Chapter I: Part 1

GLADSTONIAN GHOSTS,

By CECIL CHESTERTON.

GLADSTONIAN GHOSTS.

BY

CECIL CHESTERTON.

PRINTED BY THE LANTHORN
PRESS, AND PUBLISHED IN
LONDON BY S. C. BROWN
LANGHAM & CO., LTD.

CONTENTS.

DEDICATION 7

I. LIBERALISM AND THE ZEITGEIST 20

II. “WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?” 34

III. NATIONAL PENRHYNISM 51

IV. “MILITARISM AND AGGRESSION” 70

V. THE FETISH OF FREE TRADE 92

VI. TOWARDS ANARCHISM 114

VII. OUR BRITISH MOSLEMS 142

VIII. “RETRENCHMENT AND REFORM” 159

IX. SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION 180

X. SOME MATERIALS AND A POSSIBILITY 211

DEDICATION

TO

EDGAR JEPSON.

DEDICATION.

My dear Jepson,

If (with your permission) I dedicate this essay in political criticism to you, it is because I know that, though you parade it less, your interest in the science of politics is fully as keen as my own. In point of fact there is no-one whose judgment in these matters I would trust more readily than yours. You are a philosopher; and the philosopher’s outlook in politics is always clear, practical and realistic as contrasted with the thoroughly romantic illusions of the typical party man. That, by the way, is why Mr. Balfour, the philosopher, has in the domain of parliamentary and electoral strategy hopelessly outwitted Mr. Chamberlain, the “man of business and busy man”--to quote his own characteristically poetic phrase.

As a philosopher you are able to see what no “practical statesman” on either side of the House seems likely to perceive--that social and economic politics are the only kind of politics that really matter, and that the “chicken-in-the-pot” ideal of Henri Quatre is after all the primary aim of all statesmanship. Three centuries of anarchic commercialism have left us a legacy of pauperism, disease, famine, physical degeneracy and spiritual demoralization, which in another century will infallibly destroy us altogether if we cannot in the mean time destroy them. And I think you share my impatience when our Radical friends insist on discussing Irish Home Rule, Church Disestablishment and the abolition of the House of Lords, as if such frivolities could really satisfy the human conscience faced with the appalling realities of the slums.

When therefore I speak of your interest in politics I am not thinking of that rather exciting parlour game which they play at Westminster during the spring months. In this you probably take less interest than I; for I must confess (not altogether without shame) that the sporting aspect of politics has always fascinated me. You, on the other hand, have _Bridge_ to amuse you; and, when you are brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience on this count, you may fairly plead that any man who played _Bridge_ with the peculiar mixture of ignorance, stupidity, criminal laziness and flagrant dishonesty with which the Front Benches play the game of politics, would infallibly be turned out of his club and probably cut by all his acquaintances.

It may seem surprising that, taking this view of contemporary party warfare, I should have troubled to write a book in criticism of it. To which I can only reply that the parliamentary bridge-players are unfortunately staking on their pastime not their own money but my country’s interests; so that the incidents of the game become important despite the frivolity of the players, and it seems to me that we are on the eve of a turn of luck which may prove not only important but disastrous.

I suppose that we are not unlikely to have a General Election within the forthcoming year; and many indications appear to point to the probability of a sweeping Liberal victory. I want you to consider carefully what a Liberal victory means for us and for all serious reformers.

A Liberal victory means one of two things; either six years of government by the Whigs or six years of government by the Nonconformists. There is no third alternative, for neither the old destructive Free-thinking Radicalism of the late Charles Bradlaugh and the almost extinct Secular Society, nor the new sentimental High Church Radicalism of my excellent friend C. F. G. Masterman and his associates of the _Commonwealth_ has the slightest hold on any section of the electorate that counts politically. If you doubt this, it is because you did not follow Masterman’s campaign at Dulwich as closely as I did. Vehement Catholic though he was, he was forced to accept all the political shibboleths of Nonconformity on pain of certain annihilation; yet, even after he had gone to the very verge of what his conscience would permit to conciliate his sectarian masters, this did not save him from a crushing defeat. An excellent candidate, an eloquent and effective speaker with real civic enthusiasm, he met the same fate which overtook Bernard Shaw at St. Pancras, when he stood for the L.C.C. And that fate will continue to overtake all who rely on Radical support without first making their full submission--political, theological and moral--to the Vatican of Dissent.

The Radical wing of the Liberal Party has degenerated into a political committee of the Free Church Councils; even the Liberal League cannot get on without making some acknowledgement of Nonconformist authority. But the “Imperialist” section is of course less absolutely under the control of Salem Chapel than its rival; is it fundamentally any more progressive?

