CHAPTER I

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THE ENGLISH UTILITARIANS

_By_

LESLIE STEPHEN

[Illustration]

LONDON

_DUCKWORTH and CO._

3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.

1900

PREFACE

This book is a sequel to my _History of English Thought in the

Eighteenth Century_. The title which I then ventured to use was more

comprehensive than the work itself deserved: I felt my inability to

write a continuation which should at all correspond to a similar title

for the nineteenth century. I thought, however, that by writing an

account of the compact and energetic school of English Utilitarians I

could throw some light both upon them and their contemporaries. I had

the advantage for this purpose of having been myself a disciple of the

school during its last period. Many accidents have delayed my completion

of the task; and delayed also its publication after it was written. Two

books have been published since that time, which partly cover the same

ground; and I must be content with referring my readers to them for

further information. They are _The English Radicals_, by Mr. C. B.

Roylance Kent; and _English Political Philosophy from Hobbes to Maine_,

by Professor Graham.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY 1

CHAPTER I

POLITICAL CONDITIONS

I. The British Constitution 12

II. The Ruling Class 18

III. Legislation and Administration 22

IV. The Army and Navy 30

V. The Church 35

VI. The Universities 43

VII. Theory 51

CHAPTER II

THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT

I. The Manufacturers 57

II. The Agriculturists 69

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

I. Pauperism 87

II. The Police 99

III. Education 108

IV. The Slave-Trade 113

V. The French Revolution 121

VI. Individualism 130

CHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY

I. John Horne Tooke 137

II. Dugald Stewart 142

CHAPTER V

BENTHAM'S LIFE

I. Early Life 169

II. First Writings 175

III. The Panopticon 193

IV. Utilitarian Propaganda 206

V. Codification 222

CHAPTER VI

BENTHAM'S DOCTRINE

I. First Principles 235

II. Springs of Action 249

III. The Sanctions 255

IV. Criminal Law 263

V. English Law 271

VI. Radicalism 282

VII. Individualism 307

NOTE ON BENTHAM'S WRITINGS 319

INTRODUCTORY

The English Utilitarians of whom I am about to give some account were a

group of men who for three generations had a conspicuous influence upon

English thought and political action. Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and

John Stuart Mill were successively their leaders; and I shall speak of

each in turn. It may be well to premise a brief indication of the method

which I have adopted. I have devoted a much greater proportion of my

work to biography and to consideration of political and social

conditions than would be appropriate to the history of a philosophy. The

reasons for such a course are very obvious in this case, inasmuch as the

Utilitarian doctrines were worked out with a constant reference to

practical applications. I think, indeed, that such a reference is often

equally present, though not equally conspicuous, in other philosophical

schools. But in any case I wish to show how I conceive the relation of

my scheme to the scheme more generally adopted by historians of abstract

speculation.

I am primarily concerned with the history of a school or sect, not with

the history of the arguments by which it justifies itself in the court

of pure reason. I must therefore consider the creed as it was actually

embodied in the dominant beliefs of the adherents of the school, not as

it was expounded in lecture-rooms or treatises on first principles. I

deal not with philosophers meditating upon Being and not-Being, but with

men actively engaged in framing political platforms and carrying on

popular agitations. The great majority even of intelligent partisans are

either indifferent to the philosophic creed of their leaders or take it

for granted. Its postulates are more or less implied in the doctrines

which guide them in practice, but are not explicitly stated or

deliberately reasoned out. Not the less the doctrines of a sect,

political or religious, may be dependent upon theories which for the

greater number remain latent or are recognised only in their concrete

application. Contemporary members of any society, however widely they

differ as to results, are employed upon the same problems and, to some

extent, use the same methods and make the same assumptions in attempting

solutions. There is a certain unity even in the general thought of any

given period. Contradictory views imply some common ground. But within

this wider unity we find a variety of sects, each of which may be

considered as more or less representing a particular method of treating

the general problem: and therefore principles which, whether clearly

recognised or not, are virtually implied in their party creed and give a

certain unity to their teaching.

One obvious principle of unity, or tacit bond of sympathy which holds a

sect together depends upon the intellectual idiosyncrasy of the

individuals. Coleridge was aiming at an important truth when he said

that every man was born an Aristotelian or a Platonist.[1] Nominalists

and realists, intuitionists and empiricists, idealists and materialists,

represent different forms of a fundamental antithesis which appears to

run through all philosophy. Each thinker is apt to take the postulates

congenial to his own mind as the plain dictates of reason. Controversies

between such opposites appear to be hopeless. They have been aptly

compared by Dr. Venn to the erection of a snow-bank to dam a river. The

snow melts and swells the torrent which it was intended to arrest. Each

side reads admitted truths into its own dialect, and infers that its own

dialect affords the only valid expression. To regard such antitheses as

final and insoluble would be to admit complete scepticism. What is true

for one man would not therefore be true--or at least its truth would not

be demonstrable--to another. We must trust that reconciliation is

achievable by showing that the difference is really less vital and

corresponds to a difference of methods or of the spheres within which

each mode of thought may be valid. To obtain the point of view from

which such a conciliation is possible should be, I hold, one main end of

modern philosophising.

The effect of this profound intellectual difference is complicated by

other obvious influences. There is, in the first place, the difference

of intellectual horizon. Each man has a world of his own and sees a

different set of facts. Whether his horizon is that which is visible

from his parish steeple or from St. Peter's at Rome, it is still

strictly limited: and the outside universe, known vaguely and

indirectly, does not affect him like the facts actually present to his

perception. The most candid thinkers will come to different conclusions

when they are really provided with different sets of fact. In political

and social problems every man's opinions are moulded by his social

station. The artisan's view of the capitalist, and the capitalist's view

of the artisan, are both imperfect, because each has a first-hand

knowledge of his own class alone: and, however anxious to be fair, each

will take a very different view of the working of political

institutions. An apparent concord often covers the widest divergence

under the veil of a common formula, because each man has his private

mode of interpreting general phrases in terms of concrete fact.

This, of course, implies the further difference arising from the

passions which, however illogically, go so far to determine opinions.

Here we have the most general source of difficulty in considering the

actual history of a creed. We cannot limit ourselves to the purely

logical factor. All thought has to start from postulates. Men have to

act before they think: before, at any rate, reasoning becomes distinct

from imagining or guessing. To explain in early periods is to fancy and

to take a fancy for a perception. The world of the primitive man is

constructed not only from vague conjectures and hasty analogies but from

his hopes and fears, and bears the impress of his emotional nature. When

progress takes place some of his beliefs are confirmed, some disappear,

and others are transformed: and the whole history of thought is a

history of this gradual process of verification. We begin, it is said,

by assuming: we proceed by verifying, and we only end by demonstrating.

The process is comparatively simple in that part of knowledge which

ultimately corresponds to the physical sciences. There must be a certain

harmony between beliefs and realities in regard to knowledge of ordinary

matters of fact, if only because such harmony is essential to the life

of the race. Even an ape must distinguish poisonous from wholesome food.

Beliefs as to physical facts require to be made articulate and distinct;

but we have only to recognise as logical principles the laws of nature

which we have unconsciously obeyed and illustrated--to formulate

dynamics long after we have applied the science in throwing stones or

using bows and arrows. But what corresponds to this in the case of the

moral and religious beliefs? What is the process of verification? Men

practically are satisfied with their creed so long as they are satisfied

with the corresponding social order. The test of truth so suggested is

obviously inadequate: for all great religions, however contradictory to

each other, have been able to satisfy it for long periods. Particular

doctrines might be tested by experiment. The efficacy of witchcraft

might be investigated like the efficacy of vaccination. But faith can

always make as many miracles as it wants: and errors which originate in

the fancy cannot be at once extirpated by the reason. Their form may be

changed but not their substance. To remove them requires not disproof of

this or that fact, but an intellectual discipline which is rare even

among the educated classes. A religious creed survives, as poetry or art

survives,--not so long as it contains apparently true statements of fact

but--so long as it is congenial to the whole social state. A philosophy

indeed is a poetry stated in terms of logic. Considering the natural

conservatism of mankind, the difficulty is to account for progress, not

for the persistence of error. When the existing order ceases to be

satisfactory; when conquest or commerce has welded nations together and

brought conflicting creeds into cohesion; when industrial development

has modified the old class relations; or when the governing classes have

ceased to discharge their functions, new principles are demanded and new

prophets arise. The philosopher may then become the mouthpiece of the

new order, and innocently take himself to be its originator. His

doctrines were fruitless so long as the soil was not prepared for the

seed. A premature discovery if not stamped out by fire and sword is

stifled by indifference. If Francis Bacon succeeded where Roger Bacon

failed, the difference was due to the social conditions, not to the men.

The cause of the great religious as well as of the great political

revolutions must be sought mainly in the social history. New creeds

spread when they satisfy the instincts or the passions roused to

activity by other causes. The system has to be so far true as to be

credible at the time; but its vitality depends upon its congeniality as

a whole to the aspirations of the mass of mankind.

The purely intellectual movement no doubt represents the decisive

factor. The love of truth in the abstract is probably the weakest of

human passions; but truth when attained ultimately gives the fulcrum for

a reconstruction of the world. When a solid core of ascertained and

verifiable truth has once been formed and applied to practical results

it becomes the fixed pivot upon which all beliefs must ultimately turn.

