THE BEGINNING OF THE GLADSTONE PERIOD
The Palmerston era was now at an end, and that of Gladstone was beginning.
The first had been a period of domestic indifference and external
agitation. Energy at home and restraint abroad were the marks of the first
Liberal Ministry. The dominating force in practical politics was a man who
derived his principles from a mixture of sound stocks. A temperate foreign
policy, a rigorous economy in expenditure, and a dislike of commercial
interference and restriction he had inherited from Sir Robert Peel.
Beginning his career as a strong Churchman, he had gradually acquired the
old Whig liberality in religious matters. "I think it," he wrote in 1865,
"a most formidable responsibility in these times to doubt any man's
character on account of his opinions. The limit of possible variation
between character and opinion, ay, between character and belief, is
widening, and will widen."[280] To belief in popular government he seems to
have approached of his own nature, and he shared with Bright the honours of
leadership in the new agitation for Reform. His party was compounded in
much the same way of the different schools, old Whig doctrines of freedom
of opinion, Palmerston's enthusiasm for nationalities, and the Manchester
School's dislike of foreign affairs and preference for domestic interests
combining in a general theory of individual and national liberty, which for
the first time approached complete Liberalism. In two directions {231} the
policy of the new school of thought showed a distinct advance upon any of
its predecessors. Its conception of freedom was less pedantic than that of
Benthamites or Manchester men, and it was not afraid to imitate the methods
of State interference which Tory philanthropy alone had previously ventured
to employ. This new spirit combined with the regard for nationalities to
produce an entirely novel policy in Ireland, where peculiar diseases were
at last met with peculiar remedies.
The policy of economic reconstruction, which was first seriously undertaken
by the Liberal Ministry of 1868, was undertaken largely in response to
pressure from a new section of society. The Reform Act of 1832 had
enfranchised the L10 householder. The Representation of the People Act of
1867 enfranchised every town-dweller who paid rates. The first gave power
to the middle class. The second gave power to the working class. The
artisans, whose political agitation had died out in the Chartist movement
of 1848, had devoted their energies since that date to the development of
their industrial organizations. In 1863 Holyoake started an "Association
for the Promotion of Co-operation," and in 1869 the Co-operative Societies
had a total capital of L2,000,000, and an annual trade of L8,000,000. A
similar growth had taken place in the case of Trade Unions. Between 1855
and 1865 the numbers of Trade Unionists seem to have been more than
doubled, and Unions which in 1870 contained 142,000 members, had 266,000 in
1875.[281] This form of organization was even more directly political than
co-operation in the manufacture or supply of goods. It was frequently
brought into conflict with legal theories about conspiracy, restraint of
trade, intimidation, and breach of contract; and the necessity of amending
the existing law was apparent.
This growth of organizations had produced a great increase of intelligence
and influence among the better sort of working men. In thus managing
affairs on a large scale, they had developed a capacity for political
control which was very different from the vaguer discontent of an earlier
generation. They were now {232} organized and disciplined, and their demand
for enfranchisement could no longer be ignored or despised. The American
Civil War had aroused their interest in politics, and the fortitude with
which some of them had borne the sufferings of the time had done much to
disarm opposition. Bright's agitation at last found a response, and in 1866
the Whig Government introduced a Reform Bill. The Ministry, deprived of
Palmerston, collapsed before the Bill could be carried, and by a cynical
sacrifice of the very Tory principles which had defeated the Whig Bill, the
Tory Ministry of Lord Derby and Disraeli passed the Bill of 1867 into law.
With the Tory leader himself supporting the Bill, the voice of Toryism was
not loudly raised against it. Lord Robert Cecil, who soon afterwards became
Lord Salisbury, was the most bitter of the independent men behind Disraeli,
and he was rivalled, if not surpassed, by the Radical Robert Lowe. Party
discipline kept most of the Tories quiet, and there was no general
opposition on the other side. Disraeli cared little for his own Bill,
except as a means of "dishing the Whigs," and Gladstone and Bright were the
real champions of the measure, in and out of Parliament. "The working men,"
said the latter, "in thinking over this question, feel they are distrusted,
that they are marked as inferiors, that they are a sort of pariahs."[282]
The former roused the contempt of Lord Cranborne by describing the workmen
as "our own flesh and blood." The issue, in short, was simply that of all
disputes about the franchise. Was the governing class for the time being to
admit that the other was capable of managing its own affairs, or was it to
declare that there was some essential difference between them which made
its own ascendancy necessary? Disraeli was not, in these matters, a Tory,
and with Liberal support he carried his Bill. It was a job, without any
genuine enthusiasm to inspire it, but it had its Liberal effect. The
artisans obtained fuller control over their own lives, and the Liberal
Government which they set up in 1868 expressed for the first time the
wishes of their class in legislation.
{233}
It is necessary at this point to refer to two forces which were acting upon
the political machine. The first, Socialism, was a diffused influence,
operating among the working classes. The other, the teaching of John Stuart
Mill, was a definite intellectual impulse, which worked directly upon the
minds of men of education. Socialism has never been accepted as a creed by
the majority of British working men, and its hard, logical reasoning will
probably always prove as alien to them as Philosophic Radicalism was to the
middle class. It had been expressed for a short time in the co-operative
experiment of Robert Owen, and it came into prominence at the time of the
French Revolution of 1830. But its direct proclamation that the system of
private capital meant the abuse of wage-earners, and that it was only where
the whole people owned and controlled the means of production,
distribution, and exchange that the poorer section could get economic
security, was never popular. The Chartist movement had a purely political
programme of annual Parliaments, payment of members, the ballot, and other
constitutional reforms. Practical Socialism, the direct interference of the
State in order to improve economic conditions, was concentrated after the
Reform Act of 1832 in the Tory philanthropists. Lord Shaftesbury hated
Socialism as a creed. But in opposing a Secular Education Bill of 1850 he
used the very arguments by which Socialists justified their demand for the
nationalization of capital: "The honourable and learned member seemed to
think that crime was to be traced in almost all instances to want of
education; no doubt that was in many cases a source of crime, but it was
not the only, nor the chief source. Want of employment was the source of a
vast proportion of crime. The condition in which the people lived, the
influences to which they were subjected, the sunken and immoral state of a
vast number of parents, rendered it next to impossible to produce any
permanent improvement in many brought into our schools; and so long as you
should leave the condition of your great towns, in all their sanitary,
social, and domestic arrangements, such as at present, a large proportion
of your efforts would be vain, {234} and the education you could give
nearly fruitless."[283] This was not Socialism. But it was the recognition
of the fact that the individual would have no chance of honest growth
unless society co-operated to improve the conditions in which he lived.
The general attitude of legislators towards the spirit of Socialism was
very different. The Tories were largely moved to oppose it by its alliance
with free thought. In 1833 the Bishop of Exeter formally moved that the
Government should take steps to suppress it. The Bishop of London said that
"The Government, as a Christian Government, were called upon in the
exercise of their parental functions to interpose a shield between these
pernicious doctrines and the minds of those who were more than the rest of
society liable to the dominion of passion."[284] Wellington gravely
referred to the "atrocious character" of the Socialist Associations, which
decoyed the people away from church by inviting them to Sunday dances. The
Whig Ministry then declined to interfere with the propagation of any
opinions, however obnoxious. But their intellectual hostility was as marked
as that of Wellington himself. In 1852, after the French Revolution of
1848, with its disastrous attempt to provide work for all at the expense of
the State, had brought the new doctrines again into prominence, Macaulay
declined with great vigour to have anything to do with "Fourierism, or St.
