fixing of fair rents by judicial courts in Ireland and certain districts
of the Highlands of Scotland; in others to prevent endless dispute and
loss, as in the disposal, in specified proportions, of the personal
property of those who die without a will; in a further series to prevent
a virtual monopoly from becoming tyrannous, as in the compulsion of
railway companies to run certain third-class trains, and not to charge
beyond a stated fare, or the restriction of the profits of gas companies
to 10 per cent. unless a specified reduction in price is made to the
consumers; in others, yet, for the supposed advantage of a class, as in
the custom of primogeniture, which gives all real property (that is,
land) to the eldest son of a father who dies intestate; and, in others,
for the presumed benefit of the community, at the expense of individual
efforts, as in the limitation of the duration of patents for inventions
to seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, and of copyright in books to
forty-two years from the date of publication, or for the author's life
and seven years after, whichever of these terms may be the longer.
As to the first three points--the fixing of fair rents in Ireland and
the Highlands, the due division of the personal property of those who
die without a will, and the limitation of the power of virtual
monopolies--there is no need at this day to argue, for all are
irrevocable. As to the fourth, there is no practical disagreement among
leading politicians on both sides regarding the desirability of doing
away with the custom of primogeniture, as enforced by law. But as to the
fifth, it may be submitted that the State goes too far or not far
enough.
Our legislators have been exceedingly tender towards every description
of property except that created by certain of the highest phases of
brain-power. If a man invents a machine which may save millions to the
community, he loses all specific property in his invention after a given
period of years; if he writes a book which may elevate mankind, his
family are similarly condemned after a certain period to forfeit all
claim upon the fruits of his labour. But if, instead of putting his
brain to such uses, he merely makes a machine or lends a book for hire,
there is no law to step in and deprive him of the profits if either
machine or book lasts a century.
Why this difference? The theory appears to be that the community is
entitled to profit after a certain period by the brains of its members,
when used in the creative or inventive direction; but if the claim be
good, has not the State an equal right to profit after a similar period
by the brains of its members when used in trading ways? Why should
brains exercised in one direction be handicapped in comparison with
those exercised in another? The answer may be that the inventor or
author employs no capital, that the trader does, and that, therefore,
whatever profit the former is allowed to make is a profit upon nothing,
while in the latter case the profit is directly upon the capital
employed, which ought not to be interfered with.
But this is to adopt the fallacy that capital is necessarily the same
thing as money. The capital of an inventor or an author is his brains,
which he expends upon his invention or his book; and the community has
exactly the same right to deprive the widow and the orphan of a fortune
because it was made by a lucky speculation, for instance, forty-two
years before, as of their property in a book because it was published
that length of time previous. It is true that the State does not fully
exercise this right, and protects the family of the mere money-maker
while it despoils that of the brain-worker; but the principle is one
which contains larger possibilities than the former have yet realized.
The argument that it is for the benefit of the community that only a
certain amount of time should be given to the inventor or the author in
which to make a profit is dangerous, because it can so easily be applied
to other species of property. Why not to the body of the machine as well
as to its principle, why not to the pages of the book as well as to what
they contain? And even if it is never pushed so far, there are certain
species of property now protected by the law which will not improbably
be attacked upon this same ground of "the benefit of the community"
before very long; and it is difficult to see how they can be defended as
long as the statutes affecting copyright and patents exist.
The most striking of such kinds of property is that in minerals. A man
buys an estate for farming, grazing, or, it may be, purposes of
pleasure. Some time afterwards minerals are found beneath it, and,
though he has neither placed them there nor may assist to get them out,
he is privileged to charge "mining royalties" upon every ton that is
raised as long as there is any to be obtained. Why should not his power
in this direction be limited? He takes everything and gives nothing; the
author or inventor gives everything and takes little. It would be as
much for "the benefit of the community" to have the former's minerals
after a given period, with no reward to himself, as to have the latter's
books or machines. Why, then, should bullion be carefully protected and
brains despoiled? If it be replied that when a man has bought a plot of
ground it is his to the centre of the earth at one side and to the sky
on the other, may it not be submitted that the former portion of the
right ought to be restricted, while the latter certainly does not exist,
for the law steps in at point after point to control his use of the land
between the surface and the sky?
The State, therefore, interferes with property, as it is, in a most
material degree: instances of such interference have been scattered
through these pages, and the tendency of the future is likely to be
towards more than less interference. And there is hardly any that can be
proposed, even of the extremest kind, for which it would not be possible
to find a precedent.
XXXV.--OUGHT THE STATE TO FIND FOOD AND WORK FOR ALL?
