The term Individualism was cited by Henry Reeve (of _Edinburgh Review_
fame) in William IV’s reign as “a novel expression.” John Stuart Mill
is (wrongly) credited with having given it currency and popularity.
Although he discusses the subject at great length in his _Political
Economy_, he seldom if ever uses the exact term--his judicious
and well-balanced mind was adverse to the manufacture of labels.
He preferred to employ such expressions as “individual freedom,”
“individual property,” “those who have been called the _laissez-faire_
school,” etc. Even in _Liberty_, published much later, which is rightly
regarded as a classic of Individualism, he avoids the term, although
he uses (perhaps not more than once) the word “Individuality” in that
sense.
However, the term is an extremely convenient one to express the views
of those who would confine the functions of the State and various
public authorities to a relatively small province, i.e., maintaining
law and order, the army, the navy and other means of national defence,
the enforcement of contracts, the maintenance of public services
which cannot conveniently be entrusted to private enterprise, and
in general the provision of a fair field for the play of individual
energy. It is opposed to Collectivism, Socialism, Communism, and the
various other means of restricting liberty, whether these be adopted
by public authorities, quasi-private corporations, private firms,
hereditary autocrats, military dictators, or the like. It should be
remembered that in Mill and many writers of the older generation the
terms Socialism and Communism are used as equivalents; and it is
hardly necessary to remind any serious student that words, especially
general terms,[2] are very slippery articles, and that many discussions
are barren and lead to complete misunderstanding, because the parties
engaged in them have no clear definition of the terms in their minds,
or, at any rate, are using the terms in a sense different from that
employed by their opponents.
Modern as the term Individualism may be, the thing itself is older.
Undoubtedly traces of the theory may be found in Latin and Greek
writers; but it is needless to go back further than the seventeenth
century, for three very good reasons:
1. In the Greek world the City State was supreme--the individual
citizen lived and moved as a member of the State.[3] So Pericles is
made by Thucydides to say: “If a man prospers individually when his
country is destroyed, he is none the less joined in the general ruin,
while he comes through in complete safety if the State prospers, even
though he himself suffers calamities.” In the Roman Empire citizens had
only legal rights. The State was autocratic.
2. The medieval theory of politics and economics was feudal and
paternal. To Macaulay’s schoolboy, and even to people less well
informed, this fact is so familiar that the mere statement will
suffice. It is clear that up to 1500 A.D. there was little scope for a
theory of Individualism.
3. The Classical Revival, though it revolutionized a large part of
modern thought, at first did nothing to change the general attitude
toward the State. This was only to be expected, seeing that the State
was supreme in Classical theory.
At last, in the seventeenth century, came the rise of Individualism,
and this was due to several causes:
1. The Protestant Reformation brought private judgment into theology,
and the new habit of thought soon extended to other questions, and,
above all, to the problems of individual rights and the functions of
the State.
2. The wars of Religion which devastated Europe, made men distrust
the principle of authority, which had seemingly led to those horrors.
The wars, having been conducted by Governments, helped to undermine
confidence in official wisdom, i.e., in governments. A careful reader
of Pope’s poetry will notice that almost every line is permeated with
scorn, not only for the general human capacity but for “the great” in
particular; and nearly all the leading eighteenth century writers hold
similar opinions. Thus Gray, in contemplative mood, exclaims:
“How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!”
But long before Pope, the Swedish Oxenstiern (1654) had summed up the
whole matter in his renowned saying: “Behold, my son, with how little
wisdom the world is governed.”
3. The action of despots, benevolent or otherwise, who introduced
innumerable and vexatious regulations to control the business and daily
life of their subjects, caused thoughtful men to distrust government
action. The restrictive policy carried out by Colbert, under Louis XIV,
with a multitude of protective regulations, provoked a reaction to the
_laissez faire_ school of France; and the French merchants’ cry “_let
us alone_”[4] became the motto of economic and political reformers.
But before this, in the reign of Charles II., there had come forward
the English founder of Individualism, the master builder in that
school of empiric philosophy which is one of the most characteristic
products of England. This man was John Locke.[5] His name and writings
are not today very familiar to the general reader, because nearly all
his principles were translated into practice by other men, famous in
their day and tolerably well known to posterity, while Locke is little
more than a name, venerated but nowadays seldom read. And yet he is,
directly and indirectly, perhaps the most influential writer[6] who has
appeared in the last two hundred years.
We are here only concerned with his political philosophy. Its direct
influence in England was immense. The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688
sprang naturally from his theory of government. Adam Smith’s doctrine
of Natural Liberty and Bentham’s general theory of Individualism owe
much to him. John Stuart Mill acknowledged him as one of his masters
in philosophy. But great as was his direct influence in England,
it produced even more striking effects in France and America. The
Declaration of Independence may be traced largely to the philosophy of
Locke, who (though his constitution for South Carolina was a practical
failure) may also claim to have had a share in the Constitution of
the United States. Adam Smith drew from the physiocrats who drew
from Locke. Tom Paine and the other “Friends of the People” found in
Rousseau a like intermediary.
