Produced by Al Haines
A MODERN SYMPOSIUM
BY
G. LOWES DICKINSON
"LIFE LIKE A DOME OF MANY-COLOURED GLASS
STAINS THE WHITE RADIANCE OF ETERNITY"
LONDON
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
MUSEUM STREET
FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1905
REPRINTED 1930
REPRINTED 1934
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
UNWIN BROTHERS LTD., WOKING
FRATRUM SOCIETATI
FRATRUM MINIMUS
THE SPEAKERS
LORD CANTILUPE
A TORY
ALFRED REMENHAM
A LIBERAL
REUBEN MENDOZA
A CONSERVATIVE
GEORGE ALLISON
A SOCIALIST
ANGUS MACCARTHY
AN ANARCHIST
HENRY MARTIN
A PROFESSOR
CHARLES WILSON
A MAN OF SCIENCE
ARTHUR ELLIS
A JOURNALIST
PHILIP AUDUBON
A MAN OF BUSINESS
AUBREY CORYAT
A POET
SIR JOHN HARINGTON
A GENTLEMAN OF LEISURE
WILLIAM WOODMAN
A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
GEOFFRY VIVIAN
A MAN OF LETTERS
A MODERN SYMPOSIUM
SOME of my readers may have heard of a club known as the Seekers. It
is now extinct; but in its day it was famous, and included a number of
men prominent in politics or in the professions. We used to meet once
a fortnight on the Saturday night, in London during the winter, but in
the summer usually at the country house of one or other of the members,
where we would spend the week-end together. The member in whose house
the meeting was held was chairman for the evening; and after the paper
had been read it was his duty to call upon the members to speak in what
order he thought best. On the occasion of the discussion which I am to
record, the meeting was held in my own house, where I now write, on the
North Downs. The company was an interesting one. There was Remenham,
then Prime Minister, and his great antagonist Mendoza, both of whom
were members of our society. For we aimed at combining the most
opposite elements, and were usually able, by a happy tradition
inherited from our founder, to hold them suspended in a temporary
harmony. Then there was Cantilupe, who had recently retired from
public life, and whose name, perhaps, is already beginning to be
forgotten. Of younger men we had Allison, who, though still engaged in
business, was already active in his socialist propaganda. Angus
MacCarthy, too, was there, a man whose tragic end at Saint Petersburg
is still fresh in our minds. And there were others of less note;
Wilson, the biologist, Professor Martin, Coryat, the poet, and one or
two more who will be mentioned in their place.
After dinner, the time of year being June, and the weather unusually
warm, we adjourned to the terrace for our coffee and cigars. The air
was so pleasant and the prospect so beautiful, the whole weald of
Sussex lying before us in the evening light, that it was suggested we
should hold our meeting there rather than indoors. This was agreed.
But it then transpired that Cantilupe, who was to have read the paper,
had brought nothing to read. He had forgotten, or he had been too
busy. At this discovery there was a general cry of protest.
Cantilupe's proposition that we should forgo our discussion was
indignantly scouted; and he was pressed to improvise something on the
lines of what he had intended to write. This, however, he steadily
declined to attempt; and it seemed as though the debate would fall
through, until it occurred to me to intervene in my capacity as
chairman.
"Cantilupe," I said, "certainly ought to be somehow penalized. And
since he declines to improvise a paper, I propose that he improvise a
speech. He is accustomed to doing that; and since he has now retired
from public life, this may be his last opportunity. Let him employ it,
then, in doing penance. And the penance I impose is, that he should
make a personal confession. That he should tell us why he has been a
politician, why he has been, and is, a Tory, and why he is now retiring
in the prime of life. I propose, in a word, that he should give us his
point of view. That will certainly provoke Remenham, on whom I shall
call next. He will provoke someone else. And so we shall all find
ourselves giving our points of view, and we ought to have a very
interesting evening." This suggestion was greeted, if not with
enthusiasm, at least with acquiescence. Cantilupe at first objected
strongly, but yielded to pressure, and on my calling formally upon him
rose reluctantly from his seat. For a minute or two he stood silent,
humping his shoulders and smiling through his thick beard. Then, in
his slow, deliberate way, he began as follows:
"Why I went into politics? Why did I? I'm sure I don't know.
Certainly I wasn't intended for it. I was intended for a country
gentleman, and I hope for the rest of my life to be one; which,
perhaps, if I were candid, is the real reason of my retirement. But I
was pushed into politics when I was young, as a kind of family duty;
and once in it's very hard to get out again. I'm coming out now
because, among other things, there's no longer any place for me.
Toryism is dead. And I, as you justly describe me, am a Tory. But you
want to know why? Well, I don't know that I can tell you. Perhaps I
ought to be able to. Remenham, I know, can and will give you the
clearest possible account of why he is a Liberal. But then Remenham
has principles; and I have only prejudices. I am a Tory because I was
born one, just as another man is a Radical because he was born one.
