Notes
[1] T. H. Green, Works, iii. 367.
[2] L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 122.
[3] L. T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 126, 127, 133.
[4] L. T. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction (2nd edition), 166.
[5] Bulwer's Life of Palmerston, i. 278. Palmerston's list of "Liberals" of June, 1828, includes 11 Peers and 37 Commoners.
[6] Representative Government, chap. xvi.
[7] J. A. Hobson, Imperialism (1905 edition), 319.
[8] Morley's Life of Cobden (popular edition), 529. The reference is to Russia's assistance of Austria against the Hungarians.
[9] Daily News, 16th February, 1912.
[10] There are few modern expressions of a general theory of Tory politics. The Letters of an Englishman (Constable, 1911, 1912) are almost pure Toryism. Lord Hugh Cecil's Conservatism is tinged with Liberal ideas on Free Trade and Foreign Affairs. Mr. Pierse Loftus's Conservative Party and the Future is essentially Tory, but is rather suggestion for the future than an expression of the present mind of Toryism. Mr. J. M. Kennedy's Tory Democracy is the philosophy of Nietzsche masquerading in political dress, and bears no relation to practical politics, past, present, or future. Mr. Price Collier's England and the English is the Toryism of an American who has enjoyed the hospitality of the leisured class, and has read the Times with some diligence. The cheap reprint is introduced by a characteristic eulogy from the pen of Lord Rosebery, who seems to have spent the last twenty-five years, if not in a castle in Spain, at least in an eighteenth-century nobleman's country house. Neither he nor Mr. Collier seems to have any knowledge of the industrial North. The Standard has now opened its columns to a discussion of the principles and proposals of Toryism, but I have not yet (December, 1912) detected much system in what has been published. Various periodicals express various shades of Toryism, from the purity of Mr. W. S. Lilly, through the individualism of Mr. A. Baumann, to the Protectionist-Social Reform School of "Curio."
[11] But most of the Tory Suffragists stop at a narrow property franchise.
[12] Mr. Lewis Harcourt at the Albert Hall, 28th February, 1911.
[13] T. H. Green, Works, iii. cxii.
[14] T. H. Green, Political Obligation, § 122.
[15] Hansard, III. cxxiv. 602.
[16] Letters to a Friend on Votes for Women.
[17] Speeches reprinted from the Times, 47.
[18] National Review, May, 1912, 420.
[19] Observer, leading article, 15th September, 1912.
[20] At the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, 13th November, 1896.
[21] Morning Post, leading article, 22nd August, 1912. The most startling feature of this passage is its assumption that patriotism can be bought, and, indeed, cannot be made secure except by being bought. If it be true that patriotism follows the cash, we are bound to the Argentine Republic and the United States by as close ties as to Canada, and if the present flow of British capital continues, our hearts will soon warm towards Russia. For the Liberal view of Empire, half a century old, see Gladstone's speech (1855), quoted in Morley's Life of Gladstone, i. 363.
[22] See, for example, leading articles in the Morning Post, 18th July, 1912, and Daily Telegraph, 12th July, 1912.
[23] Morley's Burke (English Men of Letters), 136.
[24] Cole shot a black man because he suspected him of stealing sheep. Lewis shot another because his daughter said he had insulted her. Both acts were done in cold blood, and with the approval of local whites. There was no suggestion in either case that the law was inadequate or could not have been enforced.
[25] Morning Post, leading article, 14th May, 1912.
[26] The grossest modern example of Tory Imperialism is Mr. Bonar Law's proposal, while claiming the right to close English markets to foreign manufacturers, to keep those of India, whether Indians like it or not, open to English manufacturers. It is matched by his proposal that it should be left to the Dominions to say whether or not our own food supplies should be free or taxed.
[27] The Times recently spoke of "insolence" when a meeting of East Lancashire manufacturers and Members of Parliament criticized Sir Edward Grey's policy in Persia. We may be wrong in the North. But we shall always think for ourselves. The same journal has made a vicious attack upon the Supreme Court of India, because it interferes with the arbitrary acts of executive officers.
[28] Moray's Life of Cobden, ii. 361. The Review of Reviews furnished another example of this vicious reaction when it urged (October, 1912) that England must not put pressure upon Turkey to reform its government of Macedonia, because such action would impair our authority over the Moslem of India. In other words, because of our Empire, we must connive at murder, rape, and every form of brigandage.
[29] Parliamentary History, xxv. 472.
[30] Wilberforce Correspondence, i. 219.
[31] Annual Register, 1793, 113.
[32] Parl. Hist., xxx. 810.
[33] Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell, i. 56.
[34] The first exception to this rule was Mr. Smith the banker, who was made Earl Carrington in 1797.
[35] Scottish borough members were exempt. But Scottish boroughs were the most rotten of all rotten boroughs. An English county member must have £600 a year, a borough member £300. The qualifications were often fictitious.