The precursors of Revolution in eighteenth century France owed much
to Locke. Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists were all more or less
his disciples. Though Rousseau is also in one sense a founder of
Socialism, his famous and unhistorical Social Contract was taken from
Locke, who borrowed it from Hobbes, converting it from an argument for
an all powerful despot to an argument for a limited constitutional
monarchy, free and tolerant. Everyone knows the far-famed declarations
of Rousseau’s _Social Contract_ and the Constitution of the United
States--that all men are born free and have a natural right to
freedom and security.[7] But few have read them in Locke’s _Of Civil
Government_, where they appeared much earlier.
For Locke and his disciples, including Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson,
and a long line of British and American statesmen, the main object
of Representative Government is the freedom and happiness of the
individual citizens who control it by their votes and support it by
their taxes. Thus Locke’s political philosophy crossed the Channel, and
became the groundwork of Quesnay, Turgot, Bastiat, and other advocates
of _laissez faire_, which was a French synonym for Individualism.
Crossing the Atlantic it became the groundwork of American policy in
internal affairs. Locke was the first considerable publicist to lay
down the momentous doctrine that the State is secular--that it has
a well-defined province in which alone it may act, i.e., that its
business is to secure to men their civil rights, leaving all other
matters to individual volition or voluntary co-operation. Thus he says
in _A Letter Concerning Toleration_: “The commonwealth seems to me to
be a society of men constituted only for the procuring, preserving,
and advancing their own civil interests. Civil interests I call life,
liberty, health and indolency [freedom from pain] of body; and the
possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture,
and the like. It is the duty of the civil magistrate, by the impartial
execution of equal laws, to secure unto all the people in general, and
to every one of his subjects in particular the just possession of these
things belonging to this life.”
In refusing to extend toleration to Roman Catholics, Locke followed
Milton in his _Areopagitica_. In those times it was believed that Rome,
if it regained power, would overthrow constitutional liberty. The
Inquisition was still active. No one advocated universal toleration
except members of persecuted minorities. In the reign of James II, most
English Dissenters, when offered toleration on condition that the Roman
Catholics should also be tolerated, declined the boon.
Locke, it may be said, laid down the theory so frequently set forth
by Macaulay--that the duty of Government is to preserve the lives and
property of its subjects, and that their other activities must be left
in the main to moral influences and to free competitive enterprise.
Locke did his business so thoroughly that the English theory remained
unchanged for more than a century and a half. Indeed, if tendencies
admitted of exact dates, we might say that Locke’s theory was almost
unchallenged until the publication of the Fabian Essays in 1889.
In _Civil Government_ Locke expounds the Individualistic view
of private property, and again lays down the quintessence of
Individualism: “The great and chief end, therefore, of men’s uniting
into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is
the preservation of their property.” He qualifies his theory of a
Social Contract, Compact, or Covenant, by pointing out that “men
when they enter into society give up ... liberty” of a kind; “yet
it being only with an intention in every one the better to preserve
himself, his liberty and property,” the power conferred “can never
be supposed to extend farther than the common good, but is obliged
to secure everyone’s property,” etc., etc. This artful qualification
of the _common good_, serves as a complete defence of the “Glorious
Revolution,” which gave us effective parliamentary government.
As Locke is of capital importance in our subject, those who wish to
study it thoroughly should at least read his monumental essay. Some
critics may object that we have over-valued Locke, seeing that he
was anticipated in many respects by Hobbes as well as by Milton and
other Republican writers. It is true that Hobbes, like Locke, was in
a sense Individualist. But his influence, for various reasons, was
much smaller. Besides, though Hobbes and Locke adopted many of the same
premises, they drew from them quite different conclusions. Locke argued
in favor of a free commonwealth, while Hobbes pointed to an absolute
monarchy.
Locke’s victory over all opposing schools of thought was so complete
that Emancipation and Liberty became for more than a century after
his death the keynotes of English political philosophy. Under the
early Georges individual liberty was not only the admiration of all
intelligent foreigners, but it had gone quite as far as public opinion
approved. With the American revolution democratic reformers came to the
front. But all progress was stopped by the French Revolution.
One of the few able men who wrote in nominal opposition to Locke’s
point of view was Bolingbroke, whose brilliant _Patriot King_
(published in 1749) is probably more admired today than it was at the
time of his death. But Bolingbroke, though he had a more extended
view of the functions of Government than Locke, did not write in
strong opposition to his principles. His ideal, “a patriot king at the
head of a united people,” was capable of a more or less “democratic”
interpretation.
