of social equality that inspired the Peasant Revolt. But communism was the
goal of the peasant leaders in 1381, and freedom from actual oppression the
desire of their followers. No conception of political democracy can be
found in the speeches and demands of Wat Tyler.
In the sixteenth century Robert Ket in Norfolk renewed the old cries of
social revolution, and roused the countryside to stop the enclosures by
armed revolt. And again the popular rising is an agrarian war to end
intolerable conditions, not a movement for popular government.
THE "SOCIAL CONTRACT" THEORY
The theory of a pact or contract between the Government and the people
became the favourite assumption of political writers from the sixteenth
century onward, and it was this theory that Rousseau popularised in his
"Social Contract," the theory, too, which triumphed for a season in the
French Revolution.
The theory is, of course, pure assumption, without any basis in history,
and resting on no foundation of fact. It assumes that primitive man was
born with enlightened views on civil government, and that for the greater
well-being of his tribe or nation he deposited the sovereign authority
which belonged to himself, in a prince or king--or in some other form of
executive government--retaining the right to withdraw his allegiance from
the government if the authority is abused, and the contract which conferred
sovereignty violated. It was not maintained that the contract was an
actually written document; it was supposed to be a tacit agreement. The
whole theory seems to have sprung from the study of Roman law and the
constitutions of Athens and Sparta. Nothing was known of primitive man or
of the beginnings of civilisation till the nineteenth century. The Bible
and the classical literature of Greece and Rome are all concerned with
civilised, not primitive, man, and with slaves and "heathens" who are
accounted less than men. The "sovereign people" of Athens and Sparta became
the model of later republican writers, while the choosing of a king by the
Israelites recorded in the Old Testament sanctioned the idea, for early
Protestant writers, that sovereignty was originally in the people.
The Huguenot Languet, in his _Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_ (1579), maintained
on scriptural grounds that kingly power was derived from the will of the
people, and that the violation by the king of the mutual compact of king
and people to observe the laws absolved the people from all allegiance.[72]
The Jesuit writers, Bellarmine and Mariana, argued for the sovereignty of
the people as the basis of kingly rule; and when the English divines of the
Established Church were upholding the doctrine of the divine right of
kings, the Spanish Jesuit, Suarez, was amongst those who attacked that
doctrine, quoting a great body of legal opinion in support of the
contention that "the prince has that power of law giving which the people
have given him." Suarez, too, insists that all men are born equal, and that
"no one has a political jurisdiction over another." Milton, in his "Tenure
of Kings and Magistrates" (1649), had taken a similar line: the people had
vested in kings and magistrates the authority and power of self-defence and
preservation. "The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what
is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the
people to the common good of all, in whom the power yet remains
fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their
natural birthright." Hooker, fifty years earlier (1592-3), in his
"Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I., had affirmed the sovereignty or
legislative power of the people as the ultimate authority, and had also
declared for an original social contract, "all public regiment of what kind
soever seemeth evidently to have risen from deliberate advice,
consultation, and composition between men, judging it convenient and
behoveful." Hobbes made the social contract a justification for Royal
absolutism, and Locke, with a Whig ideal of constitutional government,
enlarged on the right of a people to change its form of government, and
justified the Revolution of 1688. The writings of Hobbes and Locke have had
a lasting influence, and Locke is really the source of the democratic
stream of the eighteenth century. It rises in Locke to become the torrent
of the French Revolution.
But Huguenots and Jesuits, Hooker and Milton--what influence had their
writings on the mass of English people? None whatever, as far as we can
see. Milton could write of "the power" of "the people" as a "natural
birthright," but the power was plainly in Cromwell's army, and "the people"
had no means of expression concerning its will, and no opportunity for the
assertion of sovereignty. Lilburne and the Levellers held that democracy
could be set up on the ruins of Charles I.'s Government, and the
sovereignty of the people become a fact; and with a ready political
instinct Lilburne proposed the election of popular representatives on a
democratic franchise. Cromwell rejected all Lilburne's proposals; for him
affairs of State were too serious for experiments in democracy; and
Lilburne himself was cast into prison by the Commonwealth Government.
Lilburne's pamphlets were exceedingly numerous, and his popularity, in
London particularly, enormous. He was the voice of the unrepresented,
powerless citizens in whom the republican theorists saw the centre of
authority. The one effort to persuade the Commonwealth Republic to give
power to the people was made by John Lilburne, and it was defeated. The
Whig theory that an aristocratic House of Commons, elected by a handful of
people, and mainly at the dictation of the landowners, was "the People,"
triumphed. The bulk of the English people were left out of all account in
the political struggles of Whigs and Tories, and democracy was not dreamed
of till America was free and France a republic. The industrial revolution
compelled the reform of the British House of Commons, and democracy has
slowly superseded aristocracy, not from any enthusiasm for the "sovereign
people," but from the traditional belief that representative government
means the rule of the people.
Precedent, not theory, has been the argument for democracy in England.
THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)
The writings of Hobbes are important, because they state the case for
absolute rule, or "a strong government," as we call it to-day. Hobbes was
frankly rationalist and secular. Holding the great end of government to be
happiness, he made out that natural man lived in savage ill-will with his
fellows. To secure some sort of decency and safety men combined together
and surrendered all natural rights to a sovereign--either one man, or an
assembly of men--and in return civil rights were guaranteed. But the
sovereignty once established was supreme, and to injure it was to injure
oneself, since it was composed of "every particular man." The sovereign
power was unlimited, and was not to be questioned. Whether monarchy,
aristocracy, or democracy was the form of government was unimportant,
though Hobbes preferred monarchy, because popular assemblies were unstable
and apt to need dictators. Civil laws were the standard of right and wrong,
and obedience to autocracy was better than the resistance which led to
civil war or anarchy--the very things that induced men to establish
sovereignty. Only when the safety of the state was threatened was rebellion
justifiable.
At bottom, the objection to the theories of Hobbes is the same objection
that must be taken to the theories of Locke and Rousseau. All these writers
assume not only the fiction of a social contract, but a _static_ view of
society. Society is the result of growth: it is not a fixed and settled
community. Mankind proceeds experimentally in forms of government. To
Hobbes and his followers, security of life and property was the one
essential thing for mankind--disorder and social insecurity the things to
be prevented at all cost. Now, this might be all very well but for
evolution. Mankind cannot rest quietly under the strongest and most stable
government in the world. It will insist on learning new tricks, on thinking
new thoughts, and if it is not allowed to teach itself fresh habits, it
will break out in revolt, and either the government will be broken or the
subjects will wither away under the rule of repression.
Hobbes may be quoted as a supporter of the rule of the Stuarts, and equally
of the rule of Cromwell. Every kind of strong tyranny may be defended by
his principles.
In the nineteenth century Carlyle was the finest exponent of "strong"
government, and generally the leaders of the Tory party have been its
advocates, particularly in the attitude to be taken towards subject races.
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
Locke, setting out to vindicate the Whig Revolution of 1688, rejects
Hobbes' view of the savagery of primitive man, and invents "a state of
peace, goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation"--equally, as we know
to-day, far from the truth. Locke's primitive men have a natural right to
personal property--"as much land as a man tills, plants, improves,
cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property"--but they
are as worried and as fearful as Hobbes' savages. So they, too, renounce
their natural rights in favour of civil liberty, and are happy when they
have got "a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society,
and made by the legislative power erected on it."
According to Hobbes, once having set up a government, there was no possible
justification for changing it--save national peril; and a bad government
was to be obeyed rather than the danger of civil war incurred.
But Locke never allows the government to be more than the trustee of the
people who placed it in power. It rules by consent of the community, and
may be removed or altered when it violates its trust. Hobbes saw in the
break-up of a particular government the dissolution of society. Locke made
a great advance on this, for he saw that a change of government could be
accomplished without any very serious disturbance in the order of society
or the peace of a nation. Hobbes did not believe that the people could be
trusted to effect a change of government, while Locke had to justify the
change which had just taken place in 1688.
Only when we have dropped all Locke's theories of primitive man's
happiness, and the social-contract fiction, does the real value of his
democratic teaching become clear, and the lasting influence of his work
become visible.
Mankind is compelled to adopt some form of government if it is to sleep at
nights without fear of being murdered in its bed, or if it wishes to have
its letters delivered by the postman in the morning. As the only purpose of
government is to secure mutual protection, mankind must obey this
government, or the purpose for which government exists will be defeated.
But the powers of government must be strictly limited if this necessary
consent of the governed is to continue, and if the government has ceased to
retain the confidence that gives consent, then its form may be changed to
some more appropriate shape.
Now all this theory of Locke's has proved to be true in the progress of
modern democracy. It was pointed out that the danger of his doctrine--that
a nation had the right to choose its form of government, and to change or
adapt its constitution--lay in the sanction it gave to revolution; but
Locke answered that the natural inertia of man was a safeguard against
frequent and violent political changes, and as far as England was concerned
Locke was right. The average Englishman grumbles, but only under great
provocation is he moved to violent political activity. As a nation, we have
acknowledged the right of the majority to make the political changes that
have brought in democracy, and we have accepted the changes loyally.
Occasionally, since Locke, the delay of the government in carrying out the
wishes of the majority has induced impatience, but, generally, the
principle has been acted upon that government is carried on with the
consent of the governed, and that the Parliamentary party which has
received the largest number of votes has the authority from the people to
choose its ministry, and to make laws that all must obey.
The power of the people is demonstrated by the free election of members of
Parliament, and, therefore, democracy requires that its authority be obeyed
by all who are represented in Parliament. There is no social contract
between the voter and the government; but there is a general feeling that
it is not so much participation in politics as the quiet enjoyment of the
privileges of citizenship that obliges submission to the laws. The
extension of the franchise was necessary whenever a body of people excluded
from the electorate was conscious of being unrepresented and desired
representation. Otherwise the consent of the voteless governed was
obviously non-existent, and government was carried on in defiance of the
absence of that consent.