[36] Annual Register, 1796, 52.
[37] Parl. Hist., xxii. 422.
[38] State Trials, xxiii. 229.
[39] Speech on Seditious Societies, 17th November, 1795.
[40] Londonderry to Brougham, 31st August, 1829, Castlereagh Correspondence, i. 121.
[41] Speech on Revolutionary Principles, 13th December, 1792. Compare the argument which is used to-day against the enfranchisement of working women. Toryism knows no sex.
[42] Speech on Bull-baiting, 24th May, 1802.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Speech, 24th April, 1807.
[45] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 162, 165 (1798). The publication of reports of debates began in 1771, or rather, was then first permitted.
[46] Hansard, I. xli. 1045 (1819).
[47] Hansard, I. xxxviii. 1171 (1818).
[48] Hansard, I. xli. 388 (1819).
[49] Hansard, I. xli. 914. The resolutions were no more "disgraceful" than those of the ordinary Trade Union Congress of to-day.
[50] Arnould's Life of Denman, i. 253.
[51] In 1817 no less than 1,200 persons were sent to prison for offences against the Game Laws.
[52] Hansard, I., xxxix. 1435, 1439.
[53] Beaufoy's speech, Annual Register, 1787.
[54] Burke's Memoirs of the English Catholics, ii. 459, 466.
[55] Speeches: On Repeal of the Test Act, 2nd March, 1790.
[56] Strictures on Female Education (1799), i. 106.
[57] Legacy to Young Ladies (1826).
[58] Legacy to his Daughters (1784).
[59] Lucy Aikin's Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld (1825), xvi.
[60] See further, the writer's Emancipation of English Women, ch. 3.
[61] Speeches, 26th May, 1797.
[62] Hansard, I. xli. 391.
[63] Parl. Hist., xxxi. 1384.
[64] Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, ii. 367.
[65] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 416.
[66] Parl. Hist., xix. 1100.
[67] Leviathan, ii. ch. xvii.
[68] On Civil Government, ch. viii.
[69] Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (1792). Compare his Speech at Bristol previous to the Election (1780).
[70] Speeches, vol. vi. 310 (23rd March, 1797). Compare Granville, in the Annual Register, 1808, 196.
[71] Burke, French Revolution.
[72] Parl. Hist., xxxii. 961 (1796).
[73] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 1429.
[74] Fitzmaurice's Life of Shelburne, iii. 88, 435. His ideas on education he tried to enforce on his own estates. But "the clergy opposed his lordship's intentions, lest the children should become Dissenters, although it was engaged that the children of Church people should go to Church with their parents." Ibid., 438 n.
[75] Fitzmaurice, iii. 497, 498.
[76] Ibid., ii. 329.
[77] Ibid., 360.
[78] Ibid., iii. 438.
[79] Ibid., iii. 365.
[80] Letter to Lord Holland, 12th October, 1792.
[81] Speeches, vi. 383.
[82] M. Halévy suggests that the Wesleyan revival, which began in the middle of the eighteenth century, was largely if not wholly responsible for the social changes. But, except in so far as it increased dissent in religion, the liberating influence of Wesleyanism was small. The Wesleyans are, to this day, the most conservative of Nonconformists, and their mystical piety was utterly opposed to the rationalistic freethinking of the Revolution.
[83] Arthur Young's Annals, xxv. passim.
[84] 39 Geo. III, c. 81; 39 & 40 Geo. III, c. 106.
[85] Letters to his Son, 19th December, 1767.
[86] Walpole's George III, iii. 197; Chesterfield's Letters, 12th April, 1768.
[87] Annual Register, 1770, 72.
[88] Annual Register, 1769, 125.
[89] Annual Register, 1769, 197 et seq.
[90] Stephen's Memoirs of Horne Tooke, passim.
[91] William Knox, in a letter to Grenville, Grenville Papers, iv. 336. Knox wrote the pamphlet State of the Nation, to which Burke replied in his celebrated Observations.
[92] For the views of Fox, see Lord Russell's Correspondence of C. J. Fox, I. 146; Walpole's Last Journals, ii. 241; and for those of the elder Pitt, Chatham Correspondence, ii. 367. The Duke of Richmond set up a claim to an old French peerage, by way of preparing an asylum for himself when George III had finally established his despotism. Burke's Correspondence, ii. 112.
[93] Speech at Bristol previous to the Election (1780). The union between English reformers and American rebels was marked by deeds as well as words. In 1770 the Assembly of South Carolina subscribed £1,500 to the Society of the Friends of the Bill of Rights. A. R. 1770, 224.
[94] A. R. 1780, 51. See also Sir George Savile's Address to the Freeholders of York, 169.
[95] A. R. 1780, 55.
[96] Watson's Anecdotes of His Own Time.
[97] Parl. Hist., xxix. 509.
