LABOUR--“YOUNG ENGLAND”--“FREE TRADE”
In _Vivian Grey_, Disraeli mocks at the attitude of the early political
economists towards Labour in the person of “Mr. Toad,” who defined it
as “that exertion of mind or body which is not the involuntary effect
of the influence of natural sensations.” In the second of his long
series of election addresses, he promised to “withhold his support
from every ministry which will not originate some great measure to
ameliorate the condition of the lower orders, ... to liberate our
shackled industry....” The subject is closely allied to much already
surveyed. Here, however, I shall for the most part leave politics
alone, and confine myself mainly to the social aspects of the question,
for from this standpoint he himself approached it. On Mr. Villiers’
resolutions in 1852, he distinctly stated that he and his friends had
opposed the repeal of the Corn Laws on the main ground that it would
“prove injurious to the interests of Labour;” on the subsidiary ground
that it would injure “considerable interests in the country.” He had,
two years before, urged that it “was a question of labour, or it was
nothing.” Even in the _Revolutionary Epick_, fifteen years earlier, he
had sung, “The many labour, and the few enjoy.”
The extracts given in the preceding chapter from Disraeli’s speech
on Mr. Hume’s motion in 1848, illustrate the central ideas which he
enforced with singular pertinacity in all his published works and
public utterances.
They are mainly these.
It was an age of emancipation, and Peel liberated commerce. In so
doing he disjointed Labour. His two great reforms--that of the Tariff
and that of the Corn Laws--designed as inter-remedial, were certainly
calculated to disturb and dislocate Labour, the one by unloosing the
full forces of straining competition; the other by revolutionising the
centres of industry, by transferring population from the country to the
city, by impairing the landed interests, both high and low, by shifting
the distribution of toil. At the very moment before his relaxation of
the Corn Laws, Peel, conscious that he would disorganise Labour,[75]
had been unconsciously converted to the “right to physical happiness”
system of Manchester--the dryest embodiment of the theory of the French
“physical” equalitarians, on which I touched in my last chapter. His
economics of “cheapness,” the results of which he feared in relation to
the distribution of employment, thus became associated with a principle
that, as I have shown, demands “unlimited employment of labour.” He
freed Commerce, but he unsettled Labour, already rebelling against
the harsh workings of the new Poor Laws. Disraeli asked himself if
reduced tariffs would augment purchasing power, if dethroned land
would be succeeded by any novel power for alleviating the Labour thus
unhinged. And, further, he asked whether the middle class of 1846
would not reap the benefit without bearing the burden, just as it had
done in the Reform of 1832. What would be the effect of discontent on
the institutions of the country? The two great problems during the
whole decade of 1830-40, when there had occurred a real renaissance,
an awakening, had been Democracy and the Church. Was Democracy to
be detached from the order and orders of the State? was it to be an
anti-national solvent? And was the Church to realise its mission as
a society of believers instead of being perverted into a library of
assent? So far Chartism and Apostasy had been the answers. Were Sir
Robert Peel’s arithmetical measures, excellent as they were in theory,
any practical power for regeneration? Chartism’s inner causes had been
both the want of employment and the despair of the employed. In 1840,
he proclaimed, to his leader’s dismay, his deep sympathy, not with
Chartism, “but with the Chartists,” preyed on by ambitious leaders,
and victimised by official indifference. Throughout he regarded the
whole “condition of England” question from its moral and social
standpoints--to which economics should be subordinate--as touching
Labour at one end and Leadership at the other.
The claims of Labour, he says, are paramount as those of property.
Property and Labour should be allies, and not foes; nay, Labour is
itself the property of the poor, out of which the property of the rich
is accumulated. The gentlemen of England should form the advanced guard
of Labour; and, moreover, the master-workmen themselves compose “a
powerful aristocracy.” So long as property was allied both to land and
manufacture, a feeling of public spirit and public duty in the main
characterised the large employers. But a financial oligarchy was bound
to arise, and has arisen, linked by no visible ties to the workers,
and generous more by gifts of “ransom” than by personal participation;
a system of commerce, too, without leaders, which now works in groups
and merely on “cheapest market” principles, has sprung into being. And,
moreover, the vast multiplication of machines tended all along, and
tends more and more with the huge increase of intercommunication, to
exalt mechanism into life and to degrade the labourer into a machine,
himself devoid alike of powers and of duties. Over and over again
Disraeli championed, not only the employment of the people, but variety
in their employments. He is never wearied of scathing any system which
might enhance the grinding monotony of mechanical toil. And all this,
while the clamour for material enjoyment rises higher hour by hour; and
the labourer is driven, in his hard quest after squalid enjoyments,
more into the dark corners of organisations for coercing a State
expected to pauperise him, than to philanthropists eager to raise his
condition by preaching over his head, before the roof that covers it is
decent.
To combat the latter evils--among others--Disraeli started the “Young
England Movement,” and afterwards protested that the old system
of trade reciprocity, with tariffs as levers, had proved a better
guarantee for _social_ happiness than the retail wealth system of “free
imports.” At the same time, as I shall notice, after the repeal of
the Corn Laws had cheapened commodities, he was decidedly of opinion
that to go back would be too violent an upheaval, unless sanctioned
by the deliberate voice of an instructed nation under absolutely new
conditions. To forestall the dangers of financial and commercial
plutocracy,[76] he planned and supported the many alleviative measures
with which his name and Lord Shaftesbury’s are connected, in the teeth,
be it remembered, of the Radical and Utilitarian opposition; while
he proclaimed in the ’seventies, as he had before proclaimed in the
’fifties, his programme of _Sanitas sanitatum_--Health before Wealth.
He foresaw, too, the overcrowding of huge cities through the waste of
the soil, with all its attendant miseries; even so early as 1846 he had
urged that “nothing is so expensive as a vicious population;” and he
felt, also, that if life without toil is “a sorry sort of lot,” toil
without life is an infinitely worse one. Above all, he looked in this
matter, as throughout, far more to the regeneration of society than
to State interference, so easily evaded and so devitalising. And he
lamented the colossal enlargement of the towns, which isolates while it
excites.
“... In cities,” he protests in _Sybil_, “that condition is aggravated.
A density of population implies a severer struggle for existence, and
a consequent repulsion of elements brought into too close contact. In
great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are
not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making
of fortunes; and for all the rest, they are careless of neighbours.
Christianity teaches us to love our neighbours as ourself; modern
society acknowledges no neighbour.” But he descried already a rift in
the gloom. “Society, still in its infancy, is beginning to feel its
way.”
The late ’thirties and early ’forties, with their agitations against
middle-class apathy and aristocratic neglect, witnessed to the
reality of the disease which was known as the “condition-of-England
question.” Many of the nobles were not noble; never had been “so many
gentlemen, and so little gentleness.”[77] Exclusion from the suffrage
prevented the natural representation of injuries, and compelled
Labour to band itself covertly, and often under leaders embittered
and embittering with personal and clashing ambitions. The Reform Act,
contended Disraeli, had not reposed the government in abler hands,
nor elevated the head or enlarged the heart of Parliament. “... On
the contrary, one House of Parliament” (he is writing in 1845) “has
been irremediably degraded into the decaying position of a mere court
of registry, possessing great privileges, on condition that it never
exercises them; while the other Chamber, that at the first blush and
to the superficial exhibits symptoms of almost unnatural vitality, ...
assumes on a more studious inspection somewhat of the character of a
select vestry fulfilling municipal rather than imperial offices, and
beleaguered by critical and clamorous millions who cannot comprehend
why a privileged and exclusive senate is requisite to perform functions
which immediately concern _all_....”