It is not Locke's theories that have guided politically the great masses of
the people, for Locke's writings have had no very considerable popularity
in England. But it has happened that these theories have influenced the
conduct of statesmen, and with reason, since they offer an explanation of
political progress, and constrain politicians to act, experimentally
indeed, but with some reasonable anticipation of safety to the nation.
British statesmen and politicians have made no parade of Locke's opinions;
they have done nothing to incur the charge of "theorist," but the influence
of Locke can be seen all the same--chiefly in the loyal acceptance of
political change, in the refusal to be shocked or alarmed at a "leap in the
dark," and by a willingness to adjust the machinery of government to the
needs of the time. In England Locke's influence has been less dynamic than
static; it has helped us to preserve a moderation in politics; to be
content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to
alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to
speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion--since it is public opinion
that is the final court of appeal; to tolerate abuses until it is quite
plain a great number of people are anxious to have the abuse removed; and
above all to settle down in easy contentment under political defeat, and
make the best of accomplished reforms, not because we like them, but
because a Parliamentary majority has decreed them.
For England, in fact, the essence of Locke's teaching has helped to produce
a deference almost servile to political majorities and to public opinion, a
reluctance to make any reform until public opinion has pronounced loudly
and often in favour of reform, and an emphatic assurance that every reform
enacted by Parliament is the unmistakable expression of the will of the
people. Locke has discouraged us from hasty legislation and from political
panics.
ROUSSEAU AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Locke's influence in France and in America has been altogether different.
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot were all students and admirers of Locke,
and his political theories were at the base of Rousseau's "Social
Contract." A return to nature, a harking back to an imaginary primitive
happiness of mankind, the glorification of an ideal of simplicity and
innocence,--supposed to have been the ideal of early politics--the
restoration of a popular sovereignty built up on natural rights alleged to
have been lost: these were the articles of faith Rousseau preached with
passionate conviction in his "Discourses" and in the "Social Contract."
Individual man was born naturally "free," and had become debased and
enslaved by laws and civilisation. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is
in chains," is the opening sentence of the "Social Contract." This liberty
and equality of primitive man was acclaimed as a law of nature by
eighteenth century writers in France, and to some extent in England too.
Pope could write, "The state of nature was the reign of God." Instead of a
forward movement the business of man was to recover the lost happiness of
the childhood of the world, to bring back a golden age of liberty and
equality. Locke's "state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and
preservation" is to be the desire of nations, and with wistful yearning
Rousseau's disciples gazed on the picture painted by their master.
It was all false, all a fiction, all mischievous and misleading, this
doctrine of a return to an ideal happiness of the past, and it was the most
worthless portion of Locke's work. To-day it is easy for us to say this,
when we have learnt something of the struggle for existence in nature,
something of the habits and customs of primitive man, and something of
man's upward growth. But Locke and Rousseau were born before our limited
knowledge of the history of man and his institutions had been learnt;
before science, with patient research, had revealed a few incidents in the
long story of man's ascent. Even the history of Greece and Rome, as
Rousseau read it, was hopelessly inaccurate and incomplete. Therefore,
while we can see the fallacy in all the eighteenth century teaching
concerning the natural happiness of uncivilised man, we must at the same
time remember it as a doctrine belonging to a pre-scientific era. The
excuse in France, too, for its popularity was great. Civilisation weighed
heavily on the nation. The whole country groaned under a misrule, and
commerce and agriculture were crippled by the system of taxation. It seemed
that France was impoverished to maintain a civilisation that only a few,
and they not the most useful members of the community, could enjoy.
How mankind had passed from primitive freedom to civilised slavery neither
Locke nor Rousseau inquired. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
chains," cries Rousseau, in sublime disregard of facts. For man was not
born free in the ancient republics of Greece and Rome that Rousseau
revered; children were not born free in his day any more than they are in
ours; and any assembly or community of people necessarily involves mutual
consideration and forbearance which are at once restrictive.
The truth is, of course, that man is not born free, but is born with free
will to work out political freedom or to consent to servitude. He is not
born with "natural" political rights, but born to acquire by law political
rights.
The fiction of primitive man's happiness and of the natural goodness and
freedom of man did little harm in England, for Locke was not a popular
author, and Wesley's religious revival in the eighteenth century laid awful
stress on man's imperfections. The sovereign people ruled in an unreformed
House of Commons, and the "contract" theory was exhibited by ministers
holding office on the strength of a majority in the Commons.
Rousseau's writings depicted, with a clearness that fascinated the reader,
the contrast between the ideal state that man had lost and the present
condition of society with its miseries and corruption; and by its
explanation of the doctrines of a contract and the sovereignty of the
people, suggested the way to end these miseries and corruptions. The
"Social Contract" became the text-book of the men who made the French
Revolution, and if the success of the Revolution is due to the teaching of
Rousseau more than to that of any other French philosopher, the crimes and
mistakes of the Revolution are directly to be traced to his influence, and
this in spite of Rousseau's deprecation of violence.[73]
As there is a certain tendency in England to-day to attempt the
resuscitation of Rousseau's theories of popular sovereignty and the natural
rights of man, and as so distinguished a writer as Mr. Hilaire Belloc is at
pains to invite the English working class to seek illumination from
Rousseau and to proceed to democracy guided by the speculative political
doctrines of the eighteenth century rather than on the tried experimental
lines of representative government and an extended franchise, it is
necessary to devote to Rousseau and his "Social Contract" more space than
the subject deserves.
The "Social Contract" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history;
it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of
originality. From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the
State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original
pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the
doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the
inalienability of citizenship. Where Locke was content to maintain that the
people collectively had the right to change the form of government,
Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while
voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's
eyes. The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives
but by public meeting, has only been found possible in small slave-ridden
states.
At the Revolution France had to elect its deputies. But the theory of the
sovereignty of the people has over and over again, in France, upset the
Government, and destroyed the authority of the deputies. In England we
accept the rule of Parliament, and are satisfied that the election of
representatives by an enfranchised people is the most satisfactory form of
democracy, though we retain a healthy instinct of criticism of the
Government in power. In France has happened what Locke's critics foretold:
the sovereign people never wholeheartedly delegates its powers to its
deputies, and indulges in revolution when impatient of government. During
the Revolution the passionate clamour of the sovereign people overpowered
the votes and voices of elected representatives, and revolution and
reaction were the rule in France from 1793 to 1871.
We may be frankly against the Government all the time in England; we may
resist it actively and passively, for the purpose of calling attention to
some political grievance, some disability that needs removal. But we never
forget that it is the Government, or believe that it can be overturned save
by the votes of the electorate. At the time of the European revolutions of
1848, when crowns were falling, and ministers flying before the rage of the
sovereign people, Chartism never seriously threatened the stability of the
British Government, and its great demonstrations were no real menace to the
existing order. Nothing seems able to shake the British confidence in its
elected representatives, and in the Government that is supported by a
majority of those representatives. We have never accepted the gospel of
Jean Jacques Rousseau; Priestley and Price are almost the only names that
can be mentioned as disciples of Rousseau before the advent of Mr. H.
Belloc.
France, still following Rousseau, does not associate political sovereignty
with representation as England does. It never invests the doings of its
Cabinet with a sacred importance, and it readily transfers the reins of
government from Ministry to Ministry. France has submitted to the
sovereignty of an Emperor and to the rule of kings since the great
Revolution, and though its Republic is now forty years old, and at present
there are no signs of dictatorship on the horizon, the Government of the
Republic is never safe from a revolutionary rising of the sovereign people,
and only by the strength of its army has revolution been kept at bay. If
Louis XVI. had possessed the army of modern France he too might have kept
the revolution at bay. All this revolution and reaction, disbelief in the
authority of representative government, and lively conviction that
sovereignty is with the citizens, and must be asserted from time to
time--to the confusion of deputies and delegates--is Rousseau's work, the
reaping of the harvest sown by the "Social Contract." Let us sum up the
character of Rousseau's work, and then leave him and his doctrines for ever
behind us.
"Rousseau's scheme is that of a doctrinaire who is unconscious of the
infinite variety and complexity of life, and its apparent simplicity is
mainly due to his inability to realise and appreciate the difficulties of
his task. He evinced no insight into the political complications of his
time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for
civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical
utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his
principles proved how valueless and impracticable most of his doctrines
were. He never attempted to trace social and political evils to their
causes, in order to suggest suitable modifications of existing conditions.
He could not see how impossible it was to sweep away all institutions and
impose a wholly new social order irrespective of the natures, faculties,
and desires of those whom he wished to benefit; on the contrary, he
exaggerates the passivity and plasticity of men and circumstances, and
dreams that his model legislator, who apparently is to initiate the new
society, will be able to repress all anti-social feelings. He aims at order
and symmetry, oblivious that human nature does not easily and rapidly bend
to such treatment. It is his inability to discover the true mode of
investigation that accounts for much of Rousseau's sophistry. His truisms
and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations,
savour more of theology than of political science, while his
quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulæ, assumed to be
axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness and cogency which is apt to
be mistaken for sound logic. He supports glaring paradoxes with an array of
ingenious arguments, and with fatal facility and apparent precision he
deduces from his unfounded premises a series of inconsequent conclusions,
which he regards as authoritative and universally applicable. At times he
becomes less rigid, as when (under the influence of Montesquieu) he studies
the relations between the physical constitution of a nation, its territory,
its customs, its form of government, and its deep-rooted opinions, or avows
that there has been too much dispute about the forms of government. But
such considerations are not prominent. In certain cases his inconsistencies
may be due to re-handling, but he is said to have observed that those who
boasted of understanding the whole contract were more clever than he."[74]
This may sound very severe, but it is entirely just. The "Social Contract"
consists of four books: (1) The founding of the civilized state by a social
pact. (2) The theory of the sovereignty of the people. (3) and (4). The
different forms of government; the indestructible character of the general
will of the community; and civil religion.