The influence, however, is often obscure and still indirect. The more

cultivated recognise the necessity of bringing their whole doctrine into

conformity with the definitely organised and established system; and, at

the present day, even the uneducated begin to have an inkling of

possible results. Yet the desire for logical consistency is not one

which presses forcibly upon the less cultivated intellects. They do not

feel the necessity of unifying knowledge or bringing their various

opinions into consistency and into harmony with facts. There are easy

methods of avoiding any troublesome conflict of belief. The philosopher

is ready to show them the way. He, like other people, has to start from

postulates, and to see how they will work. When he meets with a

difficulty it is perfectly legitimate that he should try how far the old

formula can be applied to cover the new applications. He may be led to a

process of 'rationalising' or 'spiritualising' which is dangerous to

intellectual honesty. The vagueness of the general conceptions with

which he is concerned facilitates the adaptation; and his words slide

into new meanings by imperceptible gradations. His error is in taking a

legitimate tentative process for a conclusive test; and inferring that

opinions are confirmed because a non-natural interpretation can be

forced upon them. This, however, is only the vicious application of the

normal process through which new ideas are diffused or slowly infiltrate

the old systems till the necessity of a thoroughgoing reconstruction

forces itself upon our attention. Nor can it be denied that an opposite

fallacy is equally possible, especially in times of revolutionary

passion. The apparent irreconcilability of some new doctrine with the

old may lead to the summary rejection of the implicit truth, together

with the error involved in its imperfect recognition. Hence arises the

necessity for faking into account not only a man's intellectual

idiosyncrasies and the special intellectual horizon, but all the

prepossessions due to his personal character, his social environment,

and his consequent sympathies and antipathies. The philosopher has his

passions like other men. He does not really live in the thin air of

abstract speculation. On the contrary, he starts generally, and surely

is right in starting, with keen interest in the great religious,

ethical, and social problems of the time. He wishes--honestly and

eagerly--to try them by the severest tests, and to hold fast only what

is clearly valid. The desire to apply his principles in fact justifies

his pursuit, and redeems him from the charge that he is delighting in

barren intellectual subtleties. But to an outsider his procedure may

appear in a different light. His real problem comes to be: how the

conclusions which are agreeable to his emotions can be connected with

the postulates which are congenial to his intellect? He may be

absolutely honest and quite unconscious that his conclusions were

prearranged by his sympathies. No philosophic creed of any importance

has ever been constructed, we may well believe, without such sincerity

and without such plausibility as results from its correspondence to at

least some aspects of the truth. But the result is sufficiently shown by

the perplexed controversies which arise. Men agree in their conclusions,

though starting from opposite premises; or from the same premises reach

the most diverging conclusions. The same code of practical morality, it

is often said, is accepted by thinkers who deny each other's first

principles; dogmatism often appears to its opponents to be thoroughgoing

scepticism in disguise, and men establish victoriously results which

turn out in the end to be really a stronghold for their antagonists.

Hence there is a distinction between such a history of a sect as I

contemplate and a history of scientific inquiry or of pure philosophy. A

history of mathematical or physical science would differ from a direct

exposition of the science, but only in so far as it would state truths

in the order of discovery, not in the order most convenient for

displaying them as a system. It would show what were the processes by

which they were originally found out, and how they have been afterwards

annexed or absorbed in some wider generalisation. These facts might be

stated without any reference to the history of the discoverers or of the

society to which they belonged. They would indeed suggest very

interesting topics to the general historian or 'sociologist.' He might

be led to inquire under what conditions men came to inquire

scientifically at all; why they ceased for centuries to care for

science; why they took up special departments of investigation; and what

was the effect of scientific discoveries upon social relations in

general. But the two inquiries would be distinct for obvious reasons. If

men study mathematics they can only come to one conclusion. They will

find out the same propositions of geometry if they only think clearly

enough and long enough, as certainly as Columbus would discover America

if he only sailed far enough. America was there, and so in a sense are

the propositions. We may therefore in this case entirely separate the

two questions: what leads men to think? and what conclusions will they

reach? The reasons which guided the first discoverers are just as valid

now, though they can be more systematically stated. But in the 'moral

sciences' this distinction is not equally possible. The intellectual and

the social evolution are closely and intricately connected, and each

reacts upon the other. In the last resort no doubt a definitive system

of belief once elaborated would repose upon universally valid truths

and determine, instead of being determined by, the corresponding social

order. But in the concrete evolution which, we may hope, is

approximating towards this result, the creeds current among mankind have

been determined by the social conditions as well as helped to determine

them. To give an account of that process it is necessary to specify the

various circumstances which may lead to the survival of error, and to

the partial views of truth taken by men of different idiosyncrasies

working upon different data and moved by different passions and

prepossessions. A history written upon these terms would show primarily

what, as a fact, were the dominant beliefs during a given period, and

state which survived, which disappeared, and which were transformed or

engrafted upon other systems of thought. This would of course raise the

question of the truth or falsehood of the doctrines as well as of their

vitality: for the truth is at least one essential condition of permanent

vitality. The difference would be that the problem would be approached

from a different side. We should ask first what beliefs have flourished,

and afterwards ask why they flourished, and how far their vitality was

due to their partial or complete truth. To write such a history would

perhaps require an impartiality which few people possess and which I do

not venture to claim. I have my own opinions for which other people may

account by prejudice, assumption, or downright incapacity. I am quite

aware that I shall be implicitly criticising myself in criticising

others. All that I can profess is that by taking the questions in this

order, I shall hope to fix attention upon one set of considerations

which are apt, as I fancy, to be unduly neglected. The result of

reading some histories is to raise the question: how people on the other

side came to be such unmitigated fools? Why were they imposed upon by

such obvious fallacies? That may be answered by considering more fully

the conditions under which the opinions were actually adopted, and one

result may be to show that those opinions had a considerable element of

truth, and were held by men who were the very opposite of fools. At any

rate I shall do what I can to write an account of this phase of thought,

so as to bring out what were its real tenets; to what intellectual type

they were naturally congenial; what were the limitations of view which

affected the Utilitarians' conception of the problems to be solved; and

what were the passions and prepossessions due to the contemporary state

of society and to their own class position, which to some degree

unconsciously dictated their conclusions. So far as I can do this

satisfactorily, I hope that I may throw some light upon the intrinsic

value of the creed, and the place which it should occupy in a definitive

system.

NOTES:

[1] _Table-Talk_, 3 July 1830.

CHAPTER I

POLITICAL CONDITIONS

I. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION

The English Utilitarians represent one outcome of the speculations

current in England during the later part of the eighteenth century. For

the reasons just assigned I shall begin by briefly recalling some of the

social conditions which set the problems for the coming generation and

determined the mode of answering them. I must put the main facts in

evidence, though they are even painfully familiar. The most obvious

starting-point is given by the political situation. The supremacy of

parliament had been definitively established by the revolution of 1688,

and had been followed by the elaboration of the system of party

government. The centre of gravity of the political world lay in the

House of Commons. No minister could hold power unless he could command a

majority in this house. Jealousy of the royal power, however, was still

a ruling passion. The party line between Whig and Tory turned ostensibly

upon this issue. The essential Whig doctrine is indicated by Dunning's

famous resolution (6 April 1780) that 'the power of the crown had

increased, was increasing, and ought to be diminished.' The resolution

was in one sense an anachronism. As in many other cases, politicians

seem to be elaborately slaying the slain and guarding against the

attacks of extinct monsters. There was scarcely more probability under

George III. than there is under Victoria that the king would try to

raise taxes without consent of parliament. George III., however, desired

to be more than a contrivance for fixing the great seal to official

documents. He had good reason for thinking that the weakness of the

executive was an evil. The king could gain power not by attacking the

authority of parliament but by gaining influence within its walls. He

might form a party of 'king's friends' able to hold the balance between

the connections formed by the great families and so break up the system

of party government. Burke's great speech (11 Feb. 1780) upon

introducing his plan 'for the better security of the independence of

parliament and the economical reformation of the civil and other

establishments' explains the secret and reveals the state of things

which for the next half century was to supply one main theme for the

eloquence of reformers. The king had at his disposal a vast amount of

patronage. There were relics of ancient institutions: the principality

of Wales, the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the earldom of

Chester; each with its revenue and establishment of superfluous

officials. The royal household was a complex 'body corporate' founded in

the old days of 'purveyance.' There was the mysterious 'Board of Green

Cloth' formed by the great officers and supposed to have judicial as

well as administrative functions. Cumbrous mediaeval machinery thus

remained which had been formed in the time when the distinction between

a public trust and private property was not definitely drawn or which

had been allowed to remain for the sake of patronage, when its functions

had been transferred to officials of more modern type. Reform was

foiled, as Burke put it, because the turnspit in the king's kitchen was

a member of parliament. Such sinecures and the pensions on the civil

list or the Irish establishment provided the funds by which the king

could build up a personal influence, which was yet occult,

irresponsible, and corrupt. The measure passed by Burke in 1782[2] made

a beginning in the removal of such abuses.

Meanwhile the Whigs were conveniently blind to another side of the

question. If the king could buy, it was because there were plenty of

people both able and willing to sell. Bubb Dodington, a typical example

of the old system, had five or six seats at his disposal: subject only

to the necessity of throwing a few pounds to the 'venal wretches' who

went through the form of voting, and by dealing in what he calls this

'merchantable ware' he managed by lifelong efforts to wriggle into a

peerage. The Dodingtons, that is, sold because they bought. The 'venal

wretches' were the lucky franchise-holders in rotten boroughs. The

'Friends of the People'[3] in 1793 made the often-repeated statement

that 154 individuals returned 307 members, that is, a majority of the

house. In Cornwall, again, 21 boroughs with 453 electors controlled by

about 15 individuals returned 42 members,[4] or, with the two county

members, only one member less than Scotland; and the Scottish members

were elected by close corporations in boroughs and by the great

families in counties. No wonder if the House of Commons seemed at times

to be little more than an exchange for the traffic between the

proprietors of votes and the proprietors of offices and pensions.

