contention. If two men ride on a horse one must ride behind, and if two
parties take opposite views of the same measure one must be wrong. The
best testimony to the fact that, as a whole, the Liberal policy pursued
by this country for more than half a century has been right, is,
therefore, that even when the Tories have been in the majority they have
not attempted to reverse it. Every great question that has been agitated
for by the Liberals as a body, except Home Rule, which has yet to be
settled, has been settled in the way they wished; and has more than once
been carried to the last point of success by the Tories themselves. Not
even the staunchest Conservative would urge a return to the system of
rotten boroughs, would repeal the Education Act, re-establish the Irish
Church, or renew open voting; and the Tories who would re-enact the Corn
Laws continue few.
Lord Salisbury has contended that, even if the Liberals have always been
right and the Tories wrong, it should make no difference to the
present-day voter; and, speaking at Reading in the autumn of 1883, he
asked--"Would any of you go to an apothecary's shop because the previous
tenant was a very good man at curing rheumatism? You would say, 'It
matters little to me whether the former tenant was a skilful man or not;
all that concerns me is the skill of the present tenant of the
establishment.'" But supposing, to carry on Lord Salisbury's
illustration, this new tenant could say, "I have in my possession a
recipe of my predecessor which proved itself an infallible cure for
rheumatism; I prepare it in the same fashion; it will have the same
result." Would one not reply, "I will rather trust the recipe which has
always done good, even though in the course of nature it has changed
owners, than put myself in the hands of the opposition chemist, who,
though exceedingly old and eminently respectable, never effects a cure,
but whenever he is called in leaves the patient worse than he finds
him?"
And when Lord Salisbury strove to make his point more clear, he did not
mend matters much. "It is only the existing party, whether Liberal or
Conservative," he said, "that really concerns you; success, wisdom, and
justice do not stick to organizations or buildings--they are the
attributes of men. It is by their present acts and their present
principles that the two parties must be judged." Even if this be
allowed--and, carried to its logical extent, it would justify every
piece of "political legerdemain" (the phrase applied by Lord Salisbury
himself to Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill) the Tory party has ever
perpetrated, or may ever attempt--Liberals need not shrink from the
test. For the Tories, as they have ever done, are now shrinkingly and
fearsomely following in the paths the Liberals years ago laid down, with
just sufficient deviation to prove that the old Adam of reaction is not
dead. Whether it be free trade, or parliamentary reform, or the
closure, they initiate nothing; but when the Liberals have cleared the
way, they are eager to adopt all that they have previously denounced,
and to claim as their own principles they have throughout professed to
abhor. Seeing that the Liberals borrow nothing from the Tories, while
the Tories borrow a very great deal from the Liberals, we can judge the
two parties, as Lord Salisbury wished, by their present acts and their
present principles, and show that the Liberal is the more worthy of
popular support.
It is, of course, not to be wondered at that such a desire to ignore the
past should be expressed by a politician who, from his maiden speech to
his most recent efforts, has denounced Liberal ideas; who, at various
stages of his parliamentary career, has opposed the spread of popular
education, the extension of the suffrage, the creation of the ballot,
the emancipation of the Jews, the extinction of Church rates, the full
admission of Dissenters to the Universities, the abolition of purchase
in the army, the repeal of the taxes on knowledge, the throwing open of
the Civil Service to the people, the right of Nonconformists to be
buried in their parish churchyard, the remission of long-standing and
obviously unpayable Irish arrears, and the destruction of the property
qualification for members of Parliament; whose sympathy for his fellows
may be gathered from his insinuated comparison of the Irish to
Hottentots, and his declaration that it is "just" that the children of
those who have contracted marriage with their deceased wife's sister
should be bastardized; whose taste for diplomacy was shown by his
direction to a Viceroy to "create" a pretext for forcing a quarrel upon
Afghanistan; whose regard for the strictness of truth was displayed in
his denial of the authenticity of a well-remembered secret memorandum;
whose love for liberty was evidenced by the lukewarmness with which he
watched the struggles for freedom in Italy and Bulgaria, and the hearty
and continuous support he gave to the slave-holding faction in America;
and whose affection for the people may be judged from the fact that,
throughout his political life, his name has never been identified with a
single piece of constructive legislation for their welfare. "By their
fruits shall ye know them" is applicable to politics, therefore; as
Lord Salisbury, by so strenuously endeavouring to ignore the maxim,
practically admits; and at the risk of putting aside the canon of
criticism adopted by the noble marquis, let me show some of the fruits
of modern Liberal policy.