Simonianism, or Socialism, or any of those other 'isms,' for which the
plain English word is 'robbery.'"[285] Whigs and Tories, whatever their
opinions about free thought, were at least united in their determination to
brook no interference with private property.
The real English Socialism was of a more practical kind than the
doctrinaire Socialism of Continental thinkers like Lassalle and Marx. The
chief spokesman was Thomas Carlyle, who was a philosopher rather than a
politician, and rather created a {235} new spirit in men than contrived for
them any practical expedients. He never concealed his contempt for the
ordinary politician, and had more in common with a Tory like Shaftesbury
than with Whigs, Radicals, or political workmen.
The Whigs were "the grand dilettanti" or "lukewarm, withered mongrels." The
Radicals were "ballot-boxing on the graves of heroic ancestors." The mass
of the people were "the rotten multitudinous canaille," and manhood
suffrage was as reasonable as "horsehood and doghood suffrage." The world
could only be saved by the hero, and the best thing mankind could do was to
entrust itself to the unfettered genius of its great men. All this, and
much more wild abuse sprang from Carlyle's violent indignation against
individualism. He had no respect either for the aristocratic neglect of the
Whigs or for the philosophical basis of the school of _laissez faire_. For
the conception of society as a collection of competing individuals,
protected in their competition by the State, he endeavoured to substitute a
conception of society as a mass of mutually dependent individuals, united
by "organic filaments," the weaker aided and protected by the State against
the competition of the stronger, and the whole rising and falling,
advancing and retreating together. "Call that yet a society," he exclaimed,
"where there is no longer any social idea extant; not so much as the idea
of a Common Home, but only of a common overcrowded Lodging House? Where
each isolated, regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neighbour,
clutches what he can get, and cries 'Mine,' and calls it Peace, because in
the cut-purse and cut-throat scramble no steel knives but only a far
cunninger sort can be employed."[286] This is not scientific Socialism,
with its logical formulae, the evolution of economic structures, the
ultimate nationalization of all the means of production, distribution and
exchange, and the rest. But it is a passionate appeal, in the very spirit
of Socialism, to the sense of brotherhood, to the feeling that every man
has as much right as every other not to be left behind in the race of
industrial {236} competition, and that the State, the organization of
Society for common purposes, should not be confined merely to negative
functions, but should be made the active and positive instrument of the
improvement of human life.
Carlyle presented a curious contrast of the aristocrat and the democrat.
His feeling was all for the people. But it was to be carried into practical
effect by despotic or oligarchic methods. No man ever saw more clearly the
miseries of poverty, or felt more acutely the degradation of worth by
external circumstances. "Through every living soul the glory of a present
God still beams." But he was convinced that misery could not be entrusted
with the instruments of its own relief. The two habits of mind, the
sympathetic and the disposing, were in him united. His contempt for
political democracy was bound up with his zeal for social democracy, his
recognition of the equal worth of all with his determination not to give
them equal power. The generation in which he wrote based all its hopes upon
politics. Political reform was everything. Once enfranchised, the
population would be able to protect itself against aggression, and its
distress would come automatically to an end. Carlyle saw, what the Whigs,
the Radicals, and the Manchester men could not or would not see, that this
negative operation of the vote, this power of defence against interference
by others, was of little use for his immediate purpose, the economic
reconstruction of society, and he declared in his haste that it was of no
use. Political reform did not go deep enough, and Carlyle drove violently
into the camp of opposition. There was no hope except in the hero, the man
of extraordinary understanding and strength, who could both detect the
causes of human suffering and compel society to abate them.
It was this emotional appeal of Carlyle which made him such a powerful
force among thoughtful men and women, and especially among those whom
experience had made acquainted with the worst effects of the industrial
revolution. His hero-worship gave no little encouragement to the more
brutal sort of Toryism, and there are still many English people who believe
{237} that the history of a nation is only the biography of its great men.
But his insistence upon the direct responsibility of the social
organization for the happiness of every one within it was in the line of a
reaction against crude individualism, which by 1850 was strongly marked
outside Tory philanthropy. Mrs. Gaskell's _Mary Barton_, a novel which
dealt sympathetically with industrial unrest, was published in 1848.
Harriet Martineau, identified with Whiggery and the Manchester School,
wrote in 1849 of the state of the wage-earners: "A social idea or system
which compels such a state of things as this must be, in so far, worn out.
In ours, it is clear that some renovation is wanted, and must be
found."[287] In 1850 the Christian Socialist movement in the Church of
England produced the _Tracts on Christian Socialism_ and Charles Kingsley's
novel _Alton Locke_. Dickens published his _Hard Times_ in 1854, and
constantly attacked the system of _laissez faire_ in the columns of
_Household Words_. Ruskin, with less political instinct, pleaded as
passionately for beauty in common life as for ethical principles in art,
and, like his master Carlyle, clothed his economic sermons in a style which
put the cold reasoning of individualism to shame. Even Disraeli, who
combined unusual moral levity with an unusual capacity for discovering the
set of social currents, gave utterance to similar opinions in _Sybil_ and
other novels. By the time that the working men were enfranchised in 1867,
the Parliamentary work of Lord Shaftesbury was being accompanied by a
general movement in society. Negative Liberalism, the removal of
restrictions upon the individual, had obviously produced little direct good
among the poorer people. It was time that humane and generous impulses in
the direction of positive assistance had their way. The difference between
the new Liberalism and the old was the difference between emancipation and
toleration, between leaving alone and setting free.
The influence of John Stuart Mill was not so much in the direction of
definite changes in society as in the direction of {238} an alteration of
mental processes by which such changes became possible. Liberal thinkers
like Paine and Bentham had assailed the human mind from without, clamouring
about its gates with completely fashioned ideas, which they endeavoured to
thrust into it by a sort of intellectual assault. They had no doubts of
their own rightness or of the duty of others to agree with them. Mill,
chiefly through his acquaintance with the evolutionary ideas of Comte, was
of a more tolerant disposition, and preferred to adopt the method of
getting to understand how his adversary's error had arisen, and of
persuading him, as it were, to retrace his steps, and by choosing another
road, arrive at a sounder conclusion. His book on Logic was an attempt to
alter the prevailing system of intuitional philosophy, by which he believed
that prejudices and the dictates of interest were assumed to be absolute
truths, and to substitute for it a system in which every idea might be
thoroughly examined and tested before it was adopted. In other words, he
proposed to do with the conceptions of philosophy what Bentham proposed to
do with institutions, to accept none, except on their merits. He thus hoped
to produce, not definitely new ideas, but a condition of mind to which new
ideas would not be repugnant. This method of undermining his adversary's
position was his method in politics as in general philosophy.
Mill was the son of a Utilitarian, and was himself a disciple of Bentham.