But Remenham, I really believe, is a Liberal, because he has convinced
himself that he ought to be one. I admire him for it, but I am quite
unable to understand him. And, for my own part, if I am to defend, or
rather to explain myself, I can only do so by explaining my prejudices.
And really I am glad to have the opportunity of doing so, if only
because it is a satisfaction occasionally to say what one thinks; a
thing which has become impossible in public life.
"The first of my prejudices is that I believe in inequality. I'm not
at all sure that that is a prejudice confined to myself--most people
seem to act upon it in practice, even in America. But I not only
recognize the fact, I approve the ideal of inequality. I don't want,
myself, to be the equal of Darwin or of the German Emperor; and I don't
see why anybody should want to be my equal. I like a society properly
ordered in ranks and classes. I like my butcher or my gardener to take
off his hat to me, and I like, myself, to stand bareheaded in the
presence of the Queen. I don't know that I'm better or worse than the
village carpenter; but I'm different; and I like him to recognize that
fact, and to recognize it myself. In America, I am told, everyone is
always informing you, in everything they do and say, directly or
indirectly, that they are as good as you are. That isn't true, and if
it were, it isn't good manners to keep saying it. I prefer a society
where people have places and know them. They always do have places in
any possible society; only, in a democratic society, they refuse to
recognize them; and, consequently, social relations are much ruder,
more unpleasant and less humane than they are, or used to be, in
England. That is my first prejudice; and it follows, of course, that I
hate the whole democratic movement. I see no sense in pretending to
make people equal politically when they're unequal in every other
respect. Do what you may, it will always be a few people that will
govern. And the only real result of the extension of the franchise has
been to transfer political power from the landlords to the trading
classes and the wire-pullers. Well, I don't think the change is a good
one. And that brings me to my second prejudice, a prejudice against
trade. I don't mean, of course, that we can do without it. A country
must have wealth, though I think we were a much better country when we
had less than we have now. Nor do I dispute that there are to be found
excellent, honourable, and capable men of business. But I believe that
the pursuit of wealth tends to unfit men for the service of the state.
And I sympathize with the somewhat extreme view of the ancient world
that those who are engaged in trade ought to be excluded from public
functions. I believe in government by gentlemen; and the word
gentleman I understand in the proper, old-fashioned English sense, as a
man of independent means, brought up from his boyhood in the atmosphere
of public life, and destined either for the army, the navy, the Church,
or Parliament. It was that kind of man that made Rome great, and that
made England great in the past; and I don't believe that a country will
ever be great which is governed by merchants and shopkeepers and
artisans. Not because they are not, or may not be, estimable people;
but because their occupations and manner of life unfit them for public
service.
"Well, that is the kind of feeling--I won't call it a principle--which
determined my conduct in public life. And you will remember that it
seemed to be far more possible to give expression to it when first I
entered politics than it is now. Even after the first Reform
Act--which, in my opinion was conceived upon the wrong lines--the
landed gentry still governed England; and if I could have had my way
they would have continued to do so. It wasn't really parliamentary
reform that was wanted; it was better and more intelligent government.
And such government the then ruling class was capable of supplying, as
is shown by the series of measures passed in the thirties and forties,
the new Poor Law and the Public Health Acts and the rest. Even the
repeal of the Corn Laws shows at least how capable they were of
sacrificing their own interests to the nation; though otherwise I
consider that measure the greatest of their blunders. I don't profess
to be a political economist, and I am ready to take it from those whose
business it is to know that our wealth has been increased by Free
Trade. But no one has ever convinced me, though many people have
tried, that the increase of wealth ought to be the sole object of a
nation's policy. And it is surely as clear as day that the policy of
Free Trade has dislocated the whole structure of our society. It has
substituted a miserable city-proletariat for healthy labourers on the
soil; it has transferred the great bulk of wealth from the
country-gentleman to the traders; and in so doing it has more and more
transferred power from those who had the tradition of using it to those
who have no tradition at all except that of accumulation. The very
thing which I should have thought must be the main business of a
statesman--the determination of the proper relations of classes to one
another--we have handed over to the chances of competition. We have
abandoned the problem in despair, instead of attempting to solve it;
with the result, that our population--so it seems to me--is daily
degenerating before our eyes, in physique, in morals, in taste, in
everything that matters; while we console ourselves with the increasing
aggregate of our wealth. Free Trade, in my opinion, was the first
great betrayal by the governing class of the country and themselves,
and the second was the extension of the franchise. I do not say that I
would not have made any change at all in the parliamentary system that
had been handed down to us. But I would never have admitted, even
implicitly, that every man has a right to vote, still less that all
have an equal right. For society, say what we may, is not composed of
individuals but of classes; and by classes it ought to be represented.