Undoubtedly Labour is far better situated in 1904 than it was in
1844, and undoubtedly this improvement is partly due to Disraeli’s
influence and action. The ideals of “Young England” have borne fruit.
Our “Toynbee Halls” and university settlements, the recognition of
_noblesse oblige_, the trained public opinion that superior light and
leading are in duty bound to lead and enlighten as well as help the
poor; that the poor are their _tenants_; that--
“Not what we give, but what we share:
The gift without the giver is bare;”
--these and their tone are its outcome. His policies of health and
humanisation, of wholesome housing before technical teaching, for
first emancipating Labour from carking cares and then entrusting it
with public duties, have prospered. Chartism and its allied mutinies
have subsided into citizenship. The artisans of to-day are princes
in comparison with what they were. The contracted sloth of the
utilitarian middle class has been shaken to follow what emanated from
the universities. In his Guildhall speeches of 1874 and 1875 Disraeli
could point with pride to Capital at one with Labour, and to operatives
in sympathy with privileges which they shared. At this moment they
are catered as well as cared for; and yet their independence is far
completer than when it was aggressive because it was cowed.
But none the less, the fatal overcrowding which he foresaw, the
self-divestment by Mammon of direct and immediate responsibilities,
has produced a fresh class of the “sweated” and rookeried masses,
multiplying the unemployed and--what is worse--the unemployable in
compound ratio, and still menacing the physique of the nation. The
pressure of poverty is ever with us; of its wretchedness research
has indeed called forth a science. As what we deemed the lowest
ascends, a fresh depth of distress is always bared to our shame. The
democratisation of local government through the county councils has
indeed done much, and will do more, for the proletariate; but their
lack, with notable exceptions, of high leadership, their tendency to
municipal centralisation, their careless and inexperienced prodigality
with the public purse, their bias towards pauperisation, their tendency
to promote the feverish political ambitions of a class, and sometimes
to confuse the cause of industry with that of its captains, remain a
danger, though, I believe, a vanishing danger, to the State.
* * * * *
Disraeli’s earliest novel--one of the books “written by boys,” vague in
its restlessness and untamed in its dazzling extravagance, contains in
its episode of “Poor John Conyers” the germ of that genuine sympathy
with Labour which he afterwards more seriously developed. Apart from
his human instincts and from his desire for a real national unity, it
was founded on his contempt for the merely mechanical or formal in
society; and in 1845, on that tour of experience in Lancashire which
brought home to him anew the terrible gulf between “the two nations”
of rich and poor, and which the pathos, the humour, the wit and the
thought of _Sybil_ have immortalised.
Few that have read _Coningsby_ will forget the vivid impressions of
Manchester machinery in its pages. They are, perhaps, too familiar for
quotation, and I prefer here to cite some sentences from _Sybil_.
“... Twelve hours of daily labour at the rate of one penny each hour;
and even this labour is mortgaged,” groans the loom-worker. “... Then
why am I here?... It is that the capitalist has found a slave that has
supplanted the labour and ingenuity of man. Once he was an artisan; at
the best he only now watches machines; and even that occupation slips
from his grasp to the woman and the child. The capitalist flourishes,
he amasses wealth; we sink, lower and lower; lower than the beasts of
burthen; for they are fed better than we are, cared for more. And it
is just, for according to the present system they are more precious.
And yet they tell us that the interests of Capital and of Labour are
identical. _If a society that has been created by labour suddenly
becomes independent of it, that society is bound to maintain the race
whose only property is labour, out of the proceeds of that other
property which has not ceased to be productive._... We sink among no
sighs except our own. And if they give us sympathy--what then? Sympathy
is the solace of the Poor; but for the Rich there is Compensation.
“You (the nobles) govern us still with absolute authority, and you
govern the most miserable people on the face of the globe. ‘And is this
a fair description of the people of England?’ said Lord Valentine. ‘A
flash of rhetoric, I presume, that would place them lower than ... the
serfs of Russia or the lazzaroni of Naples.’
“‘Infinitely lower,’ said the delegate, ‘for they are not only
degraded, but conscious of their degradation. _They no longer believe
in any difference between the governing and the governed classes of
this country._ They are sufficiently enlightened to feel they are
victims. Compared with the privileged of their own land, they are in
a lower state than any other population compared with its privileged
classes.’
“‘The people must have leaders,’ said Lord Valentine.
“‘And they have found them,’ said the delegate.
“‘When it comes to a push, they will follow their nobility,’ said Lord
Valentine.
“‘Will their nobility lead them?’ said the other delegate....
“‘We have an aristocracy of wealth,’ said the delegate who had chiefly
spoken. ‘In a progressive civilisation wealth is the only means of
class distinction; but a new disposition of wealth may remove even
this.’
“‘Ah! You want to get at our estates,’ said Lord Valentine, smiling,
‘but the effort on your part may resolve society into its original
elements, and the old sources of distinction may again develop
themselves.’
“‘Tall barons will not stand against Paixhans’ rockets,’ said the
delegate. ‘Modern science has vindicated the natural equality of man.’
“‘And I must say I am very sorry for it,’ said the other delegate;
‘for human strength always seems to me the natural process of settling
affairs.’”
To cherish national unison as a higher form of human harmony than
the discordant bond of automatic groups; to force the governing to
sympathise with the governed; to establish that “Labour requires
regulation as much as Property;” to raise, train, improve and establish
labour “rather,” as he wrote in 1870, “by the use of ancient forms and
the restoration of the past than by political revolutions founded on
abstract ideas,” were Disraeli’s aims. In all except the important one
of the last, the means for accomplishing them, Carlyle’s message is the
same. There is a passage in _Coningsby_ where Disraeli dreams that a
day may come when industry will cease to obey mere industrialism. There
is another in Carlyle’s “Past and Present”[78] to the same effect.
For both, the nobility of labour was a central idea; for both, the
conviction that the cavaliers of England should prove its captains; for
both, _Sanitas sanitatum_ was a practical ideal. “Deliver me,” cries
Carlyle, “these rickety perishing souls of infants, and let your cotton
trade take its chance.” Disraeli and Carlyle alike abominated the
doctrine that national happiness consists merely in material wealth. A
shared or common wealth of endeavour and influence was a goal for each;
for each, too, the main problem remained, “_How, in conjunction with
inevitable democracy, indispensable sovereignty is to exist._”
“... If there be a change,” said Sybil, “it is because in some degree
the People have learnt their strength.”
“Ah! Dismiss from your mind those fallacious fancies,” said Egremont.