It is pathetic in the light of subsequent events to read again the admirable article (to which by the way I am indebted for the title of this book) contributed by Mr. Webb to the _Nineteenth Century_ three years ago. Mr. Webb was so simple-minded as to suppose that Lord Rosebery’s talk about “national efficiency” really meant something, and that “Liberal Imperialism” was a genuine attempt to form a party of progress free of Gladstonian tradition. Sancta simplicitas! We can see now clearly enough that the Liberal Imperialists were for the most part mere squeezable opportunists with all the effete prejudices of the Pro-Boers minus their sturdiness of conviction, men who wished to snatch a share in the popularity of the South African War, but had not the slightest intention of abandoning a single Mid-Victorian nostrum, which could still be used to catch a few votes. On the Education Bills, Tariff Reform and Licensing, they have Gladstonised, Miallised, Cobdenised and Wilfred-Lawsonised with the best. And now that the Fiscal Question seems likely to drive back into the ranks of the Liberal “Right” such men as Lord Goschen and the Duke of Devonshire--the very men who were frightened to death of Mr. Chamberlain’s “Socialism” as far back as 1885--all hope of reform from that quarter is at an end. A “Liberal Imperialist” government means Lord Rosebery orating nobly about nothing in particular, Lord Goschen and the Duke of Devonshire acting up to their self-constituted function of “drags upon the wheel,” and Sir Henry Fowler once more sitting heavily on all enlightened municipal enterprise in the interests of piratical monopolists. I see that the Whigs are already crying out for “Free Trade concentration,” which will I imagine prove an excellent excuse for doing nothing for the next half decade.

And yet, I fear, we shall have to accept the Whigs as the lesser of two evils. At least their offences will in the main be negative, while the victory of the Nonconformists means a period of legislation so disastrous that you and I and all advanced reformers will be obliged to cling to the House of Lords as our only bulwark against the appalling flood of reaction. For some time the Nonconformists have been clamouring for the repeal of the admirable Education Acts of 1902-3. They have now begun to clamour for the repeal of the Licensing Act as well. Now, quite apart from the merits of these measures, it is as clear as daylight that all progress will be impossible if every government devotes its time and energies to repealing the measures of its predecessor. This disastrous precedent will be but the first-fruit of a Dissent-driven ministry. Meanwhile our refreshments, our amusements, even our religious observances will be subjected to silly sectarian taboos. Social reform will be hopelessly neglected, while we may have to face a revival of the foolish agitation in favour of Church Disestablishment which even Mr. Chamberlain’s marvellous genius for electioneering could not persuade the country to take very seriously in the eighties.

“The Whigs are a class with all the selfish prejudices and all the vices of a class; the Radicals are a sect with all the grinding tyranny and all the debasing fanaticism of a sect.” Those words are as true to-day as they were when Lord Randolph Churchill spoke them nearly twenty years ago. Indeed all that has happened since has tended to make the Whigs more selfishly “class-conscious” and the Radicals more debasingly sectarian.

It may be retorted that the Tories are no better equipped for the art of statesmanship. I assent; but I say that on the whole they are less positively dangerous. For one thing the very cloudiness of their political outlook renders them to a great extent amenable to skilful and systematic pressure from genuine reformers. It is often possible to get them to pass good measures without knowing it, as Mr. Webb and Mr. Morant are supposed to have induced them to pass an Education Bill which would have been rejected with unanimity by the Cabinet, the Conservative Party, the House of Lords and all three Houses of Convocation, had its real excellence been perceived by those bodies. Also the Tories have not always in their pockets that dilapidated bundle of red herrings (the Church, the Lords, etc), which the Radicals produce periodically whenever the electorate has to be deluded. But, when all has been said, it must be confessed that there is little to be hoped from the Tories just now. They had their chance in 1895, when they came into power on the cry of “Social Reform.” Had they fulfilled their pledges then, we should never have had to face the terror of a Gladstonian resurrection. But they failed; and the great Tory revival which Randolph Churchill inaugurated has ended in a pageant of fashionable incompetence above, and frivolous Jingoism (inexpressibly disquieting to serious Imperialists) below, the wires being pulled vigorously meanwhile by the unclean hands of Hebrew Finance--a sight that would have made Churchill sick at heart.

There remains the Labour Party which I discuss fully elsewhere. Here I will only say that, while I believe that the only hope for England and the Empire is in Socialism, I confess that, if I am to trust to Socialists as I see them at present (outside our own Fabian Society) I feel the hope to be a slender one.

To conclude: if you and I vote (as I expect we shall) for Tory candidates at the next election, it will not be from any admiration for the present government, rather it will be from a very natural fear lest a worse thing befall us. I have written this book for the same reason; it may be taken among other things as a word of advise to my fellow-citizens to weigh carefully, before recording their verdict on their present rulers, the respective merits of the frying pan and the fire.

The warning, I think you at least will agree with me, is by no means superfluous.

Yours sincerely,

CECIL CHESTERTON.

LIBERALISM AND THE ZEITGEIST.

It was the custom of Macaulay and other representative writers of the Dark Ages to speak of the mediæval era in Europe as one of savage and unenlightened barbarism. There is something particularly amusing to the twentieth century observer in the patronizing tone adopted by men, who lived in what could hardly be called a community at all, in writing of the splendid civilization which flourished under Frederick II. and St. Louis. For it is becoming obvious to us all now that the great movement of the world from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century was not a movement towards civilization but a movement away from it. Civilization does not imply a collection of mechanical contrivances brought to a high state of perfection--it may or may not possess such contrivances. But it does imply a _Civitas_, a commonwealth, a conscious organization of society for certain ends. This the age of St. Louis had, and the age of Cobden had not. The great movement which we roughly call “Liberalism” may therefore be very properly described as a reaction against civilization.

