THE ELEMENTS OF LIBERALISM
I cannot here attempt so much as a sketch of the historical progress of
the Liberalizing movement. I would call attention only to the main
points at which it assailed the old order, and to the fundamental ideas
directing its advance.
1. _Civil Liberty._
Both logically and historically the first point of attack is arbitrary
government, and the first liberty to be secured is the right to be dealt
with in accordance with law. A man who has no legal rights against
another, but stands entirely at his disposal, to be treated according to
his caprice, is a slave to that other. He is "rightless," devoid of
rights. Now, in some barbaric monarchies the system of rightlessness has
at times been consistently carried through in the relations of subjects
to the king. Here men and women, though enjoying customary rights of
person and property as against one another, have no rights at all as
against the king's pleasure. No European monarch or seignior has ever
admittedly enjoyed power of this kind, but European governments have at
various times and in various directions exercised or claimed powers no
less arbitrary in principle. Thus, by the side of the regular courts of
law which prescribe specific penalties for defined offences proved
against a man by a regular form of trial, arbitrary governments resort
to various extrajudicial forms of arrest, detention, and punishment,
depending on their own will and pleasure. Of such a character is
punishment by "administrative" process in Russia at the present day;
imprisonment by _lettre de cachet_ in France under the _ancien régime_;
all executions by so-called martial law in times of rebellion, and the
suspension of various ordinary guarantees of immediate and fair trial in
Ireland. Arbitrary government in this form was one of the first objects
of attack by the English Parliament in the seventeenth century, and this
first liberty of the subject was vindicated by the Petition of Right,
and again by the Habeas Corpus Act. It is significant of much that this
first step in liberty should be in reality nothing more nor less than a
demand for law. "Freedom of men under government," says Locke, summing
up one whole chapter of seventeenth-century controversy, "is to have a
standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society and made
by the legislative power erected in it."
The first condition of universal freedom, that is to say, is a measure
of universal restraint. Without such restraint some men may be free but
others will be unfree. One man may be able to do all his will, but the
rest will have no will except that which he sees fit to allow them. To
put the same point from another side, the first condition of free
government is government not by the arbitrary determination of the
ruler, but by fixed rules of law, to which the ruler himself is subject.
We draw the important inference that there is no essential antithesis
between liberty and law. On the contrary, law is essential to liberty.
Law, of course, restrains the individual; it is therefore opposed to his
liberty at a given moment and in a given direction. But, equally, law
restrains others from doing with him as they will. It liberates him
from the fear of arbitrary aggression or coercion, and this is the only
way, indeed, the only sense, in which liberty _for an entire community_
is attainable.
There is one point tacitly postulated in this argument which should not
be overlooked. In assuming that the reign of law guarantees liberty to
the whole community, we are assuming that it is impartial. If there is
one law for the Government and another for its subjects, one for noble
and another for commoner, one for rich and another for poor, the law
does not guarantee liberty for all. Liberty in this respect implies
equality. Hence the demand of Liberalism for such a procedure as will
ensure the impartial application of law. Hence the demand for the
independence of the judiciary to secure equality as between the
Government and its subjects. Hence the demand for cheap procedure and
accessible courts. Hence the abolition of privileges of class.[2] Hence
will come in time the demand for the abolition of the power of money to
purchase skilled advocacy.
2. _Fiscal Liberty._
Closely connected with juristic liberty, and more widely felt in
everyday life, is the question of fiscal liberty. The Stuarts brought
things to a head in this country by arbitrary taxation. George III
brought things to a head in America by the same infallible method. The
immediate cause of the French Revolution was the refusal of the nobles
and the clergy to bear their share of the financial burden. But fiscal
liberty raises more searching questions than juristic liberty. It is not
enough that taxes should be fixed by a law applying universally and
impartially, for taxes vary from year to year in accordance with public
needs, and while other laws may remain stable and unchanged for an
indefinite period, taxation must, in the nature of the case, be
adjustable. It is a matter, properly considered, for the Executive
rather than the Legislature. Hence the liberty of the subject in fiscal
matters means the restraint of the Executive, not merely by established
and written laws, but by a more direct and constant supervision. It
means, in a word, responsible government, and that is why we have more
often heard the cry, "No taxation without representation," than the cry,
"No legislation without representation." Hence, from the seventeenth
century onwards, fiscal liberty was seen to involve what is called
political liberty.