But he never accepted the Benthamite theory without qualification. He knew
that men were actuated by other motives, good and bad, than self-interest.
He did not believe that by setting all men free to pursue their own
interest the majority would achieve happiness. He did not believe that it
was enough in politics to enfranchise every person of twenty-one years of
age, or that a democracy might not be guilty of as abominable tyranny as a
despot or an oligarchy. He held most of the Benthamite principles, as
forming the best working philosophy, but he never supposed that they would
not require safeguards against abuse, or would inevitably produce the
desired result. Bentham said, "This individual is actuated by this {239}
motive; apply this remedy to his condition, and he will develop himself to
this point." Mill said, "This individual seems to be actuated by various
motives, of which this seems to be the most important, his history and the
experience of other individuals suggests that if this remedy is applied to
his condition he will tend to develop himself to this point. I will
therefore make the experiment." Bentham was always confident and dogmatic.
Mill was never more than patient and hopeful.
Mill in effect combined the qualities of the historical and the critical
schools of thought. His was not the vigorous hammering method of previous
Liberals, but a cold, illuminating, and suggestive examination, which gave
full credit to the existing institution, even while it displayed its
defects. He asked, "How has it grown?" as earnestly as "How does it work?"
and he lamented the indifference of his predecessors to history. "No one
can calculate what struggles, which the cause of improvement has yet to
undergo, might have been spared if the philosophers of the eighteenth
century had done anything like justice to the past."[288] Every institution
is to be studied historically, though it must be justified empirically. If
it is bad in use, it must be reformed or abolished, but the change must be
made along the line of past growth. What he said of the position of women
he applied to every other problem. "The least that can be demanded is, that
the question should not be considered as prejudged by existing fact and
existing opinion, but open to discussion on its merits, as a question of
justice and expediency; the decision on this, as on any of the other social
arrangements of mankind, depending on what an enlightened estimate of
tendencies and consequences may show to be most advantageous to humanity in
general.... Through all the progressive period of human history, the
condition of women has been approaching nearer to equality with men. This
does not of itself prove that the assimilation must go on to complete
equality, but it assuredly affords some presumption that such is the
case."[289] This double view, combining the Radical view of Bentham with
the historical {240} view of Burke, enabled Mill to see his subject, as it
were, stereoscopically and in true relation with its surroundings. He was
not influenced by Darwin's theory of evolution. But his own work produced a
very similar effect. It made men accustomed to the idea of continuous
alteration, of future as well as past growth.
Mill was thus the most prominent thinker of a time in which old systems of
thought were being undermined. Natural science and the higher criticism
were breaking up the foundations of authority in religion, and Mill's
general method of dealing with habits of thought, no less than the direct
plea for free thinking and free speaking contained in his treatise on
_Liberty_, gave a wider scope to honest scepticism. He expressed approval
of some of the new Socialistic projects. He was in favour of compulsory
education, of the regulation of hours of labour, of Trade Unionism and
co-operation, and he looked forward to a time "when the division of the
produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now
does, on the accident of birth, will be made in concert on an acknowledged
principle of justice." The social problem of the future, he said, would be
"how to unite the greatest individual liberty of action with a common
ownership of the new material of the globe, and an equal participation of
all in the benefits of combined labour."[290] His most original
contribution to politics was his appeal for absolute equality of freedom
for men and women, which was the first effective attempt to remove the
class brand from women, and to abolish the aristocracy of sex. But his most
valuable work, as has already been suggested, was not so much to sow new
political ideas in the minds of his followers as to plough them for the
reception of such ideas. He did not so much start them along new paths as
set them to inquire whether they were right in remaining in the old, and
whether there was any real danger in leaving them. As solvents of
prejudice, Mill's works have not been surpassed by any. He promoted, not
change, but the readiness to change; not Liberal measures, but {241}
Liberal-mindedness. Thus persuaded to refrain from hasty judgments upon
opinions, and to accept every new idea upon its merits, the rising
generation applied itself to the working of the improved political machine.
The Liberalism of the Government which was in power from 1868 to 1874 was
displayed in the further application of old principles, no less than in the
adoption of principles which were new. Religious equality was expressed in
their Irish policy and in their treatment of education. Reforms in the
Civil Service and the Army abolished more class distinctions in the public
service. The new School Boards were another example of popular control of
Government. Acts dealing with Trade Unions and the ownership of Irish land
expressed the new theory of State interference with individual liberty, and
Acts referring to women marked a great appreciation of them in comparison
with men.
One old principle was the basis of the Ballot Act of 1872. This gave to
dependent persons the power of voting freely in the choice of their
representatives, without fear of landlords, employers, or customers. The
project was as old as the agitation for manhood suffrage, and was first
suggested in the days of Wilkes and the Society of the Friends of the Bill
of Rights. Other impediments to individual freedom were removed in 1870,
when all posts in the Civil Service, outside the Foreign Office, were
opened to competitive examination; and in 1871, when the system of
purchasing commissions in the Army was abolished. Two preserves of
aristocracy and wealth were thus thrown open to the people at large. Direct
aid was given to the poorer classes by the establishment of a national
system of education in 1870. This had been first suggested by Whitbread,
and gained the support of Bentham, the Whigs, and the Manchester School.
Tories like Lord Shaftesbury had been in favour of it so long as nothing
was done to limit the privileges of the Church, and there had been no
reason, other than indifference, why the parsimonious grants out of the
Exchequer should not {242} have been increased long before. By this time
the neglect of the poorer children and the complete failure of private
enterprise had become conspicuous. Two million children received no
education at all, one million received an education which was inadequate,
and only one million three hundred thousand were educated in schools aided
and inspected by the State.[291] The system was now made general, and the
local control was placed in the hands of School Boards, elected by the
ratepayers, and empowered to provide for the expenses of their districts by
levying a rate.
The old Liberal principle of equality between sects, implied in the Irish
Church Act, was expressed more simply in an Act of 1871, which abolished
all theological tests for professors, fellows, tutors, and scholars of
Oxford and Cambridge, except in the Theological Faculties. The exception
was a characteristic revelation of Mr. Gladstone's influence. If absolute
freedom of religious thinking is required more in one place than in
another, it is in a school of divinity. But the Churchman was still
involved in the Liberal Prime Minister, and the theological honours and
offices were left to the dominant creed. The exception was not of much
general importance, and the Act removed the principal disabilities which
had fettered the mind of the Universities no less than they had hindered
the education of Nonconformists. This Act was passed with little
opposition, even from the Lords. The great conflict of religious principle
took place over the Education Act, which, like most of its predecessors and
successors, might have been more aptly styled the "Religious Difficulty in
Schools Act." The problem was not educational at all. A substantial
majority of all parties would have agreed upon a scheme of national secular
education in a few hours. But the course of events had determined that the
children's minds should appear less important to Parliament than their
souls.
