CHAPTER III

POLITICAL THEORY

I. MILL ON GOVERNMENT

I now turn to the general political theory of which Mill was the

authoritative exponent. The _Encyclopaedia_ article upon 'Government'

(1820) gives the pith of their doctrine. It was, as Professor Bain[80]

thinks, an 'impelling and a guiding force' in the movement which

culminated in the Reform Bill. The younger Utilitarians regarded it,

says J. S. Mill, as 'a masterpiece of political wisdom';[81] while

Macaulay[82] taunts them for holding it to be 'perfect and

unanswerable.' This famous article is a terse and energetic summary of

the doctrine implied in Bentham's _Works_, but there obscured under

elaboration of minute details. It is rather singular, indeed, that so

vigorous a manifesto of Utilitarian dogma should have been accepted by

Macvey Napier--a sound Whig--for a publication which professed

scientific impartiality. It has, however, in the highest degree, the

merits of clearness and condensation desirable in a popular

exposition. The reticence appropriate to the place excuses the

omission of certain implicit conclusions. Mill has to give a complete

theory of politics in thirty-two 8vo pages. He has scanty room for

qualifying statement or historical illustration. He speaks as from the

chair of a professor laying down the elementary principles of a

demonstrated science.[83]

Mill starts from the sacred principle. The end of government, as the

end of all conduct, must be the increase of human happiness. The

province of government is limited by another consideration. It has to

deal with one class of happiness, that is, with the pains and

pleasures 'which men derive from one another.' By a 'law of nature'

labour is requisite for procuring the means of happiness. Now, if

'nature' produced all that any man desired, there would be no need of

government, for there would be no conflict of interest. But, as the

material produced is finite, and can be appropriated by individuals,

it becomes necessary to insure to every man his proper share. What,

then, is a man's proper share? That which he himself produces; for, if

you give to one man more than the produce of his labour, you must take

away the produce of another man's labour. The greatest happiness,

therefore, is produced by 'assuring to every man the greatest possible

quantity of the produce of his own labour.' How can this be done?

Will not the strongest take the share of the weakest? He can be

prevented in one and apparently only in one way. Men must unite and

delegate to a few the power necessary for protecting all. 'This is

government.'[84]

The problem is now simple. Government is essentially an association

of men for the protection of property. It is a delegation of the

powers necessary for that purpose to the guardians, and 'all the

difficult questions of government relate to the means' of preventing

the guardians from themselves becoming plunderers.

How is this to be accomplished? The power of protection, says Mill,

following the old theory, may be intrusted to the whole community, to

a few, or to one; that is, we may have a democracy, an aristocracy, or

a monarchy. A democracy, or direct government of all by all, is for

the ordinary reasons pronounced impracticable. But the objections to

the other systems are conclusive. The need of government, he has

shown, depends upon 'the law of human nature'[85] that 'a man, if

able, will take from others anything which they have and he desires.'

The very principle which makes government necessary, therefore, will

prompt a government to defeat its own proper end. Mill's doctrine is

so far identical with the doctrine of Hobbes; men are naturally in a

state of war, and government implies a tacit contract by which men

confer upon a sovereign the power necessary for keeping the peace. But

here, though admitting the force of Hobbes's argument, he diverges

from its conclusion. If a democracy be impossible, and an aristocracy

or monarchy necessarily oppressive, it might seem, he admits, as it

actually seemed to Hobbes and to the French economists, that the fewer

the oppressors the better, and that therefore an absolute monarchy is

the best. Experience, he thinks, is 'on the surface' ambiguous.

Eastern despots and Roman emperors have been the worst scourges to

mankind; yet the Danes preferred a despot to an aristocracy, and are

as 'well governed as any people in Europe.' In Greece, democracy, in

spite of its defects, produced the most brilliant results.[86] Hence,

he argues, we must go 'beyond the surface,' and 'penetrate to the

springs within.' The result of the search is discouraging. The hope of

glutting the rulers is illusory. There is no 'point of saturation'[87]

with the objects of desire, either for king or aristocracy. It is a

'grand governing law of human nature' that we desire such power as

will make 'the persons and properties of human beings subservient to

our pleasures.'[88] This desire is indefinitely great. To the number

of men whom we would force into subservience, and the degree in which

we would make them subservient, we can assign no limits. Moreover, as

pain is a more powerful instrument for securing obedience than

pleasure, a man will desire to possess 'unlimited power of inflicting

pain upon others.' Will he also desire, it may be asked, to make use

of it? The 'chain of inference,' he replies, in this case is close and

strong 'to a most unusual degree.' A man desires the actions of others

to be in correspondence with his own wishes. 'Terror' will be the

'grand instrument.'[89] It thus follows that the very principle upon

which government is founded leads, in the absence of checks, 'not only

to that degree of plunder which leaves the members (of a community)

... the bare means of subsistence, but to that degree of cruelty which

is necessary to keep in existence the most intense terror.' An English

gentleman, he says, is a favourable specimen of civilisation, and yet

West Indian slavery shows of what cruelty he could be guilty when

unchecked. If equal cruelty has not been exhibited elsewhere, it is,

he seems to think, because men were not 'the same as sheep in respect

to their shepherd,'[90] and may therefore resist if driven too far.

The difficulty upon this showing is to understand how any government,

except the most brutal tyranny, ever has been, or ever can be,

possible. What is the combining principle which can weld together such

a mass of hostile and mutually repellent atoms? How they can even form

the necessary compact is difficult to understand, and the view seems

to clash with his own avowed purpose. It is Mill's aim, as it was

Bentham's, to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest number;

and yet he seems to set out by proving as a 'law of human nature' that

nobody can desire the happiness of any one except himself. He quotes

from Montesquieu the saying, which shows an 'acute sense of this

important truth,' 'that every one who has power is led to abuse

it.'[91] Rather it would seem, according to Mill, all power implies

abuse in its very essence. The problem seems to be how to make

universal cohesion out of universal repulsion.

Mill has his remedy for this deeply seated evil. He attacks, as

Bentham had already done, the old-fashioned theory, according to which

the British Constitution was an admirable mixture of the three 'simple

forms.' Two of the powers, he argues, will always agree to 'swallow up

the third.'[92] 'The monarchy and aristocracy have all possible

motives for endeavouring to obtain unlimited power over the persons

and property of the community,' though the democracy, as he also says,

has every possible motive for preventing them. And in England, as he

no doubt meant his readers to understand, the monarchy and aristocracy

had to a great extent succeeded. Where, then, are we to look? To the

'grand discovery of modern times,' namely, the representative system.

If this does not solve all difficulties we shall be forced to the

conclusion that good government is impossible. Fortunately, however,

the representative system may be made perfectly effective. This

follows easily. It would, as he has said,[93] be a 'contradiction in

terms' to suppose that the community at large can 'have an interest

opposite to its interest,' In the Bentham formula, it can have 'no

sinister interest.' It cannot desire its own misery. Though the

community cannot act as a whole, it can act through representatives.

It is necessary to intrust power to a governing body; but that body

can be prevented by adequate checks from misusing its powers. Indeed,

the common theory of the British Constitution was precisely that the

House of Commons was 'the checking body.'[94] The whole problem is to

secure a body which shall effectively discharge the function thus

attributed in theory to the House of Commons. That will be done when

the body is chosen in such a way that its interests are necessarily

coincident with those of the community at large. Hence there is of

course no difficulty in deducing the actual demands of reformers.

Without defining precise limits, he shows that representatives must be

elected for brief periods, and that the right to a vote must at least

be wide enough to prevent the electoral body from forming a class with

'sinister interests.' He makes some remarkable qualifications, with

the view apparently of not startling his readers too much by absolute

and impracticable claims. He thinks that the necessary identity of

interest would still be secured if classes were unrepresented whose

interests are 'indisputably included in those of others.' Children's

interests are involved in those of their parents, and the interests of

'almost all women' in those of their fathers or husbands.[95] Again,

all men under forty might be omitted without mischief, for 'the great

majority of old men have sons whose interests they regard as an

essential part of their own. This is a law of human nature.'[96] There

would, he observes, be no danger that men above forty would try to

reduce the 'rest of the community to the state of abject slaves.'

Mill, as his son tells us,[97] disowned any intention of positively

advocating these exclusions. He only meant to say that they were not

condemned by his general principle. The doctrine, however, about

women, even as thus understood, scandalised his younger followers.

Mill proceeds to argue at some length that a favourite scheme of some

moderate reformers, for the representation of classes, could only lead

to 'a motley aristocracy,' and then answers two objections. The first

is that his scheme would lead to the abolition of the monarchy and the

House of Lords. The reply is simple and significant. It would only

lead to that result if a monarchy or a House of Lords were favourable

to bad government. He does not inquire whether they are so in fact.

The second objection is that the people do not understand their own

interest, and to this his answer is more remarkable. If the doctrine

be true, he says, we are in 'deplorable' position: we have to choose

between evils which will be designedly produced by those who have both

the power to oppress and an interest in oppression; and the evils

which will be accidentally produced by men who would act well if they

recognised their own interests.[98] Now the first evil is in any case

the worst, for it supposes an 'invariable' evil; while in the other

case, men may at least act well by accident. A governing class, that

is with interests separate from those of the government, _must_ be

bad. If the interests be identical, the government _may_ be bad. It

will be bad if ignorant, but ignorance is curable. Here he appeals for

once to a historical case. The priesthood at the Reformation argued on

behalf of their own power from the danger that the people would make a

bad use of the Bible. The Bible should therefore be kept for the

sacred caste. They had, Mill thinks, a stronger case in appearance

than the Tories, and yet the effect of allowing the people to judge

for themselves in religious matters has been productive of good

effects 'to a degree which has totally altered the condition of human

nature.'[99] Why should not the people be trusted to judge for

themselves in politics? This implies a doctrine which had great

influence with the Utilitarians. In the remarkable essay upon

'Education,' which is contained in the volume of reprints, Mill

discusses the doctrine of Helvetius that all the differences between

men are due to education. Without pronouncing positively upon the

differences between individuals, Mill observes that, at any rate, the

enormous difference between classes of men is wholly due to

education.[100] He takes education, it must be observed, in the widest

possible sense, as meaning what would now be called the whole action

of the 'environment' upon the individual. This includes, as he shows

at length, domestic education, all the vast influence exercised upon a

child in his family, 'technical education,' by which he means the

ordinary school teaching, 'social education,' that is the influences

which we imbibe from the current opinions of our neighbours, and

finally, 'political education,' which he calls the 'keystone of the

arch.' The means, he argues, by which the 'grand objects of desire may

be attained, depend almost wholly upon the political machine.'[101] If

that 'machine' be so constituted as to make the grand objects of

desire the 'natural prizes of just and virtuous conduct, of high

services to mankind and of the generous and amiable sentiments from

which great endeavours in the service of mankind naturally proceed, it

is natural to see diffused among mankind a generous ardour in the

acquisition of those admirable qualities which prepare a man for

admirable action, great intelligence, perfect self-command, and

over-ruling benevolence.' The contrary will be the case where the

political machine prompts to the flattery of a small ruling body.

