaded. Wherever neglect involves danger to others,
as in the case of small-pox and other contagious epidemics, it is clear
that the decision cannot be left to individuals, and the State is bound
to interfere to enforce rational precautions.
So also the State is bound to undertake trades which are essential for
the protection of the nation against foreign enemies. Our dockyards
and arsenals may, and doubtless do, often make mistakes and turn out
expensive work; but we could not safely leave the building of ironclads
and supply of cannon solely to private enterprise, for there is no such
large and steady demand for such articles as would induce a number of
private firms to erect works and keep up establishments adequate to
supply the wants which might arise in an emergency. In all such matters,
therefore, of national defence we must put up with a certain amount
of drawbacks incidental to State management, and confine ourselves
to endeavouring to reduce them to a minimum. And this is to a great
extent within the power of the nation and its Parliament, by applying
common-sense principles of business to national expenditure, and seeing
that while on the one hand we get as nearly as possible a pound’s
worth of work for every pound spent, on the other hand we do not spend
nineteen shillings uselessly, because some Chancellor of the Exchequer
wants to gain momentary popularity by the ‘penny wise and pound foolish’
economy of docking the extra shilling off the necessary estimates. In
private life a man gets on by knowing when to spend as well as when not
to spend, and true economy has no greater foe than spasmodic parsimony
alternating almost certainly with spasmodic extravagance. It would be
easy to multiply instances, for there are few phases of political and
practical life to which the principle of polarity does not apply, where
extremes are not false, and where there is not a good deal to be said on
both sides of the question. But the very obviousness of the principle
makes it difficult to deal with it generally without degenerating into
commonplace, while to trace its application exhaustively in any one
instance would require a volume. Those who wish to pursue the subject
further will do well to study the works of Herbert Spencer, where they
will find the application of general principles to all the problems of
sociology treated with a depth of philosophic insight and an abundance
and aptness of illustration which I cannot pretend to equal. My ambition
is of a humbler nature. I do not expect to set the Thames on fire,
or to produce a revolution in modern thought; but I do hope that the
views which I have endeavoured to express may do somewhat to make some
readers more tolerant and charitable in their judgments, less bitter and
one-sided in controversy; and that whatever truth there may be in my
ideas will contribute to form a small part, neither more nor less than
it deserves, of the great body of truth which is handed down from the
present to succeeding generations, and which becomes, long after I am
there to witness it, the inheritance of the human race in the course of
its evolution.
And now, before I take my final leave of the reader, let me for a few
moments throw the reins on the neck of fancy, and suppose myself standing
with that group of Parsees by the shore of the Indian Ocean, listening to
its murmured rhythm, inhaling the balmy air, watching the silver crescent
of the new moon, and musing on the wise sayings of the ancient sage;
the sum of the reflections which I have tried to embody in the preceding
pages would take form and crystallise in the following sonnet:—
Hail! gracious Ormuzd, author of all good,
Spirit of beauty, purity, and light;
Teach me like thee to hate dark deeds of night,
And battle ever with the hellish brood
Of Ahriman, dread prince of evil mood—
Father of lies, uncleanness, envious spite,
Thefts, murders, sensual sins that shun the light,
Unreason, ugliness, and fancies lewd—
Grant me, bright Ormuzd, in thy ranks to stand,
A valiant soldier faithful to the end;
So when I leave this life’s familiar strand,
Bound for the great Unknown, shall I commend
My soul, if soul survive, into thy hand—
Fearless of fate if thou thine aid will lend.
INDEX.
Abraham, 186.
Accumulator, the electric, 63, 64.
Acetic ether, 73, 74.
Acids, 69, 70.
Aerobes, 87, 88.
Affinities, chemical, 51, 52, 55, 68;
of Zoroastrianism and art, 212.
Agriculture, 245.
Ahriman, 4, 180, 202, 203, 265.
Air, a cubic centimetre of, 20;
pressure of, 24, 25.
Aleutian Islands, 97.
Alga, 95, 105;
forests of the, 97.
Algonquins, funeral custom, 149.
Alizarine manufactured, 86.
