Chapter I: Liberalism and Toryism (2)

The same characteristic difference between the desire to adapt an institution to the encouragement of individual growth and the desire to compel individual growth to the efficient working of an institution peeps out, even where the practical proposals of the two parties appear to be identical. A Liberal supports State education because it puts the poor man into fuller possession of himself. A Tory supports it because an ignorant poor man is likely to be turbulent and to make attacks upon the institution of property. A Liberal supports a Mental Deficiency Bill because it protects feeble-minded persons against their neighbours and against themselves. A Tory supports it because it discourages the breeding of types which he regards as useless to the State. While the general attitude of Toryism to the economic reforms of modern Liberalism has been hostile, a small {32} section of the Tory party has shown itself ready enough to support, and even to originate schemes which interfere with economic freedom and the rights of property. But the motives of the Liberal and the Tory social reformers are not the same. The one aims at private happiness, the other at public utility. "We would endeavour," said Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, "to secure to every man the best conditions of living, and so far as can be done by laws and customs, to secure him also an equal chance with others of a useful and happy life."[17] "The essence of our policy," says Lord Willoughby de Broke, "is to give each individual the elements that will afford him an opportunity of at least living a free and a decorous existence, and the opportunity to raise himself or herself to the highest point of moral and material efficiency."[18] The emphasis on happiness in the one passage and on efficiency in the other shows precisely the difference in the objects of the two men. The first is personal, the second instrumental. The Liberal conception of the State makes the development of the individual an end in itself. The Tory conception makes it a means of public advantage, of obtaining workers for national industries and soldiers for national armies, and it is accompanied by proposals for conscription, protection, and the maintenance of popular education at a low level, which are redolent of restriction and subordination. A Tory journalist puts the matter more precisely: "If Unionism is to recover the confidence of the masses it must recognize their claim to a fuller and a happier life. Only in this way can it serve the great causes which it has at heart. We stand for the Empire. An Imperial people cannot be built up in squalor and poverty, when every thought is absorbed by the provision of the daily bread. We cannot get a hearing for Imperial causes until we have brought happiness into the homes of the people."[19] The Tory makes its inhabitants happy for the sake of the Empire. The Liberal has no use for the Empire unless it makes its inhabitants happy.

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Modern Toryism is identified with Imperialism, and, except for the relics of old controversies between sects, most of the antagonism of Liberal and Tory centres to-day about the Empire. The most definite opposition is to be observed in original conceptions. To the Tory, the Empire seems to be something in itself; he is impressed with its size, its wealth, its population; the mere existence of such a huge fabric, efficiently maintained, under the national flag, satisfies him. The Liberal is more concerned with what the Empire represents, with its maintenance of individual liberty, with its development of the subject peoples which it contains, with its encouragement to exploitation, with its implied antagonism to foreign peoples, with its increase of the cost of armaments, and with its effect upon the temper of domestic government. He is not, as a practical statesman, concerned to evacuate any part of this vast inheritance. "The situation of man is the preceptor of his duty." But he looks with suspicion upon any attempt to increase it, he encourages every transfer of control to local authorities, he insists that where races of an inferior civilization are incorporated their affairs shall be managed in their interest and not in that of the conquering race, and he views with constant apprehension the inclusion of such races because he knows that their despotic government must threaten the existence of his own free institutions. If the Empire is justified at all, it is justified by the ideals which it expresses, and by nothing else.