The demand for the reforms advocated by Burke and Dunning was due to the

catastrophe of the American War. The scandal caused by the famous

coalition of 1783 showed that a diminution of the royal influence might

only make room for selfish bargains among the proprietors of

parliamentary influence. The demand for reform was taken up by Pitt. His

plan was significant. He proposed to disfranchise a few rotten boroughs;

but to soften this measure he afterwards suggested that a million should

be set aside to buy such boroughs as should voluntarily apply for

disfranchisement. The seats obtained were to be mainly added to county

representation; but the franchise was to be extended so as to add about

99,000 voters in boroughs, and additional seats were to be given to

London and Westminster and to Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and

Sheffield. The Yorkshire reformers, who led the movement, were satisfied

with this modest scheme. The borough proprietors were obviously too

strong to be directly attacked, though they might be induced to sell

some of their power.

Here was a mass of anomalies, sufficient to supply topics of

denunciation for two generations of reformers, and, in time, to excite

fears of violent revolution. Without undertaking the easy task of

denouncing exploded systems, we may ask what state of mind they implied.

Our ancestors were perfectly convinced that their political system was

of almost unrivalled excellence: they held that they were freemen

entitled to look down upon foreigners as the slaves of despots. Nor can

we say that their satisfaction was without solid grounds. The boasting

about English freedom implied some misunderstanding. But it was at least

the boast of a vigorous race. Not only were there individuals capable of

patriotism and public spirit, but the body politic was capable of

continuous energy. During the eighteenth century the British empire

spread round the world. Under Chatham it had been finally decided that

the English race should be the dominant element in the new world; if the

political connection had been severed by the bungling of his successors,

the unbroken spirit of the nation had still been shown in the struggle

against France, Spain, and the revolted colonies; and whatever may be

thought of the motives which produced the great revolutionary wars, no

one can deny the qualities of indomitable self-reliance and high courage

to the men who led the country through the twenty years of struggle

against France, and for a time against France with the continent at its

feet. If moralists or political theorists find much to condemn in the

ends to which British policy was directed, they must admit that the

qualities displayed were not such as can belong to a simply corrupt and

mean-spirited government.

One obvious remark is that, on the whole, the system was a very good

one--as systems go. It allowed free play to the effective political

forces. Down to the revolutionary period, the nation as a whole was

contented with its institutions. The political machinery provided a

sufficient channel for the really efficient force of public opinion.

There was as yet no large class which at once had political aspirations

and was unable to gain a hearing. England was still in the main an

agricultural country: and the agricultural labourer was fairly

prosperous till the end of the century, while his ignorance and

isolation made him indifferent to politics. There might be a bad squire

or parson, as there might be a bad season; but squire and parson were as

much parts of the natural order of things as the weather. The farmer or

yeoman was not much less stolid; and his politics meant at most a choice

between allegiance to one or other of the county families. If in the

towns which were rapidly developing there was growing up a discontented

population, its discontent was not yet directed into political channels.

An extended franchise meant a larger expenditure on beer, not the

readier acceptance of popular aspirations. To possess a vote was to have

a claim to an occasional bonus rather than a right to influence

legislation. Practically, therefore, parliament might be taken to

represent what might be called 'public opinion,' for anything that

deserved to be called public opinion was limited to the opinions of the

gentry and the more intelligent part of the middle classes. There was no

want of complaints of corruption, proposals to exclude placemen from

parliament and the like; and in the days of Wilkes, Chatham, and Junius,

when the first symptoms of democratic activity began to affect the

political movement, the discontent made itself audible and alarming. But

a main characteristic of the English reformers was the constant appeal

to precedent, even in their most excited moods. They do not mention the

rights of man; they invoke the 'revolution principles' of 1688; they

insist upon the 'Bill of Rights' or Magna Charta. When keenly roused

they recall the fate of Charles I.; and their favourite toast is the

cause for which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the scaffold.

They believe in the jury as the 'palladium of our liberties'; and are

convinced that the British Constitution represents an unsurpassable

though unfortunately an ideal order of things, which must have existed

at some indefinite period. Chatham in one of his most famous speeches,

appeals, for example, to the 'iron barons' who resisted King John, and

contrasts them with the silken courtiers which now compete for place and

pensions. The political reformers of the time, like religious reformers

in most times, conceive of themselves only as demanding the restoration

of the system to its original purity, not as demanding its abrogation.

In other words, they propose to remedy abuses but do not as yet even

contemplate a really revolutionary change. Wilkes was not a 'Wilkite,'

nor was any of his party, if Wilkite meant anything like Jacobin.

NOTES:

[2] 22 George III. c. 82.

[3] _Parl. Hist._ xxx. 787.

[4] _State Trials_, xxiv. 382.

II. THE RULING CLASS

Thus, however anomalous the constitution of parliament, there was no

thought of any far-reaching revolution. The great mass of the population

was too ignorant, too scattered and too poor to have any real political

opinions. So long as certain prejudices were not aroused, it was content

to leave the management of the state to the dominant class, which alone

was intelligent enough to take an interest in public affairs and strong

enough to make its interest felt. This class consisted in the first

place of the great landed interest. When Lord North opposed Pitt's

reform in 1785 he said[5] that the Constitution was 'the work of

infinite wisdom ... the most beautiful fabric that had ever existed

since the beginning of time.' He added that 'the bulk and weight' of the

house ought to be in 'the hands of the country-gentlemen, the best and

most respectable objects of the confidence of the people,' The speech,

though intended to please an audience of country-gentlemen, represented

a genuine belief.[6] The country-gentlemen formed the class to which not

only the constitutional laws but the prevailing sentiment of the country

gave the lead in politics as in the whole social system. Even reformers

proposed to improve the House of Commons chiefly by increasing the

number of county-members, and a county-member was almost necessarily a

country-gentleman of an exalted kind. Although the country-gentleman was

very far from having all things his own way, his ideals and prejudices

were in a great degree the mould to which the other politically

important class conformed. There was indeed a growing jealousy between

the landholders and the 'monied-men.' Bolingbroke had expressed this

distrust at an earlier part of the century. But the true representative

of the period was his successful rival, Walpole, a thorough

country-gentleman who had learned to understand the mysteries of finance

and acquired the confidence of the city. The great merchants of London

and the rising manufacturers in the country were rapidly growing in

wealth and influence. The monied-men represented the most active,

energetic, and growing part of the body politic. Their interests

determined the direction of the national policy. The great wars of the

century were undertaken in the interests of British trade. The extension

of the empire in India was carried on through a great commercial

company. The growth of commerce supported the sea-power which was the

main factor in the development of the empire. The new industrial

organisation which was arising was in later years to represent a class

distinctly opposed to the old aristocratic order. At present it was in a

comparatively subordinate position. The squire was interested in the

land and the church; the merchant thought more of commerce and was apt

to be a dissenter. But the merchant, in spite of some little jealousies,

admitted the claims of the country-gentleman to be his social superior

and political leader. His highest ambition was to be himself admitted to

the class or to secure the admission of his family. As he became rich he

bought a solid mansion at Clapham or Wimbledon, and, if he made a

fortune, might become lord of manors in the country. He could not as yet

aspire to become himself a peer, but he might be the ancestor of peers.

The son of Josiah Child, the great merchant of the seventeenth century,

became Earl Tylney, and built at Wanstead one of the noblest mansions in

England. His contemporary Sir Francis Child, Lord Mayor, and a founder

of the Bank of England, built Osterley House, and was ancestor of the

earls of Jersey and Westmoreland. The daughter of Sir John Barnard, the

typical merchant of Walpole's time, married the second Lord Palmerston.

Beckford, the famous Lord Mayor of Chatham's day, was father of the

author of _Vathek_, who married an earl's daughter and became the father

of a duchess. The Barings, descendants of a German pastor, settled in

England early in the century and became country-gentlemen, baronets,

and peers. Cobbett, who saw them rise, reviled the stockjobbers who were

buying out the old families. But the process had begun long before his

days, and meant that the heads of the new industrial system were being

absorbed into the class of territorial magnates. That class represented

the framework upon which both political and social power was moulded.

This implies an essential characteristic of the time. A familiar topic

of the admirers of the British Constitution was the absence of the sharp

lines of demarcation between classes and of the exclusive aristocratic

privileges which, in France, provoked the revolution. In England the

ruling class was not a 'survival': it had not retained privileges

without discharging corresponding functions. The essence of

'self-government,' says its most learned commentator,[7] is the organic

connection 'between State and society.' On the Continent, that is,

powers were intrusted to a centralised administrative and judicial

hierarchy, which in England were left to the class independently strong

by its social position. The landholder was powerful as a product of the

whole system of industrial and agricultural development; and he was

bound in return to perform arduous and complicated duties. How far he

performed them well is another question. At least, he did whatever was

done in the way of governing, and therefore did not sink into a mere

excrescence or superfluity. I must try to point out certain results

which had a material effect upon English opinion in general and, in

particular, upon the Utilitarians.

NOTES:

[5] _Parl. Hist._ xxv. 472.

[6] The country-gentlemen, said Wilberforce in 1800, are the 'very

nerves and ligatures of the body politic.'--_Correspondence_, i. 219.

[7] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (3rd edition, 1871), p. 879.

III. LEGISLATION AND ADMINISTRATION

The country-gentlemen formed the bulk of the law-making body, and the

laws gave the first point of assault of the Utilitarian movement. One

explanation is suggested by a phrase attributed to Sir Josiah Child.[8]

The laws, he said, were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant

country-gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make good laws for the

government of their own families, much less for the regulation of

companies and foreign commerce. He meant that the parliamentary

legislation of the century was the work of amateurs, not of specialists;

of an assembly of men more interested in immediate questions of policy

or personal intrigue than in general principles, and not of such a

centralised body as would set a value upon symmetry and scientific

precision. The country-gentleman had strong prejudices and enough common

sense to recognise his own ignorance. The product of a traditional

order, he clung to traditions, and regarded the old maxims as sacred

because no obvious reason could be assigned for them. He was suspicious

of abstract theories, and it did not even occur to him that any such

process as codification or radical alteration of the laws was

conceivable. For the law itself he had the profound veneration which is

expressed by Blackstone. It represented the 'wisdom of our ancestors';

the system of first principles, on which the whole order of things

reposed, and which must be regarded as an embodiment of right reason.