3. _Personal Liberty._
Of political liberty it will be more convenient to speak later. But let
us here observe that there is another avenue by which it can be, and, in
fact, was, approached. We have seen that the reign of law is the first
step to liberty. A man is not free when he is controlled by other men,
but only when he is controlled by principles and rules which all society
must obey, for the community is the true master of the free man. But
here we are only at the beginning of the matter. There may be law, and
there may be no attempt, such as the Stuarts made, to set law aside, yet
(1) the making and maintenance of law may depend on the will of the
sovereign or of an oligarchy, and (2) the content of the law may be
unjust and oppressive to some, to many, or to all except those who make
it. The first point brings us back to the problem of political liberty,
which we defer. The second opens questions which have occupied a great
part of the history of Liberalism, and to deal with them we have to ask
what types of law have been felt as peculiarly oppressive, and in what
respects it has been necessary to claim liberty not merely through law,
but by the abolition of bad law and tyrannical administration.
In the first place, there is the sphere of what is called personal
liberty--a sphere most difficult to define, but the arena of the
fiercest strife of passion and the deepest feelings of mankind. At the
basis lies liberty of thought--freedom from inquisition into opinions
that a man forms in his own mind[3]--the inner citadel where, if
anywhere, the individual must rule. But liberty of thought is of very
little avail without liberty to exchange thoughts--since thought is
mainly a social product; and so with liberty of thought goes liberty of
speech and liberty of writing, printing, and peaceable discussion. These
rights are not free from difficulty and dubiety. There is a point at
which speech becomes indistinguishable from action, and free speech may
mean the right to create disorder. The limits of just liberty here are
easy to draw neither in theory nor in practice. They lead us immediately
to one of the points at which liberty and order may be in conflict, and
it is with conflicts of this kind that we shall have to deal. The
possibilities of conflict are not less in relation to the connected
right of liberty in religion. That this liberty is absolute cannot be
contended. No modern state would tolerate a form of religious worship
which should include cannibalism, human sacrifice, or the burning of
witches. In point of fact, practices of this kind--which follow quite
naturally from various forms of primitive belief that are most sincerely
held--are habitually put down by civilized peoples that are responsible
for the government of less developed races. The British law recognizes
polygamy in India, but I imagine it would not be open either to a
Mahommedan or a Hindu to contract two marriages in England. Nor is it
for liberty of this kind that the battle has been fought.
What, then, is the primary meaning of religious liberty? Externally, I
take it to include the liberties of thought and expression, and to add
to these the right of worship in any form which does not inflict injury
on others or involve a breach of public order. This limitation appears
to carry with it a certain decency and restraint in expression which
avoids unnecessary insult to the feelings of others; and I think this
implication must be allowed, though it makes some room for strained and
unfair applications. Externally, again, we must note that the demand for
religious liberty soon goes beyond mere toleration. Religious liberty is
incomplete as long as any belief is penalized, as, for example, by
carrying with it exclusion from office or from educational advantages.
On this side, again, full liberty implies full equality. Turning to the
internal side, the spirit of religious liberty rests on the conception
that a man's religion ranks with his own innermost thought and feelings.
It is the most concrete expression of his personal attitude to life, to
his kind, to the world, to his own origin and destiny. There is no real
religion that is not thus drenched in personality; and the more religion
is recognized for spiritual the starker the contradiction is felt to be
that any one should seek to impose a religion on another. Properly
regarded, the attempt is not wicked, but impossible. Yet those sin most
against true religion who try to convert men from the outside by
mechanical means. They have the lie in the soul, being most ignorant of
the nature of that for which they feel most deeply.
Yet here again we stumble on difficulties. Religion is personal. Yet is
not religion also eminently social? What is more vital to the social
order than its beliefs? If we send a man to gaol for stealing trash,
what shall we do to him whom, in our conscience and on our honour, we
believe to be corrupting the hearts of mankind, and perhaps leading them
to eternal perdition? Again, what in the name of liberty are we to do to
men whose preaching, if followed out in act, would bring back the rack
and the stake? Once more there is a difficulty of delimitation which
will have to be fully sifted. I will only remark here that our practice
has arrived at a solution which, upon the whole, appears to have worked
well hitherto, and which has its roots in principle. It is open to a man
to preach the principles of Torquemada or the religion of Mahomet. It is
not open to men to practise such of their precepts as would violate the
rights of others or cause a breach of the peace. Expression is free, and
worship is free as far as it is the expression of personal devotion. So
far as they infringe the freedom, or, more generally, the rights of
others, the practices inculcated by a religion cannot enjoy unqualified
freedom.