Alkalies, 69, 70.
America, woman in, 111, 112;
respect for law in, 235.
Amœba, 76, 77, 82;
propagation of the, 103, 104, 117.
Amos, 187.
Anemone, sea, 104.
Angiosperms, 98.
Animal life, 92, 93;
Zoroaster enjoins kindness to, 207.
Aquarium, 93;
nature one huge, 101.
Arnold, Matthew, 207;
definition of the Deity by, 171.
Aryan race, divisions of the, 199;
religion of the, 200;
language, 200.
Assur, 153.
Astronomy, 5;
in early religions, 153.
Athanasian Creed, 181-183.
Atlantic cable, 60, 61.
Atoms, 5, 10, 14;
weight of, 15-17;
theory of, 16;
elementary, 18;
and their laws, 19, 22, 25;
vibrations of, 26;
and ether, 32;
and the vortex theory, 33, 34, 36;
action of heat on, 43;
and chemical energy, 50;
affinities and repulsions of, 51;
the primary element of matter, 66, 67;
polarity of, 68;
in hydrates, 69;
of hydrogen in acids, 69, 70;
of oxygen, 70;
multipolar, 71;
magnetic, 72;
dimensions of, 119.
Augustin, 201.
Australia, free trade in, 242, 245.
Authorities to whom the author is indebted, x.
Atavism, 103, 118.
Avogadro, law of, 13.
Axolotl, 123.
Bacteria, 85, 105.
Balkh, Zoroaster at, 201.
Bees, reproduction of, 106.
Bel, 152, 153.
Berkeley, Bishop, 142.
Berlin, spirit-seeing in, 166.
Blindness cured by hypnotism, 165.
Bombay, death rate in, 1881, 1882, 218.
Books, the best mirrors of an age, 111, 112;
modern French novels, 113.
Bozu, Buddhist priest upon the Divine Creator, 160, 161.
Brahm, 114.
Brahminism, 207.
Braid, Dr., cures by hypnotism, 165, 168, 193.
Brain, the, 125, 126;
tissue of the, 127;
average weight of the human, 129;
organs of the, 130, 131;
areas of speech, hearing, and sight in the, 132;
intellectual faculties in the, 133;
abnormal state of the, 134, 135;
action of the grey tissue of the, 137;
of the higher animals, 137, 138;
cells of the, 140;
action in a murder, 189;
organ of will in the, 191, 192;
effect of injuries to the, 192;
effect of will on the, 194.
Bret Harte, 110, 112.
Bruce, legend of the heart of, 228.
Buddha, 187.
Buddhism, 156;
in Shakespeare, 160;
the Divine Creator in, 160, 161;
morality of, 160, 184;
based upon pessimism, 177, 197, 198, 206, 207.
Burial of the dead, 149;
prehistoric, 151;
Parsee avoidance of, 208.
Butyric acid, 73, 74.
Byron on the Parsees, 219.
Calculus, the differential, 6, 28-32, 138.
California, 256.
Canterbury, Augustin at, 201.
Capital and labour, 176, 246-248.
Carbon, 16, 18, 71;
in dynamite, 50;
radicals of, 73, 74, 77;
in the protoplasm, 80;
early abundance of, 86;
in a dead body, 88;
plant life and, 93.
Carbonic dioxide, 16, 51, 82, 83, 92, 95, 96;
in plant life, 101.
Carlyle, 171, 188, 251.
Carnegie, Andrew, on modern worship, 219.
Catholic theology, 147.
Cause, the Great First, 122, 162;
Dr. Temple’s definition of, 170;
evolution of the idea of, 172, 201, 203;
Zoroaster and, 204;
the only reasonable theory, 208.
Cell, the first step in organisms, 78, 79;
the nucleated multiplication of the, 104.
Centrifugal force, 89, 90, 117.
Centripetal force, 89, 90, 117;
in societies, 233.
Chaldean legends, 152, 153;
of the Creation, 193.
Chalk, formation of, 95.
Chemical energy in electricity, 60.
