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THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
XXI
LIBERALISM
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_EDITORS OF_
THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE
PROFESSOR GILBERT MURRAY, O.M., LL.D., F.B.A.
PROFESSOR G. N. CLARK, LL.D., F.B.A.
SIR HENRY TIZARD, K.C.B., F.R.S.
* * * * *
LIBERALISM
_By_
L. T. HOBHOUSE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
_First published in 1911, and reprinted in 1919, 1923, 1927, 1929,
1934, 1942 and 1944_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I BEFORE LIBERALISM 7
II THE ELEMENTS OF LIBERALISM
1. Civil Liberty. 2. Fiscal
Liberty. 3. Personal Liberty.
4. Social Liberty. 5. Economic
Liberty. 6. Domestic Liberty.
7. Local, Racial, and National
Liberty. 8. International
Liberty. 9. Political Liberty
and Popular Sovereignty 21
III THE MOVEMENT OF THEORY 50
IV 'LAISSEZ-FAIRE' 78
V GLADSTONE AND MILL 102
VI THE HEART OF LIBERALISM 116
VII THE STATE AND THE INDIVIDUAL 138
VIII ECONOMIC LIBERALISM 167
IX THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM 214
BIBLIOGRAPHY 252
INDEX 253
LIBERALISM
CHAPTER I
BEFORE LIBERALISM
The modern State is the distinctive product of a unique civilization.
But it is a product which is still in the making, and a part of the
process is a struggle between new and old principles of social order. To
understand the new, which is our main purpose, we must first cast a
glance at the old. We must understand what the social structure was,
which--mainly, as I shall show, under the inspiration of Liberal
ideas--is slowly but surely giving place to the new fabric of the civic
State. The older structure itself was by no means primitive. What is
truly primitive is very hard to say. But one thing is pretty clear. At
all times men have lived in societies, and ties of kinship and of simple
neighbourhood underlie every form of social organization. In the
simplest societies it seems probable that these ties--reinforced and
extended, perhaps, by religious or other beliefs--are the only ones that
seriously count. It is certain that of the warp of descent and the woof
of intermarriage there is woven a tissue out of which small and rude but
close and compact communities are formed. But the ties of kinship and
neighbourhood are effective only within narrow limits. While the local
group, the clan, or the village community are often the centres of
vigorous life, the larger aggregate of the Tribe seldom attains true
social and political unity unless it rests upon a military organization.
But military organization may serve not only to hold one tribe together
but also to hold other tribes in subjection, and thereby, at the cost of
much that is most valuable in primitive life, to establish a larger and
at the same time a more orderly society. Such an order once established
does not, indeed, rest on naked force. The rulers become invested with a
sacrosanct authority. It may be that they are gods or descendants of
gods. It may be that they are blessed and upheld by an independent
priesthood. In either case the powers that be extend their sway not
merely over the bodies but over the minds of men. They are ordained of
God because they arrange the ordination. Such a government is not
necessarily abhorrent to the people nor indifferent to them. But it is
essentially government from above. So far as it affects the life of the
people at all, it does so by imposing on them duties, as of military
service, tribute, ordinances, and even new laws, in such wise and on
such principles as seem good to itself. It is not true, as a certain
school of jurisprudence held, that law is, as such, a command imposed by
a superior upon an inferior, and backed by the sanctions of punishment.
But though this is not true of law in general it is a roughly true
description of law in that particular stage of society which we may
conveniently describe as the Authoritarian.
Now, in the greater part of the world and throughout the greater part of
history the two forms of social organization that have been
distinguished are the only forms to be found. Of course, they themselves
admit of every possible variation of detail, but looking below these
variations we find the two recurrent types. On the one hand, there are
the small kinship groups, often vigorous enough in themselves, but
feeble for purposes of united action. On the other hand, there are
larger societies varying in extent and in degree of civilization from a
petty negro kingdom to the Chinese Empire, resting on a certain union of
military force and religious or quasi-religious belief which, to select
a neutral name, we have called the principle of Authority. In the lower
stages of civilization there appears, as a rule, to be only one method
of suppressing the strife of hostile clans, maintaining the frontier
against a common enemy, or establishing the elements of outward order.
The alternative to authoritarian rule is relapse into the comparative
anarchy of savage life.
But another method made its appearance in classical antiquity. The city
state of ancient Greece and Italy was a new type of social organization.