The common law was a tradition, not made by express legislation, but

somehow existing apart from any definite embodiment, and revealed to

certain learned hierophants. Any changes, required by the growth of new

social conditions, had to be made under pretence of applying the old

rules supposed to be already in existence. Thus grew up the system of

'judge-made law,' which was to become a special object of the

denunciations of Bentham. Child had noticed the incompetence of the

country-gentlemen to understand the regulation of commercial affairs.

The gap was being filled up, without express legislation, by judicial

interpretations of Mansfield and his fellows. This, indeed, marks a

characteristic of the whole system. 'Our constitution,' says Professor

Dicey,[9] 'is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all

the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.' The law of landed

property, meanwhile, was of vital and immediate interest to the

country-gentleman. But, feeling his own incompetence, he had called in

the aid of the expert. The law had been developed in mediaeval times, and

bore in all its details the marks of the long series of struggles

between king and nobles and parliaments. One result had been the

elaborate series of legal fictions worked out in the conflict between

private interests and public policy, by which lawyers had been able to

adapt the rules fitted for an ancient state of society to another in

which the very fundamental conceptions were altered. A mysterious system

had thus grown up, which deterred any but the most resolute students. Of

Fearne's essay upon 'Contingent remainders'(published in 1772) it was

said that no work 'in any branch of science could afford a more

beautiful instance of analysis.' Fearne had shown the acuteness of 'a

Newton or a Pascal.' Other critics dispute this proposition; but in any

case the law was so perplexing that it could only be fully understood by

one who united antiquarian knowledge to the subtlety of a great

logician. The 'vast and intricate machine,' as Blackstone calls it, 'of

a voluminous family settlement' required for its explanation the

dialectical skill of an accomplished schoolman. The poor

country-gentleman could not understand the terms on which he held his

own estate without calling in an expert equal to such a task. The man

who has acquired skill so essential to his employer's interests is not

likely to undervalue it or to be over anxious to simplify the labyrinth

in which he shone as a competent guide.

The lawyers who played so important a part by their familiarity with the

mysteries of commercial law and landed property, naturally enjoyed the

respect of their clients, and were rewarded by adoption into the class.

The English barrister aspired to success by himself taking part in

politics and legislation. The only path to the highest positions really

open to a man of ability, not connected by blood with the great

families, was the path which led to the woolsack or to the judge's

bench. A great merchant might be the father or father-in-law of peers; a

successful soldier or sailor might himself become a peer, but generally

he began life as a member of the ruling classes, and his promotion was

affected by parliamentary influence. But a successful lawyer might fight

his way from a humble position to the House of Lords. Thurlow, son of a

country-gentleman; Dunning, son of a country attorney; Ellenborough, son

of a bishop and descendant of a long line of North-country 'statesmen';

Kenyon, son of a farmer; Eldon, son of a Newcastle coal merchant,

represent the average career of a successful barrister. Some of them

rose to be men of political importance, and Thurlow and Eldon had the

advantage of keeping George III's conscience--an unruly faculty which

had an unfortunately strong influence upon affairs. The leaders of the

legal profession, therefore, and those who hoped to be leaders, shared

the prejudices, took a part in the struggles, and were rewarded by the

honours of the dominant class.

The criminal law became a main topic of reformers. There, as elsewhere,

we have a striking example of traditional modes of thought surviving

with singular persistence. The rough classification of crimes into

felony and misdemeanour, and the strange technical rules about 'benefit

of clergy' dating back to the struggles of Henry II. and Becket,

remained like ultimate categories of thought. When the growth of social

conditions led to new temptations or the appearance of a new criminal

class, and particular varieties of crime became conspicuous, the only

remedy was to declare that some offence should be 'felony without

benefit of clergy,' and therefore punishable by death. By unsystematic

and spasmodic legislation the criminal law became so savage as to shock

every man of common humanity. It was tempered by the growth of technical

rules, which gave many chances of escape to the criminal; and by

practical revolt against its excesses, which led to the remission of the

great majority of capital sentences.[10] The legislators were clumsy,

not intentionally cruel; and the laws, though sanguinary in reality,

were more sanguinary in theory than in practice. Nothing, on the other

hand, is more conspicuous than the spirit of fair play to the criminal,

which struck foreign observers.[11] It was deeply rooted in the whole

system. The English judge was not an official agent of an inquisitorial

system, but an impartial arbitrator between the prisoner and the

prosecutor. In political cases especially a marked change was brought

about by the revolution of 1688. If our ancestors talked some nonsense

about trial by jury, the system certainly insured that the persons

accused of libel or sedition should have a fair trial, and very often

something more. Judges of the Jeffreys type had become inconceivable,

though impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of

juries were actively aroused. Englishmen might fairly boast of their

immunity from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their

unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so

ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received

due credit from later critics of the system.

The country-gentleman, again, was not only the legislator but a most

important figure in the judicial and administrative system. As justice

of the peace, he was the representative of law and order to his country

neighbours. The preface of 1785 to the fifteenth edition of Burn's

_Justice of the Peace_, published originally in 1755, mentions that in

the interval between these dates, some three hundred statutes had been

passed affecting the duties of justices, while half as many had been

repealed or modified. The justice was of course, as a rule, a

superficial lawyer, and had to be prompted by his clerk, the two

representing on a small scale the general relation between the lawyers

and the ruling class. Burn tells the justice for his comfort that the

judges will take a lenient view of any errors into which his ignorance

may have led him. The discharge of such duties by an independent

gentleman was thought to be so desirable and so creditable to him that

his want of efficiency must be regarded with consideration. Nor, though

the justices have been a favourite butt for satirists, does it appear

that the system worked badly. When it became necessary to appoint paid

magistrates in London, and the pay, according to the prevalent system,

was provided by fees, the new officials became known as 'trading

justices,' and their salaries, as Fielding tells us, were some of the

'dirtiest money upon earth.' The justices might perhaps be hard upon a

poacher (as, indeed, the game laws became one of the great scandals of

the system), or liable to be misled by a shrewd attorney; but they were

on the whole regarded as the natural and creditable representatives of

legal authority in the country.

The justices, again, discharged functions which would elsewhere belong

to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the

justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole

administrative system.[12] Their duties had become so multifarious and

perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads.

Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate

detail, and showing how large a part they played in the whole social

structure. An intense jealousy of central power was one correlative

characteristic. Blackstone remarks in his more liberal humour that the

number of new offices held at pleasure had greatly extended the

influence of the crown. This refers to the custom-house officers, excise

officers, stamp distributors and postmasters. But if the tax-gatherer

represented the state, he represented also part of the patronage at the

disposal of politicians. A voter was often in search of the place of a

'tidewaiter'; and, as we know, the greatest poet of the day could only

be rewarded by making him an exciseman. Any extension of a system which

multiplied public offices was regarded with suspicion. Walpole, the

strongest minister of the century, had been forced to an ignominious

retreat when he proposed to extend the excise. The cry arose that he

meant to enslave the country and extend the influence of the crown over

all the corporations in England. The country-gentleman had little reason

to fear that government would diminish his importance by tampering with

his functions. The justices of the peace were called upon to take a

great and increasing share in the administration of the poor-law. They

were concerned in all manner of financial details; they regulated such

police as existed; they looked after the old laws by which the trades

were still restricted; and, in theory at least, could fix the rate of

wages. Parliament did not override, but only gave the necessary sanction

to their activity. If we looked through the journals of the House of

Commons during the American War, for example, we should get the

impression that the whole business of the legislature was to arrange

administrative details. If a waste was to be enclosed, a canal or a

highroad to be constructed, there was no public department to be

consulted. The gentry of the neighbourhood joined to obtain a private

act of parliament which gave the necessary powers to the persons

interested. No general enclosure act could be passed, though often

suggested. It would imply a central commission, which would only, as was

suggested, give rise to jobbery and take power out of the natural hands.

Parliament was omnipotent; it could regulate the affairs of the empire

or of a parish; alter the most essential laws or act as a court of

justice; settle the crown or arrange for a divorce or for the alteration

of a private estate. But it objected to delegate authority even to a

subordinate body, which might tend to become independent. Thus, if it

was the central power and source of all legal authority, it might also

be regarded as a kind of federal league, representing the wills of a

number of partially independent persons. The gentry could meet there and

obtain the sanction of their allies for any measure required in their

own little sphere of influence. But they had an instinctive aversion to

the formation of any organised body representing the state. The

neighbourhood which wanted a road got powers to make it, and would

concur in giving powers to others. But if the state were to be intrusted

to make roads, ministers would have more places to give, and roads

might be made which they did not want. The English roads had long been

infamous, but neither was money wasted, as in France, on roads where

there was no traffic.[13] Thus we have the combination of an absolute

centralisation of legislative power with an utter absence of

administrative centralisation. The units meeting in parliament formed a

supreme assembly; but they did not sink their own individuality. They

only met to distribute the various functions among themselves.

The English parish with its squire, its parson, its lawyer and its

labouring population was a miniature of the British Constitution in

general. The squire's eldest son could succeed to his position; a second

son might become a general or an admiral; a third would take the family

living; a fourth, perhaps, seek his fortune at the bar. This implies a

conception of other political conditions which curiously illustrate some

contemporary conceptions.

NOTES:

[8] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.