I do not say it was wrong. Let none suppose that I have any share in the factitious dreams of the “Young England” enthusiasts or their contemporary imitators. I know that Feudalism died in the fifteenth century of its own rottenness, and that its revival is as hopeless and undesirable as the revival of Druidism (much favoured I believe in some literary quarters just now) would be. I recognise that Liberalism in getting rid of its obsolete relics did good and necessary work and cleared the way for better. I merely state the case historically because it is impossible to understand the present position and prospects of Liberalism without realizing that Liberalism is in its essence destructive and in the strict sense of the word anti-social.

Look at the track of Liberalism across English history. It begins practically with the Reformation and the Great Pillage, wherein it showed its true character very vividly in the combination of a strictly individualistic religion with the conversion of communal property into private property for the benefit of the new “Reforming” oligarchs. Then it appears in the Civil War, which we are beginning to understand better than the Whig historians of the late century understood it. On its economic side Puritanism was the seventeenth century counterpart of Cobdenism--a middle-class movement striking at once at the old aristocracy, whose lands it confiscated and divided, and at the proletariat, whom it robbed of what was left of their common heritage and to whom it denied their traditional holidays, avowedly on religious grounds but practically in the interests of the employing class. One could continue the story further if it were necessary. But all that need be said is that in the middle of the nineteenth century we find Liberalism everywhere dominant and victorious with the result that Englishmen had practically ceased to form a community at all.

It is a common taunt in the mouths of Tariff Reformers just now that Cobden and Bright opposed the Factory Acts; and Liberals, driven into a corner on the subject, generally affect to regard this as an unfortunate and unaccountable lapse from grace on the part of the two Free Trade Apostles. Of course it was nothing of the sort: it was the only possible line for them to take as honest men and consistent political thinkers. The matter of the Factory Acts does not stand alone: state education, when first proposed was met with Radical opposition of a very similar kind. If anyone will look through the speeches of the opponents of the early Factory Bills he will find that they were attacked, just as the present government’s Education Bill was attacked, not as revolutionary but as reactionary measures. They were constantly compared to the Sumptuary Laws and to the statutes regulating the position of apprentices which figure in mediæval legislation. And the comparison is a perfectly fair one. Cobden and Bright were fundamentally _right_ in their contention that Factory Acts were contrary to the first principles of Liberalism. Such acts were only passed, because the application of Liberal principles to the questions involved had resulted in a welter of brutality, child torture and racial deterioration, so horrible that no decently humane man, no reasonable enlightened citizen could think of Lancashire and its cotton trade without a shudder. When the Sovereign gave her assent to the first effective Factory Bill she passed a prophetic sentence of death on Liberalism and the Liberal Party.

Doubtless the execution of the sentence has been long deferred and may yet be deferred longer. But the backbone had been taken out of Liberalism as soon as that concession had been made. It could not claim any longer to have a coherent or intelligible political philosophy. For the arguments used by the Manchester School against import duties were precisely the same as those used against factory legislation. The two propositions were based upon the same axioms and postulates; if one was wrong, why not the other? And if the worship of “doing as one likes” were unsound in the region of economics what reason was there for supposing it to be sound in the region of politics? If Free Contract were an untenable foundation for society, what became of Free Trade? And, if Free Trade were to go, might not the demand for a Free Church have to follow? The fortress of Liberalism still looked imposing enough, but the foundations were sapped and there were ominous cracks and fissures in the walls.

Indeed the passing of the great Factory Acts marks the turning of the tide. It was the public confession of the English nation that Cobden’s and Bastiat’s Utopia of ‘economic harmonies’ was a foolish and impossible one, based on bad economics and worse history. It was the beginning of the reaction in favour of what I have called civilization, that is of the conscious and deliberate regulation and control of commerce in the public interest. Everything that has been done since in the way of industrial reform--Housing Acts, Public Health Acts, compulsory and free education, municipal ownership and municipal trading--has proceeded in this direction. We are working towards what Herbert Spencer called “The New Toryism,” that is back to civilization.

It is no matter for surprise that most of the measures mentioned above have been the work of Tory governments. Doubtless the Tories are stupid and ineffectual enough, doubtless they are too much controlled by landed interests and capitalist rings, to deal with social evils very courageously. But at least they have this great advantage over their enemies, that they are not obliged to reconcile everything they do with the exploded economic dogmas of Benthamism, so that the insight and progressive instincts of their abler leaders have been able to force them farther along the path of progress than the sheer pressure of political necessity has been able to force the equally reluctant Liberals. So long as social reform remains a matter of pickings, we shall get the best pickings from the Tories.

But if, as I have suggested all meaning has long ago gone out of Liberalism, how does it come about that Liberalism insists on surviving? Are we not all expecting a big Liberal majority at the next General Election, and would not such a majority prove that Liberalism was very much alive? My answer is that it would not. Doubtless the Liberals will win at the polls next year; probably they will get a good majority. But this will prove nothing as to the spiritual vitality of the thing they represent. It will prove that the people of this country are annoyed with the present government and want a change. It will not prove that they are in any real sense of the word Liberals; still less that Liberalism has anything vital or valuable to say in relation to current problems.

