J. SULLY.
THE RIGHT OF EVOLUTION.
In the Royal Academy's Exhibition which opened May 2, 1890, I remarked a fine picture of the Lord Mayor's Show. That Show is the monument of a mercantile evolution by which poor men,—one, 'tis said, with only a cat for capital,—clubbed together in guilds, largely socialistic, and, so increasing means, accumulated the wealth which controlled kings, and inaugurated the epoch of peace, so necessary for commerce.
But the Academy picture was not so striking as one I had seen the day before (May-day) in Hyde Park. There, amid a motley crowd with red and black flags inscribed 'Anarchy,' stood William Morris,—artist, scholar, and poet,—announcing to the workmen that they are slaves, rich men their owners, their natural enemies, and existing society a war.
The Guild-Socialism of London is past. Its gorgeous ghost may presently masquerade for the last time through November fog and London squalor. But the Hyde Park scene has its career yet to run. What its orators demanded was a new privilege. It was not the equal rights of labor, but privilege. This new lordship is to dictate my limits of education, my mode of production, my hours of work, my wages. The poet leader told the toilers that they alone did what was useful, all others were doing what was useless; the man who wrote "The Earthly Paradise" declared himself one of the mere "parasitic class," climbing and flourishing on the manual laborers. I did not see how his remorseless logic could have spared Shakespeare himself, and it appears certain that under this levelling scheme no dreamer, no poet, could ever have the culture, or the leisure, necessary to bear his literary fruit. When the distribution of work and wages is left to a majority of the millions, will they agree that writing "The Earthly Paradise" is as productive as the mining of coal? Among these millions, how many fools, how many sots! Shakespeare drew, in Christopher Sly, a character familiar to us as to him. Christopher is taken, while in a drunken sleep, into a nobleman's mansion, and, on waking, is treated as a lord who has been wandering in his mind, fancying himself a boor. He is surrounded by liveried servants; his lady comes to welcome his recovery; he is feasted; a beautiful drama is performed before him. In the height of his glory Christopher calls for a tankard of beer; he drinks deep; and just as his players are entering on the poetic drama, Christopher rolls from his cushioned throne and lies snoring on the floor. Had it been left to Christopher Sly's vote to determine whether higher wages should be paid Shakespeare or the brewer, the bard might have come off badly. And were the wages of actors and actresses dependent on a government chosen by the masses, not only the Slys throughout England, but the millions remote from theatres, and the Methodists, Salvationists, Presbyterians, would certainly unite to close all theatres. Even Edward Bellamy "looking backward" finds no provision for a theatre. Little by little we should find ourselves in a prosaic world. Men and women would be born; they might eat, and sleep; they would die. But our little life might bid farewell to the beautiful dreams that clothe its dry bones with beauty.
Such is my impression of every constructive scheme of Socialism. I recognise the evils that give rise to such schemes; I feel their urgency. Their strong appeal to our humanity might silence criticism of their crudity, were their method evolutionary. We could then feel certain that every practical step would be traceable if not confirmed by experience. But when a theory adopts the revolutionary method, when it proposes a complete, irreversible overthrow of existing institutions; it is necessary to ask whether its own system would be any improvement on the old.
It may be said that English Socialism does not advocate violence. But violence is only an incident of revolution. There never was a revolution in which the fighting did not come as a surprise. Those who inflame the masses with aims that cannot be gained but by bloodshed, are really advocating violence. Reforms of a political or a social system are secured peacefully, but a revolutionary subversion of the foundations in a whole nation can only come by war. It is a declaration of war to deal with the whole existing order with hostility, with acrimony and hatred, as wholly bad. Such order is thereby sentenced to death; its execution is merely a question of power.
Even supposing a revolution not attended by bloodshed, assuming it extorted from authority by fear of violence, what can be gained? What new materials, with which to make the earthly paradise? None. We see what men are, what motives now rule; such and such parties, politicians, official people, "400" people; a vast population of working people who have no definite principle of social equality, much less of fraternity. The mass, in the distance, may appear in solidarity, like the distant ocean; but, seen closely, it is made up of distinct waves. The bootblack looks down on the sweep, as the millionaire looks down on the tradesman. There is as much social inequality in Washington as in London. Revolutions pass and leave you the same old human nature. Whence is socialism to get a cabinet of angels who will administer the new order,—run the farms, public works, railways, and so on,—without selfishness, jobbery, personal ends, or corruption? And shall our schools train intelligence downward, so that it shall not rise above mediocrity? "The snow may fall level one day, the next it is piled into drifts." Property might be equally distributed this year; the next it would be in the hands of the cleverest. You seize a man by the throat and say "You've got to be fraternal." He may gasp out "I will"; but when his throat is free he will love you no better.
But we are told that the selfish forces of human nature, its tendency to social inequality, can themselves be revolutionised. It was so with the early Christians. Jesus was not a socialist, he advised tribute to Cæsar, and respect for those who sat in Moses's seat; but, some two centuries after his death, the Christians did give up their private possessions, and had all things in common. The avowed cause of this, however, was that the world was just coming to an end. Why labor and accumulate in a world about to be consumed? No sooner did that superstitious expectation fade away than socialism ceased. The forces of human nature resumed their sway. Those forces,—the love of property, of luxury, competition, enterprise,—have since been dissolved, here and there, but only by similar superstitions. A hundred communities were formed for secular interests, about Robert Owen's time. They all failed. The only ones existing are those founded in the belief that this world is a wilderness of woe, destined to destruction, and heaven the only true investment. Such are the Oneida, Shaker, and Mormon communities. The modern socialists can appeal to no such superstition. And yet, though many of them believe themselves "infidels," their movement is the afterglow of Christianity. Their method is millennial. They look for the destruction of the old political world in much the same way as the early Christians looked for the destruction of the physical world. There is to be a grand transformation scene. Some Bellamy is to sound a trumpet, a lucifer match is to be scratched, and, puff! away go the pomp and glories of this world. The high are to be laid low, the low raised high, and a new social kingdom to be established.
All this, though uttered by some atheists, is supernaturalism. It is a survival from the millennial superstition. It is secular second-adventism. It will pass away like its forerunners, though it may like them cause revolutions. The socialistic fathers and their children will fall asleep, and the old world roll on much the same as before, diurnally, but on its moral orbit somewhat slower. For revolutionary changes invariably retard human progress. Because, while they cannot alter the inherited habitudes of a people,—their motives, prejudices, superstitions,—they give these unreformed feelings a new habitation, swept and garnished, so that the last state of that nation is worse than the first. So long as outgrown notions remain only in antiquated institutions, their error is demonstrated by their folly; their tumbling walls instruct them in new needs; and when at last the old institution falls, as it must, the experience induces adaptation of the new one to the forces that laid low the old. When the outer embodies an inner reform, there is no reaction. The progress is permanent. Such is not the case when decrepit sentiments are suddenly given the sinews of youth.