I rise in the morning and go to my breakfast; my tea, my coffee, my
sugar, and my ham are all of easy price because of the reductions in
import duties made by Liberal Governments. I take up my newspaper, and I
have it so cheaply because Mr. Gladstone, despite the utmost efforts of
the Conservatives, secured the repeal of the paper duty. I go to
business, and, as I write my letter or my postcard, I cannot but reflect
that a Liberal Ministry in 1840 allowed me to send the one for a penny,
and a Liberal Ministry in 1870 to send the other for half that sum. I
proceed to dinner, and find that bread, cheese, and much of my dessert
are the more available because of Liberal remissions. And as in the
evening I visit the theatre, the very opera glasses I hold in my hand
are the cheaper because, in one of his Budgets, Mr. Gladstone included
these among the hundreds of other articles from which he removed a small
but galling tax.
These are some, and only some, of the material benefits resulting from
the Liberal policy. What of the political, what of the social, what of
the moral benefits? If I am an Englishman, I am proud of the fact that
no longer is the national flag allowed to float over a slave; if I am a
Scotchman, I rejoice that my country has been freed from the
extraordinary system of mis-representation which weighed upon it like a
nightmare before 1832; if I am an Irishman, I am not forced at the point
of the bayonet to pay tithes to an alien Church, to liquidate arrears
for rack-rents owing from the time of the famine, or to give an
exorbitant rent for the result of my own improvements; if I am a
Churchman, my Church has been strengthened by the repeal of enactments
which provoked opposition, while providing no good for the Establishment
they professed to serve; if I am a Nonconformist, I am no longer liable
to have my goods seized in support of a Church in which I do not
believe, I have the right to be married in my own place of worship, and
to be buried by my own minister by the side of my fathers; if I am a
Catholic, I have been liberated from certain restrictions upon my
religion, which I resented as an insult and a wrong; if I am a Jew, I
can sit with the peers, in the Commons, or on the judicial bench; if I
belong to the army, and am an officer, my rise is made easy--if I am a
private, my rise is made possible, by the abolition of purchase; if I am
either soldier or sailor, I owe it mainly to Liberal exertions that
discipline is no longer maintained by the lash; if I am a merchant
seaman, my life is the better protected because of the efforts of a
Liberal member of Parliament; if I am in the Civil Service, I have the
greater chance of success because of the destruction of that system of
nomination, which, however advantageous to the aristocracy, was fatal to
modest merit; if I am a student, I can go to a University with the
certainty that not now shall I be deprived of the reward of my exertions
because my conscience prevents me from subscribing the Thirty-nine
Articles; if I am a tradesman, my goods are freed from many a customs
duty which formerly restricted their sale; if I am a farmer, I can vote
without fear of my landlord, my lands have been to some extent saved
from the depredations of hares and rabbits, and my tenure has been
rendered more certain than ever before; if I am an artisan, the fruits
of combination have been secured to me, my employer has been made liable
for accidents arising from either his carelessness or his greed, my vote
has been obtained, and by the ballot has been protected; if I am the
child of the poorest, a school has been opened for me where a sound
education can be procured at a small cost; in fact, in whatever station
I may chance to be placed, I cannot but feel in my every-day life the
beneficent influences of the policy advocated by leaders of advanced
thought, and adopted by Liberal Ministries during the past fifty years.
If, then, I am asked to justify the Liberal party by showing what it has
done, I answer that, by timely reform, it has saved England from the
continental curse of frequent revolution; that, in striving for the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, it has in especial elevated
and educated the masses, for whom it has provided cheap food for both
body and mind; and that it has struggled, and in the main successfully
struggled, to secure civil and religious equality for all. And in the
future as in the past, with perfect liberty as its fixed ideal, and with
peace, retrenchment, and reform as the methods by which it wishes that
ideal to be obtained, it will press onward and upward, and ever onward
and upward, until England, now regarded as the mother of free nations,
shall be but one of a gigantic brotherhood of freedom, embracing every
civilized people that may then inhabit the globe.
VII.--WHAT ARE LIBERAL PRINCIPLES?
After this recital of Liberal deeds, it may fairly be asked, "What are
Liberal principles?" and these it is not easy to define off-hand. There
are certain general truths which are the commonplaces of both parties,
and no serious attempt has yet been made to lay down a system of
principles with which none except Liberals can agree. But there are
differences that underlie the action of the two parties which are
unmistakable, and are worth finding out.
If one were to ask the first half-dozen Liberals he met for a definition
of their principles, varying and perhaps vague replies would be
received. For in politics, as in other matters that combine speculation
with practical action, it is only the few who speculate, while the many
are content to act. And even most of those who tried to answer would be
apt to reply that Liberal principles could be summed up in the old party
watch-word--"Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform," thus confounding Liberal
principles with Liberal aims.