The whole work teems with generalisations, mostly ill-founded, and the
details are not in agreement. The one thing of permanent value is the
conception that the State represents the "general will" of the community.
How that "general will" finds expression and gets its way is of great
importance to democracy. Even more important is the nature of that "general
will." Individualist as Rousseau was in his views about personal property
(following Locke in an apparent ideal of peasant proprietorship), he
insisted on the subjection of personal rights to the safety of the
Commonwealth.
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
The resistance of the American colonies to the British Government did not
commence with any spirit of independence. The tea incident at Boston took
place in 1773, and it was not till three years later that the Declaration
of Independence was drawn up. The Whig principles of 1688 are at the
foundation of American liberties, and Locke's influence is to be seen both
in the Declaration of Independence and in the American constitution. The
colonists from the first had in many states a Puritanism that was hostile
to the prerogatives of governors, and appeals to the British Government
against the misuse of the prerogative were generally successful. The
colonists wanted no more, and no less, than the constitutional rights
enjoyed by Englishmen in Great Britain, and while the Whigs were in power
these rights were fairly secure. George III., attempting a reversion to
monarchist rule, drove the colonists to war and to seek independence; with
the aid of France this independence was won.
If the French officers who assisted the Americans brought the doctrines of
Rousseau to the revolted colonists, which is possible, it is quite certain
that the establishment of the American Republic, and the principles of La
Fayette and Paine, who had fought in the American War, were not without
effect in France.
The American Constitution was the work of men who believed in democratic
government as Locke had defined it, and America has been the biggest
experiment in democracy the world has seen. The fact that the President and
his Cabinet are not members of Congress makes the great distinction between
the British and American Constitution. The College of Electors is elected
only to elect the President; that done, its work is over. Congress,
consisting of members elected from each state, and the Senate, consisting
of representatives from each state, need not contain a majority of the
President's party, and the President is in no way responsible to Congress
as the British Prime Minister is to the House of Commons. The relation of
the State Governments to the Federal Government has presented the chief
difficulty to democracy in America.
The Whigs, or Republicans, as they came to be called, stood for a strong
Federal Government; the Democrats were jealous for the rights of State
Governments. The issue was not decided till the Civil War of 1861-1865,
when the southern slave-holding States, seeing slavery threatened,
announced their secession from the United States. Abraham Lincoln, the
newly-elected President, declared that the Government could not allow
secession, and insisted that the war was to save the union. Slavery was
abolished and the Union saved by the defeat of the Secessionists; but for a
time the fortunes of the Union were more desperate than they had been at
any time since the Declaration of Independence.
Hamilton was the real founder of the Republican party, as Jefferson was of
the Democrats. Both these men were prominent in the making of the American
Constitution in 1787, and Jefferson was the responsible author of the
Declaration of Independence. But Franklin and Paine made large
contributions to the democratic independence of America.
THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)
Edmund Randolph, the first Attorney-General of the United States, was on
Washington's staff at the beginning of the War, and he ascribed
independence in the first place to George III., but next to "Thomas Paine,
an Englishman by birth."[75]
Paine's later controversies with theological opponents have obscured his
very considerable services to American Independence, to political democracy
in England, and to constitutional government in the French Revolution; and
as mankind is generally, and naturally, more interested in religion than in
politics, Paine is remembered rather as an "infidel"--though he was a
strong theist--than as a gifted writer on behalf of democracy and a
political reformer of original powers.
Paine--who came of a Suffolk Quaker family--reached America in 1774, on the
very threshold of the war. His Quaker principles made him attack negro
slavery on his arrival, and he endeavoured, without success, to get an
anti-slavery clause inserted in the "Declaration of Independence." He
served in the American ranks during the war, and was the friend of
Washington, who recognised the value of his writings. For Paine's "Common
Sense" pamphlet and his publication, "The Crisis," had enormous
circulation, and were of the greatest value in keeping the spirit of
independence alive in the dark years of the war. They were fiercely
Republican; and though they were not entirely free from contemporary
notions of government established on the ruins of a lost innocence, they
struck a valiant note of self-reliance, and emphasised the importance of
the average honest man. "Time makes more converts than reason," wrote
Paine. Of monarchy he could say, "The fate of Charles I. hath only made
kings more subtle--not more just"; and, "Of more worth is one honest man to
society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever
lived."
Paine was in England in 1787, busy with scientific inventions, popular in
Whig circles and respected. The fall of the Bastille won his applause, as
it did the applause of Fox and the Whigs, but it was not till the
publication of Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France," in 1790,
that Paine again took up his pen on behalf of democracy.
Burke had been the hero of Paine and the Americans in the War of
Independence, and his speeches and writings had justified the republic. And
now it was the political philosophy of Hobbes that Burke seemed to be
contending for when he insisted that the English people were bound for ever
to royalty by the act of allegiance to William III.
Paine replied to Burke the following year with the "Rights of Man" which he
wrote in a country inn, the "Angel," at Islington. It was not so much to
demolish Burke as to give the English nation a constitution that Paine
desired; for it seemed to the author of "Common Sense" that, America having
renounced monarchy and set up a republican form of government, safely
guarded by a written constitution, England must be anxious to do the same
thing, and was only in need of a constitution.
The flamboyant rhetoric of the American Declaration of Independence--"We
hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--was not the sort of
language that appealed to English Whigs (America itself cheerfully admitted
the falseness of the statement by keeping the negro in slavery), and the
glittering generalities of the "Rights of Man" made no impression on the
Whig leaders in Parliament. Paine was back in the old regions of a social
contract, and of a popular sovereignty antecedent to government. It was all
beside the mark, this talk of a popular right inherent in the nation, a
right that gave the power to make constitutional changes not _through_
elected representatives in Parliament, but by a general convention.
Parliament in the sight of the Whigs was the sovereign assembly holding its
authority from the people, and only by a majority in the House of Commons
could the people express its will. What made the "Rights of Man" popular
with the English democrats of the "Constitutional Society" and the
sympathisers with the French Revolution was not so much the old
pre-historic popular "sovereignty" fiction--though it is true that there
were many Englishmen, of whom Godwin was one, who could see no hope of
Parliament reforming itself or of granting any measure of enfranchisement
to the people, and therefore were willing to fall back on any theory for
compelling Parliament to move towards a more liberal constitution--as the
programme of practical reforms that was unfolded in its pages and the
honest defence of the proceedings in Paris. That Parliament had no right to
bind posterity, as Burke maintained, and that if the revolution of 1688 was
authoritative, why should a revolution in 1788 be less authoritative? were
matters of less interest than the clear statement of events in France, and
the proposals for a democratic constitution in England and for social
reform. Fifty thousand copies of the "Rights of Man" were quickly sold, and
it obtained a large number of readers in America, and was translated into
French. The total sales were estimated at 200,000 in 1793. Paine followed
it up with Part II. while he was an elected member of the National
Convention in Paris, and in 1792, when a cheap edition of the "Rights of
Man" was issued, its author was tried for high treason, and in his absence
convicted and outlawed.
Part I. of the "Rights of Man," while relying on the popular "sovereignty"
fiction for getting a national convention, contained a careful definition
of representative government. It showed that government by democracy--i.e.
by popular meeting, suitable enough for small and primitive societies--must
degenerate into hopeless confusion in a large population; that monarchy and
aristocracy which sprang from the political confusion of the people must
degenerate into incapacity. A representative government was the control of
a nation by persons elected by the whole nation, and the Rights of Man were
the rights of all to this representation.
As a nation we have never admitted any "natural" political rights to man,
but we have steadily insisted on the constitutional right of representation
in Parliament to those who possess a fixed abode and contribute by taxation
to the national revenue.
Paine attacked all hereditary authority and all titles, but approved a
double chamber for Parliament. He claimed that the whole nation ought to
decide on the question of war with a foreign country, and urged that no
member of Parliament should be a government pensioner.
In Part II. there is a confident announcement that "monarchy and
aristocracy will not continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened
countries of Europe," so sure was Paine that civilised mankind would hasten
to follow the examples of France and America, and summon national
conventions for the making of republican constitutions. As the old form of
government had been hereditary, the new form was to be elective and
representative. The money hitherto spent on the Crown was to be devoted to
a national system of elementary education--all children remaining at school
till the age of 14--and to old-age pensions for all over 60. It is in these
financial proposals and the suggested social reforms that Paine is seen as
a pioneer of democracy. A progressive income tax is included in this Part
II., the tax to be graduated from 3d. in the £ on incomes between £50 to
£500; 6d. on incomes between £500 and £1,000; an additional 6d. up to
£4,000; and then 1s. on every additional £1,000 until we get to an income
tax of 20s. in the £ on an income of £22,000 a year.
The popularity of Paine's proposals in England and the Reign of Terror in
France frightened the British Government into a policy of fierce
persecution against all who bought, sold, lent or borrowed the "Rights of
Man." "Constitutional Societies" were suppressed, and all who dared openly
express sympathy with revolutions or republics were promptly arrested.
Paine, outlawed by the British Government, contended in the National
Convention for a republican constitution for France, did his best to
prevent the execution of Louis XVI., fell with the Girondins, was thrown
into prison, and only escaped with his life by an accident. Then, under the
very shadow of the guillotine Paine wrote his "Age of Reason," to recall
France from atheism to a mild humanitarian theism. This book was fatal to
Paine's reputation. Henceforth the violent denunciation of theological
opponents pursued him to the grave, and left his name a byword to the
orthodox. As Paine's contribution to the body of democratic belief in the
"Rights of Man" was submerged in the discussion on his religious opinions,
so was his early plea for what he called "Agrarian Justice." On his release
from a prison cell in the Luxembourg, in 1795, Paine published his "Plan
for a National Fund." This plan was an anticipation of our modern proposals
for Land Reform. Paine urged the taxation of land values--the payment to
the community of a ground-rent--and argued for death duties as "the least
troublesome method" of raising revenue. It was in the preface to this
pamphlet on "Agrarian Justice" that Paine replied to Bishop Watson's sermon
on "The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor." "It
is wrong," wrote Paine, "to say God made rich and poor; He made only male
and female, and gave them the earth for their inheritance."