[98] See, for instance, Luxford's case, mentioned by Fox in Parl. Hist., xxix. 557, and contrast the judge and the juries in William Hone's trials (1817).
[99] See the speech of Calcagus to the British, in Tacitus' Agricola, c. 30.
[100] In her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
[101] Political Arithmetic (1774), 95.
[102] Thoughts on Scarcity (1795).
[103] Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV., cix.
[104] Reports, 1806, iii. 2.
[105] On Civil Liberty (1776), 72.
[106] Political Justice (1793), ii. 190.
[107] Memoir of Major Cartwright, i. 244.
[108] I use the term "Radicals" for these early extremists because it is the most convenient. But the word was not actually introduced till the end of the French War in 1816.
[109] P. 3.
[110] P. 22.
[111] P. 37.
[112] Memoir, i. 191.
[113] In 1793 the Society published a Report on the State of the Representation, which showed that 309 members were returned by private patronage, 163 of them by Peers (Annual Register, 1793).
[114] Parl. Hist., xxxi. 793.
[115] Speeches, v. 97, 115 (1795).
[116] Hansard, I. xxxviii. 1118. The voting on Burdett's resolution was 106 to 0. Ibid., 1185.
[117] Speeches, 17th May, 1794.
[118] The minority in the Commons ranged between forty and sixty. In the Lords it was sometimes only three or four.
[119] Appeal to the Nation (1812), 78.
[120] A Problem (1824).
[121] Preface to Rights of Man, Part II.
[122] Part I.
[123] Ibid., Conclusion.
[124] Part II., Preface.
[125] Part II., c. i.
[126] See for example the resolutions of the London Wards in the Annual Register, 1792.
[127] Rights of Man, Part II.
[128] Part II., Preface.
[129] Part II.
[130] Rights of Man, Part II., c. 3.
[131] So late as 1840 Cook, a Whig, described the Rights of Man as "a fountain of evil," and denounced its "licentiousness and impiety." See his History of Party, iii. 399.
[132] Parl. Hist. (1799), xxxi. 467. Compare Colonel Cawthorne's speech, xxx. 1440.
[133] Hansard, I. xli. 434 (1819).
[134] Speeches, 24th May, 1802.
[135] Annual Register, 1782. There is an admirable account of these different societies in Mr. G. S. Veitch's Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (1913).
[136] Annual Register, 1792. The Association soon got into difficulties. Its president, Mr. John Reeves, published a pamphlet so violently Tory in tone that the House of Commons ordered him to be prosecuted for sedition involved in contempt of itself. He was acquitted.
[137] Government spies were sometimes involved in their own net. Two of them took part in treasonable proceedings at Edinburgh, and were hanged, drawn, and quartered (Annual Register, 1793, Chronicle, 53, 58).
[138] These cases are taken from the Chronicle in the Annual Register, 1792.
[139] State Trials, xxiii.; Annual Register, 1794, 32.
[140] State Trials, xxiii.
[141] Report of Secret Committee of Commons; Parl. Hist., xxxi. 727.
[142] Reports of Secret Committees of 1795 and 1799 in the Parl. Hist., xxxi. 475, 574, 688; xxxiv. 579, 1000, and the consequent debates. Dr. J. Holland Rose and Mr. G. S. Veitch come to the same conclusion as that reached in the text.
[143] Shelburne became Lord Lansdowne in 1784.
[144] Speeches, vi. 61.
[145] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 992.
[146] Hansard, I. xli. 7, 8.
[147] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 248.
[148] During their brief tenure of office in 1807 they stopped the Slave Trade, which Pitt's Government, while always condemning it, had never suppressed. This was the last and the noblest of the public acts of Fox.
[149] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 213.
[150] Letter to Lord Holland, in the Correspondence of C. J. Fox, 23rd February, 1799.
[151] Parl. Hist., xxxiv. 244. Cf. Granville and Auckland at pp. 668, 717.
[152] To Charles Grey, 8th August, 1803, 6th January, 1804; Correspondence of C. J. Fox.
[153] Parl. Hist., xxxi. 684 (1793).
[154] Ibid., xxx. 422 (1792).
[155] Speeches, v. 496.
[156] Ibid., 84.
[157] Ibid., 174.
[158] Alison's Life of Castlereagh, i. 21, 23.
[159] Parl. Hist., xxxi. 1367 (1795).
[160] Speeches, vi. 620 (1805).
[161] Hansard, I. x. 290.
[162] Hansard, I. 354.
[163] Ibid., I. x. 365.
[164] Ibid., 376.
[165] The descent upon Copenhagen is to-day used as an argument for a powerful German Navy. Our old immoralities pursue us still.
[166] Life and Opinions of Earl Grey, by Colonel Grey, 220.
[167] Ibid., 332.
[168] Yonge's Life of Lord Liverpool, ii. 26.