Chemistry, 5, 14, 25;
elementary substances in, 17, 18, 74;
energy in, 47;
a modern law of change, 75;
and the protoplasm, 84.
Chinese funeral custom, 149;
religion, origin of the, 152;
religion, 156, 159;
myths, 164;
faith in a virgin mother, 155.
Chlorine, 16, 70, 71.
Christianity, 157, 198;
the position of women influenced by, 108, 109;
Pauline, 177;
the creed of, 180, 181;
impractical, 182;
morality of, 184, 185, 188;
influenced by Oriental asceticism, 212.
Clausius, 19.
Cleanliness and religion, 223, 224.
Clerk Maxwell, 19.
Coal, 45, 49, 97;
heat in burning, 61, 62;
land animals found in, 99.
Cobden, Richard, 242.
Colloids, 77, 78, 80.
Comets, 25;
supernatural dread of, 164.
Communism, 252, 253.
Conceptions, our, 143.
Confucianism, 184, 198.
Conservative legislation, 230;
in England, 235.
Contract, law of, 254, 255.
Creation, unknown, 19;
early myths of the, 152, 153.
Cromwell, 213.
Crystals, 10, 26-28.
Cumming, Dr., 47.
Darwin, 6, 122, 172;
his theory of Pangenesis, 119;
his theory of evolution, 121.
David, 186.
Descartes, 141.
Deus, derivation of the word, 200.
Deutsch, Emmanuel, on the Talmud, 172, 188.
Diamond, the, 74, 77.
Dionæa, 96.
Dog, will in a, 39, 40;
sense of right and wrong in a, 193.
Drummond, Professor, 3.
Dryopithecus, 100.
Dynamite, 48, 50, 74, 176.
Dynamo, the, 61-63.
Earth, structure of the, 51, 52;
first temperature of the, 86;
orbit of the, 22, 89, 117.
Echidna, the, 124.
Education, 237-240.
Egypt, ancient tombs in, 149, 150;
animal worship in, 150;
priests in, 152;
astronomy in, 153, 154;
a virgin mother worshipped in, 155;
religious morality in, 184.
Electric energy, 47;
light currents, effects of, 57-59;
telegraph, 59, 60;
accumulator, 61;
light, 56, 57, 61;
engines, 62, 63.
Electricity, 2, 14;
ether in, 25;
nature of, 52-55;
in pith balls, 52, 53, 71, 72;
velocity of the current in, 56;
and magnets, 58, 59;
storage of, 64.
Embryology, 106.
Emerson, vii.
Energy, 2;
nature of, 35, 36, 38, 66, 67;
of motion and position, 37, 48;
transformation of, 41, 42;
in heat and light, 43, 44, 47;
variations of, 47, 48;
molecular, 49;
chemical, 50;
in electricity, 54-57;
cost of, obtained from zinc, 61, 62;
conservation of, 62, 63, 139.
England, conservatism in, 236, 237;
education in, 237-239;
free trade in, 243.
English literature, 111;
woman in, 112, 113;
colonisation, 232.
Eozoon Canadiense, 99.
Ethelbert, 201.
Ether, 22, 36;
density of, 24, 25;
waves, 26, 43;
vibrations of, 27;
attempt to identify, with atoms, 32, 35;
nature of, 66.
Evil, origin of, 170, 173;
attempts to reconcile it with good, 178;
consistent with theory of God, 173, 202;
modern treatment of, 224.
Evolution, 6, 8, 121;
of religion, 4, 155, 156, 185, 186;
of matter, 80;
of life, 100;
important facts in the history of, 123;
does not tend to virtue, 173, 176;
of moral ideas, 186, 191;
of the horror of murder, 189, 190.
Fable of the shield, 227-230;
applied to politics, 230;
to commerce, 243, 244.
“Faust” a Zoroastrian drama, 209.
Ferdousi, 201.
Fermentation, 87, 88.
Ferns in the primary epoch, 97.
Fetish worship, 150.
Fiji, 149, 189.
Fire, primitive means of obtaining, 41;
worship, 207, 220.
Fish shells in the Tertiary epoch, 98;
in the Silurian epoch, 99.