I would have enfranchised peasants, artisans, merchants, manufacturers,
as such, taking as my unit the interest, not the individual, and
assigning to each so much weight as would enable its influence to be
felt, while preserving to the landed gentry their preponderance. That
would have been difficult, no doubt, but it would have been worth
doing; whereas it was, to my mind, as foolish as it was easy simply to
add new batches of electors, till we shall arrive, I do not doubt, at
what, in effect, is universal suffrage, without having ever admitted to
ourselves that we wanted to have it.
"But what has been done is final and irremediable. Henceforth,
numbers, or rather those who control numbers, will dominate England;
and they will not be the men under whom hitherto she has grown great.
For people like myself there is no longer a place in politics. And
really, so far as I am personally concerned, I am rather glad to know
it. Those who have got us into the mess must get us out of it.
Probably they will do so, in their own way; but they will make, in the
process, a very different England from the one I have known and
understood and loved. We shall have a population of city people,
better fed and housed, I hope, than they are now, clever and quick and
smart, living entirely by their heads, ready to turn out in a moment
for use everything they know, but knowing really very little, and not
knowing it very well. There will be fewer of the kind of people in
whom I take pleasure, whom I like to regard as peculiarly English, and
who are the products of the countryside; fellows who grow like
vegetables, and, without knowing how, put on sense as they put on flesh
by an unconscious process of assimilation; who will stand for an hour
at a time watching a horse or a pig, with stolid moon-faces as
motionless as a pond; the sort of men that visitors from town imagine
to be stupid because they take five minutes to answer a question, and
then probably answer by asking another; but who have stored up in them
a wealth of experience far too extensive and complicated for them ever
to have taken account of it. They live by their instincts not their
brains; but their instincts are the slow deposit of long years of
practical dealings with nature. That is the kind of man I like. And I
like to live among them in the way I do--in a traditional relation
which it never occurs to them to resent, any more than it does to me to
abuse it. That sort of relation you can't create; it has to grow, and
to be handed down from father to son. The new men who come on to the
land never manage to establish it. They bring with them the isolation
which is the product of cities. They have no idea of any tie except
that of wages; the notion of neighbourliness they do not understand.
And that reminds me of a curious thing. People go to town for society;
but I have always found that there is no real society except in the
country. We may be stupid there, but we belong to a scheme of things
which embodies the wisdom of generations. We meet not in
drawing-rooms, but in the hunting-field, on the county-bench, at
dinners of tenants or farmers' associations. Our private business is
intermixed with our public. Our occupation does not involve
competition; and the daily performance of its duties we feel to be
itself a kind of national service. That is an order of things which I
understand and admire, as my fathers understood and admired it before
me. And that is why I am a Tory; not because of any opinions I hold,
but because that is my character. I stood for Toryism while it meant
something; and now that it means nothing, though I stand for it no
longer, still I can't help being it. The England that is will last my
time; the England that is to be does not interest me; and it is as well
that I should have nothing to do with directing it.
"I don't know whether that is a sufficient account of the question I
was told to answer; but it's the best I can make, and I think it ought
to be sufficient. I always imagine myself saying to God, if He asks me
to give an account of myself: 'Here I am, as you made me. You can take
me or leave me. If I had to live again I would live just so. And if
you want me to live differently, you must make me different.' I have
championed a losing cause, and I am sorry it has lost. But I do not
break my heart about it. I can still live for the rest of my days the
life I respect and enjoy. And I am content to leave the nation in the
hands of Remenham, who, as I see, is all impatience to reply to my
heresies."
REMENHAM in fact was fidgeting in his chair as though he found it hard
to keep his seat; and I should have felt bound in pity to call upon him
next, even if I had not already determined to do so. He rose with
alacrity; and it was impossible not to be struck by the contrast he
presented to Cantilupe. His elastic upright figure, his firm chin, the
exuberance of his gestures, the clear ring of his voice, expressed
admirably the intellectual and nervous force which he possessed in a
higher degree than any man I have ever come across. He began without
hesitation, and spoke throughout with the trained and facile eloquence
of which he was master. "I shall, I am sure, be believed," he said,
"when I emphatically assert that nothing could be more distressing to
me than the notion--if I should be driven to accept it--that the
liberal measures on which, in my opinion, the prosperity and the true
welfare of the country depends should have, as one of their incidental
concomitants, the withdrawal from public life of such men as our friend
who has just sat down. We need all the intellectual and moral
resources of the country; and among them I count as not the least
valuable and fruitful the stock of our ancient country gentlemen. I
regretted the retirement of Lord Cantilupe on public as well as on
personal grounds; and my regret is only tempered, not altogether
removed, when I see how well, how honourably and how happily he is
employing his well-deserved leisure. But I am glad to know that we
have still, and to believe that we shall continue to have, in the great
Council of the nation, men of his distinguished type and tradition to
form one, and that not the least important, of the balances and
counter-checks in the great and complicated engine of state.