The State thus interfering with both capital and labour, it is sometimes
contended that its duties ought to be so extended as to find food and
work for all. There is a captivating sound about the proposition which
has commended it to many without a due weighing of the probable results.
It is a matter upon which a hasty generalization, though springing from
the purest motives, may do vast harm, and is one, therefore, which all
ought most carefully to consider before expressing an opinion upon it.
Cardinal Manning, in an article published in the winter of 1887, carried
the theory of the public duty of feeding the hungry to its extremest
point in these words--"All men are bound by natural obligations, if they
can, to feed the hungry. But it may be said that granting the obligation
in the giver does not prove a right in the receiver. To which I answer
that the obligation to feed the hungry springs from the natural right of
every man to life, and to the food necessary for the sustenance of life.
So strict is this natural right that it prevails over all positive laws
of property. Necessity has no law, and a starving man has a natural
right to his neighbour's bread."
With all deference, the last sentence must be stated to be false, both
in logic and morals. If it were true, it would justify immediate raids
by the starving upon the nearest baker's shop, and one wonders what the
Cardinal would say if he happened to be the baker. Granting that every
one has a right to live, there is no equivalent right to live at other
people's expense. It is true that, by our Poor Law, a system has been
created by which no one need starve, but that does not justify the theft
of bread. There is a preliminary question to be put even in the case of
the starving, and that is as to why they are in that condition. If it be
because they have been idle, or drunken, or generally worthless, as in
many cases it is, the mere fact that they are starving does not entitle
them to sack a baker's shop. They will be fed by the Poor Law if they
take the necessary steps, but if they are able-bodied they will have to
work for their food; and as most human beings have to do the same, where
is the hardship?
It will be replied by some that the Poor Law works harshly towards the
deserving poor, but that is an argument for amendment, not for abolition
or indiscriminate extension. And if it be further said that the food
supplied is meagre and the lodgings rough, it must be remembered that
the poor-rate is paid by a very large number whose food is no more
plentiful and whose lodgings are certainly worse. As for the argument
that some people starve rather than "enter the house," it is not easy to
see what relief could be given by the State without infringing that
spirit.
But there is a question most intimately affecting this matter which,
though of the highest importance, cannot be discussed here as it
deserves, and that is the question of population, concerning which Mill
truly says, "Every one has a right to live. We will suppose this
granted. But no one has a right to bring creatures into life, to be
supported by other people. Whoever means to stand upon the first of
these rights must renounce all pretension to the last. If a man cannot
support even himself unless others help him, those others are entitled
to say that they do not also undertake the support of any offspring
which it is physically possible for him to summon into the world.... It
would be possible for the State to guarantee employment at ample wages
to all who are born. But if it does this, it is bound in
self-protection, and for the sake of every purpose for which government
exists, to provide that no person shall be born without its consent....
It cannot, with impunity, take the feeding upon itself and leave the
multiplying free."
And so, while the Poor Law ought to be carried out in the humanest and
most liberal fashion compatible with the interests of the poor who pay
the rates as well as the poor who benefit by them, any movement for so
extending it as to bring more persons under its operation, and thus to
further pauperize the community, would be dangerous. We had enough of
that under the system swept away by the Act of 1834, the hideous
demoralization caused by which should be studied to-day by those who are
eager for a freer dispensation of State relief.
The arguments against the State going further than at present in the
direction of giving food to all are equally good as against providing
work for all. Relief works have ever been centres of corruption and
waste of the worst type, while "national workshops" have not been so
brilliant a success in the form of dockyards and arsenals as to warrant
an extension of the system to all the trades we practise.
The theory that the State is bound to provide work for all was never
more concisely put than in the original draft of the French Republican
Constitution after the Revolution of 1848, the seventh article of which
ran thus: "The right of labour is the right which every man has to live
by his labour. It is the duty of Society, through the channels of
production and other means at its command, hereafter to be organized, to
provide work for such able-bodied men as cannot find it for themselves."
But even a Government imbued with Socialistic tendencies found this to
be much too strong, and modified it thus: "It is the duty of Society by
fraternal assistance to protect the lives of necessitous citizens,
either by finding them work as far as possible, or by providing for
those who are incapacitated for work and who have no families to support
them." Yet the modified form was not found to work well in actual
practice, and the history of the failure of the French National
Workshops of 1848 remains as an eloquent testimony to the fact that the
State ought to interfere as little as possible with industrial
enterprises and private concerns.
XXXVI.--HOW OUGHT WE TO DEAL WITH SOCIALISM?