“The People are not strong; the People never can be strong. Their
attempts at self-vindication will end only in their suffering and
confusion. It is civilisation that has effected, that is effecting,
this change. It is that increased knowledge of themselves that teaches
the educated their social duties. _There is a day-spring in the history
of this nation which perhaps those only who are on the mountaintops
can as yet recognise. You deem you are in darkness, and I see a dawn._
The new generation of the aristocracy of England are not tyrants, not
oppressors, Sybil.... Their intelligence, better than that, their
hearts, are open to the responsibility of their situation. But the
work that lies before them is no holiday work. It is not the fever
of superficial impulse that can remove the deep-fixed barriers of
centuries of ignorance and crime. Enough that their sympathies are
awakened; time and thought will bring the rest. They are the natural
leaders of the People, Sybil....”
I may be permitted to point out a likeness and a contrast. The seething
ferment on the Continent was pricking Labour into an insurgent
materialism which, in the dearth of ancient and active institutions
fraught with the balm of healing, leagued itself to attack all forms of
authority, kingship and capital alike.
“Ah, the People, this poor King in tatters,” wrote Heine from Paris
in 1848, “has fallen on flatterers far more shameless, as they swing
their censers around his head, than the courtiers of Byzantium or
Versailles. These court lackeys of the People incessantly vaunt its
virtues and excellences, crying aloud: ‘How beautiful is the People!
how good is the People! how intelligent is the People!’ No, you lie.
The People is not beautiful; on the contrary, it is very ugly. But its
ugliness is due to its dirt, and will vanish with public baths for the
free ablutions of his Majesty. A piece of soap, too, will do no harm;
and we shall then see a People in the beauty of cleanliness--a washen
People. The People whose goodness is thus magnified is not good at all.
It is often as bad as other potentates. But its baseness flows from
hunger. When once it has well eaten and drunk, it will smile, gracious
and well-favoured as the rest. Nor is his Majesty over-intelligent. He
is possibly stupider than the others--stupid with the bestiality of his
minions; he will only love or heed the speakers, or howlers, of the
jargon of his passions: he hates every brave soul that converses in the
speech of reason, and that would ennoble and enlighten him.”
Heine was leading “Young Germany.” A few years earlier, Disraeli was
leading “Young England.” The contrast between the atmosphere of the
two countries deserves a passing comment. “Young England” aimed at
betterment in that very feudal spirit which the poet--the “unfrocked
Romantic”--by turns breathed and spurned. In Germany the weird medley
of the “Romantic School” had for fifty years been striving to rewaken
the myths, the chivalry, the wistfulness of the past. But its direct
influences were merely æsthetic, and mainly sentimental; while they
eventually became actually anæmic--a vague reverie of mediæval
moonlight and pallid ghosts. The uprooting French Revolution had swept
away both castle and cobwebs, and in Germany the “folk-song” was the
sole antiquity to which this Romantic attachment could cling, and by
which it could touch the patriotism of a disunited people. But in
England, Scott’s “buff-jerkin” revival, at which Carlyle so unjustly
scoffed, was more than a literary sport; it had already braced the
nation with the fresh breeze of an invigorating tradition. It brought
back and home the inheritance of a real throne and a real nobility,
of chivalry, of daring, and of prowess; it reminded the people that
the humblest was once protected by the highest; and though it perhaps
burked or omitted much that disgraced the age of the tournament, the
foray, and the cloister, it quickened its best, its most hopeful and
most cheerful elements. It took the dry bones from their mouldering
tomb and put the breath of life, the wholesome laughter of humour,
and the brightness of beauty into and about their scattered fragments;
whereas in Germany the Romantics rather embalmed and buried the living
energies of the present in a Gothic mausoleum, weird with wan emblems,
and chill and solemn as a cathedral vault.
Disraeli recognised that our country thrives by adaptation and
adjustment; that it is the region of natural growth, and not of sudden
blossom; of the oak, not the aloe. In inter-dependence, even more than
independence, in the mutual ties of classes, Disraeli discerned the
English root for democratic ideas which had all along lurked in the
soil. England is great because of that same insular inaccessibility to
ideas which repelled Heine. Her slowness of insight vanishes gradually,
and not by leaps and bounds--through growth and conduct rather than
through universal theories. An idea knocks at our gates for generations
before it wins admittance; but when it once enters, it becomes
naturalised and ceases to be alien; it becomes actualised; it dwells
and walks and votes, and has commerce at large. It becomes part of the
popular life and parcel of the national behaviour.
“Young England” prepared the ground for social regeneration. It sought
to raise the conditions of labour. It was no rose-water club, but,
short-lived as it proved, was a real forerunner of measures. A word,
therefore, upon it may be pardoned in this connection. Many in the
past century have played the part of “saviours of society.” Robert
Owen, Ferdinand Lassalle, Napoleon III., Karl Marx, and the eccentric
Mr. Urquhart, who furnished some of the _traits_ for Disraeli’s
“Sidonia.”[79] But none in this country have been at once so genuine
and effective as this association of “Young England;” for, enlisting
the enthusiasm of the high and the young, it struck into the roots of
national character, without which no development is feasible. Young
England aimed further, at rendering leadership sympathetic with labour.
It wanted to revive in the lowly a sense of privilege, and in the
noble to quicken higher standards of obligation; it wished to recall
the heroic; and this it tried to accomplish, not by social disturbance,
but by seeking to arouse ancient ideals still slumbering in national
traditions. For this purpose it appealed to youth--“the trustees of
posterity;”[80] to the power of personal influence and example; and
above all, it hoped, as I have already noticed, to counteract the
soullessness of utilitarianism.
“Ah, yes!” (Disraeli makes Gerard observe in _Sybil_); “I know that
style of speculation.... Your gentlemen who remind you that a working
man now has a pair of cotton stockings, and that Harry the Eighth was
not so well off. At any rate, the condition of classes must be judged
of by the age and by their relations with each other.”
It was also a vigorous protest against that retort of the Liberal on
the Radical--the sluggish doctrine of _laissez-faire_, the principle
of “stew-in-your-own-juice,” “devil take the hindmost,” “muddling
through,” and “let _ill_ alone.” Disraeli had combated it from the
first:--
“In Vraibleusia” (I quote from his early satire of _Popanilla_) “we
have so much to do that we have no time to think--a habit which only
becomes nations who are not employed. You are now fast approaching the
great shell question; a question which, I confess, affects the interest
of every man in this island more than any other.... No one, however,
can deny that the system works well; and if anything at any time go
wrong, why, really Mr. Secretary Periwinkle is a wonderful man, and our
most eminent conchologist--he no doubt will set it right; and if by any
chance things are past even his management, why, then, I suppose, to
use our national motto, _something will turn up_.”
It further served as antidote to the self-complacence and retail
outlook of the _bourgeoisie_. The “Middle-Middles,” healthfully and
powerfully as they symbolise decency, order, and common sense, too
often lack, even in their educated varieties, perception and sympathy.
At present they pervade Parliament, while the Press--which since 1867
appeals more and more to the gallery--controls opinion. Hence the
dearth of accord between the prate of Parliament and a nation that
realises its unity. Hence springs the momentary decay of Parliament
itself--not from party spirit, but from the inanition of parties
representing principles, without which party sinks into faction.