4. _Social Liberty._
From the spiritual we turn to the practical side of life. On this side
we may observe, first, that Liberalism has had to deal with those
restraints on the individual which flow from the hierarchic organization
of society, and reserve certain offices, certain forms of occupation,
and perhaps the right or at least the opportunity of education
generally, to people of a certain rank or class. In its more extreme
form this is a caste system, and its restrictions are religious or legal
as well as social. In Europe it has taken more than one form. There is
the monopoly of certain occupations by corporations, prominent in the
minds of eighteenth-century French reformers. There is the reservation
of public appointments and ecclesiastical patronage for those who are
"born," and there is a more subtly pervading spirit of class which
produces a hostile attitude to those who could and would rise; and this
spirit finds a more material ally in the educational difficulties that
beset brains unendowed with wealth. I need not labour points which will
be apparent to all, but have again to remark two things. (1) Once more
the struggle for liberty is also, when pushed through, a struggle for
equality. Freedom to choose and follow an occupation, if it is to become
fully effective, means equality with others in the opportunities for
following such occupation. This is, in fact, one among the various
considerations which lead Liberalism to support a national system of
free education, and will lead it further yet on the same lines. (2) Once
again, though we may insist on the rights of the individual, the social
value of the corporation or quasi-corporation, like the Trade Union,
cannot be ignored. Experience shows the necessity of some measure of
collective regulation in industrial matters, and in the adjustment of
such regulation to individual liberty serious difficulties of principle
emerge. We shall have to refer to these in the next section. But one
point is relevant at this stage. It is clearly a matter of Liberal
principle that membership of a corporation should not depend on any
hereditary qualification, nor be set about with any artificial
difficulty of entry, where by the term artificial is meant any
difficulty not involved in the nature of the occupation concerned, but
designed for purposes of exclusiveness. As against all such methods of
restriction, the Liberal case is clear.
It has only to be added here that restrictions of sex are in every
respect parallel to restrictions of class. There are, doubtless,
occupations for which women are unfit. But, if so, the test of fitness
is sufficient to exclude them. The "open road for women" is one
application, and a very big one, of the "open road for talent," and to
secure them both is of the essence of Liberalism.
5. _Economic Liberty_
Apart from monopolies, industry was shackled in the earlier part of the
modern period by restrictive legislation in various forms, by navigation
laws, and by tariffs. In particular, the tariff was not merely an
obstruction to free enterprise, but a source of inequality as between
trade and trade. Its fundamental effect is to transfer capital and
labour from the objects on which they can be most profitably employed in
a given locality, to objects on which they are less profitably employed,
by endowing certain industries to the disadvantage of the general
consumer. Here, again, the Liberal movement is at once an attack on an
obstruction and on an inequality. In most countries the attack has
succeeded in breaking down local tariffs and establishing relatively
large Free Trade units. It is only in England, and only owing to our
early manufacturing supremacy, that it has fully succeeded in overcoming
the Protective principle, and even in England the Protectionist reaction
would undoubtedly have gained at least a temporary victory but for our
dependence on foreign countries for food and the materials of industry.
The most striking victory of Liberal ideas is one of the most
precarious. At the same time, the battle is one which Liberalism is
always prepared to fight over again. It has led to no back stroke, no
counter-movement within the Liberal ranks themselves.
It is otherwise with organized restrictions upon industry. The old
regulations, which were quite unsuited to the conditions of the time,
either fell into desuetude during the eighteenth century, or were
formally abolished during the earlier years of the industrial
revolution. For a while it seemed as though wholly unrestricted
industrial enterprise was to be the progressive watchword, and the
echoes of that time still linger. But the old restrictions had not been
formally withdrawn before a new process of regulation began. The
conditions produced by the new factory system shocked the public
conscience; and as early as 1802 we find the first of a long series of
laws, out of which has grown an industrial code that year by year
follows the life of the operative, in his relations with his employer,
into more minute detail. The first stages of this movement were
contemplated with doubt and distrust by many men of Liberal sympathies.