The better Imperial idea was thus described a few years ago by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain: "We, in our Colonial policy, as fast as we acquire new territory and develop it, develop it as trustees of civilization for the commerce of the world. We offer in all these markets over which our flag floats the same opportunities, the same open field, to foreigners that we offer to our own subjects, and upon the same terms. In that policy we stand alone, because all other nations, as fast as they acquire new territory--acting, as I believe, most mistakenly in their own interests, and, above all, in the interests of the countries that they administer--all other nations seek at once to secure the {34} monopoly for their own products by preferential and other methods."[20] These are noble and generous words. The conception of a rich and powerful race extending the blessings of order, good government, and industrial enterprise into the backward parts of the earth for the universal benefit of all mankind is a magnificent conception. But if it ever was Imperialism it is not the Imperialism of to-day. In less than ten years the speaker denied himself. The trustees of civilization became national egoists, subordinating all others to their own ascendancy. The free and open market was made a national monopoly, and British subjects arrogated to themselves all the exclusive privileges which had been "most mistakenly" reserved to themselves by other nations. The deterioration of generosity has seldom been so swift and so complete. In 1912 Mr. Chamberlain's successor in the leadership of Protectionist Imperialism makes the exclusion of the foreigner the very essence of Empire. "Co-operation in war was a vital necessity; but there could never be real co-operation in war unless there first had been co-operation in peace. It was for that reason that Unionists had advocated, and intended to advocate, the policy of Imperial preference. All the Dominions had urged the Mother Country to adopt in trade--and in everything else--that principle which would enable one portion of the Empire to treat all other portions of the Empire on better terms than were given to the rest of the world." The whole basis of the Empire is thus made to be hostility towards foreign peoples, and instead of war being a hateful necessity, undertaken to preserve the ideals for which the Empire stands, it becomes itself the first object of the Empire, to which all its other possibilities must be sacrificed.

The Empire, as conceived by modern Imperialists, is in fact the negation of Liberalism. Domestic liberty, local independence, economic freedom, the development of inferior races, all must be sacrificed to the idea of an isolated and mechanically efficient unity. "The Unionist policy is a policy of union and strength. The Unionists say: As we are faced by great dangers, {35} let us hold to the tried and proved national organization which was devised to meet such dangers in the past. And they say also: Let us have peace between the classes, for division in that way is even more dangerous than the division of the United Kingdom into its separate tribes or parishes.... We must keep united or we will be destroyed. But the Unionists go farther, and they say: We must be united not only as a United Kingdom but as a British Empire. Old England by herself may not have the strength to face the enormous forces now being arrayed against her. In the same way the Dominions by themselves have not the strength to maintain their freedom against possible attacks. Let us therefore combine, and then we shall be like the bundle of faggots, impossible to break. Now this policy of Imperial union cannot be achieved by sentiment alone. Sentiment is an excellent thing; but as part of the Empire is Dutch and part French, and as even British colonists tend to forget the Mother Country and look upon their own new country as the centre and the boundary of their patriotism, we need the perpetual unifier of material interest. Where a man's treasure is, there shall his heart be also." Therefore we must tax imported foodstuffs in order to give a preference to the Colonies. If we do not, "What are we to offer to Canada in the way of a material interest strong enough to make her foreign policy identical with ours?"[21]

This is the subordination of everything to organization. Ireland is to be governed against its will, the poorer classes are to be kept down by force or by indulgence, the industrial and commercial freedom of the Colonies and the Mother Country is to be fettered by artificial bonds of trade, in order that {36} Germany may be kept in her place. The illustration of the bundle of faggots will serve for the Liberal as well as for the Tory. What the Liberal wants is not a bundle of dead wood, but a group of living and growing trees about a parent stem, each planted freely in the soil and drawing from it its own sustenance.

