THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL AND PALMERSTON
While Peel was thus, with the co-operation of the Whigs, making some approach towards Liberalism, the real control of Liberal policy was passing out of the hands of the old governing class altogether. The active force in the Liberal movement of this period was the Manchester School. The members of this school were not unlike the Philosophic Radicals, and the two were generally found on the same side. But the Manchester men differed in character, if not in opinions, from the philosophers, and as they were more numerous, they were more powerful. Conclusions which in the one case were reached by reasoning from accepted principles of human nature were reached in the other by the ways of practical experience. The manufacturer liked individual liberty, not because he believed that it was only by leaving every man to pursue his own interest that the greatest happiness of the greatest number could be secured, but because he felt that he could manage his business best if no outside person interfered with him, and that in similar circumstances others could do the same. The Radical was a Free Trader because Protection benefited one class at the expense of another. The manufacturer was a Free Trader because Protection, by raising the price of corn, made his workpeople wretched, lowered the purchasing power of the people, and lessened the demand for his manufactures, or else forced him to pay higher wages and exposed him to foreign competition. The Radical suggested that war should be made expensive, in order that human nature
might revolt against it. The manufacturer confined himself to the commercial view that, so long as war existed, it was better to make it cheap and to confine it to the smallest possible area. The Radical approved of colonial independence because he believed that the Home Government could not understand the interests of the colonists as well as the colonists themselves. The manufacturer approved of colonial independence because it lessened the expenses and lightened the taxation of the English people. By different roads the two schools generally reached the same end.
The Manchester School was essentially a middle-class school. The Radicals had nothing in common but their Radicalism. The Manchester men were almost all of that sober, clear-headed, independent class, often sadly wanting in gracefulness and culture, but always amply endowed with courage, enterprise, and common sense, which has built up the cotton industry of East Lancashire. They were not democratic in any theoretical sense.[[234]] They cared nothing either for aristocracy or democracy. They were accustomed to mix on terms of equality with men of all classes, and their estimate of a man's worth was always their own, and depended on nothing but his capacity. So far as personal intercourse is concerned, there is no part of the world where the social estimate of a man depends less upon the accidents of birth than that part of England where the Manchester School flourished. The manufacturers were not proof against the attacks of interest, and their opposition to factory legislation is a serious blot on their political character. They believed as firmly as the Whigs in the virtues of property, and most of them had no liking for such things as universal suffrage. But in other respects they had an influence upon the progress of Liberalism which was profound and continuous. They made Parliament think highly of the common people.
Their general principles were best stated by Fox, of Oldham. "I have gone into politics," he said, "with this question constantly in my mind, What will your theories, your forms, your
propositions, do for human nature? Will they make man more manly? Will they raise men and women in the scale of creation? Will they lift them above the brutes? Will they call forth their thoughts, their feelings, their actions? Will they make them more moral beings? Will they be worthy to tread the earth as children of the common Parent, and to look forward, not only for His blessing here, but for His benignant bestowment of happiness hereafter? If institutions do this, I applaud them; if they have lower aims, I despise them; and if they have antagonistic aims, I counteract them with all my might and main."[[235]] The language is more florid than that of Bentham would have been. But the principles are Bentham's, and they are purely Liberal.
The policy thus expounded by Fox was not a mere creed of pounds, shillings, and pence. The Manchester School is often denounced alternately as cold-hearted and material and as warmhearted and sentimental, of sacrificing at one time humanity to trade and at another national interests to a feeble love of peace. It in fact combined an intense moral earnestness with a degree of plain good sense which has never been surpassed. It is, on the one hand, largely due to the efforts of the School that ideas of international unity have supplanted the old ideas of the balance of international hostilities. But their whole programme—Free Trade, peace, non-intervention, reduction of armaments, retrenchment, arbitration, and colonial self-government—might have been, and in suitable circumstances always was, urged on grounds of convenience and interest. Both the Peace Society and Mr. Norman Angell are descended politically from the Manchester School, and without the union of the two forces, moral and economic, the School would have effected little. No popular agitation can ever succeed without an appeal to a moral sense, good or bad. Cobden and Bright and the other Manchester men saw, what the men of the world who differ from them never see, that in politics, as in all life, your ultimate interest coincides with morality. Honesty, if it had no virtue in itself, would still be the best policy. It is as
true among nations as among individuals that material good is achieved most easily and maintained most securely by treating your neighbour as you would have him treat you. Interference, boasting, hostile tariffs, regulating the affairs of a nation without regard to the feelings of its members, all mean unrest, expense, heavy taxation, and perhaps war. Order and peace are essential to prosperity, and order and peace can only be secured by moral conduct. Even the dullest economic programmes were thus touched by the Manchester men with moral fire. "I see in the Free Trade policy," said Cobden, "that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe—drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace."[[236]] The hope was sanguine, and its realization will not come yet. But it is only by hopes like this that the world has ever been moved. We advance by the labours of those who identify interest with morality, and not of those who calculate morality in terms of interest. To domestic and foreign policy alike the Manchester School gave a tone which they had never possessed before. The international ideas of the French Revolution, thus identified with national interest, were by them made part of the inheritance of Liberalism.
The School naturally subordinated foreign and colonial policy to domestic policy. Foreign affairs were bluntly described by one of them as a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy, and they resented the use of the common people for the dynastic aims of diplomatists. "Crowns, coronets, mitres," said Bright, "military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people."[[237]] "It was with that view," said Cobden, "that I preferred my budget, and advocated the reduction of our armaments; it is with that view, coupled with higher motives, that I have recommended arbitration treaties, to render unnecessary
the vast amount of armaments which are kept up between civilized countries. It is with that view—the view of largely reducing the expenditure of the State, and giving relief, especially for the agricultural classes—that I have made myself the object of the sarcasms of those very parties, by going to Paris to attend peace meetings. It is with that view that I have directed attention to our Colonies, showing how you might be carrying out the principle of Free Trade, give to the Colonies self-government, and charge them, at the same time, with the expense of their own government."[[238]] "The condition of England question," wrote Cobden to Peel, after the repeal of the Corn Laws, "there is your mission!"[[239]] It was certainly the mission of Cobden and his associates.