[9] _The Law of the Constitution_, p. 209.

[10] See Sir J. F. Stephen's _History of the Criminal Law_ (1883), i.

470. He quotes Blackstone's famous statement that there were 160

felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives a very

uncertain measure of the severity of the law. A single act making

larceny in general punishable by death would be more severe than fifty

separate acts, making fifty different varieties of larceny punishable by

death. He adds, however, that the scheme of punishment was 'severe to

the highest degree, and destitute of every sort of principle or system.'

The number of executions in the early part of this century varied

apparently from a fifth to a ninth of the capital sentences passed. See

Table in Porter's _Progress of the Nation_ (1851), p. 635.

[11] See the references to Cottu's report of 1822 in Stephen's

_History_, i. 429, 439, 451. Cottu's book was translated by Blanco

White.

[12] Gneist's _Self-Government_ (1871), p. 194. It is characteristic

that J. S. Mill, in his _Representative Government_, remarks that the

'Quarter Sessions' are formed in the 'most anomalous' way; that they

represent the old feudal principle, and are at variance with the

fundamental principles of representative government (_Rep. Gov._ (1867),

p. 113). The mainspring of the old system had become a simple anomaly to

the new radicalism.

[13] See Arthur Young, _passim_. There was, however, an improvement even

in the first half of the century. See Cunningham's _Growth of English

Industry, etc. (Modern Times)_, p. 378.

IV. THE ARMY AND NAVY

We are often amused by the persistency of the cry against a 'standing

army' in England. It did not fairly die out until the revolutionary

wars. Blackstone regards it as a singularly fortunate circumstance 'that

any branch of the legislature might annually put an end to the legal

existence of the army by refusing to concur in the continuance' of the

mutiny act. A standing army was obviously necessary; but by making

believe very hard, we could shut our eyes to the facts, and pretend

that it was a merely temporary arrangement.[14] The doctrine had once

had a very intelligible meaning. If James II. had possessed a

disciplined army of the continental pattern, with Marlborough at its

head, Marlborough would hardly have been converted by the prince of

Orange. But loyal as the gentry had been at the restoration, they had

taken very good care that the Stuarts should not have in their hand such

a weapon as had been possessed by Cromwell. When the Puritan army was

disbanded, they had proceeded to regulate the militia. The officers were

appointed by the lords-lieutenants of counties, and had to possess a

property qualification; the men raised by ballot in their own districts;

and their numbers and length of training regulated by Act of Parliament.

The old 'train-bands' were suppressed, except in the city of London, and

thus the recognised military force of the country was a body essentially

dependent upon the country gentry. The militia was regarded with favour

as the 'old constitutional force' which could not be used to threaten

our liberties. It was remodelled during the Seven Years' War and

embodied during that and all our later wars. It was, however,

ineffective by its very nature. An aristocracy which chose to carry on

wars must have a professional army in fact, however careful it might be

to pretend that it was a provision for a passing necessity. The pretence

had serious consequences. Since the army was not to have interests

separate from the people, there was no reason for building barracks. The

men might be billeted on publicans, or placed under canvas, while they

were wanted. When the great war came upon us, large sums had to be spent

to make up for the previous neglect. Fox, on 22nd February 1793,

protested during a lively debate upon this subject that sound

constitutional principles condemned barracks, because to mix the army

with the people was the 'best security against the danger of a standing

army.'[15]

In fact a large part of the army was a mere temporary force. In 1762,

towards the end of the Seven Years' War, we had about 100,000 men in

pay; and after the peace, the force was reduced to under 20,000. Similar

changes took place in every war. The ruling class took advantage of the

position. An army might be hired from Germany for the occasion. New

regiments were generally raised by some great man who gave commissions

to his own relations and dependants. When the Pretender was in Scotland,

for example, fifteen regiments were raised by patriotic nobles, who gave

the commissions, and stipulated that although they were to be employed

only in suppressing the rising, the officers should have permanent

rank.[16] So, as was shown in Mrs. Clarke's case, a patent for raising a

regiment might be a source of profit to the undertaker, who again might

get it by bribing the mistress of a royal duke. The officers had,

according to the generally prevalent system, a modified property in

their commissions; and the system of sale was not abolished till our own

days. We may therefore say that the ruling class, on the one hand,

objected to a standing army, and, on the other, since such an army was

a necessity, farmed it from the country and were admitted to have a

certain degree of private property in the concern. The prejudice against

any permanent establishment made it necessary to fill the ranks on

occasion by all manner of questionable expedients. Bounties were offered

to attract the vagrants who hung loose upon society. Smugglers,

poachers, and the like were allowed to choose between military service

and transportation. The general effect was to provide an army of

blackguards commanded by gentlemen. The army no doubt had its merits as

well as its defects. The continental armies which it met were collected

by equally demoralising methods until the French revolution led to a

systematic conscription. The bad side is suggested by Napier's famous

phrase, the 'cold shade of our aristocracy'; while Napier gives facts

enough to prove both the brutality too often shown by the private

soldier and the dogged courage which is taken to be characteristic even

of the English blackguard. By others,--by such men as the duke of

Wellington and Lord Palmerston, for example, types of the true

aristocrat--the system was defended[17] as bringing men of good family

into the army and so providing it, as the duke thought, with the best

set of officers in Europe. No doubt they and the royal dukes who

commanded them were apt to be grossly ignorant of their business; but it

may be admitted by a historian that they often showed the qualities of

which Wellington was himself a type. The English officer was a gentleman

before he was a soldier, and considered the military virtues to be a

part of his natural endowment. But it was undoubtedly a part of his

traditional code of honour to do his duty manfully and to do it rather

as a manifestation of his own spirit than from any desire for rewards or

decorations. The same quality is represented more strikingly by the

navy. The English admiral represents the most attractive and stirring

type of heroism in our history. Nelson and the 'band of brothers' who

served with him, the simple and high-minded sailors who summed up the

whole duty of man in doing their best to crush the enemies of their

country, are among the finest examples of single-souled devotion to the

calls of patriotism. The navy, indeed, had its ugly side no less than

the army. There was corruption at Greenwich[18] and in the dockyards,

and parliamentary intrigue was a road to professional success. Voltaire

notes the queer contrast between the English boast of personal liberty

and the practice of filling up the crews by pressgangs. The discipline

was often barbarous, and the wrongs of the common sailor found

sufficient expression in the mutiny at the Nore. A grievance, however,

which pressed upon a single class was maintained from the necessity of

the case and the inertness of the administrative system. The navy did

not excite the same jealousy as the army; and the officers were more

professionally skilful than their brethren. The national qualities come

out, often in their highest form, in the race of great seamen upon whom

the security of the island power essentially depended.

NOTES:

[14] See _Military Forces of the Crown_, by Charles M. Clode (1869), for

a full account of the facts.

[15] _Parl. Hist._ xxx. 490. Clode states (i. 222) that L9,000,000 was

spent upon barracks by 1804, and, it seems, without proper authority.

[16] Debate in _Parl. Hist._ xiii. 1382, etc., and see Walpole's

_Correspondence_, i. 400, for some characteristic comments.

[17] Clode, ii. 86.

[18] See the famous case in 1778 in which Erskine made his first

appearance, in _State Trials_, xxi. Lord St. Vincent's struggle against

the corruption of his time is described by Prof. Laughton in the

_Dictionary of National Biography_, (_s.v._ Sir John Jervis). In 1801

half a million a year was stolen, besides all the waste due to

corruption and general muddling.

V. THE CHURCH

I turn, however, to the profession which was more directly connected

with the intellectual development of the country. The nature of the

church establishment gives the most obvious illustration of the

connection between the intellectual position on the one hand and the

social and political order on the other, though I do not presume to

decide how far either should be regarded as effect and the other as

cause.

What is the church of England? Some people apparently believe that it is

a body possessing and transmitting certain supernatural powers. This

view was in abeyance for the time for excellent reasons, and, true or

false, is no answer to the constitutional question. It does not enable

us to define what was the actual body with which lawyers and politicians

have to deal. The best answer to such questions in ordinary case would

be given by describing the organisation of the body concerned. We could

then say what is the authority which speaks in its name; and what is the

legislature which makes its laws, alters its arrangements, and defines

the terms of membership. The supreme legislature of the church of

England might appear to be parliament. It is the Act of Uniformity which

defines the profession of belief exacted from the clergy; and no

alteration could be made in regard to the rights and duties of the

clergy except by parliamentary authority. The church might therefore be

regarded as simply the religious department of the state. Since 1688,

however, the theory and the practice of toleration had introduced

difficulties. Nonconformity was not by itself punishable though it

exposed a man to certain disqualifications. The state, therefore,

recognised that many of its members might legally belong to other

churches, although it had, as Warburton argued, formed an 'alliance'

with the dominant church. The spirit of toleration was spreading

throughout the century. The old penal laws, due to the struggles of the

seventeenth century, were becoming obsolete in practice and were

gradually being repealed. The Gordon riots of 1780 showed that a

fanatical spirit might still be aroused in a mob which wanted an excuse

for plunder; but the laws were not explicitly defended by reasonable

persons and were being gradually removed by legislation towards the end

of the century. Although, therefore, parliament was kept free from

papists, it could hardly regard church and state as identical, or

consider itself as entitled to act as the representative body of the

church. No other body, indeed, could change the laws of the church; but

parliament recognised its own incompetence to deal with them. Towards

the end of the century, various attempts were made to relax the terms of

subscription. It was proposed, for example, to substitute a profession

of belief in the Bible for a subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles.

But the House of Commons sensibly refused to expose itself by venturing

upon any theological innovations. A body more ludicrously incompetent

could hardly have been invented.