[169] Alison's Castlereagh, i. 500 et seq.; Castlereagh's speech in Hansard, I. xxx. 292.
[170] Walpole's Life of Russell, i. 110.
[171] Hansard, I. xxvii. 850.
[172] Ibid., 862.
[173] Ibid., 790, 791
[174] Hansard, I. xxvii. 773.
[175] Ibid., I. xxvii. 782.
[176] Hansard, I. xl. 338, 671; xli. 421, 892.
[177] Tooke's History of Prices, ii. 4, 18.
[178] Hansard, I. xli. 924.
[179] Pellew's Life of Sidmouth, iii. 276. The name "Radical" was just coming into use. It was explained in the Commons as a new word in 1817 (Hansard, I. xxxvi. 761).
[180] Yonge's Life of Liverpool, ii. 429. There were one or two flashes of imagination. Peel, just rising into prominence in the Tory party, thought that Reform could not be long delayed. "Public opinion is growing too large for the channels that it has been accustomed to run through" (Croker Papers, i. 170).
[181] Hansard, I. xxxvii. 570, 680, 682; xli. 230. Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical, passim.
[182] Castlereagh Correspondence, xii. 162, 259.
[183] Annual Register, 1819, Hist. 107. Hunt and his associates were afterwards sentenced to imprisonment for conspiracy, Hunt for two and a half years. A. R., 1820; Chron., 898.
[184] See the speech of Lord Grenville in Hansard, I. xli. 448.
[185] Burdett's motion of 1818 for Radical Reform was beaten, as already described, by 106 votes to 0. See ante, p. [105], and Hansard, I. xxxviii. 1185. For the official Whig view see Brougham, ante, p. [105].
[186] Yonge's Liverpool, ii. 365. Wilberforce supported State grants in aid of education from a similar motive. See ante, [52].
[187] Hansard, I. xli. 1212.
[188] Twiss, Life of Eldon, ii. 124.
[189] Hansard, II. xvi. 397.
[190] Hansard, II. xxi. 1632.
[191] Wellington Despatches, v. 409.
[192] Hansard, II. xxi. 1646, 1655. For the Liberal arguments see ibid., xix. 1719; xxi. 1601, 1795; xxii. 591; xxiii. 75, 738; xxiv. 126.
[193] Catechism of Parliamentary Reform (1817).
[194] Theory of Legislation, ch. xiii. § 10.
[195] Constitutional Code.
[196] It was Macaulay who, during the debates on the Reform Bill, contrasted "the beauty, the completeness, the speed, the precision with which every process is performed in our factories, and the awkwardness, the rudeness, the slowness, the uncertainty of the apparatus by which offences are punished and rights vindicated" (Speeches, 5th July, 1831). This is pure Utilitarianism.
[197] Hansard, I. xxiii. 1166.
[198] Report of Lords' Committee on the State of Ireland (1825), 558.
[199] Commons' Committee (1825), 414.
[200] Ibid., 810.
[201] Catholics were expressly excluded from the places of Lord Chancellor and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. These disabilities still exist.
[202] Hansard, II. xviii. 711.
[203] Ibid., II. xviii. 869.
[204] A declaration was substituted for the old tests, that the candidate for office would never attempt "to injure or subvert" the Established Church. The Lords added the words "upon the true faith of a Christian." In freeing the Dissenters they disabled the Jews.
[205] Macaulay's Miscellaneous Writings; Westminster Reviewer's Defence of Mill.
[206] Macaulay's Speeches: Speech on Reform, 16th December, 1832.
[207] Ibid.
[208] Macaulay's Miscellaneous Writings; Mill on Government.
[209] Macaulay, Speeches, on Reform, 20th September, 1831.
[210] Works (1869), 670 (written in 1830).
[211] Speeches, on Reform, 16th December, 1831.
[212] Speech on the People's Charter, 3rd May, 1842.
[213] Hansard, III. xxiii. 101, 102.
[214] Bulwer's Palmerston, ii. 174, 178. See also his Memoirs, iii. 322, 323; Torrens' Life of Melbourne, i. 437; Walpole's Life of Russell, i. 264; and the Edinburgh Review, July, 1834. The King included the Catholic Association, the Orangemen, the Political Unions and the Trade Unions in one dislike, and wished they could all be put down by law (Walpole's Russell, ubi sup.).
[215] See, for instance, Webb's Local Government; The Parish and the County; Peet's Liverpool Vestry Books, vol. i.
[216] Speeches, on Ten Hours Bill, 22nd May, 1846.
[217] Morley's Life of Cobden, i. 464.
[218] Hodder's Life of Shaftesbury, passim; Oastler's letters on Slavery in Yorkshire (1830); Hutchin and Harrison's History of Factory Legislation, ch. iii.-vi.
[219] The Acts were the Common Law Procedure Act (1832) and the Fines and Recoveries Act (1833).