A logical Liberal, faced with the task of establishing a national system of
education, could take only the course which was {243} advocated by the
Birmingham League. That was to make education free, compulsory, and
secular. No one should pay for education except as a taxpayer, all should
be compelled to send their children to school, and no form of religious
opinion should be taught. This would have secured all the benefits of
secular learning and discipline, without compelling the member of one sect
to contribute to the propagation of the opinions of another, and without
compelling a child to be instructed in opinions which were obnoxious to its
parents. But it was impossible for logic to have its way. Schools had been
established in some districts for many years. The majority taught the
doctrines of the Establishment. Others were Wesleyan, others Unitarian,
others Catholic, others Jewish. Most of these had already enjoyed State
aid, though they had been built by voluntary subscription. It was
impossible to ignore their existence. It was impossible also to ignore the
fact that the majority of the English people, in a rough and ready way,
desired that some sort of religion should be taught in the schools. There
was no way out except in a compromise, and the difficulty thus acknowledged
has never yet been removed. State aid was given to sectarian schools as
well as Board Schools, and by the since famous Cowper Temple clause it was
provided that no distinctive religious formulary should be taught in a
Board School. This was not pure Liberalism. Nonconformists might object, as
they had always objected, to paying for the propagation of obnoxious
dogmas. Churchmen and Catholics might object, with equal reason, to paying
for the propagation of opinions which were obnoxious because they contained
no dogmas at all. Between the devil of dogma and the deep sea of
Nonconformity no English Government has yet found a way. But the sects have
had to live together in the country, and the compromise of 1870, though it
settled nothing, was as good an arrangement as could have been made at the
time.
The Education Act was an obvious interference of Government with absolute
liberty, and the argument that this measure {244} of control was only
undertaken in order to equip the individual for the better enjoyment of
liberty was an argument which would have applied to Socialism itself. But
this Act was only a continuation of previous policy. The Trades Union Act
of 1871 was a contrivance of an entirely new sort, and the support given to
it by the Liberal Ministry meant a great change. Previous legislation had
marked an alteration in the attitude of the State towards combinations of
workmen, and the Act of 1871 carried the change a degree farther. The Acts
of 1799 and 1800 had prohibited Trade Unions. The Acts of 1824 and 1825 had
permitted them. The Act of 1871 protected them and gave them special
privileges. This was the direct consequence of pressure by organized
workmen, assisted by members of the middle class like Thomas Hughes and
Frederic Harrison. Decisions of the judges had tended to cripple labour
organizations by declaring strikes to be intimidation, and peaceful
picketing a nuisance, and by holding that workmen acting in combination
might be guilty of the crime of conspiracy, even though they did nothing
which would have been a crime in the case of a single person. One decision
had declared that a Trade Union, being an association in restraint of
trade, was illegal, and that an official who embezzled its funds could not
be sued by the Society.
These judicial attacks were only part of a campaign which was now being
waged against the whole system of Trade Unionism. The workmen were
beginning to make their strength felt, and the old legal dislike of
interference with liberty joined with the less disinterested objections of
employers to anything which interfered with their power to do as they liked
with their capital and their labourers. Some serious outrages, committed by
the smaller organizations of a few towns like Sheffield and Manchester,
gave colour to the general indictment of combinations of this sort. As a
matter of fact nothing stood between the most moral and responsible workmen
and exploitation by the worse sort of masters but his Trade Union. Absolute
freedom to sell his labour as he pleased meant for the ordinary workman
absolute freedom to be abused by an economic superior. The Trade {245}
Union was the workman's only means of obtaining security of life. "Any one
who regards it as a simple instrument to raise wages," wrote Mr. Frederic
Harrison, "is, as Adam Smith says, 'as ignorant of the subject as of human
nature.' Unionism, above all, aims at making regular, even, and safe the
workman's life. No one who had not specially studied it would conceive the
vast array of grievances against which Unionism and strikes are directed.
If we looked only to that side of the question, we should come to fancy
that from the whole field of labour there went up one universal protest
against injustice. There is a 'miserable monotony' of wrong and suffering
in it. Excessive labour, irregular labour, spasmodic overwork, spasmodic
locking-out, 'overtime,' 'short time,' double time, night work, Sunday
work, truck in every form, overlookers' extortion, payment in kind, wages
reduced by drawbacks, 'long pays,' or wages held back, fines,
confiscations, rent and implements irregularly stopped out of wages,
evictions from tenements, 'black lists' of men, short weights, false
reckoning, forfeits, children's labour, women's labour, unhealthy labour,
deadly factories and processes, unguarded machinery, defective machinery,
preventable accidents, recklessness from desire to save,--in countless ways
we find a waste of human life, health, well-being, and power, which are not
represented in the ledgers or allowed for in bargains."[292] In other
words, the law, by a pedantic application of rules of abstract liberty, was
depriving workmen of real liberty. Liberty of contract did not mean liberty
of life, and it was only by sacrificing individual freedom to the common
good in organization that real freedom was to be secured.
The Act of 1871 partly remedied the evil. Trade Unions, if there were
nothing criminal in their expressed objects, were allowed to be registered,
and could then enjoy the rights over their funds which were possessed by
Friendly Societies. But they were given absolute freedom in their internal
organization, and no action at law could be brought against them. These
changes in {246} the law were unfortunately almost nullified by a Criminal
Law Amendment Act which practically gave statutory force to many of the
recent legal decisions. Strikes were made legal, but everything done in
pursuance of a strike was illegal, and working men and women were
frequently imprisoned after 1871 for the most trivial acts, even while the
serious boycotting of workpeople by employers was freely permitted. It is a
great blot on the reputation of the Government, still dominated by the
middle class and its dislike of combination, that it refused to complete
the work which it had begun, and to enable Trade Unions not only to exist,
but to work. At the General Election of 1874 two workmen, Alexander
Macdonald and Thomas Burt, were actually elected to the House of Commons,
and the roused feeling of the Unionists gained its object. The Conservative
Home Secretary repealed the disabling Act, peaceful picketing was
legalized, and workmen in combination were no longer punishable except for
acts which were criminal if committed by single individuals. The strength
gained by the Unions in this brief campaign finally established them in the
industrial and political life of the country. The political reforms did not
directly improve the condition of the working classes. But many, if not
all, the improvements which subsequently took place, were only possible in
the state of real freedom which the Acts of 1871 and 1874 had established.
One attempt to interfere with the absolute liberty of the individual
failed. This was the Licensing Bill of 1871, which proposed to reduce the
number of public-houses in the country. The departure from the old line was
very marked. There had never been absolute freedom of trade in strong
drink. From the earliest years alehouses had been licensed and supervised
by magistrates. But their numbers in all parts of the country were more
than was required for any reasonable consumption by the population. In
Liverpool a disastrous experiment had been tried. Licences had been granted
to every person of good character who chose to apply, on the assumption
that unrestricted competition would lead to good management and the
extinction of the worst class of house by competition. A principle which
was abundantly {247} successful in the cotton industry proved a helpless
failure in the drink trade. There was no unhealthy demand for cotton goods.