Hence we must say that the church had either no supreme body which could

speak in its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its discipline, or

the details of its organisation; or else, that the only body which had

in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by sufficient considerations,

to absolute inaction. The church, from a secular point of view, was not

so much a department of the state as an aggregate of offices, the

functions of which were prescribed by unalterable tradition. It

consisted of a number of bishops, deans and chapters, rectors, vicars,

curates, and so forth, many of whom had certain proprietary rights in

their position, and who were bound by law to discharge certain

functions. But the church, considered as a whole, could hardly be called

an organism at all, or, if an organism, it was an organism with its

central organ in a permanent state of paralysis. The church, again, in

this state was essentially dependent upon the ruling classes. A glance

at the position of the clergy shows their professional position. At

their head were the bishops, some of them enjoying princely revenues,

while others were so poor as to require that their incomes should be

eked out by deaneries or livings held _in commendam_. The great sees,

such as Canterbury, Durham, Ely, and Winchester, were valued at between,

L20,000 and L30,000 a year; while the smaller, Llandaff, Bangor,

Bristol, and Gloucester, were worth less than L2000. The bishops had

patronage which enabled them to provide for relatives or for deserving

clergymen. The average incomes of the parochial clergy, meanwhile, were

small. In 1809 they were calculated to be worth L255, while nearly four

thousand livings were worth under L150; and there were four or five

thousand curates with very small pay. The profession, therefore, offered

a great many blanks with a few enormous prizes. How were those prizes

generally obtained? When the reformers published the _Black Book_ in

1820, they gave a list of the bishops holding sees in the last year of

George III.; and, as most of these gentlemen were on their promotion at

the end of the previous century. I give the list in a note.[19]

There were twenty-seven bishoprics including Sodor and Man. Of these

eleven were held by members of noble families; fourteen were held by men

who had been tutors in, or in other ways personally connected with the

royal family or the families of ministers and great men; and of the

remaining two, one rested his claim upon political writing in defence of

Pitt, while the other seems to have had the support of a great city

company. The system of translation enabled the government to keep a hand

upon the bishops. Their elevation to the more valuable places or leave

to hold subsidiary preferments depended upon their votes in the House of

Lords. So far, then, as secular motives operated, the tendency of the

system was clear. If Providence had assigned to you a duke for a father

or an uncle, preferment would fall to you as of right. A man of rank who

takes orders should be rewarded for his condescension. If that

qualification be not secured, you should aim at being tutor in a great

family, accompany a lad on the grand tour, or write some pamphlet on a

great man's behalf. Paley gained credit for independence at Cambridge,

and spoke with contempt of the practice of 'rooting,' the cant phrase

for patronage hunting. The text which he facetiously suggested for a

sermon when Pitt visited Cambridge, 'There is a young man here who has

six loaves and two fishes, but what are they among so many?' hit off the

spirit in which a minister was regarded at the universities. The memoirs

of Bishop Watson illustrate the same sentiment. He lived in his pleasant

country house at Windermere, never visiting his diocese, and according

to De Quincey, talking Socinianism at his table. He felt himself to be a

deeply injured man, because ministers had never found an opportunity

for translating him to a richer diocese, although he had written

against Paine and Gibbon. If they would not reward their friends, he

argued, why should he take up their cause by defending Christianity?

The bishops were eminently respectable. They did not lead immoral lives,

and if they gave a large share of preferment to their families, that at

least was a domestic virtue. Some of them, Bishop Barrington of Durham,

for example, took a lead in philanthropic movements; and, if considered

simply as prosperous country-gentlemen, little fault could be found with

them. While, however, every commonplace motive pointed so directly

towards a career of subserviency to the ruling class among the laity, it

could not be expected that they should take a lofty view of their

profession. The Anglican clergy were not like the Irish priesthood, in

close sympathy with the peasantry, or like the Scottish ministers, the

organs of strong convictions spreading through the great mass of the

middle and lower classes. A man of energy, who took his faith seriously,

was, like the Evangelical clergy, out of the road to preferment, or,

like Wesley, might find no room within the church at all. His colleagues

called him an 'enthusiast,' and disliked him as a busybody if not a

fanatic. They were by birth and adoption themselves members of the

ruling class; many of them were the younger sons of squires, and held

their livings in virtue of their birth. Advowsons are the last offices

to retain a proprietary character. The church of that day owed such a

representative as Horne Tooke to the system which enabled his father to

provide for him by buying a living. From the highest to the lowest ranks

of clergy, the church was as Matthew Arnold could still call it, an

'appendage of the barbarians.' The clergy, that is, as a whole, were an

integral but a subsidiary part of the aristocracy or the great landed

interest. Their admirers urged that the system planted a cultivated

gentleman in every parish in the country. Their opponents replied, like

John Sterling, that he was a 'black dragoon with horse meat and man's

meat'--part of the garrison distributed through the country to support

the cause of property and order. In any case the instinctive

prepossessions, the tastes and favourite pursuits of the profession were

essentially those of the class with which it was so intimately

connected. Arthur Young,[20] speaking of the French clergy, observes

that at least they are not poachers and foxhunters, who divide their

time between hunting, drinking, and preaching. You do not in France find

such advertisements as he had heard of in England, 'Wanted a curacy in a

good sporting country, where the duty is light and the neighbourhood

convivial.' The proper exercise for a country clergyman, he rather

quaintly observes, is agriculture. The ideal parson, that is, should be

a squire in canonical dress. The clergy of the eighteenth century

probably varied between the extremes represented by Trulliber and the

Vicar of Wakefield. Many of them were excellent people, with a mild

taste for literature, contributing to the _Gentleman's Magazine_,

investigating the antiquities of their county, occasionally confuting a

deist, exerting a sound judgment in cultivating their glebes or

improving the breed of cattle, and respected both by squire and farmers.

The 'Squarson,' in Sydney Smith's facetious phrase, was the ideal

clergyman. The purely sacerdotal qualities, good or bad, were at a

minimum. Crabbe, himself a type of the class, has left admirable

portraits of his fellows. Profound veneration for his noble patrons and

hearty dislike for intrusive dissenters were combined in his own case

with a pure domestic life, a keen insight into the uglier realities of

country life and a good sound working morality. Miss Austen, who said

that she could have been Crabbe's wife, has given more delicate pictures

of the clergyman as he appeared at the tea-tables of the time. He varies

according to her from the squire's excellent younger brother, who is

simply a squire in a white neck-cloth, to the silly but still

respectable sycophant, who firmly believes his lady patroness to be a

kind of local deity. Many of the real memoirs of the day give pleasant

examples of the quiet and amiable lives of the less ambitious clergy.

There is the charming Gilbert White (1720-1793) placidly studying the

ways of tortoises, and unconsciously composing a book which breathes an

undying charm from its atmosphere of peaceful repose; William Gilpin

(1724-1804) founding and endowing parish schools, teaching the

catechism, and describing his vacation tours in narratives which helped

to spread a love of natural scenery; and Thomas Gisborne (1758-1846),

squire and clergyman, a famous preacher among the evangelicals and a

poet after the fashion of Cowper, who loved his native Needwood Forest

as White loved Selborne and Gilpin loved the woods of Boldre; and Cowper

himself (1731-1800) who, though not a clergyman, lived in a clerical

atmosphere, and whose gentle and playful enjoyment of quiet country life

relieves the painfully deep pathos of his disordered imagination; and

the excellent W. L. Bowles (1762-1850), whose sonnets first woke

Coleridge's imagination, who spent eighty-eight years in an amiable and

blameless life, and was country-gentleman, magistrate, antiquary,

clergyman, and poet.[21] Such names are enough to recall a type which

has not quite vanished, and which has gathered a new charm in more

stirring and fretful times. These most excellent people, however, were

not likely to be prominent in movements destined to break up the placid

environment of their lives nor, in truth, to be sources of any great

intellectual stir.

NOTES:

[19] The list, checked from other sources of information, is as

follows:--Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury, was grandson of the

third duke of Rutland; Edward Vernon, archbishop of York, was son of the

first Lord Vernon and cousin of the third Lord Harcourt, whose estates

he inherited; Shute Barrington, bishop of Durham, was son of the first

and brother of the second Viscount Barrington; Brownlow North, bishop of

Winchester, was uncle to the earl of Guildford; James Cornwallis, bishop

of Lichfield, was uncle to the second marquis, whose peerage he

inherited; George Pelham, bishop of Exeter, was brother of the earl of

Chichester; Henry Bathurst, bishop of Norwich, was nephew of the first

earl; George Henry Law, bishop of Chester, was brother of the first Lord

Ellenborough; Edward Legge, bishop of Oxford, was son of the second earl

of Dartmouth; Henry Ryder, bishop of Gloucester, was brother to the earl

of Harrowby; George Murray, bishop of Sodor and Man, was nephew-in-law

to the duke of Athol and brother-in-law to the earl of Kinnoul. Of the

fourteen tutors, etc., mentioned above, William Howley, bishop of

London, had been tutor to the prince of Orange at Oxford; George

Pretyman Tomline, bishop of Lincoln, had been Pitt's tutor at Cambridge;

Richard Beadon, bishop of Bath and Wells, had been tutor to the duke of

Gloucester at Cambridge; Folliott Cornewall, bishop of Worcester, had

been made chaplain to the House of Commons by the influence of his

cousin, the Speaker; John Buckner, bishop of Chichester, had been tutor

to the duke of Richmond; Henry William Majendie, bishop of Bangor, was

the son of Queen Charlotte's English master, and had been tutor to

William IV.; George Isaac Huntingford, bishop of Hereford, had been

tutor to Addington, prime minister; Thomas Burgess, bishop of St.