The policy of Walpole, and indeed his successors, was _Quieta non
movere_, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” A politician might have said, “We
are all individualists now.” Tory Dr. Johnson and non-party Goldsmith
joined in composing the couplet:
“How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which kings or laws can cause or cure!”
In the same year that the _Patriot King_ was published appeared the far
more important _L’Esprit des Lois_ of Montesquieu, a revolutionary book
because it introduced the historical method. It helped to confirm the
prevalent mode of thought, because it held up the British Constitution
to the admiration of mankind.
We may then take it for granted that among thinkers and writers there
was little effective opposition to Individualism in the eighteenth
century.
In the economic sphere Hume, Tucker and Burke were all advocates of
free trade and industrial emancipation from red tape regulations. But
Adam Smith was the great architect. Individualism, already firmly
rooted in England, was made impregnable in economics for generations
by his _Wealth of Nations_, which appeared in 1776. At second hand
or otherwise this work is so well known that it would be waste of
time to dilate upon it. Until Adam Smith came into the field the
Individualistic practice in politics had not, as a rule, extended to
trade in spite of Walpole’s experiments in that direction. But within
seventy years the triumph of _laissez faire_ in economics was complete.
Pitt, the first great modern Tory statesman, absorbed Adam Smith’s
teaching and educated his party. This was a decisive factor; till
then the one check upon Individualism had been Tory hostility to the
Whigs--the political heirs of Locke. Henceforward the Tories, though
as a body inclined to Protection and State control of trade, could
be persuaded by leaders like Huskisson or Peel (however unwillingly)
to remove restrictions from commerce and industry; indeed, in late
Victorian days their leader, Lord Salisbury, and the bulk of his
Parliamentary followers remained Free Traders. Free Trade means the
absence of a Protective Tariff. Freedom of Trade means freedom not
only from tariffs but from restrictions and regulations of all kinds,
including those imposed by Trade Unions or combinations of employers,
as well as those imposed by Government. This robust growth of economic
Individualism was largely due to the seed sown by the _Wealth of
Nations_ and to the popular arguments of Cobden and the Manchester
School.
It is impossible here to do more than glance at the important
developments of _laissez faire_ in France and the United States.
In France the movement for economic emancipation was led by the
Physiocrats, who by their contemporaries were called “Economistes.”
Many of their members, as Quesnay and Turgot, were great and
beneficent figures in the history of France. The zeal they displayed
for industrial and commercial liberty was natural in reflective men
contemplating the feudal servitude of the French people, who were,
like Rousseau’s Man, everywhere in chains. They rightly attributed
the poverty and misery of France to the obsolete regulations
which everywhere sterilized effort and enterprise. Writing in the
_Encyclopédie_, Turgot condemns “le malheureux principe qui a si
longtemps infecté l’administration du commerce, je veux dire la
manie de tout régler, et de ne jamais s’en rapporter aux hommes sur
leur propre intérêt.” The Physiocrats detected the fallacies of the
Mercantile Theory and the Balance of Trade. Adam Smith owed much to
them; but his judicious mind rejected their “crank” doctrine--that land
is the sole source of wealth. Unhappily for France, Turgot fell, and
instead of his wise reforms came revolutionary violence and the wars
that made Napoleon the military despot of France. Napoleon created
a new bureaucratic state, more efficient than the old monarchy but
hardly less subversive of freedom. Nevertheless Individualism revived
in France after Waterloo and found a brilliant protagonist in Frédéric
Bastiat, whose writings are a most lively exposure of the fallacies of
Socialism, Protectionism and Militarism.
When we turn to the United States, we find there in Thomas Jefferson
the master Individualist--for ability and consistency he has few if any
rivals in the practice of that political creed. Having received the
pure doctrine of Locke, he found during his residence in France a kind
of laboratory in which he watched the French experiments in government.
In the end he was able to establish in the United States a form of
political thought which dominated it from the first decade of the
nineteenth century and still prevails.[8] This may be called a triumph
in observation and experiment, extremely rare in practical politics.
The American tariff, indeed, is contrary to Jefferson’s philosophy. But
it must be remembered that the United States constitutes the largest
and richest free trade area in the world with forty-eight states
enjoying complete liberty of exchange for all their products and a
maximum of freedom from economic restrictions.
We must now turn to England and the Industrial Revolution which will
engage our attention more closely than its twin French sister. This
vast change, which lasted roughly from 1760-1846, is now described
in all text-books. England passed from home industries to factory
industries. The Individualist régime, which then prevailed, enabled her
to effect the change with comparative ease, and a period of wonderful
expansion followed. For the second half of the nineteenth century Great
Britain led the world in manufactures, commerce and shipping. Capital
accumulated. Wages rose steadily. All classes prospered. The eighteenth
century had been the age of optimists, and Adam Smith was one of
them. He believed that Heaven would help those who helped themselves,
and his anticipation of the prosperity which would follow commercial
freedom was realized in Victorian England. One of his doctrines was
that, if the individual trader were left to himself, the study of his
own advantage would lead him to a course of action which would also be
advantageous to society. Let him pursue his own interest, and he would
be “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his
intention.”