It did not depend on a natural instinct which might be increased by supply
beyond the needs of health. To multiply drink-shops was to multiply, for
many of the people who dealt with them, the temptations to demoralizing
excess of consumption. The Liverpool experiment showed the folly of
_laissez faire_ in a matter of this sort. The Licensing Bill of 1871
expressed the opposite policy. It proposed to reduce the number of houses
in each district to that which the justices thought was enough for its
legitimate needs. The licences, though generally renewed, were granted for
one year only. For ten years they were to be continued, subject to a small
annual payment by the licensees. After the expiration of that period the
justices were to fix the number for the district, and, in virtue of the
artificial monopoly which the licences conferred, were to distribute them
among such respectable persons as offered the highest prices. These
proposals were as vigorous an interference with individual liberty as was
consistent with existing rights. The holders of licences had no legal right
to more than a year's profits from their licences. Custom had given them an
expectancy of indefinite length. The public interest required that their
numbers should be reduced. Reduction was therefore proposed, but after a
substantial delay. The scheme was just in principle and generous in
practice. But the extreme advocates of temperance legislation objected to
its generosity, and the brewers and licensed victuallers objected to its
justice. The Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce, was not strong enough to carry it.
It was abandoned soon after its introduction, and a priceless opportunity
of at once improving the conditions of town life and of subduing a powerful
trade interest to the public was lost for ever.
The most difficult of the Ministry's problems was the Irish problem, and
the most novel of its proposals were its Irish proposals. Judged by the
degree of their success, these measures were perhaps not very important. At
least, they did not settle the affairs of Ireland. But their spirit was of
the greatest possible {248} significance. This Liberal Government was the
first English Government which ever set itself to legislate for Ireland
according to Irish ideas, to recognize the essential differences between
the two countries, to establish in Ireland what it would not maintain in
England, and to destroy in Ireland those English institutions which had
been erected by the egoism of its predecessors. The existing system was
recognized as hopeless. In February, 1868, the Tory Government suspended
the Habeas Corpus Act for the fourth time in two years. Fenianism was
checked, but the disease of which it was a symptom was not cured. The
Liberals endeavoured to go to the root of the matter. The maintenance of
order was only a condition of further action, and the only possible further
action was the redress of grievances.
The case of Ireland had for a long time caused anxiety to Liberal thinkers.
In 1835 Cobden had contrasted England's readiness to sympathize with Poland
and Greece with her complete indifference to the claims of Ireland. "Whilst
our diplomatists, fleets, and armies have been put in motion at enormous
cost, to carry our counsel, or, if needful, our arms, to the assistance of
the people of these remote regions, it is an unquestionable fact, that the
population of a great portion of our own Empire has, at the same time,
presented a grosser spectacle of moral and physical debasement than is to
be met with in the whole civilized world."[293] Disraeli in 1844 declared
that it was the duty of an English Minister "To effect by his policy all
those changes which a revolution would accomplish by force."[294] In 1847
Bright pointed to the root cause: "There is an unanimous admission now that
the misfortunes of Ireland are connected with the question of the
management of the land."[295] The rejection of Peel's Bill of 1845 has
already been noticed. The only measure passed for the relief of Irish
tenants since that date was the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849. This had
provided State assistance for the sale of hopelessly mortgaged estates. Its
chief result had been to substitute for a thriftless but easy-going gentry
{249} a company of grasping absentees, who rack-rented their tenants
without mercy, where their predecessors had at any rate let them alone. The
state of the Irish peasantry, even though the pressure of population had
been greatly reduced by famine and emigration, was substantially worse in
1868 than it had been in 1845. The violence of Fenianism, murder and armed
rescue at Manchester, and gunpowder plot at Clerkenwell, at last drew
attention to a state of affairs in which there was nothing new except the
degree of its badness.
Before the Liberals dealt with the land question, they turned their
attention to the other great Irish grievance, the establishment of an alien
Church. This was one of those matters of sentiment which, between
conquering and conquered peoples, produce the most deadly and incurable
animosities. The Irish Church had been established for the express purpose
of prosecuting the English cause. It embodied and symbolized the alien
domination. It perpetuated the memories of a thousand massacres and
confiscations. In the language of John Bright, it was "a garrison Church
... the effect has been to make Catholicism in Ireland not only a faith,
but absolutely a patriotism." Every clergyman "is necessarily in his
district a symbol of the supremacy of the few and of the subjection of the
many."[296] In its presence every Catholic Irishman felt himself a member
of a conquered race, and every economic grievance was exaggerated. To
invest the alien Church with the privileges of Establishment was to rub
salt into the wounds of Ireland.
The Tories resisted the Liberal Bill partly on proprietary grounds. They
treated a corporation, created for the propagation of certain opinions, a
task in which it had conspicuously failed, as if it were a private person,
and denounced disendowment as robbery. The Liberals contended that the
State had endowed the Church, and that on the failure of the Church to
provide for the spiritual needs of the Irish people, it was fair that the
State should resume part of the property and apply it for other purposes.
But the details of disendowment are hardly material. The {250} essence of
the Bill was that it tended to destroy the ascendancy of Protestantism as
against Catholicism, and of Englishmen as against Irishmen. Gathorne Hardy
put the Tory case on this point in one sentence. He said that he looked
upon the Church "as a part of the Imperial Government."[297] Sergeant Dowse
stated the Liberal case in reply. "The Irish people regarded that Church as
a great wrong and a standing memorial of conquest.... Nobody ever said the
measure would lead to social equality. But in future a Bishop or Dean would
no longer be preferred over a Bishop or Dean of the Catholic or minister of
the Presbyterian Church, and in that way, at least, an important removal of
social distinctions would be effected." He reminded his hearers that on the
anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne orange flags were hoisted on the
spires of State churches, and described them as "the badge of degradation
to the vast majority of the Irish people. Protestant ascendancy did exist,
as long as one Church was patronized and preferred above another Church
either of the whole or a portion of the people."[298] The Bill was carried
into law after a hard fight with the House of Lords. It did not entirely
destroy the insolence of Irish Protestants or allay all the discontents of
the peasantry. But it was an earnest of the disposition of an English
Government to legislate for the Irish people as they would have legislated
for themselves.
The sentimental grievance having been removed, the Liberals turned to the
practical grievance. The Irish Land Act of 1870 provided that the tenant
should receive compensation for his improvements, and unless the contrary
were proved, it was to be presumed that all improvements were his, and not
the landlord's. If a tenant were evicted, he was to be compensated for
disturbance, unless the eviction were for non-payment of rent, and even
then the court might hold that the exorbitant amount demanded, or other
circumstances, entitled him to special compensation. No tenant who paid
less than L50 a year could contract out of the Act. Two great principles
were expressed in this measure. The first was that of the Church Act, the
{251} Irish government of Ireland. The second was the new collectivism. The
Act not only alleviated the great hardship of the Irish tenants, it was a
direct interference by the State with the right of property and with
freedom of contract. The absolute owner of land was no longer allowed to
deal with it as he pleased without compensating those to whom he leased it,
and a poor tenant was expressly prevented from agreeing to his own injury.
Utilitarianism and _laissez faire_ had ceased to dominate the Liberal mind,
and liberty was deliberately restricted in one direction that it might
expand more readily in another. Where one party was rich and the other
poor, where one held land in his absolute disposition and the other could
not live without it, freedom of bargaining meant the lessening of liberty.
This principle, suggested in the Factory Acts, and first openly applied to
the problem of Irish land, is now the distinctive character of Liberal
domestic policy.