David's, was a personal friend of Addington; John Fisher, bishop of

Salisbury, had been tutor to the duke of Kent; John Luxmoore, bishop of

St. Asaph, had been tutor to the duke of Buccleugh; Samuel Goodenough,

bishop of Carlisle, had been tutor to the sons of the third duke of

Portland and was connected with Addington; William Lort Mansel, bishop

of Bristol, had been tutor to Perceval at Cambridge, and owed to

Perceval the mastership of Trinity; Walter King, bishop of Rochester,

had been secretary to the duke of Portland; and Bowyer Edward Sparke,

bishop of Ely, had been tutor to the duke of Rutland. The two remaining

bishops were Herbert Marsh, bishop of Peterborough, who had established

a claim by defending Pitt's financial measures in an important pamphlet;

and William Van Mildert, bishop of Llandaff, who had been chaplain to

the Grocers' Company and became known as a preacher in London.

[20] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 327.

[21] See _A Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century_ (Thomas

Twining), 1882, for a pleasant picture of the class.

VI. THE UNIVERSITIES

The effect of these conditions is perhaps best marked in the state of

the universities. Universities have at different periods been great

centres of intellectual life. The English universities of the eighteenth

century are generally noted only as embodiments of sloth and prejudice.

The judgments of Wesley and Gibbon and Adam Smith and Bentham coincide

in regard to Oxford; and Johnson's love of his university is an

equivocal testimony to its intellectual merits. We generally think of it

as of a sleepy hollow, in which portly fellows of colleges, like the

convivial Warton, imbibed port wine and sneered at Methodists, though

few indeed rivalled Warton's services to literature. The universities in

fact had become, as they long continued to be, high schools chiefly for

the use of the clergy, and if they still aimed at some wider

intellectual training, were sinking to be institutions where the pupils

of the public schools might, if they pleased, put a little extra polish

upon their classical and mathematical knowledge. The colleges preserved

their mediaeval constitution; and no serious changes of their statutes

were made until the middle of the present century. The clergy had an

almost exclusive part in the management, and dissenters were excluded

even from entering Oxford as students.[22] But the clergyman did not as

a rule devote himself to a life of study. He could not marry as a

fellow, but he made no vows of celibacy. The college, therefore, was

merely a stepping-stone on the way to the usual course of preferment. A

fellow looked forwards to settling in a college living, or if he had the

luck to act as tutor to a nobleman, he might soar to a deanery or a

bishopric. The fellows who stayed in their colleges were probably those

who had least ambition, or who had a taste for an easy bachelor's life.

The universities, therefore, did not form bodies of learned men

interested in intellectual pursuits; but at most, helped such men in

their start upon a more prosperous career. The studies flagged in

sympathy. Gray's letters sufficiently reveal the dulness which was felt

by a man of cultivation confined within the narrow society of college

dons of the day. The scholastic philosophy which had once found

enthusiastic cultivators in the great universities had more or less held

its own through the seventeenth century, though repudiated by all the

rising thinkers. Since the days of Locke and Berkeley, it had fallen

utterly out of credit. The bright common sense of the polished society

of the day looked upon the old doctrine with a contempt, which, if not

justified by familiarity, was an implicit judgment of the tree by its

fruits. Nobody could suppose the divines of the day to be the

depositaries of an esoteric wisdom which the vulgar were not worthy to

criticise. They were themselves chiefly anxious to prove that their

sacred mysteries were really not at all mysterious, but merely one way

of expressing plain common sense. At Oxford, indeed, the lads were still

crammed with Aldrich, and learned the technical terms of a philosophy

which had ceased to have any real life in it. At Cambridge, ardent young

radicals spoke with contempt of this 'horrid jargon--fit only to be

chattered by monkies in a wilderness.'[23] Even at Cambridge, they still

had disputations on the old form, but they argued theses from Locke's

essay, and thought that their mathematical studies were a check upon

metaphysical 'jargon.' It is indeed characteristic of the respect for

tradition that at Cambridge even mathematics long suffered from a

mistaken patriotism which resented any improvement upon the methods of

Newton. There were some signs of reviving activity. The fellowships were

being distributed with less regard to private interest. The mathematical

tripos founded at Cambridge in the middle of the century became the

prototype of all competitive examinations; and half a century later

Oxford followed the precedent by the Examination Statute of 1800. A

certain number of professorships of such modern studies as anatomy,

history, botany, and geology were founded during the eighteenth century,

and show a certain sense of a need of broader views. The lectures upon

which Blackstone founded his commentaries were the product of the

foundation of the Vinerian professorship in 1751; and the most recent of

the Cambridge colleges, Downing College, shows by its constitution that

a professoriate was now considered to be desirable. Cambridge in the

last years of the century might have had a body of very eminent

professors. Watson, second wrangler of 1759, had delivered lectures upon

chemistry, of which it was said by Davy that hardly any conceivable

change in the science could make them obsolete.[24] Paley, senior

wrangler in 1763, was an almost unrivalled master of lucid exposition,

and one of his works is still a textbook at Cambridge. Isaac Milner,

senior wrangler in 1774, afterwards held the professorships of

mathematics and natural philosophy, and was famous as a sort of

ecclesiastical Dr. Johnson. Gilbert Wakefield, second wrangler in 1776,

published an edition of Lucretius, and was a man of great ability and

energy. Herbert Marsh, second wrangler in 1779, was divinity professor

from 1807, and was the first English writer to introduce some knowledge

of the early stages of German criticism. Porson, the greatest Greek

scholar of his time, became professor in 1790; Malthus, ninth wrangler

in 1788, who was to make a permanent mark upon political economy, became

fellow of Jesus College in 1793. Waring, senior wrangler in 1757, Vince,

senior wrangler in 1775, and Wollaston, senior wrangler in 1783, were

also professors and mathematicians of reputation. Towards the end of the

century ten professors were lecturing.[25] A large number were not

lecturing, though Milner was good enough to be 'accessible to

students.' Paley and Watson had been led off into the path of

ecclesiastical preferment. Marsh too became a bishop in 1816. There was

no place for such talents as those of Malthus, who ultimately became

professor at Haileybury. Wakefield had the misfortune of not being able

to cover his heterodoxy with the conventional formula. Porson suffered

from the same cause, and from less respectable weaknesses; but it seems

that the university had no demand for services of the great scholar, and

he did nothing for his L40 a year. Milner was occupied in managing the

university in the interests of Pitt and Protestantism, and in waging war

against Jacobins and intruders. There was no lack of ability; but there

was no inducement to any intellectual activity for its own sake; and

there were abundant temptations for any man of energy to diverge to the

career which offered more intelligible rewards.

The universities in fact supplied the demand which was actually

operative. They provided the average clergyman with a degree; they

expected the son of the country-gentleman or successful lawyer to

acquire the traditional culture of his class, and to spend three or four

years pleasantly, or even, if he chose, industriously. But there was no

such thing as a learned society, interested in the cultivation of

knowledge for its own sake, and applauding the devotion of life to its

extension or discussion. The men of the time who contributed to the

progress of science owed little or nothing to the universities, and were

rather volunteers from without, impelled by their own idiosyncrasies.

Among the scientific leaders, for example, Joseph Black (1728-1799) was

a Scottish professor; Priestley (1733-1804) a dissenting minister;

Cavendish (1731-1810) an aristocratic recluse, who, though he studied at

Cambridge, never graduated; Watt (1736-1819) a practical mechanician;

and Dalton (1766-1844) a Quaker schoolmaster. John Hunter (1728-1793)

was one of the energetic Scots who forced their way to fame without help

from English universities. The cultivation of the natural sciences was

only beginning to take root; and the soil, which it found congenial, was

not that of the great learned institutions, which held to their old

traditional studies.

I may, then, sum up the result in a few words. The church had once

claimed to be an entirely independent body, possessing a supernatural

authority, with an organisation sanctioned by supernatural powers, and

entitled to lay down the doctrines which gave the final theory of life.

Theology was the queen of the sciences and theologians the interpreters

of the first principles of all knowledge and conduct. The church of

England, on the other hand, at our period had entirely ceased to be

independent: it was bound hand and foot by acts of parliament: there was

no ecclesiastical organ capable of speaking in its name, altering its

laws or defining its tenets: it was an aggregate of offices the

appointment to which was in the hands either of the political ministers

or of the lay members of the ruling class. It was in reality simply a

part of the ruling class told off to perform divine services: to

maintain order and respectability and the traditional morality. It had

no distinctive philosophy or theology, for the articles of belief

represented simply a compromise; an attempt to retain as much of the old

as was practicable and yet to admit as much of the new as was made

desirable by political considerations. It was the boast of its more

liberal members that they were not tied down to any definite dogmatic

system; but could have a free hand so long as they did not wantonly come

into conflict with some of the legal formulae laid down in a previous

generation. The actual teaching showed the effects of the system. It had

been easy to introduce a considerable leaven of the rationalism which

suited the lay mind; to explain away the mysterious doctrines upon which

an independent church had insisted as manifestations of its spiritual

privileges, but which were regarded with indifference or contempt by the

educated laity now become independent. The priest had been disarmed and

had to suit his teaching to the taste of his patrons and congregations.