Fungi, 95.
France, protection in, 246;
state railways in, 261.
Franklin, Benjamin, 163.
French Revolution, 231, 233;
colonisation, 232;
trade in a colony, 233.
Frog with the brain removed, 137.
Galileo, 147, 164, 205.
Gallio, 239.
Gas in dynamite, 51.
Gases, law of, 11-13;
in water, 14;
kinetic theory of, 14, 33;
substances reduced to, 44;
expansion of, 45.
Galton, Mr. F., 240.
Genesis, the Creation in, 152, 153.
Geology, 5;
records of, 96;
earliest strata of, 97;
vegetable records in, 96-98;
animal records in, 99, 100.
Geometry, 139.
George, Henry, 256.
Ghosts, universal belief in, 149-151.
Glass, 49, 53.
Globigerena, 95.
God, Buddhist idea of, 161;
a magnified man, 170, 171;
Carlyle on, 171;
Arnold’s definition of, 171;
Jewish doctors on, 172;
prevalent idea of miraculous intervention by, 173;
the author of good and evil, 179;
primitive Aryan word for, 200.
Grammar, 239, 240.
Gravity, the law of, 5, 16, 48, 49, 121, 144;
atoms subject to the, 34;
universal confidence in the, 148;
a dangerous heresy, 164.
Greeks, religion amongst the, 155, 156.
Gushtasp, 201.
Gymnosperms, 97, 98.
Haeckel, 119, 122.
Hale, Justice, 164.
Halley, 164.
Haug, Dr., 202, 205.
Heat, produced by work, 41, 42;
nature of, 43;
performs work, 44, 47;
and electricity, 54, 61;
and the stability of substances, 74;
in chemistry, 75.
Helmholz, 32.
Hercules, 193, 197.
Heredity, the principle of, 117-121;
in education, 240.
Hesperornis, 123.
Hillel, morality of, 188.
Hindoo religion, 152, 156;
migration, 199.
Horace, 163.
Horse, 119.
Human remains in Tertiary period, 100;
implements, prehistoric, 144, 145.
Hume, 162.
Huxley, Professor, v., vi., 78, 86, 122, 172, 203;
on spontaneous generation, 85;
on the protista, 94;
on the uniformity of law in Nature, 146.
Hydrates, 69.
Hydrochloric acid, 16, 70, 71.
Hydrogen, 11, 13, 16-18, 70, 71, 74, 75;
composition of, 15;
in the sun, 26;
in dynamite, 50;
in water, 52, 68, 238;
in the accumulator, 63;
in acids, 69;
in the protoplasm, 80;
in a dead body, 88.
Hypnotism, 134, 192;
blindness cured by, 165, 166;
an old lady dancing through, 193.
Ibn Ezra, 172.
India, British railways in, 250.
Indians, North American, totem of the, 150;
murder amongst the, 189.
Indigotine, 86.
Induction, phenomena of, 58.
Intellectual faculties, the seat of the, 133, 134.
Iodine vapour, 75.
Iranian migration, 199;
language, 200.
Ireland, popular ignorance of the land question in, 9;
rents in, 233, 234;
contracts in, 254;
railways in, 262.
Iron, filings and a magnet, 1, 10, 11, 27;
contraction of, 49, 50;
bar and a magnet, 68;
rust, 68, 81;
motion of, 83.
Irving, Edward, 166.
Isaiah, 187.
Isomerism, 74.
Istar, vi.
Jehovah, gradual conception of, 157, 158, 186.
Jehuda Hilmi, 172.
Jesus, on miracles, 168, 169;
the personification of Ormuzd, 180-183, 204;
an historical personage, 198;
adopted a Jewish view of religion, 212.
Jewish doctors on God, 172;
gradual development of the, religion, 157;
morality in the, religion, 186, 187.
Jijibhoy, Jamsedjee, Sir, 217.
“Jingoism,” 241.
Joule, Dr., 42, 46.
Jupiter, the planet, 22, 25.
Kant, 141, 142.
Kesar, 152, 153.