Napoleon organised the plebiscite, which conferred on him the Consulate for
life, in 1802, and the French Revolution and Constitution making having
yielded to a military dictatorship, Paine returned to America, and died in
New York in 1809.
MAJOR CARTWRIGHT AND THE "RADICAL REFORMERS"
John Cartwright, the "Father of Reform," is notable as the first of the
English "Radical Reformers." His direct influence on politics was
small--none of his writings had the success of the "Rights of Man"--but,
like Paine, he laboured to turn England by public opinion from aristocracy
to democracy, and for more than forty years Cartwright was to the fore with
his programme of Radical reform. The problem for Cartwright and the Radical
reformers was how to get the changes made which would give political power
to the people--with whom was the sovereignty, as they had learnt from
Locke--and make Parliament the instrument of democracy. A hundred years and
more have not sufficed to get this problem answered to everybody's
satisfaction, but in the latter part of the eighteenth century, to the
minds of simple, honest men, it seemed enough that the argument should be
stated plainly and reasonably; it would follow that all mankind would be
speedily convinced; so great was the faith in the power of reason.
What neither Cartwright nor Paine understood was, that it was not the
reasonableness of a proposed reform but the strength of the demand that
carried the day. The revolt and independence of the American Colonies were
not due to a political preference for a republic, but were the work of
public opinion driven by misgovernment to protest. The difficulty in
England was that the mass of people might be in great wretchedness, badly
housed, ill-fed, and generally neglected, but they were not conscious of
any desire for democracy. They were against the government, doubtless, and
willing enough, in London, to shout for "Wilkes and Liberty," but the time
had not yet come for the working class to believe that enfranchisement was
a remedy for the ills they endured.
Major Cartwright was an exceedingly fine type of man; conscientious, public
spirited, humane, and utterly without personal ambition. He resigned his
commission in the Navy because he believed it wrong to fight against the
American Colonies, and he organised a county militia for the sake of
national defence. On the pedestal beneath his statue in Cartwright Gardens,
just south of Euston Road, in London, the virtues of the "Father of Reform"
are described at length, and he is mentioned as "the firm, consistent and
persevering advocate of _universal suffrage_, equal representation, vote by
ballot, and annual Parliaments." It was in 1777 that Cartwright published
his first pamphlet entitled "Legislative Rights Vindicated," and pleaded
for "a return to the ancient and constitutional practice of Edward III."
and the election of annual Parliaments. Long Parliaments were the root of
all social political evil, Cartwright argued. War, national debt, distress,
depopulation, land out of cultivation, Parliamentary debate itself become a
mockery--these calamities were all due to long Parliaments; and would be
cured if once a year--on June 1st--a fresh Parliament was elected by the
votes of every man over eighteen--by ballot and without any plural
voting--and a payment of two guineas a day was made to members on their
attendance. Of course, Cartwright could not help writing "all are by nature
free, all are by nature equal"--no political reformer in the eighteenth
century could do otherwise--but, unlike his contemporaries, the Major was a
stout Christian, and insisted that as the whole plan of Christianity was
founded on the equality of all mankind, political rights must have the same
foundation. By the political axiom that "no man shall be taxed but with his
own consent, given either by himself or his own representative in
Parliament," Cartwright may be quoted as one who had some perception of
what democracy meant in England; but he is off the track again in arguing
that personality, and not the possession of property, was the sole
foundation of the right of being represented in Parliament. It was the
possession of property that brought taxation, and with taxation the right
to representation. We cannot repeat too often that in England the progress
to democracy has never been made on assumptions of an abstract right to
vote. We have come to democracy by experience, and this experience has
taught us that people who are taxed insist, sooner or later, on having a
voice in the administration of the national exchequer. But we have never
admitted "personality" as a title to enfranchisement.
[Illustration: THE GORDON RIOTS
_From the Painting by Seymour Lucas, R.A._]
Cartwright followed with the multitude of political writers of his time to
deduce a right to vote, and his deduction is as worthless as the rest of
the _a priori_ reasoning. But the brave old man--he was tried for
"sedition" at the age of eighty in the Government panic of 1820--was an
entirely disinterested champion of the poor and a real lover of liberty. He
believed the affairs of government ought to be a matter of common concern,
and that they were quite within the capacities of ordinary men.
Cartwright's life--much more than his writings--kept the democratic ideal
unshaken in the handful of "Radical Reformers" who survived the Tory
reaction on the war with the French Republic in 1793, and his glowing
enthusiasm helped to kindle the fire for political enfranchisement that was
burning in the hearts of the manufacturing population by 1818. But in 1777
the electorate was not anxious for reform, and the unenfranchised gave no
thought to their political disabilities. On the very day in 1780 that the
Duke of Richmond proposed, in the House of Lords, a resolution in favour of
manhood suffrage and annual Parliaments, the London mob, stirred up by the
anti-Catholic fanaticism of Lord George Gordon, marched to Westminster with
a petition to repeal Savile's Act of 1778, which allowed Catholics to
bequeath land and to educate their own children. There was a riot, and in
the course of the next six days the mob burnt Newgate, sacked Catholic
chapels, and generally plundered and ravaged the City.
In the House of Commons Pitt made three attempts to get reform
considered--in 1782, 1783 and 1785--and on each occasion his resolution was
defeated by an overwhelming majority. After that Pitt made no further
effort for reform, and from 1793 to 1795 the Government he led passed the
Acts of repressive legislation which made all democratic propaganda
illegal, and crushed all political agitation.
But "the Cause" was not dead.
Sir Francis Burdett, M.P. for Westminster, Henry Hunt, better known as
"Orator Hunt," and Cobbett with his "Political Register," in various ways
renewed the campaign for manhood suffrage, and the growth of the
manufacturing districts made a change in the constitution of Parliament
imperative.
Burdett was sent to the Tower in 1810 for contempt of Parliament, but lived
to see the Reform Bill of 1831 passed into law, and died a Tory. Cobbett
spent two years in prison, and became M.P. for Oldham in 1832. What Cobbett
did with pen--and no man at that day wrote with greater ability for the
common people, or with greater acceptance--Hunt did on the platform. Both
strove to arouse the working class to demand enfranchisement. Hunt presided
at the mass meeting at Peterloo, by Manchester, in 1819--an entirely
peaceful meeting which was broken up by the military with some loss of
life--and was sent to prison for two years for doing so. He also was
elected M.P. (for Preston) in the first reformed Parliament.
Again the Government tried coercion, and after Peterloo, for the next few
years, intimidation and numerous arrests kept down all outward
manifestation of the reform movement.
In spite of this, the movement could not be stayed. Each year saw political
indifference changed to positive desire for enfranchisement, and the
British public, which, in the main, had been left untouched by the vision
of a democracy and the call for a national convention and a new
constitution, became impatient for the reform of Parliament and the
representation of the manufacturing interest.
THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814)
The name of Spence must be mentioned amongst those who preached the
democratic idea at the close of the eighteenth century. A Newcastle
schoolmaster, Spence, in 1775, expounded his "Plan" for land
nationalisation on the following lines:--
"The land, with all that appertains to it, is in every parish made the
property of the Corporation or parish, with as ample power to let, repair,
or alter all or any part thereof, as a lord of the manor enjoys over his
lands, houses, etc.; but the power of alienating the least morsel, in any
manner, from the parish, either at this or any time thereafter, is denied.
For it is solemnly agreed to, by the whole nation, that a parish that shall
either sell or give away any part of its landed property shall be looked
upon with as much horror and detestation as if they had sold all their
children to be slaves, or massacred them with their own hands. Thus are
there no more or other landlords in the whole country than the parishes,
and each of them is sovereign lord of its territories.
"Then you may behold the rent which the people have paid into the parish
treasuries employed by each parish in paying the Parliament or National
Congress at any time grants; in maintaining and relieving its own poor
people out of work; in paying the necessary officers their salaries; in
building, repairing, and adorning its houses, bridges, and other
structures; in making and maintaining convenient and delightful streets,
highways, and passages both for foot and carriages; in making and
maintaining canals and other conveniences for trade and navigation; in
planting and taking in waste grounds; in providing and keeping up a
magazine of ammunition and all sorts of arms sufficient for all the
inhabitants in case of danger from enemies; in premiums for the
encouragement of agriculture, or anything else thought worthy of
encouragement; and, in a word, doing whatever the people think proper, and
not as formerly, to support and spread luxury, pride, and all manner of
vice."
No taxes of any kind were to be paid by native or foreigner "but the
aforesaid rent, which every person pays to the parish according to the
quantity, quality, and conveniences of the land, housing, etc., which he
occupies in it. The Government, poor, roads, etc., are all maintained by
the parishes with the rent, on which account all wares, manufactures,
allowable trade employments, or actions are entirely duty free."
The "Plan" ends with the usual confidence of the idealist reformer of the
time in the speedy triumph of right, and in the world-wide acceptance of
what seemed to its author so eminently reasonable a proposal.
"What makes this prospect yet more glowing is that after this empire of
right and reason is thus established it will stand for ever. Force and
corruption attempting its downfall shall equally be baffled, and all other
nations, struck with wonder and admiration at its happiness and stability,
shall follow the example; and thus the whole earth shall at last be happy,
and live like brethren."
The American War and the French Revolution hindered the consideration of
Spence's "empire of right and reason," but, in the course of nearly forty
years' advocacy of land nationalisation, Spence gathered round him a band
of disciples in London, and the Spenceans were a recognised body of
reformers in the early part of the nineteenth century. The attacks on
private property in land, and the revolutionary proposals for giving the
landlords notice to quit, brought down the wrath of the Government on
Spence, and he was constantly being arrested, fined and imprisoned for
"seditious libel," while his bookshop in Holborn was as frequently
ransacked by the authorities.
