GLADSTONE AND MILL
From the middle of the nineteenth century two great names stand out in
the history of British Liberalism--that of Gladstone in the world of
action, that of Mill in the world of thought. Differing in much, they
agreed in one respect. They had the supreme virtue of keeping their
minds fresh and open to new ideas, and both of them in consequence
advanced to a deeper interpretation of social life as they grew older.
In 1846 Gladstone ranked as a Conservative, but he parted from his old
traditions under the leadership of Peel on the question of Free Trade,
and for many years to come the most notable of his public services lay
in the completion of the Cobdenite policy of financial emancipation. In
the pursuit of this policy he was brought into collision with the House
of Lords, and it was his active intervention in 1859-60 which saved the
Commons from a humiliating surrender, and secured its financial
supremacy unimpaired until 1909. In the following decade he stood for
the extension of the suffrage, and it was his Government which, in 1884,
carried the extension of the representative principle to the point at
which it rested twenty-seven years later. In economics Gladstone kept
upon the whole to the Cobdenite principles which he acquired in middle
life. He was not sympathetically disposed to the "New Unionism" and the
semi-socialistic ideas that came at the end of the 'eighties, which, in
fact, constituted a powerful cross current to the political work that he
had immediately in hand. Yet in relation to Irish land he entered upon a
new departure which threw over freedom of contract in a leading case
where the two parties were on glaringly unequal terms. No abstract
thinker, he had a passion for justice in the concrete which was capable
of carrying him far. He knew tyranny when he saw it, and upon it he
waged unremitting and many-sided war.
But his most original work was done in the sphere of imperial relations.
The maligned Majuba settlement was an act of justice which came too
late to effect a permanent undoing of mischief. All the greater was the
courage of the statesman who could throw himself at that time upon the
inherent force of national liberty and international fair dealing. In
the case of Ireland Gladstone again relied on the same principles, but
another force was necessary to carry the day, a force which no man can
command, the force of time. In international dealings generally
Gladstone was a pioneer. His principle was not precisely that of Cobden.
He was not a non-interventionist. He took action on behalf of Greece,
and would have done so on behalf of the Armenians, to save the national
honour and prevent a monstrous wrong. The Gladstonian principle may be
defined by antithesis to that of Machiavelli, and to that of Bismarck,
and to the practice of every Foreign Office. As that practice proceeds
on the principle that reasons of State justify everything, so Gladstone
proceeded on the principle that reasons of State justify nothing that is
not justified already by the human conscience. The statesman is for him
a man charged with maintaining not only the material interests but the
honour of his country. He is a citizen of the world in that he
represents his nation, which is a member of the community of the world.
He has to recognize rights and duties, as every representative of every
other human organization has to recognize rights and duties. There is no
line drawn beyond which human obligations cease. There is no gulf across
which the voice of human suffering cannot be heard, beyond which
massacre and torture cease to be execrable. Simply as a patriot, again,
a man should recognize that a nation may become great not merely by
painting the map red, or extending her commerce beyond all precedent,
but also as the champion of justice, the succourer of the oppressed, the
established home of freedom. From the denunciation of the Opium War,
from the exposure of the Neapolitan prisons, to his last appearance on
the morrow of the Constantinople massacre this was the message which
Gladstone sought to convey. He was before his time. He was not always
able to maintain his principle in his own Cabinet, and on his retirement
the world appeared to relapse definitely into the older ways. His own
party gave itself up in large measure to opposite views. On the other
hand, careful and unprejudiced criticism will recognize that the chief
opponent of his old age, Lord Salisbury, had imbibed something of his
spirit, and under its influence did much to save the country from the
excesses of Imperialism, while his follower, Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman, used the brief term of his power to reverse the
policy of racial domination in South Africa and to prove the value of
the old Gladstonian trust in the recuperative force of political
freedom. It may be added that, if cynicism has since appeared to hold
the field in international politics, it is the cynicism of terror rather
than the cynicism of ambition. The Scare has superseded the Vision as
the moving force in our external relations, and there are now signs that
the Scare in turn has spent its force and is making room at last for
Sense.