Of the anti-middle class attitude of “Young England,” a notable
instance occurs in “Angela Pisani,” the brilliant fiction of George
Smythe, afterwards seventh Lord Strangford (in Disraeli’s words),
“a man of brilliant gifts; of dazzling wit, infinite culture and
fascinating manners,” who “could promulgate a new faith with graceful
enthusiasm.” The tirade is placed on the lips of Napoleon, denouncing
the “puddle-blooded” whom he had “made great men, but could not make
gentlemen,” and its reproaches--certainly not characteristic of
Disraeli--apply, of course, in an infinitely less degree to England.
The nucleus of “Young England” had begun in a close association of
university friends. The Cambridge “Apostles” comprised Tennyson and
Hallam, Monteith and Doyle, and “Cool-of-the-evening” Monckton-Milnes.
Disraeli, Lord Strangford, and Lord John Manners reinforced this
nucleus with Faber, Hope, Baillie Cochrane (afterwards Lord Lamington),
and others; they gave them an ampler scope and a longer view, but not
without murmuring jealousies. They taught that the spirit of reform
transcended its letter, and that the English “romantic school”--just
as later on the English pre-Raphaelites in Art--must reseek the
fountainhead of original principles. Milnes wrote in 1844: “You must
have been amused at the name of ‘Young England,’ which we started
so long ago, being usurped by opinions so different and so inferior
a tone of thought. It is, however, a good phenomenon in its way,
and one of its products--Lord John Manners--a very fine, promising
fellow. The worst of them is that they are going about the country
talking education and liberality, and getting immense honour for the
very things for which the Radicals have been called all possible
blackguards and atheists a few years ago.”
The newer Radical reforms, however, were based on “the greatest
happiness” principle of utility; whereas the league of “Young England”
was founded on the expansion of traditions, and more especially on
the immemorial rights of Labour. What “Young England” really effected
was to infuse enthusiasm into institutions. In 1838 this same “Mr.
Vavasour” of _Tancred_, and “Mr. Tremaine Bertie” of _Endymion_, had
also written: “We have set agoing a new dining club which promises
well. Twenty of the most charming men in the universe met last Tuesday.
They won’t call it ‘Young England,’ however.” It is no disrespect to
the memory of the late Lord Houghton to say that the vague eclecticism
of his youth scarcely fostered a robust energy or a keen insight. His
“remarks” on _Coningsby_ in _Hood’s Magazine_ under the name of “Real
England” were a sympathetic commentary; but, a born _dilettante_, he
“lionised” ideas as he “lionised” genius. He patted intuition on the
back. He was the Mrs. Leo Hunter of politics; and he played admirably
the part of “Bennet Langton” to Carlyle’s “Dr. Johnson.” He somewhat
prattled of “silences” and “eternities.” Well does Disraeli make
“Waldershare” in _Endymion_ exclaim of him: “... What I do like in him
... is this revival of the Pythagorean system, and heading a party of
silence. That is rich.”
Lord Lamington--the “Buckhurst” of _Coningsby_--who in his pleasant
glimpse of the movement has supplemented its muster-roll by the names
of Borthwick and Stafford, quotes Serjeant Murphy’s pasquinade of “Jack
Sheppard.” Its last verse runs as follows:--
“_We have Smythe and Hope with his opera-hat,
But they cannot get Dicky Milnes, that’s flat--
He is not yet tinctured with Puseyite leavening,
But he may drop in in the ‘cool of the evening.’_”
The “Puseyite leavening” recalls the strictures of Carlyle on the High
Church proclivities of a portion of the movement. Coleridge’s great
book on the Church had undoubtedly stirred both thought and enthusiasm.
Disraeli, as I shall show hereafter, wished to make the Church a
living social regenerator of the “national spirit,” to see it at once
disciplined and enthusiastic, to restore its original functions, to
render it really “Anglican;” and in his old age--strenuously opposed as
he ever was to the “mass in masquerade,” firmly resolved as he remained
to uphold orderly Protestantism--he has outlined at once a portrait and
a type of his permanent meaning in the person of “Nigel Penruddock;”
just as he has drawn a picture of “Young England” Anglicanism in the
“St. Lys” of _Sybil_, the prototype of whom was Faber.
In the spring of 1844, Carlyle thus characteristically addresses
Monckton-Milnes--
“... _On the whole, if ‘Young England’ would altogether fling its
shovel-hat into the lumber-room, much more cast its purple stockings to
the nettles, and honestly recognising what was dead, ... address itself
frankly to the magnificent but as yet chaotic Future, ... telling men
at every turn that it knew and saw for ever clearly the body of the
Past to be dead (and even to be damnable, if it pretended to be still
alive and to go about in a galvanic state), what achievement might
not ‘Young England’ manage for us!_” Carlyle was ever a free-thinking
Puritan, a creedless Calvinist. “What was dead,” “what pretended still
to be alive,” was the Church of England.... It is easy to deride that
youthful display of poor metre, but fine enthusiasm, “England’s Trust,”
by Lord John Manners.
“_With Roncesvalles upon his banners
Comes prancing along my Lord John Manners._”
Carlyle misliked in him what he disliked in Scott, the “properties” of
Romanticism. But the earnestness of Manners’s little volume is beyond
question. In the Church it recognises the national recuperative force
and salve for anarchy. “We laugh at all commandment save our own,”
sighs the boyish devotee--
“_Yes, through the Church must come the healing power
To bind our wounds in this tumultuous hour._”
And Labour had ever been the sacred trust of the Church. Divorce Labour
from religion, and the State falls. It had been the fault of the
Church herself that Labour had gone out of history, as it were, and
crossed over to a more primitive form of true religious fervour under
the Methodist revival; but the Church alone, as a national growth,
could hope, if true to its high destinies, for the preservation of the
great mass of the populace from the disruptive elements of unbelief.
The Church, too, was the natural educator of the people. True,
Manners’s Anglicanism was that of Laud; true, also, to that name he
rhymes “adored.” But it is also true that the whole brotherhood felt
that if the Church, and through it the State, was to be quickened, it
must revert, like the State, to its origin; it must no more be regarded
merely as an endowed official or as a consecrated police, but as a
divine institution. Moreover, Disraeli also regarded the English Church
as the special protectress of popular liberties. I shall return to this
subject in its proper place hereafter; but I may here add that these
convictions of “Young England” were vehemently advocated by Disraeli
in his speeches on the Irish Church more than twenty years after the
“Young England” brotherhood came to an end.
Disraeli always urged the immense importance of parochial life as even
greater than political. Had the higher classes understood “the order
of the peasantry,” ricks and dwellings would not have been burned down
in the ’thirties. In advocating the claims of ancient country-side
customs, he raised the plea of humanising ceremony--one certainly
cherished by the upper classes for themselves. The people would not, it
is true, be “fed” by morris revelries, and they starved equally without
them.
It was not to be expected that such a cause, with such a leader,
followed by aristocratic youth and attended by the revival of
maypole dances and tournaments, should escape ridicule and even
suspicion. Grey-headed noblemen, who resented any efforts to render
institutions real, and for whom enthusiasm meant vulgarity, shook
their heads over the follies of their sons, seduced by the wiles
of a designing adventurer. But to such as still doubt Disraeli’s
sincerity in these matters, and refuse to be convinced by a long chain
of after-utterances, I would simply suggest the following fact.