That these aims are well worth striving for has long been an accepted
doctrine of the party; but, in trying to gain them, we have to adapt
them to circumstances, and are not called upon in every single emergency
to push them to their logical extent. Logic, after all, is only a pair
of spectacles, not eyesight itself; and attempts to arrange human
affairs upon too precise a basis frequently end, as France so often has
shown, in failure. We long for peace, but not for peace at any price; we
ask for retrenchment, but not an indiscriminate paring down of
expenditure for the sake of showing a saving; and we struggle for
reform, but not to cut all the branches off the trees on the chance of
improving their appearance.
Before, in fact, we have been able to struggle at all for these or any
other points in politics, certain principles have had to be acted upon
by generations of progressive thinkers, which have developed and
strengthened our liberties. It is, perhaps, presumptuous to attempt to
lay down in a few words a basis of Liberal principle, but I would submit
that that basis may be found in the contention that
_All men should be equal before the law_;
that, as a consequence,
_All should have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of
action_;
and that, in order to secure and retain these liberties,
_The people should govern themselves_.
With regard to the first point, I do not contend that all men are, or
ever can be, equal. Differences of mental and physical strength, of
energy and temperament, and of will to work, there must always be; and
in the struggle for existence, which is likely to grow even keener as
the world becomes more filled, the fittest must continue to come to the
top, as they have done and deserve to do. A law-made equality would not
last a week, but much law-made inequality has lasted for centuries, and
it is against this that Liberals as Liberals must protest. We object to
all law-made privilege, and we ask that men gifted with equal capacities
shall have equal chances. We do not claim any new privilege for the
poor, but we demand the abolition of the old privileges, express and
un-express, of the rich. Something was done in the latter direction when
the system of nomination in most departments of the civil service and
that of purchase in the army were got rid of. But as long as in the
higher departments of public affairs a man has a place in the
legislature merely because he is the son of his father; as long as in
the humbler branches no one unpossessed of a property qualification can
sit on certain local boards; and as long as in daily life the facilities
for frequent appeal, devised by lawyers within the House for the benefit
of lawyers without, provide a power for wealth that is often used to
defeat the ends of justice, so long, to take these alone out of many
instances, shall we lack that equality of opportunity which we demand
not as a favour but a right.
But if every man is to be equal before the law, he must have the right
to think as his reason directs; to discuss as freely as he thinks; and
to act as he pleases, so long as his neighbour is not injured in the
honest discharge of his duties, or the common weal put in jeopardy.
"Give me," said Milton, "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue
according to conscience, above all liberties"--for it is certain that
with freedom of thought and discussion all other liberties will follow.
John Mill carried this principle to the fullest extent when he argued
that "if all mankind, minus one, were of one opinion, and only one
person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified
in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be
justified in silencing mankind." To all such sweeping generalizations
there are, however, possible exceptions. No man would be much inclined
to blame Cromwell for suppressing the pamphlet "Killing no Murder,"
which directly advocated his own assassination; even the strongest lover
of free discussion would not be prepared to allow the systematic
circulation of exhortations to blow up our public buildings, and
directions as to the best way of doing it; and instances may conceivably
arise--and an invasion one of them--where absolute freedom of
publication and debate would form a national danger. Our liberties,
therefore, would be sufficiently protected if we recognized the right of
every man to speak and to act as he pleases, "so long as his neighbour
is not injured in the honest discharge of his duties, or the common weal
put in jeopardy."
In order, however, that men may be able to think, speak, and do as they
deem right, it is necessary that the people shall rule, and that the
majority, when it has made up its mind, shall have the power to carry
out its decree. Even the Tories of these days will not dispute this
principle, and, therefore, Liberals cannot claim it as at this moment
their own; and yet, broadly speaking, the root idea of the Tory party is
the aristocratic theory that the few ought to govern the many, while
that of the Liberal party is the democratic, that the many ought to
govern the few.
In the days before the mass of the people were a real power in the
affairs of the State, this difference was very clearly marked, for the
Tories then were under no necessity to conceal their belief that the
"common herd" were not to be trusted in political concerns. And it is
useful, as showing what the high Tory doctrine on this point really was,
to recall the fact that a judge on the bench, less than a century ago,
in summing up at a political trial, laid it down as a doctrine not to be
questioned that "a government in every country should be just like a
corporation; and in this country it is made up of the landed interest,
which alone has a right to be represented. As for rabble, who have
nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation of them? What
security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their
property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkle of an eye;
but landed property cannot be removed." And another judge at a political
trial within the present century went even further in denying to the
people not merely the right of interference with public affairs, but
even of comment upon them. "It is said," he observed, "that we have a
right to discuss the acts of our legislature. This would be a large
permission indeed. Is there to be a power in the people to counteract
the acts of the Parliament; and is the libeller to come and make the
people dissatisfied with the Government under which he lives? This is
not to be permitted to any man,--it is unconstitutional and seditious."