The divines of the eighteenth century had, as they boasted, confuted the

deists; but it was mainly by showing that they could be deists in all

but the name. The dissenters, less hampered by legal formulae, had

drifted towards Unitarianism. The position of such divines as Paley,

Watson, and Hey was not so much that the Unitarians were wrong, as that

the mysterious doctrines were mere sets of words, over which it was

superfluous to quarrel. The doctrine was essentially traditional; for it

was impossible to represent the doctrines of the church of England as

deductions from any abstract philosophy. But the traditions were not

regarded as having any mysterious authority. Abstract philosophy might

lead to deism or infidelity. Paley and his like rejected such philosophy

in the spirit of Locke or even Hume. But it was always possible to treat

a tradition like any other statement of fact. It could be proved by

appropriate evidence. The truth of Christianity was therefore merely a

question of facts like the truth of any other passages of history. It

was easy enough to make out a case for the Christian miracles, and then

the mysteries, after it had been sufficiently explained that they really

meant next to nothing, could be rested upon the authority of the

miracles. In other words, the accepted doctrines, like the whole

constitution of the church, could be so modified as to suit the

prejudices and modes of thought of the laity. The church, it may be

said, was thoroughly secularised. The priest was no longer a wielder of

threats and an interpreter of oracles, but an entirely respectable

gentleman, who fully sympathised with the prejudices of his patron and

practically admitted that he had very little to reveal, beyond

explaining that his dogmas were perfectly harmless and eminently

convenient. He preached, however, a sound common sense morality, and was

not divided from his neighbours by setting up the claims characteristic

of a sacerdotal caste. Whether he has become on the whole better or

worse by subsequent changes is a question not to be asked here; but

perhaps not quite so easily answered as is sometimes supposed.

The condition of the English church and universities may be contrasted

with that of their Scottish rivals. The Scottish church and universities

had no great prizes to offer and no elaborate hierarchy. But the church

was a national institution in a sense different from the English. The

General Assembly was a powerful body, not overshadowed by a great

political rival. To rise to be a minister was the great ambition of poor

sons of farmers and tradesmen. They had to study at the universities in

the intervals, perhaps, of agricultural labour; and if the learning was

slight and the scholarship below the English standard, the young

aspirant had at least to learn to preach and to acquire such philosophy

as would enable him to argue upon grace and freewill with some

hard-headed Davie Deans. It was doubtless owing in part to these

conditions that the Scottish universities produced many distinguished

teachers throughout the century. Professors had to teach something which

might at least pass for philosophy, though they were more or less

restrained by the necessity of respecting orthodox prejudices. At the

end of the century, the only schools of philosophy in the island were to

be found in Scotland, where Reid (1710-1796) and Adam Smith (1723-1790)

had found intelligent disciples, and where Dugald Stewart, of whom I

shall speak presently, had become the recognised philosophical

authority.

NOTES:

[22] At Cambridge subscription was abolished for undergraduates in 1775;

and bachelors of arts had only to declare themselves '_bona-fide_

members of the church of England.'

[23] Gilbert Wakefield's _Memoirs_, ii. 149.

[24] De Quincey, _Works_ (1863), ii. 106.

[25] Wordsworth's _University Life, etc._ (1874), 83-87.

VII. THEORY

What theory corresponds to this practical order? It implies, in the

first place, a constant reference to tradition. The system has grown up

without any reference to abstract principles or symmetrical plan. The

legal order supposes a traditional common law, as the ecclesiastical

order a traditional creed, and the organisation is explicable only by

historical causes. The system represents a series of compromises, not

the elaboration of a theory. If the squire undertook by way of

supererogation to justify his position he appealed to tradition and

experience. He invoked the 'wisdom of our ancestors,' the system of

'checks and balances' which made our Constitution an unrivalled mixture

of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy deserving the 'dread and envy

of the world.' The prescription for compounding that mixture could

obviously be learned by nothing but experiment. Traditional means

empirical. By instinct, rather than conscious reasoning, Englishmen had

felt their way to establishing the 'palladia of our liberties': trial by

jury, the 'Habeas Corpus' Act, and the substitution of a militia for a

standing army. The institutions were cherished because they had been

developed by long struggles and were often cherished when their real

justification had disappeared. The Constitution had not been 'made' but

had 'grown'; or, in other words, the one rule had been the rule of

thumb. That is an excellent rule in its way, and very superior to an

abstract rule which neglects or overrides experience. The 'logic of

facts,' moreover, may be trusted to produce a certain harmony: and

general principles, though not consciously invoked, tacitly govern the

development of institutions worked out under uniform conditions. The

simple reluctance to pay money without getting money's worth might

generate the important principle that representation should go with

taxation, without embodying any theory of a 'social contract' such as

was offered by an afterthought to give a philosophical sanction.

Englishmen, it is said, had bought their liberties step by step, because

at each step they were in a position to bargain with their rulers. What

they had bought they were determined to keep and considered to be their

inalienable property. One result is conspicuous. In England the ruling

classes did not so much consider their privileges to be something

granted by the state, as the power of the state to be something derived

from their concessions. Though the lord-lieutenant and the justices of

the peace were nominated by the crown, their authority came in fact as

an almost spontaneous consequence of their birthright or their acquired

position in the country. They shone by their own light and were really

the ultimate sources of authority. Seats in parliament, preferments in

the church, commissions in the army belonged to them like their estates;

and they seemed to be qualified by nature, rather than by appointment,

to act in judicial and administrative capacities. The system of

'self-government' embodies this view. The functions of government were

assigned to men already powerful by their social position. The absence

of the centralised hierarchy of officials gave to Englishmen the sense

of personal liberty which compelled the admiration of Voltaire and his

countrymen in the eighteenth century. In England were no _lettres de

cachet_, and no Bastille. A man could say what he thought and act

without fear of arbitrary rule. There was no such system as that which,

in France, puts the agents of the central power above the ordinary law

of the land. This implies what has been called the 'rule of the law' in

England. 'With us every official from the prime minister down to a

constable or a collector of taxes' (as Professor Dicey explains the

principle) 'is under the same responsibility for every act done without

legal justification as any other citizen.'[26] The early centralisation

of the English monarchy had made the law supreme, and instead of

generating a new structure had combined and regulated the existing

social forces. The sovereign power was thus farmed to the aristocracy

instead of forming an organ of its own. Instead of resigning power they

were forced to exercise it on condition of thorough responsibility to

the central judiciary. Their privileges were not destroyed but were

combined with the discharge of corresponding duties. Whatever their

shortcomings, they were preserved from the decay which is the inevitable

consequence of a divorce of duties from privileges.

Another aspect of the case is equally clear. If the privilege is

associated with a duty, the duty may also be regarded as a privilege.

The doctrine seems to mark a natural stage in the evolution of the

conception of duty to the state. The power which is left to a member of

the ruling class is also part of his dignity. Thus we have an

amalgamation between the conceptions of private property and public

trust. 'In so far as the ideal of feudalism is perfectly realised,' it

has been said,[27] 'all that we can call public law is merged in private

law; jurisdiction is property; office is property; the kingship itself

is property.' This feudal ideal was still preserved with many of the

institutions descended from feudalism. The king's right to his throne

was regarded as of the same kind as the right to a private estate. His

rights as king were also his rights as the owner of the land.[28]

Subordinate landowners had similar rights, and as the royal power

diminished greater powers fell to the aggregate of constitutional

kinglets who governed the country. Each of them was from one point of

view an official, but each also regarded his office as part of his

property. The country belonged to him and his class rather than he to

the country. We occasionally find the quaint theory which deduced

political rights from property in land. The freeholders were the owners

of the soil and might give notice to quit to the rest of the

population.[29] They had therefore a natural right to carry on

government in their own interests. The ruling classes, however, were not

marked off from others by any deep line of demarcation; they could sell

their own share in the government to anybody who was rich enough to buy

it, and there was a constant influx of new blood. Moreover, they did in

fact improve their estate with very great energy, and discharged

roughly, but in many ways efficiently, the duties which were also part

of their property. The nobleman or even the squire was more than an

individual; as head of a family he was a life tenant of estates which he

desired to transmit to his descendants. He was a 'corporation sole' and

had some of the spirit of a corporation. A college or a hospital is

founded to discharge a particular function; its members continue perhaps

to recognise their duty; but they resent any interference from outside

as sacrilege or confiscation. It is for them alone to judge how they can

best carry out, and whether they are actually carrying out, the aims of

the corporate life. In the same way the great noble took his part in

legislation, church preferment, the command of the army, and so forth,

and fully admitted that he was bound in honour to play his part

effectively; but he was equally convinced that he was subject to nothing

outside of his sense of honour. His duties were also his rights. The

naif expression of this doctrine by a great borough proprietor, 'May I

not do what I like with my own?' was to become proverbial.[30]

This, finally, suggests that a doctrine of 'individualism' is implied

throughout. The individual rights are the antecedent and the rights of

the state a consequent or corollary. Every man has certain sacred rights

accruing to him in virtue of 'prescription' or tradition, through his

inherited position in the social organism. The 'rule of law' secures

that he shall exercise them without infringing the privileges of his

neighbour. He may moreover be compelled by the law to discharge them on

due occasion. But, as there is no supreme body which can sufficiently

superintend, stimulate, promote, or dismiss, the active impulse must

come chiefly from his own sense of the fitness of things. The efficiency

therefore depends upon his being in such a position that his duty may

coincide with his personal interest. The political machinery can only

work efficiently on the assumption of a spontaneous activity of the

ruling classes, prompted by public spirit or a sense of personal

dignity. Meanwhile, 'individualism' in a different sense was represented

by the forces which made for progress rather than order, and to them I

must now turn.

NOTES:

[26] Professor Dicey's _Lectures on the Law of the Constitution_ (1885),

p. 178. Professor Dicey gives an admirable exposition of the 'rule of

law.'

[27] Pollock and Maitland's _History of English Law_, i. 208.

[28] A characteristic consequence is that Hale and Blackstone make no

distinction between public and private law. Austin (_Jurisprudence_

(1869), 773-76) applauds them for this peculiarity, which he regards as

a proof of originality, though it would rather seem to be an acceptance

of the traditional view. Austin, however, retorts the charge of

_Verwirrung_ upon German critics.

[29] This is the theory of Defoe in his _Original Power of the People of

England_ (Works by Hazlitt, vol iii. See especially p. 57).

[30] The fourth duke of Newcastle in the House of Lords, 3 Dec. 1830.