CHAPTER III

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

I. PAUPERISM

Perhaps the gravest of all the problems which were to occupy the coming

generation was the problem of pauperism. The view taken by the

Utilitarians was highly characteristic and important. I will try to

indicate the general position of intelligent observers at the end of the

century by referring to the remarkable book of Sir Frederick Morton

Eden. Its purport is explained by the title: 'The State of the Poor; or,

an History of the Labouring Classes of England from the Norman Conquest

to the present period; in which are particularly considered their

domestic economy, with respect to diet, dress, fuel, and habitation; and

the various plans which have from time to time been proposed and adopted

for the relief of the poor' (3 vols. 4to, 1797). Eden[74] (1766-1809)

was a man of good family and nephew of the first Lord Auckland, who

negotiated Pitt's commercial treaty. He graduated as B.A. from Christ

Church, Oxford, in 1787; married in 1792, and at his death (14th Nov.

1809) was chairman of the Globe Insurance Company. He wrote various

pamphlets upon economical topics; contributed letters signed

'Philanglus' to Cobbett's _Porcupine_, the anti-jacobin paper of the

day; and is described by Bentham[75] as a 'declared disciple' and a

'highly valued friend.' He may be reckoned, therefore, as a Utilitarian,

though politically he was a Conservative. He seems to have been a man of

literary tastes as well as a man of business, and his book is a clear

and able statement of the points at issue.

Eden's attention had been drawn to the subject by the distress which

followed the outbreak of the revolutionary war. He employed an agent who

travelled through the country for a year with a set of queries drawn up

after the model of those prepared by Sinclair for his _Statistical

Account of Scotland_. He thus anticipated the remarkable investigation

made in our own time by Mr. Charles Booth. Eden made personal inquiries

and studied the literature of the subject. He had a precursor in Richard

Burn (1709-1785), whose _History of the Poor-laws_ appeared in 1764, and

a competitor in John Ruggles, whose _History of the Poor_ first appeared

in Arthur Young's _Annals_, and was published as a book in 1793 (second

edition, 1797). Eden's work eclipsed Ruggles's. It has a permanent value

as a collection of facts; and was a sign of the growing sense of the

importance of accurate statistical research. The historian of the social

condition of the people should be grateful to one who broke ground at a

time when the difficulty of obtaining a sound base for social inquiries

began to make itself generally felt. The value of the book for

historical purposes lies beyond my sphere. His first volume, I may say,

gives a history of legislation from the earliest period; and contains

also a valuable account of the voluminous literature which had grown up

during the two preceding centuries. The other two summarise the reports

which he had received. I will only say enough to indicate certain

critical points. Eden's book unfortunately was to mark, not a solution

of the difficulty but, the emergence of a series of problems which were

to increase in complexity and ominous significance through the next

generation.

The general history of the poor-law is sufficiently familiar.[76] The

mediaeval statutes take us to a period at which the labourer was still

regarded as a serf; and a man who had left his village was treated like

a fugitive slave. A long series of statutes regulated the treatment of

the 'vagabond.' The vagabond, however, had become differentiated from

the pauper. The decay of the ancient order of society and its

corresponding institutions had led to a new set of problems; and the

famous statute of Elizabeth (1601) had laid down the main lines of the

system which is still in operation.

When the labourer was regarded as in a servile condition, he might be

supported from the motives which lead an owner to support his slaves, or

by the charitable energies organised by ecclesiastical institutions. He

had now ceased to be a serf, and the institutions which helped the poor

man or maintained the beggar were wrecked. The Elizabethan statute gave

him, therefore, a legal claim to be supported, and, on the other hand,

directed that he should be made to work for his living. The assumption

is still that every man is a member of a little social circle. He

belongs to his parish, and it is his fellow-parishioners who are bound

to support him. So long as this corresponded to facts, the system could

work satisfactorily. With the spread of commerce, and the growth of a

less settled population, difficulties necessarily arose. The pauper and

the vagabond represent a kind of social extravasation; the 'masterless

man' who has strayed from his legitimate place or has become a

superfluity in his own circle. The vagabond could be flogged, sent to

prison, or if necessary hanged, but it was more difficult to settle what

to do with a man who was not a criminal, but simply a product in excess

of demand. All manner of solutions had been suggested by philanthropists

and partly adopted by the legislature. One point which especially

concerns us is the awkwardness or absence of an appropriate

administrative machinery.

The parish, the unit on which the pauper had claims, meant the persons

upon whom the poor-rate was assessed. These were mainly farmers and

small tradesmen who formed the rather vague body called the vestry.

'Overseers' were appointed by the ratepayers themselves; they were not

paid, and the disagreeable office was taken in turn for short periods.

The most obvious motive with the average ratepayer was of course to keep

down the rates and to get the burthen of the poor as much as possible

out of his own parish. Each parish had at least an interest in economy.

But the economical interest also produced flagrant evils.

In the first place, there was the war between parishes. The law of

settlement--which was to decide to what parish a pauper

belonged--originated in an act of 1662. Eden observes that the short

clause in this short act had brought more profit to the lawyers than

'any other point in the English jurisprudence.'[77] It is said that the

expense of such a litigation before the act of 1834 averaged from

L300,000 to L350,000 a year.[78] Each parish naturally endeavoured to

shift the burthen upon its neighbours; and was protected by laws which

enabled it to resist the immigration of labourers or actually to expel

them when likely to become chargeable. This law is denounced by Adam

Smith[79] as a 'violation of natural liberty and justice.' It was often

harder, he declared, for a poor man to cross the artificial boundaries

of his parish than to cross a mountain ridge or an arm of the sea. There

was, he declared, hardly a poor man in England over forty who had not

been at some time 'cruelly oppressed' by the working of this law. Eden

thinks that Smith had exaggerated the evil: but a law which operated by

preventing a free circulation of labour, and made it hard for a poor man

to seek the best price for his only saleable commodity, was, so far,

opposed to the fundamental principles common to Smith and Eden. The law,

too, might be used oppressively by the niggardly and narrow-minded. The

overseer, as Burn complained,[80] was often a petty tyrant: his aim was

to depopulate his parish; to prevent the poor from obtaining a

settlement; to make the workhouse a terror by placing it under the

management of a bully; and by all kinds of chicanery to keep down the

rates at whatever cost to the comfort and morality of the poor. This

explains the view taken by Arthur Young, and generally accepted at the

period, that the poor-law meant depopulation. Workhouses had been

started in the seventeenth century[81] with the amiable intention of

providing the industrious poor with work. Children might be trained to

industry and the pauper might be made self-supporting. Workhouses were

expected that is, to provide not only work but wages. Defoe, in his

_Giving Alms no Charity_, pointed out the obvious objections to the

workhouse considered as an institution capable of competing with the

ordinary industries. Workhouses, in fact, soon ceased to be profitable.

Their value, however, in supplying a test for destitution was

recognised; and by an act of 1722, parishes were allowed to set up

workhouses, separately or in combination, and to strike off the lists of

the poor those who refused to enter them. This was the germ of the later

'workhouse test.'[82] When grievances arose, the invariable plan, as

Nicholls observes,[83] was to increase the power of the justices. Their

discretion was regarded 'as a certain cure for every shortcoming of the

law and every evil arising out of it.' The great report of 1834 traces

this tendency[84] to a clause in an act passed in the reign of William

III., which was intended to allow the justices to check the extravagance

of parish officers. They were empowered to strike off persons improperly

relieved. This incidental regulation, widened by subsequent

interpretations, allowed the magistrates to order relief, and thereby

introduced an incredible amount of demoralisation.

The course was natural enough, and indeed apparently inevitable. The

justices of the peace represented the only authority which could be

called in to regulate abuses arising from the incapacity and narrow

local interests of the multitudinous vestries. The schemes of

improvement generally involved some plan for a larger area. If a hundred

or a county were taken for the unit, the devices which depopulated a

parish would no longer be applicable.[85] The only scheme actually

carried was embodied in 'Gilbert's act' (1782), obtained by Thomas

Gilbert (1720-1798), an agent of the duke of Bridgewater, and an active

advocate of poor-law reform in the House of Commons. This scheme was

intended as a temporary expedient during the distress caused by the

American War; and a larger and more permanent scheme which it was to

introduce failed to become law. It enabled parishes to combine if they

chose to provide common workhouses, and to appoint 'guardians.' The

justices, as usual, received more powers in order to suppress the harsh

dealing of the old parochial authorities. The guardians, it was assumed,

could always find 'work,' and they were to relieve the able-bodied

without applying the workhouse test. The act, readily adopted, thus

became a landmark in the growth of laxity.[86]

At the end of the century a rapid development of pauperism had taken

place. The expense, as Eden had to complain, had doubled in twenty

years. This took place simultaneously with the great development of

manufactures. It is not perhaps surprising, though it may be melancholy,

that increase of wealth shall be accompanied by increase of pauperism.

