'As chairman of that Commission, I had to instruct the secretary working with myself to draw such a report as would at least obtain a majority upon the Commission, and we succeeded in drawing a report that obtained a unanimity of votes; but, of course, to do so we had to put forward the points in which we felt that many would concur, and to keep out our most extreme suggestions. I personally would go much farther, and would allow towns to build or hire or buy, and would encourage them to solve the problem for themselves, and not ask the State to help them, except by setting free their hands and allowing them to obtain land cheaply and to tax themselves freely for the purpose…. Gladly would I see towns armed with the powers to destroy, without compensation, in extreme cases, filthy dwellings, where it is proved to the satisfaction of the magistrates that the owners are in fault, and the sites of such dwellings might be obtained by a cheap process. In all cases we ought to give powers to public bodies to take land for public purposes at a fair price … and by the adoption of the principle of betterment … owners would be called upon to make special contribution towards schemes which would improve their property at large.'
He dwelt on the sufferings of the working classes owing to improvements which ejected them from their dwellings, and urged that the Local Authority should in all cases come to terms as to rehousing before granting any facilities for improvements.
For land he advocated taxation of unearned increment and fixity of tenure under fair rents fixed by judicial courts, with power to the community to buy up land at its real price.
He also advocated, not only the limitation of hours of work, a principle to which he had been converted by the Industrial Remuneration Conference of 1885, but that the workers should be qualified for the enjoyment of their leisure by educational opportunities. He urged the example of Switzerland in making education compulsory up to sixteen years of age, and that of Ontario in granting free education up to the age of twenty-one.
He advocated municipal Socialism, by giving to municipalities the widest possible power to deal with local needs, and, passing from local expenditure to that of the State, he dealt with the need for graduation of Imperial taxation, and urged the equalization of the death duties (as between real and personal estate) and making these duties progressive. He would raise them gradually to 25 per cent. By such means we should attain the double purpose of raising money and discouraging the possession of large estates, which are the cause of the existence of a too numerous idle class.
Adult suffrage and one man or woman, one vote, was always a part of his programme.
In his utterances the change from individualism to collectivism is marked. 'We were all Tory anarchists once,' he used to say in reviewing economic theories of the sixties, and the change which had come over the attitude of economists to social questions. His own conversion was so thorough that in industrial questions he acted often as a pioneer, and his constituency adopted his views on the limitation of hours by legislation as in the demand for a legal eight-hour day. [Footnote: Speeches in Forest of Dean and elsewhere (1890-1891). Radical Programme, 1890.]
He had laid it down as a condition of acceptance of the candidature for the Forest that there must be 'full and absolute belief' in him and in his word. Time was given for the personal attack to develop, and it was made by pamphlet propaganda with unsparing virulence, but entirely without result. Not a dozen Liberals in the division declared themselves affected by it; and 'on June 11th, 1891, I gave my consent to stand for Parliament at a meeting held at Lydney, which was extraordinarily successful and unanimous.'
The chair was taken by Mr. Thomas Blake, who had been member for the division, and who in the darkest hour of Sir Charles's political life had come forward with a proposal to resign and make way for him. He was there now to say that, if Sir Charles would stand, he himself would act as unpaid election agent. On the platform were all the leading Liberals of the Forest, among them Canon Wood of Newent, whose opposition had been turned into strenuous advocacy. There also was 'Mabon' to speak for himself and the Welsh miners, and from the outside world Mr. Reginald McKenna, an inseparable friend. Sir Charles's speech, which he counted to have been the best of his life, dealt briefly with the leading political topics of the day—Home Rule and the Radical programme—but soon passed to the personal issue. He recalled the change from the murky dreariness of March to the height of summer loveliness which reigned about them, and the change no less great in the moral atmosphere. He reviewed the history of the attacks that had been made, the avowed determination to prevent his being their member; and at the close he declared himself satisfied that their trust was fully his. 'My conditions have been fulfilled. I accept the confidence you have reposed in me. I trust that strength may be given to me to justify that confidence, and I reply—not for a day, nor for a year, but from this day forward, for better for worse; and thereto I plight my troth. To-morrow we go forth from among you and commit our honour to your charge.'
He was justified in the confidence which he reposed in them. One attempt was made to raise the personal issue against him; and its result showed that any man would be imprudent who sought to oppose Sir Charles Dilke in the Forest of Dean except on strictly political grounds. First and last no member of Parliament ever got more loyal support; but no man ever trusted less to personal popularity. He carefully developed the whole electoral machinery. The month which he spent every autumn in the Forest was very largely a month of work on the detail of registration, and the register as he caused it to be kept might be put forward as an example of perfection unapproached elsewhere in Great Britain.