It differed from the clan and the commune in several ways. In the first
place it contained many clans and villages, and perhaps owed its origin
to the coming together of separate clans on the basis not of conquest
but of comparatively equal alliance. Though very small as compared with
an ancient empire or a modern state it was much larger than a primitive
kindred. Its life was more varied and complex. It allowed more free play
to the individual, and, indeed, as it developed, it suppressed the old
clan organization and substituted new divisions, geographical or other.
It was based, in fact, not on kinship as such, but on civic right, and
this it was which distinguished it not only from the commune, but from
the Oriental monarchy. The law which it recognized and by which it lived
was not a command imposed by a superior government on a subject mass. On
the contrary, government was itself subject to law, and law was the life
of the state, willingly supported by the entire body of free citizens.
In this sense the city state was a community of free men. Considered
collectively its citizens owned no master. They governed themselves,
subject only to principles and rules of life descending from antiquity
and owing their force to the spontaneous allegiance of successive
generations. In such a community some of the problems that vex us most
presented themselves in a very simple form. In particular the relation
of the individual to the community was close, direct, and natural.
Their interests were obviously bound up together. Unless each man did
his duty the State might easily be destroyed and the population
enslaved. Unless the State took thought for its citizens it might easily
decay. What was still more important, there was no opposition of church
and state, no fissure between political and religious life, between the
claims of the secular and the spiritual, to distract the allegiance of
the citizens, and to set the authority of conscience against the duties
of patriotism. It was no feat of the philosophical imagination, but a
quite simple and natural expression of the facts to describe such a
community as an association of men for the purpose of living well.
Ideals to which we win our way back with difficulty and doubt arose
naturally out of the conditions of life in ancient Greece.
On the other hand, this simple harmony had very serious limitations,
which in the end involved the downfall of the city system. The
responsibilities and privileges of the associated life were based not on
the rights of human personality but on the rights of citizenship, and
citizenship was never co-extensive with the community. The population
included slaves or serfs, and in many cities there were large classes
descended from the original conquered population, personally free but
excluded from the governing circle. Notwithstanding the relative
simplicity of social conditions the city was constantly torn by the
disputes of faction--in part probably a legacy from the old clan
organization, in part a consequence of the growth of wealth and the
newer distinction of classes. The evil of faction was aggravated by the
ill-success of the city organization in dealing with the problem of
inter-state relations. The Greek city clung to its autonomy, and though
the principle of federalism which might have solved the problem was
ultimately brought into play, it came too late in Greek history to save
the nation.
The constructive genius of Rome devised a different method of dealing
with the political problems involved in expanding relations. Roman
citizenship was extended till it included all Italy and, later on, till
it comprised the whole free population of the Mediterranean basin. But
this extension was even more fatal to the free self-government of a city
state. The population of Italy could not meet in the Forum of Rome or
the Plain of Mars to elect consuls and pass laws, and the more wisely
it was extended the less valuable for any political purpose did
citizenship become. The history of Rome, in fact, might be taken as a
vast illustration of the difficulty of building up an extended empire on
any basis but that of personal despotism resting on military force and
maintaining peace and order through the efficiency of the bureaucratic
machine. In this vast mechanism it was the army that was the seat of
power, or rather it was each army at its post on some distant frontier
that was a potential seat of power. The "secret of the empire" that was
early divulged was that an emperor could be made elsewhere than at Rome,
and though a certain sanctity remained to the person of the emperor, and
legists cherished a dim remembrance of the theory that he embodied the
popular will, the fact was that he was the choice of a powerful army,
ratified by the God of Battles, and maintaining his power as long as he
could suppress any rival pretender. The break-up of the Empire through
the continual repetition of military strife was accelerated, not caused,
by the presence of barbarism both within and without the frontiers. To
restore the elements of order a compromise between central and local
jurisdictions was necessary, and the vassal became a local prince owning
an allegiance, more or less real as the case might be, to a distant
sovereign. Meanwhile, with the prevailing disorder the mass of the
population in Western Europe lost its freedom, partly through conquest,
partly through the necessity of finding a protector in troublous times.
The social structure of the Middle Ages accordingly assumed the
hierarchical form which we speak of as the Feudal system. In this
thorough-going application of the principle of authority every man, in
theory, had his master. The serf held of his lord, who held of a great
seigneur, who held of the king. The king in the completer theory held of
the emperor who was crowned by the Pope, who held of St. Peter. The
chain of descent was complete from the Ruler of the universe to the
humblest of the serfs.[1] But within this order the growth of industry
and commerce raised up new centres of freedom. The towns in which men
were learning anew the lessons of association for united defence and the
regulation of common interests, obtained charters of rights from
seigneur or king, and on the Continent even succeeded in establishing
complete independence. Even in England, where from the Conquest the
central power was at its strongest, the corporate towns became for many
purposes self-governing communities. The city state was born again, and
with it came an outburst of activity, the revival of literature and the
arts, the rediscovery of ancient learning, the rebirth of philosophy and
science.