The Tory conception of the Empire is in fact very like the old Roman Empire, and ominous comparisons are often drawn between the two.[22] The Roman Empire was a similar gigantic organization, which subordinated all other ideas to that of strength and unity against external peoples. What will preserve the British Empire from the fate of the Roman is what the Romans omitted, the encouragement of local independence, the sacrifice of mere mechanical efficiency to that infinite diversity of individual civilizations which keeps nations alive. The recent Canadian attempt to make a treaty of reciprocity with the United States produced some excellent examples of the viciousness of Imperialism. The Liberal Ministry allowed the British Ambassador in the States to place his services at the disposal of the Canadian Government. They assumed that it was not their business to dictate to the Canadians what commercial arrangements they should or should not make with foreign peoples, and they treated a Canadian Government which had been in office for seventeen years as properly representative of the Canadian people. The Tory Imperialists attacked them for assisting the Canadian Ministry in its negotiations. Their demand, in effect, was that the British Government should have at least tacitly disapproved of this assertion of Canadian independence. For the moment the Canadian people have refused to enter into the treaty. Ten years hence they may have changed their minds, and we shall then have a direct conflict between Imperialism and Canadian Nationalism. The Liberals would allow the Canadians to manage their own affairs as they think best. The Tories, even though they would refrain from force, would at least try to bribe {37} them into an artificial union, which they would not enter of their own free will.

The deterioration of Imperialism really dates from the South African War. This was the first expression of Imperial unity. But what was that unity worth, which was employed for the shameful purpose of destroying the local independence which it existed only to maintain? The whole justification of the Empire was that it enabled communities of different characters to grow freely within it, and the war destroyed what war should never have been undertaken except to preserve. The difference of opinion about that grave event marked the characteristic difference between Liberal and Tory. The life of the individual parts is everything to the Liberal, and their organization is only tolerable in so far as it protects and encourages that life. It is not to him, as it is to the Tory, a thing in itself, a permanent segregation of his race from the rest of humanity, a monopoly and a preserve, to be maintained as a weight in the balance of international power. Nor has he any doubt that the loosely knit federation, which he prefers, will prove in the end stronger against Foreign enemies than the drilled and disciplined union which the Tories want. The Roman Empire collapsed because of this unnatural perfection of strength. The native vigour and independence of its parts were sacrificed to centralization. By enslaving the minds of her dependents to the Imperial idea, Rome threw herself open to less organized but more individualistic enemies. By leaving the inhabitants of her Dominions to develop themselves according to their own ideas, and not by managing them as potential weapons against the foreigner, Great Britain has brought herself to her present strength. A conscript army may be maintained for an indefinite period by constantly renewing the recruits. Nations cannot be renewed, and a conscript Empire must inevitably perish of its own rigidity.

Imperialists often speak of the Empire as if it consisted entirely of self-governing dominions of white men. In fact, by far the greater part of it is governed despotically, and consists of countries where white men cannot make permanent settlements. This {38} part of the Empire the Liberal regards from two points of view. The less civilized or less powerful races which inhabit them are as individual to him as are the Canadians or the Germans, and are no more to be used by him for his own interest. "A superior race is bound to observe the highest current morality of the time in all its dealings with the subject race."[23] Order, justice, capital, the development of natural resources, and education, with an honest spirit in the Government, may help rather than retard the growth of the local life. But with the benefits of civilization is too often introduced the temper of exploitation. Confiscation, massacre, slavery, open or disguised, and the abuse of native women, have been common enough in the building of the Empire, and the conduct of men like Cole of Nairobi and Lewis of Rhodesia shows that the same habit of mind is far from rare at this day.[24] The modern history of South Africa contains more than one disreputable passage of this kind, and if the development of territories like Uganda and Batsutoland has been more disinterested, it is only because they offered less easy prizes to the rapacity of trading companies and financiers. The primary motive of all our appropriations of territory has of course been our desire to increase our own wealth, and in most quarters we have been more anxious to force the native population into labour for our profit than to improve their condition or character. The plea that our Empire is justified because it elevates inferior races is a piece of cant which has been grafted on to a purely materialistic system. How little separates us even now from the old slavery may be seen in the following passage from a Tory newspaper: "In all essential qualities of racial progress, in self-control, perseverance, reasoning power, and so forth, the negro races are far behind the white.... The negro is given new racial ambitions by the acquisition of civil and in some cases of political rights.... The white South {39} African ... may be forced to reconsider his whole native policy.... Education is a frightful source of mischief.... Industrial education, the painful teaching of toil in civilization, must precede the higher development."[25] In plain English, we may have to disfranchise the coloured voters of Cape Colony, shut up their schools and churches, and reduce them to slavery. In just such language did the West Indian planters reason in the days of Wilberforce, from the fact of inferiority, through the deprivation of the means of improvement, to the ultimate destruction of character in "industrial education." It is in problems of this sort that the Liberal sees the evil side of Empire. It is more important to him that the black races of Cape Colony should not be deprived of the franchise than that South Africa should be able to assist Great Britain in time of war. If the country can only be included in the Empire at the cost of this deliberate degradation of the native peoples, it is better in his eyes that it should become independent. When the Empire ceases to encourage the growth of all peoples within it, the justification of it has ceased to exist.[26]