Where there are many rich men, there will be a better field for thieves

and beggars. A life of dependence becomes easier though it need not

necessarily be adopted. Whatever may have been the relation of the two

phenomena, the social revolution made the old social arrangements more

inadequate. Great aggregations of workmen were formed in towns, which

were still only villages in a legal sense. Fluctuations of trade, due to

war or speculation, brought distress to the improvident; and the old

assumption that every man had a proper place in a small circle, where

his neighbours knew all about him, was further than ever from being

verified. One painful result was already beginning to show itself.

Neglected children in great towns had already excited compassion. Thomas

Coram (1668?-1751) had been shocked by the sight of dying children

exposed in the streets of London, and succeeded in establishing the

Foundling Hospital (founded in 1742). In 1762, Jonas Hanway (1712-1786)

obtained a law for boarding out children born within the bills of

mortality. The demand for children's labour, produced by the factories,

seemed naturally enough to offer a better chance for extending such

charities. Unfortunately among the people who took advantage of it were

parish officials, eager to get children off their hands, and

manufacturers concerned only to make money out of childish labour.

Hence arose the shameful system for which remedies (as I shall have to

notice) had to be sought in a later generation.

Meanwhile the outbreak of the revolutionary war had made the question

urgent. When Manchester trade suffered, as Eden tells us in his reports,

many workmen enlisted in the army, and left their children to be

supported by the parish. Bad seasons followed in 1794 and 1795, and

there was great distress in the agricultural districts. The governing

classes became alarmed. In December 1795 Whitbread introduced a bill

providing that the justices of the peace should fix a minimum rate of

wages. Upon a motion for the second reading, Pitt made the famous speech

(12th December) including the often-quoted statement that when a man had

a family, relief should be 'a matter of right and honour, instead of a

ground of opprobrium and contempt.'[87] Pitt had in the same speech

shown his reading of Adam Smith by dwelling upon the general objections

to state interference with wages, and had argued that more was to be

gained by removing the restrictions upon the free movement of labour. He

undertook to produce a comprehensive measure; and an elaborate bill of

130 clauses was prepared in 1796.[88] The rates were to be used to

supplement inadequate wages; 'schools of industry' were to be formed for

the support of superabundant children; loans might be made to the poor

for the purchase of a cow;[89] and the possession of property was not to

disqualify for the receiving relief. In short, the bill seems to have

been a model of misapplied benevolence. The details were keenly

criticised by Bentham, and the bill never came to the birth. Other

topics were pressing enough at this time to account for the failure of a

measure so vast in its scope. Meanwhile something had to be done. On 6th

May 1795 the Berkshire magistrates had passed certain resolutions called

from their place of meeting, the 'Speenhamland Act of Parliament.' They

provided that the rate of wages of a labourer should be increased in

proportion to the price of corn and to the number of his family--a rule

which, as Eden observes, tended to discourage economy of food in times

of scarcity. They also sanctioned the disastrous principle of paying

part of the wages out of rates. An act passed in 1796 repealed the old

restrictions upon out-door relief; and thus, during the hard times that

were to follow, the poor-laws were adapted to produce the state of

things in which, as Cobbett says (in 1821) 'every labourer who has

children is now regularly and constantly a pauper.'[90] The result

represents a curious compromise. The landowners, whether from

benevolence or fear of revolution, desired to meet the terrible distress

of the times. Unfortunately their spasmodic interference was guided by

no fixed principles, and acted upon a class of institutions not

organised upon any definite system. The general effect seems to have

been that the ratepayers, no longer allowed to 'depopulate,' sought to

turn the compulsory stream of charity partly into their own pockets. If

they were forced to support paupers, they could contrive to save the

payment of wages. They could use the labour of the rate-supported

pauper instead of employing independent workmen. The evils thus produced

led before long to most important discussions.[91] The ordinary view of

the poor-law was inverted. The prominent evil was the reckless increase

of a degraded population instead of the restriction of population.

Eden's own view is sufficiently indicative of the light in which the

facts showed themselves to intelligent economists. As a disciple of Adam

Smith, he accepts the rather vague doctrine of his master about the

'balance' between labour and capital. If labour exceeds capital, he

says, the labourer must starve 'in spite of all political

regulations.'[92] He therefore looks with disfavour upon the whole

poor-law system. It is too deeply rooted to be abolished, but he thinks

that the amount to be raised should not be permitted to exceed the sum

levied on an average of previous years. The only certain result of

Pitt's measure would be a vast expenditure upon a doubtful experiment:

and one main purpose of his publication was to point out the objections

to the plan. He desires what seemed at that time to be almost hopeless,

a national system of education; but his main doctrine is the wisdom of

reliance upon individual effort. The truth of the maxim '_pas trop

gouverner_,' he says,[93] has never been better illustrated than by the

contrast between friendly societies and the poor-laws. Friendly

societies had been known, though they were still on a humble scale, from

the beginning of the century, and had tended to diminish pauperism in

spite of the poor-laws. Eden gives many accounts of them. They seem to

have suggested a scheme proposed by the worthy Francis Maseres[94]

(1731-1824) in 1772 for the establishment of life annuities. A bill to

give effect to this scheme passed the House of Commons in 1773 with the

support of Burke and Savile, but was thrown out in the House of Lords.

In 1786 John Acland (died 1796), a Devonshire clergyman and justice of

the peace, proposed a scheme for uniting the whole nation into a kind of

friendly society for the support of the poor when out of work and in old

age. It was criticised by John Howlett (1731-1804), a clergyman who

wrote much upon the poor-laws. He attributes the growth of pauperism to

the rise of prices, and calculates that out of an increased expenditure

of L700,000, L219,000 had been raised by the rich, and the remainder

'squeezed out of the flesh, blood, and bones of the poor,' An act for

establishing Acland's crude scheme failed next year in parliament.[95]

The merit of the societies, according to Eden, was their tendency to

stimulate self-help; and how to preserve that merit, while making them

compulsory, was a difficult problem. I have said enough to mark a

critical and characteristic change of opinion. One source of evil

pointed out by contemporaries had been the absence of any central power

which could regulate and systematise the action of the petty local

bodies. The very possibility of such organisation, however, seems to

have been simply inconceivable. When the local bodies became lavish

instead of over-frugal, the one remedy suggested was to abolish the

system altogether.

NOTES:

[74] See _Dictionary of National Biography_.

[75] _Works_, i. 255.

[76] See Sir G. Nicholls's _History of the Poor-law_, 1854. A new

edition, with life by H. G. Willink, appeared in 1898.

[77] _History_, i. 175.

[78] M'Culloch's note to _Wealth of Nations_, p. 65. M'Culloch in his

appendix makes some sensible remarks upon the absence of any properly

constituted parochial 'tribunal.'

[79] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. x.

[80] See passage quoted in Eden's _History_, i. 347.

[81] Thomas Firmin (1632-1677), a philanthropist, whose Socinianism did

not exclude him from the friendship of such liberal bishops as Tillotson

and Fowler, started a workhouse in 1676.

[82] Nicholls (1898), ii. 14.

[83] _Ibid._ (1898), ii. 123.

[84] _Report_, p. 67.

[85] William Hay, for example, carried resolutions in the House of

Commons in 1735, but failed to carry a bill which had this object. See

Eden's _History_, i. 396. Cooper in 1763 proposed to make the hundred

the unit.--Nicholls's _History_, i. 58. Fielding proposes a similar

change in London. Dean Tucker speaks of the evil of the limited area in

his _Manifold Causes of the Increase of the Poor_ (1760).

[86] Nicholls, ii. 88.

[87] _Parl. Hist._ xxxii. 710.

[88] A full abstract is given in Edens _History_, iii. ccclxiii. etc.

[89] Bentham observes (_Works_, viii. 448) that the cow will require the

three acres to keep it.

[90] Cobbett's _Political Works_, vi. 64

[91] I need only note here that the first edition of Malthus's _Essay_

appeared in 1798, the year after Eden's publication.

[92] Eden's _History_, i. 583.

[93] _Ibid._ i. 587.

[94] Maseres, an excellent Whig, a good mathematician, and a respected

lawyer, is perhaps best known at present from his portrait in Charles

Lamb's _Old Benchers_.

[95] It maybe noticed as an anticipation of modern schemes that in 1792

Paine proposed a system of 'old age pensions,' for which the necessary

funds were to be easily obtained when universal peace had abolished all

military charges. See _State Trials_, xxv. 175.

II. THE POLICE

The system of 'self-government' showed its weak side in this direction.

It meant that an important function was intrusted to small bodies, quite

incompetent of acting upon general principles, and perfectly capable of

petty jobbing, when unrestrained by any effective supervision. In

another direction the same tendency was even more strikingly

illustrated. Municipal institutions were almost at their lowest point of

decay. Manchester and Birmingham were two of the largest and most

rapidly growing towns. By the end of the century Manchester had a

population of 90,000 and Birmingham of 70,000. Both were ruled, as far

as they were ruled, by the remnants of old manorial institutions.