Spence died in 1814, and the movement for abolishing the landlords in
favour of common ownership languished and stopped. The interesting thing
about Spence's "Plan" is its anticipation of Henry George's propaganda for
a Single Tax on Land Values, and the extinction of all other methods of
raising national revenue, a propaganda that, in a modified form for the
taxation of land values, has already earned the approval of the House of
Commons.
PRACTICAL POLITICS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS
Because we insist on the experimental character of our British political
progress, and the steady refusal to accept speculative ideas and _a priori_
deductions in politics, it does not follow that the services of the
idealist are to be unrecognised.
The work of the idealist, whether he is a writer or a man of action--and
sometimes, as in the case of Mazzini, he is both--is to stir the souls of
men and shake them out of sluggish torpor, or rouse them from gross
absorption in personal gain, and from dull, self-satisfied complacency. He
is the prophet, the agitator, the pioneer, and after him follow the
responsible statesmen, who rarely see far ahead or venture on new paths.
Once or twice in the world's history the practical statesman is an
idealist, as Abraham Lincoln was, but the combination of qualities is
unusual. The political idealist gets his vision in solitary places, the
democratic statesman gets his experience of men by rubbing shoulders with
the crowd.
A democratic nation must have its seers and prophets, lest it forget its
high calling to press forward, and so sink in the slough of contented ease.
The preacher of ideals is the architect of a nation's hopes and desires,
and the fulfilment of these hopes and desires will depend on the wisdom of
its political builders--the practical politicians. Often enough the
structural alterations are so extensive that the architect does not
recognise his plan; and that is probably as it should be; for it is quite
likely that the architect left out of account so simple a matter as the
staircase in his house beautiful, and the builder is bound to adapt the
plan to ordinary human needs.
The idealist has a faith in the future of his cause that exceeds the
average faith, and in his sure confidence fails to understand why his
neighbours will not follow at his call, or move more rapidly; and so he
fails as a practical leader.
Here the work of the statesman and politician comes in. They are nearer to
the mass of people, they hold their authority by election of the people,
and they understand that the rate of speed must be slow. Under the guidance
of their political leaders, the people are willing to move.
Sometimes the idealist is frankly revolutionary, is for beginning anew in
politics, and starting society all over again. If the state of things is
bad enough, he may get into power, as he did in France at the Revolution,
and for a time the world will stagger at his doings. But there is no
beginning _de novo_ in politics, and the revolutions wrought by men who
would give the world an entirely fresh start (to be distinguished from mere
changes of dynasty, such as our English Revolution was) have their sandy
foundations washed away by the floods of reaction.
There is no such absolute escape from the past for men or nations, and we
can only build our new social and political order on the foundations of
experience. But we may not be moved to build at all but for the prophet and
the agitator, and therefore the instinct that makes governments slay or
imprison the political agitator and suppress the writings of political
prophets can be understood. For the existence of every government is
threatened by prophets and agitators, and in self-defence it resists
innovation. A healthy democracy will allow too many opportunities for
popular expression to fear innovation; yet even under a democracy the
prophets have been stoned--their sepulchres to be subsequently erected by
public subscription and handsomely decorated.
Democracy owes too much to its prophets in the past not to rejoice at their
presence in its midst. But it will prudently leave the direction of its
public affairs to men who, less gifted it may be in finding new paths, are
more experienced in making the roads that others have discovered fit for
the heavy tread of multitudes.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century changed the face of
England and brought to the manufacturing class wealth and prominence. The
population of Lancashire was not more than 300,000 in 1760, the West Riding
of Yorkshire about 360,000, and the total population of England 6,000,000.
The inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, Crompton, Watt, and Cartwright
revolutionised the cotton trade in the last twenty years of the eighteenth
century, and increased enormously the production of woollen goods. England
ceased to be mainly a nation of farmers and merchants; domestic manufacture
gave way to the factory system; the labouring people, unable to make a
living in the country, gathered into the towns. The long series of
Enclosure Acts--1760-1843--turned seven million acres of common land into
private property, and with this change in agrarian conditions and the
growth of population England ceased to be a corn-exporting country, and
became dependent on foreign nations for its food supply.
While these industrial and agrarian changes meant a striking increase in
wealth and population, they were accompanied by untold misery to the common
people.
"Instead of the small master working in his own home with his one or two
apprentices and journeymen, the rich capitalist-employer with his army of
factory hands grew up. Many of these masters were rough, illiterate and
hard, though shrewd and far-seeing in business. The workmen were forced to
work for long hours in dark, dirty and unwholesome workshops. The State did
nothing to protect them; the masters only thought of their profits; the
national conscience was dead, and unjust laws prevented them combining
together in trade unions to help themselves. Women and children were made
to work as long and as hard as the men. A regular system grew up of
transporting pauper and destitute children to weary factory work. There was
no care for their health. There were few churches and chapels, though the
Methodists often did something to prevent the people from falling back into
heathendom. The workmen were ignorant, brutal, poor and oppressed. There
were no schools and plenty of public houses. In hard times distress was
widespread, and the workmen naturally listened to agitators and fanatics,
or took to violent means of avenging their wrongs, for they had no
constitutional means of redress. Even the masters had no votes, as the new
towns sent no members to Parliament. The transfer of the balance of
population and wealth from the south and east to the north and Midlands
made Parliamentary reform necessary."[76]
With this transfer of the balance of economic power came a good deal of
rivalry between the manufacturers and the landed gentry, the latter
becoming more and more Tory, the former more and more Radical. As all
political power, in the main, was in the landowner's hands, men anxious to
take part in politics eagerly bought up the small estates, and the old
yeoman class disappeared, except in out-of-the-way places. These yeomen and
small landowners had been the backbone of the Parliamentary Party in the
days of the Stuarts, but they were left hopelessly behind in an age of
mechanical inventions and agrarian changes, and were in most cases glad to
sell out and invest their property in other ways.
The story of the misery of rural depopulation in the first half of the
sixteenth century repeats itself at the close of the eighteenth.
"A single farmer held as one farm the lands that once formed fourteen
farms, bringing up respectably fourteen families. The capitalist farmer
came in like the capitalist employer. His gangs of poor and ignorant
labourers were the counterpart of the swarm of factory hands. The business
of farming was worked more scientifically, with better tools and greater
success; but after the middle of the eighteenth century the condition of
the agricultural labourer got no better, and now the great mass of the
rural population were mere labourers.... Pauperism became more and more a
pressing evil, especially after 1782, when _Gilbert's Act_ abolished the
workhouse test (which compelled all who received relief from the rates to
go into the half-imprisonment of a poor-house), and the system of poor law
doles in aid of wages was encouraged by the high prices at the end of the
century. In 1803 one-seventh of the people was in receipt of poor law
relief."[77]
But with all the considerable distress, in town and country alike amongst
the working people, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, swift
progress was taking place in agriculture and in manufactures. Only, the
accumulated wealth fell into fewer hands, and the fluctuations in the
demand for goods, caused partly by the opening up of new markets, brought
successions of good times and bad times. "The workmen shared but partially
in the prosperity, and were the first to bear the brunt of hard times."[78]
THE NEED FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM
The point for us to note here is that the changed economic conditions made
Parliamentary reform a necessity, and brought the question of popular
enfranchisement within sight. It was useless for Burke to maintain the
incomparable beauty of the British constitution; English politicians might
be indifferent to political theories of democracy, and heartily dislike any
notion of radical change, but the abuses were too obvious to prevent
reform.
Whatever the size of the county it returned two members elected by
freeholders, and the cost of a county election was enormous. Some of the
boroughs, especially in Cornwall, were tiny villages. Eighteen members were
returned from such boroughs in that part of Cornwall which now returns one
member for the Liskeard Division. The fields of Old Sarum belonged to seven
electors and returned two members. As there was no habitation whatever in
this "borough" of Old Sarum, a tent was put up for the convenience of the
returning officer at election times. No general law decided the borough
franchise. Local custom and various political and personal considerations
settled who should vote for members of Parliament. Places like Westminster
and Preston had practically manhood suffrage. In most of the "corporation
boroughs" the franchise was restricted exclusively to freemen of the
borough, and to the self-elected non-resident persons who composed the
governing body before the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835. A small number
of rich and powerful men really worked nearly all the elections. Seats were
openly bought and sold, and a candidate had either to find a patron who
would provide him with a seat, or, failing a patron, to purchase a seat
himself. Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst,
and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place. Midhurst was
selected by the father of Charles James Fox as "the most comfortable of
constituencies from the point of view of a representative; for the right of
election rested in a few small holdings, on which no human being resided,
distinguished among the pastures and the stubble that surrounded them by a
large stone set up on end in the middle of each portion. These burbage
tenures, as they were called, had all been bought up by a single
proprietor, Viscount Montagu, who when an election was in prospect,
assigned a few of them to his servants, with instructions to nominate the
members and then make back the property to their employer. This ceremony
was performed in March, 1768, and the steward of the estate, who acted as
the returning officer, declared that Charles James Fox had been duly chosen
as one of the burgesses for Midhurst, at a time when that young gentleman
was still amusing himself in Italy."
Three years earlier Burke had entered Parliament as a nominee of Lord
Rockingham's. Gibbon sat in the House for some years under patronage.
Gladstone first became a member by presentation to a pocket borough, and
later spoke in praise of this method of bringing young men of promise into
Parliament. John Wilson Croker estimated that of six hundred and
fifty-eight members of the House of Commons at the end of the eighteenth
century, two hundred and seventy-six were returned by patrons. Men of more
independence of mind who could afford to buy seats did so, and many of the
reformers--including Burdett, Romilly and Hume--thus sat in the House.