We have outgrown such doctrines as these; and, thanks to the efforts of
generations of Liberals who have passed to their rest, the right of the
"rabble who have nothing but personal property"--or, for the matter of
that, no property at all--to take part in settling the affairs of the
State, whether by criticism or active interference, is solidly
established.
It may be argued that as the Tories of to-day have accepted democracy,
the Liberals have no right to claim the principles here laid down as if
they were without exception their own. But this Tory acceptance of
democratic ideas is only partial, and a party which mainly depends upon
the aristocracy for support can never adopt them with consistency and
enthusiasm. The very existence of an hereditary legislature violates the
principle that all men should be equal before the law; the theory upon
which a State-established Church rests is equally a violation of the
right of every one to think, speak, and act as he chooses; and the
continuous efforts of the Tories to limit the franchise, and to erect
barriers against the majority having their will, are utterly opposed to
the view that the people should govern, and harmonize with the old idea
that the people should be governed.
It must not be imagined that these differences between the parties mean
nothing, or that we are beyond all danger of losing the advance we have
made. The ease with which we might slip back into despotism is shown by
the manner in which the Tories resort to coercion--or, as they prefer to
term it, "exceptional legislation"--when a majority of the Irish people
has to be cowed. The suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the abolition
of trial by jury, the extinction of liberty of the press, and the denial
of the right of public meeting have been frequently enacted against the
majority of the people of Ireland, because their views on the political
situation have not accorded with those of the majority of the people of
England. And though they have all failed, and repeatedly failed, a
variation of the same old plan is put in operation to-day as if it were
a newly-discovered and infallible remedy for every popular ill.
Easy-going folk are apt to reply that, as these things concern only
Ireland, it is of no special moment to ourselves, and that England is
safe from any revival of a despotic system. Even if this were true it
would be false morality, and false morality makes bad politics. But it
is not true. Despotism is a disease which spreads, and any development
of it applied to one part of the body politic might, in conceivable
circumstances, be used as a precedent to apply it to the whole. And if
it be said that in these happy days the men of England have the
undisputed right to think as they like and talk as they will, it can be
answered that not one of the shackles upon freedom of thought and
freedom of action has been voluntarily struck off by the Tories, and
that it is only lately that they prevented a member of Parliament for
years from taking the seat to which he had been four times elected,
because he avowed what he believed upon theological questions.
The difference between the two parties, even in the present general
acceptance of a democratic system, may be put in words once used by Mr.
Chamberlain--"It is the essential condition, the cardinal principle of
Liberalism, that we should recognize rights, and not merely confer
favours." With us, the suffrage is the right of every free citizen; with
the Tories, it is a favour conferred upon the working by the moneyed
classes. We demand religious equality; the Tories are willing to give
toleration. But favours we do not ask, and toleration we will not have.
Liberals, in fact, are prepared substantially to subscribe to the
principles laid down more than a century since in the American
Declaration of Independence--a document which sounded the knell of
despotism on its own side of the Atlantic, and awoke echoes which shook
down another despotism on ours. "We hold," said that document, "these
truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure
these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of
government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness."
These, broadly speaking, are Liberal principles; and when one has
absorbed them thoroughly, there comes to him that Liberal sentiment,
that enthusiasm for his fellows, which feels a blow struck at any man's
freedom, in any part of the whole world, as keenly as if it were struck
at his own.
VIII.--ARE LIBERALS AND RADICALS AGREED?
It may be thought that by dealing only with "the fundamental principles
of the Liberal party," the Radicals were put aside as if they had no
separate existence; and to a large extent this is true, for Radicals are
simply advanced Liberals. The principles just asserted are common to all
members of the progressive party. There are differences as to the time
at which certain measures directly flowing from them shall become a
portion of the party's platform; and that is all.
A great deal of the prejudice which used to exist against those called
"Radicals" has died away, but traces of it linger still; and it will be
well to see what Radicalism, as a phase of Liberalism, really is. It may
sound strange to be told that the Whigs were the Radicals of an earlier
day, and that they sometimes carried their Radicalism to the point of
revolution. In these times it is becoming increasingly doubtful whether
those who call themselves by what was once the honourable title of
"Whig" have any claim to be considered members of the Liberal party; and
there are many who consider that they are now more truly conservative
than the Conservatives themselves. The Whigs tell us that they are only
acting as the drag on the wheel; but this implies that we are always
going down hill. That we do not believe. We hold that we are
progressing; and a drag which would act upon the coach as it climbs the
hill is a product neither of prudence nor common sense.