This characteristic passage betrays an enthusiasm which really burned

under Mill's stern outside. He confines himself habitually to the

forms of severe logic, and scorns anything like an appeal to

sentiment. The trammels of his scientific manner impede his utterance

a little, even when he is speaking with unwonted fervour. Yet the

prosaic Utilitarian who has been laying down as a universal law that

the strong will always plunder the weak, and that all rulers will

reduce their subjects to abject slavery, is absolutely convinced, it

seems, of the possibility of somehow transmuting selfishness into

public spirit, justice, generosity, and devotion to truth. Equally

characteristic is the faith in the 'political machine.' Mill speaks as

if somebody had 'discovered' the representative system as Watt (more

or less) discovered the steam-engine; that to 'discover' the system is

the same thing as to set it to work; and that, once at work, it will

be omnipotent. He is not less certain that a good constitution will

make men virtuous, than was Bentham that he could grind rogues honest

by the Panopticon. The indefinite modifiability of character was the

ground upon which the Utilitarians based their hopes of progress; and

it was connected in their minds with the doctrine of which his essay

upon education is a continuous application. The theory of 'association

of ideas' appeared to him to be of the utmost importance in education

and in politics, because it implied almost unlimited possibilities of

moulding human beings to fit them for a new order. In politics this

implied, as J. S. Mill says,[102] 'unbounded confidence' in the

influence of 'reason.' Teach the people and let them vote freely, and

everything would follow.

This gives Mill's answer to one obvious objection. The Conservative

who answered him by dwelling upon the ignorance of the lower classes

was in some respects preaching to a convert. Nobody was more

convinced than Mill of the depths of popular ignorance or, indeed, of

the stupidity of mankind in general. The labourers who cheered Orator

Hunt at Peterloo were dull enough; but so were the peers who cheered

Eldon in the House of Lords; and the labourers at least desired

general prosperity, while the peers were content if their own rents

were kept up. With general education, however, even the lower orders

of the people would be fit for power, especially when we take into

account one other remarkable conclusion. The 'wise and good,' he says,

'in any class of men do, for all general purposes, govern the

rest.'[103] Now, the class in which wisdom and virtue are commonest is

not the aristocracy, but the middle rank. Another truth follows 'from

the principles of human nature in general.' That is the rather

surprising truth that the lower orders take their opinions from the

middle class; apply to the middle class for help in sickness and old

age; hold up the same class as a model to be imitated by their

children, and 'account it an honour' to adopt its opinions.

Consequently, however far the franchise were extended, it is this

class which has produced the most distinguished ornaments of art,

science, and even of legislation, which will ultimately decide upon

political questions. 'The great majority of the people,' is his

concluding sentence, 'never cease to be guided by that rank; and we

may with some confidence challenge the adversaries of the people to

produce a single instance to the contrary in the history of the

world.'

This article upon 'Government' gives the very essence of Utilitarian

politics. I am afraid that it also suggests that the political theory

was chiefly remarkable for a simple-minded audacity. Good political

treatises are rare. They are apt to be pamphlets in disguise, using

'general principles' for showy perorations, or to be a string of

platitudes with no definite application to facts. They are fit only

for the platform, or only for the professor's lecture-room. Mill's

treatise, according to his most famous antagonist, was a mere bundle

of pretentious sophistry.

Macaulay came forth like a Whig David to slay the Utilitarian Goliath.

The _Encyclopaedia_ articles, finished in 1824, were already in

1825,[104] as Mill says, text-books of the young men at the Cambridge

Union. Macaulay, who won his Trinity fellowship in 1824, had there

argued the questions with his friend Charles Austin, one of Bentham's

neophytes. In the next year Macaulay made his first appearance as an

Edinburgh Reviewer; and in 1829 he took the field against Mill. In the

January number he attacked the essay upon 'Government'; and in two

articles in the succeeding numbers of the _Review_ replied to a

defence made by some Utilitarian in the _Westminster_. Mill himself

made no direct reply; and Macaulay showed his gratitude for Mill's

generosity in regard to the Indian appointment by declining to

republish the articles.[105] He confessed to have treated his opponent

with a want of proper respect, though he retracted none of his

criticisms. The offence had its excuses. Macaulay was a man under

thirty, in the full flush of early success; nor was Mill's own

treatment of antagonists conciliatory. The dogmatic arrogance of the

Utilitarians was not unnaturally met by an equally arrogant

countercheck. Macaulay ridicules the Utilitarians for their claim to

be the defenders of the true political faith. He is afraid not of them

but of the 'discredit of their alliance'; he wishes to draw a broad

line between judicious reformers and a 'sect which having derived all

its influence from the countenance which they imprudently bestowed

upon it, hates them with the deadly hatred of ingratitude.' No party,

he says, was ever so unpopular. It had already disgusted people with

political economy; and would disgust them with parliamentary reform,

if it could associate itself in public opinion with the cause[106].

This was indeed to turn the tables. The half-hearted disciple was

insulting the thoroughbred teacher who had borne the heat and burthen

of the day, and from whom he had learned his own doctrine. Upon this

and other impertinences--the assertion, for example, that Utilitarians

were as incapable of understanding an argument as any 'true blue

baronet after the third bottle at a Pitt Club'--it is needless to

dwell. They illustrate, however, the strong resentment with which the

Utilitarians were regarded by the classes from whom the Whigs drew

their most cultivated supporters. Macaulay's line of argument will

show what was the real conflict of theory.

His view is, in fact, a long amplification of the charge that Mill was

adopting a purely _a priori_ method. Mill's style is as dry as Euclid,

and his arguments are presented with an affectation of logical

precision. Mill has inherited the 'spirit and style of the Schoolmen.

He is an Aristotelian of the fifteenth century.' He writes about

government as though he was unaware that any actual governments had

ever existed. He deduces his science from a single assumption of

certain 'propensities of human nature.'[107] After dealing with Mill's

arguments, Macaulay winds up with one of his characteristic purple

patches about the method of induction. He invokes the authority of

Bacon--a great name with which in those days writers conjured without

a very precise consideration of its true significance. By Bacon's

method we are to construct in time the 'noble science of politics,'

which is equally removed from the barren theories of Utilitarian

sophists and the petty craft of intriguing jobbers. The Utilitarians

are schoolmen, while the Whigs are the true followers of Bacon and

scientific induction. J. S. Mill admitted within certain limits the

relevancy of this criticism, and was led by the reflections which it

started to a theory of his own. Meanwhile, he observes that his father

ought to have justified himself by declaring that the book was not a

'scientific treatise on politics,' but an 'argument for parliamentary

reform.'[108] It is not quite easy to see how James Mill could have

made such a 'justification' and distinguished it from a recantation.

If Mill really meant what Macaulay took him to mean, it would be

superfluous to argue the question gravely. The reasoning is only fit,

like the reasoning of all Macaulay's antagonists, for the proverbial

schoolboy. Mill, according to Macaulay, proposes to discover what

governments are good; and, finding that experience gives no clear

answer, throws experience aside and appeals to absolute laws of human

nature. One such 'law' asserts that the strong will plunder the weak.

Therefore all governments except the representative must be

oppressive, and rule by sheer terror. Mill's very reason for relying

upon this argument is precisely that the facts contradict it. Some

despotisms work well, and some democracies ill; therefore we must

prove by logic that all despotisms are bad, and all democracies good.

Is this really Mill's case?

An answer given by Mill's champion, to which Macaulay replies in his

last article, suggests some explanation of Mill's position. Macaulay

had paid no attention to one highly important phrase. The terrible

consequences which Mill deduces from the selfishness of rulers will

follow, he says, 'if nothing checks.'[109] Supplying this

qualification, as implied throughout, we may give a better meaning to

Mill's argument. A simple observation of experience is insufficient.

The phenomena are too complex; governments of the most varying kinds

have shown the same faults; and governments of the same kind have

shown them in the most various degrees. Therefore the method which

Macaulay suggests is inapplicable. We should reason about government,

says Macaulay,[110] as Bacon told us to reason about heat. Find all

the circumstances in which hot bodies agree, and you will determine

the principle of heat. Find all the circumstances in which good

governments agree, and you will find the principles of good

government. Certainly; but the process, as Macaulay admits, would be a

long one. Rather, it would be endless. What 'circumstances' can be the

same in all good governments in all times and places? Mill held in

substance, that we could lay down certain broad principles about

human nature, the existence of which is of course known from

'experience', and by showing how they would work, if restrained by no

distinct checks, obtain certain useful conclusions. Mill indicates

this line of reply in his own attack upon Mackintosh.[111] There he

explains that what he really meant was to set forth a principle

recognised by Berkeley, Hume, Blackstone, and, especially, in Plato's

_Republic_. Plato's treatise is a development of the principle that

'identity of interests affords the only security for good government.'

Without such identity of interest, said Plato, the guardians of the

flock become wolves. Hume[112] had given a pithy expression of the

same view in the maxim 'established,' as he says, 'by political

writers,' that in framing the 'checks and controls of the

constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no

other end in his actions than private interest.' Mill points this by

referring to the 'organs of aristocratical opinion' for the last fifty

years. The incessant appeal has been for 'confidence in public men,'

and confidence is another name for scope for misrule.[113] This, he

explains, was what he meant by the statement (which Mackintosh

considered to have been exploded by Macaulay) that every man pursued

his own interest.[114] It referred to the class legislation of the

great aristocratic ring: kings, nobles, church, law, and army.

Utilitarianism, in its political relations, was one continuous warfare

against these sinister 'interests,' The master-evil of the

contemporary political state undoubtedly implied a want of

responsibility. A political trust was habitually confounded with

private property. Moreover, whatever else may be essential to good

government, one essential is a strong sense of responsibility in the

governors. That is a very sound principle, though not an axiom from

which all political science can be deduced. If the essay on

'Government' was really meant as a kind of political Euclid--as a

deduction of the best system of government from this single principle

of responsibility--it was as grotesque as Macaulay asserted. Mill

might perhaps have met the criticism by lowering his claims as his son

suggests. He certainly managed to express his argument in such terms

that it has an uncomfortable appearance of being intended for a

scientific exposition.

This deserves notice because the position is characteristic of the

Utilitarians' method. Their appeals to experience always end by

absolute assertions. We shall find the same difficulty in their

economic inquiries. When accused, for example, of laying down absolute

principles in such cases, they reply that they are only speaking of

'tendencies,' and recognise the existence of 'checks.' They treat of

what would be, if certain forces acted without limit, as a necessary

step towards discovering what is when the limits exist. They appear to

their opponents to forget the limits in their practical conclusions.