Aikin[96] observes that 'Manchester (in 1795) remains an open town;

destitute (probably to its advantage) of a corporation, and

unrepresented in parliament.' It was governed by a 'boroughreeve' and

two constables elected annually at the court-leet. William Hutton, the

quaint historian of Birmingham, tells us in 1783 that the town was still

legally a village, with a high and low bailiff, a 'high and low taster,'

two 'affeerers,' and two 'leather-sealers,' In 1752 it had been provided

with a 'court of requests' for the recovery of small debts, and in 1769

with a body of commissioners to provide for lighting the town. This was

the system by which, with some modifications, Birmingham was governed

till after the Reform Bill.[97] Hutton boasts[98] that no town was

better governed or had fewer officers. 'A town without a charter,' he

says, 'is a town without a shackle.' Perhaps he changed his opinions

when his warehouses were burnt in 1791, and the town was at the mercy of

the mob till a regiment of 'light horse' could be called in. Aikin and

Hutton, however, reflect the general opinion at a time when the town

corporations had become close and corrupt bodies, and were chiefly

'shackles' upon the energy of active members of the community. I must

leave the explanation of this decay to historians. I will only observe

that what would need explanation would seem to be rather the absence

than the presence of corruption. The English borough was not stimulated

by any pressure from a central government; nor was it a semi-independent

body in which every citizen had the strongest motives for combining to

support its independence against neighbouring towns or invading nobles.

The lower classes were ignorant, and probably would be rather hostile

than favourable to any such modest interference with dirt and disorder

as would commend themselves to the officials. Naturally, power was left

to the little cliques of prosperous tradesmen, who formed close

corporations, and spent the revenues upon feasts or squandered them by

corrupt practices. Here, as in the poor-law, the insufficiency of the

administrative body suggests to contemporaries, not its reform, but its

superfluity.

The most striking account of some of the natural results is in

Colquhoun's[99] _Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis_. Patrick

Colquhoun (1745-1820), an energetic Scot, was born at Dumbarton in 1745,

had been in business at Glasgow, where he was provost in 1782 and 1783,

and in 1789 settled in London. In 1792 he obtained through Dundas an

appointment to one of the new police magistracies created by an act of

that year. He took an active part in many schemes of social reform; and

his book gives an account of the investigations by which his schemes

were suggested and justified. It must be said, however, parenthetically,

that his statistics scarcely challenge implicit confidence. Like

Sinclair and Eden, he saw the importance of obtaining facts and figures,

but his statements are suspiciously precise and elaborate.[100] The

broad facts are clear enough.

London was, he says, three miles broad and twenty-five in circumference.

The population in 1801 was 641,000. It was the largest town, and

apparently the most chaotic collection of dwellings in the civilised

world. There were, as Colquhoun asserts[101] in an often-quoted passage,

20,000 people in it, who got up every morning without knowing how they

would get through the day. There were 5000 public-houses, and 50,000

women supported, wholly or partly, by prostitution. The revenues raised

by crime amounted, as he calculates, to an annual sum of, L2,000,000.

There were whole classes of professional thieves, more or less organised

in gangs, which acted in support of each other. There were gangs on the

river, who boarded ships at night, or lay in wait round the warehouses.

The government dockyards were systematically plundered, and the same

article often sold four times over to the officials. The absence of

patrols gave ample chance to the highwaymen then peculiar to England.

Their careers, commemorated in the _Newgate Calendar_, had a certain

flavour of Robin Hood romance, and their ranks were recruited from

dissipated apprentices and tradesmen in difficulty. The fields round

London were so constantly plundered that the rent was materially

lowered. Half the hackney coachmen, he says,[102] were in league with

thieves. The number of receiving houses for stolen goods had increased

in twenty years from 300 to 3000.[103] Coining was a flourishing trade,

and according to Colquhoun employed several thousand persons.[104]

Gambling had taken a fresh start about 1777 and 1778[105]; and the

keepers of tables had always money enough at command to make convictions

almost impossible. French refugees at the revolution had introduced

_rouge et noir_; and Colquhoun estimates the sums yearly lost in

gambling-houses at over L7,000,000. The gamblers might perhaps appeal

not only to the practices of their betters in the days of Fox, but to

the public lotteries. Colquhoun had various correspondents, who do not

venture to propose the abolition of a system which sanctioned the

practice, but who hope to diminish the facility for supplementary

betting on the results of the official drawing.

The war had tended to increase the number of loose and desperate

marauders who swarmed in the vast labyrinth of London streets. When we

consider the nature of the police by which these evils were to be

checked, and the criminal law which they administered, the wonder is

less that there were sometimes desperate riots (as in 1780) than that

London should have been ever able to resist a mob. Colquhoun, though a

patriotic Briton, has to admit that the French despots had at last

created an efficient police. The emperor, Joseph II., he says, inquired

for an Austrian criminal supposed to have escaped to Paris. You will

find him, replied the head of the French police, at No. 93 of such a

street in Vienna on the second-floor room looking upon such a church;

and there he was. In England a criminal could hide himself in a herd of

his like, occasionally disturbed by the inroad of a 'Bow Street runner,'

the emissary of the 'trading justices,' formerly represented by the two

Fieldings. An act of 1792 created seven new offices, to one of which

Colquhoun had been appointed. They had one hundred and eighty-nine paid

officers under them. There were also about one thousand constables.

These were small tradesmen or artisans upon whom the duty was imposed

without remuneration for a year by their parish, that is, by one of

seventy independent bodies. A 'Tyburn ticket,' given in reward for

obtaining the conviction of a criminal exempted a man from the discharge

of such offices, and could be bought for from L15 to L25. There were

also two thousand watchmen receiving from 8-1/2d. up to 2s. a night.

These were the true successors of Dogberry; often infirm or aged persons

appointed to keep them out of the workhouse. The management of this

distracted force thus depended upon a miscellaneous set of bodies; the

paid magistrates, the officials of the city, the justices of the peace

for Middlesex, and the seventy independent parishes.

The law was as defective as the administration. Colquhoun represents the

philanthropic impulse of the day, and notices[106] that in 1787 Joseph

II. had abolished capital punishment. His chief authority for more

merciful methods is Beccaria; and it is worth remarking, for reasons

which will appear hereafter, that he does not in this connection refer

to Bentham, although he speaks enthusiastically[107] of Bentham's model

prison, the Panopticon. Colquhoun shows how strangely the severity of

the law was combined with its extreme capaciousness. He quotes

Bacon[108] for the statement that the law was a 'heterogeneous mass

concocted too often on the spur of the moment,' and gives sufficient

proofs of its truth. He desires, for example, a law to punish receivers

of stolen goods, and says that there were excellent laws in existence.

Unfortunately one law applied exclusively to the case of pewter-pots,

and another exclusively to the precious metals; neither could be used as

against receivers of horses or bank notes.[109] So a man indicted under

an act against stealing from ships on navigable rivers escaped, because

the barge from which he stole happened to be aground. Gangs could afford

to corrupt witnesses or to pay knavish lawyers skilled in applying these

vagaries of legislation. Juries also disliked convicting when the

penalty for coining sixpence was the same as the penalty for killing a

mother. It followed, as he shows by statistics, that half the persons

committed for trial escaped by petty chicanery or corruption, or the

reluctance of juries to convict for capital offences. Only about

one-fifth of the capital sentences were executed; and many were pardoned

on condition of enlisting to improve the morals of the army. The

criminals, who were neither hanged nor allowed to escape, were sent to

prisons, which were schools of vice. After the independence of the

American colonies, the system of transportation to Australia had begun

(in 1787); but the expense was enormous, and prisoners were huddled

together in the hulks at Woolwich and Portsmouth, which had been used as

a temporary expedient. Thence they were constantly discharged, to return

to their old practices. A man, says Colquhoun,[110] would deserve a

statue who should carry out a plan for helping discharged prisoners. To

meet these evils, Colquhoun proposes various remedies, such as a

metropolitan police, a public prosecutor, or even a codification or

revision of the Criminal Code, which he sees is likely to be delayed. He

also suggested, in a pamphlet of 1799, a kind of charity organisation

society to prevent the waste of funds. Many other pamphlets of similar

tendencies show his active zeal in promoting various reforms. Colquhoun

was in close correspondence with Bentham from the year 1798,[111] and

Bentham helped him by drawing the Thames Police Act, passed in 1800, to

give effect to some of the suggestions in the _Treatise_.[112]

Another set of abuses has a special connection with Bentham's activity.