"When, however, he claims--or perhaps I should rather say desires--for
the distinguished order of which he is a member, an actual and
permanent preponderance in the state, there, I confess, I must part
company with him. Nay, I cannot even accept the theory, to which he
gave expression, of a fixed and stable representation of interests. It
is indeed true that society, by the mysterious dispensation of the
Divine Being, is wonderfully compounded of the most diverse elements
and classes, corresponding to the various needs and requirements of
human life. And it is an ancient theory, supported by the authority of
great names, by Plato, my revered master, the poet-philosopher, by
Aristotle, the founder of political science, that the problem of a
statesman is so to adjust these otherwise discordant elements as to
form once for all in the body-politic a perfect, a final and immutable
harmony. There is, according to this view, one simple chord and one
only, which the great organ of society is adapted to play; and the
business of the legislator is merely to tune the instrument so that it
shall play it correctly. Thus, if Plato could have had his way, his
great common chord, his harmony of producers, soldiers and
philosophers, would still have been droning monotonously down the ages,
wherever men were assembled to dwell together. Doubtless the concord
he conceived was beautiful. But the dissonances he would have
silenced, but which, with ever-augmenting force, peal and crash, from
his day to ours, through the echoing vault of time, embody, as I am apt
to think, a harmony more august than any which even he was able to
imagine, and in their intricate succession weave the plan of a
world-symphony too high to be apprehended save in part by our grosser
sense, but perceived with delight by the pure intelligence of immortal
spirits. It is indeed the fundamental defect of all imaginary
polities--and how much more of such as fossilize, without even
idealizing, the actual!--that even though they be perfect, their
perfection is relative only to a single set of conditions; and that
could they perpetuate themselves they would also perpetuate these,
which should have been but brief and transitory phases in the history
of the race. Had it been possible for Plato to establish over the
habitable globe his golden chain of philosophic cities, he would have
riveted upon the world for ever the institutions of slavery and caste,
would have sealed at the source the springs of science and invention,
and imprisoned in perennial impotence that mighty genius of empire
which alone has been able to co-ordinate to a common and beneficent end
the stubborn and rebellious members of this growing creature Man. And
if the imagination of a Plato, permitted to work its will, would thus
have sterilized the germs of progress, what shall we say of such men as
ourselves imposing on the fecundity of nature the limits and rules of
our imperfect mensuration! Rather should we, in humility, submit
ourselves to her guidance, and so adapt our institutions that they
shall hamper as little as may be the movements and forces operating
within them. For it is by conflict, as we have now learnt, that the
higher emerges from the lower, and nature herself, it would almost
seem, does not direct but looks on, as her world emerges in painful
toil from chaos. We do not find her with precipitate zeal intervening
to arrest at a given point the ferment of creation; stretching her hand
when she sees the gleam of the halcyon or the rose to bid the process
cease that would destroy them; and sacrificing to the completeness of
those lower forms the nobler imperfection of man and of what may lie
beyond him. She looks always to the end; and so in our statesmanship
should we, striving to express, not to limit, by our institutions the
forces with which we have to deal. Our polity should grow, like a
skin, upon the living tissue of society. For who are we that we should
say to this man or that, go plough, keep shop, or govern the state?
That we should say to the merchant, 'thus much power shall be yours,'
and to the farmer, 'thus much yours?' No! rather let us say to each
and to all, Take the place you can, enjoy the authority you can win!
Let our constitution express the balance of forces in our society, and
as they change let the disposition of power change with them! That is
the creed of liberalism, supported by nature herself, and sanctioned, I
would add with reverence, by the Almighty Power, in the disposition and
order of His stupendous creation.
"But it is not a creed that levels, nor one that destroys. None can
have more regard than I--not Cantilupe himself--for our ancient crown,
our hereditary aristocracy. These, while they deserve it--and long may
they do so!--will retain their honoured place in the hearts and
affections of the people. Only, alongside of them, I would make room
for all elements and interests that may come into being in the natural
course of the play of social forces. But these will be far too
numerous, far too inextricably interwoven, too rapidly changing in
relative weight and importance, for the intelligence of man to attempt,
by any artificial scheme, to balance and adjust their conflicting
claims. Open to all men equally, within the limits of prudence, the
avenue to political influence, and let them use, as they can and will,
in combined or isolated action, the opportunities thus liberally
bestowed. That is the key-note of the policy which I have consistently
adopted from my entrance into public life, and which I am prepared to
prosecute to the end, though that end should be the universal suffrage
so dreaded by the last speaker. He tells me it is a policy of reckless
abandonment. But abandonment to what? Abandonment to the people! And
the question is, Do we trust the people? I do; he does not! There, I
venture to think, is the real difference between us.
"Yes, I am not ashamed to say it, I trust the People! What should I
trust, if I could not trust them? What else is a nation but an
assemblage of the talents, the capacities, the virtues of the citizens
of whom it is composed? To utilize those talents, to evoke those
capacities, to offer scope and opportunity to those virtues, must be
the end and purpose of every great and generous policy; and to that
end, up to the measure of my powers, I have striven to minister, not
rashly, I hope, nor with impatience, but in the spirit of a sober and
assured faith.