Disraeli’s speech of April 11, 1845, on the Maynooth grant[81] broke
up the “Young England” association, and terminated his leadership of
it. What was the main principle of that speech? It was this: “... You
find your Erastian system crumbling from under your feet.... I have
unfaltering confidence in the stability of our Church, but I think that
the real source of the danger which threatens it is its connection with
the State, which places it under the control of the House of Commons
that is not necessarily of its communion.” He denied that the State
had ever “endowed” the Church. The Church owned property which was the
patrimony of the poor. He argued that since 1829 the State’s relation
to the Church had altered. He implied, as he often afterwards asserted,
that the union of Church and State was for the benefit of the State far
more than for that of the Church. Now, this attitude was eminently that
of his “Young England” professions. And yet its fearless expression
dissolved a gathering which his detractors maintained was used merely
as a step to personal advancement.
Carlyle, in the passage above cited, evinced the same irritable
impatience that he exhibited in 1849, when he cursed parliamentary
institutions because a particular Parliament had over-talked itself.
He was an iconoclast who, however, often confused the symbol with the
faith that underlies it, and in dethroning the image would have dashed
the glamour of its shrine. In 1848--the year of anarchy--Disraeli made
a famous speech (the speech which procured him his future leadership of
the House). He upheld these institutions while he denounced that very
Parliament which moved Carlyle’s indignation. The future has proved him
right, and the sage wrong. The practical fruits of the future, too,
have vindicated the peculiar tinge that Disraeli himself lent to the
“Young England” brotherhood.
One closing word on the social aims of “Young England.” I may summarise
them by the phrase “Health and Home.” They compassed the relief of
industry, and they implied the effort to shame the knights of industry
into some chivalry towards it.
“Pitt,” wisely comments Mr. Kebbel, “ended the quarrel between the King
and the aristocracy, and reconciled the Whig doctrine of monarchy with
the Whig doctrine of Parliament. Peel accommodated Toryism to the new
_régime_ established by the Reform Bill, and his name will always be
identified with the progress of middle-class reform. _Lord Beaconsfield
carried Toryism into the next stage, and made it the business of his
life to close up the gap in our social system which ... had been
gradually widening, and to reconcile the working classes to the Throne,
the Church, and the Aristocracy._”
To those who object that beyond Foreign Policy and the last Reform
Bill, Disraeli effected little that is lasting, this is the answer.
He was prouder of his many social reforms than of his Berlin Treaty.
He was a born conciliator. He put a new and powerful leaven into the
social lump, and he inspired the generous youth of the country. What
he especially sought to mitigate was irresponsible Plutocracy, with a
shifting stock of vagrant and unrelated Labour bought in the cheapest
market, sold in the dearest; without stability, without ties, without
allegiance.
“‘I am not against Capital’ (he makes “Enoch Craggs” declaim in
_Endymion_), ‘what I am against is Capitalists.’
“‘But if we get rid of capitalists, we shall soon get rid of capital.’
“‘No, no,’ said Enoch, with his broad accent, shaking his head and with
a laughing eye. ‘Master Thornberry (the Radical) has been telling you
that. He is the most inveterate capitalist of the whole lot.... Master
Thornberry is against the capitalists in land; but there are other
capitalists nearer home, and I know more about them. I was reading a
book the other day about King Charles--Charles I., whose head they cut
off--I am very liking to that time, and read a good deal about it; and
there was Lord Falkland, a great gentleman of those days, and he said
when Archbishop Laud was trying on some of his priestly tricks, that
“If he were to have a Pope, he would rather the Pope were at Rome than
Lambeth.” So I sometimes think, if we are to be ruled by capitalists, I
would sooner, perhaps, be ruled by gentlemen of estate, who have been
long among us, than by persons who build big mills, who come from God
knows where, and, when they have worked their millions out of our flesh
and bone, go God knows where....’”
The two river bills carried at Disraeli’s instigation in 1852; the
twenty-nine bills for ameliorating the position of factory operatives,
passed despite those Radicals who predicted ruin for the manufacturer;
the Employers and Workmen Acts, the Conspiracy and Protection of
Property Act, the Poor Law Amendment Act, the Commons Act, the
Artisans’ Dwellings Acts, the Public Health Act, the Rating Act,
the Employers’ Liability Acts, the Agricultural Holdings Act, among
many others, attest the victory of “popular Toryism” over “class
Liberalism,” and the protection of suffering against selfishness.
“Young England,” like all Utopian propaganda, was a romantic vision,
and exceeded actuality. But in essence it has been eminently practical.
Classes (of which England is made) are infinitely more in communion
than they were in 1840. The effort to set them by the ears and to
oppose the “masses” to the “classes” has ignominiously failed. The
Church of England has roused itself to the national needs beyond all
comparison with those days. The appeals of _Sybil_, _Coningsby_, and
_Tancred_, ridiculed as rodomontade and branded as a charlatan’s
dodge, have been rendered into action, and stand confessed as the
deeply felt and pondered schemes of a poet and a statesman. “When,”
says Bolingbroke, “great coolness of judgment is united to great
warmth of imagination, we see that happy combination which we call a
genius.” Such has proved Disraeli, and his inmost soul is embodied in
that “Young England” which he organised and encouraged in a freezing
atmosphere. Over fifty years ago he exhorted youth, at the Manchester
Athenæum, as “the trustees of posterity.” “The man,” he then said, “who
did not look up would look down, and he who did not aspire was destined
perhaps to grovel.” The youth of to-day is far more conscious of its
burden than was the youth of any class in the ’forties.
It was mainly on these social grounds that Disraeli resisted that
system of free imports which has gone down to history as “Free Trade.”
He never denied that it was calculated to enrich manufacturers
and manufacturing centres; he grew to admit its benefits to the
consumer, although these were by no means wholly due to its action;
but he deprecated its “economic frenzy.” He held that it injured the
producer[82] and played havoc both with land and distribution of
labour. He thought it would eventually impair morale and physique,
and sacrifice the general welfare to the material interests of a
class; and, before it was nationally adopted, he considered that all
ends would have been better served by the adoption of that system
of reciprocal treaties[83]--on a principle called by him “at once
national and cosmopolitan”--which was termed “Free Trade” in the days
of Pitt, and had been inaugurated in 1713 by the abortive tariff of
the great Utrecht Treaty; nor will it now be doubted that if in 1846 a
comprehensive scheme of technical education had been set on foot, many
of the evils engendered by over-competition would have been avoided,
whatever fiscal system this country had chosen.
Writing so early as 1832 to the Wycombe electors, he even then
declared: “... With regard to the Corn Laws, I will support any change,
the basis of which is _to relieve the consumer without injuring the
farmer_.” This was not the “Radical” doctrine of those days.