The fact is that a party which has parted with its convictions may continue to exist for a long time by living on its prejudices. This is the ordinary history of movements, whether political, social or religious, during the period of their decadence, and it is briefly the history of Liberalism during the last fifty years.

The Factory Acts, by their obvious necessity and their equally obvious indefensibility from the Liberal standpoint, knocked the bottom out of Liberalism and made a consistent Liberal philosophy impossible for the future. But only new and growing movements require a philosophy. When a movement has been going long enough to accumulate a fair number of catch-words and a collection of common likes and dislikes, it can make enormous use of these and even win great electoral triumphs on the strength of them long after they have become completely separated from the doctrines from which they originally sprang, and indeed long after these doctrines have become so obsolete as to be universally incredible.

An almost exact parallel may be drawn between the recent history of Liberalism and the recent history of Nonconformity. English Nonconformity was founded on the doctrines of Calvin as English Liberalism was on those of Lock and Adam Smith. Where are the doctrines of Calvin now? I do not suppose there is one chapel in London--perhaps in England--where the doctrine of Reprobation is taught in all its infamous completeness. The ordinary London Nonconformist minister at any rate is the mildest and vaguest of theologians, and talks like the member of an Ethical Society about little but “Truth and Righteousness.” So far from preaching Calvinism with its iron and inflexible logic and its uncompromising cry of “Come out and be ye separate!” he is the first to tell you that the age of dogma is gone by and that modern religion must be “undenominational.” Yet, in spite of the complete disappearance of its intellectual basis, Dissent remains powerful enough to thwart the execution of great reforms and wreck the careers of great statesmen. And if you ask what (if not a common theology) holds the Nonconformists together and makes them so potent a force, the answer will be a common stock of prejudices--a prejudice against Catholic ritual, a prejudice against horse-racing, a prejudice against established churches, a prejudice against public houses and music halls, a prejudice in favour of Sunday observance. All these (except in the case of church establishment where the prejudice is the result of a political accident erected into a religious dogma) are natural consequences of the Calvinist theology, but in that theology the modern Dissenter does not believe. Nevertheless, the foundation gone, the prejudice remains, and may be found strong enough among other things to destroy the value of one of the most beneficent reforms which the last thirty years have seen.

Now what has happened in the case of Nonconformity has happened also in the case of Liberalism. The philosophy of Bastiat has followed the philosophy of Calvin into the shades of incredibility. Yet the prejudices born of that philosophy remain and can still be played upon with considerable effect. They may briefly be summarized as follows:--A prejudice against peers (though not against capitalists), a prejudice against religious establishments, a prejudice against state interference with _foreign_ trade (the case of home industry having been conceded), a prejudice against Imperialism, a prejudice against what is vaguely called “militarism”--that is to say against provision for national defence. Add prejudices borrowed from the Nonconformists against publicans and priests and you have the sum total of modern Liberalism.

Now I regard all these prejudices as mere hindrances to progress. I wish to show in the pages which are to follow that they are not, as the enthusiastic Radical imagines, the very latest manifestations of “progressive thought,” but that on the contrary they are the refuse of a dead epoch and an exploded theory of politics, that considered as a message for our age they are barren and impossible, that a party dominated by them is unfitted for public trust, and that, unless newer and more promising movements can emancipate themselves from their influence, they are likely to share the same ultimate fate.

Peel is said to have caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes. But the present apparel of the Liberals is not such as to tempt any self-respecting party to theft.

“WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?”

The ordinary man conceives of a Socialist as a kind of very extreme Liberal or Radical, a man who pushes Radical doctrines further than most Radicals dare push them. Indeed many Socialists conceive so of themselves. Yet it is obvious that, if there is any truth at all in what I have just written, this must be regarded as a complete misconception.

Socialism and Collectivism are names which we give to the extreme development of that tendency in political thought which has proved so fatal to Liberalism, which is indeed a reaction against Liberalism. Karl Marx himself, revolutionary though he was, admitted that the English Factory Acts were the first political expression of Socialism; we have already seen that they were the death warrant of consistent and philosophic Liberalism. Every piece of Socialistic legislation is in its nature anti-Liberal. There is no getting away from the truth of Herbert Spencer’s taunt when he called Socialism “The New Toryism.” Epigrammatically expressed, that is an excellent and most complimentary description of it. Socialism is an attempt to adapt the old Tory conceptions of national unity, solidarity and order to new conditions. Our case against Toryism is that its economic and political synthesis is no longer possible for us. But we can have no kind of sympathy with Liberalism which is the negation of all synthesis, the proclamation of universal disruption.

It is therefore particularly disheartening to find that “Liberal principles” are apparently as sacrosanct in the eyes of many Socialists as in those of the Liberals themselves. That Socialists also denounce the idea of a State Church, that Socialists also rail at Imperialism and condemn “bloated armaments,” that Socialists also proclaim the universal holiness and perfection of Free Trade--this is the really extraordinary and disturbing fact.