Bentham had been led in 1778 to attend to the prison question by reading

Howard's book on _Prisons_; and he refers to the 'venerable friend who

had lived an apostle and died a martyr.'[113] The career of John Howard

(1726-1790) is familiar. The son of a London tradesman, he had inherited

an estate in Bedfordshire. There he erected model cottages and village

schools; and, on becoming sheriff of the county in 1773, was led to

attend to abuses in the prisons. Two acts of parliament were passed in

1774 to remedy some of the evils exposed, and he pursued the inquiry at

home and abroad. His results are given in his _State of the Prisons in

England and Wales_ (1779, fourth edition, 1792), and his _Account of the

Principal Lazarettos in Europe_ (1789). The prisoners, he says, had

little food, sometimes a penny loaf a day, and sometimes nothing; no

water, no fresh air, no sewers, and no bedding. The stench was

appalling, and gaol fever killed more than died on the gallows. Debtors

and felons, men, women and children, were huddled together; often with

lunatics, who were shown by the gaolers for money. 'Garnish' was

extorted; the gaolers kept drinking-taps; gambling flourished: and

prisoners were often cruelly ironed, and kept for long periods before

trial. At Hull the assizes had only been held once in seven years, and

afterwards once in three. It is a comfort to find that the whole number

of prisoners in England and Wales amounted, in 1780, to about 4400, 2078

of whom were debtors, 798 felons, and 917 petty offenders. An act passed

in 1779 provided for the erection of two penitentiaries. Howard was to

be a supervisor. The failure to carry out this act led, as we shall see,

to one of Bentham's most characteristic undertakings. One peculiarity

must be noted. Howard found prisons on the continent where the

treatment was bad and torture still occasionally practised; but he

nowhere found things so bad as in England. In Holland the prisons were

so neat and clean as to make it difficult to believe that they were

prisons: and they were used as models for the legislation of 1779. One

cause of this unenviable distinction of English prisons had been

indicated by an earlier investigation. General Oglethorpe (1696-1785)

had been started in his philanthropic career by obtaining a committee of

the House of Commons in 1729 to inquire into the state of the gaols. The

foundation of the colony of Georgia as an outlet for the population was

one result of the inquiry. It led, in the first place, however, to a

trial of persons accused of atrocious cruelties at the Fleet

prison.[114] The trial was abortive. It appeared in the course of the

proceedings that the Fleet prison was a 'freehold,' A patent for

rebuilding it had been granted to Sir Jeremy Whichcot under Charles II.,

and had been sold to one Higgins, who resold it to other persons for

L5000. The proprietors made their investment pay by cruel ill-treatment

of the prisoners, oppressing the poor and letting off parts of the

prison to dealers in drink. This was the general plan in the prisons

examined by Howard, and helps to account for the gross abuses. It is one

more application of the general system. As the patron was owner of a

living, and the officer of his commission, the keeper of a prison was

owner of his establishment. The paralysis of administration which

prevailed throughout the country made it natural to farm out paupers to

the master of a workhouse, and prisoners to the proprietor of a gaol.

The state of prisoners may be inferred not only from Howard's authentic

record but from the fictions of Fielding, Smollett and Goldsmith; and

the last echoes of the same complaints may be found in _Pickwick_ and

_Little Dorrit_. The Marshalsea described in the last was also a

proprietary concern. We shall hereafter see how Bentham proposed to

treat the evils revealed by Oglethorpe and Howard.

NOTES:

[96] Aikin's _Country Round Manchester_.

[97] Bunce's _History of the Corporation of Birmingham_ (1878).

[98] _History of Birmingham_ (2nd edition), p. 327.

[99] The first edition, 1795, the sixth, from which I quote, in 1800. In

Benthams _Works_, x. 330, it is said that in 1798, 7500 copies of this

book had been sold.

[100] In 1814 Colquhoun published an elaborate account of the _Resources

of the British Empire_, showing similar qualities.

[101] _Police_, p. 310.

[102] _Police_, p. 105.

[103] _Ibid._ p. 13.

[104] _Ibid._ p. 211.

[105] _Ibid._ p. 136.

[106] _Police_, p. 60.

[107] _Ibid._ p. 481.

[108] _Ibid._ p. 7.

[109] _Ibid._ p. 298.

[110] _Police_, p. 99.

[111] Bentham's _Works_, x. 329 _seq._

[112] _Ibid._ v. 335.

[113] Bentham's _Works_, iv. 3, 121.

[114] Cobbett's _State Trials_, xvii. 297-626.

III. EDUCATION

Another topic treated by Colquhoun marks the initial stage of

controversies which were soon to grow warm. Colquhoun boasts of the

number of charities for which London was already conspicuous. A growing

facility for forming associations of all kinds, political, religious,

scientific, and charitable, is an obvious characteristic of modern

progress. Where in earlier times a college or a hospital had to be

endowed by a founder and invested by charter with corporate personality,

it is now necessary only to call a meeting, form a committee, and appeal

for subscriptions. Societies of various kinds had sprung up during the

century. Artists, men of science, agriculturists, and men of literary

tastes, had founded innumerable academies and 'philosophical

institutes.' The great London hospitals, dependent upon voluntary

subscriptions, had been founded during the first half of the century.

Colquhoun counts the annual revenue of various charitable institutions

at L445,000, besides which the endowments produced L150,000, and the

poor-rates L255,000.[115] Among these a considerable number were

intended to promote education. Here, as in some other cases, it seems

that people at the end of the century were often taking up an impulse

given a century before. So the Society for promoting Christian

Knowledge, founded in 1699, and the Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel, founded in 1701, were supplemented by the Church Missionary

Society and the Religious Tract Society, both founded in 1799. The

societies for the reformation of manners, prevalent at the end of the

seventeenth century, were taken as a model by Wilberforce and his

friends at the end of the eighteenth.[116] In the same way, the first

attempts at providing a general education for the poor had been made by

Archbishop Tenison, who founded a parochial school about 1680 in order

'to check the growth of popery.' Charity schools became common during

the early part of the eighteenth century and received various

endowments. They were attacked as tending to teach the poor too much--a

very needless alarm--and also by free thinkers, such as Mandeville, as

intended outworks of the established church. This last objection was a

foretaste of the bitter religious controversies which were to accompany

the growth of an educational system. Colquhoun says that there were 62

endowed schools in London, from Christ's Hospital downwards, educating

about 5000 children; 237 parish schools with about 9000 children, and

3730 'private schools.' The teaching was, of course, very imperfect, and

in a report of a committee of the House of Commons in 1818, it is

calculated that about half the children in a large district were

entirely uneducated. There was, of course, nothing in England deserving

the name of a system in educational more than in any other matters. The

grammar schools throughout the country provided more or less for the

classes which could not aspire to the public schools and universities.

About a third of the boys at Christ's Hospital were, as Coleridge tells

us, sons of clergymen.[117] The children of the poor were either not

educated, or picked up their letters at some charity school or such a

country dame's school as is described by Shenstone. A curious proof,

however, of rising interest in the question is given by the Sunday

Schools movement at the end of the century. Robert Raikes (1735-1811), a

printer in Gloucester and proprietor of a newspaper, joined with a

clergyman to set up a school in 1780 at a total cost of 1s. 6d. a week.

Within three or four years the plan was taken up everywhere, and the

worthy Raikes, whose newspaper had spread the news, found himself

revered as a great pioneer of philanthropy. Wesley took up the scheme

warmly; bishops condescended to approve; the king and queen were

interested, and within three or four years the number of learners was

reckoned at two or three hundred thousand. A Sunday School Association

was formed in 1785 with well known men of business at its head. Queen

Charlotte's friend, Mrs. Trimmer (1741-1810), took up the work near

London, and Hannah More (1745-1833) in Somersetshire. Hannah More gives

a strange account of the utter absence of any civilising agencies in the

district around Cheddar where she and her sisters laboured. She was

accused of 'methodism' and a leaning to Jacobinism, although her views

were of the most moderate kind. She wished the poor to be able to read

their Bibles and to be qualified for domestic duties, but not to write

or to be enabled to read Tom Paine or be encouraged to rise above their

position. The literary light of the Whigs, Dr. Parr (1747-1825), showed

his liberality by arguing that the poor ought to be taught, but admitted

that the enterprise had its limits. The 'Deity Himself had fixed a great

gulph between them and the poor.' A scanty instruction given on Sundays

alone was not calculated to facilitate the passage of that gulf. By the

end of the century, however, signs of a more systematic movement were

showing themselves. Bell and Lancaster, of whom I shall have to speak,

were rival claimants for the honour of initiating a new departure in

education. The controversy which afterwards raged between the supporters

of the two systems marked a complete revolution of opinion. Meanwhile,

although the need of schools was beginning to be felt, the appliances

for education in England were a striking instance of the general

inefficiency in every department which needed combined action. In

Scotland the system of parish schools was one obvious cause of the

success of so many of the Scotsmen which excited the jealousy of

southern competitors. Even in Ireland there appears to have been a more

efficient set of schools. And yet, one remark must be suggested. There

is probably no period in English history at which a greater number of

poor men have risen to distinction. The greatest beyond comparison of

self-taught poets was Burns (1759-1796). The political writer who was at

the time producing the most marked effect was Thomas Paine (1737-1809),

son of a small tradesman. His successor in influence was William Cobbett

(1762-1835), son of an agricultural labourer, and one of the pithiest of

all English writers. William Gifford (1756-1826), son of a small

tradesman in Devonshire, was already known as a satirist and was to lead

Conservatives as editor of the _The Quarterly Review_. John Dalton

(1766-1842), son of a poor weaver, was one of the most distinguished men

of science. Porson (1759-1808), the greatest Greek scholar of his time,

was son of a Norfolk parish clerk, though sagacious patrons had sent him

to Eton in his fifteenth year. The Oxford professor of Arabic, Joseph

White (1746-1814), was son of a poor weaver in the country and a man of

reputation for learning, although now remembered only for a rather

disreputable literary squabble. Robert Owen and Joseph Lancaster, both

sprung from the ranks, were leaders in social movements. I have already

spoken of such men as Watt, Telford, and Rennie; and smaller names might

be added in literature, science, and art. The individualist virtue of

'self-help' was not confined to successful money-making or to the

wealthier classes. One cause of the literary excellence of Burns, Paine,

and Cobbett may be that, when literature was less centralised, a writer

was less tempted to desert his natural dialect. I mention the fact,

however, merely to suggest that, whatever were then the difficulties of

getting such schooling as is now common, an energetic lad even in the

most neglected regions might force his way to the front.