Even the considerations already put forward do not exhaust the social
question, for only in the briefest fashion have been touched the
important points which that question involves. And there is yet left to
be discussed the attitude which ought to be adopted towards that body of
opinions upon public affairs vaguely known as "Socialism."
The attitude of some is simply denunciatory, for there is a class of
politician which always imputes base motives to those with whom it
disagrees, and which is so proficient in abuse that it apparently thinks
it a waste of time to argue. That class has been painfully in evidence
in regard to the Socialists. It is considered that--so true is the old
proverb that if you give a dog a bad name you may as well hang
him--nothing more need be done respecting a new and therefore unpopular
doctrine than to so label it as to ensure its repudiation by honest but
unthinking men. And thus the name "Socialist" is applied as equivalent
to thief; and men utterly ignorant of what the words imply link
Socialist to Nihilist, Communist to Anarchist, as if each were equal to
each, and all therefore equal to one another.
This has been the favourite device of the opponents of all new
doctrines, political or social, philosophical or religious. To be
ridiculed, to be persecuted, even to be slain has been the fate of the
would-be elevators of their kind, as the roll of fame, which includes
the names of Socrates and Galileo, Luther and Savonarola, Voltaire and
Roger Bacon, Mazzini and Darwin will testify. The Socialists now are
hardly called worse names than were applied to geologists fifty years
ago, and to Evolutionists but the other day. Atheists, of course, they
have been named, for Atheist is the epithet customarily applied by
ignorant and bigoted men, who have made God in their own image, to those
more zealous in endeavouring to raise humanity.
Against any such method of dealing with public questions all fair-minded
men should strongly, and without ceasing, protest. And as Socialism is
spreading among the masses, it is in the highest degree important that
the fact should be studied calmly and without prejudice. Hard words
break no bones, and contumely tends to strengthen any cause in which
there is an atom of good.
Socialism, therefore, should be dealt with in an inquiring and not an
abusive spirit, and with the determination to accept from it whatever of
good to the community we may find it to contain. There is another method
which Prince Bismarck has been trying for years, and with the signal
lack of success that always comes from trying to stamp out an opinion by
force of law. In presumed defence of "society" and "order"--two
excellent things, but often the excuse for despots to perpetrate cruel
injustice upon the liberty-loving and the poor--he has secured law after
law for the purpose of "putting down Socialism;" men have been torn from
their homes because of their opinions; the right of public meeting has
been placed at the mercy of the police; the press has been gagged, and
every means taken to stamp out a body of opinions some of which even the
German Chancellor himself cannot help sharing. And with what result?
That, after ten years of this wretched work, the Socialists--though
prevented from public meeting, speaking, or writing--are multiplying in
Germany in an ever-growing proportion; that in Berlin, the capital of
the empire, they number tens of thousands of electors as their
adherents; and that Prince Bismarck is ever asking for extended powers
to crush a force which, in its free state, as yielding to the touch as
water, is mighty when compressed.
With an even greater power of police, and no restriction at all from the
laws, the Czar has failed as signally to extirpate Nihilism. Ideas
cannot be killed in this fashion, though their holders can be and are
rendered more dangerous. Mill certainly considered that "the dictum
that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant
falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into
commonplaces, but which all experience refutes;" and he was of opinion
that "no reasonable person can doubt that Christianity might have been
extirpated in the Roman Empire." But it may be submitted that, when
arguing about the persecution of ideas to-day, we must not forget the
immense additional force given to them by means of printing. The secret
presses of Germany and Russia "spread the light;" and there is nothing
so certain as that the very charm which comes from the possession of
that which is prohibited aids in strengthening a movement which is under
the ban of the law.
But, it may be said, the efforts of those who would attempt to put down
Socialism are not to be considered in the light of political
persecution, and are not to be compared with religious persecution, for
they are directed solely to the suppression of "anti-social" doctrines,
the adoption of which would be fatal not only to States as they now
exist, but to society itself. A more precise definition must be asked,
however, of the doctrines thus described. Though opposed to an eight
hours' bill, to land nationalization, and to national workshops, leading
points in the Socialist programme, I cannot conceive how, if they were
all adopted within the next year, such dire results could from them
flow.
Every new body of doctrine which gives hope to the masses and threatens
the domination of the privileged among men has been described with equal
virulence by its antagonists. Read the charges upon which Christians
were condemned under the Roman Empire; read those brought against Luther
and his co-reformers when first Protestantism threatened the Church of
Rome; remember those thrown at the Puritans when they tried to secure
for Englishmen liberty of thought and action. They were in every case
that the doctrines were anti-social; that if adopted they would wreck
the then condition of society; and that they were in the highest degree
perilous to the State. For it is the fate of all preachers of a new
doctrine to be treated as rogues until their persecutors are proved to
be fools.