This, though none seems to see it, is the real root of the difficulties which beset every attempt to form an independent Socialist or Labour Party. You cannot have an independent party with any real backbone in it without independent thinking. And, omitting pious platitudes about “the socialization of all the means of production, distribution and exchange” there does not seem to me any perceptible difference between the way in which the Independent Labour Party (for example) thinks about current problems and the way in which the Liberals think about them. They may think differently about economic abstractions, but they do not think differently when it comes to practical politics. Consequently whenever a question divides the Liberals and the Tories, the I.L.P. always dashes into the Liberal camp at the firing of the first shot without apparently waiting to consider for one moment whether perhaps Socialism may not have an answer of its own to give which will in the nature of things be neither the Liberal nor the Tory answer. And then the I.L.P. and their allies of the Labour Representation Committee boast proudly of their “independence” because they are not allowed to speak on Liberal platforms. Of what avail is that prohibition if the platform on which they themselves stand is in its essence a Liberal platform.

A little while ago the leaders of the I.L.P. were extremely indignant because three L.R.C. representatives were said to have spoken at a by-election in support of Liberal candidates. The defence was that the three leaders in question spoke, not in support of the Liberal candidate, but in opposition to the Licensing Bill and other measures of the Conservative Government. Now it seems to me that this puts the whole question of Socialist and Labour independence in a nutshell. If Socialists and other champions of labour have really nothing to say on the Licensing Bill, Education, Tariff Reform, Chinese Labour and other topics of the hour other than what all the Liberals are saying it seems very difficult to understand why it is so very wicked of them to support Liberal candidates. If on every question which is really before the country they agree with the said Liberal candidates it would seem the obvious thing to do. At any rate I feel quite certain that they will go on doing it, directly or indirectly, in spite of all the waste paper pledges and resolutions in the world, until they get a political philosophy of their own, when they will realize that the Socialist (or if you prefer it the “Labour”) view of the licensing question, the fiscal question and the South African labour question is and must be fundamentally different from the Liberal and Radical view.

And indeed for want of such realisation the rush of the Labour men into the Liberal camp becomes more headlong every day. It began with Radical Trade Unionists newly converted to the idea of independent labour representation. But the Socialist wing has not shown itself a whit steadier in its allegiance to the doctrine of real independence. If you doubt this charge, turn to an article contributed by Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald to the _Speaker_ on the subject of the International Socialist Congress at Amsterdam. The _Speaker_ if one of the ablest is one of the most thoroughly obscurantist of Liberal papers, holding fast and without shame by the traditions of Cobden and Gladstone. Mr. MacDonald has been in the past one of the most uncompromising of the leaders of the I.L.P. and is at this moment Secretary of the Labour Representation Committee. He seems to claim, in the passage I am going to quote, to speak for his party, and, as far as I am aware, none of the leaders of that party have ventured to repudiate him.

This is what he says:--

“If, for instance, in the next Liberal Cabinet the Rosebery faction were strongly represented, and if no satisfactory pledges were given upon the Government’s intentions regarding Trade Union legislation, the Labour Party would be perfectly justified in supporting a vote of censure--or what would amount to that--on the first King’s Speech; but on the other hand, if the Cabinet were anti-Imperialist, and were sound on Trade Union legislation, the Labour Party would be justified in giving it general support and in protecting it from defeat.”

It is hardly necessary to point out that here Mr. MacDonald gives the whole I.L.P. case hopelessly away. None reading the above passage could suppose for a moment that it was written by a Socialist. Observe that the writer does not ask for a single item of socialist or semi-socialist legislation. He is silent about Old Age Pensions, about an Eight Hours Day or a Minimum Wage, about a Graduated Income Tax, about Housing or Factory legislation--in a word about everything that could by any possibility be called Socialistic. For what does he ask? Firstly for anti-Imperialism? Now is anti-Imperialism the same as Socialism? Is there any reason for supposing that the anti-Imperialist wing of the Liberal party will do more for labour than the Imperialist wing? Is Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman a Socialist or a Labourite? Is Mr. John Morley, who for years has absolutely blocked the way in regard to social reform, a Socialist or a Labourite? Why should the Labour Party support the hopelessly outmoded rump of Little-England Radicalism without at any rate making a very stringent bargain with them? As to trade union legislation, every Socialist would doubtless support it, but it is not in itself a Socialist measure; it is merely what everyone supposed that the Unions had obtained thirty years ago with the assent of Liberals and Tories alike. It therefore comes to this--that Mr. MacDonald has declared himself as regards practical issues not a Socialist at all, but an anti-Imperialist Radical who is in favour of improving the legal position of trades unions. Then why, in the name of heaven form an independent party at all? He and those who follow him are clearly in their right place as an insignificant section of the Radical “tail.” And that is how both Tories and Radicals will in future regard them.