This political argument is an instance of the same method. The genesis

of his theory is plain. Mill's 'government,' like Bentham's, is simply

the conception of legal 'sovereignty' transferred to the sphere of

politics. Mill's exposition is only distinguished from his master's by

the clearness with which he brings out the underlying assumptions. The

legal sovereign is omnipotent, for what he declares to be the law is

therefore the law. The law is his commands enforced by 'sanctions,'

and therefore by organised force. The motives for obedience are the

fear of the gallows on one side, and, on the other, the desire of

protection for life and property. Law, again, is the ultimate social

bond, and can be made at will by the sovereign. He thus becomes so

omnipotent that it is virtually assumed that he can even create

himself. Not only can the sovereign, once constituted, give commands

enforced by coercive sanctions upon any kind of conduct, but he can

determine his own constitution. He can at once, for example, create a

representative system in practice, when it has been discovered in

theory, and can by judicious regulations so distribute 'self-interest'

as to produce philanthropy and public spirit. Macaulay's answer really

makes a different assumption. He accepts the purely 'empirical' or

'rule of thumb' position. It is idle, he says, to ask what would

happen if there were no 'checks.' It is like leaving out the effect of

friction in a problem of mechanics. The logic may be correct, but the

conclusions are false in practice.[115] Now this 'friction' was

precisely the favourite expedient of the Utilitarians in political

economy. To reason about facts, they say, you must analyse, and

therefore provisionally disregard the 'checks,' which must be

afterwards introduced in practical applications. Macaulay is really

bidding us take 'experience' in the lump, and refrains from the only

treatment which can lead to a scientific result. His argument, in

fact, agrees with that of his famous essay on Bacon, where we learn

that philosophy applied to moral questions is all nonsense, and that

science is simply crude common-sense. He is really saying that all

political reasoning is impossible, and that we must trust to

unreasoned observation. Macaulay, indeed, has good grounds of

criticism. He shows very forcibly the absurdity of transferring the

legal to the political sovereignty. Parliament might, as he says, make

a law that every gentleman with L2000 a year might flog a pauper with

a cat-of-nine-tails whenever he pleased. But, as the first exercise of

such a power would be the 'last day of the English aristocracy,' their

power is strictly limited in fact.[116] That gives very clearly the

difference between legal and political sovereignty. What parliament

makes law is law, but is not therefore enforceable. We have to go

behind the commands and sanctions before we understand what is the

actual power of government. It is very far from omnipotent. Macaulay,

seeing this, proceeds to throw aside Mill's argument against the

possibility of a permanent division of power. The _de facto_

limitation of the sovereign's power justifies the old theory about

'mixed forms of government.' 'Mixed governments' are not impossible,

for they are real. All governments are, in fact, 'mixed.' Louis XIV.

could not cut off the head of any one whom he happened to dislike. An

oriental despot is strictly bound by the religious prejudices of his

subjects. If 'sovereignty' means such power it is a chimera in

practice, or only realised approximately when, as in the case of negro

slavery, a class is actually ruled by force in the hands of a really

external power. And yet the attack upon 'mixed governments,' which

Bentham had expounded in the _Fragment_, has a real force which

Macaulay seems to overlook. Mill's argument against a possible

'balance' of power was, as Macaulay asserted, equally applicable to

the case of independent sovereigns; yet France might be stronger at

Calais and England at Dover.[117] Mill might have replied that a state

is a state precisely because, and in so far as, there is an agreement

to recognise a common authority or sovereign. Government does not

imply a 'mixture,' but a fusion of power. There is a unity, though not

the abstract unity of the Utilitarian sovereign. The weakness of the

Utilitarians is to speak as though the sovereign, being external to

each individual, could therefore be regarded as external to the whole

society. He rules as a strong nation may rule a weak dependency. When

the sovereign becomes also the society, the power is regarded as

equally absolute, though now applied to the desirable end of

maximising happiness. The whole argument ignores the simple

consideration that the sovereign is himself in all cases the product

of the society over which he rules, and his whole action, even in the

most despotic governments, determined throughout by organic instincts,

explaining and not ultimately explicable by coercion. Macaulay's

doctrine partially recognises this by falling back upon the Whig

theory of checks and balances, and the mixture of three mysterious

entities, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. But, as Bentham had

sufficiently shown in the _Fragment_, the theory becomes hopelessly

unreal when we try to translate it into facts. There are not three

separate forces, conflicting like three independent forces, but a

complex set of social institutions bound together into a whole. It is

impossible really to regard government as a permanent balance of

antagonistic forces, confronting each other like the three duellists

in Sheridan's _Critic_. The practical result of that theory is to

substitute for the 'greatest happiness' principle the vague criterion

of the preservation of an equilibrium between indefinable forces; and

to make the ultimate end of government the maintenance as long as

possible of a balance resting on no ulterior principle, but

undoubtedly pleasant for the comfortable classes. Nothing is left but

the rough guesswork, which, if a fine name be wanted, may be called

Baconian induction. The 'matchless constitution,' as Bentham calls it,

represents a convenient compromise, and the tendency is to attach

exaggerated importance to its ostensible terms. When Macaulay

asserted against Mill[118] that it was impossible to say which

element--monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy--had gained strength in

England in the last century, he is obviously looking at the formulae

and not at the social body behind.

This leads to considerations really more important than the

argumentation about _a priori_ and inductive methods. Mill in practice

knew very well the qualifications necessary before his principles

applied. He showed it in his Indian evidence; and Place could have

told him, had it required telling, that the actual political machinery

worked by very strange and tortuous methods. Yet he was content to

override such considerations when he is expounding his theory, and

laid himself open to Macaulay's broad common-sense retort. The nation

at large cannot, he says, have a 'sinister interest.' It must desire

legislation which is beneficial to the whole. This is to make the vast

assumption that every individual will desire what is good for all, and

will be a sufficient judge of what is good. But is it clear that a

majority will even desire what is good for the whole? May they not

wish to sacrifice both other classes and coming generations to their

own instantaneous advantages? Is it plain that even enlightenment of

mind would induce a poor man to see his own advantage in the policy

which would in the long run be best for the whole society? You are

bound, said Macaulay, to show that the poor man will not believe that

he personally would benefit by direct plunder of the rich; and indeed

that he would not be right in so believing. The nation, no doubt,

would suffer, but in the immediate period which alone is contemplated

by a selfish pauper, the mass of the poor might get more pleasure out

of confiscation. Will they not, on your own principles, proceed to

confiscation? Shall we not have such a catastrophe as the reign of

terror?

The Westminster Reviewer retorted by saying that Macaulay prophesied a

reign of terror as a necessary consequence of an extended franchise.

Macaulay, skilfully enough, protested against this interpretation. 'We

say again and again,' he declares, 'that we are on the defensive. We

do not think it necessary to prove that a quack medicine is poison.

Let the vendor prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that

universal suffrage is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a

good.'[119] Mill rests his whole case upon the selfishness of mankind.

Will not the selfishness lead the actual majority at a given moment to

plunder the rich and to disregard the interests of their own

successors?

Macaulay's declaration that he was only 'upon the defensive' might be

justifiable in an advocate. His real thought may be inferred from a

speech on the charter made in 1842. The chartists' petition of that

year had asked for universal suffrage. Universal suffrage, he replies,

would be incompatible with the 'institution of property.'[120] If the

chartists acted upon their avowed principles, they would enforce 'one

vast spoliation.' Macaulay could not say, of course, what would

actually result, but his 'guess' was that we should see 'something

more horrible than can be imagined--something like the siege of

Jerusalem on a far larger scale.' The very best event he could

anticipate--'and what must the state of things be, if an Englishman

and a Whig calls such an event the very best?'--would be a military

despotism, giving a 'sort of protection to a miserable wreck of all

that immense glory and prosperity.'[121] So in the criticism of Mill

he had suggested that if his opponent's principles were correct, and

his scheme adopted, 'literature, science, commerce, manufactures'

would be swept away, and that a 'few half-naked fishermen would divide

with the owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest of European

cities.'[122]

Carefully as Macaulay guards himself in his articles upon Mill, the

speech shows sufficiently what was his 'guess'; that is, his real

expectation. This gives the vital difference. What Macaulay professes

to deduce from Mill's principles he really holds himself, and he holds

it because he argues, as indeed everybody has to argue, pretty much on

Mill's method. He does not really remain in the purely sceptical

position which would correspond to his version of 'Baconian

induction.' He argues, just as Mill would have argued, from general

rules about human nature. Selfish and ignorant people will, he thinks,

be naturally inclined to plunder; therefore, if they have power, they

will plunder. So Mill had argued that a selfish class would rule for

its own sinister interests and therefore not for the happiness of the

greatest number. The argument is the same, and it is the only line of

argument which is possible till, if that should ever happen, a genuine

science of politics shall have been constituted. The only question is

whether it shall take the pomp of _a priori_ speculation or conceal

itself under a show of 'Baconian induction.'

On one point they agree. Both Mill and Macaulay profess unbounded

confidence in the virtue and wisdom of the middle, that is, of their

own class. Macaulay hopes for a reform bill which will make the votes

of the House of Commons 'the express image of the opinion of the

middle orders of Britain.'[123] Mill holds that the middle class will

retain this moral authority, however widely the franchise be extended;

while Macaulay fears that they will be swamped by its extension to the

masses. The reform bill which they joined in supporting was regarded

by the Radicals as a payment on account; while the Whig hoped that it

would be a full and final discharge. The Radical held that no barriers

against democracy were needed; he took for granted that a democracy

would find its natural leaders in the educated and intelligent. The

Whig, to whom such confidence appeared to be altogether misplaced, had

to find some justification for the 'checks' and 'balances' which he

thought essential.

II. WHIGGISM

I have spoken of Macaulay's articles because they represent the most

pointed conflict between the Utilitarian and the Whig. Macaulay

belongs properly to the next generation, but he appeared as the

mouthpiece of the earlier group of writers who in Mill's time

delivered through the _Edinburgh Review_ the true oracles of the Whig

faith. Upon that ground Mill had assailed them in his article. Their

creed, he said, was a 'see-saw.' The Whigs were aristocrats as much as

the Tories. They were simply the 'outs' who hoped to be the 'ins.'

They trimmed their sails to catch public opinion, but were careful not

to drift into the true popular currents. They had no desire to limit

the power which they hoped one day to possess. They would attack

abuses--the slave-trade or the penal laws--to gain credit for

liberality and enlightenment, when the abuses were such as could be

removed without injuring the power of the aristocracy. They could use

'vague generalities' about liberty and so forth, but only to evade

definite applications. When any measure was proposed which really

threatened the power of the privileged classes, they could bring out a

contradictory set of fine phrases about Jacobinism and democracy.

Their whole argument was a shuffle and they themselves mere selfish

trimmers.[124] To this Jeffrey replied (in December 1826) by accepting

the position.[125] He pleaded guilty to a love of 'trimming,' which

meant a love of the British Constitution. The constitution was a

compromise--a balance of opposing forces--and the only question could

be whether they were properly balanced. The answer was fair enough.

Mill was imputing motives too easily, and assuming that the Reviewers

saw the abuses in the same light as he did, and were truckling to

public robbers in hopes of sharing the plunder. He was breaking a

butterfly upon a wheel. The Edinburgh Reviewers were not missionaries

of a creed. They were a set of brilliant young men, to whom the

_Review_ was at first a mere pastime, occupying such leisure as was

allowed by their professional pursuits. They were indeed men of

liberal sympathies, intelligent and independent enough to hold by a

party which was out of power. They had read Hume and Voltaire and

Rousseau; they had sat at the feet of Dugald Stewart; and were in

sympathy with intellectual liberalism. But they were men who meant to

become judges, members of parliament, or even bishops. Nothing in

their social atmosphere had stimulated the deep resentment against

social injustice which makes the fanatic or the enthusiast. We may

take as their interpreter the Whig philosopher James Mackintosh

(1765-1832), a man of wide reading, both in history and philosophy, an

eloquent orator, and a very able writer. Mackintosh, said

Coleridge,[126] is the 'king of the men of talent'; by which was

intimated that, as a man of talent, he was not, like some people, a

man of genius. Mackintosh, that is, was a man to accept plausible

formulae and to make them more plausible; not a man to pierce to the

heart of things, or reveal fruitful germs of thought. His intellect

was judicial; given to compromises, affecting a judicious _via media_,

and endeavouring to reconcile antagonistic tendencies. Thoroughgoing

or one-sided thinkers, and Mill in particular, regarded him with

excessive antipathy as a typical representative of the opposite

intellectual tendencies. Mackintosh's political attitude is

instructive. At the outbreak of the French revolution he was a

struggling young Scot, seeking his fortune in London, just turning

from medicine to the bar, and supporting himself partly by journalism.