The mediæval city state was superior to the ancient in that slavery was
no essential element in its existence. On the contrary, by welcoming the
fugitive serf and vindicating his freedom it contributed powerfully to
the decline of the milder form of servitude. But like the ancient state
it was seriously and permanently weakened by internal faction, and like
the ancient state it rested the privileges of its members not on the
rights of human personality, but on the responsibilities of citizenship.
It knew not so much liberty as "liberties," rights of corporations
secured by charter, its own rights as a whole secured against king or
feudatory and the rest of the world, rights of gilds and crafts within
it, and to men or women only as they were members of such bodies. But
the real weakness of the city state was once more its isolation. It was
but an islet of relative freedom on, or actually within, the borders of
a feudal society which grew more powerful with the generations. With the
improvement of communications and of the arts of life, the central
power, particularly in France and England, began to gain upon its
vassals. Feudal disobedience and disorder were suppressed, and by the
end of the fifteenth century great unified states, the foundation of
modern nations, were already in being. Their emergence involved the
widening and in some respects the improvement of the social order; and
in its earlier stages it favoured civic autonomy by suppressing local
anarchy and feudal privilege. But the growth of centralization was in
the end incompatible with the genius of civic independence, and perilous
to such elements of political right as had been gained for the
population in general as the result of earlier conflicts between the
crown and its vassals.
We enter on the modern period, accordingly, with society constituted on
a thoroughly authoritarian basis, the kingly power supreme and tending
towards arbitrary despotism, and below the king the social hierarchy
extending from the great territorial lord to the day-labourer. There is
one point gained as compared to earlier forms of society. The base of
the pyramid is a class which at least enjoys personal freedom. Serfdom
has virtually disappeared in England, and in the greater part of France
has either vanished or become attenuated to certain obnoxious incidents
of the tenure of land. On the other hand, the divorce of the English
peasant from the soil has begun, and has laid the foundation of the
future social problem as it is to appear in this country.
The modern State accordingly starts from the basis of an authoritarian
order, and the protest against that order, a protest religious,
political, economic, social, and ethical, is the historic beginning of
Liberalism. Thus Liberalism appears at first as a criticism, sometimes
even as a destructive and revolutionary criticism. Its negative aspect
is for centuries foremost. Its business seems to be not so much to build
up as to pull down, to remove obstacles which block human progress,
rather than to point the positive goal of endeavour or fashion the
fabric of civilization. It finds humanity oppressed, and would set it
free. It finds a people groaning under arbitrary rule, a nation in
bondage to a conquering race, industrial enterprise obstructed by social
privileges or crippled by taxation, and it offers relief. Everywhere it
is removing superincumbent weights, knocking off fetters, clearing away
obstructions. Is it doing as much for the reconstruction that will be
necessary when the demolition is complete? Is Liberalism at bottom a
constructive or only a destructive principle? Is it of permanent
significance? Does it express some vital truth of social life as such,
or is it a temporary phenomenon called forth by the special
circumstances of Western Europe, and is its work already so far
complete that it can be content to hand on the torch to a newer and more
constructive principle, retiring for its own part from the race, or
perchance seeking more backward lands for missionary work? These are
among the questions that we shall have to answer. We note, for the
moment, that the circumstances of its origin suffice to explain the
predominance of critical and destructive work without therefrom
inferring the lack of ultimate reconstructive power. In point of fact,
whether by the aid of Liberalism or through the conservative instincts
of the race, the work of reconstruction has gone on side by side with
that of demolition, and becomes more important generation by generation.
The modern State, as I shall show, goes far towards incorporating the
elements of Liberal principle, and when we have seen what these are, and
to what extent they are actually realized, we shall be in a better
position to understand the essentials of Liberalism, and to determine
the question of its permanent value.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This is, of course, only one side of mediæval theory, but it is the
side which lay nearest to the facts. The reverse view, which derives the
authority of government from the governed, made its appearance in the
Middle Ages partly under the influence of classical tradition. But its
main interest and importance is that it served as a starting-point for
the thought of a later time. On the whole subject the reader may consult
Gierke, _Political Theories of the Middle Age_, translated by Maitland
(Cambridge University Press).