In other respects, Gladstone was a moral rather than an intellectual
force. He raised the whole level of public life. By habitually calling
upon what was best in men, he deepened the sense of public
responsibility and paved the way, half unconsciously, for the fuller
exercise of the social conscience. Mill was also a moral force, and the
most persistent influence of his books is more an effect of character
than of intellect. But, in place of Gladstone's driving power and
practical capacity, Mill had the qualities of a life-long learner, and
in his single person he spans the interval between the old and the new
Liberalism. Brought up on the pure milk of the Benthamite word, he never
definitely abandoned the first principles of his father. But he was
perpetually bringing them into contact with fresh experience and new
trains of thought, considering how they worked, and how they ought to be
modified in order to maintain what was really sound and valuable in
their content. Hence, Mill is the easiest person in the world to convict
of inconsistency, incompleteness, and lack of rounded system. Hence,
also, his work will survive the death of many consistent, complete, and
perfectly rounded systems.
As a utilitarian, Mill cannot appeal to any rights of the individual
that can be set in opposition to the public welfare. His method is to
show that the permanent welfare of the public is bound up with the
rights of the individual. Of course, there are occasions on which the
immediate expediency of the public would be met by ignoring personal
rights. But if the rule of expediency were followed there would be
neither right nor law at all. There would be no fixed rules in social
life, and nothing to which men could trust in guiding their conduct. For
the utilitarian, then, the question of right resolves itself into the
question: What claim is it, in general and as a matter of principle,
advisable for society to recognize? What in any given relation are the
permanent conditions of social health? In regard to liberty Mill's reply
turns on the moral or spiritual forces which determine the life of
society. First, particularly as regards freedom of thought and
discussion, society needs light. Truth has a social value, and we are
never to suppose that we are in the possession of complete and final
truth. But truth is only to be sought by experience in the world of
thought, and of action as well. In the process of experimentation there
are endless opportunities of error, and the free search for truth
therefore involves friction and waste. The promulgation of error will do
harm, a harm that might be averted if error were suppressed. But
suppression by any other means than those of rational suasion is one of
those remedies which cure the disease by killing the patient. It
paralyzes the free search for truth. Not only so, but there is an
element of positive value in honest error which places it above
mechanically accepted truth. So far as it is honest it springs from the
spontaneous operation of the mind on the basis of some partial and
incomplete experience. It is, so far as it goes, an interpretation of
experience, though a faulty one, whereas the belief imposed by authority
is no interpretation of experience at all. It involves no personal
effort. Its blind acceptance seals the resignation of the will and the
intellect to effacement and stultification.
The argument on this side does not rest on human fallibility. It appeals
in its full strength to those who are most confident that they possess
truth final and complete. They are asked to recognize that the way in
which this truth must be communicated to others is not by material but
by spiritual means, and that if they hold out physical threats as a
deterrent, or worldly advantage as a means of persuasion, they are
destroying not merely the fruits but the very root of truth as it grows
within the human mind. Yet the argument receives additional force when
we consider the actual history of human belief. The candid man who knows
anything of the movements of thought will recognize that even the faith
which is most vital to him is something that has grown through the
generations, and he may infer, if he is reasonable, that as it has grown
in the past so, if it has the vital seed within it, it will grow in the
future. It may be permanent in outline, but in content it will change.
But, if truth itself is an expanding circle of ideas that grows through
criticism and by modification, we need say no more as to the rough and
imperfect apprehension of truth which constitutes the dominant opinion
of society at any given moment. It needs little effort of detachment to
appreciate the danger of any limitation of inquiry by the collective
will whether its organ be law or the repressive force of public opinion.