He became secretary to the Society of the 'Friends of the People,' the

Whig rival of the revolutionary clubs, and in April 1791 sprang into

fame by his _Vindiciae Gallicae_. The Whigs had not yet lost the fervour

with which they had welcomed the downfall of the Bastille. Burke's

_Reflections_, the work of a great thinker in a state of irritation

bordering upon frenzy, had sounded the note of alarm. The revolution,

as Burke maintained, was in fact the avatar of a diabolic power. It

meant an attack upon the very organic principles of society. It

therefore implied a complete breach of historical continuity, and a

war against the reverence for 'prescription' and tradition which is

essential to all healthy development. To his extreme opponents the

same theory afforded the justification of the revolution. It meant

that every institution was to be thrown into the crucible, and a new

world to arise governed only by reason. The view very ably defended by

Mackintosh was opposed to both. He looks upon the French revolution as

a more complete application of the principles of Locke and the English

Whigs of 1688. The revolutionists are, as he urges,[127] applying the

principles which had been worked out by the 'philosophers of Europe'

during the preceding century. They were not, as Burke urged,

rejecting experience for theory. The relation between their doctrine

and politics is analogous to the relation between geometry and

mechanics.[128] We are now in the position of a people who should be

familiar with Newton, but in shipbuilding be still on a level with the

Esquimaux. The 'rights of man' appear to him to mean, not, as Burke

and Bentham once agreed, a set of 'anarchical fallacies,' but a set of

fundamental moral principles; and the declaration of them a most wise

and 'auspicious' commencement of the 'regenerating labours' of the new

legislators. The French revolution represented what Somers would now

approve if he had our advantages.[129] A thoroughgoing change had

become necessary in France. The church, army, and law were now

'incorrigible.'[130] Burke had seen, in the confiscation of church

property, an attempt to abolish Christianity. To Mackintosh it seemed

to be a reform justifiable in principle, which, though too roughly

carried out, would reduce 'a servile and imperious priesthood to

humble utility.'[131] A poor priesthood, indeed, might incline to

popular superstition. We could console ourselves by reflecting that

the power of the church, as a corporation, was broken, and that

toleration and philosophy would restrain fanaticism.[132] The

assignats were still 'almost at par.'[133] The sale of the national

property would nearly extinguish the debt. France had 'renounced for

ever the idea of conquest,'[134] and had no temptations to war,

except her colonies. Their commercial inutility and political

mischievousness had been so 'unanimously demonstrated,' that the

French empire must soon be delivered from 'this cumbrous and

destructive appendage.' An armed people, moreover, could never be used

like a mercenary army to suppress liberty. There was no danger of

military despotism, and France would hereafter seek for a pure glory

by cultivating the arts of peace and extending the happiness of

mankind.[135]

No wonder that Mackintosh, with these views, thought that the history

of the fall of the Bastille would 'kindle in unborn millions the holy

enthusiasm of freedom';[136] or that, in the early disorders, he saw

temporary aberrations of mobs, destined to be speedily suppressed by

the true leaders of the revolution. Mackintosh saw, I take it, about

as far as most philosophers, that is, about as far as people who are

not philosophers. He observes much that Burke ought to have

remembered, and keeps fairly to the philosophical principle which he

announces of attributing the revolution to general causes, and not to

the schemes of individuals.[137] When assignats became waste paper,

when the guillotine got to work, when the religion of reason was being

set up against Christianity, when the French were conquering Europe,

when a military despotism was arising, when, in short, it became quite

clear that the French revolution meant something very different from a

philosophical application of the principles of Locke and Adam Smith,

Mackintosh began to see that Burke had not so far missed the mark.

Burke, before dying, received his penitent opponent at Beaconsfield;

and in 1800 Mackintosh took the opportunity of publicly declaring that

he 'abhorred, abjured, and for ever renounced the French revolution,

with its sanguinary history, its abominable principles, and its ever

execrable leaders.' He hoped to 'wipe off the disgrace of having been

once betrayed into that abominable conspiracy against God and

man.'[138] In his famous defence of Peltier (1803), he denounced the

revolution in a passage which might have been adopted from Burke's

_Letters on a Regicide Peace_.[139]

In a remarkable letter to Windham[140] of 1806, Mackintosh gives his

estimate of Burke, and takes some credit to himself for having

discovered, even in the time of his youthful errors, the consistency

of Burke's principles, as founded upon an abhorrence of 'abstract

politics.'[141] Politics, he now thought, must be made scientific by

recognising with Burke the supreme importance of prescription and

historic continuity, and by admitting that the philosophers had not

yet constructed a science bearing to practical politics the same

relation as geometry to mechanics. He applied his theory to the

question of parliamentary reform in the _Edinburgh Review_.[142] Here

he accepts the doctrine, criticised by James Mill, that a proper

representative system must be judged, not, as Mill maintained, solely

by the identity of its interest with that of the community at large,

but by its fitness to give power to different classes. It follows that

the landowners, the professional classes, and the populace should all

be represented. And he discovers that the variety of the English

system was calculated to secure this end. Though it was only in a few

constituencies that the poorest class had a voice, their vote in such

places represented the same class elsewhere. It was as well that there

should be some extreme Radicals to speak for the poorest. But he

thinks that any uniform suffrage would be bad, and that universal

suffrage would be the most mischievous of all systems.[143] That would

mean the swamping of one class by all--a tyranny more oppressive,

perhaps, than any other tyranny. If one class alone were to be

represented, it should be the favourite middle class, which has the

'largest share of sense and virtue,' and is most connected in interest

with other classes.[144] A legitimate aim of the legislator is,

therefore, to prevent an excess of democracy. With Mackintosh it seems

essential not simply to suppress 'sinister interests,' but to save

both the aristocracy and the middle class from being crushed by the

lower classes. The opposition is vital; and it is plain that the

argument for the aristocracy, that is, for a system developed from all

manner of historical accidents and not evolved out of any simple

logical principles, must be defended upon empirical grounds.

Mackintosh was in India during the early period of the _Edinburgh

Review_. Jeffrey, as editor for its first quarter of a century, may be

taken more fully to represent its spirit. Jeffrey's trenchant, if not

swaggering style, covered a very timid, sensitive, and, in some

respects, a very conservative temperament. His objection to the 'Lake

Poets' was the objection of the classical to the romantic school.

Jeffrey's brightness of intellect may justify Carlyle's comparison of

him to Voltaire,--only a Voltaire qualified by dislike to men who were

'dreadfully in earnest.' Jeffrey was a philosophical sceptic; he

interpreted Dugald Stewart as meaning that metaphysics, being all

nonsense, we must make shift with common-sense; and he wrote a

dissertation upon taste, to prove that there are no rules about taste

whatever. He was too genuine a sceptic to sacrifice peace to the

hopeless search for truth. One of the most striking passages in his

_Essays_[145] is an attack upon 'perfectibility.' He utterly

disbelieves that progress in knowledge will improve morals or diminish

war, or cure any of the evils that flesh is heir to. Such a man is not

of the material of which enthusiastic reformers are made. Throughout

the war he was more governed by his fear than by his zeal. He was in

constant dread of failure abroad and ruin at home. The _Review_

provoked the Tories, and induced them to start its rival, not by

advocacy of political principles, but by its despairing view of the

war.[146] He was still desiring at that time (1808) to avoid 'party

politics' in the narrower sense.

The political view corresponding to this is given in the articles,

some of which (though the authorship was not yet avowed) were assailed

by Mill in the _Westminster_. In an early article[147] he defends the

French philosophers against the imputation of responsibility for the

reign of terror. Their excellent and humane doctrines had been

misapplied by the 'exasperation' and precipitation of inexperienced

voters. His most characteristic article is one published in January

1810. The failure of the Walcheren expedition had confirmed his

disbelief in our military leaders; the rise of English Radicalism, led

by Burdett in the House of Commons, and Cobbett in the press, the

widely spread distress and the severity of oppressive measures, roused

his keenest alarm.[148] We are, he declared, between two violent and

pernicious factions--the courtiers of arbitrary power and the

democrats. If the Whig leaders did not first conciliate and then

restrain the people, the struggle of the extreme parties would soon

sweep away the constitution, the monarchy, and the Whig aristocracy by

which that monarchy 'is controlled, confirmed, and exalted above all

other forms of polity.' Democracy, it was plain, was increasing with

dangerous rapidity. A third of every man's income was being taken by

taxes, and after twenty years' boastful hostility we were left without

a single ally. Considering all this, it seems as though 'the wholesome

days of England were numbered,' and we are on the 'verge of the most

dreadful of all calamities'--a civil war.

Jeffrey has learned from Hume that all government is ultimately

founded upon opinion. The great thing is to make the action of public

opinion regular and constituted. The whole machinery of the

constitution, he says, is for the express purpose of 'preventing the

kingly power from dashing itself to pieces against the more radical

power of the people.'[149] The merit of a representative body is not

to be tested simply by the goodness of its legislation, but by its

diminishing the intensity of the struggle for the supreme power.

Jeffrey in fact is above all preoccupied with the danger of

revolution. The popular will is, in fact, supreme; repression may

force it into explosion; but by judicious management it may be tamed

and tempered. Then we need above all things that it should, as he says

in his reply to Mill (December 1826), give their 'natural and

wholesome influence to wealth and rank.' The stability of the English

Constitution depends, as he said in 1810, upon the monarchy and

aristocracy, and their stability on their being the natural growth of

ages and having 'struck their roots deep into every stratum of the

political soil.'

The Whigs represent the view implied in Macaulay's attack upon

Mill--the view of cultivated men of sense, with their eyes open to

many difficulties overlooked by zealots, but far too sceptical and

despondent to rouse any enthusiasm or accept any dogmas absolutely. By

the time of the Reform Bill the danger was obviously on the side of

dogged obstructionism, and then the 'middle party,' as Jeffrey calls

it, inclined towards the Radical side and begged them to join its

ranks and abandon the attempt to realise extreme views. They could

also take credit as moderate men do for having all along been in the

right. But to both extremes, as Jeffrey pathetically complains, they

appeared to be mere trimmers.[150]

The Utilitarian held the Whig to be a 'trimmer'; the Whig thought the

Utilitarian a fanatic; they agreed in holding that the Tory was simply

stupid. And yet, when we look at the Tory creed, we shall find that

both Whig and Utilitarian overlooked some very vital problems. The

Tories of course represent the advocates of strong government; and, as

their opponents held, had no theories--only prejudices. The first

article of the creed of an Eldon or a Sidmouth was, 'I believe in

George III.';--not a doctrine capable of philosophical justification.