The intention was, doubtless, to protect the weaker party, but the
method was that of interference with freedom of contract. Now the
freedom of the sane adult individual--even such strong individualists as
Cobden recognized that the case of children stood apart--carried with it
the right of concluding such agreements as seemed best to suit his own
interests, and involved both the right and the duty of determining the
lines of his life for himself. Free contract and personal responsibility
lay close to the heart of the whole Liberal movement. Hence the doubts
felt by so many Liberals as to the regulation of industry by law. None
the less, as time has gone on, men of the keenest Liberal sympathies
have come not merely to accept but eagerly to advance the extension of
public control in the industrial sphere, and of collective
responsibility in the matter of the education and even the feeding of
children, the housing of the industrial population, the care of the sick
and aged, the provision of the means of regular employment. On this side
Liberalism seems definitely to have retraced its steps, and we shall
have to inquire closely into the question whether the reversal is a
change of principle or of application.
Closely connected with freedom of contract is freedom of association. If
men may make any agreement with one another in their mutual interest so
long as they do not injure a third party, they may apparently agree to
act together permanently for any purposes of common interest on the same
conditions. That is, they may form associations. Yet at bottom the
powers of an association are something very different from the powers of
the individuals composing it; and it is only by legal pedantry that the
attempt can be made to regulate the behaviour of an association on
principles derived from and suitable to the relations of individuals. An
association might become so powerful as to form a state within the
state, and to contend with government on no unequal terms. The history
of some revolutionary societies, of some ecclesiastical organizations,
even of some American trusts might be quoted to show that the danger is
not imaginary. Short of this, an association may act oppressively
towards others and even towards its own members, and the function of
Liberalism may be rather to protect the individual against the power of
the association than to protect the right of association against the
restriction of the law. In fact, in this regard, the principle of
liberty cuts both ways, and this double application is reflected in
history. The emancipation of trade unions, however, extending over the
period from 1824 to 1906, and perhaps not yet complete, was in the main
a liberating movement, because combination was necessary to place the
workman on something approaching terms of equality with the employer,
and because tacit combinations of employers could never, in fact, be
prevented by law. It was, again, a movement to liberty through equality.
On the other hand, the oppressive capacities of a trade union could
never be left out of account, while combinations of capital, which might
be infinitely more powerful, have justly been regarded with distrust. In
this there is no inconsistency of principle, but a just appreciation of
a real difference of circumstance. Upon the whole it may be said that
the function of Liberalism is not so much to maintain a general right of
free association as to define the right in each case in such terms as
make for the maximum of real liberty and equality.
6. _Domestic Liberty._
Of all associations within the State, the miniature community of the
Family is the most universal and of the strongest independent vitality.
The authoritarian state was reflected in the authoritarian family, in
which the husband was within wide limits absolute lord of the person and
property of wife and children. The movement of liberation consists (1)
in rendering the wife a fully responsible individual, capable of holding
property, suing and being sued, conducting business on her own account,
and enjoying full personal protection against her husband; (2) in
establishing marriage as far as the law is concerned on a purely
contractual basis, and leaving the sacramental aspect of marriage to the
ordinances of the religion professed by the parties; (3) in securing the
physical, mental, and moral care of the children, partly by imposing
definite responsibilities on the parents and punishing them for neglect,
partly by elaborating a public system of education and of hygiene. The
first two movements are sufficiently typical cases of the
interdependence of liberty and equality. The third is more often
conceived as a Socialistic than a Liberal tendency, and, in point of
fact, the State control of education gives rise to some searching
questions of principle, which have not yet been fully solved. If, in
general, education is a duty which the State has a right to enforce,
there is a countervailing right of choice as to the lines of education
which it would be ill to ignore, and the mode of adjustment has not yet
been adequately determined either in theory or in practice. I would,
however, strongly maintain that the general conception of the State as
Over-parent is quite as truly Liberal as Socialistic. It is the basis of
the rights of the child, of his protection against parental neglect, of
the equality of opportunity which he may claim as a future citizen, of
his training to fill his place as a grown-up person in the social
system. Liberty once more involves control and restraint.