NOTES:

[115] _Police_, p. 340.

[116] Wilberforce started on this plan a 'society for enforcing the

king's proclamation' in 1786, which was supplemented by the society for

'the Suppression of Vice' in 1802. I don't suppose that vice was much

suppressed. Sydney Smith ridiculed its performances in the _Edinburgh_

for 1809. The article is in his works. A more interesting society was

that for 'bettering the condition of the poor,' started by Sir Thomas

Bernard and Wilberforce in 1796.

[117] _Biographia Literaria_ (1847), ii. 327.

IV. THE SLAVE-TRADE

I have thus noticed the most conspicuous of the contemporary problems

which, as we shall see, provided the main tasks of Bentham and his

followers. One other topic must be mentioned as in more ways than one

characteristic of the spirit of the time. The parliamentary attack upon

the slave-trade began just before the outbreak of the revolution. It is

generally described as an almost sudden awakening of the national

conscience. That it appealed to that faculty is undeniable, and,

moreover, it is at least a remarkable instance of legislative action

upon purely moral grounds. It is true that in this case the conscience

was the less impeded because it was roused chiefly by the sins of men's

neighbours. The slave-trading class was a comparative excrescence. Their

trade could be attacked without such widespread interference with the

social order as was implied, for example, in remedying the grievances of

paupers or of children in factories. The conflict with morality, again,

was so plain as to need no demonstration. It seems to be a questionable

logic which assumes the merit of a reformer to be in proportion to the

flagrancy of the evil assailed. The more obvious the case, surely the

less the virtue needed in the assailant. However this may be, no one can

deny the moral excellence of such men as Wilberforce and Clarkson, nor

the real change in the moral standard implied by the success of their

agitation. But another question remains, which is indicated by a later

controversy. The followers of Wilberforce and of Clarkson were jealous

of each other. Each party tried to claim the chief merit for its hero.

Each was, I think, unjust to the other. The underlying motive was the

desire to obtain credit for the 'Evangelicals' or their rivals as the

originators of a great movement. Without touching the personal details

it is necessary to say something of the general sentiments implied. In

his history of the agitation,[118] Clarkson gives a quaint chart,

showing how the impulse spread from various centres till it converged

upon a single area, and his facts are significant.

That a great change had taken place is undeniable. Protestant England

had bargained with Catholic Spain in the middle of the century for the

right of supplying slaves to America, while at the peace of 1814 English

statesmen were endeavouring to secure a combination of all civilised

powers against the trade. Smollett, in 1748, makes the fortune of his

hero, Roderick Random, by placing him as mate of a slave-ship under the

ideal sailor, Bowling. About the same time John Newton (1725-1807),

afterwards the venerated teacher of Cowper and the Evangelicals, was in

command of a slaver, and enjoying 'sweeter and more frequent hours of

divine communion' than he had elsewhere known. He had no scruples,

though he had the grace to pray 'to be fixed in a more humane calling.'

In later years he gave the benefit of his experience to the

abolitionists.[119] A new sentiment, however, was already showing

itself. Clarkson collects various instances. Southern's Oroonoco,

founded on a story by Mrs. Behn, and Steele's story of Inkle and Yarico

in an early _Spectator_, Pope's poor Indian in the _Essay on Man_, and

allusions by Thomson, Shenstone, and Savage, show that poets and

novelists could occasionally turn the theme to account. Hutcheson, the

moralist, incidentally condemns slavery; and divines such as Bishops

Hayter and Warburton took the same view in sermons before the Society

for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. Johnson, 'last of the

Tories' though he was, had a righteous hatred for the system.[120] He

toasted the next insurrection of negroes in the West Indies, and asked

why we always heard the 'loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of

negroes'? Thomas Day (1748-1789), as an ardent follower of Rousseau,

wrote the _Dying Negro_ in 1773, and, in the same spirit, denounced the

inconsistencies of slave-holding champions of American liberty.

Such isolated utterances showed a spreading sentiment. The honour of the

first victory in the practical application must be given to Granville

Sharp[121] (1735-1813), one of the most charming and, in the best sense,

'Quixotic' of men. In 1772 his exertions had led to the famous decision

by Lord Mansfield in the case of the negro Somerset.[122] Sharp in 1787

became chairman of the committee formed to attack the slave-trade by

collecting the evidence of which Wilberforce made use in parliament. The

committee was chiefly composed of Quakers; as indeed, Quakers are pretty

sure to be found in every philanthropic movement of the period. I must

leave the explanation to the historian of religious movements; but the

fact is characteristic. The Quakers had taken the lead in America. The

Quaker was both practical and a mystic. His principles put him outside

of the ordinary political interests, and of the military world. He

directed his activities to helping the poor, the prisoner, and the

oppressed. Among the Quakers of the eighteenth century were John Woolman

(1720-1772), a writer beloved by the congenial Charles Lamb and Antoine

Benezet (1713-1784), born in France, and son of a French refugee who

settled in Philadelphia. When Clarkson wrote the prize essay upon the

slave-trade (1785), which started his career, it was from Benezet's

writings that he obtained his information. By their influence the

Pennsylvanian Quakers were gradually led to pronounce against

slavery[123]; and the first anti-slavery society was founded in

Philadelphia in 1775, the year in which the skirmish at Lexington began

the war of independence. That suggests another influence. The

Rationalists of the eighteenth century were never tired of praising the

Quakers. The Quakers were, by their essential principles, in favour of

absolute toleration, and their attitude towards dogma was not

dissimilar. 'Rationalisation' and 'Spiritualisation' are in some

directions similar. The general spread of philanthropic sentiment,

which found its formula in the _Rights of Man_, fell in with the Quaker

hatred of war and slavery. Voltaire heartily admires Barclay, the Quaker

apologist. It is, therefore, not surprising to find the names of the

deists, Franklin and Paine, associated with Quakers in this movement.

Franklin was an early president of the new association, and Paine wrote

an article to support the early agitation.[124] Paine himself was a

Quaker by birth, who had dropped his early creed while retaining a

respect for its adherents. When the agitation began it was in fact

generally approved by all except the slave-traders. Sound Whig divines,

Watson and Paley and Parr; Unitarians such as Priestley and Gilbert

Wakefield and William Smith; and the great methodist, John Wesley, were

united on this point. Fox and Burke and Pitt rivalled each other in

condemning the system. The actual delay was caused partly by the

strength of the commercial interests in parliament, and partly by the

growth of the anti-Jacobin sentiment.

The attempt to monopolise the credit of the movement by any particular

sect is absurd. Wilberforce and his friends might fairly claim the glory

of having been worthy representatives of a new spirit of philanthropy;

but most certainly they did not create or originate it. The general

growth of that spirit throughout the century must be explained, so far

as 'explanation' is possible, by wider causes. It was, as I must venture

to assume, a product of complex social changes which were bringing

classes and nations into closer contact, binding them together by new

ties, and breaking up the old institutions which had been formed under

obsolete conditions. The true moving forces were the same whether these

representatives announced the new gospel of the 'rights of man'; or

appealed to the traditional rights of Englishmen; or rallied supporters

of the old order so far as it still provided the most efficient

machinery for the purpose. The revival of religion under Wesley and the

Evangelicals meant the direction of the stream into one channel. The

paralytic condition of the Church of England disqualified it for

appropriating the new energy. The men who directed the movements were

mainly stimulated by moral indignation at the gross abuses, and the

indolence of the established priesthood naturally gave them an

anti-sacerdotal turn. They simply accepted the old Protestant tradition.

They took no interest in the intellectual questions involved.