Such Toryism meant the content of the rich and powerful with the

system by which their power and wealth were guaranteed. Their

instincts had been sharpened by the French revolution; and they saw in

any change the removal of one of the safeguards against a fresh

outburst of the nether fires. The great bulk of all political opinion

is an instinct, not a philosophy; and the obstructive Tories

represented little more than class prejudice and the dread of a great

convulsion. Yet intelligent Tories were being driven to find some

reasons for their creed, which the Utilitarians might have considered

more carefully.

III. CONSERVATISM

A famous man of letters represents certain tendencies more clearly

than the average politician. Robert Southey (1777-1843), the 'ultra

servile sack-guzzler,' as Bentham pleasantly calls him in 1823,[151]

was probably the best abused man, on his own side at least, among

Mill's contemporaries. He was attacked by Mill himself, and savagely

denounced by Byron and Hazlitt. He was not only a conspicuous writer

in the _Quarterly Review_ but, as his enemies thought, a renegade

bought by pensions. It is, I hope, needless to defend him against this

charge. He was simply an impatient man of generous instincts and no

reflective power, who had in his youth caught the revolutionary fever,

and, as he grew up, developed the patriotic fever.

Later views are given in the _Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects

of Society_ (1829), chiefly known to modern readers by one of

Macaulay's essays. Southey was as assailable as Mill. His political

economy is a mere muddle; his political views are obviously distorted

by accidental prejudices; and the whole book is desultory and

disjointed. In a dialogue with the ghost of Sir Thomas More, he takes

the opportunity of introducing descriptions of scenery, literary

digressions, and quaint illustrations from his vast stores of reading

to the confusion of all definite arrangement. Southey is in the

awkward position of a dogmatist defending a compromise. An Anglican

claiming infallibility is necessarily inconsistent. His view of

toleration, for example, is oddly obscure. He would apparently like to

persecute infidels;[152] and yet he wishes to denounce the Catholic

church for its persecuting principles. He seems to date the main

social evils to the changes which began at the Reformation, and yet he

looks back to the period which succeeded the Reformation as

representing the ideal state of the British polity. His sympathy with

the literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries predisposed

him to this position. He would have been more intelligible if he had

been more distinctly reactionary. For all that, his views show the

presence of a leaven which was materially to affect the later

development of English opinions. That Jacobinism meant anarchy, and

that anarchy led irresistibly to military despotism were propositions

which to him, as to so many others, seemed to be established by the

French revolution. What, then, was the cause of the anarchy? Sir

Thomas More comes from the grave to tell us this, because he had

witnessed the past symptoms of the process. The transition from the

old feudal system to the modern industrial organisation had in his day

become unmistakably developed. In feudal times, every man had his

definite place in society; he was a member of a little group;

supported, if controlled and disciplined, by an elaborate system of

spiritual authority. The Reformation was the period at which the

'masterless man' made his appearance. The conversion of pastures into

arable land, the growth of commerce and of pauperism, were marks of

the coming change. It proceeded quietly for some generations; but the

development of the modern manufacturing system represents the

operation of the same process on a far larger scale, and with far

greater intensity. The result may be described by saying that we have

instead of a legitimate development a degeneration of society. A vast

populace has grown up outside of the old order. It is independent

indeed, but at the heavy price of being rather an inorganic mass than

a constituent part of the body politic. It is, briefly, to the growth

of a huge 'proletariate' outside the church, and hostile to the state,

that Southey attributes all social evils.

The view has become familiar enough in various shapes; and in the

reproaches which Southey brings against the manufacturing system we

have an anticipation of other familiar lamentations. Our manufacturing

wealth is a 'wen,' a 'fungous excrescence from the body politic';[153]

it is no more a proof of real prosperity than the size of a dropsical

patient is a proof of health;[154] the manufacturer worships mammon

instead of Moloch;[155] and wrings his fortune from the degradation of

his labourers as his warlike ancestors wrung wealth from their slaves;

he confines children in a tainted atmosphere, physical and moral, from

morning till night, and a celebrated minister (Pitt) boasts of this

very evil;[156] he treats his fellow-creatures as machines,[157] and

wealth, though accumulated, is not diffused; the great capitalists,

'like pikes in a fishpond,' devour the weaker fish;[158] competition

is not directed to providing the best goods, but the cheapest;[159]

every man oppresses his neighbour; the landlord racks his tenant, the

farmer grinds the labourer; all the little centres of permanent life

are broken up; not one man in a thousand is buried with his fathers,

and the natural ties and domestic affections are prematurely

dissolved.[160]

Here, too, is to be found the source of the infidel opinions which

call for suppression. London is a hotbed of corruption;[161] a centre

of wealth; and yet, in spite of poor-laws, a place where wretches are

dying of starvation, and which could collect a mob capable of

producing the most appalling catastrophes. In such a place, men become

unbelievers like savages, because removed from all humanising

influences, and booksellers can carry on a trade in blasphemy.

Infidelity is bred in 'the filth and corruption of large towns and

manufacturing districts.'[162] The disappearance of clerical influence

has led to 'a mass of ignorance, vice, and wretchedness which no

generous heart can contemplate without grief.'[163] It is not

surprising that, in Southey's opinion, it is doubtful whether the bulk

of the people has gained or lost in the last thousand years.[164]

Macaulay takes all this as mere sentimentalism and preference of a

picturesque outside to solid comfort. But whatever Southey's errors of

fact, they show at least a deeper insight than his opponent into some

social evils. His proposed remedies explain his diagnosis of the evil.

In the first place, it is not surprising, though it surprised

Macaulay, that he had many sympathies with the socialist, Robert Owen.

He saw Owen in 1816,[165] and was much impressed by his views. In the

_Colloquies_,[166] Owen is called the 'happiest, most beneficent, and

most practical of all enthusiasts'; an account is given of one of the

earliest co-operative schemes,[167] and Southey believes in the

possibility of the plan. He makes, however, one significant remark.

Owen, he thinks, could not succeed without enlisting in his support

some sectarian zeal. As Owen happened to object to all religious

sects, this defect could not be remedied.

Southey, in fact, held that the absence of religious discipline was at

the root of the whole evil. Religion, he declares, much to the scorn

of Macaulay, 'is the basis upon which civil government rests.'[168]

There must, as he infers, be an established religion, and the state

which neglects this duty is preparing its own ruin. 'Nothing,' he

declares, 'in abstract science can be more certain than these

propositions,' though they are denied by 'our professors of the arts

babblative and scribblative'--that is, by Benthamites and Whigs. For

here, in fact, we come to the irreconcilable difference. Government is

not to be a mere machinery for suppressing violence, but an ally of

the church in spreading sound religion and morality. The rulers,

instead of merely reflecting the popular will, should lead and direct

all agencies for suppressing vice and misery. Southey, as his son

takes pains to show,[169] though he was for upholding authority by the

most stringent measures, was convinced that the one way to make

government strong was to improve the condition of the people. He

proposed many measures of reform; national education on the

principles, of course, of Dr. Bell; state-aided colonisation and the

cultivation of waste lands at home; Protestant sisterhoods to

reproduce the good effects of the old order which he regretted and yet

had to condemn on Anglican principles. The English church should have

made use of the Wesleyans as the church of Rome had used the

Franciscans and Dominicans; and his _Life of Wesley_ was prompted by

his fond belief that this might yet be done. Government, he said,

ought to be 'paternal';[170] and his leading aspirations have been

adopted by Socialists on the one hand, and the converts to Catholicism

on the other.

For his philosophy, Southey was in the habit of referring to

Coleridge; and Coleridge's _Constitution of Church and State_ is

perhaps the book in which Coleridge comes nearest to bringing an

argument to a conclusion. Though marked by his usual complexities of

style, his parentheses and irrelevant allusions and glances at wide

metaphysical discussions, he succeeds in laying down a sufficient

sketch of his position. The book was originally published in 1830, and

refers to the Catholic emancipation of the previous year. Unlike

Southey, he approves of the measure, only regretting the absence of

certain safeguards; and his general purpose may be said to be to give

such a theory of the relations of church and state as may justify an

establishment upon loftier grounds than those of the commonplace Tory.

His method, as he explains, is to find the true 'idea' of a

constitution and a national church. The 'idea,' he explains, does not

mean the conscious aim of the persons who founded or now constitute

the bodies in question. An 'idea' is the subjective counterpart of an

objective law.[171] It corresponds to the vital force which moulds

the structure of the social organism, although it may never have been

distinctly formulated by any one of the actors. In this sense,

therefore, we should have to proceed by a historical method. We should

study the constitution as we study the physiology of a physical

body;[172] and he works out the analogy at some length. So far,

Coleridge is expressing the characteristic view that Nature in general

is to be regarded as an evolution; only that evolution is to be

understood in the sense of Schelling not in the sense of either

Darwin. Of course, when Coleridge professes to find the 'idea' of the

church and state, what he really finds is not the idea so much as his

idea of the idea--which may be a very different thing. His theory of

'evolution' is compatible with assuming that evolutions are

illegitimate whenever he happens to dislike them.

He coincides rather curiously with James Mill in asserting that the

'social bond' was originally formed to protect property, not to

protect life.[173] He discovers accordingly that the ancient races,

Jews, Goths, and Kelts alike, divided the land into two parts, one to

be inherited by separate families, the other to be set apart for the

nation. From the latter or the 'nationalty' springs the church

establishment. This property belongs rightfully and inalienably to the

nation itself. It is held by what he calls the 'clerisy.' Its

functions are, in the first place, to provide a career by which the

poorest classes may rise to a higher position; and secondly, to

provide for the development of all the qualities which distinguish

the civilised man from the savage.[174] Briefly, then, the church is

that part of the national organism which is devoted to educating the

people to be 'obedient, free, useful organisable subjects, citizens,

and patriots, living to the benefit of the estate, and prepared to die

for its defence.' Henry viii. would have surpassed Alfred if he had

directed the 'nationalty' to its true purposes; that is, especially to

the maintenance of universities, of a parochial clergy, and of schools

in every parish. Unluckily, Henry VIII.'s 'idea' of a national church

was vague. Ideas were not his strong point. Coleridge appears to be

especially troubled to work the principles into conformity with his

views of Catholic emancipation. The peculiarity of the theory is that

the church, according to him, seems to be simply a national

institution. It might exist, and in fact, did exist before

Christianity, as is proved not only by the Jewish but by the Druidical

church.[175] That it should be Christian in England is a 'blessed

accident,' or 'providential boon'--or, as he puts it, 'most awfully a

godsend.' Hence it follows that a primary condition of its utility is

that the clerisy should contribute to the support of the other organs

of the community. They must not be the subjects of a foreign power,

nor, as he argues at length, subject to the desocialising influence of

celibacy. It follows that the Roman church is unfitted to be ever a

national church, although, if that danger be sufficiently obviated, no

political disqualifications should be imposed upon Romanists. And

thus, too, the Church Catholic is essentially a body which has no

relations to any particular state. It is opposed to the world, not to

the nation, and can have no visible head or 'personal centre of

unity.'[176] The church which makes such claims is the revelation of

Antichrist.