[220] The House of Lords did its utmost to maintain the old abuses. The Bill was sent back to the Commons "with the title altered but the preamble changed.... Out of 140 clauses 106 have been in substance omitted, 18 other clauses have been introduced, and of the whole purport and intention of the original Bill little is to be found in the Bill which is now come down to us" (Lord John Russell in Hansard, III. xxxiv. 218). The Government stood firm, and, with the help of Peel, obtained the greater part of what they wanted.
[221] The contending principles were most clearly expressed in the Lords. The Duke of Richmond and Lord Wharncliffe supported the Bill because it abolished a class distinction. Wellington opposed it for precisely that reason (Hansard, III. vii. 129).
[222] Romilly, Memoirs, iii. 252; Memoir of Earl Spencer, 185.
[223] Hansard, III. xlviii. 1252.
[224] Ibid., 1304, 1305.
[225] Hansard, III. xlviii. 1321.
[226] Ibid., 1322.
[227] Ibid., xlviii. 1263.
[228] Speeches, on Education, 18th April, 1847.
[229] He was very ably supported by his secretary, Charles Buller.
[230] Parliamentary Papers, 1839, xvii. 53.
[231] Adderley, in Hansard, III. cx. 578 (1850).
[232] In ten days 5,884 petitions were presented against this "endowment of error."
[233] Hansard, III. cxxxi. 1123.
[234] Cobden to Peel; Morley's Life of Cobden (Popular Edition), 395.
[235] Quoted in F. W. Hirst's Manchester School, 491.
[236] Hirst, 229.
[237] Speeches, ii. 397.
[238] Hirst's Manchester School, 251.
[239] Morley's Cobden, 396.
[240] Speeches, i. 470; ii. 397, 399.
[241] Cobden, England, Ireland, and America (1835).
[242] The Three Panics; Russia, c. iv.
[243] Speeches, i. 463.
[244] Cobden, Hansard, III. cxii. 671.
[245] England, Ireland, and America.
[246] Hansard, III. clxxvi. 832.
[247] Hirst, xii.
[248] See e.g., Hansard, I. xli. 456 (1819). A few Whig members like Lord Grenville (ibid., 456) and Ellice (ibid., 931) pressed the same point.
[249] The whole petition is set out in Hirst's Manchester School, 117 et seq.
[250] Hirst, 123 (1833).
[251] Cobden, Speeches, i. 256 (1845).
[252] Bright, in Hirst, 218.
[253] W. J. Fox, in Hirst, 175.
[254] Prentice's History of the League, i. 129, 140.
[255] A meeting of Birmingham women on the 2nd April, 1838, protested against the Corn Law and the new Poor Law. It was connected with the Chartist agitation.
[256] Prentice, i. 171.
[257] Hansard, III. cx. 1248.
[258] After 1867 Factory Bills were often opposed by women and their champions, in the same logical spirit, as an interference by men with women's "liberty."
[259] Hansard, III. cx. 566.
[260] It is perhaps worth noting here that there is no trace to-day in the character of Australian colonists of any unusual taint in origin. Many of the transported criminals were made criminal simply by their surroundings, and when they obtained a new chance became as energetic, as resourceful, and as valuable to the community at large as the most respectable people in the Colony. This experience should always give pause to those who argue that the inhabitants of our slums are naturally degenerate, and that the process of "selection" which has reduced them to the depths has anything accurate or scientific about it.
[261] Hansard, III. ciii. 383; cviii. 161, 777; cxvii. 543; cxxiv. 554. Convicts were until 1867 occasionally sent to Western Australia, but only at the request of the inhabitants, who needed cheap labour.
[262] Hansard, III. cx. 559, 566.
[263] Ibid., 1170. Compare Bright at p. 661, and Russell, ibid., cviii. 549.
[264] Lord Grey, Hansard, III. cx. 657.
[265] Archbishop of Canterbury, Hansard, III. liii. 959.
[266] Hansard, III. cxxiv. 1150.
[267] Hansard, III., ccxliv. 1313.
[268] Lytton Bulwer's Palmerston, i., 139.
[269] Ibid., 346.
[270] Hansard, III. cxii. 583, 584.
[271] Ibid., 508, 509.
[272] Hansard, III. cxii. 586.
[273] Fitzmaurice's Life of Granville, i. 49.
[274] Morley's Life of Gladstone, ii. 37.
[275] The two great blemishes, the inequality of the sexes, and the difficulty of giving redress to the poor, have now been unanimously condemned by a Royal Commission (1913).
[276] Hansard, III. cxliv. 1476.
[277] Ibid., 1784.
[278] Hansard, III. clxxvi. 709.
[279] Ibid., 829.
[280] Morley's Life of Gladstone, ii. 431.
[281] Webb's History of Trade Unionism (1902), 495.
[282] Speeches, ii. 100.