But there is one Socialist sect in England from which we might at least expect freedom from Liberal tradition. The Social Democratic Federation is never tired of boasting of its independence, its “class-consciousness,” its stern Marxian inflexibility of purpose. Yet, when it comes to practice, it is only a trifle less enslaved by Liberal ideas than the I.L.P. itself. During the South African War the S.D.F. went one better than the Liberals in its narrow pro-Boerism. Its members rallied to the support of the late Mr. Kruger (surely the strangest leader that Social Democracy ever boasted!) and backed up the Radical Krugerites without apparently asking any questions as to their policy on labour matters. Later, on the education question, they again rallied to the Radical standard (the standard of 1870!) and, like so many Liberal Nonconformists, broke into ecstatic worship of the “ad hoc” principle, denouncing as “undemocratic” the socialistic policy of municipalized education which the Tory government had borrowed from the Fabian Society. Moreover, glancing at the S.D.F. programme I find among the “palliatives” disestablishment of the church and abolition of hereditary monarchy. How the economic condition of the people is going to be “palliated” by these measures I do not profess to know; I will only remark that the “palliation” does not seem very visible in the United States at the present time. But what I want to insist upon is the utter futility of playing thus into the hands of the champions of capitalism by helping to impress workmen with the idea that their misfortunes are wholly or in part due to those purely constitutional causes concerning which Radicals and Conservatives are at war, while all the time we at least know that they are due to the economic structure of society which Radicals and Conservatives alike support.

I agree with the S.D.F. in thinking that a Labour party must have some sort of doctrinal basis. An old party can live for a long while on catchwords and prejudices, but you cannot build a new party up without some definite political ideas. But these doctrines and ideas must not be a mere re-hash of exploded Liberal doctrines and ideas plus a theoretic belief in “the socialization of all the means, etc.” The new party need not call itself Socialist,--perhaps had better not do so,--but its attitude towards practical matters must be effectively socialistic. It must stand for the rights of the community as emphatically as the older Liberalism stood for the rights of the individual. It must work for the state control and regulation of industry as Liberalism worked for its liberation from state interference. In a word, it must be Protectionist in a more far-reaching sense than that in which the word is applicable to Mr. Chamberlain or Mr. Chaplin. So that its political philosophy will be emphatically anti-Liberal and may sometimes (though but accidentally) have to be pro-Tory.

Moreover, even if a Labour party could be a Labour party and nothing more, there would always be a tactical as well as a philosophic reason for clearing our movement of all complicity with the ideas of Liberalism. During the first half of the nineteenth century it was always supposed that the working classes of this country were generally, if not exclusively Radical. Possibly at that time they were, but since their enfranchisement in 1867 they have proved themselves overwhelmingly and unrepentantly Tory. The history of the decades which have intervened since then has been the history of the gradual capture by the Tories of all the great industrial districts where the working-class vote is most powerful. Politicians of the ’forties spoke of the “Conservative Working Man” as incredulously as men would speak of a white negro. Yet events have proved not only that such a person exists, but that he can by his vote control the politics of nearly every great manufacturing town in England.

Now the Conservative working man has no fundamental objection to Socialism. The word no doubt displeases him, partly because of its foreign origin, partly from its vaguely revolutionary associations, but on the practical application of Socialism he looks with very decided favour. In fact it is not improbable that the conversion of the labouring classes to Toryism was in part at least due to the fact that during the sixties and seventies the Tories had for a leader Mr. Disraeli, whose quick Hebraic imagination and insight made him perceive the significance of the social problem, while the Liberals were led by Mr. Gladstone, who regarded all social reform from the first with supreme indifference which in his later days deepened into a hostility so intense and deep-rooted that he was ready to shatter his party and his own career over Home Rule, if by so doing he could stave off economic questions. But to return to the Tory workman. I have said he has no objection to applied Socialism. It would be a comparatively easy matter to secure his support for a programme of advanced industrial reform, were he not required to swallow first a number of Liberal doctrines which have no relation to his class interests and to which he really has a strong objection--anti-Imperialism, the reduction of armaments, doctrinaire republicanism and Irish Home Rule. Once cut the Labour party free from these things and the increase of its electoral power will be enormous.

Before proceeding to a more detailed examination of the Liberal attitude towards current problems and its relation to the genuinely progressive attitude, let me sum up the conclusions already reached.

There is no philosophic ground for identifying Socialism with extreme Liberalism or Radicalism. The philosophies of Liberalism and Socialism are not merely different but directly antagonistic.

There is no historical ground for regarding the Liberal party as the friend of the working classes. The Liberal party is historically an essentially capitalist party; as a matter of fact the Tory party has carried more drastic and valuable social reforms than its rival.

There is no tactical advantage to be gained by committing the new-born Labour party to the specific doctrines of Liberalism. The working classes of this country have no enthusiasm for any of these doctrines and have a marked dislike for some of them.

Therefore the Labour party or Socialist party or whatever the new movement cares to call itself must if it is to succeed fling all its Liberal lumber overboard and start afresh. It is not enough that it should be independent of Liberal money and Liberal organisation. All this matters little. What is essential is that it should be independent of Liberal ideas.

NATIONAL PENRHYNISM.

As I have already suggested the subservience of Socialists and Labourites to the traditions of Liberalism, so far from showing any signs of abating gets worse every day. It has been getting markedly worse since the beginning of the new century. It was the South African War more than anything else which captured the English Socialists and swept them into the most reactionary wing of the broken forces of Liberalism. Since then the Radicals have always been able by raising the cry of “No Imperialism!” to bend the Socialists to their will. Hence Mr. MacDonald’s amazing indiscretion quoted in my last chapter.