Knowledge, limits of our, 125-127, 136, 139-141.
Knox, John, 221.
Lakman and Lakmana, 152.
Latimer, 221.
Law in Nature, 6, 144, 145, 164, 171;
common, 236.
Lead, 63.
Leibnitz, 194.
Lichens, 95, 96.
Light, waves, 19, 23, 24, 26-28, 43;
velocity of, 21, 22;
energy in, 47;
electric, 56, 57, 61.
Lightning conductors, 163.
Lourdes, miracles at, 168.
Luther, 198
Magnet, the, 1, 2, 27, 68, 70, 71;
nature of, 58.
Magnetism, vii.
Mahometanism, 157, 158, 198, 213.
Maimonides on God, 172.
Manuals in geology, 100.
Manufacturers, generous, 217.
Marriage, 115.
Mass, the, 223.
Matter, 10;
nature of, 66, 67.
Meat, frozen, 45, 87.
Mechanical action in life, 39, 40, 91;
power, 41;
process in nerve action, 129, 130.
Menai Bridge, 50.
Mercury, 17, 44.
Metrical system, the, 42.
Mexican myths, 154, 155.
Microcrith, 15.
Microscope, 11, 239.
Mill, John Stuart, 161.
Milton, 209, 213.
Miracles, 6;
a question of evidence, 162, 163;
early belief in, 164;
uselessness of ordinary, 167, 170;
not found in Zoroastrianism, 204.
Molecules, 5, 10, 12, 22, 25;
weight of, 13;
in chemistry, 14;
of oxygen and hydrogen, 15;
composition of, 18;
in a cubic centimetre of air, 20;
vibrations of, 26;
the vortex theory of, 33, 34;
action of heat on, 43-46;
of nitrogen, 50;
nature of, 67;
complex, 73;
of monera, 79;
of the protoplasm, 80, 81.
Molecular energies, 47, 49.
Monera, 79, 94;
reproduction of the, 103, 117.
Monogamy, 109.
Monotheism, 156.
Moon, worship of the, 102, 153;
Parsee worship of the, 219.
Morality, in religions, 108, 184-188;
in nations, 110;
origin of, 190, 191.
Mormonism, 213.
Motion, of living beings, 83;
independent of will in the brain, 137, 192.
Music in religion, 222.
Murder, 189, 190.
Nerves, 129, 130;
divisions of the, 131;
channels of the, 133.
Newcome, Colonel, 211.
Newman, Cardinal, 147, 148, 159.
Newton, 16, 17, 28, 121, 138, 144, 205.
Nickel, a magnet, 68.
Nicolai, visions seen by, 166.
Nitric acid, 69.
Nitrogen, 18, 69, 88;
in dynamite, 50, 51;
in the protoplasm, 80.
Nitro-glycerine (dynamite), 50, 51.
Nitrous oxide, 51.
Northumberland House, lion on, 167.
Novelists, English, 111.
Nummulitic limestone, 94, 95.
Nursery rhymes, 142.
Nutrition, 81.
Octoroon, 118.
Oersted, 59.
Optimism, 176.
Ormuzd, 3, 4;
Jesus the modern, 180-182;
a definition of, 201, 202;
homage due to, 203;
sonnet to, 265.
Oxide of iron, 43, 81.
Oxygen, 11, 13, 14, 18, 57, 238;
composition of, 15;
is universal, 16;
weight of an atom of, 16;
and iron, 43;
in dynamite, 50;
affinities of, 52;
in the accumulator, 63;
in water, 68, 75;
bipolar, 70;
in the protoplasm, 80;
in contact with dead bodies, 88;
and animal life, 93, 96;
in plant life, 101.
Palgrave, 158.
Pangenesis, 119.
Pantheism, in China, 156;
prevalence of, 159, 160.
Paris, 241.
Parsees, the, 199;
creed of the, 205;
rites of the, 207, 208;
the distinguishing characteristics of the, 214-216;
women amongst, 215, 216;
a commercial people, 217;
death rate amongst the, 218;
Byron on the, 219;
modern worship of the, 219, 264.