[283] Hansard, III. cx. 464. Compare Viscount Duncan's speech on the Window Tax, ibid., 68.
[284] Ibid., III. li. 537.
[285] Speeches, on re-election to Parliament, 2nd November, 1852.
[286] Sartor Resartus (1833) Bk. III. c. v. Compare his Past and Present (1843) and Latter Day Pamphlets (1850).
[287] Thirty Years' Peace, iv. 454.
[288] Essay on Coleridge.
[289] Subjection of Women, c. i.
[290] Autobiography; Political Economy, Bk. V. c. xi.
[291] Sir Henry Craik, The State in its Relation to Education, 84, 85.
[292] Fortnightly Review (1865); reprinted in National and Social Problems (1908).
[293] England, Ireland, and America.
[294] Hansard, III. lxxii. 1016.
[295] Speeches, on the Coercion Bill, i. 308.
[296] Speeches, i. 425, 369 (1866).
[297] Hansard, III. cxciv. 2071.
[298] Ibid., 1955, 1963.
[299] See the Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the condition of education in England (1869-70). So little importance was attached to the education of girls that the Commission at first proposed to confine its work entirely to boys' schools!
[300] Morley's Gladstone, ii. 318.
[301] For a statement of Gladstone's views on war and the Manchester doctrine, see his speech at Edinburgh on the 17th March, 1880, quoted in Morley's Gladstone, iii. 182.
[302] Times, 25th September, 1870.
[303] He succeeded Lord Clarendon at the Foreign Office just before the outbreak of the war.
[304] Morley's Gladstone, ii. 350.
[305] Ibid., 353.
[306] Ibid., ii. 346.
[307] Morley's Gladstone, ii. 347.
[308] Ibid., 348.
[309] The Prime Minister estimated these at more than the whole National Debt (Lord Selborne's Memorials, II. i. 231.)
[310] One of his resolutions advocating intervention was beaten by 131 votes, a far greater majority than the Government could expect on any party measure.
[311] Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon resigned their posts in the Ministry rather than share the responsibility of such a crime. The former suspended his resignation for a few weeks.
[312] Afterwards Marquis of Salisbury.
[313] Beaconsfield did not stop at this point. He made a treaty with Turkey, binding us to defend her possessions in Asia, and her to reform her system of government. The reforms were never carried out, and fifteen years later the Armenian massacres showed what Turkish promises were worth. One omission was made in these arrangements. Bismarck offered to support a British occupation of Egypt. Beaconsfield refused thus to impair the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and took a worthless "lease" of the island of Cyprus instead. The sanction of Europe for our incursion into Egypt was thus lost.
[314] Lord Mayo, quoted in Hansard, III. ccxliii. 312. Lady Betty Balfour's Lord Lytton's Indian Administration is a very good account of the Viceroy's aims and methods. See also the Blue Book, Papers Relating to Afghanistan (1878).
[315] Balfour, 30.
[316] For the Parliamentary debates see Hansard, III. ccxliii. 245 (Lords), and 310 (Commons). Lord Lawrence's views were quoted from a dispatch of his (1869) at p. 311.
[317] Hansard, III. ccxliii. 349.
[318] Hansard, 380. Mr. Chamberlain's defence of the claim to criticize a war while it is in progress (p. 382) is the best possible comment on his treatment of Pro-Boers twenty years later.
[319] The best Liberal speeches are in Hansard, III. ccxliii., Lords Halifax (245), Lawrence (261), and Grey (406); Whitbread (310), Chamberlain (380), and Gladstone (541).
[320] The Midlothian Campaign (speeches in 1879 and 1880), 113.
[321] Ibid., 194.
[322] The Midlothian Campaign, 19.
[323] Ibid., 66.
[324] Ibid., 131.
[325] The Midlothian Campaign, 58.
[326] The Midlothian Campaign, 63.
[327] Lord Randolph Churchill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, Sir John Gorst, and Sir Henry Drummond Wolff.
[328] Hansard, III. cclxxviii. 1174. Bright's best speech is at cclx. 1199.
[329] Times, 21st November, 1883; Nineteenth Century, January and February, 1884. Miss Octavia Hill, who knew more about the subject than anybody else, was not appointed a member of the Commission, though she gave evidence. Twenty years elapsed before a woman sat on a Royal Commission.
[330] Report of Lord Bessborough's Commission (1881), 21.
[331] Lord Morley's Miscellanies, iv. 306.
[332] Midlothian Campaign, 44.
[333] See Hansard, III. ccxcviii. 1659; ccxcix. 1085, 1098, 1119. Lord Salisbury spoke at Newport on the 7th October, 1885, three months after Lord Carnarvon had, with his knowledge, communicated with Parnell.
[334] Hansard, III. ccciv. 1050.
[335] Ibid., 1372.
[336] At Nottingham, 31st January, 1913.