MANUFACTURING CENTRES UNREPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT
It was not so much that the landowning aristocracy were over-represented in
Parliament by their control of so many pocket boroughs, as that great
manufacturing centres were entirely unrepresented. The middle-class
manufacturers had no means of making their influence felt in the unreformed
House of Commons, for towns of such importance as Leeds, Manchester and
Birmingham sent no representatives to Parliament. This meant that
Parliament was out of touch with all the industrial life of the nation, and
that nothing was done till after the Reform Act in the way of serious
industrial legislation.
35 constituencies with hardly any voters at all returned 75 members
46 constituencies with less than 50 voters in each returned 90 "
19 constituencies with less than 100 voters in each returned 37 "
26 constituencies with less than 200 voters in each returned 52 "
84 male electors in other constituencies returned 157 "
The Reform Act of 1832 changed all this. It disfranchised all boroughs with
less than 2,000 inhabitants--fifty-six in all; allowed one member only to
boroughs with between 2,000 and 4,000; gave representatives to Manchester,
Birmingham, Leeds, and to several other large manufacturing towns and
London boroughs; extended the county franchise to leaseholders and £50
tenants at will; and settled the borough franchise on a uniform
qualification of occupation in a house of £10 rateable value. It also fixed
two days, instead of fifteen, as the limit for county elections, and one
day for boroughs.
THE PASSAGE OF THE GREAT REFORM BILL
The Reform Bill was not carried without much rioting in the country, and
some loss of life.
The Duke of Wellington was at the head of the Tory Ministry in 1830; and
though he declared in face of an Opposition that was headed by the Whig
aristocrats, and included the middle-class manufacturers and the great bulk
of the working class in the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire
and the Midlands, that "no better system (of Parliamentary representation)
could be devised by the wit of man" than the unreformed House of Commons,
and that he would never bring forward a reform measure himself, and should
always feel it his duty to resist such measure when proposed by others,
yet, in less than two years after this speech Wellington's resistance had
ended, and the Reform Bill was carried into law.
What happened in those two years was this: At the general election in the
summer of 1831, the popular cry was "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing
but the Bill."
"The whole countless multitude of reformers had laid hold of the principle
that the most secure and the shortest way of obtaining what they wanted was
to obtain representation. The non-electors felt themselves called upon to
put forth such power as they had as a means to obtaining the power which
they claimed." And the non-electors were enormously successful. For they
"combined their will, their knowledge, and their manifest force in
political unions, whence they sent forth will, knowledge, and influence
over wide districts of the land. And the electors, seeing the importance of
the crisis--the unspeakable importance that it should be well
conducted--joined these unions."
The Reformers carried the day at the elections, and the new House of
Commons passed the second reading of the Bill on July 8th, by 136: 367-231.
On September 21st the third reading passed by 345 to 236. Then on the 8th
of October the House of Lords threw out the Bill by 199 to 158, and at once
fierce riots broke out all over the country, in especial at Derby,
Nottingham, and Bristol.
At Derby the jail was stormed. At Nottingham the castle was burned, and of
nine men subsequently convicted of riot, three were hanged. At Bristol, the
jail, the Mansion House, the Customs House, the Excise Office, and the
Bishop's Palace were burned, and twelve lives were lost in three days.
The new session opened in December, and again the Bill was introduced, and
this time the second reading had a majority of 162: 324-162. The House of
Lords hesitated when the Bill came up to them at the end of March, 1832;
allowed the second reading to pass by 184 to 175, and then in Committee
struck out those clauses which disfranchised the "rotten"
boroughs--uninhabited constituencies like Old Sarum. Grey, the Whig Prime
Minister, at once resigned, and the Duke of Wellington endeavoured to form
a Tory anti-reform Ministry. But the task was beyond him, the temper of the
country was impatient of any further postponement of the Bill. Petitions
poured in urging Parliament to vote no supplies, and resolutions were
passed refusing to pay taxes till the Bill became law.
On Wellington's failure to make a Government, William IV. had to recall
Grey, and the Whigs resumed office with an assurance that, if necessary,
the King would create sufficient peers favourable to reform, so that the
Bill should pass.
The battle was over, the anti-Reformers retired, and on June 4th, 1832, the
Reform Bill passed the Lords by 106 to 22, receiving the Royal Assent three
days later.
The Whigs protested that the Reform Bill was _a final measure_, and Sir
Francis Burdett, the veteran reformer, was content to vote with the Tories
when the Act had become law. But there is no finality in politics, and the
Reform Bill was only the removal of a barrier on the road to democracy. The
Tories described the Bill as revolutionary, but as a matter of fact the Act
of 1832 neither fulfilled the hopes of its friends nor the fears of its
foes. What the Act did was to transfer the balance of power from the landed
aristocracy, which had been in the main predominant since 1688, to the
richer members of the middle class--the big farmers in the country, the
prosperous shopkeepers in the towns. The working class was still voteless,
and the old democratic franchise of Preston and Westminster was gone from
those boroughs.
The first reformed Parliament met early in 1833, and the change in the
character of the House of Commons was seen at once. Government accepted
responsibility for legislation in a way that had never been known before.
The New Poor Law, 1834, and the new Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, were
the beginning of our present system of local government. Slavery was
abolished in all British Colonies in 1833.
Greville, in his Memoirs, gives us an impression of the new regime in
Parliament as it appeared to one who belonged to the old dethroned
aristocracy.
"The first thing that strikes one is its inferiority to preceding Houses of
Commons, and the presumption, impertinence, and self-sufficiency of the new
members.... There exists no _party_ but that of the Government; the Irish
act in a body under O'Connell to the number of about forty; the Radicals
are scattered up and down without a leader, numerous, restless, turbulent,
bold, and active; the Tories, without a head, frightened, angry, and
sulky."
THE WORKING CLASS STILL UNREPRESENTED
But the working classes were the really disappointed people in the country.
They had worked for the reformers, and their energies--and their
violence--had been the driving force that had carried the Bill into law. If
their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more
bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish
the social improvements that had been predicted.
CHARTISM
So the working class in despair of help from the Government, decided to get
the franchise for themselves, and for twelve years, 1838-1850, Chartism was
the great popular movement. The _Five Points of the People's Charter_ were
proclaimed in 1838: (1) Universal Suffrage; (2) Vote by Ballot; (3) Annual
Parliaments; (4) Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of
Parliament; (5) Payment of Members. A Sixth Point--Equal Electoral
Districts--was left out in the National Petition.
Although the Chartist demands were political, it was the social misery of
the time that drove men and women into the Chartist movement. The
wretchedness of their lot--its hopeless outlook, and the horrible housing
conditions in the big towns--these things seemed intolerable to the more
intelligent of the working people, and thousands flocked to the monster
Chartist demonstrations, and found comfort in the orations of Feargus
O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien, and Ernest Jones.
The Charter promised political enfranchisement to the labouring people, and
once enfranchised they could work out by legislation their own social
salvation. So it seemed in the 'Forties--when one in every eleven of the
industrial population was a pauper.
Stephens, a "hot-headed" Chartist preacher, put the case as he, a typical
agitator of the day, saw it in 1839: "The principle of the People's Charter
is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his happiness.
The question of universal suffrage is, after all, a knife-and-fork
question. It means that every workman has a right to have a good hat and
coat, a good roof, a good dinner, no more work than will keep him in
health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty."[79]
The lot of the labourer and the artisan was found to be worse than it was
in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, before the great Reform Act
had been passed.[80] And while the Anti-Corn Law League, the Socialist
propaganda of Robert Owen, and the agitation for factory legislation, all
promised help and attracted large numbers of workmen, the Chartist movement
was by far the strongest and most revolutionary of all the post-reform
popular agitations. Chartism went to pieces because the leaders could not
work together, and were, in fact, greatly divided as to the methods and
objects of the movement. By 1848 Bronterre O'Brien had retired from the
Chartist ranks, Feargus O'Connor was M.P. for Nottingham--to be led away
from the House of Commons hopelessly insane, to die in 1855--and Ernest
Jones could only say when the Chartist Convention broke up in hopeless
disagreement, "amid the desertion of friends, and the invasion of enemies,
the fusee has been trampled out, and elements of our energy are scattered
to the winds of heaven."
In spite of its failure, Chartism kept alive for many years the desire for
political enfranchisement in the labouring classes. That desire never died
out. Although Palmerston, the "Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet"--so
Disraeli accurately enough described him--was Prime Minister from 1855 to
1865 (with one short interval), and during that period gave no
encouragement to political reform, the opinion in the country grew steadily
in favour of working-class enfranchisement. Palmerston's very inactivity
drove Liberals and the younger Conservatives to look to the working classes
for support for the measures that were planned. The middle class was
satisfied that the artisans could be admitted to the franchise without
danger to the Constitution. Palmerston's death in 1865 left the Liberal
Party to Earl Russell's premiership, with Gladstone as its leader in the
Commons. Reform was now inevitable.
The Bill as first introduced in 1866 was a moderate measure, making a £7
rental the qualification for a vote in the boroughs. It was too moderate to
provoke any enthusiasm, and it was hateful to the old Palmerstonian Whigs
and most of the Conservatives, who objected to any enfranchisement of the
working class. By a combination of these opponents the Bill was defeated,
the Liberals retired from office, and a Conservative ministry under Lord
Derby, with Disraeli leading the House of Commons, was formed.
THE HYDE PARK RAILINGS (1866)
It was seen quickly that there was a very real demand for the
enfranchisement of the town workman--the agricultural districts remained
unawakened--and Reform Leagues and Reform Unions sprang up as they had done
in 1831. Then in London came the incident of the Hyde Park railings, which
gave a distinct impetus to the Reform movement. What happened at Hyde Park
was this: the London Reform Union decided to hold a monster demonstration
in Hyde Park on July 23rd, but the Chief Commissioner of Police had
declared the meeting must not take place, and ordered the gates to be
closed at five o'clock. Mr. Edmund Beales, and other leaders of the London
Reform Union, on being refused admittance, drove away calmly to hold a
meeting in Trafalgar Square, but the great mass of people remained outside
the park, "pressed and pressing round the railings." Some were clinging to
the railings; others deliberately weakened the supports of the railings.