"Such is my conception of liberalism. But if liberalism has its
mission at home, not less important are its principles in the region of
international relations. I will not now embark on the troubled sea of
foreign policy. But on one point I will touch, since it was raised by
the last speaker, and that is the question of our foreign trade. In no
department of human activity, I will venture to say, are the intentions
of the Almighty more plainly indicated, than in this of the interchange
of the products of labour. To each part of the habitable globe have
been assigned its special gifts for the use and delectation of Man; to
every nation its peculiar skill, its appropriate opportunities. As the
world was created for labour, so it was created for exchange. Across
the ocean, bridged at last by the indomitable pertinacity of art, the
granaries of the new world call, in their inexhaustible fecundity for
the iron and steel, the implements and engines of the old. The
shepherd-kings of the limitless plains of Australia, the Indian ryot,
the now happily emancipated negro of Georgia and Carolina, feed and are
fed by the factories and looms of Manchester and Bradford. Pall Mall
is made glad with the produce of the vineyards of France and Spain; and
the Italian peasant goes clad in the labours of the Leicester artisan.
The golden chain revolves, the silver buckets rise and fall; and one to
the other passes on, as it fills and overflows, the stream that pours
from Nature's cornucopia! Such is the law ordained by the Power that
presides over the destinies of the world; and not all the interferences
of man with His beneficent purposes can avail altogether to check and
frustrate their happy operation. Yet have the blind cupidity, the
ignorant apprehensions of national zeal dislocated, so far as was
possible, the wheels and cogs of the great machine, hampered its
working and limited its uses. And if there be anything of which this
great nation may justly boast, it is that she has been the first to
tear down the barriers and dams of a perverted ingenuity, and to admit
in unrestricted plenitude to every channel of her verdant meadows the
limpid and fertilizing stream of trade.
"Verily she has had her reward! Search the records of history, and you
will seek in vain for a prosperity so immense, so continuous, so
progressive, as that which has blessed this country in the last
half-century of her annals. This access of wealth was admitted indeed
by the speaker who preceded me. But he complained that we had taken no
account of the changes which the new system was introducing into the
character and occupations of the people. It is true; and he would be a
rash man who should venture to forecast and to determine the remoter
results of such a policy; or should shrink from the consequences of
liberty on the ground that he cannot anticipate their character. Which
of us would have the courage, even if he had the power, to impose upon
a nation for all time the form of its economic life, the type of its
character, the direction of its enterprise? The possibilities that lie
in the womb of Nature are greater than we can gauge; we can but
facilitate their birth, we may not prescribe their anatomy. The evils
of the day call for the remedies of the day; but none can anticipate
with advantage the necessities of the future. And meantime what cause
is there for misgiving? I confess that I see none. The policy of
freedom has been justified, I contend, by its results. And so
confident am I of this, that the time, I believe, is not far distant,
when other countries will awake at last to their own true interests and
emulate, not more to their advantage than to ours, our fiscal
legislation. I see the time approaching when the nations of the world,
laying aside their political animosities, will be knitted together in
the peaceful rivalry of trade; when those barriers of nationality which
belong to the infancy of the race will melt and dissolve in the
sunshine of science and art; when the roar of the cannon will yield to
the softer murmur of the loom, and the apron of the artisan, the blouse
of the peasant be more honourable than the scarlet of the soldier; when
the cosmopolitan armies of trade will replace the militia of death;
when that which God has joined together will no longer be sundered by
the ignorance, the folly, the wickedness of man; when the labour and
the invention of one will become the heritage of all; and the peoples
of the earth meet no longer on the field of battle, but by their chosen
delegates, as in the vision of our greatest poet, in the 'Parliament of
Man, the Federation of the World.'"
WITH this peroration Remenham resumed his seat. He had spoken, as
indeed was his habit, rather as if he were addressing a public meeting
than a company of friends. But at least he had set the ball rolling.
To many of those present, as I well knew, his speech and his manner
must have been eminently provocative; and naturally to none more than
to Mendoza. I had, therefore, no hesitation in signalling out the
Conservative chief to give us the opposite point of view. He responded
with deliberation, lifting from his chest his sinister Jewish face, and
slowly unfolding his long body, while a malicious smile played about
his mouth.
"One," he began, "who has not the privilege of immediate access to the
counsels of the Divine Being cannot but feel himself at a disadvantage
in following a man so favoured as my distinguished friend. The
disadvantage, however, is one to which I have had, perforce, to grow
accustomed during long years of parliamentary strife, I have resigned
myself to creeping where he soars, to guessing where he prophesies.