[337] Hansard, III. ccciv. 1268.
[338] At Bristol, 17th January, 1888.
[339] Aspects of Home Rule (speech of 22nd April, 1893), 170. Mr. Balfour succeeded Sir Michael as Irish Secretary on the 7th March, 1887.
[340] Hansard, III. ccccix. 66, 1191; cccxii. 183; cccxiii. 1608.
[341] Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord St. Aldwyn, and Mr. Bonar Law have recently suggested that the Crown itself should once more take an active and open part in politics and veto legislation.
[342] See his Popular Government.
[343] J. A. Hobson's Imperialism, chap. i.; Meredith Townsend in Liberalism and the Empire, 341.
[344] Lord Wolseley's Soldier's Pocket Book. His lordship would probably not poison his enemy's wells, or burn him alive, or kill him with explosive bullets, or massacre his women and children. But why not?
[345] See, for instance, L. T. Hobhouse's Democracy and Reaction; J. A. Hobson's Imperialism; and Norman Angell's Great Illusion.
[346] See Fitzpatrick's Transvaal from Within; Sir E. T. Cook's Rights and Wrongs of the Transvaal War; Mr. Bryce's Impressions of South Africa; and Sir Francis Younghusband's South Africa of To-day (1897), 246, 250.
[347] Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Speeches reprinted from the Times, 167.
[348] It has been suggested that without the war this would have been impossible. Even if this were true, the case against the war would still stand. Material success cannot be balanced against morality. It might similarly be argued that an eruption on the skin is a good thing, because it rids the body of poisonous matter. Clean living would have prevented the accumulation of the poison, and made the violent means of discharge unnecessary.
[349] The questions of limiting the number of "pickets," and of making Unions liable for the wrongful acts of their central executive committees are not yet finally settled. The Acts of 1871 and 1874 did not, I think contemplate an absolute immunity.
[350] Lord Morley's Miscellanies, iv. 311. The same principles are of course being applied in all civilized countries. See Mr. Jethro Brown's Underlying Principles of Modern Legislation.
[351] In a very remarkable article in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1912, an anonymous writer declares that the better sort of workmen are now not merely politically, but actually, in character and ability, the superiors of the middle class. The shameless ignorance and hostility to ideas, which he discovers in the latter, are due partly to the increase of luxury and partly to the public-school system. The reform of the latter, which is now in progress, is probably as urgent a need of the middle, as industrial insurance is of the working class.
[352] Herbert Samuel's Liberalism, 8, 11.
[353] The Labour Exchange at Liverpool has actually decasualized the whole of the system of dock labour in that port. Credit for this is due to Mr. Rowland Williams, of the Exchange, and Mr. Lawrence D. Holt, a local shipowner. The machinery established by the Act has done what private effort had for a generation found beyond its strength.
[354] Liberalism and the Social Problem, 316. These speeches are by far the best expression of the philosophy of the new Liberalism.
[355] Churchill, op. cit., 82.
[356] Mr. Harold Spender, in Mr. Philip Snowden's Living Wage, x.
[357] It should be remembered that in the peculiar case of women Trade Unionism is almost impossible. Without the State, they have no means of raising their wages as men have raised theirs by combination.
[358] Social Statics (1851), 325.
[359] A great proportion of this surplus wealth is spent on giving fictitious values to works of art and curiosities. A china jar which cost £500 fifty years ago may be bought for £5,000 to-day. The increase represents no real increase in value, but simply an increased capacity of millionaires to bid against each other. The price will again fall, as incomes are reduced.
[360] Accusations of moral corruption are most rarely made by those who are best acquainted with political history. But what other term is to be applied to this action, of which I am informed on the best possible authority? For several days before the day on which the Woman Suffrage amendment was moved to the Franchise Bill, a Liberal Member, who had refused to pledge himself to either side, was "bombarded" with requests from pledged Suffragist Members that he would vote against them and defeat the amendment. We hang soldiers who commit this offence in military warfare.
[361] Sir Almroth Wright's notorious pamphlet has of course been repudiated by the saner women Anti-Suffragists. But it certainly represents the opinions of the average man Anti-Suffragist.
[362] I cannot deal seriously with the argument that the vote is merely an expression of physical force, that a minority only yields to a majority because it would be beaten in a civil war, that substantially all women might vote on one side at an election and substantially all men on the other, that the women outnumber the men and would therefore be able to procure the legislation which they wanted, that the men would refuse to obey the law, that civil war would follow, that the women would be beaten, and that society would be dissolved. Those politicians who believe in the possibility of such a succession of miracles had better retire each to a separate desert island. They will not find in any society of human beings a constitution which does not admit, on similarly logical grounds, of the same dreadful disasters. Such an absurd and pedantic example of reasoning away from human nature has not been seriously maintained in England since the time of Cartwright.