Parthenogenesis, 106.
Pasteur, 87.
Patriotism, 240, 241.
Peel, Sir Robert, 242.
Pendulum, 37.
Perceptions, the basis of knowledge, 125, 140.
Permian formation, 97;
reptiles in the, 99.
Perron, Anquetil du, 203.
Peruvian myths, 154, 155.
Pessimism, 177, 178.
Pharisees, 168, 169.
Philo, 187.
Philosophy, and the unknown, 141;
in Eastern religion, 160.
Physical conditions and religious progress, 224.
Pigeon with the brain removed, 137, 192.
Pith-balls, electricity in, 52, 53, 71, 72.
Planet worship, 155.
Plant life, 82, 92, 93;
reproduction of, 84, 105;
food, 95;
fly-eating, 96;
gradual appearance in geology of, 97;
in the chalk, 98.
Plato, 142.
Polarity, law of, v., vii., 1-4, 10, 65;
in crystals, 27, 28;
in wave motion, 38;
in will, 40, 195;
of chemical elements, 68, 70;
electrical differs from magnetic, 72;
is the clue to the construction of the world, 74;
in life, 76, 89, 93;
in the organic world, 91;
in evolution, 100;
in sex, 107, 109, 114, 115;
a law of existence, 171;
asserts itself in society, 174;
in moral life, 178;
in art and fiction, 209-211;
in politics, 230, 231;
in political economy, 247-250.
Polytheism, 157.
Poor laws, the, 253.
Population, effects of the accumulation of, 175, 176.
Postal service, 260.
Potassic hydrates, 69.
Pramantha, 41, 42.
Prayer, Zoroastrian, 223, 225.
Prehistoric faith in spirits, 151.
Priesthood, first records of a, 52.
Primary period, the, 97;
fish in the, 99.
Principles, Zoroaster’s two great, 202.
Progress, modern, 7.
Prometheus, 42, 209.
Propagation of life by germs, 104, 118;
of the lower plants, 105.
Property in land, 255, 256.
Protection, 244-246.
Protista, 94.
Protoplasm, the, 78, 79, 81, 84;
nature of the, 80;
the first, 87;
the origin of all life, 93;
in nerve-endings, 129.
Proudhon, 256.
Putrefaction, 87, 88.
Pyramids, the, 10;
astronomical value of the, 153, 154.
Quakers, the, 213.
Quantivalence of substances, 71, 72.
Radiolaria, 95.
Railway, companies, 248;
profits of companies, 249, 250;
working of a State, 261, 262.
Religion, 4;
nature of, 146;
origin of, 148, 149, 151;
early, 152;
universal faith in a virgin mother, 154, 155;
planet worship, 155;
gradual evolution of, 155, 156;
philosophical in the East, 160;
nature in, 163;
wars of, 179;
amongst savages, 185;
Jewish, 186;
and morality, 188;
Aryan, 200;
of Zoroaster, 201, 208, 223;
probable form of modern, 203, 209;
music the language of, 222, 223.
Roman Church, the, 223.
Reproduction of species, 83;
of worms, 104;
sexual, 105, 106, 118.
Reptiles, 99.
Ricardo, 247.
Russia, 243;
communism in, 253.
Sabbath, the, 212;
origin of the, 155;
in England, 212, 220.
Saint Paul, his doctrine of predestination, 158;
on God, 172;
Christianity of, 177, 188;
on charity, 182.
—— Vitus’s dance, 166.
Salt, 52, 70.
Salvation Army, the, 180.
Sanskrit, 199, 200.
Sargasso Sea, 97.
Saul, 180, 186.
Savages, and numbers, 138, 191;
religion amongst, 149-151, 185;
murder amongst, 189, 190.
Schliemann, Professor, 151.
Scotland, virtue in, 176;
the poor rate in, 253.
Scott, Sir Walter, 210, 211, 241.
Secondary epoch, the, 97;
reptiles and birds in the, 99;
transformation of a water into an air population, 123.
Semitic races, religion amongst the, 156.
Sermons, 220-222;
on the mount, 184, 187, 254.