A phenomenon of this period as remarkable as the appearance of Socialistic
ideas is the direction of the attention of Parliament to the affairs of
women. One or two Acts had dealt with the condition of working women as
with that of working children, and they had been excluded altogether from
the brutalizing labour of mines. But the general status of the sex, as
compared with that of men, had remained unaltered since the accession of
George III. Beneath the surface of politics a substantial improvement had
taken place. The first condition of emancipation was that women themselves
should be enabled to demand it. The carefully fostered ignorance of the
eighteenth century was now being gradually reduced by improvements in
education. The vast majority of middle-class women still received a mental
training which was infinitely inferior to that of men. But a few schools,
of which those of Miss Buss in North London and Miss Dorothea Beale at
Cheltenham were the most conspicuous, had begun to substitute a scientific
training of the mind for the futile cultivation of graces and
accomplishments. Bedford College and Queen's College in London provided
{252} similar training for girls who had passed the school age, and in 1870
the first women's college at Cambridge was established by Anne Jemima
Clough. A few books had been published by women, who claimed the same
freedom of development for the individual woman as all Liberals required
for the individual man. The public distinctions of women like George Eliot,
the Brontes, Mary Somerville, Harriet Martineau, and Florence Nightingale
had accustomed society to the idea of vigorous female independence.
Elizabeth Blackwell and Elizabeth Garrett had already contrived to squeeze
themselves, in the face of every kind of opposition, into the medical
profession, and soon after the Liberal victory of 1868 Sophia Jex-Blake
began that extraordinary struggle at Edinburgh which at last ended in the
defeat of male jealousy and the admission of women to medical schools and
medical degrees. In all directions women of the middle class were beginning
to assert their right to develop their own faculties and to employ their
own powers according to their own ideas of what was right and fitting, and
not according to those of the dominant sex.
This movement among women was only part of the general movement towards
individual freedom from external control which is described in these pages.
The ruling sex was as little capable of understanding the part as the Tory
of the French Revolution had been of understanding the whole. But the real
Liberal had no difficulty in discovering and in comprehending the movement
of women, and the most conspicuous Liberal thinker of the time attacked
sexual Toryism as he attacked the Toryism of class or creed. Mill's
_Subjection of Women_, published in 1869, applied to the condition of women
precisely those arguments which, in other works, he applied to that of men.
The question must be studied with an open mind, and not subject to a priori
assumptions. Why should it be presumed that dependence and feebleness of
mind were natural to women? Why should it be presumed that it was natural
that men should regulate even the private lives of women? Why should it be
presumed that a woman was naturally incapable of managing her own affairs?
{253} These propositions, which had perhaps been true in a barbarous
society, could only be proved in a state of civilization by reason and
argument. Until women had had some opportunity of exerting their natural
powers in a state of independence, it was absurd to argue that those
natural powers were not equal to independence. An arbitrary standard,
convenient to the interest of the dominant sex, had been erected for women,
and they had been carefully trained up to it. Delicacy of mind and body,
diffidence and self-effacement, superficial and unscientific learning had
been required of them, and it was not surprising that they had very rarely
attained to anything stronger. It was absurd to argue that women were
naturally incapable of intellectual exertion, of professional skill, or of
taking part in public affairs, when the whole scheme of their education had
been contrived to make them so incapable. The supposed weaknesses are at
best exaggerated by education, and it was not improbable that they had been
created by it. When everything possible had been done by artificial means
to strengthen their minds and bodies, we might be able to form some
accurate judgment of what their powers were. In any case, we had no right
to enforce a general mode of life upon all women, irrespective of their
individual variations. We no longer branded men with class marks, and
reserved special occupations and dignities for special groups. Why should
we persist in maintaining the same system for women? If there was only one
woman in England who was capable of practising as a doctor, it was her
right as an individual to be allowed to practise, and the incapacity of
every other of her sex was no reason for depriving her of her opportunity
of working out her own life. Every kind of school and college, every
occupation and profession, should be thrown open, and women should be
permitted, as men were permitted, each to find her own place, according to
her own natural capacity.
This was the ordinary argument of Liberalism, a plea for the substitution
of individual opportunity for class regulation. Mill went farther, as every
Liberal is bound to go, and claimed for women the same right to control
their own government as that {254} which he claimed for men. During the
debates on the Reform Bill of 1867 he actually moved an amendment providing
for the enfranchisement of women on the same terms as men. The respect with
which the House listened to his speech was accorded to the speaker rather
than to his argument, and it is only in very recent years that the
opposition to Woman Suffrage has ceased to be largely frivolous and even
obscene. In Mill's day the force outside Parliament was very weak, and it
was impossible that his proposals should succeed. Even among the middle and
upper classes only one woman in ten received a scientific mental training,
and many of the best educated were so far removed by circumstances from all
personal hardships that their sense of the common grievance was slight. But
the movement which Mill thus brought to the surface of politics was
essentially part of the great tide of individual emancipation which had
been flowing since the French Revolution, and pioneers like Lydia Becker
were already struggling with prejudice and prudery with some success. Women
were beginning to refuse, as Catholics, Dissenters, and workmen had
refused, to be treated in the State as a branded class. If the domination
of one class of men over another class of men had led to abuse, did not the
domination of one sex over another also lead to abuse? The deliberate
stunting of the female mind in education,[299] the exclusion of women from
the Universities and the professions, the gross inequalities sanctioned by
the new Divorce Act, the barbarity which stripped the wife on marriage of
all her property and even of the earnings of her own labour, and reduced
her to absolute physical and mental dependence upon her husband, all this
was the direct or indirect consequence of the political domination of the
male sex. Those who disposed of women in the State, disposed of them also
in the schools, in industry, and in the family. With excess of logic, the
early Woman Suffragists even opposed the restriction of women's labour by
{255} Factory Acts as if every such interference had been inspired by male
jealousy.
Most barbarous of all the grievances of women were the legal and
conventional rules which affected the moral relations of the sexes. In
nothing had the egoism of men been so remarkably displayed as in the
construction of these rules, and in the care with which they had concealed
the consequences from women. The progress of the movement in favour of
Woman Suffrage is precisely to be measured by the growth of women's
knowledge of the facts of sex, and in particular of the meaning of
prostitution. The general conspiracy of silence was at last being broken
up, and the new women were turning their new eyes upon the old facts. It
was at this time still common for medical men to recommend the practice of
vice to their men patients, and the practice of vice was an easy thing. A
child of thirteen might legally "consent" to her own dishonour, and the man
who used her for his pleasure could not be punished as a criminal. It was a
crime to abduct a young girl for the purpose of marrying her and so getting
control of her property. But it was not a crime to abduct her for the
purpose of keeping her in a brothel. It was a crime to keep a brothel. But
it was a crime because it was a nuisance to the public, not because it
meant the systematic degradation of women and girls. Their knowledge that
the law sanctioned, and that so much of male opinion encouraged, the abuse
of their sex for the indulgence of their political superiors was enough in
itself to direct the attention of earnest women to politics. But these
grievances were of ancient growth, and it might reasonably be pleaded that
ignorance and want of imagination alone prevented their remedy. A new
expression of the same disposing habit of mind showed that it had lost
nothing of its old vigour.