Admittedly there are some theories advanced by men calling themselves
Socialists which, if adopted, would seriously conflict with the existing
order of society; but to condemn every proposal put forward as Socialist
because there are Socialists who have said strange, and sometimes
stupid, things would be monstrous. It is a controversial trick of a
peculiarly poor order to attempt to hold the leaders of any movement
responsible for the hare-brained ideas of some of their followers. Not
to repudiate them is not to signify agreement, or our party leaders
would possess some of the most extravagant doctrines ever conceived by
man.
Besides, one must always sever the conventional beliefs from the real.
No sensible person considers Christianity untrue because even the
churches would regard him as a madman who literally adopted the
injunction to sell all that he had to give to the poor. In any body of
doctrines there are always some which its adherents hold, but do not
stand by.
And, therefore, charity as well as common sense demands that the tall
talk on both sides--for there is not a great deal to choose between them
in this respect--should cease; but the trick is too easily learned to be
quickly dropped. The idea of the well-to-do that all would go smoothly
if it were not for "agitators" and "mob-orators" is as absurd as the
contention of the Socialist that most of our ills are due to the
"profit-monger." Your "agitator" or your "mob-orator" would have not the
least influence if he did not voice the feelings, the longings, and the
hopes of his silent friends. And as for the "profit-monger," is not the
workman who is better off than the poorest among his fellows deserving
the name?
Let us have fair play all round to ideas as well as to men. If, in the
supposed interests of society, every movement designed to upraise the
poor is suppressed, the tendency must be to force men towards Anarchism
and Nihilism, by causing them to wish to destroy that order of things
which to them acts so unjustly. Despair is a fatal counsellor, and those
who would identify the welfare of the State with that of the mere
money-getter are its frequent cause. It is easier to raise the devil
than to lay him, and appeals to the merely animal instinct in
man--whether to protect his own property or to take that of others,
with a complete ignoring of his duties as well as his rights--must end
in ruin and shame.
"There is among the English working classes," once observed Sir Robert
Peel, "too much suffering and too much perplexity. It is a disgrace and
a danger to our civilization. It is absolutely necessary that we should
render the condition of the manual labourer less hard and less
precarious. We cannot do everything, but something may be effected, and
something ought to be done." Though nearly forty years have passed since
that statesman's death, we are still groping blindly for the something
which ought to be done for the poor; and such strength as Socialism
possesses is derived from the general spread of the feeling which Peel
put into words, and which no politician--much more no statesman--can
afford to neglect.
And that is why the politics of the future will be largely affected by
the social questions now coming to the front. From the opinions of many
who are pressing them forward one may profoundly differ, but justice
demands that all they advance should be examined without prejudice, and
with the determination to accept that which is good, from whatever
quarter it may come.
XXXVII.--WHAT SHOULD BE THE LIBERAL PROGRAMME?
While the social problem, however, is developing, we have the political
problem to face; and, therefore, the immediate programme of the Liberal
party now demands consideration. In some detail have been presented the
arguments from a Liberal point upon all the great public questions which
are either ripe or ripening for settlement. It has not been possible to
go minutely into every point involved; a broad outline of each subject
has had to suffice; but it may be trusted that each has been
sufficiently explained for us now to consider which should occupy the
forefront in the Liberal platform.
Mr. Bright observed, in days not long since, when he was honoured by
every man in the party as one of its most trusted leaders, that he
disliked programmes. What he preferred, it was evident, was that when
some great question--such as the repeal of the Corn Laws or the
extension of the suffrage, with both of which his name will be ever
identified--should thrust itself to the front by force of circumstances,
it should be faced by the Liberal party and dealt with on its merits;
and what he opposed, it was equally evident, was the formulation of any
cut-and-dried programme, containing a number of points to be accepted as
a shibboleth by every man calling himself Liberal or Radical, and by its
hide-bound propensity tending to retard real progress.
The Irish question is one of those great matters which has thrust itself
to the front by force of circumstances, which should be faced by the
Liberal party and dealt with on its merits, and which, until it is so
faced and dealt with, will stand in the path of any real reforms. The
evil effects of the discontent of four millions of people at our very
doors are not to be got rid of by shutting our eyes to them; and the
intensification of those evil effects which is to-day going on is a
matter which must engage the attention of every Liberal.