[363] I use these terms as a convenient way of referring to the general movements for and against emancipation. They may mean anything in themselves. So far as I am concerned, I believe neither in that sexual promiscuity which some Anti-Suffragists charge against their opponents, nor on the other hand in that theory of a primitive matriarchate upon which some Suffragists base their claims.
[364] For the history of the agitation see Mrs. Fawcett's Women's Suffrage ("The People's Books" series); and for its philosophical basis, Mrs. Olive Schreiner's Women and Labour, and my own Emancipation of English Women.
[365] I refer those who believe that the militant women were suffering from hysteria or other sexual disorder to the deliberate contradiction of Mr. H. L. Carre-Smith, in the Standard of the 9th April, 1912. Mr. Smith is a competent physician, and an Anti-Suffragist, and he has made a careful study of the militant type. "As a rule," he says, "I have been struck by their normal demeanour."
[366] The only Government department which acted wisely in dealing with the women was the Irish Office. The first offenders against the law in Dublin were promptly placed in the first division. Unhappily, this was after Mr. McKenna had revived forcible feeding, and too late to produce any effect. The next Irish offences were attempts at arson and murder, committed by one of Mr. McKenna's prisoners. Had Mr. Birrell been at the Home Office in 1906, we should still be far from arson and explosives.
[367] I received a letter from a Cabinet Minister in 1909, in which he said that he expected vitriol-throwing at any moment. Vitriol is, of course, the weapon of an outraged sex instinct, the injured wife or discarded mistress.
[368] I refer my readers to the grave and responsible report of Sir Victor Horsley, Dr. Mansell Moulin, and Dr. Agnes Saville, three physicians of unquestioned competence and probity, which appeared in the Lancet of the 24th August, 1912.
[369] One of the charges, that a large number of plain-clothes policemen had mingled with the crowd for the purpose of attacking the women, was no more a subject for investigation in a court of law than the subject of the Parnell Commission. On this point Mr. Churchill denied the charges without inquiring of anybody but police officers, whose evidence, even if it was perfectly honest, was of little value. For a police officer to say that he did not see a fact, one of a large number of facts, is not sufficient proof that a private person is lying when he states that he did see it. Two gentlemen known to me say that they saw a large number (one says "more than a hundred") of plain-clothes men march back into Scotland Yard after the disturbance. Mr. Churchill says that there were "not more than a dozen" on duty. My informants may be lying or mistaken. But Mr. Churchill is not in a position to say so, because he never attempted to cross-examine them. Both appear to me to be honest witnesses.
[370] For a naïve and illuminating statement of the militant women's case see The Suffragette, by Sylvia Pankhurst; and for a fuller statement of my own opinions, my Emancipation of English Women (1913 edition). For the case against Mr. Churchill see the pamphlet Treatment of the Women's Deputations by the Metropolitan Police (The Woman's Press, 1911). See also my pamphlet Political Prisoners (National Political League, 1912). During the London Dock strike of 1912 charges similar to those above mentioned were made against the police. Mr. McKenna granted a public inquiry at once.
[371] No Liberal questions Sir Edward Grey's honesty or good will. His record in connection with Woman's Suffrage, no bad touchstone, is conspicuously pure.
[372] The action of Austria in establishing formal sovereignty over Bosnia and Herzegovina was not such a gross violation of moral rules as it appears at first sight. Austria had been in occupation of these territories, with European sanction, for more than a generation, and there is no question that they had been well governed. It was only in taking advantage of the revolution in Turkey, without obtaining the formal consent of the Powers, that she acted immorally.
[373] It should be remembered that the whole of the Foreign Service is recruited from among people with minimum incomes of £400 a year. This ensures a Tory bias among permanent officials.
[374] There is great need of a history of foreign policy which shall trace in a satisfactory way the various currents which have brought us to our present situation. For the present we have to rely on detached studies like Mr. E. D. Morel's Morocco in Diplomacy, Mr. E. H. Perris's Our Foreign Policy and Sir Edward Grey's Failure, Mr. J. A. Spender's pamphlet reprinted from the Westminster Gazette, Mr. Morgan Shuster's Strangling of Persia, Professor E. G. Browne's pamphlets on the same subject, and the Hon. George Peel's Friends of England, Enemies of England, and Future of England. There is no general historical survey, and until there is, foreign policy will remain as much the monopoly of a caste as ancient legal systems. It is time that this mysterification of such important affairs was ended. At this moment (February, 1913), though the French Government has published a huge Yellow Book on the Morocco crisis, Sir Edward Grey still refuses to the English people any explanation of the reason why he nearly led them into war eighteen months ago.
[375] An article in the Times of the 15th March, 1913 seems to endorse all our Liberal protests and criticisms.
[376] See, for example, the article by Mr. Sydney Brooks in the Fortnightly Review for January, 1913. The suggestion was also made in a leading article in the Daily Telegraph, the date of which I forget.