The subject of the Contagious Diseases Acts of 1866 and 1869 is dreadful to
contemplate and to describe. But its significance is so immense, and its
neglect by all ordinary historians is so marked, that it must be treated in
this book. The conflict between the disposing and the sympathetic minds,
between the {256} blind and largely unconscious egoism of a governing class
and the interest of its depreciated subjects, has never been elsewhere so
terribly illustrated. Prostitution has always been regarded by a male
society either as a danger or as a convenience. By such women as have known
of its existence it has been more justly considered as an example of
heartless oppression and abuse. Only a minority of the women who engage in
it are there out of their own choice. The great bulk of this trade, which
is now not improperly described as the White Slave Traffic, is supplied by
unwilling victims. They are entrapped in childhood, or in early youth, they
are corrupted by bad housing and overcrowding, they are betrayed by
seducers, or they are driven by starvation wages to earn their living on
the streets. Their condition is the most wretched of any people in the
world. No other trade is so dangerous to those who are employed in it, or
so quickly uses up their lives. No other trade so swiftly devours in its
workpeople those noble qualities of the mind which would enable them to
support the heaviest physical burdens. In prostitution everything is sooner
or later destroyed that most adorns body, mind, and soul.
For the victims of this traffic in flesh the Legislature had for long
provided nothing but fine and imprisonment, methods which were as useless
to deter the minority which was corrupt as they were powerless to save the
majority which was unfortunate. The Liberal could adopt only one course, to
attack the causes at their roots, to amend Statutes like the Divorce Act,
which sanctioned vice in men, to protect young girls by raising the age of
consent, and to impose penalties on those who exploited them, to improve
the conditions of housing and labour, and to raise wages. The Government
which was left in power by Palmerston, seeing prostitution only with male
eyes, made a fatal error. They set themselves, not to make prostitution
difficult for women, but to make it safe for men. The diseases produced by
vice were seriously injuring the health of the Army and Navy. The
Government did not attempt, as its successors have attempted, to reduce the
practice of vice among their servants. They took the easier {257} course of
recognizing and regulating what they thought they could not check. By the
Act of 1866, amended by the Act of 1869, they compelled the unfortunate
women in garrison towns to submit themselves periodically to medical
examination. The healthy were discharged. The diseased were compulsorily
detained in hospitals until they were cured, when they also were released
to continue the practice of their trade. The soldiers and sailors were
implicitly told that if they were careful to select one of these Government
women they could be vicious with impunity. The climax of the system was
reached in 1885, when the Commander-in-Chief in India instructed his
commanding officers to see that plenty of good-looking girls were provided
for their men, and that they had all proper facilities for practising their
trade.
Of the foul barbarity of this contrivance of the Legislature it is
difficult to write with moderation, even at this distance of time. It is
not suggested here that the majority of the men who were responsible were
animated by vicious motives. It was only another example of unimaginative
dullness legislating without responsibility. But the effect of deliberate
wickedness could not have been worse. The wretched were confirmed in
wretchedness. The degraded were thrust farther into the depths of
degradation. Thousands of human beings of the subject class, originally
guilty of nothing worse than poverty or a youthful lapse from principle,
were placed by the State at the disposal of the governing class for the
foulest purpose. It is a most vivid illustration of the rarity of complete
Liberalism, that the Contagious Diseases Acts remained on the Statute Book
for seventeen years, and that if they were in the first place smuggled
through Parliament, they were afterwards defended by men of all parties
alike.
A few politicians like James Stansfeld fought steadily in Parliament. But
the Parliamentary machine is so constructed, that when parties are divided
public causes fall to the ground. In this case, as in that of the repeal of
the Corn Laws, reform came by way of a struggle outside the walls of the
Legislature. {258} Mrs. Josephine Butler was the leader of the agitation.
Seventeen years of fighting against vested interests, against the medical
profession and the Army, against indifference, against active and
persecuting prudery, and against physical violence were required, and the
victory was not completed till 1886. But this long agony was of enormous
historical importance. It not only achieved its immediate object, the
repeal of the Acts and the further result of the passing of the Criminal
Law Amendment Act of 1885; its indirect effects were infinite. It was the
first organized effort on the part of women in their own political
interest. It extended to other parts of the world. It taught women,
irrespective of class and race, the value of solidarity. It stimulated the
demand for education, for better moral standards, for the franchise, for
everything which would enable women to control their own lives and to take
themselves out of the disposition of men. It was in fact the greatest
single stimulus to that vast social movement for the emancipation of women
which is to-day visible in every part of the world. No one can understand
the modern demand for Woman Suffrage who does not realize that the driving
force behind it is the increasing knowledge of prostitution which has
sprung from Mrs. Butler's agitation. Rightly or wrongly, the Suffragists
believe that political domination involves moral domination, and that
involuntary prostitution will exist so long as the regulation of women's
political affairs rests in the hands of men.
The Contagious Diseases Acts represented the extreme abuse of the male ego.
But the Liberal Government of 1868, which actually passed the second of the
two Acts, did not a little in other ways to improve the condition of women.
The Married Women's Property Act of 1870 protected the wife's earnings
against her husband, and permitted her to enjoy, for her own use, property
which she had acquired by inheritance. The Education Act of 1870 permitted
women to be elected as members of the new School Boards, and an Act of 1875
admitted them also to Boards of Guardians. These three Acts marked a
substantial rise in the social scale. They affected chiefly women of the
{259} richer classes. But the admissions which they implied were of
indefinite extent. Society had begun to look at the individual within the
family as it had begun to look at the individual within the class or sect.
The wife was acknowledged to be a separate individual from her husband, and
the presence of women on public bodies was a sufficient answer to the
argument that women should be confined to those duties which they could
only perform in association with men. Marriage had ceased to be the sole
object of a decent woman's life. In spite of the monstrous injustice of the
Contagious Diseases Acts, woman was being placed in Society, in some
measure at least, in accordance with her own worth, and not with the
assumptions of male egoism.
The foreign policy of the Government was conspicuously Liberal, and it was
justified by its results. Liberty was maintained and moral rules were
enforced without Palmerston's recklessness, and there were none of the acts
of petty bullying with which he had varied his tilting at tyrants. The
general outline of the new policy is contained in a memorandum addressed by
Mr. Gladstone to the Queen in 1871. He stated its principles to be "That
England should keep entire in her own hands the means of estimating her own
obligations upon the various states of facts as they arise; that she should
not foreclose and narrow her own liberty of choice, by declarations made to
other powers, in their real or supported interests, of which they would
claim to be joint interpreters; that it is dangerous for her to assume
alone an advanced, and therefore an isolated, position, in regard to
European controversies; that, come what may, it is better for her to
promise too little than too much; that she should not encourage the weak by
giving expectations of aid to resist the strong, but should rather seek to
deter the strong, by firm but moderate language, from aggression on the
weak; that she should seek to develop and mature the action of a common, or
public, or European opinion, as the best standing bulwark against wrong,
but should beware of seeming to lay down the law of that opinion by her own
authority, and thus running the risk of setting against {260} her, and
against right and justice, that general sentiment which ought to be, and
generally would be, arrayed in their favour. I am persuaded that opinions
of this colour are the only opinions which the country is disposed to
approve. But I do not believe that on that account it is one whit less
disposed than it has been at any time, to cast in its lot upon any fitting
occasion with the cause it believes to be right."[300]
This is a sort of middle between Palmerstonism and Cobdenism. It repudiates
the balance of power. It condemns isolated, single-handed war on behalf of
weak nations against strong, and emphasizes the necessity of international
co-operation. But it lays down no general rule of non-interference, it
justifies diplomatic protest against the immoral treatment of one nation by
another, and it admits that war may sometimes be right and necessary, even
when no specifically British interest is directly involved.[301] It is
probably as nearly a precise definition of Liberal policy as could be made
in connection with a matter where precision is extremely difficult.