Sex in ancient creeds, 102, 103.
Shakers, the, 166, 252.
Shakespeare, on women, 112;
Buddhism in, 160;
despondency of, 178;
polarity of character in, 210, 211.
Shelley, 19, 226.
Snakes, changes from oviparous to viviparous, 124.
Soap bubbles, 19;
a clue to the dimensions of light, 33.
Socialism, 251, 252.
Society, 231.
Sociology, H. Spencer on, 259.
Socrates on religion, 172.
Sodium, 52, 70.
Solar myths, 152-154;
system worshipped by the Aryans, 200.
Somnambulism, 126, 134, 135, 192.
Sonnet to Ormuzd, 265.
Soul, the, 194.
Sound waves, velocity of, 24.
Species, 118, 119.
Spectroscope, 25, 26.
Spectrum of sun-rays, 43.
Spencer, Herbert, x., 113, 161, 203;
on antagonistic forces, 90;
on polarity in religion, 109, 172;
on politics, 231;
on altruism, 254;
on sociology, 259;
works of, 264.
Spiritualism, 136.
Spontaneous generation, 84, 89.
State interference, 253, 255, 257;
railways, 261, 262;
trade for national defence, 263.
Steam, action of, 45, 49;
engine, 45, 61.
Stone-throwing, brain action in, 38, 39.
Substances, quality and grouping of, 73;
stability of, 74, 75.
Succession duty, 258.
Sun, 26;
heat of the, 45.
Sutherland family, crest of the, 150.
Tait, Professor, 32.
Talmud, the, 172, 212;
morality in the, 187, 188.
Telephone, the, 60.
Temple, Dr., 162;
on evolution, 121;
on a Creator, 170, 203;
on man, 193.
Tennyson, 203, 210, 226, 241.
Tertiary epoch, 98;
mammals in the, 100.
Thomson, Sir W., 19, 21, 32.
Tobit, the Book of, 187.
Trade, free, 242-245.
Trance, phenomena of, 135.
Traveller, a, on misery in Christian lands, 175.
Triton, the, 122.
Tulliver, Maggie, 112, 211.
Turkey, 110, 111;
woman in, 112.
Turks, English, 113, 114.
Tyndall, 94.
United States, the, 241, 242;
protection in the, 242, 243, 246;
homestead laws in the, 256, 257.
Unknown, the Great, 126, 127.
Urea, 86.
Variations of species, principle of, 120.
Vedas, the Hindoo, 152;
antiquity of the, 199.
Vendidad, the, 202.
Virgin mother, prevalence of faith in a, 154, 155.
Voltaic battery, the, 14, 55, 61.
Volume, variations of, 12.
Vortex theory, 33, 34.
Wales, coal in, 258.
Wahabite reformer, 158.
Water, formation of, 11, 12, 14, 15, 52;
and electricity, 14, 53;
a cubic inch of, magnified, 21;
becomes vapour, 45, 46, 75;
freezing, 81.
Waves, motion, 23, 24, 48;
light, 19-24, 26-28, 43;
sound, 24.
Wheat, mummy, 80.
Will, free, 191;
nature of the, 194.
Witchcraft, 164, 179.
Woman, natural office of the, 107, 108;
position of, a test of civilisation, 110, 111;
in modern books, 111, 112;
rights of, 116;
amongst the Parsees, 214-216.
Wood, burning, 75.
Wordsworth, pantheism in, 159, 160.
Worms, reproduction of, 104.
Zend, dialect, 199, 200;
scriptures, 201, 202;
Avesta, 203.
Zinc, in electricity, 61.
Zodiac, the, 153.
Zoophytes, 94, 95.
Zoroaster, 4, 187;
theory of, 7, 179, 197, 202, 203, 223;
history of, 197, 198;
known by his book, 199;
a reformer, 200;
at Balkh, 201;
his creed not weighted by tradition, 204;
miraculous conception of, 205.
Zoroastrian, a modern, 3;
creed of a, 180;
morality, 205, 206.
Zoroastrianism and art, 212;
and modern thought, 213.
THE END.