A Short History of English Liberalism

by W. Lyon Blease

The Liberalism of the Government which was in power from 1868 to 1874 was displayed in the further application of old principles, no less than in the adoption of principles which were new. Religious equality was expressed in their Irish policy and in their treatment of education. Reforms in the Civil Service and the Army abolished more class distinctions in the public service. The new School Boards were another example of popular control of Government. Acts dealing with Trade Unions and the ownership of Irish land expressed the new theory of State interference with individual liberty, and Acts referring to women marked a great appreciation of them in comparison with men.

One old principle was the basis of the Ballot Act of 1872. This gave to dependent persons the power of voting freely in the choice of their representatives, without fear of landlords, employers, or customers. The project was as old as the agitation for manhood suffrage, and was first suggested in the days of Wilkes and the Society of the Friends of the Bill of Rights. Other impediments to individual freedom were removed in 1870, when all posts in the Civil Service, outside the Foreign Office, were opened to competitive examination; and in 1871, when the system of purchasing commissions in the Army was abolished. Two preserves of aristocracy and wealth were thus thrown open to the people at large. Direct aid was given to the poorer classes by the establishment of a national system of education in 1870. This had been first suggested by Whitbread, and gained the support of Bentham, the Whigs, and the Manchester School. Tories like Lord Shaftesbury had been in favour of it so long as nothing was done to limit the privileges of the Church, and there had been no reason, other than indifference, why the parsimonious grants out of the Exchequer should not

have been increased long before. By this time the neglect of the poorer children and the complete failure of private enterprise had become conspicuous. Two million children received no education at all, one million received an education which was inadequate, and only one million three hundred thousand were educated in schools aided and inspected by the State.[^[291]] The system was now made general, and the local control was placed in the hands of School Boards, elected by the ratepayers, and empowered to provide for the expenses of their districts by levying a rate.

The old Liberal principle of equality between sects, implied in the Irish Church Act, was expressed more simply in an Act of 1871, which abolished all theological tests for professors, fellows, tutors, and scholars of Oxford and Cambridge, except in the Theological Faculties. The exception was a characteristic revelation of Mr. Gladstone's influence. If absolute freedom of religious thinking is required more in one place than in another, it is in a school of divinity. But the Churchman was still involved in the Liberal Prime Minister, and the theological honours and offices were left to the dominant creed. The exception was not of much general importance, and the Act removed the principal disabilities which had fettered the mind of the Universities no less than they had hindered the education of Nonconformists. This Act was passed with little opposition, even from the Lords. The great conflict of religious principle took place over the Education Act, which, like most of its predecessors and successors, might have been more aptly styled the "Religious Difficulty in Schools Act." The problem was not educational at all. A substantial majority of all parties would have agreed upon a scheme of national secular education in a few hours. But the course of events had determined that the children's minds should appear less important to Parliament than their souls.

A logical Liberal, faced with the task of establishing a national system of education, could take only the course which was

advocated by the Birmingham League. That was to make education free, compulsory, and secular. No one should pay for education except as a taxpayer, all should be compelled to send their children to school, and no form of religious opinion should be taught. This would have secured all the benefits of secular learning and discipline, without compelling the member of one sect to contribute to the propagation of the opinions of another, and without compelling a child to be instructed in opinions which were obnoxious to its parents. But it was impossible for logic to have its way. Schools had been established in some districts for many years. The majority taught the doctrines of the Establishment. Others were Wesleyan, others Unitarian, others Catholic, others Jewish. Most of these had already enjoyed State aid, though they had been built by voluntary subscription. It was impossible to ignore their existence. It was impossible also to ignore the fact that the majority of the English people, in a rough and ready way, desired that some sort of religion should be taught in the schools. There was no way out except in a compromise, and the difficulty thus acknowledged has never yet been removed. State aid was given to sectarian schools as well as Board Schools, and by the since famous Cowper Temple clause it was provided that no distinctive religious formulary should be taught in a Board School. This was not pure Liberalism. Nonconformists might object, as they had always objected, to paying for the propagation of obnoxious dogmas. Churchmen and Catholics might object, with equal reason, to paying for the propagation of opinions which were obnoxious because they contained no dogmas at all. Between the devil of dogma and the deep sea of Nonconformity no English Government has yet found a way. But the sects have had to live together in the country, and the compromise of 1870, though it settled nothing, was as good an arrangement as could have been made at the time.

The Education Act was an obvious interference of Government with absolute liberty, and the argument that this measure

of control was only undertaken in order to equip the individual for the better enjoyment of liberty was an argument which would have applied to Socialism itself. But this Act was only a continuation of previous policy. The Trades Union Act of 1871 was a contrivance of an entirely new sort, and the support given to it by the Liberal Ministry meant a great change. Previous legislation had marked an alteration in the attitude of the State towards combinations of workmen, and the Act of 1871 carried the change a degree farther. The Acts of 1799 and 1800 had prohibited Trade Unions. The Acts of 1824 and 1825 had permitted them. The Act of 1871 protected them and gave them special privileges. This was the direct consequence of pressure by organized workmen, assisted by members of the middle class like Thomas Hughes and Frederic Harrison. Decisions of the judges had tended to cripple labour organizations by declaring strikes to be intimidation, and peaceful picketing a nuisance, and by holding that workmen acting in combination might be guilty of the crime of conspiracy, even though they did nothing which would have been a crime in the case of a single person. One decision had declared that a Trade Union, being an association in restraint of trade, was illegal, and that an official who embezzled its funds could not be sued by the Society.

These judicial attacks were only part of a campaign which was now being waged against the whole system of Trade Unionism. The workmen were beginning to make their strength felt, and the old legal dislike of interference with liberty joined with the less disinterested objections of employers to anything which interfered with their power to do as they liked with their capital and their labourers. Some serious outrages, committed by the smaller organizations of a few towns like Sheffield and Manchester, gave colour to the general indictment of combinations of this sort. As a matter of fact nothing stood between the most moral and responsible workmen and exploitation by the worse sort of masters but his Trade Union. Absolute freedom to sell his labour as he pleased meant for the ordinary workman absolute freedom to be abused by an economic superior. The Trade

Union was the workman's only means of obtaining security of life. "Any one who regards it as a simple instrument to raise wages," wrote Mr. Frederic Harrison, "is, as Adam Smith says, 'as ignorant of the subject as of human nature.' Unionism, above all, aims at making regular, even, and safe the workman's life. No one who had not specially studied it would conceive the vast array of grievances against which Unionism and strikes are directed. If we looked only to that side of the question, we should come to fancy that from the whole field of labour there went up one universal protest against injustice. There is a 'miserable monotony' of wrong and suffering in it. Excessive labour, irregular labour, spasmodic overwork, spasmodic locking-out, 'overtime,' 'short time,' double time, night work, Sunday work, truck in every form, overlookers' extortion, payment in kind, wages reduced by drawbacks, 'long pays,' or wages held back, fines, confiscations, rent and implements irregularly stopped out of wages, evictions from tenements, 'black lists' of men, short weights, false reckoning, forfeits, children's labour, women's labour, unhealthy labour, deadly factories and processes, unguarded machinery, defective machinery, preventable accidents, recklessness from desire to save,—in countless ways we find a waste of human life, health, well-being, and power, which are not represented in the ledgers or allowed for in bargains."[^[292]] In other words, the law, by a pedantic application of rules of abstract liberty, was depriving workmen of real liberty. Liberty of contract did not mean liberty of life, and it was only by sacrificing individual freedom to the common good in organization that real freedom was to be secured.