Rationalism, according to them, meant simply an attack upon the

traditional sanctions of morality; and it scarcely occurred to them to

ask for any philosophical foundation of their creed. Wilberforce's book,

_A Practical View_, attained an immense popularity, and is

characteristic of the position. Wilberforce turns over the infidel to be

confuted by Paley, whom he takes to be a conclusive reasoner. For

himself he is content to show what needed little proof, that the

so-called Christians of the day could act as if they had never heard of

the New Testament. The Evangelical movement had in short no distinct

relation to speculative movements. It took the old tradition for

granted, and it need not here be further considered.

One other remark is suggested by the agitation against the slave-trade.

It set a precedent for agitation of a kind afterwards familiar. The

committee appealed to the country, and got up petitions. Sound Tories

complained of them in the early slave-trade debates, as attempts to

dictate to parliament by democratic methods. Political agitators had

formed associations, and found a convenient instrument in the 'county

meetings,' which seems to have possessed a kind of indefinite legal

character.[125] Such associations of course depend for the great part of

their influence upon the press. The circulation of literature was one

great object. Paine's _Rights of Man_ was distributed by the

revolutionary party, and Hannah More wrote popular tracts to persuade

the poor that they had no grievances. It is said that two millions of

her little tracts, 'Village Politics by Will Chip,' the 'Shepherd of

Salisbury Plain,' and so forth were circulated. The demand, indeed,

showed rather the eagerness of the rich to get them read than the

eagerness of the poor to read them. They failed to destroy Paine's

influence, but they were successful enough to lead to the foundation of

the Religious Tract Society. The attempt to influence the poor by cheap

literature shows that these opinions were beginning to demand

consideration. Cobbett and many others were soon to use the new weapon.

Meanwhile the newspapers circulated among the higher ranks were passing

through a new phase, which must be noted. The great newspapers were

gaining power. The _Morning Chronicle_ was started by Woodfall in 1769,

the _Morning Post_ and _Morning Herald_ by Dudley Bate in 1772 and 1780,

and the _Times_ by Walter in 1788. The modern editor was to appear

during the war. Stoddart and Barnes of the _Times_, Perry and Black of

the _Morning Chronicle_, were to become important politically. The

revolutionary period marks the transition from the old-fashioned

newspaper, carried on by a publisher and an author, to the modern

newspaper, which represents a kind of separate organism, elaborately

'differentiated' and worked by a whole army of co-operating editors,

correspondents, reporters, and contributors. Finally, one remark may be

made. The literary class in England was not generally opposed to the

governing classes. The tone of Johnson's whole circle was conservative.

In fact, since Harley's time, government had felt the need of support in

the press, and politicians on both sides had their regular organs. The

opposition might at any time become the government; and their supporters

in the press, poor men who were only too dependent, had no motive for

going beyond the doctrines of their principals. They might be bought by

opponents, or they might be faithful to a patron. They did not form a

band of outcasts, whose hand would be against every one. The libel law

was severe enough, but there had been no licensing system since the

early days of William and Mary. A man could publish what he chose at his

own peril. When the current of popular feeling was anti-revolutionary,

government might obtain a conviction, but even in the worst times there

was a chance that juries might be restive. Editors had at times to go to

prison, but even then the paper was not suppressed. Cobbett, for

example, continued to publish his _Registrar_ during an imprisonment of

two years (1810-12). Editors had very serious anxieties, but they could

express with freedom any opinion which had the support of a party.

English liberty was so far a reality that a very free discussion of the

political problems of the day was permitted and practised. The English

author, therefore, as such, had not the bitterness of a French man of

letters, unless, indeed, he had the misfortune to be an uncompromising

revolutionist.

NOTES:

[118] _History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the

Abolition of the Slave-trade by the British Parliament_ (1808). Second

enlarged edition 1839. The chart was one cause of the offence taken by

Wilberforce's sons.

[119] Cf. Sir J. Stephen's _Ecclesiastical Biography_ (The Evangelical

Succession).

[120] See passages collected in Birkbeck Hill's _Boswell_, ii. 478-80,

and cf. iii. 200-204. Boswell was attracted by Clarkson, but finally

made up his mind that the abolition of the slave-trade would 'shut the

gates of mercy on mankind.'

[121] See the account of G. Sharp in Sir J. Stephen's _Ecclesiastical

Biography_ (Clapham Sect).

[122] Cobbett's _State Trials_, xx. 1-82.

[123] The Society determined in 1760 'to disown' any Friend concerned in

the slave-trade.

[124] Mr. Conway, in his _Life of Paine_, attributes, I think, a little

more to his hero than is consistent with due regard to his predecessors;

but, in any case, he took an early part in the movement.

[125] See upon this subject Mr. Jephson's interesting book on _The

Platform_.

V. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The English society which I have endeavoured to characterise was now to

be thrown into the vortex of the revolutionary wars. The surpassing

dramatic interest of the French Revolution has tended to obscure our

perception of the continuity of even English history. It has been easy

to ascribe to the contagion of French example political movements which

were already beginning in England and which were modified rather than

materially altered by our share in the great European convulsion. The

impression made upon Englishmen by the French Revolution is, however, in

the highest degree characteristic. The most vehement sympathies and

antipathies were aroused, and showed at least what principles were

congenial to the various English parties. To praise or blame the

revolution, as if it could be called simply good or bad, is for the

historian as absurd as to praise or blame an earthquake. It was simply

inevitable under the conditions. We may, of course, take it as an

essential stage in a social evolution, which if described as progress is

therefore to be blessed, or if as degeneration may provoke lamentation.

We may, if we please, ask whether superior statesmanship might have

attained the good results without the violent catastrophes, or whether a

wise and good man who could appreciate the real position would have

approved or condemned the actual policy. But to answer such problems

with any confidence would imply a claim to a quasi-omniscience.

Partisans at the time, however, answered them without hesitation, and

saw in the Revolution the dawn of a new era of reason and justice, or

the outburst of the fires of hell. Their view is at any rate indicative

of their own position. The extreme opinions need no exposition. They are

represented by the controversy between Burke and Paine. The general

doctrine of the 'Rights of Men'--that all men are by nature free and

equal--covered at least the doctrine that the inequality and despotism

of the existing order was hateful, and people with a taste for abstract

principles accepted this short cut to political wisdom. The 'minor'

premise being obviously true, they took the major for granted. To Burke,

who idealised the traditional element in the British Constitution, and

so attached an excessive importance to historical continuity, the new

doctrine seemed to imply the breaking up of the very foundations of

order and the pulverisation of society. Burke and Paine both assumed too

easily that the dogmas which they defended expressed the real and

ultimate beliefs, and that the belief was the cause, not the

consequence, of the political condition. Without touching upon the logic

of either position, I may notice how the problem presented itself to the

average English politician whose position implied acceptance of

traditional compromises and who yet prided himself on possessing the

liberties which were now being claimed by Frenchmen. The Whig could

heartily sympathise with the French Revolution so long as it appeared to

be an attempt to assimilate British principles. When Fox hailed the

fall of the Bastille as the greatest and best event that had ever

happened, he was expressing a generous enthusiasm shared by all the

ardent and enlightened youth of the time. The French, it seemed, were

abolishing an arbitrary despotism and adopting the principles of Magna

Charta and the 'Habeas Corpus' Act. Difficulties, however, already

suggested themselves to the true Whig. Would the French, as Young asked

just after the same event, 'copy the constitution of England, freed from

its faults, or attempt, from theory, to frame something absolutely

speculative'?[126] On that issue depended the future of the country. It

was soon decided in the sense opposed to Young's wishes. The reign of

terror alienated the average Whig. But though the argument from

atrocities is the popular one, the opposition was really more

fundamental. Burke put the case, savagely and coarsely enough, in his

'Letter to a noble Lord.' How would the duke of Bedford like to be

treated as the revolutionists were treating the nobility in France? The

duke might be a sincere lover of political liberty, but he certainly

would not be prepared to approve the confiscation of his estates. The

aristocratic Whigs, dependent for their whole property and for every

privilege which they prized upon ancient tradition and prescription,

could not really be in favour of sweeping away the whole complex social

structure, levelling Windsor Castle as Burke put it in his famous

metaphor, and making a 'Bedford level' of the whole country. The Whigs

had to disavow any approval of the Jacobins; Mackintosh, who had given

his answer to Burke's diatribes, met Burke himself on friendly terms

(9th July 1797), and in 1800 took an opportunity of public recantation.