But there is compensation everywhere. And, perhaps, there are certain
points which may be revealed to babes and sucklings, while they are
concealed from beings more august. The worm, I suppose, must be aware
of excrescences and roughnesses of the soil which escape the more
comprehensive vision of the eagle; and to the worm, at least, these are
of more importance than mountain ranges and oceans which he will never
reach. It is from that humble point of view that I shall offer a few
remarks supplementary to, perhaps even critical of, the eloquent
apostrophe we have been permitted to enjoy.
"The key-note of my friend's address was liberty. There is no British
heart which does not beat higher at the sound of that word. But while
I listened to his impassioned plea, I could not help wondering why he
did not propose to dispense to us in even larger and more liberal
measure the supreme and precious gift of freedom. True, he has done
much to remove the barriers that separated nation from nation, and man
from man. But how much remains to be accomplished before we can be
truly said to have brought ourselves into line with Nature! Consider,
for example, the policeman! Has my friend ever reflected on all that
is implied in that solemn figure; on all that it symbolizes of
interference with the purposes of a beneficent Creator? The policeman
is a permanent public defiance of Nature. Through him the weak rule
the strong, the few the many, the intelligent the fools. Through him
survive those whom the struggle for existence should have eliminated.
He substitutes the unfit for the fit. He dislocates the economy of the
universe. Under his shelter take root and thrive all monstrous and
parasitic growths. Marriage clings to his skirts, property nestles in
his bosom. And while these flourish, where is liberty? The law of
Nature we all know:
The good old rule, the ancient plan
That he should take who has the power,
And he should keep who can!
"But this, by the witchcraft of property, we have set aside. Our walls
of brick and stone we have manned with invisible guards. We have
thronged with fiery faces and arms the fences of our gardens and parks.
The plate-glass of our windows we have made more impenetrable than
adamant. To our very infants we have given the strength of giants.
Babies surfeit, while strong men starve; and the foetus in the womb
stretches out unformed hands to annex a principality. Is this liberty?
Is this Nature? No! It is a Merlin's prison! Yet, monstrous, it
subsists! Has our friend, then, no power to dissolve the charm? Or,
can it be that he has not the will?
"Again, can we be said to be free, can we be said to be in harmony with
Nature, while we endure the bonds of matrimony? While we fetter the
happy promiscuity of instinct, and subject our roving fancy to the
dominion of 'one unchanging wife?' Here, indeed, I frankly admit,
Nature has her revenges; and an actual polygamy flourishes even under
the aegis of our law. But the law exists; it is the warp on which, by
the woof of property, we fashion that Nessus-shirt, the Family, in
which, we have swathed the giant energies of mankind. But while that
shirt clings close to every limb, what avails it, in the name of
liberty, to snap, here and there, a button or a lace? A more heroic
work is required of the great protagonist, if, indeed, he will follow
his mistress to the end. He shakes his head. What! Is his service,
then, but half-hearted after all? Or, can it be, that behind the mask
of the goddess he begins to divine the teeth and claws of the brute?
But if nature be no goddess, how can we accept her as sponsor for
liberty? And if liberty be taken on its own merits, how is it to be
distinguished from anarchy? How, but by the due admixture of coercion?
And, that admitted, must we not descend from the mountain-top of
prophecy to the dreary plains of political compromise?"
Up to this point Mendoza had preserved that tone of elaborate irony
which, it will be remembered, was so disconcerting to English
audiences, and stood so much in the way of his popularity. But now his
manner changed. Becoming more serious, and I fear I must add, more
dull than I had ever heard him before, he gave us what I suppose to be
the most intimate exposition he had ever permitted himself to offer of
the Conservative point of view as he understood it.
"These," he resumed, "are questions which I must leave my friend to
answer for himself. The ground is too high for me. I have no skill in
the flights of speculation. I take no pleasure in the enunciation of
principles. To my restricted vision, placed as I am upon the earth,
isolated facts obtrude themselves with a capricious particularity which
defies my powers of generalization. And that, perhaps, is the reason
why I attached myself to the party to which I have the honour to
belong. For it is, I think, the party which sees things as they are;
as they are, that is, to mere human vision. Remenham, in his haste,
has called us the party of reaction. I would rather say, we are the
party of realism. We have in view, not Man, but Englishmen; not ideal
polities, but the British Constitution; not Political Economy, but the
actual course of our trade. Through this great forest of fact, this
tangle of old and new, these secular oaks, sturdy shrubs, beautiful
parasitic creepers, we move with a prudent diffidence, following the
old tracks, endeavouring to keep them open, but hesitating to cut new
routes till we are clear as to the goal for which we are asked to
sacrifice our finest timber. Fundamental changes we regard as
exceptional and pathological. Yet, being bound by no theories, when we
are convinced of their necessity, we inaugurate them boldly and carry
them through to the end. And thus it is that having decided that the
time had come to call the people to the councils of the nation, we
struck boldly and once for all by a measure which I will never
admit--and here I regret that Cantilupe is not with me--which I will
never admit to be at variance with the best, and soundest traditions of
conservatism.