In the literature of Individualism after Locke, Bentham is perhaps
the leading figure; he was to the nineteenth century what Locke was
to the eighteenth, and he showed how an Individualistic conception of
society might be made the basis of wonderful improvements in public
administration. He was a strong advocate of public economy, and was
careful to insist that the functions of central and local authorities
should be limited to police, public health and other services which
do not lend themselves to voluntary effort. His small _Manual of
Political Economy_, published in 1798, puts the economic case in a
nutshell: “With the view of causing an increase to take place in the
mass of national wealth, or with a view to increase the means either
of subsistence or enjoyment, without some special reason, the general
rule is, that nothing ought to be done or attempted by government. The
motto, or watchword of government on these occasions, ought to be--_Be
quiet_;... The request which agriculture, manufacturers, and commerce
present to governments, is modest and reasonable as that which Diogenes
made to Alexander: ‘_Stand out of my sunshine._’ We have no need of
favour--we require only a secure and open path.”
That Utilitarianism, Individualism, and Political Economy enjoyed so
long a reign, and even held sway at the Universities, was largely due
to the philosophy of John Stuart Mill, a very great man, who to all
his other gifts added a candour, rare in controversy, which secures
the confidence of the reader and makes him feel that he is not reading
propaganda but accompanying the author on a journey in search of truth.
Mill’s lucidity of thought and style helped to extend his influence,
and he soon took the place of Bentham as the leading exponent of
utilitarian Individualism. His virtues and unselfish public spirit
won him the title of “the Saint of Rationalism.” Among Mill’s books
_Political Economy_, _Representative Government_, and above all, _On
Liberty_, are the most important for our subject. They influenced, and
still influence, the views of intellectuals on the critical problem
of what should be the relationship under democratic institutions
between the people and their government. Mill’s analysis of the whole
subject provides a most valuable contribution to political and economic
science. There is a fine moral elevation of tone which lifts his
arguments and conclusions far above the level of mere party controversy
or the narrow and selfish interests of classes. The argument for free
speech and complete toleration, and for individual liberty in general,
has never been developed with such persuasive force as in Mill’s brief
but masterly treatise _On Liberty_. Among Mill’s contemporaries the
most brilliant of the writers who took part in this controversy was
Macaulay. There is no more crushing exposure in our literature of the
fallacies of State Socialism and of the theory that a government ought
to be extravagant and meddlesome than Macaulay’s essay on Southey’s
_Colloquies of Society_. It is worthy to be printed alongside Bastiat’s
unmasking of the French experiments in Communism.
The most powerful political force on the side of Individualism in
the middle years of the nineteenth century was, of course, the
Manchester School under the leadership of Cobden and Bright, supported
by economists like Henry Fawcett and Thorold Rogers. It was equally
opposed to Protectionism, Militarism and Socialism. With its support
Gladstone introduced a severe economy into all departments of State and
instituted the financial control of an efficient Treasury Department on
the principles already laid down by Sir Robert Peel.
Among the apostles of Individualism after the death of Cobden and
Mill were Herbert Spencer and his disciple Auberon Herbert. Herbert
Spencer’s _The Man versus the State_ is an effective pamphlet against
the Socialistic tendencies which began to permeate both the Liberal
and Conservative Parties in the ’Eighties and the ’Nineties of last
century. Among the politicians who aided this movement the most
conspicuous was Joseph Chamberlain. His Radical Programme was issued in
1885, and when he passed over to the Conservative Party he took with
him some of its items, including free education, which was carried by
Lord Salisbury’s Government.
Meanwhile, a Socialist Party was being gradually formed under such
leaders as Hyndman, Morris and Keir Hardie. In 1889 there appeared
the _Fabian Essays_, which won many converts to a moderate and
progressive type of Socialism. Its most brilliant exponent was Mr.
Bernard Shaw; but it owed even more to the researchful industry
and incessant activity of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. A little later
appeared Blatchford’s _Merrie England_, which caught the popular
fancy and helped to turn many working class Radicals into Socialists.
But it was not until the Great War, with all the terrible suffering
and economic loss which accompanied and followed it, that British
industry and capital were at last confronted with a strong Labour
Party and threatened by an active group of Communists who aimed at
the expropriation of property and at the Marxian ideal known as the
“Dictatorship of the Proletariat.” Since then Socialist propaganda has
been very active among the working classes, and a considerable section
of the British Press has been inclined to compromise with its proposals
rather than to meet them and counter them by the principles and
arguments of Individualism, opposing free competition and enterprise to
monopolistic combinations and bureaucratic red tape.