The foundation of liberty on this side, then, is the conception of
thought as a growth dependent on spiritual laws, flourishing in the
movement of ideas as guided by experience, reflection and feeling,
corrupted by the intrusion of material considerations, slain by the
guillotine of finality. The same conception is broadened out to cover
the whole idea of personality. Social well-being cannot be incompatible
with individual well-being. But individual well-being has as its
foundation the responsible life of the rational creature. Manhood, and
Mill would emphatically add womanhood too, rests on the spontaneous
development of faculty. To find vent for the capacities of feeling, of
emotion, of thought, of action, is to find oneself. The result is no
anarchy. The self so found has as the pivot of its life the power of
control. To introduce some unity into life, some harmony into thought,
action and feeling, is its central achievement, and to realize its
relation to others and guide its own life thereby, its noblest rule. But
the essential of control is that it should be self-control. Compulsion
may be necessary for the purposes of external order, but it adds nothing
to the inward life that is the true being of man. It even threatens it
with loss of authority and infringes the sphere of its responsibility.
It is a means and not an end, and a means that readily becomes a danger
to ends that are very vital. Under self-guidance individuals will
diverge widely, and some of their eccentricities will be futile, others
wasteful, others even painful and abhorrent to witness. But, upon the
whole, it is good that they should differ. Individuality is an element
of well-being, and that not only because it is the necessary consequence
of self-government, but because, after all allowances for waste, the
common life is fuller and richer for the multiplicity of types that it
includes, and that go to enlarge the area of collective experience. The
larger wrong done by the repression of women is not the loss to women
themselves who constitute one half of the community, but the
impoverishment of the community as a whole, the loss of all the elements
in the common stock which the free play of the woman's mind would
contribute.
Similar principles underlie Mill's treatment of representative
government. If the adult citizen, male or female, has a right to vote,
it is not so much as a means to the enforcement of his claims upon
society, but rather as a means of enforcing his personal responsibility
for the actions of the community. The problem of character is the
determining issue in the question of government. If men could be
spoon-fed with happiness, a benevolent despotism would be the ideal
system. If they are to take a part in working out their own salvation,
they must be summoned to their share in the task of directing the common
life. Carrying this principle further, Mill turned the edge of the
common objection to the extension of the suffrage based on the ignorance
and the irresponsibility of the voters. To learn anything men must
practise. They must be trusted with more responsibility if they are to
acquire the sense of responsibility. There were dangers in the process,
but there were greater dangers and there were fewer elements of hope as
long as the mass of the population was left outside the circle of civic
rights and duties. The greatest danger that Mill saw in democracy was
that of the tyranny of the majority. He emphasized, perhaps more than
any Liberal teacher before him, the difference between the desire of the
majority and the good of the community. He recognized that the different
rights for which the Liberal was wont to plead might turn out in
practice hard to reconcile with one another, that if personal liberty
were fundamental it might only be imperilled by a so-called political
liberty which would give to the majority unlimited powers of coercion.
He was, therefore, for many years anxiously concerned with the means of
securing a fair hearing and fair representation to minorities, and as a
pioneer of the movement for Proportional Representation he sought to
make Parliament the reflection not of a portion of the people, however
preponderant numerically, but of the whole.
On the economic side of social life Mill recognized in principle the
necessity of controlling contract where the parties were not on equal
terms, but his insistence on personal responsibility made him chary in
extending the principle to grown-up persons, and his especial attachment
to the cause of feminine emancipation led him to resist the tide of
feeling which was, in fact, securing the first elements of emancipation
for the woman worker. He trusted at the outset of his career to the
elevation of the standard of comfort as the best means of improving the
position of the wage-earner, and in this elevation he regarded the
limitation of the family as an essential condition. As he advanced in
life, however, he became more and more dissatisfied with the whole
structure of a system which left the mass of the population in the
position of wage-earners, while the minority lived on rents, profits,
and the interest on invested capital. He came to look forward to a
co-operative organization of society in which a man would learn to "dig
and weave for his country," as he now is prepared to fight for it, and
in which the surplus products of industry would be distributed among the
producers. In middle life voluntary co-operation appeared to him the
best means to this end, but towards the close he recognized that his
change of views was such as, on the whole, to rank him with the
Socialists, and the brief exposition of the Socialist ideal given in his
Autobiography remains perhaps the best summary statement of Liberal
Socialism that we possess.