"But such measures are exceptional, and we hope they will be final. We
take no delight in tinkering the constitution. The mechanism of
government we recognize to be only a means; the test of the statesman
is his power to govern. And remaining, as we do, inaccessible to that
gospel of liberty of which our opponents have had a special revelation,
we find in the existing state of England much that appears to us to
need control. We are unable to share the optimism which animates
Remenham and his friends as to the direction and effects of the new
forces of industry. Above the whirr of the spindle and the shaft we
hear the cry of the poor. Behind our flourishing warehouses and shops
we see the hovels of the artisan. We watch along our highroads the
long procession of labourers deserting their ancestral villages for the
cities; we trace them to the slum and the sweater's den; we follow them
to the poorhouse and the prison; we see them disappear engulfed in the
abyss, while others press at their heels to take their place and share
their destiny. And in face of all this we do not think it to be our
duty to fold our arms and invoke the principle of liberty. We feel
that we owe it to the nation to preserve intact its human heritage, the
only source of its greatness and its wealth; and we are prepared, with
such wisdom as we have, to legislate to that end, undeterred by the
fear of incurring the charge of socialism.
"But while we thus concern ourselves with the condition of these
islands, we have not forgotten that we have relations to the world
outside. If, indeed, we could share the views to which Remenham has
given such eloquent expression, this is a matter which would give us
little anxiety. He beholds, as in a vision, the era of peace and
good-will ushered in by the genius of commerce. By a mysterious
dispensation of Providence he sees cupidity and competition furthering
the ends of charity and peace. But here once more I am unable to
follow his audacious flight. Confined to the sphere of observation, I
cannot but note that in the long and sanguinary course of history there
has been no cause so fruitful of war as the rivalries of trade. Our
own annals at every point are eloquent of this truth; nor do I see
anything in the conditions of the modern world that should limit its
application. We have been told that all nations will adopt our fiscal
policy. Why should they, unless it is to their interest? We adopted
it because we thought it was to ours; and we shall abandon it if we
ever change our opinion. And when I say 'interest' I would not be
understood to mean economic interest in the narrower sense. A nation,
like an individual, I conceive, has a personality to maintain. It must
be its object not to accumulate wealth at all costs, but to develop and
maintain capacity, to be powerful, energetic, many-sided, and above all
independent. Whether the policy we have adopted will continue to
guarantee this result, I am not prophet enough to venture to affirm.
But if it does not, I cannot doubt that we shall be driven to revise
it. Nor can I believe that other nations, not even our own colonies,
will follow us in our present policy, if to do so would be to jeopardy
their rising industries and unduly to narrow the scope of their
economic energies. I do not, then, I confess, look forward with
enthusiasm or with hope to the Crystal Palace millennium that inspired
the eloquence of Remenham. I see the future pregnant with wars and
rumours of wars. And in particular I see this nation, by virtue of its
wealth, its power, its unparalleled success, the target for the envy,
the hatred, the cupidity of all the peoples of Europe. I see them
looking abroad for outlets for their expanding population, only to find
every corner of the habitable globe preoccupied by the English race and
overshadowed by the English flag. But from this, which is our main
danger, I conjure my main hope for the future. England is more than
England. She has grown in her sleep. She has stretched over every
continent huge embryo limbs which wait only for the beat of her heart,
the motion of her spirit, to assume their form and function as members
of one great body of empire. The spirit, I think, begins to stir, the
blood to circulate. Our colonies, I believe, are not destined to drop
from us like ripe fruit; our dependencies will not fall to other
masters. The nation sooner or later will wake to its imperial mission.
The hearts of Englishmen beyond the seas will beat in unison with ours.
And the federation I foresee is not the federation of Mankind, but that
of the British race throughout the world."
He paused, and in the stillness that followed we became aware of the
gathering dusk. The first stars were appearing, and the young moon was
low in the west. From the shadow below we heard the murmur of a
fountain, and the call of a nightingale sounded in the wood. Something
in the time and the place must have worked on Mendoza's mood; for when
he resumed it was in a different key.
"Such," he began, "is my vision, if I permit myself to dream. But who
shall say whether it is more than a dream? There is something in the
air to-night which compels candour. And if I am to tell my inmost
thought, I must confess on what a flood of nescience we, who seem to
direct the affairs of nations, are borne along together with those whom
we appear to control. We are permitted, like children, to lay our
hands upon the reins; but it is a dark and unknown genius who drives.
We are his creatures; and it is his ends, not ours, that are furthered
by our contests, our efforts, our ideals. In the arena Remenham and I
must play our part, combat bravely, and be ready to die when the crowd
turn down their thumbs. But here in a moment of withdrawal, I at least
cannot fail to recognize behind the issues that divide us the tie of a
common destiny. We shall pass and a new generation will succeed us; a
generation to whom our ideals will be irrelevant, our catch-words
empty, our controversies unintelligible.
Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.