We need not inquire into the prophecies. It is enough to say that to

Coleridge as to Southey the preservation of an established church

seemed to be an essential condition of morality and civilisation. They

differed from the ordinary Tory, who was content to defend any of the

abuses by the cry of sacrilege and confiscation. The church was to be

made worthy of its position, and rendered capable of discharging its

high functions effectually. Coleridge, it may be said, would fully

admit that an organ which had ceased to correspond to its idea must

die. It could not continue to preserve itself by mere force of

obstruction, but must arouse, throw off its abuses, and show itself to

be worthy of its high claims. Meanwhile, however, he was perhaps more

anxious to show the Utilitarians that in assailing the institution on

account of its abuses, they were really destroying the most essential

guarantee of progress. He sums up, in a curious passage, the proofs of

modern degradation.[177] The wicked eighteenth century is of course

responsible for everything. The 'mechanic corpuscular theory'; the

consequent decay of philosophy, illustrated by such phrases as an

excellent 'idea' of cooking; 'the ourang-outang theology of the origin

of the human species substituted for the first ten chapters of the

book of Genesis; rights of nature for the duties and privileges of

citizens; idealess facts, misnamed proofs from history, for principles

and the insight derived from them': all these and other calamitous

results of modern philosophy are connected with a neglect of the

well-being of the people, the mistaking of a large revenue for

prosperity, and the consumption of gin by paupers to the 'value of

eighteen millions yearly.' He appeals pathetically to the leaders of

the Utilitarians. They will scorn him for pronouncing that a 'natural

clerisy' is 'an essential element of a rightly constituted nation.'

All their tract societies and mechanics' institutes and 'lecture

bazaars under the absurd name of universities' are 'empiric specifics'

which feed the disease. Science will be plebified, not popularised.

The morality necessary for a state 'can only exist for the people in

the form of religion. But the existence of a true philosophy, or the

power and habit of contemplating particulars in the unity and fontal

mirror of the idea,--this in the rulers and teachers of a nation is

indispensable to a sound state of religion in all classes. In fact,

religion, true or false, is and ever has been the centre of gravity in

a realm to which all other things must and will accommodate

themselves.'

The existence of the eighteenth century always remained a hopeless

puzzle for Coleridge and his followers. Why at that period everything

went wrong in the higher regions of thought remained a mystery. 'God

is above,' says Sir Thomas More to Southey,[178] 'but the devil is

below; evil principles are in their nature more active than good.' The

devil seemed to have got into the upper air, and was working with his

allies, Bentham and Mill and Paine and Cobbett, with remarkable

success. But, whatever the theories of conservatives in church and

state, the fact that the theories were held is important. The

diametrical opposition between two schools, one of which regarded the

church as a simple abuse, and its doctrines as effete superstitions,

while the other looked to the church and its creed as giving the sole

hope for suppressing the evil principle, was a critical point in later

movements, political as well as religious.

IV. SOCIALISM

I have spoken of Southey's sympathy for Robert Owen. Owen (1771-1858)

is one of the characteristic figures of the time. He was the son of a

village tradesman in Wales, and had risen to prosperity by the

qualities of the virtuous apprentice. Industry, patience, an

imperturbably good temper, and sagacity in business matters had raised

him to high position as a manufacturer at the time of the rapid

advance of the cotton trade. Many poor men have followed the same path

to wealth. Owen's peculiarity was that while he became a capitalist he

preserved his sympathy with the working classes. While improving

machinery, he complained that the 'living machinery' was neglected.

One great step in his career was his marriage to the daughter of David

Dale of New Lanark, a religious and worthy manufacturer.[179] Dale had

employed a number of pauper children who were in that day to be

disposed of by their parishes; and had done his best to make their

position more tolerable. Owen took up this scheme, and carried it out

more systematically. New Lanark, in his hands, became a model village;

he provided in various ways for the encouragement of sobriety,

industry, and honesty among his workmen, set up stores to supply cheap

and good provisions, and especially provided infant schools and a

systematic education. 'The children,' he declares, 'were the happiest

human beings he ever saw.' When his partners interfered with his

plans, Owen bought them out and started the company to which Bentham

and Allen belonged. New Lanark rapidly became famous. It was visited

by all the philanthropists of the day. The royal dukes not only of

England but of Russia were interested; and Owen even believed that he

had converted Napoleon at Elba. So far, Owen was a benevolent

capitalist, exercising a paternal sway over his people. He became

convinced, however, that he had discovered the key to the great social

problems of the day. When the distresses followed the peace, he was

prepared to propound his remedy, and found many willing hearers in all

classes. Liverpool and Sidmouth listened to him with favour, and the

duke of Kent became president of a committee started to carry out his

views. He gave the impetus to the movement by which the Factory Act of

1819 was carried, although it was far from embodying his proposals in

their completeness.

Owen's diagnosis of the social disease explains Southey's partiality.

Like Southey, he traced the evil to the development of the

manufacturing system. That system involved, as he held, what later

Socialists have called the 'exploitation' of the labouring classes by

the capitalists. With singularly crude notions of political economy,

Owen assumed that the 'dead machinery' was in competition with the

'living machinery.' He made startling calculations as to the amount

of human labour represented by steam-engines; and took for granted

that the steam-engine displaced an equal number of workmen. His remedy

for poverty was to set up a number of communities, which should

maintain themselves by cultivating the soil with the spade, and in

which every man should labour for all. Thus New Lanarks were to be

spread over the country, with the difference that the employer was to

be omitted. Owen, in short, became properly a Socialist, having been

simply a paternal philanthropist. For a time Owen met with

considerable support. A great meeting was held in London in 1817, and

a committee was started two years afterwards, of which Ricardo was a

member. Ricardo, indeed, took pains to let it be known that he did not

believe in the efficacy of Owen's plans. Meanwhile Owen was breaking

off his connection with New Lanark, and becoming the apostle of a new

social creed. His missionary voyages took him to Ireland, to the

United States and Mexico, and attempts were made to establish

communities in Scotland and in the State of Illinois.

Owen and his followers became natural antagonists of the Utilitarians.

He agreed with Southey in tracing distress to the development of the

great manufacturing system, though he went much further. The

principles essentially involved in the whole industrial system were,

according to him, pernicious. He held the essential doctrine of his

modern successors that property is theft. Between such a man and the

men who took the _Wealth of Nations_ for their gospel, and Ricardo as

its authorised commentator, there was an impassable gulf. On the other

hand, Owen was equally far from the Tory view of religious

principles. Southey's remark that he could only succeed by allying

himself with some religious fanaticism was just to the point.

Owen was a man of very few ideas, though he held such as he had with

extraordinary tenacity, and enforced them by the effective if

illogical method of incessant repetition. Among them was the idea

which, as he declares, had occurred to him before he was ten years old

that there was something radically wrong in all religions. Whether

this opinion had come to him from the diffused rationalism of his

time, or was congenial to the practical and prosaic temperament which

was disquieted by the waste of energy over futile sectarian squabbles,

or was suggested by his early study of Seneca--the only author of whom

he speaks as having impressed him in early years--it became a fixed

conviction. He had been an early supporter of Lancaster and

'unsectarian' education. When his great meeting was to be held in 1817

it occurred to him that he might as well announce his views. He

accordingly informed his hearers that the religions of the world were

the great obstacles to progress. He expected, as he assures us, that

this candid avowal would cause him to be 'torn in pieces.' It provoked

on the contrary general applause, and Owen congratulated himself

rather hastily on having struck the deathblow of superstition.

Owen's position, at any rate, was a significant symptom. It showed

that the Socialist movement sprang from motives outside the sphere of

the churches. Owen's personal simplicity and calmness seems to have

saved him from any bitter animosity. He simply set aside Christianity

as not to the purpose, and went on calmly asserting and re-asserting

his views to Catholics and Protestants, Whigs, Radicals, and Tories.

They agreed in considering him to be a bore, but were bored rather

than irritated. Owen himself, like later Socialists, professed

indifference to the political warfare of Whigs and Tories. When, at

the height of the Reform movement, he published a paper called the

_Crisis_, the title referred not to the struggle in which all the

upper classes were absorbed, but to the industrial revolution which he

hoped to bring about. He would have been equally ready to accept help

from Whig, Tory, or Radical; but his position was one equally

distasteful to all. The Tory could not ally himself with the man who

thought all religions nonsense; nor any of the regular parties with

the man who condemned the whole industrial system and was opposed to

all the cherished prejudices of the respectable middle classes.

Owen's favourite dogma is worth a moment's notice. He was never tired

of repeating that 'character is formed by circumstances'; from which

he placidly infers that no man deserves praise or blame for his

conduct. The inference, it must be admitted, is an awkward one in any

ethical system. It represents, probably, Owen's most serious objection

to the religions of the world. The ultimate aim of the priest is to

save men's souls; and sin means conduct which leads to supernatural

punishment. Owen, on the contrary, held that immorality was simply a

disease to be cured, and that wrath with the sinner was as much out of

place as wrath with a patient. In this sense Owen's view, as I at

least should hold, defines the correct starting-point of any social

reformer. He has to consider a scientific problem, not to be an agent

of a supernatural legislator. He should try to alter the general

conditions from which social evils spring, not to deal in pardons or

punishment. Owen was acting with thoroughly good sense in his early

applications of this principle. The care, for example, which he

bestowed upon infant education recognised the fact that social reform

implied a thorough training of the individual from his earliest years.

Owen's greatest error corresponds to the transformation which this

belief underwent in his mind. Since circumstances form character, he

seems to have argued, it is only necessary to change the circumstances

of a grown-up man to alter his whole disposition. His ambitious scheme

in America seemed to suppose that it was enough to bring together a

miscellaneous collection of the poor and discontented people, and to

invite them all to behave with perfect unselfishness. At present I

need only remark that in this respect there was a close coincidence

between Owen and the Utilitarians. Both of them really aimed at an

improvement of social conditions on a scientific method; and both

justified their hopes by the characteristic belief in the indefinite

modifiability of human nature by external circumstances.

I turn to a man who was in some ways the most complete antithesis to

Owen. William Cobbett (1762-1835), unlike Owen, took a passionate and

conspicuous part in the political struggles of the day. Cobbett,

declares the _Edinburgh Review_ in July 1807, has more influence than

all the other journalists put together. He had won it, as the reviewer

thought, by his force of character, although he had changed his

politics completely 'within the last six months.' The fact was more

significant than was then apparent. Cobbett, son of a labourer who

had risen to be a small farmer, had in spite of all obstacles learned

to read and write and become a great master of the vernacular. His

earliest model had been Swift's _Tale of a Tub_, and in downright

vigour of homely language he could scarcely be surpassed even by the

author of the _Drapier's Letters_. He had enlisted as a soldier, and

had afterwards drifted to America. There he had become conspicuous as

a typical John Bull. Sturdy and pugnacious in the highest degree, he

had taken the English side in American politics when the great

question was whether the new power should be bullied by France or by

England. He had denounced his precursor, Paine, in language savouring

too much, perhaps, of barrack-rooms, but certainly not wanting in

vigour. He defied threats of tar and feathers; put a portrait of

George III. in his shop-window; and gloried in British victories, and,

in his own opinion, kept American policy straight. He had, however,

ended by making America too hot to hold him; and came back to declare

that republicanism meant the vilest and most corrupt of tyrannies, and

that, as an Englishman, he despised all other nations upon earth. He

was welcomed on his return by Pitt's government as likely to be a

useful journalist, and became the special adherent of Windham, the

ideal country-gentleman and the ardent disciple of Burke's principles.