7. _Local, Racial, and National Liberty._
From the smallest social unit we pass to the largest. A great part of
the liberating movement is occupied with the struggle of entire nations
against alien rule, with the revolt of Europe against Napoleon, with the
struggle of Italy for freedom, with the fate of the Christian subjects
of Turkey, with the emancipation of the negro, with the national
movement in Ireland and in India. Many of these struggles present the
problem of liberty in its simplest form. It has been and is too often a
question of securing the most elementary rights for the weaker party;
and those who are not touched by the appeal are deficient rather in
imagination than in logic or ethics. But at the back of national
movements very difficult questions do arise. What is a nation as
distinct from a state? What sort of unity does it constitute, and what
are its rights? If Ireland is a nation, is Ulster one? and if Ulster is
a British and Protestant nation, what of the Catholic half of Ulster?
History has in some cases given us a practical answer. Thus, it has
shown that, enjoying the gift of responsible government, French and
British, despite all historical quarrels and all differences of
religious belief, language, and social structure, have fused into the
nation of Canada. History has justified the conviction that Germany was
a nation, and thrown ridicule on the contemptuous saying of Metternich
that Italy was a geographical expression. But how to anticipate history,
what rights to concede to a people that claims to be a self-determining
unit, is less easy to decide. There is no doubt that the general
tendency of Liberalism is to favour autonomy, but, faced as it is with
the problems of subdivision and the complexity of group with group, it
has to rely on the concrete teaching of history and the practical
insight of statesmanship to determine how the lines of autonomy are to
be drawn. There is, however, one empirical test which seems generally
applicable. Where a weaker nation incorporated with a larger or stronger
one can be governed by ordinary law applicable to both parties to the
union, and fulfilling all the ordinary principles of liberty, the
arrangement may be the best for both parties. But where this system
fails, where the government is constantly forced to resort to
exceptional legislation or perhaps to de-liberalize its own
institutions, the case becomes urgent. Under such conditions the most
liberally-minded democracy is maintaining a system which must undermine
its own principles. The Assyrian conqueror, Mr. Herbert Spencer
remarks, who is depicted in the bas-reliefs leading his captive by a
cord, is bound with that cord himself. He forfeits his liberty as long
as he retains his power.
Somewhat similar questions arise about race, which many people wrongly
confuse with nationality. So far as elementary rights are concerned
there can be no question as to the attitude of Liberalism. When the
political power which should guarantee such rights is brought into view,
questions of fact arise. Is the Negro or the Kaffir mentally and morally
capable of self-government or of taking part in a self-governing State?
The experience of Cape Colony tends to the affirmative view. American
experience of the negro gives, I take it, a more doubtful answer. A
specious extension of the white man's rights to the black may be the
best way of ruining the black. To destroy tribal custom by introducing
conceptions of individual property, the free disposal of land, and the
free purchase of gin may be the handiest method for the expropriator. In
all relations with weaker peoples we move in an atmosphere vitiated by
the insincere use of high-sounding words. If men say equality, they mean
oppression by forms of justice. If they say tutelage, they appear to
mean the kind of tutelage extended to the fattened goose. In such an
atmosphere, perhaps, our safest course, so far as principles and
deductions avail at all, is to fix our eyes on the elements of the
matter, and in any part of the world to support whatever method succeeds
in securing the "coloured" man from personal violence, from the lash,
from expropriation, and from gin; above all, so far as it may yet be,
from the white man himself. Until the white man has fully learnt to rule
his own life, the best of all things that he can do with the dark man is
to do nothing with him. In this relation, the day of a more constructive
Liberalism is yet to come.
8. _International Liberty._
If non-interference is the best thing for the barbarian many Liberals
have thought it to be the supreme wisdom in international affairs
generally. I shall examine this view later. Here I merely remark: (1) It
is of the essence of Liberalism to oppose the use of force, the basis of
all tyranny. (2) It is one of its practical necessities to withstand the
tyranny of armaments. Not only may the military force be directly
turned against liberty, as in Russia, but there are more subtle ways, as
in Western Europe, in which the military spirit eats into free
institutions and absorbs the public resources which might go to the
advancement of civilization. (3) In proportion as the world becomes
free, the use of force becomes meaningless. There is no purpose in
aggression if it is not to issue in one form or another of national
subjection.