Park Lane was thronged, and all along the Bayswater Road there was a dense
crowd. The line was too long for the police to defend, and presently, when
the railings yielded to the pressure, the people poured in to the park.
"There was a simultaneous, impulsive rush, and some yards of railing were
down, and men in scores were tumbling and floundering and rushing over
them. The example was followed along Park Lane, and in a moment half a mile
of iron railings was lying on the grass, and a tumultuous and delighted mob
was swarming over the park. The news ran wildly through the town. Some
thought it a revolt; others were of opinion it was a revolution. The first
day of liberty was proclaimed here--the breaking loose of anarchy was
shrieked at there. The mob capered and jumped over the sward for half the
night through. Flower beds and shrubs suffered a good deal, not so much
from wanton destruction, as from the pure boisterousness which came of an
unexpected opportunity for horseplay. There were a good many little
encounters with the police; stones were thrown on the one side, and
truncheons used on the other pretty freely. A few heads were broken on both
sides, and a few prisoners were made by the police; but there was no
revolution, no revolt, no serious riot even."[81]
The Guards were called out, and a detachment arrived at the park, but the
people only cheered the soldiers good-humouredly. Not even a blank
cartridge was fired that day.
The Government, however, took the Hyde Park disturbance with extreme
seriousness. "Nothing can well be more certain than the fact that the Hyde
Park riot, as it was called, convinced Her Majesty's ministers of the
necessity of an immediate adoption of the reform principle."[82] Disraeli,
who in 1859 had proposed reform without getting any support, now saw that a
great opportunity had come for a constructive Conservative policy, and
boldly insisted to his party that Parliamentary Reform was a necessity.
"You cannot establish a party of mere resistance to change, for change is
inevitable in a progressive country," he told his followers.
All through the autumn and winter great demonstrations took place in the
large towns and cities of the country in support of the demand for the
enfranchisement of the workman, and when Parliament met in February, 1867,
a Reform Bill was promised in the Queen's Speech. To Lord Derby the measure
was frankly a "leap in the dark," and one or two Conservative ministers
(including Cranborne, afterwards Lord Salisbury) left the Government in
disgust. But the Conservatives generally chuckled at "dishing the Whigs,"
and the Bill, with considerable revision, was passed through both Houses of
Parliament by August.
HOUSEHOLD SUFFRAGE
By the Reform Bill of 1867 all male householders in boroughs were
enfranchised, and all male lodgers who paid £10 a year for unfurnished
rooms. The town workman was enfranchised by this Act as the middle-class
man had been enfranchised by the Act of 1832, and the electorate was
increased from about 100,000 to 2,000,000. An amendment that women should
not be excluded from the franchise was moved by John Stuart Mill, and
defeated. Some redistribution of seats took place under the Act of 1867,
eleven boroughs were disfranchised, thirty-five with less than 10,000
inhabitants were made single-member constituencies, and additional
representation was given to Chelsea, Hackney, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester,
Salford, Glasgow, Birmingham, Dundee, and Merthyr. "Thus was _Household
Suffrage_ brought in in the boroughs, and a great step was made towards
democracy, for it was plain that the middle-class county constituencies
could not last very much longer now that all workmen who happened to live
in boroughs had their votes."[83]
The third Reform Act, giving household suffrage to the country districts,
was passed by Gladstone in 1884, and it was followed by a Redistribution of
Seats Act in 1885. By these two Acts the agricultural labourer was
enfranchised, a service franchise was created for those who were qualified
neither as householders nor lodgers, and the principle of single-member
equal electoral districts--on a basis of 54,000 inhabitants--was adopted.
Only twenty-three boroughs, the City of London and the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, retained double-member representation. The
membership of the House of Commons was increased from six hundred and
fifty-eight to six hundred and seventy, the present total; and the
franchise remains as it was fixed in 1885--occupation and ownership giving
the right to vote.
From time to time, for more than a hundred years, a plea has been put
forward for universal or adult suffrage for men on the ground of an
abstract right to vote, but it has met with little encouragement.[84] There
is, however, a wide feeling in favour of simplifying the registration laws,
so that a three-months' residence, instead of, as at present, a year's
residence from one July to the next, should be sufficient to qualify for
the franchise. There is also a strong demand for "one man, one vote." At
present, while no elector may give more than one vote in any constituency,
he may, if he has property in various places, give a vote in each of these
districts, and some men thus give as many as a dozen votes at a general
election. This plural voting by property and residential qualifications in
different constituencies is not customary in other constitutional
countries, and a Bill for its abolition passed the House of Commons in
1906, but was rejected by the Lords.
While Liberals urge "one man, one vote" as the more democratic arrangement,
Conservatives reply by asking for "one vote, one value"--that is, a new
redistribution of seats, for in the last twenty-five years there have been
deep and extensive changes in the distribution of populations, and Ireland
in particular is over-represented, it is maintained. But then the
representation of Ireland in the House of Commons was really guaranteed by
the Act of Union, 1800.[85]
WORKING-CLASS REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT
With the extension of the franchise the change in the _personnel_ of the
House of Commons has become marked. The more wealthy of the middle class
entered in considerable numbers after 1832; the Acts of 1867 and 1884 made
the entry of the workman inevitable. The miners were the first to send
Labour representatives to Parliament, and to-day their members outnumber
those of any other trade. Since 1892 industrial constituencies, chiefly in
Yorkshire, Lancashire, South Wales, and the mining districts, have gone on
steadily electing and re-electing working-class representatives--trade
union secretaries and officers for the most part--and with the formation of
a National Labour Representation Committee in 1900, these representatives
became a separate and distinct party--the Labour Party after 1906--in the
House of Commons.
Enfranchisement to secure representation for the redress of grievances has
been the principle that has guided the English people towards democracy.
Both the middle class and the working class were convinced that
enfranchisement was necessary if the House of Commons was to be in any real
sense a representative assembly, and both have used enfranchisement for
obtaining representation in Parliament. The return of forty Labour Members
at recent general elections is evidence that a large electorate supports
the Labour Party in its desire to carry in Parliament legislation that will
make life a better thing for the labourer and his family; and in the House
of Commons the Labour Members have won a general respect. As a matter of
fact, the House of Commons to-day is in every way a more orderly, a more
intelligent, more business-like, and better-mannered assembly than it was
in the days before 1832.
No stronger evidence of the value of Parliamentary representation to the
working-class can be offered than the large output of what may be called
labour legislation in recent years. It is true that Lord Shaftesbury's
benevolent and entirely disinterested activities promoted Factory Acts in
the first half of the nineteenth century, but in the last twenty years
measures for the amelioration of the lot of the workman have been
constantly before Parliament.
REMOVAL OF RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES--CATHOLICS, JEWS, AND FREETHINKERS
The nineteenth century was not only the century of popular enfranchisement;
it was the century that saw the removal of religious disabilities, and the
free admission to Parliament and to the Government of Roman Catholics,
Nonconformists, Jews, and Freethinkers.
In the year 1800 Roman Catholics in England were excluded from Parliament,
from the franchise, from the magistracy, the Bar, the Civil Service, from
municipal corporations, and from commissions in the Army and Navy. Pitt was
willing to abolish these disabilities on the passing of the Act of Union,
and the Irish people were bitterly disappointed that the disabilities
remained. But George III. refused all assent to the proposals, and Pitt
resigned. Several times the House of Commons passed Catholic Relief Bills,
which were thrown out by the Lords, and it was not till 1829, when "the
English ministry had to choose between concession and civil war," that Peel
and the Duke of Wellington yielded and persuaded their party to admit
Catholics to Parliament and to the Civil and Military Services.
The repeal of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics--Acts of Elizabeth
that inflicted penalties on priests who said mass in England, and on Roman
Catholics who attended mass--took place in 1844, and in 1866 the
Parliamentary Oath was amended and made unobjectionable to Roman Catholics.
A Roman Catholic is still excluded by law from the Crown, the Lord
Chancellorship, and the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, but many Roman
Catholics are members of Parliament--members of all parties--and the late
Lord Ripon, a Catholic, sat in a Liberal Cabinet.
In 1846 Rothschild was elected as a Liberal M.P. for the City of London,
but the law did not permit him to take his seat. Then for some years Jewish
M.P.'s were allowed to take part in debates and sit on committees, but were
not allowed to vote. Finally, in 1858, the Lords, after rejecting the
measure for ten years, passed the Jews' Disabilities Bill, which removed
all restriction. The Right Hon. Herbert Samuel, M.P., is the first Jew to
sit in the Cabinet, for though Disraeli was of the Jewish race, he was a
Christian in belief.
Although in 1800 various Acts on the Statute Book required Nonconformists
to subscribe to the religion of the Church of England before taking part in
municipal affairs, these Acts had long been a dead letter. All that was
done in the nineteenth century was to repeal these Acts, and to throw open
the universities and public offices to Nonconformists. It is only, however,
in recent years that Nonconformists have filled posts of high importance in
the Cabinet.
The last attempt at restriction on the religious beliefs of members of
Parliament was made in the House of Commons itself, when Charles Bradlaugh,
after being duly elected M.P. for Northampton, was by the action of the
House excluded from his seat. Bradlaugh was a frank disbeliever in
Christianity, and the House of Commons refused to allow him either to take
the oath or make an affirmation. For five years (1880-5) the struggle
lasted--a Liberal Government being in power all the time--and three times
during that period the electors of Northampton triumphantly returned
Charles Bradlaugh as their member, only to be answered by resolutions of
refusal and expulsion passed by the House of Commons against their
representative. It was a repetition of the battle Wilkes had fought one
hundred and twenty years earlier, and it ended in the same way. A new
Parliament assembled in January, 1886 (after a general election in
November), the new Speaker (Mr. Peel) permitted Bradlaugh to take the oath
in the usual way, declined to allow any interference, and the battle was
over. Two years later a general Affirmation Bill was carried on the motion
of Bradlaugh, and became law. When Charles Bradlaugh lay dying in January,
1891, the House of Commons passed, without dissent, a resolution expunging
from the journals of the House the old resolutions of exclusion.
THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN
The nineteenth century then will always be noted as the era of steady
advance towards democracy, especially in England. Enfranchisement of the
workman, and his representation in Parliament, have transferred the
government of the country from an aristocracy to the middle class and the
working class, for to-day, alike in Parliament and in the permanent Civil
Service, men of the middle class predominate, assisted by those who served
apprenticeship in mine or workshop. The removal of religious disabilities
has ended the old rule that confined the business of the legislature and
the administration of justice to members of the Established Church of
England, and Roman Catholics, Jews, Nonconformists, and Freethinkers now
take their share in all public work.
One disability only remains--the sex disability that denies the
parliamentary franchise to women. In the middle ages women were excused
from parliamentary attendance, but there was no notion that their powers
and privileges as landowners were shortened because, on account of their
sex, they were granted exemption from Parliament and from juries. In 1868 a
test case--Chorlton _v._ Lings--was brought, and the judges decided that
women householders were not to be registered as electors, and it was left
to Parliament to pass a Women's Enfranchisement Bill. From the time of John
Stuart Mill's advocacy in 1867 there have always been supporters of Women's
Suffrage in the House of Commons, and in the last five years these
supporters have been growing in numbers. Only the refusal of the Government
to give time for the discussion of the Bill in Committee has prevented a
Woman's Enfranchisement measure, which on several occasions has received a
second reading, from passing the House of Commons; and the announcement by
the present (1911) Government that full facilities for such discussion are
to be granted next year (1912) would indicate that the removal of political
sex disabilities is close at hand. Women are not asking for adult suffrage,
but are willing to receive enfranchisement on the terms that qualify men as
electors, and the Conciliation Bill, as it is called--because members of
every political party have agreed to make it their Bill--would place on the
roll of electors rather more than a million of women voters.
Meantime, while waiting for the removal of the anti-democratic barrier that
excludes them from full political citizenship, women are admitted in the
United Kingdom to an equal share with men in all local government. Since
1869 women who are householders have enjoyed the municipal franchise, and
as Poor Law guardians and members of school boards, they have been freely
elected to sit side by side with men. In 1907 women were declared eligible
by Parliament for membership on county and borough councils, and for the
chairmanship of county councils and the mayoralty of boroughs. Since this
Act was passed we have seen women elected to the councils of great
cities--Manchester and Liverpool, for instance--and chosen as mayors in
several towns. No political movement in recent years has been of greater
public interest or importance than the agitation for "Votes for Women." The
demand for enfranchisement is based on the old constitutional ground of the
Parliamentarians of the seventeenth century--that those who are directly
taxed by Government must have some political control of the public
expenditure--and it is supported by the present leader of the Conservative
Party[86] on the ground that government can only be carried on in England
by consent of the governed.
The demand for the parliamentary franchise is with us the expression of
that deep dissatisfaction at the unequal relations of the sexes that is
felt by many men, and by far more women, all over the civilised world. As
the middle-class man and the workmen of Great Britain were sure that they
could not get from Parliament an understanding of popular grievances, still
less fair treatment, until they possessed the right to choose their own
parliamentary representatives, so women are convinced that there can be no
adequate adjustment of these unequal relations until they too enjoy the
same privilege of citizenship; for enfranchisement and representation are
the two chosen instruments of democratic government in our day.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VIII
DEMOCRACY AT WORK
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
To-day in Great Britain, in America, in the self-governing colonies, and in
many European countries, we can sec the principles of democracy in working
order.
The whole system of local government in Great Britain and Ireland is
essentially democratic. The municipal councils of all the large cities are
elected on household suffrage, and have enormous powers. There is now no
sex disability to prevent the election of women to these bodies, and,
except in the case of the clergy of the Established Church, who are
disqualified from sitting on town councils (but not on county or district
councils), all ratepayers are eligible for nomination. The result is that
on nearly every city council, and on a great number of county councils,
London borough councils, urban and rural district councils, boards of
guardians, and parish councils, there are working-class representatives,
while women members have been elected to the great councils of Liverpool
and Manchester, and sit on many boards of guardians and parish councils.
All these councils are of recent creation. The Municipal Corporations Act
of 1835 placed the election of town councils for the first time in the
hands of the ratepayers, but the real reform of local government dates from
1888. In that year the Conservative Government established county and
district councils and Lord Rosebery became the first chairman of the London
County Council. Six years later the Liberals set up parish councils in the
rural districts, with parish meetings where the population did not exceed
three hundred. In 1899 the Conservatives displaced the old London vestries
by borough councils, and in 1902-3 abolished in England the school boards
created in 1870, and made the county council the local authority for public
elementary education. Scotland was allowed to retain its school boards, and
strong but unsuccessful opposition was made in London and the chief cities
to the suppression of the specially elected education authority.
[Illustration: THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
_Photo: Moyse, Putney._]
As far as rural England is concerned, county councils, district councils,
and parish councils are, generally speaking, very reluctant to put into
operation the wide powers they possess. The average county council, though
popularly elected, is composed in agricultural England of landowners and
the bigger farmers, who, as a common rule, do not favour a land programme
for labourers, and are anxious to keep down the rates. The rural district
council and board of guardians are equally averse from any display of
public enterprise, and the parish council, which often consists mainly of
labourers, rarely accomplishes anything except at the prompting, or with
the sanction, of the parochial landowner. The result is that allotments,
rural housing, village baths and washhouses, an adequate water supply,
public halls and libraries, are not regarded as the concern of rural
elected authorities, but are left to the private enterprise of landowners.
Civic pride, which glories in the public proprietorship of lands and
libraries, tramways and lodging-houses, waterworks and workmen's dwellings,
art galleries and swimming baths, and is a living influence in the
municipalities of, let us say, London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford,
Manchester, Birmingham, West Ham, and many a smaller borough, does not
exist in rural councils. To the farmer and the peasant public ownership is
a new and alien thing. The common lands and all the old village communal
life have gone out of the memory of rural England; but the feudal tradition
that the landowner is the real centre of authority has survived, and it is
the benevolent landowner who is expected to build cottages, grant
allotments, and see to the water supply, as fifty years ago he built and
managed the village school. Political organisation could break through this
tradition, but farmers and agricultural labourers are without this
organisation; and so the authority of the landowner remains, in spite of
the democratic constitution of local government. The people can allow their
power to remain in the hands of others, just as a king can be content to
reign without ruling, and the local government of rural England is an
oligarchy elected by a popular franchise.
In the factory towns and the mining districts it is a very different
matter. Here the people are organised, and take their share in local
government. In the county of Durham, for instance, the working class
predominates on local councils, and the influence of trade unions prevails
in these assemblies wherever a strong Labour party exists. Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain began his public career on the Birmingham Town Council, and his
municipal services earned for him the enthusiastic support of Birmingham
for all his later political ventures. It would be difficult to mention the
name of a great statesman who laid the foundations of his fame in rural
local government.
As in local government, so in the Imperial Parliament. Rural England sends
no Labour member to the House of Commons. Only in very exceptional cases
has a tenant farmer been elected. It is the social labour of the mine and
the mill that has produced the Labour member of Parliament.
Mr. Joseph Arch made a valiant attempt to organise the agricultural
labourers of England, and from 1880 to 1890 a rural labourers' union, with
some thousands of members, was in existence. For a time this secured a rise
in wages, and when Mr. Arch was in Parliament, as a Liberal M.P.
(1885-1895), the rural labourer hoped for lasting improvement in the
conditions of life. But the Union fell to pieces, and Mr. Arch was not
strong enough single-handed to force the claims of his constituents on the
House of Commons.
THE WORKMAN IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
To-day there are more than forty workmen in the House of Commons, and the
great majority of these have served an apprenticeship in municipal and
trade union offices. Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire,
Stafford, South Wales, Glasgow, Dundee, Leicester, Norwich and London, all
have their elected Labour members in Parliament, and a marked preference is
shown for the man who has proved his honesty and capacity in the
municipality, or as the leader of his trade union. All the miners'
representatives are tried and experienced men. Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P., was
for ten years the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers. Mr. Clynes, M.P., was elected to the office of district
secretary of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union twenty years
ago; Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been general secretary of the same union
since 1889, and has sat on the West Ham Corporation for more than sixteen
years. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., are well known
for their work on the London County Council and on their local borough
council and board of guardians. Similarly with other Labour members of
Parliament. Their lives are marked by a sense of public responsibility,
with the result that in the House of Commons they are grave, business-like,
and undemonstrative. The Labour members do not make "scenes"; they respect
the rules of the House and the dignity of the National Assembly, partly
because they are all in sober middle age, but more because they have learnt
that public business can only be carried on by due observance of order; and
they are in Parliament to get business done for their constituents, to
promote legislation that will make life easier for the working class. When
Mr. Victor Grayson, in the exuberance of youth, and with a passion that
blazed out against the misery of the poor, made a "scene" in the House of
Commons, and was expelled, the Labour members were quite sincere in their
disapproval. They understood, with a wider knowledge than Mr. Grayson
possessed, that "scenes" alienated sympathy in the House, were not helpful
in debate, and were not popular with the electors.
The member who would succeed in the House of Commons must respect the
usages of the House, and show himself loyal to its laws of debate. As long
as this respect and loyalty are shown the Labour member is accepted by his
fellow-members as one who has been elected to the greatest club in the
world, and is justly entitled to all the privileges of membership. For the
British House of Commons is a democratic assembly, and in its collective
pride it cares nothing for the opinions or social rank of its members. All
it asks is that the newly-elected member should be alive to the honour of
membership, should be modest in his bearing, and should as soon as possible
"catch the tone of the House." He may be a labourer, or the son of a belted
earl; the House is indifferent so long as his parliamentary manners are
good.