He set up an independent paper and heartily supported the war. On the

renewal of hostilities in 1803 Cobbett wrote a manifesto[180] directed

by the government to be read in every parish church in the kingdom, in

order to rouse popular feeling. When Windham came into office in 1806,

Cobbett's friends supposed that his fortune was made. Yet at this

very crisis he became a reformer. His conversion was put down, of

course, to his resentment at the neglect of ministers. I do not think

that Cobbett was a man to whose character one can appeal as a

conclusive answer to such charges. Unfortunately he was not free from

weaknesses which prevent us from denying that his political course was

affected by personal motives. But, in spite of weaknesses and of

countless inconsistencies, Cobbett had perfectly genuine convictions

and intense sympathies which sufficiently explain his position, and

make him more attractive than many less obviously imperfect

characters. He tells us unconsciously what were the thoughts suggested

to a man penetrated to the core by the strongest prejudices--they can

hardly be called opinions--of the true country labourer.

The labourer, in the first place, if fairly represented by Cobbett,

had none of the bitter feeling against the nobility which smouldered

in the French peasantry. Cobbett looked back as fondly to the

surroundings of his youth as any nobleman could look back to Eton or

to his country mansion. He remembered the 'sweet country air' round

Crooksbury Hill, the song of birds, and the rambles through heather

and woodland. He loved the rough jovial sports; bull-baiting and

prize-fighting and single-stick play. He had followed the squire's

hounds on foot, and admired without jealousy the splendid gardens of

the bishop's palace at Farnham. Squire and parson were an intrinsic

part of the general order of things. The state of the English working

classes was, he often declares, the happiest that could be

imagined,[181] and he appeals in confirmation to his own memories.

Although, upon enlisting, he had found the army corrupt, he not only

loved the soldier for the rest of his life, but shared to the full the

patriotic exultation which welcomed the 1st of June and the Nile. Even

to the last, he could not stomach the abandonment of the title 'King

of France'; for so long as it was retained, it encouraged the farmer

to tell his son the story of Crecy and Agincourt.[182]

What, then, alienated Cobbett? Briefly, the degradation of the class

he loved. 'I wish,' he said, 'to see the poor men of England what the

poor men of England were when I was born, and from endeavouring to

accomplish this task, nothing but the want of means shall make me

desist.'[183] He had a right to make that boast, and his ardour in the

cause was as unimpeachable as honourable. It explains why Cobbett has

still a sympathetic side. He was a mass of rough human nature; no prig

or bundle of abstract formulae, like Paine and his Radical successors.

Logic with him is not in excess, but in defect. His doctrines are

hopelessly inconsistent, except so far as they represent his stubborn

prejudices. Any view will serve his purpose which can be made a weapon

of offence in his multitudinous quarrels. Cobbett, like the Radicals

of the time, was frightened by the gigantic progress of the debt. He

had advocated war; but the peasant who was accustomed to reckon his

income by pence, and had cried like a child when he lost the price of

a red herring, was alarmed by the reckless piling up of millions of

indebtedness. In 1806 he calmly proposed to his patron Windham to put

matters straight by repudiating the interest. 'The nation must

destroy the debt, or the debt will destroy the nation,' as he argued

in the _Register_.[184] The proposal very likely caused the alienation

of a respectable minister, though propounded with an amusing air of

philosophical morality. Cobbett's alarm developed until it became to

him a revelation of the mystery of iniquity. His Radical friends were

denouncing placemen and jobbery, and Cobbett began to perceive what

was at the bottom of the evil. The money raised to carry on the war

served also to support a set of bloodsuckers, who were draining the

national strength. Already, in 1804, he was lamenting a change due to

Pitt's funding system. The old families, he said, were giving way to

'loanjobbers, contractors, and nabobs'; and the country people amazed

to find that their new masters had been 'butchers, bakers,

bottle-corkers, and old-clothesmen.'[185] Barings and Ricardos and

their like were swallowing up the old country gentry wholesale; and in

later years he reckons up, as he rides, the changes in his own

neighbourhood.[186] His affection for the old country-gentleman might

be superficial; but his lamentations over the degradation of the

peasantry sprang from his heart. It was all, in his eyes, part of one

process. Paper money, he found out, was at the bottom of it all; for

paper money was the outward and visible symbol of a gigantic system of

corruption and jobbery. It represented the device by which the

hard-earned wages of the labourer were being somehow conjured away

into the pockets of Jews and stockjobbers. The classes which profited

by this atrocious system formed what he called the 'Thing'--the huge,

intricate combination of knaves which was being denounced by the

Radicals--though with a difference. Cobbett could join the reformers

in so far as, like them, he thought that the rotten boroughs were a

vital part of the system. He meets a miserable labourer complaining of

the 'hard times.' The harvest had been good, but its blessings were

not for the labourer. That 'accursed hill,' says Cobbett, pointing to

old Sarum, 'is what has robbed you of your supper.'[187] The labourer

represented the class whose blood was being sucked.

So far, then, as the Radicals were assailing the borough-mongers,

Cobbett could be their cordial ally. Two years' imprisonment for libel

embittered his feelings. In the distress which succeeded the peace,

Cobbett's voice was for a time loudest in the general hubbub. He

reduced the price of his _Register_, and his 'two-penny trash' reached

a circulation of 25,000 or 30,000 copies. He became a power in the

land, and anticipated the immediate triumph of reform. The day was not

yet. Sidmouth's measures of repression frightened Cobbett to America

(March 1819), where he wrote his history of the 'last hundred days of

English liberty.' He returned in a couple of years, damaged in

reputation and broken in fortune; but only to carry on the war with

indomitable energy, although with a recklessness and extravagance

which alienated his allies and lowered his character. He tried to

cover his errors by brags and bombast, which became ridiculous, and

which are yet not without significance.

Cobbett came back from America with the relics of Paine. Paine, the

object of his abuse, had become his idol, not because Cobbett cared

much for any abstract political theories, or for religious dogmas.

Paine's merit was that he had attacked paper money. To Cobbett, as to

Paine, it seemed that English banknotes were going the way of French

assignats and the provincial currency of the Americans. This became

one main topic of his tirades, and represented, as he said, the 'Alpha

and Omega' of English politics. The theory was simple. The whole

borough-mongering system depended upon the inflated currency. Prick

that bubble and the whole would collapse. It was absolutely

impossible, he said, that the nation should return to cash payments

and continue to pay interest on the debt. Should such a thing happen,

he declared, he would 'give his poor body up to be broiled on one of

Castlereagh's widest-ribbed gridirons.'[188] The 'gridiron prophecy'

became famous; a gridiron was for long a frontispiece to the

_Register_; and Cobbett, far from retracting, went on proving, in the

teeth of facts, that it had been fulfilled. His inference was, not

that paper should be preserved, but that the debt should be treated

with a 'sponge.'

Cobbett, therefore, was an awkward ally of political economists, whose

great triumph was the resumption of cash payments, and who regarded

repudiation as the deadly sin. The burthen of the debt, meanwhile, was

so great that repudiation was well within the limits of

possibility.[189] Cobbett, in their eyes, was an advocate of the

grossest dishonesty, and using the basest incentives. Cobbett fully

retorted their scorn. The economists belonged to the very class whom

he most hated. He was never tired of denouncing Scottish

'feelosophers'; he sneers at Adam Smith,[190] and Ricardo was to him

the incarnation of the stock-jobbing interest. Cobbett sympathised

instinctively with the doctrine of the French economists that

agriculture was the real source of all wealth. He nearly accepts a

phrase, erroneously attributed to Windham, 'Perish Commerce'; and he

argues that commerce was, in fact, of little use, and its monstrous

extension at the bottom of all our worst evils.[191] Nobody could be

more heartily opposed to the spirit which animated the political

economists and the whole class represented by them. At times he spoke

the language of modern Socialists. He defines Capital as 'money taken

from the labouring classes, which, being given to army tailors and

suchlike, enables them to keep foxhounds and trace their descent from

the Normans.'[192]

The most characteristic point of his speculations is his view of the

poor-laws. Nobody could speak with more good sense and feeling of the

demoralisation which they were actually producing, of the sapping of

the spirit of independence, and of all the devices by which the

agricultural labourer was losing the happiness enjoyed in early years.

But Cobbett's deduction from his principles is peculiar. 'Parson

Malthus' is perhaps the favourite object of his most virulent abuse.

'I have hated many men,' he says, 'but never any one so much as you,'

'I call you parson,' he explains, 'because that word includes

"boroughmonger" among other meanings, though no single word could be

sufficient.'[193] Cobbett rages against the phrase 'redundant

population.' There would be plenty for all if the borough-mongers and

stockjobbers could be annihilated, taxes abolished, and the debt

repudiated. The ordinary palliatives suggested were little to the

taste of this remarkable Radical. The man who approved bull-fighting

and supported the slave-trade naturally sneered at 'heddekashun,' and

thought savings-banks a mean device to interest the poor in the

keeping up of the funds. His remedy was always a sponge applied to the

debt, and the abolition of taxes.

This leads, however, to one remarkable conclusion. Cobbett's attack

upon the church establishment probably did more to cause alarm than

any writings of the day. For Paine's attacks upon its creed he cared

little enough. 'Your religion,' said a parson to him, 'seems to be

altogether political.' It might well be, was Cobbett's retort, since

his creed was made for him by act of parliament.[194] In fact, he

cared nothing for theology, though he called himself a member of the

church of England, and retained an intense dislike for Unitarians,

dissenters in general, 'saints' as he called the Evangelical party,

Scottish Presbyterians, and generally for all religious sects. He

looked at church questions solely from one point of view. He had

learned, it seems, from a passage in Ruggles's _History of the

Poor_,[195] that the tithes had been originally intended to support

the poor as well as the church. Gradually, as he looked back upon the

'good old times,' he developed the theory expounded in his _History of

the Reformation_. It is a singular performance, written at the period

of his most reckless exasperation (1824-27), but with his full vigour

of style. He declares[196] in 1825 that he has sold forty-five

thousand copies, and it has been often reprinted. The purpose is to

show that the Reformation was 'engendered in beastly lust, brought

forth in hypocrisy, and cherished and fed by plunder and devastation,

and by rivers of English and Irish blood.'[197] Briefly, it is the

cause of every evil that has happened since, including 'the debt, the

banks, the stockjobbers, and the American revolution.'[198] In proving

this, Cobbett writes in the spirit of some vehement Catholic bigot,

maddened by the penal laws. Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and William III.

are his monsters; the Marys of England and Scotland his ideal martyrs.