He only expressed the natural awakening of the genuine Whig to the

aspects of the case which he had hitherto ignored. The effect upon the

middle-class Whigs is, however, more to my purpose. It may be

illustrated by the history of John Horne Tooke[127] (1736-1812), who at

this time represented what may be called the home-bred British

radicalism. He was the son of a London tradesman, who had distinguished

himself by establishing, and afterwards declining to enforce, certain

legal rights against Frederick Prince of Wales. The prince recognised

the tradesman's generosity by making his antagonist purveyor to his

household. A debt of some thousand pounds was thus run up before the

prince's death which was never discharged. Possibly the son's hostility

to the royal family was edged by this circumstance. John Horne, forced

to take orders in order to hold a living, soon showed himself to have

been intended by nature for the law. He took up the cause of Wilkes in

the early part of the reign; defended him energetically in later years;

and in 1769 helped to start the 'Society for supporting the Bill of

Rights.' He then attacked Wilkes, who, as he maintained, misapplied for

his own private use the funds subscribed for public purposes to this

society; and set up a rival 'Constitutional Society.' In 1775, as

spokesman of this body, he denounced the 'king's troops' for 'inhumanly

murdering' their fellow-subjects at Lexington for the sole crime of

'preferring death to slavery.' He was imprisoned for the libel, and thus

became a martyr to the cause. When the country associations were formed

in 1780 to protest against the abuses revealed by the war, Horne became

a member of the 'Society for Constitutional Information,' of which Major

Cartwright--afterwards the revered, but rather tiresome, patriarch of

the Radicals--was called the 'father.' Horne Tooke (as he was now

named), by these and other exhibitions of boundless pugnacity, became a

leader among the middle-class Whigs, who found their main support among

London citizens, such as Beckford, Troutbeck and Oliver; supported them

in his later days; and after the American war, preferred Pitt, as an

advocate of parliamentary reform, to Fox, the favourite of the

aristocratic Whigs. He denounced the Fox coalition ministry, and in

later years opposed Fox at Westminster. The 'Society for Constitutional

Information' was still extant in the revolutionary period, and Tooke, a

bluff, jovial companion, who had by this time got rid of his clerical

character, often took the chair at the taverns where they met to talk

sound politics over their port. The revolution infused new spirit into

politics. In March 1791[128] Tooke's society passed a vote of thanks to

Paine for the first part of his _Rights of Man_. Next year Thomas Hardy,

a radical shoemaker, started a 'Corresponding Society.' Others sprang up

throughout the country, especially in the manufacturing towns.[129]

These societies took Paine for their oracle, and circulated his writings

as their manifesto. They communicated occasionally with Horne Tooke's

society, which more or less sympathised with them. The Whigs of the

upper sphere started the 'Friends of the People' in April 1792, in order

to direct the discontent into safer channels. Grey, Sheridan and Erskine

were members; Fox sympathised but declined to join; Mackintosh was

secretary; and Sir Philip Francis drew up the opening address, citing

the authority of Pitt and Blackstone, and declaring that the society

wished 'not to change but to restore.'[130] It remonstrated cautiously

with the other societies, and only excited their distrust. Grey, as its

representative, made a motion for parliamentary reform which was

rejected (May 1793) by two hundred and eighty-two to forty-one. Later

motions in May 1797 and April 1800 showed that, for the present,

parliamentary reform was out of the question. Meanwhile the English

Jacobins got up a 'convention' which met at Edinburgh at the end of

1793. The very name was alarming: the leaders were tried and

transported; the cruelty of the sentences and the severity of the

judges, especially Braxfield, shocked such men as Parr and Jeffrey, and

unsuccessful appeals for mercy were made in parliament. The Habeas

Corpus Act was suspended in 1794: Horne Tooke and Hardy were both

arrested and tried for high treason in November. An English jury

fortunately showed itself less subservient than the Scottish; the judge

was scrupulously fair: and both Hardy and Horne Tooke were acquitted.

The societies, however, though they were encouraged for a time, were

attacked by severe measures passed by Pitt in 1795. The 'Friends of the

People' ceased to exist The seizure of the committee of the

Corresponding Societies in 1798 put an end to their activity. A report

presented to parliament in 1799[131] declares that the societies had

gone to dangerous lengths: they had communicated with the French

revolutionists and with the 'United Irishmen' (founded 1791); and

societies of 'United Englishmen' and 'United Scotsmen' had had some

concern in the mutinies of the fleet in 1797 and in the Irish rebellion

of 1798. Place says, probably with truth, that the danger was much

exaggerated: but in any case, an act for the suppression of the

Corresponding Societies was passed in 1799, and put an end to the

movement.

This summary is significant of the state of opinion. The genuine

old-fashioned Whig dreaded revolution, and guarded himself carefully

against any appearance of complicity. Jacobinism, on the other hand, was

always an exotic. Such men as the leading Nonconformists Priestley and

Price were familiar with the speculative movement on the continent, and

sympathised with the enlightenment. Young men of genius, like Wordsworth

and Coleridge, imbibed the same doctrines more or less thoroughly, and

took Godwin for their English representative. The same creed was

accepted by the artisans in the growing towns, from whom the

Corresponding Societies drew their recruits. But the revolutionary

sentiment was not so widely spread as its adherents hoped or its enemies

feared. The Birmingham mob of 1791 acted, with a certain unconscious

humour, on the side of church and king. They had perhaps an instinctive

perception that it was an advantage to plunder on the side of the

constable. In fact, however, the general feeling in all classes was

anti-Jacobin. Place, an excellent witness, himself a member of the

Corresponding Societies, declares that the repressive measures were

generally popular even among the workmen.[132] They were certainly not

penetrated with revolutionary fervour. Had it been otherwise, the

repressive measures, severe as they were, would have stimulated rather

than suppressed the societies, and, instead of silencing the

revolutionists, have provoked a rising.

At the early period the Jacobin and the home-bred Radical might combine

against government. A manifesto of the Corresponding Societies begins by

declaring that 'all men are by nature free and equal and independent of

each other,' and argues also that these are the 'original principles of

English government.'[133] Magna Charta is an early expression of the

Declaration of Rights, and thus pure reason confirms British tradition.

The adoption of a common platform, however, covered a profound

difference of sentiment. Horne Tooke represents the old type of

reformer. He was fully resolved not to be carried away by the enthusiasm

of his allies. 'My companions in a stage,' he said to Cartwright, 'may

be going to Windsor: I will go with them to Hounslow. But there I will

get out: no further will I go, by God!'[134] When Sheridan supported a

vote of sympathy for the French revolutionists, Tooke insisted upon

adding a rider declaring the content of Englishmen with their own

constitution.[135] He offended some of his allies by asserting that the

'main timbers' of the constitution were sound though the dry-rot had

got into the superstructure. He maintained, according to Godwin,[136]

that the best of all governments had been that of England under George

I. Though Cartwright said at the trial that Horne Tooke was taken to

'have no religion whatever,' he was, according to Stephens, 'a great

stickler for the church of England': and stood up for the House of Lords

as well as the church on grounds of utility.[137] He always ridiculed

Paine and the doctrine of abstract rights,[138] and told Cartwright that

though all men had an equal right to a share of property, they had not a

right to an equal share. Horne Tooke's Radicalism (I use the word by

anticipation) was that of the sturdy tradesman. He opposed the

government because he hated war, taxation and sinecures. He argued

against universal suffrage with equal pertinacity. A comfortable old

gentleman, with a good cellar of Madeira, and proud of his wall-fruit in

a well-tilled garden, had no desire to see George III. at the

guillotine, and still less to see a mob supreme in Lombard Street or

banknotes superseded by assignats. He might be jealous of the great

nobles, but he dreaded mob-rule. He could denounce abuses, but he could

not desire anarchy. He is said to have retorted upon some one who had

boasted that English courts of justice were open to all classes: 'So is

the London tavern--to all who can pay.'[139] That is in the spirit of

Bentham; and yet Bentham complains that Horne Tooke's disciple, Burdett,

believed in the common law, and revered the authority of Coke.[140] In

brief, the creed of Horne Tooke meant 'liberty' founded upon tradition.

I shall presently notice the consistency of this with what may be called

his philosophy. Meanwhile it was only natural that radicals of this

variety should retire from active politics, having sufficiently burnt

their fingers by flirtation with the more thoroughgoing party. How they

came to life again will appear hereafter. Horne Tooke himself took

warning from his narrow escape. He stayed quietly in his house at

Wimbledon.[141] There he divided his time between his books and his

garden, and received his friends to Sunday dinners. Bentham, Mackintosh,

Coleridge, and Godwin were among his visitors. Coleridge calls him a

'keen iron man,' and reports that he made a butt of Godwin as he had

done of Paine.[142] Porson and Boswell encountered him in drinking

matches and were both left under the table.[143] The house was thus a

small centre of intellectual life, though the symposia were not

altogether such as became philosophers. Horne Tooke was a keen and

shrewd disputant, well able to impress weaker natures. His neighbour,

Sir Francis Burdett, became his political disciple, and in later years

was accepted as the radical leader. Tooke died at Wimbledon 18th March

1812.

NOTES:

[126] _France_, p. 206 (20th July 1789).

[127] See the _Life of Horne Tooke_, by Alexander Stephens (2 vols. 8vo,

1813). John Horne added the name Tooke in 1782.

[128] _Parl. Hist._ xxxi. 751.