Disraeli has shown conclusively that in English history such a
principle as absolute “protection” never existed. The original
principle up to the time of Anne was to feed and supply a population
then small enough so to be supported at home, and to encourage the
wealth and power of trade. He has shown that Walpole, in this respect
imitating the rival whom he destroyed, wisely followed this principle
in its colonial applications; though he unwisely divorced productive
trade from the land, and set the moneyed against the landed classes,
the high finance against the country gentlemen, into whose shoes,
however, it soon stepped. He has shown that when the colonial system
broke down by the secession of our greatest and worst governed colony,
Pitt the Second reverted to the old, the natural principle of exchange
with the continent by tariff. The exigencies of the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars forced an interlude; and for a time England was fed
by foreign corn in free competition with her own--the very time when
the loaf was dearest. But Lord Liverpool recurred to the principle;
and Peel up to 1845--when his hand was confessedly forced by the
appalling famine in Ireland--was in favour of the varying duties termed
the sliding scale, as opposed to the fixed duties of the Whigs and
the no-duties of the Radicals. That scale he eventually surrendered
under the impulse of Lord John Russell’s “Edinburgh Letter,” and was
suddenly converted by the Manchester School. In logic, and apart from
human and national instincts, their theories were as irrefragable as
those of our modern bimetallists, and of those ancient economists on
whose doctrines they rested. But their lasting usefulness depended
on the final achievement of a cosmopolitan confederation. Disraeli
presaged with weighty reasons, scouted when they were detailed, that
other nations would never fall into the scheme; he analysed the
special conditions of France, Germany, and America. He also foretold,
concerning corn, in common with all articles of certain and practically
unlimited demand (as cotton and tea, for examples), that “the moment
you have a settled market, in exact proportion to the demand, prices
will fall. This is the inevitable rule.” He pressed further the grave
peril, hardly yet realised, of England’s dependence on foreign supplies
in time of war. But beyond all, he emphasised the social dangers--the
misery for individuals and for classes. In this precipitate measure
towards a material class-millennium, he discerned a large element
of possible denationalisation, a displacement of labour which must
unavoidably deluge the unwieldy towns, and which would to some extent
relax the fibre of the nation and weaken its very means of defence,
the replacement of excellence by cheapness, and of national welfare
by wealth, the substitution for the landed interest which ought to
preponderate though never to predominate, not, as seemed for the
moment, by a high-toned class of responsible manufacturers, but
eventually by an overwhelming clique of irresponsible capitalists
with self-interests fluid as their portable property; the decrease
of the national, the natural sway of large landowners inheriting a
representative sense of accountability to tenants and dependants; a
probably great fall in agriculture and its profits, prices and wages;
the waste on a large scale and the depopulation of the soil itself; the
special aggravation of ruinous elements in Ireland; an ultimate decay,
when foreign competition should develop, of that very manufacturing
interest the system was protested to advantage and intended to protect;
for he divined already in the ’forties that to fight hostile tariffs
with “free imports” could only benefit England while continental
manufacturers were in comparative infancy.
Most of this in great measure he foresaw, and in all this has been
amply justified. What he did not anticipate was the enormous stature
which these developments have now reached. Multitudes of telling
instances might be given from those remarkable speeches, the pith and
point of which were always how this change would affect the labouring
classes. I will single out two alone, and both from that great speech
of 1846 on Mr. Miles’s amendment, which, in the light of the present,
reads like a continuous prophecy. Speaking of the displacement of
labour in connection with the then sparse distribution of the precious
metals, which he pointed out six years later must again modify the
situation owing to the recent and immense discoveries of gold, he said:
“... Every year and in every market English labour will receive less in
return of foreign articles. But gold and silver are foreign articles;
and in every year and in every market English labour will have less
command of gold and silver....” “... Supposing you import five millions
more from Russia than you ever did before, how will you make your
payments, if they take no more additional goods from you than they do
now?... I know it will be replied they manage these things by means of
bills and so on. But that will not improve the case. Suppose ... you
buy Russian bills on Brazil and New York to the amount of those five
millions, and you thus complete your transaction. But you have already
supplied the Americans and the Brazilians with as much of your goods as
you cared to take, and if you want to sell more to them, you must do so
at a great sacrifice....”
Once more, as regards foreign competition. He forecasted that of
America; and in demolishing the argument that Prussia’s protective
Zollverein was being “shaken;” he instanced Mecklenburg, induced by
English remonstrances to abstain from joining, but now complaining
that: “... After all the sacrifices we have made, if the Zollverein are
to have free importation to England, we have no advantage whatever, and
the best thing we can now do is to join and ... advance the cause of
native industry.”
Disraeli resolved that if the repeal became law, the burdens which
had been thrown on the land, because of the privileges which were its
ancient trust, should in fairness be mitigated; that it should compete
as freely as other manufacturers, for he never ceased to object to a
distinction, as manufacturers, between the farmer, the miller, and the
mill-owner.
“... I know,” he urged in a speech full of dignity and wisdom, “that
we have been told that ... we shall derive from this great struggle
not merely the repeal of the Corn Laws, but the transfer of power from
one class to another, to one distinguished for its intelligence and
wealth--the manufacturers of England. My conscience assures me that I
have not been slow in doing justice to the intelligence of that class;
certain I am that I am not one of those who envy them their wide and
deserved prosperity; but I must confess my deep mortification that in
an age of political regeneration, when all social evils are ascribed
to the operation of class interests, it should be suggested that we are
to be rescued from the alleged power of one class, only to sink under
the avowed dominion of another;” and he concluded with the hope that
if the monarchy of England, “mitigated by the acknowledged authority
of the estates of the realm,” was to prove “a worn-out dream,” if
England was to sink “under the thraldom of capital, ... of those who
while they boast of their intelligence are prouder of their wealth,”
if a new force must be summoned to maintain “the immemorial monarchy
of England,” that “novel power” might be found in “the invigorating
energies of an educated and enfranchised people.”
All this has happened. A thraldom to the middle class came into being,
and was tempered by Disraeli’s own franchise bill, and by an education
act sufficient, though not conceived in the decentralised form which
Disraeli desired, but never won the opportunity of effecting. And out
of this thraldom is springing that other of plutocracy--one which
exercises great political power without assuming great political
duties; one in the interest of which, it seems to me, some of the new
fiscal changes now being mooted are designed.
These wholesale changes I cannot but feel that Disraeli would have
withstood. Many features in Mr. Chamberlain’s plan would have enlisted
his sympathy, but in their entirety he would have thought them
hazardous. Some protection for the grazier he might have upheld; he
always laid stress on the importance of home markets. A moderate duty
on corn, in partial, though most inadequate, aid of agriculture, he
might have favoured as a necessary lever for colonial reciprocity;
especially as it would be spread over the untaxed colonial, the foreign
dutiable imports. It would scarcely much affect the price of bread,
and the very Peelites forewent the fallacy of the dear loaf; although,
as in 1852, he would show that even a four shilling duty on imported
corn could never restore the land to its former footing. “We ought,”
he would again argue, “to go to the country on principle, and not upon
details. We say we think there should be measures brought forward”
(as since have been brought forward) “to put the cultivators of the
soil in a position to allow them to compete with foreign industry.”
What, however, he then urged with all his force was that the fiscal
revolution had confessedly caused vexatious taxes. “Sir,” he said in
1852, “I do now and ever shall look on the changes which took place in
1846, both as regards the repeal of the Corn Laws and the alteration
of the Sugar Duties, as totally unauthorised. I opposed them ... _from
an apprehension of the great suffering which must be incurred by such
a change_. That suffering in a great degree, though it may be limited
to particular classes, has in some instances been even severer than we
anticipated. But I deny that at any time after those laws were passed,
either I, or the bulk of those with whom I have the honour to act, have
ever maintained a recurrence to the same laws that regulated those
industries previously to 1846.” He then showed the difference between
Lord Derby’s proposed “fixed duty” and the old state of affairs; while
he continued: “... When we come to this question of fixed duty, ...