He almost apologises for the massacre of St. Bartholomew and the

Gunpowder Plot; and, in spite of his patriotism, attributes the defeat

of the Armada to a storm, for fear of praising Elizabeth. The

bitterest Ultramontane of to-day would shrink from some of this

Radical's audacious statements. Cobbett, in spite of his extravagance,

shows flashes of his usual shrewdness. He remarks elsewhere that the

true way of studying history is to examine acts of parliament and

lists of prices of labour and of food;[199] and he argues upon such

grounds for the prosperity of the agricultural labourer under Edward

III., 'when a dung-cart filler could get a fat goose and a half for

half a day's work.' He makes some telling hits, as when he contrasts

William of Wykeham with Brownlow North, the last bishop of Winchester.

Protestants condemned celibacy. Well, had William been married, we

should not have had Winchester school, or New College; had Brownlow

North been doomed to celibacy, he would not have had ten sons and

sons-in-law to share twenty-four rich livings, besides prebends and

other preferments; and perhaps he would not have sold small beer from

his episcopal palace at Farnham. Cobbett's main doctrine is that when

the Catholic church flourished, the population was actually more

numerous and richer, that the care of the priests and monks made

pauperism impossible, and that ever since the hideous blunder

perpetrated by the reformers everything has been going from bad to

worse. When it was retorted that the census proved the population to

be growing, he replied that the census was a lie. Were the facts truly

stated, he declares, we should have a population of near twenty-eight

million in England by the end of this century,[200] a manifest

_reductio ad absurdum_. If it were remarked that there was a Catholic

church in France, and that Cobbett proves his case by the superiority

of the English poor to the French poor, he remarked summarily that the

French laws were different.[201]

Thus, the one monster evil is the debt, and the taxes turn out to have

been a Protestant invention made necessary by the original act of

plunder. That was Cobbett's doctrine, and, however perverse might be

some of his reasonings, it was clearly to the taste of a large

audience. The poor-law was merely a partial atonement for a vast and

continuous process of plunder. Corrupt as might be its actual

operation, it was a part of the poor man's patrimony, extorted by fear

from the gang of robbers who fattened upon their labours.

Cobbett's theories need not be discussed from the logical or

historical point of view. They are the utterances of a man made

unscrupulous by his desperate circumstances, fighting with boundless

pugnacity, ready to strike any blow, fair or foul, so long as it will

vex his enemies, and help to sell the _Register_. His pugnacity

alienated all his friends. Not only did Whigs and Tories agree in

condemning him, but the Utilitarians hated and despised him, and his

old friends, Burnett and Hunt, were alienated from him, and reviled by

him. His actual followers were a small and insignificant remnant. Yet

Cobbett, like Owen, represented in a crude fashion blind instincts of

no small importance in the coming years. And it is especially to be

noted that in one direction the philosophic Coleridge and the keen

Quarterly Reviewer Southey, and the Socialist Owen and the reactionary

Radical Cobbett, were more in agreement than they knew. What alarmed

them was the vast social change indicated by the industrial

revolution. In one way or another they connected all the evils of the

day with the growth of commerce and manufactures, and the breaking up

of the old system of domestic trade and village life.[202] That is to

say, that in a dumb and inarticulate logic, though in the loudest

tones of denunciation, Tories and Socialists, and nondescript Radicals

were raging against the results of the great social change, which the

Utilitarians regarded as the true line of advance of the day. This

gives the deepest line of demarcation, and brings us to the political

economy, which shows most fully how the case presented itself to the

true Utilitarian.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Bain's _James Mill_, p. 215.

[81] _Autobiography_, p. 104.

[82] _Miscellaneous Works_ (Popular Edition), p. 131.

[83] The articles from the _Encyclopaedia_ upon Government,

Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, Prisons and Prison Discipline,

Colonies, Law of Nations, Education, were reprinted in a volume 'not

for sale,' in 1825 and 1828. I quote from a reprint not dated.

[84] 'Government,' pp. 3-5.

[85] 'Government,' p. 8.

[86] 'Government,' p. 9.

[87] _Ibid._ p. 11.

[88] _Ibid._ p. 9.

[89] _Ibid._ p. 12.

[90] 'Government,' p. 9.

[91] C'est une experience eternelle que tout homme qui a du pouvoir

est porte a en abuser; il va jusqu'a ce qu'il trouve des

limites.--_Esprit des Lois_, Bk. xi. chap 4.

[92] 'Government,' p. 15.

[93] 'Government,' p. 7.

[94] _Ibid._ p. 18.

[95] 'Government,' p. 21.

[96] _Ibid._ p. 22

[97] _Autobiography_, p. 104.

[98] 'Government,' p. 28.

[99] _Ibid._ p. 30. Mill especially refers to the exposure of clerical

artifices in Father Paul's _Council of Trent_.

[100] 'Education,' p. 20

[101] _Ibid._ p. 45.

[102] _Autobiography_, p. 106.

[103] 'Government,' p. 31.

[104] Bain's _James Mill_, p. 392.

[105] They were reprinted in the _Miscellaneous Works_ after

Macaulay's death. I quote from the 'popular edition' of that work

(1875).

[106] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 166.

[107] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 132.

[108] Mill's _Autobiography_, p. 158.

[109] 'Government,' p. 12.

[110] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 169.

[111] _Fragment on Mackintosh_ (1870), pp. 275-94.

[112] Essay on the 'Independency of Parliament.'

[113] _Fragment_, p. 292.

[114] _Ibid._ p. 276.

[115] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 170.

[116] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 173.

[117] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 138.

[118] _Miscellaneous Works_, pp. 135-40.

[119] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 158, and see pp. 143-47.

[120] _Speeches_ (Popular Edition), p. 125.

[121] _Ibid._ p. 128.

[122] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 146.

[123] _Miscellaneous Works_, p. 183.

[124] A full analysis of this article is in Bain's _James Mill_, pp.

265-75.

[125] Article upon Sheridan, reprinted in Jeffrey's _Essays_, iv.

(1844).

[126] _Table-Talk_, 27th April 1823.

[127] _Vindiciae Gallicae_, in _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. (1846), p.

57.

[128] Mackintosh thinks it necessary to add that this parallel was

suggested to him by William Thomson (1746-1837), a literary gentleman

who continued Watson's _Philip III._, and may, for anything I know,

deserve Mackintosh's warm eulogy.

[129] _Vindiciae Gallicae_, p. 59.

[130] _Ibid._ p. 51.

[131] _Ibid._ p. 148.

[132] _Ibid._ p. 68.

[133] _Ibid._ p. 72.

[134] _Ibid._ p. 125.

[135] _Vindiciae Gallicae_, p. 128.

[136] _Ibid._ p. 84.

[137] _Ibid._ p. 30.

[138] _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 125.

[139] _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. 261-65.

[140] _Life_, i. 309-16.

[141] See _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. 3.

[142] _Ibid._ iii. 203-38 (an article highly praised by Bagehot in his

_Parliamentary Reform_).

[143] _Miscellaneous Works_, iii. 215-16.

[144] _Ibid._ iii. 226. Mackintosh in this article mentions the

'caucus,' and observes that the name implies that combinations have

been already formed upon 'which the future government of the

confederacy may depend more than on the forms of election, or the

letter of the present laws.' He inclines to approve the system as

essential to party government.

[145] _Essays_ (1844), i. 84-106.

[146] The famous 'Cevallos' article of 1808, said to be written by

Jeffrey and Brougham (Macvey Napier's _Correspondence_, p. 308), gave

the immediate cause of starting the _Quarterly_; and, according to

Brougham, first gave a distinctly Liberal character to the

_Edinburgh_. For Jeffrey's desire to avoid 'party politics,' see

Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, M. Napier's _Correspondence_, p. 435, and

Homer's _Memoirs_ (1853), i. 464.

[147] April 1805; reprinted in _Essays_, ii. 38, etc., to show, as he

says, how early he had taken up his view of the French revolution.

[148] Sydney Smith complains in his correspondence of this article as

exaggerating the power of the aristocracy.

[149] _Essays_, iv. 29.

[150] I need not speak of Brougham, then the most conspicuous advocate

of Whiggism. He published in 1843 a _Political Philosophy_, which,

according to Lord Campbell, killed the 'Society for the Diffusion of

Useful Knowledge.' No such hypothesis is necessary to account for the

death of a society encumbered by a 'Dictionary of Universal

Biography.' But the book was bad enough to kill, if a collection of

outworn platitudes can produce that effect.

[151] Bentham's _Works_, x. 536.

[152] _Colloquies_, i. 253.

[153] _Colloquies_, i. 171.

[154] _Ibid._ i. 178.

[155] _Ibid._ i. 169.

[156] _Ibid._ i. 167.

[157] _Ibid._ i. 170.

[158] _Ibid._ i. 194.

[159] _Ibid._ ii. 247.

[160] _Colloquies_, ii. 259.

[161] _Ibid._ i. 109.

[162] _Ibid._ ii. 105-7.

[163] _Ibid._ i. 106.

[164] _Ibid._ i. 47.

[165] _Life and Correspondence_, iv. 195; _Selections_, iii. 45.

[166] _Colloquies_, i. 62.

[167] _Colloquies_, i. 135.

[168] _Ibid._ ii. 147. Southey is here almost verbally following

Burke's _Reflections_.

[169] _Life and Correspondence_, v. 4-6.

[170] _Colloquies_, i. 105.

[171] _On the Constitution of Church and State, according to the idea

of each_, 1852 (fourth edition).

[172] _Church and State_, p. 100.

[173] _Ibid._ p. 97.

[174] _Church and State_, p. 85.

[175] _Ibid._ p. 67.

[176] _Church and State_, p. 142.

[177] _Ibid._ pp. 75-79.

[178] _Colloquies_, i. 37.

[179] See an early account of Dale (in 1798) in Sydney Smith's _Life

and Letters_, i. 35, and another in Wilberforce's _Correspondence_

(1840), i. 137 (in 1796).

[180] Printed in _Political Works_, i. 302.

[181] _Political Works_, v. 313; vi. 579.

[182] _Political Works_, i. 473; v. 319.

[183] _Ibid._ ii. 285.

[184] _Political Works_, ii. 28; iv. 388.

[185] _Ibid._ i. 443.

[186] _Rural Rides_ (1853), p. 311.

[187] _Rural Rides_, p. 386.

[188] _Political Works_, v. 436 (22nd July 1819).

[189] Even M'Culloch had recommended a partial repudiation.

[190] _Political Works_, iv. 237.

[191] _Ibid._ ii. 19, 107, 250, 346; and iii. 423. See _Parliamentary

History_, xxx., where the first use of the phrase by Hardinge is

reported.

[192] _Political Works_, vi. 176.

[193] _Ibid._ 395.

[194] _Rural Rides_, p. 446.

[195] He complains bitterly that Ruggles had suppressed this in a

second edition. _Protestant Reformation_ (1850), ii., Introduction.

[196] _Political Register_, 29th Jan. 1825.

[197] _Protestant Reformation_, p. 13.

[198] _Ibid._ p. 262.

[199] _Advice to Young Men_, p. 8.

[200] _Political Works_, v. 405. If our census be not a lie, there

were twenty-seven million Englishmen in 1891.

[201] _Protestant Reformation_, i. 311.

[202] Coleridge in a letter to Allsop (_Conversations_, etc., i. 20)

approves one of Cobbett's articles, because it popularises the weighty

truth of the 'hollowness of commercial wealth.' Cobbett, he sadly

reflects, is an overmatch for Liverpool. See Cobbett's _Political

Works_, v. 466 _n._