The badness of this government of less efficient races lies not only in its possible, and almost inevitable, exploitation of those races themselves, but in its reaction upon the people of Great Britain. There are very few men who can occupy themselves even with the honest and disinterested management of the affairs of a subject people without suffering some deterioration of their love of liberty. However benevolent despotism may be, it is always despotism. The essence of such government as that of India is to dispose of the fortunes of a people according to our own opinion of what is best for them, and not according to theirs. When it is bad, it is tyranny. When it is good, as it nearly always is, it is indulgence. It is never responsibility. It never {40} seriously contemplates the time when the subject shall control his own affairs, or shall even be associated on equal terms with the foreign conqueror. Those who grow accustomed to this absolute power can never work comfortably with free institutions, and the whole of the governing race tends to become infected with the disposing habit. The business of government becomes more than the spirit of it, the mechanical successes of administration are applauded, while the stultification of the general mind is overlooked. Efficiency is exaggerated at the expense of freedom, criticism of the Ministry is treated as insolence, and the right of every intelligent man to interest himself in the affairs of his own country is subordinated to the convenience of officials.[27] The official always looks up and not down for approval and censure, and he cannot depress the eye of his mind when he returns home from one of our foreign dependencies. The Imperialist revival of the last thirty years has thus coincided, not only with the neglect of domestic affairs, but with the active suppression of domestic freedom. The foremost champions of the House of Lords in 1909 were a retired Viceroy of India and a man who, after a successful career in Egypt, had been the mouthpiece of British insolence in South Africa. The best name in the list of the opponents of Woman Suffrage is that of the greatest despot that Egypt has ever known. "Is it not just possible," asked Cobden in 1860, "that we may become corrupted at home by the reaction of arbitrary political maxims in the East upon our domestic politics, just as Greece and Rome were demoralized by their contact with Asia?"[28] No Liberal who has watched the joint progress of {41} Imperial expansion and domestic reaction, which has taken place since Cobden's death, can answer that searching question in the negative.

The foregoing examination will be sufficient to indicate the scope and the method of the following chapters. They attempt to describe the political growth of the country, from a time when power was confined to a small disposing class, to the present day, when we have reached a well-defined stage on our advance towards complete equality of values. They also deal with the varying fortunes of Liberal ideas in foreign policy. The process seems to the writer to resemble the change from the old Ptolemaic to the new Copernican system of Astronomy. The old astronomers believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that the planets revolved about it. The new astronomers discovered that the Earth was not the centre, and that the other planets, though they had certain relations with and attractions for the earth, actually were, in the main, independent of it, and revolved, like it, about a common centre in orbits of their own. Similarly Toryism imagined that the unprivileged sex, classes, and creeds existed for no other purpose than fulfilling those duties which related to itself, and for enjoying those rights which proceeded from itself. It has been compelled to recognize that other individuals, however united with the dominant class for certain limited purposes, have their independent interests, orbits, and personalities. The writer cannot pretend to be indifferent, as between Liberalism and Toryism. But the last chapter will be sufficient proof that he is not over-full of the spirit of mere party.

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