Ministers were more than once severely tested during their term of office.
Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, made some attempt to suggest a
general reduction of armaments. The British forces had been considerably
diminished by the withdrawal of troops from the self-governing Colonies,
and expenditure on both the war services had been cut down. Lord
Clarendon's tentative advances were at least disinterested. He approached
the French Emperor and Bismarck. Each waited for the other to begin, and on
the 15th July, 1870, six months after the proposals were made, the outbreak
of the Franco-Prussian War supplied a tragically ironic comment on their
futility. The British Government suggested mediation, but without success,
and in another six months France was at the feet of her enemies. Sir Henry
Bulwer, an old subordinate of Palmerston, was the {261} only responsible
statesman who suggested intervention on her behalf.[302] The quarrel was
her own. If Bismarck had been dishonest, Napoleon III had been little
better, and the French people had been as eager for war as the German.
Ministers had no difficulty in maintaining a strict neutrality.
On two controversies arising out of the war they showed themselves as
prompt and as resolute as any one could have wished. In order to prejudice
France in the eyes of Europe, Bismarck published some proposals which the
French Emperor had made to the King of Prussia a few years before for the
annexation of Belgium to France. The independence of Belgium had been
guaranteed by England, France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia in 1839, and
this plan was as immoral in itself as it was dangerous to the peace of
Europe. It was suggested that England was not concerned single-handed to
enforce a treaty to which other Powers were parties. Gladstone was
determined at least to attempt it. An ingenious treaty was contrived
between Great Britain and the two belligerents, by which either France or
Germany was to go to war in alliance with Great Britain, if the
independence of Belgium was violated by the other. The House of Commons
voted two millions of money and approved of an increase of the forces by
20,000 men. The treaty and the Parliamentary votes were sufficient proofs
of the determination of the Government to defend the Belgians, and no
hostile army set foot upon their soil. This was an intervention in a good
cause, made without bluster, and it was justified by success.
The second occasion for strong action was a similar violation of an
international agreement. By the treaty of Paris, which ended the Crimean
War, Russia and Turkey had agreed to place no ships of war upon the Black
Sea. This was a futile interference with what might almost be called the
domestic concerns of the two countries, in an inland sea which was entirely
surrounded by their own territories. But such as it was, it was made
binding in most solemn terms. Russia could have {262} obtained a release by
diplomatic means without any difficulty. She preferred, in the crisis of
the Franco-Prussian War, to announce that she intended to be no longer
bounded by this restriction. This was an impudent breach of her engagement,
made possible only by the difficulties of her associates. The English
Government acted again with vigour and directness. Lord Granville[303]
wrote to the British Ambassador at Petersburg in language which was really
that of Gladstone: "It is quite evident that the effect of such doctrine,
and of any proceeding which, with or without avowal, is founded upon it, is
to bring the entire authority and efficacy of treaties under the
discretionary control of each one of the Powers who may have signed them,
the result of which would be the entire destruction of treaties in their
essence."[304] Mr. Odo Russell got the support of Prussia by saying that
England would fight, even if she had no allies,[305] and a conference in
London resolved formally that no single nation could arrogate to itself the
power of dispensing with a treaty. The obnoxious clause in the Treaty of
Paris was then repealed. Here again the readiness to use force in support
of moral rules was successful.
A third occasion for intervention arose when Germany required France to
cede the two provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. Gladstone wished to procure
a European protest against this transfer of territory without the assent of
the inhabitants. "My opinion certainly is that the transfer of territory
and inhabitants by mere force calls for the reprobation of Europe, and that
Europe is entitled to utter it with good effect."[306] He did not suggest
that England should step in single-handed, in the manner of Palmerston. It
was Europe's duty as it was Europe's interest. "A matter of this kind
cannot be regarded as in principle a question between the two belligerents
only, but involves considerations of legitimate interest to all the Powers
of Europe. It appears to bear on the Belgian question in {263} particular.
It is also a principle likely to be of great consequence in the eventual
settlement of the Eastern question."[307] He apprehended "that this violent
laceration and transfer is to lead us from bad to worse, and to be the
_beginning_ of a new series of European complications."[308] He was
perfectly right. His aim could only be secured with the assistance of the
neutral Powers, and the greatest of these had just shown how little she
regarded rules of morality and the public opinion of Europe. Bismarck had
indeed begun a new era, and the theory of compensation was being
substituted for the theory of obligation. It was no longer "I keep my word,
therefore you must keep yours," but "I will acquiesce in your breaking your
word, if you will allow me to break mine." Gladstone's attempt to maintain
the better system was prevented by his Cabinet, and with Russia imitating
German contempt for morality, it was probably the wisest course to do
nothing.
After these two demonstrations of their readiness to enforce moral rules
where the circumstances required it, the Government showed that they were
equally ready to observe moral rules even against their own material
interest. The American Civil War had left them the onerous legacy of the
_Alabama_ claims. The _Alabama_ was a privateer, which Palmerston and
Russell, in spite of the protests of the American Ambassador, had allowed
to sail from Birkenhead. In the service of the Confederate Government, she
had inflicted great damage upon the shipping of the North, and after the
conclusion of the war the American Government had claimed that the British
Government should pay compensation for the consequences of their
negligence. Their case was spoilt by the impudent inclusion of claims for
remote injuries, including the whole cost of the war after the last defeat
of the Confederate army in the field.[309] Palmerston and Lord John Russell
had steadily refused to admit liability. Gladstone and Lord Granville had
more wisdom and {264} more real courage. The whole case was submitted to a
Court of Arbitration at Geneva composed of representatives of the two
disputants, Italy, Switzerland, and Brazil. Great Britain was held to be
responsible, and damages were awarded. The American claims for direct
injury were nine and a half millions. The award was for three and a
quarter. This was perhaps the greatest act of the Government. For the first
time in history, a great State, instead of asserting its claims by force,
had agreed to be bound by the decision of an impartial tribunal, and had
paid damages for its wrong-doing as if it had been a private person in a
court of law. The cause of international morality advances slowly, and
reaction is frequent and universal. But the disposition to subdue egoism to
the common interest and to subordinate national vanity to moral rules grows
steadily on the whole. The first important step in advance was made by the
Liberal Government which submitted to the arbitration at Geneva.
* * * * *
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