I think it was Mr. Ben Tillet who alluded to the owner of the Bethesda Slate Quarries as “Kruger-Penrhyn.” I am not sure that Mr. Tillet or indeed anyone else realised the full accuracy of this description. For not only was there a very striking resemblance between the virtues and faults of Mr. Kruger and those of Lord Penrhyn but there was an even more remarkable analogy between the claims which the two men put forward and the arguments by which those claims were attacked and upheld.

The friends of the Welsh quarrymen said in effect to Lord Penrhyn:--“You are conducting your business improperly; your narrow obstinacy is dangerous to the community and an obstacle to progress; your conduct towards your employees is unfair and oppressive. We demand that you either mend your ways or go.” Similarly the British government said in effect to Mr. Kruger “You are conducting the government of your country badly; your narrow obstinacy is an obstacle to progress and is creating a situation dangerous to the peace of the world; your conduct towards your subjects is unfair and oppressive. We demand that you either mend your ways or go.”

And the answer is in each case the same “Shall I not do what I will with my own?” “Are not the quarries _mine_?” asks Lord Penrhyn: “Is not the Transvaal _ours_?” demanded Mr. Kruger. “If my workmen do not like my management they can leave,” said Lord Penrhyn; “If the Outlanders do not like my government they need not come,” said Mr. Kruger.

Now, granting the premises of these two eminent men their conclusions certainly follow. Indeed the popular case against both was clearly untenable. From the Liberal point of view Lord Penrhyn was as right as Mr. Kruger; from the Conservative point of view Mr. Kruger was as right as Lord Penrhyn. It is only by assailing the fundamental assumptions of both that we can make out any fair case against either. The only possible answer to the positions stated above is the Socialist answer:--“No; the quarries do not really belong to Lord Penrhyn; the Transvaal does not really belong to Mr. Kruger or to the Boers. Their title depends on the use they make of them. Private property, whether of individuals or of nations is subject ultimately to the claims of public necessity.”

I have dwelt on this point at some length because, as I have already said, it was unquestionably the South African War which more than anything else rivetted on our Socialist and Labour parties the chains of Liberalism. It is perfectly natural that Liberals should champion the “rights of nationalities,” since they are the chosen champions of the rights of property. But what have Socialists to do with either except to challenge them whenever they conflict with the general well-being? How can Socialists accept the claim of a handful of settlers to set up a ring-fence round a certain portion of the earth’s surface and declare it _their_ property any more than the claim of a landlord to enclose commons?

Note that I am not by any means saying that no Socialist could consistently oppose the South African War. There are many plausible grounds upon which he could oppose it. He could oppose it for example on the ground that the two Republics would in course of time have been peaceably absorbed into the Empire, and that the attempt to hurry the process by war was in every way a disastrous blunder. Or again he could take the ground that the war dangerously strengthened the already too powerful financial interests of the Rand and paved the way for such reactionary measures as the introduction of Chinese labour. I will not discuss here whether such arguments are sound or unsound. I only say that the particular ground of debate chosen, the inalienable “right” of a people to do what it likes with its own, is one that no Socialist can take without self-stultification.

The manner in which the leaders of the English Labour movement with a few exceptions flung themselves recklessly into the most unintelligent sort of pro-Krugerism is one example and one very disastrous in its consequences of the extent to which they have allowed themselves to be saturated with the Liberal theory of wholly irresponsible Nationalism. But it is by no means the only one. The parallel case of Ireland is in many ways even more curious.

In considering the eternal Irish question from a Socialist standpoint there are four dominant facts to be kept always in mind. The first is that Nationalism in the Irish sense is not a Socialist ideal in any sense, but is merely a kind of very narrow parochial Jingoism. The second that the Irish Nationalist party is preeminently a _Parti bourgeois_ drawing its main strength from the middle orders--small tradesmen, tenant farmers and publicans, and that its political and economic ideas are those generally characteristic of that class--rigid individualism, peasant proprietorship and the like. The third that it is a clericalist Party, representing not the enlightened Catholicism of the Continent but the narrowest kind of political Ultramontanism.[1] The fourth that Mr. Gladstone’s adoption of the Home Rule cause was a deliberate move on his part intended to stave off economic reforms in this country.

Now in these circumstances it would seem almost incredible that Socialists should feel any kind of sympathy with Irish Nationalism. Yet apparently they do feel such sympathy. Mr. Gladstone indeed builded better than he knew. He doubtless believed that by espousing Home Rule he could “dish” Mr. Chamberlain and draw the attention of young Liberals and Radicals away from social questions in which they were beginning to take a languid interest; but he could hardly have expected to effect this in the case of the Socialists and Labour leaders themselves. Yet to a great extent his policy has achieved this, and we actually find Socialists clamouring for the retention of Home Rule in the Liberal programme, though they must know perfectly well that its retention means the indefinite postponement of industrial matters.

There is no kind of excuse for the Nationalist partialities of Socialists because they know or ought to know that the theory that England oppresses Ireland is a radically false and untenable one. That Ireland is oppressed one need not deny; but it is not England that oppresses her. It is capitalism and landlordism that oppress Ireland as they oppress England. If the S.D.F. means anything at all by its “recognition of the Class War” it ought to recognise this. And recognising it, it ought to set its face like flint against a policy of disunion and racial antagonism and teach the proletarians of Ireland and England to “unite” (that is to be Unionists) according to the old Socialist formula instead of encouraging the proletarians of Ireland to regard those of England as aliens and tyrants.