"The dust of oblivion will bury our debates. Something we shall have
achieved, but not what we intended. My dream may, perhaps, be
furthered by Remenham, and his by me, or, it may be, neither his nor
mine by either. The Providence whose purposes he so readily divines is
dark to me. And perhaps, for that reason, I am able to regard him with
more charity than he has always been willing, I suspect, to extend to
me. This, at any rate, is the moment of truce. The great arena is
empty, the silent benches vanish into the night. Under the glimmer of
the moon figures more than mortal haunt the scene of our ephemeral
contests. It is they which stand behind us and deal the blows which
seem to be ours. When we are laid in the dust they will animate other
combatants; when our names are forgotten they will blazon others in
perishable gold. Why, then, should we strive and cry, even now in the
twilight hour? The same sky encompasses us, the same stars are above
us. What are my opinions, what are Remenham's? Froth on the surface!
The current bears all alike along to the destined end. For a moment
let us meet and feel its silent, irresistible force; and in this moment
reach across the table the hand of peace."
With that he stretched his hand to Remenham, with a kind of pathos of
appeal that the other, though I think he did not altogether like it,
could hardly refuse to entertain. It was theatrical, it was
un-English, but somehow, it was successful. And the whole episode, the
closing words and the incomparable gesture, left me with a sense as
though a curtain had been drawn upon a phase of our history. Mendoza,
somehow, had shut out Remenham, even more than himself, from the field
on which the issues of the future were to be fought. And it was this
feeling that led me, really a little against my inclination, to select
as the next speaker the man who of all who, made up our company, in
opinions was the most opposed to Remenham, and in temperament to
Mendoza. My choice was Allison, more famous now than he was then, but
known even at that time as an unsparing critic of both parties. He
responded readily enough; and as he began a spell seemed to snap. The
night and the hour were forgotten, and we were back on the dusty field
of controversy.
"THIS is all very touching," he began, "but Mendoza is shaking hands
with the wrong person. He's much nearer to me than he is to Remenham,
and I don't at all despair of converting him. For he does at least
understand that the character of every society depends upon its law of
property; and he even seems to have a suspicion that the law, as we
have it, is not what you would call absolute perfection. It's true
that he shows no particular inclination to alter it. But that may
come; and I'm not without hope of seeing, before I die, a
Tory-Socialist party. Remenham's is a different case, and I fear
there's nothing to be made of him. He does, I believe, really think
that in some extraordinary way the law of property, like the Anglican
Church, is one of the dispensations of Providence; and that if he
removes all other restrictions, leaving that, he will have what he
calls a natural society. But Nature, as Mendoza has pointed out, is
anarchy. Civilization means restriction; and so does socialism. So
far from being anarchy, it is the very antithesis of it. Anarchy is
the goal of liberalism, if liberalism could ever be persuaded to be
logical. So the scarecrow of anarchy, at least, need not frighten away
any would-be convert to socialism. There remains, it is true, the
other scarecrow, revolution; and that, I admit, has more life in it.
Socialism is revolutionary; but so is liberalism, or was, while it was
anything. Revolution does not imply violence. On the contrary,
violence is the abortion of revolution. Do I, for instance, look like
a Marat or a Danton? I ask you, candidly!"
He certainly did not. On the contrary, with his short squat figure,
pointed beard and spectacles, he presented a curious blend of the
middle-class Englishman and the German savant. There was a burst of
laughter at his question, in which he joined himself. But when he
resumed it was in a more serious tone and somewhat in the manner of a
lecturer. It was indeed, at that time, very largely by lectures that
he carried on his propaganda.
"No," he said, "socialism may roar; but, in England at any rate, it
roars as gently as any sucking-dove. Revolution I admit is the goal;
but the process is substitution. We propose to transform society
almost without anyone knowing it; to work from the foundation upwards
without unduly disturbing the superstructure. By a mere adjustment of
rates and taxes we shall redistribute property; by an extension of the
powers of local bodies we shall nationalize industry. But in all this
there need be no shock, no abrupt transition. On the contrary, it is
essential to our scheme that there should not be. We are men of
science and we realize that the whole structure of society rests upon
habit. With the new organization must therefore grow the new habit
that is to support it. To precipitate organic change is merely to
court reaction. That is the lesson of all revolution; and it is one
which English socialists, at any rate, have learnt. We think,
moreover, that capitalist society is, by its own momentum, travelling
towards the goal which we desire. Every consolidation of business upon
a grand scale implies the development of precisely those talents of
organization without which the socialistic state could not come into
being or maintain itself; while at the same time the substitution of
monopoly for competition removes the only check upon the power of
capital to exploit society, and brings home to every citizen in his
tenderest point--his pocket--the necessity for that public control from
which he might otherwise be inclined to shrink. Capitalist society is
thus preparing its own euthanasia; and we socialists ought to be
regarded not as assassins of the old order, but as midwives to deliver
it of the child with which it is in travail.