I must say now what I said before in this House, that I will not pin
my political career on any policy which is not after all a principle,
but a measure. Our wish is, that the interests which we believe were
unjustly treated in 1846,[84] should receive the justice which they
deserve, with as little injury to those who may have benefited more
than they were entitled to, as it is possible for human wisdom to
devise. _Sir, I call that reconciling the interests of the consumer
and the producer, when you do not permit the consumer to flourish by
placing unjust taxes upon the producer; while at the same time you
resort to no tax which gives to the producer; an unjust and artificial
price for his production._...”
But any prohibitive tax on foreign manufactures--that is another
matter, one which would protect certain trades at the expense of the
community, and aggravate the very evils which Free Trade introduced.
Such a system must press all the harder on that class of consumers
whose pay would remain unaffected by its results, and who would, in
fact, be subsidising our colonies out of their emptied pockets. The
sentiment of the colonies he would have prized beyond measure, but
other means for riveting it might be found; and in the undeveloped
condition of many among them, would not a Canadian favouritism sow a
harvest of jealousies? Moreover, the colonial population as a whole
is still far too scanty for the replacement of our markets abroad;
and further, the two main channels of cheap capital and British
prosperity--our carrying trade and London’s commercial position as
the clearing-house of the world--might be revolutionised by changes,
to which no limit could be fixed. And again, the remission of Income
Tax ought in justice to accompany such a system, for that tax was
revived by Peel expressly because the revenue had to be reimbursed for
its losses on adopting the measures for free imports. With respect to
“dumping,”[85] its conditions contain its cure. England, no longer
the main workshop of the world, cannot perhaps be so generous as
heretofore, but she can still afford to be generous. As for the promise
of higher wages through protective duties, wages are more likely
to rise through the resumption of gold imports from South Africa;
while the joint result of retaliatory tariffs and such imports would
be doubly to enhance the price of commodities for the mass. On the
other hand, the vision of a self-supporting empire he would honour,
and equally the sincere and commanding zeal of its prophet. But he
would surely argue that the times were far from ripe, and that small
and gradual beginnings might lay firmer foundations than a colossal
combination of incompatibles. Again, he would, as the writer fancies,
deplore a loud and unsolicited appeal to the passions of a multitude
and the greed of a class easily thus led into a lordship of mob
despotism. At the same time, he would certainly recognise, as Mr.
Chamberlain alone has fully recognised, the crying need for a better
distribution of employment.
Disraeli over and over again affirmed that since the nation had
endorsed this vital change, its reversal was impracticable unless the
considered national demand for it became overwhelming. It was one
of his cardinal ideas that without such deliberate demand no great
change of national policy should be risked in any department. In
1852, he and Lord Derby appealed to the country on a modified issue
of this question--that of a fixed duty. The country’s answer Disraeli
considered as final, even in that regard; nor, so far as he was able,
would he ever permit these momentous issues to be reopened by any
party or section. He remained devoted to the reciprocity principle.
He believed that “give and take” is the foundation of trade which
is barter. But, though he descried rocks ahead in the future, he
recognised that the consumer had benefited by the free opening of our
ports, that so far as material wealth was concerned, England had become
the emporium and the banker of the world. On the other hand, this very
prosperity had aggravated the misery of a class and had raised those
problems which are still engaging anxious attention. Utilitarianism,
the “cheapest market” theory, had triumphed in the establishment of
unrestricted competition, but the upshot of that competition was an
increasing strain and disorganisation of native labour. With these
evils he left the quickened spirit of “Young England” to cope; while he
himself strove to meet them by the remission of the now unjust burdens
laid on the land, his industrial franchise bill, and his cherished
policy of _sanitas sanitatum_. He had, at any rate, largely influenced
the opinion of his generation in bringing home to men’s minds and
consciences the equality of the rights of Labour with those of
property, and the adequacy of constitutional forms to enforce them; nor
did he ever cease to press them in his writings and speeches. But as a
statesman he had always to choose between evils; and of these a forced
disturbance of a nationally adopted system, which by hasty expedients
might tend to disorder and to dispersal, he ever considered the graver.
To experiment he always opposed experience.
Speaking only two years before his death, he said--
“So far as I understand ... reciprocity is barter. I have always
understood that barter was the first evidence of civilisation[86]--that
it was exactly the state of human exchange that separated civilisation
from savagery.... My noble friend (Lord Bateman) read some extracts,
... and he honoured me by reading an extract from the speech I then
made in the other House of Parliament. That was a speech in favour
of reciprocity--a speech which defined what was then thought to be
reciprocity, and indicated the means by which reciprocity could be
obtained. I do not want to enter into the discussion whether the
principle was right or wrong, but it was acknowledged in public life,
favoured and pursued by many statesmen who conceived that by the
negotiation of a treaty of commerce, by reciprocal exchange and the
lowering of duties, the products of the two negotiating countries
would find a freer access and consumption in the two countries than
they formerly possessed. But when my noble friend taunts me with a
quotation of some rusty phrase of mine forty years ago, I must remind
him that _we had elements then on which treaties of reciprocity could
be negotiated_. At that time, although the great changes of Sir Robert
Peel had taken place, there were one hundred and sixty-eight articles
in the tariff which were materials by which you could have negotiated,
if that was a wise and desirable policy, commercial treaties of
reciprocity. What is the number you now have in the tariff? Twenty-two.
Those who talk of negotiating treaties of reciprocity--have they the
materials?... _You have lost the opportunity._... The policy which
was long ago abandoned, _you cannot now resume_. You have at this
moment a great number of commercial treaties ... nearly forty, with
some of the most considerable countries in the world ... in which ‘the
most-favoured-nation’ clause is included. Well, suppose you are for
a system of reciprocity as my noble friend proposes. He enters into
negotiations with a state; he says: ‘You complain of our high duties
on some particular articles. We have not many, we have a few left;
we shall make some great sacrifice to induce you to enter into a
treaty for an exchange of products.’ _But the moment you contemplate
agreeing with the state, ... every other of the forty states with
‘the most-favoured-nation’ clause claims exactly the same privilege.
The fact is, practically speaking, reciprocity, whatever its merits,
is dead._... The opportunity, like the means, has been relinquished;
and if this is the only mode in which we are to extricate ourselves
from the great distress which prevails, our situation is hopeless. I
should be very sorry to say, whatever the condition of the country, its
condition is hopeless....”