[129] The history of these societies may be found in the trials reported

in the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth volumes of

Cobbett's _State Trials_, and in the reports of the secret committees in

the thirty-first and thirty-fourth volumes of the _Parl. History_. There

are materials in Place's papers in the British Museum which have been

used in E. Smith's _English Jacobins_.

[130] _Parl. Hist._ xxix. 1300-1341.

[131] _Parl. Hist._ xxxiv. 574-655.

[132] Mr. Wallas's _Life of Place_, p. 25 _n._

[133] _State Trials_, xxiv. 575.

[134] _Ibid._ xxv. 330.

[135] _Ibid._ xxv. 390.

[136] Paul's _Godwin_, i. 147.

[137] Stephens, ii. 48, 477.

[138] _Ibid._ ii. 34-41, 323, 478-481.

[139] _Ibid._ ii. 483.

[140] Bentham's _Works_, x. 404.

[141] He was member for Old Sarum 1801-2; but his career ended by a

declaratory act disqualifying for a seat men who had received holy

orders.

[142] Bentham's _Works_, x. 404; _Life of Mackintosh_, i. 52; Paul's

_Godwin_, i. 71; Coleridge's _Table-Talk_, 8th May 1830 and 16th August

1833.

[143] Stephens, ii. 316, 334, 438.

VI. INDIVIDUALISM

The general tendencies which I have so far tried to indicate will have

to be frequently noticed in the course of the following pages. One

point may be emphasised before proceeding: a main characteristic of the

whole social and political order is what is now called its

'individualism.' That phrase is generally supposed to convey some

censure. It may connote, however, some of the most essential virtues

that a race can possess. Energy, self-reliance, and independence, a

strong conviction that a man's fate should depend upon his own character

and conduct, are qualities without which no nation can be great. They

are the conditions of its vital power. They were manifested in a high

degree by the Englishmen of the eighteenth century. How far they were

due to the inherited qualities of the race, to the political or social

history, or to external circumstances, I need not ask. They were the

qualities which had especially impressed foreign observers. The fierce,

proud, intractable Briton was elbowing his way to a high place in the

world, and showing a vigour not always amiable, but destined to bring

him successfully through tremendous struggles. In the earlier part of

the century, Voltaire and French philosophers admired English freedom of

thought and free speech, even when it led to eccentricity and brutality

of manners, and to barbarism in matters of taste. Englishmen, conscious

and proud of their 'liberty,' were the models of all who desired liberty

for themselves. Liberty, as they understood it, involved, among other

things, an assault upon the old restrictive system, which at every turn

hampered the rising industrial energy. This is the sense in which

'Individualism,' or the gospel according to Adam Smith--_laissez faire_,

and so forth--has been specially denounced in recent times. Without

asking at present how far such attacks are justifiable, I must be

content to assume that the old restrictive system was in its actual form

mischievous, guided by entirely false theories, and the great barrier to

the development of industry. The same spirit appeared in purely

political questions. 'Liberty,' as is often remarked, may be interpreted

in two ways; not necessarily consistent with each other. It means

sometimes simply the diminution of the sphere of law and the power of

legislators, or, again, the transference to subjects of the power of

legislating, and, therefore, not less control, but control by self-made

laws alone. The Englishman, who was in presence of no centralised

administrative power, who regarded the Government rather as receiving

power from individuals than as delegating the power of a central body,

took liberty mainly in the sense of restricting law. Government in

general was a nuisance, though a necessity; and properly employed only

in mediating between conflicting interests, and restraining the violence

of individuals forced into contact by outward circumstances. When he

demanded that a greater share of influence should be given to the

people, he always took for granted that their power would be used to

diminish the activity of the sovereign power; that there would be less

government and therefore less jobbery, less interference with free

speech and free action, and smaller perquisites to be bestowed in return

for the necessary services. The people would use their authority to tie

the hands of the rulers, and limit them strictly to their proper and

narrow functions.

The absence, again, of the idea of a state in any other sense implies

another tendency. The 'idea' was not required. Englishmen were concerned

rather with details than with first principles. Satisfied, in a general

way, with their constitution, they did not want to be bothered with

theories. Abstract and absolute doctrines of right, when imported from

France, fell flat upon the average Englishman. He was eager enough to

discuss the utility of this or that part of the machinery, but without

inquiring into first principles of mechanism. The argument from

'utility' deals with concrete facts, and presupposes an acceptance of

some common criterion of the useful. The constant discussion of

political matters in parliament and the press implied a tacit acceptance

on all hands of constitutional methods. Practical men, asking whether

this or that policy shall be adopted in view of actual events, no more

want to go back to right reason and 'laws of nature' than a surveyor to

investigate the nature of geometrical demonstration. Very important

questions were raised as to the rights of the press, for example, or the

system of representation. But everybody agreed that the representative

system and freedom of speech were good things; and argued the immediate

questions of fact. The order, only established by experience and

tradition, was accepted, subject to criticism of detail, and men turned

impatiently from abstract argument, and left the inquiry into 'social

contracts' to philosophers, that is, to silly people in libraries.

Politics were properly a matter of business, to be discussed in a

business-like spirit. In this sense, 'individualism' is congenial to

'empiricism,' because it starts from facts and particular interests, and

resents the intrusion of first principles.

The characteristic individualism, again, suggests one other remark.

Individual energy and sense of responsibility are good--as even extreme

socialists may admit--if they do not exclude a sense of duties to

others. It may be a question how far the stimulation of individual

enterprise and the vigorous spirit of industrial competition really led

to a disregard of the interests of the weaker. But it would be a

complete misunderstanding of the time if we inferred that it meant a

decline of humane feeling. Undoubtedly great evils had grown up, and

some continued to grow which were tolerated by the indifference, or even

stimulated by the selfish aims, of the dominant classes. But, in the

first place, many of the most active prophets of the individualist

spirit were acting, and acting sincerely, in the name of humanity. They

were attacking a system which they held, and to a great extent, I

believe, held rightly, to be especially injurious to the weakest

classes. Possibly they expected too much from the simple removal of

restrictions; but certainly they denounced the restrictions as unjust to

all, not simply as hindrances to the wealth of the rich. Adam Smith's

position is intelligible: it was, he thought, a proof of a providential

order that each man, by helping himself, unintentionally helped his

neighbours. The moral sense based upon sympathy was therefore not

opposed to, but justified, the economic principles that each man should

first attend to his own interest. The unintentional co-operation would

thus become conscious and compatible with the established order. And, in

the next place, so far from there being a want of humane feeling, the

most marked characteristic of the eighteenth century was precisely the

growth of humanity. In the next generation, the eighteenth century came

to be denounced as cold, heartless, faithless, and so forth. The

established mode of writing history is partly responsible for this

perversion. Men speak as though some great man, who first called

attention to an evil, was a supernatural being who had suddenly dropped

into the world from another sphere. His condemnation of evil is

therefore taken to be a proof that the time must be evil. Any century is

bad if we assume all the good men to be exceptions. But the great man is

really also the product of his time. He is the mouthpiece of its

prevailing sentiments, and only the first to see clearly what many are

beginning to perceive obscurely. The emergence of the prophet is a proof

of the growing demand of his hearers for sound teaching. Because he is

in advance of men generally, he sees existing abuses more clearly, and

we take his evidence against his contemporaries as conclusive. But the

fact that they listened shows how widely the same sensibility to evil

was already diffused. In fact, as I think, the humane spirit of the

eighteenth century, due to the vast variety of causes which we call

social progress or evolution--not to the teaching of any individual--was

permeating the whole civilised world, and showed itself in the

philosophic movement as well as in the teaching of the religious

leaders, who took the philosophers to be their enemies. I have briefly

noticed the various philanthropic movements which were characteristic of

the period. Some of them may indicate the growth of new evils; others,

that evils which had once been regarded with indifference were now

attracting attention and exciting indignation. But even the growth of

new evils does not show general indifference so much as the incapacity

of the existing system to deal with new conditions. It may, I think, be

safely said that a growing philanthropy was characteristic of the whole

period, and in particular animated the Utilitarian movement, as I shall

have to show in detail. Modern writers have often spoken of the Wesleyan

propaganda and the contemporary 'evangelical revival' as the most

important movements of the time. They are apt to speak, in conformity

with the view just described, as though Wesley or some of his

contemporaries had originated or created the better spirit. Without

asking what was good or bad in some aspects of these movements, I fully

believe that Wesley was essentially a moral reformer, and that he

deserves corresponding respect. But instead of holding that his

contemporaries were bad people, awakened by a stimulus from without, I

hold that the movement, so far as really indicating moral improvement,

must be set down to the credit of the century itself. It was one

manifestation of a general progress, of which Bentham was another

outcome. Though Bentham might have thought Wesley a fanatic or perhaps a

hypocrite, and Wesley would certainly have considered that Bentham's

heart was much in need of a change, they were really allies as much as

antagonists, and both mark a great and beneficial change.