To say the truth I am a little tired of the wrongs of Ireland. I am quite willing to admit that she is an “oppressed nationality” with the proviso that this phrase is equally applicable to England, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. But one is tempted to point out that concessions have been made to the Irish peasantry such as no one dreams of making to the workers of Great Britain. How much “fixity of tenure” has the English labourer in the wretched hole which his masters provide for him? Do we sign away millions of British money and British credit to save _him_ from the oppression of his landlord? Not at all. But then he does not shoot from behind hedges; nor has he as yet had even the wisdom to organize a strong and independent political party whose support is to be obtained for value received.

In a word I contend that the association of English Socialism and Labourism with the aspirations of Irish Chauvinists is theoretically meaningless and practically suicidal. It is our business to meet the old Gladstonian cry that everything else must wait because “Ireland blocks the way” with a counter-cry, “It is Ireland’s turn to wait; Labour blocks the way.”

All this does not of course mean that no kind of devolution is practicable or desirable. There is a sense in which I am myself a convinced “Home Ruler.” I believe that a number of causes (quite independent of Irish Jingoism) are combining to make a vast extension of our system of local government imperative. Mr. H. G. Wells has shown that the administrative areas of our local authorities are at present much too small, and the authorities themselves are quickly finding this out from practical experience. Parliament is overwhelmed with business which intelligent local bodies could transact much better. Imperial Federation, when it comes, will of necessity entail a large measure of local autonomy. Altogether some scheme of provincial councils seems less fantastic to-day than it did when Mr. Chamberlain outlined it in the ’eighties. But there is no earthly reason for conceding to the least trustworthy and most militantly provincial part of the United Kingdom anything more than you give to the rest. Ireland should get such autonomy as we might give to the north of England and no more. Ireland is no more a Nation than Yorkshire, but there is every reason why both Ireland and Yorkshire should be taught to manage their purely internal affairs to the best of their ability.

But, if exclusive Nationalism is essentially unsocialistic, what are we to say of Imperialism? The answer is that there is nothing wrong with Imperialism except the name which suggests Louis Bonaparte and the dragooning of subject peoples. With the thing, in its British sense, Socialists have no kind of quarrel. Indeed if Socialists would only give up their vague invectives against “Empire,” which lead in the long run to nothing more than the unmeaning backing of the effete anti-imperialist, anti-socialist, anti-Church-and-State Radicalism current fifty years ago, and seriously face the problems raised by British expansion from an unswervingly Socialist standpoint, we might get on a good deal faster. The problem of Imperialism (“Federationism” would be a better word) may be briefly stated thus:--How can we consolidate the widely scattered and variegated dominions which fly the British flag into one vast Commonwealth of practically international extent? Have Socialists any answer to this question? Or are they to be content with the old Radical answer that this cannot or should not be done?

That any Socialist should return such answer is to me I confess astounding. To say that such a practically international commonwealth is impossible is to say that _a fortiori_ the international commonwealth of which Marx and Lassalles dreamed is impossible. If the proletarians of England and Ireland, Australia and South Africa, India and Canada cannot unite, what hope is there that those of France and Germany, Russia and Japan will do so. Surely it is a curious way of showing your enthusiasm for the Federation of the World to break up all existing federations into smaller and smaller divisions. The practical Socialist policy in relation to the Empire is clearly not to destroy it, but to socialize it--that is to prevent its exploitation by capitalist cliques and financial conspiracies, to organise it in the interests of its inhabitants as a whole, and to use its power to check the evil force and cunning of cosmopolitan finance.

For indeed the dark of deeds such finance can only, as we Socialists believe, be checked by the political force of the community. And in order to check it at all effectively the community must be operative on a scale as large as its own. That is why the older Socialists were internationalists; that is why so many of the more thoughtful of modern Socialists are imperialists. Mr. Wells has pointed out at what a serious disadvantage municipalities find themselves in dealing with private monopolies since the latter can operate over any area that is convenient to them, while the operations of the former are confined within the narrow and arbitrary frontiers drawn by Acts of Parliament. Exactly the same is true in international affairs. Mr. Beit and Mr. Eckstein can safely snap their fingers at small nationalities, however progressive. Against a Socialistic British Empire they would be utterly powerless.

And as the organization of the Empire can be made the most powerful of Socialist weapons if we can once get control of it, so the popular sentiment of Imperialism can be used for the purposes of Socialist propaganda if we know how to turn it to account. For we Socialists alone possess the key to the problem--the key for which nonsocialist Imperialists are looking. It is to be noted that as soon as the ordinary Imperialist gets anywhere near the solution of an imperial question he gets unconsciously on to the Socialist track, as for instance in the growing demand for the imperialisation of our great carrying lines. Even Mr. Chamberlain’s propaganda, though Socialists cannot think it sufficient, is a sort of groping after the socialist solution, an admission of the necessity of intervention by the united British Commonwealth to check and regulate the disintegrating anarchy of commercial competition. In fact our word to the stupid and thoughtless Imperialism of the streets is in reality the word of St. Paul to the Athenians:--“What ye ignorantly worship that declare we unto you!”