Now, the reader who has followed the brief summary of the preceding chapter cannot fail to arrive at a consideration of apparently cardinal importance. Even if he be convinced—as we are convinced—that the servile state is actually upon us, he will yet feel that a people still politically free will never allow what is to-day but a young growth to attain its full stature. The English people, he will argue, hold their own destiny in their own hand. We already possess all but manhood suffrage; and, until that power is taken from us, which it could never be without a fierce struggle, we possess a weapon with which any and every attempt to re-introduce the servile status can successfully be resisted.
A man reasoning thus should ask himself two questions: first, does the proletariat object to the re-introduction of the servile status, provided it brings with it security and sufficiency? second, does the enjoyment of a wide suffrage connote the power of self-government?
These are questions which every intelligent man must be able to answer for himself, and, if he answer them honestly, his answers, we think, will agree with those Mr. Belloc has given. In The Servile State he affirms what we all know to be the fact, that the English proletariat of to-day would not merely fail to reject the servile status, but would welcome it. He puts the matter in this way:
If you were to approach those millions of families now living at a wage with the proposal for the contract of service for life, guaranteeing them employment at what each regarded as his usual full wage, how many would refuse?
Such a contract would, of course, involve a loss of freedom; a life contract of the kind is, to be accurate, no contract at all. It is the negation of contract and the acceptation of status.[22]
Every thinking man knows that the number to reject such a proposal would be insignificant.
If, then, the great mass of the English people, the majority, that is, of the voters, is prepared to welcome rather than to reject the re-introduction of slavery, the possession or non-possession of the power to reject it appears immaterial.
Let us suppose, however, an extreme case. Let us suppose an attempt to reduce the wage-earners to slavery without guaranteeing them sufficiency and security. There are many amiable maniacs who would be willing to support such an attempt, though we cannot believe that their efforts would be rewarded with success. They would be rewarded with revolution.
This is a point upon which too great insistence cannot be laid. Such an attempt, if it were ever made, would produce a revolution: it would not be quashed in a General Election or by any other form of constitutional procedure, because, as a fact, the English people have no constitutional power.
Ultimately, of course, the power of government can only rest with the majority of the people, but in practice that power is often taken from them. It has been taken from the English people.