“I cannot for a moment doubt that the repeal of the Corn Laws--on
the policy of which I do not enter--has materially affected the
condition of those who are interested in land. I do not mean to say
that this is the only cause of landed distress. There are other
reasons--general distress, the metallic changes,[87] have all had
an effect. _But I cannot shut my eyes to the conviction that the
termination of protection to the landed interest has materially tended
to the condition in which it finds itself. But that is no reason why
we should retrace our steps, and authorise and sanction any violent
changes._ This state of things is one which has long threatened.... It
has arrived.... I cannot give up the expectation that the energy of
this country will bring about a condition of affairs more favourable
to the _various classes_ which form the great landed interest of this
country. I should look upon it as a great misfortune to this country
that the character, and power, and influence of the landed interest
and its valuable industry, should be diminished, and should experience
anything like a fatal and a final blow. It would, in my opinion, be a
misfortune, not to this country alone, but to the world, _for it has
contributed to the spirit of liberty and order more than any other
class that has existed in modern times_.... But ... I cannot support
my noble friend when he asks us to pass resolutions of this great
character, and when he himself disclaims the very ground (_i.e._
protection) on which he might have framed, not what I think was a
correct, but a plausible case. _It is a very unwise course, in my
opinion, when the country is not in a state so satisfactory as we could
wish ... to propose any inquiry which has not either some definite
object, or is likely to lead to some action on the part of those who
bring it forward._ It would lead to great disappointment and uneasiness
on the part of the country; and the classes who are trying to realise
the exact difficulties they have to encounter ... _would relapse into
a lax state which might render them incapable of making the exertions
it is necessary for them to make_.... Looking into the state of the
country, I do not see there is any great mystery in the causes which
have produced a state of which there is undoubted general complaint.
What has happened in our own commercial failures during the last ten
years will explain it. The great collapse which naturally followed the
_convulsion of prosperity_ which seemed to deluge the world and not
merely this country--the fact that other countries have been placed in
an equally disagreeable situation ... these are circumstances which
appear to me to render it quite unnecessary to enter into an inquiry on
this subject.... I do not mean to say that there are not moments ... in
which an inquiry by Parliament ... into the causes of national distress
may not be allowable--may not be necessary; but it must be a distress
of a very different kind from that which we are now experiencing. We
must have the consciousness that the great body of the people are in a
situation intolerable to them....”
Compare with this that passage from his late _Endymion_--a novel of
memories--where “Job Thornberry” (John Bright) discusses this very
problem with the hero.
“‘... But, after all,’ said Endymion, ‘America is as little in favour
of free exchange as we are. She may send us her bread-stuffs, but
her laws will not admit our goods, except on the payment of enormous
duties.’
“‘Pish!’ said Thornberry. ‘I do not care this for their enormous
duties. Let me have free imports, and I will soon settle their duties.’
“‘To fight hostile tariffs with free imports,’ said Endymion, ‘Is not
that fighting against odds?’
“‘Not a bit. This country has nothing to do but to consider its
imports. Foreigners will not give us their products for nothing; but
as for their tariffs, if we were wise men, and looked to our real
interests, their hostile tariffs, as you call them, would soon be
falling down like an old wall.’
“‘Well, I confess,’ said Endymion, ‘I have for some time thought the
principle of free exchange was a sound one; but its application in a
country like this would be very difficult, and require, I should think,
great prudence and moderation.’
“‘... Ignorance and timidity,’ said Thornberry, scornfully.
“‘Not exactly that, I hope,’ said Endymion; ‘_but you cannot deny that
the home market is a most important element in the consideration of our
public wealth, and it mainly rests on the agriculture of the country_.’”
To which “Thornberry” retorts that “England is to be ruined to keep up
rents.”
At all events, it is here, as elsewhere, evident what led Disraeli to
oppose the introduction of unregulated competition. Things have long
since marched quickly. The wall of tariffs has not tottered; Disraeli
never imagined that it would. “Foreigners” now do sometimes “give us
their products for nothing” through those colossal “Trusts” that make
enormous profits at home to undersell us at a loss and capture our
markets abroad. Competition has been reduced to the absurd. Nor is
the Continent in that plight which marked it when Disraeli uttered
the speech above cited. All these changed conditions require changing
remedies, but the heroic remedy lately advocated may well occasion
thoughtful retrospect, and the speech I have chosen may be profitably
pondered in this connection.
And can any reader of his utterances doubt that, had he lived, he would
never have left the problem of the housing of the poor to private
experiment, or merely municipal omniscience? Thirty-three years ago he
wrote as follows:--
“It is the terror of Europe and the disgrace of Britain,” says
“Lothair” of pauperism; “and I am resolved to grapple with it. It seems
to me that pauperism is not so much an affair of wages as of dwellings.
If the working classes were properly lodged, at their present rate of
wages, they would be richer. They would be healthier and happier at the
same cost....”
I will conclude with an excerpt from Disraeli’s great Crystal Palace
speech of 1872. It concerns the remedies which he had from the first
determined to apply to a state of things which the rush of so-called
“progress” had induced.
“... It must be obvious to all who consider the condition of the
multitude with a desire to improve and elevate it, that no important
step can be gained unless you can effect some reduction of their hours
of labour and humanise their toil. The great problem is to be able to
achieve such results without violating those principles of economic
truth upon which the prosperity of all States depends. You recollect
that many years ago the Tory party believed that these two results
might be obtained ... and at the same time no injury be inflicted on
the wealth of the nation. You know how that effort was encountered,
how these views and principles were met by the triumphant statesmen
of Liberalism. They told you that the inevitable consequence of your
policy was to diminish capital; and this, again, would lead to the
lowering of wages, to a great diminution of the employment of the
people, and ultimately to the impoverishment of the kingdom.... And
what has been the result? Those measures were carried; but carried, as
I can bear witness, with great difficulty and after much labour and a
long struggle. Yet they were carried; and what do we now find? That
capital was never accumulated so quickly; that wages were never higher;
that the employment of the people was never greater, and the country
never wealthier. I ventured to say a short time ago (_at Manchester_)
that the health of the people was the most important subject for a
statesman. It is ... a large subject. It has many branches. It involves
the state of the dwellings of the people, the moral consequences of
which are not less considerable than the physical. It involves their
enjoyment of some of the chief elements of nature--air, light, and
water. It involves the regulation of their industry, the inspection
of their toil. It involves the purity of their provisions, and it
touches upon all the means by which you may wean them from habits of
excess and brutality.... Well, it may be the ‘policy of sewage’ to a
Liberal member of Parliament. But to one of the labouring multitude of
England, who has found fever always to be one of the inmates of his
household--who has, year after year, seen stricken down the children of
his loins, on whose sympathy and support he has looked with hope and
confidence; it is not ‘a policy of sewage,’ but a question of life and
death. And I can tell you this, gentlemen, from personal conversation
with some of the most intelligent of the labouring class, that ...
the hereditary, the traditionary policy of the Tory party that would
improve the condition of the people, is more appreciated by the people
than the ineffable mysteries and all the pains and penalties of the
Ballot Bill.... Is that wonderful? Consider the condition of the great
body of the working classes of this country. They are in possession of
personal privileges--of personal rights and liberties--which are not
enjoyed by the aristocracies of other countries. Recently they have
obtained--and wisely obtained--a great extension of political rights;
and when the people of England see that under the Constitution of this
country ... they possess every personal right of freedom, and according
to the conviction of the whole country, also an adequate concession
of political rights, is it at all wonderful that they should wish to
elevate and improve their condition, and is it unreasonable that they
should ask the Legislature to assist them in that behest, as far as it
is consistent with the general welfare of the realm?...”
The crucial problem still exacts, though it need not baffle, solution.
We are still waiting for the complete answer to the question here
propounded by Disraeli.