9. _Political Liberty and Popular Sovereignty._
Underlying all these questions of right is the question how they are to
be secured and maintained. By enforcing the responsibility of the
executive and legislature to the community as a whole? Such is the
general answer, and it indicates one of the lines of connection between
the general theory of liberty and the doctrine of universal suffrage and
the sovereignty of the people. The answer, however, does not meet all
the possibilities of the case. The people as a whole might be careless
of their rights and incapable of managing them. They might be set on the
conquest of others, the expropriation of the rich, or on any form of
collective tyranny or folly. It is perfectly possible that from the
point of view of general liberty and social progress a limited franchise
might give better results than one that is more extended. Even in this
country it is a tenable view that the extension of the suffrage in 1884
tended for some years to arrest the development of liberty in various
directions. On what theory does the principle of popular sovereignty
rest, and within what limits does it hold good? Is it a part of the
general principles of liberty and equality, or are other ideas involved?
These are among the questions which we shall have to examine.
We have now passed the main phases of the Liberal movement in very
summary review, and we have noted, first, that it is co-extensive with
life. It is concerned with the individual, the family, the State. It
touches industry, law, religion, ethics. It would not be difficult, if
space allowed, to illustrate its influence in literature and art, to
describe the war with convention, insincerity, and patronage, and the
struggle for free self-expression, for reality, for the artist's soul.
Liberalism is an all-penetrating element of the life-structure of the
modern world. Secondly, it is an effective historical force. If its work
is nowhere complete, it is almost everywhere in progress. The modern
State as we see it in Europe outside Russia, in the British colonies, in
North and South America, as we begin to see it in the Russian empire and
throughout the vast continent of Asia, is the old authoritarian society
modified in greater or less degree by the absorption of Liberal
principles. Turning, thirdly, to those principles themselves, we have
recognized Liberalism in every department as a movement fairly denoted
by the name--a movement of liberation, a clearance of obstructions, an
opening of channels for the flow of free spontaneous vital activity.
Fourthly, we have seen that in a large number of cases what is under one
aspect a movement for liberty is on another side a movement towards
equality, and the habitual association of these principles is so far
confirmed. On the other hand, lastly, we have seen numerous cases in
which the exacter definition of liberty and the precise meaning of
equality remain obscure, and to discuss these will be our task. We have,
moreover, admittedly regarded Liberalism mainly in its earlier and more
negative aspect. We have seen it as a force working within an old
society and modifying it by the loosening of the bonds which its
structure imposed on human activity. We have yet to ask what
constructive social scheme, if any, could be formed on Liberal
principles; and it is here, if at all, that the fuller meaning of the
principles of Liberty and Equality should appear, and the methods of
applying them be made out. The problem of popular sovereignty pointed to
the same need. Thus the lines of the remainder of our task are clearly
laid down. We have to get at the fundamentals of Liberalism, and to
consider what kind of structure can be raised upon the basis which they
offer. We will approach the question by tracing the historic movement of
Liberal thought through certain well-marked phases. We shall see how the
problems which have been indicated were attacked by successive thinkers,
and how partial solutions gave occasion for deeper probings. Following
the guidance of the actual movement of ideas, we shall reach the centre
and heart of Liberalism, and we shall try to form a conception of the
essentials of the Liberal creed as a constructive theory of society.
This conception we shall then apply to the greater questions, political
and economic, of our own day; and this will enable us finally to
estimate the present position of Liberalism as a living force in the
modern world and the prospect of transforming its ideals into
actualities.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] In England "benefit of clergy" was still a good plea for remission
of sentence for a number of crimes in the seventeenth century. At that
time all who could read could claim benefit, which was therefore of the
nature of a privilege for the educated class. The requirement of
reading, which had become a form, was abolished in 1705, but peers and
clerks in holy orders could still plead their clergy in the eighteenth
century, and the last relics of the privilege were not finally abolished
till the nineteenth century.
[3] See an interesting chapter in Faguet's _Liberalisme_, which points
out that the common saying that thought is free is negated by any
inquisition which compels a man to disclose opinions, and penalizes him
if they are not such as to suit the inquisitor.