ESSAYS: SCIENTIFIC, POLITICAL, & SPECULATIVE.

BY

HERBERT SPENCER.

LIBRARY EDITION,

(otherwise fifth thousand,)

Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and various other additions.

VOL. III.

WILLIAMS AND NORGATE,

14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;

AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.

1891.

LONDON:

G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,

COVENT GARDEN.

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

{1}

MANNERS AND FASHION.

[First published in The Westminster Review for April 1854.]

Whoever has studied the physiognomy of political meetings, cannot fail to have remarked a connexion between democratic opinions and peculiarities of costume. At a Chartist demonstration, a lecture on Socialism, or a soirée of the Friends of Italy, there will be seen many among the audience, and a still larger ratio among the speakers, who get themselves up in a style more or less unusual. One gentleman on the platform divides his hair down the centre, instead of on one side; another brushes it back off the forehead, in the fashion known as “bringing out the intellect;” a third has so long forsworn the scissors, that his locks sweep his shoulders. A sprinkling of moustaches may be observed; here and there an imperial; and occasionally some courageous breaker of conventions exhibits a full-grown beard.[1] This nonconformity in hair is countenanced by various nonconformities in dress, shown by others of the assemblage. Bare necks, shirt-collars à la Byron, waistcoats cut Quaker fashion, wonderfully shaggy great coats, numerous oddities in form and colour, destroy the monotony usual in crowds. Even those exhibiting no conspicuous peculiarity, frequently indicate by something in the pattern of their clothes, that they pay small regard to what their {2} tailors tell them about the prevailing taste. And when the gathering breaks up, the varieties of head gear displayed—the number of caps, and the abundance of felt hats—suffice to prove that were the world at large like-minded, the black cylinders which tyrannize over us would soon be deposed.

[1] This was written before moustaches and beards had become general.

This relationship between political discontent and disregard of customs exists on the Continent also. Red republicanism is everywhere distinguished by its hirsuteness. The authorities of Prussia, Austria, and Italy, alike recognize certain forms of hat as indicative of disaffection, and fulminate against them accordingly. In some places the wearer of a blouse runs a risk of being classed among the suspects; and in others, he who would avoid the bureau of police, must beware how he goes out in any but the ordinary colours. Thus, democracy abroad, as at home, tends towards personal singularity. Nor is this association of char­ac­ter­is­tics peculiar to modern times, or to reformers of the State. It has always existed; and it has been manifested as much in religious agitations as in political ones. The Puritans, disapproving of the long curls of the Cavaliers, as of their principles, cut their own hair short, and so gained the name of “Roundheads.” The marked religious nonconformity of the Quakers was accompanied by an equally-marked nonconformity of manners—in attire, in speech, in salutation. The early Moravians not only believed differently, but at the same time dressed differently, and lived differently, from their fellow Christians. That the association between political independence and independence of personal conduct, is not a phenomenon of to-day only, we may see alike in the appearance of Franklin at the French court in plain clothes, and in the white hats worn by the last generation of radicals. Originality of nature is sure to show itself in more ways than one. The mention of George Fox’s suit of leather, or Pestalozzi’s school name, “Harry Oddity,” will at once suggest the {3} remembrance that men who have in great things diverged from the beaten track, have frequently done so in small things likewise. Minor illustrations may be gathered in almost every circle. We believe that whoever will number up his reforming and rationalist acquaintances, will find among them more than the usual proportion of those who in dress or behaviour exhibit some degree of what the world calls eccentricity.

If it be a fact that men of revolutionary aims in politics or religion, are commonly revolutionists in custom also, it is not less a fact that those whose office it is to uphold established arrangements in State and Church, are also those who most adhere to the social forms and observances bequeathed to us by past generations. Practices elsewhere extinct still linger about the head quarters of government. The monarch still gives assent to Acts of Parliament in the old French of the Normans; and Norman French terms are still used in law. Wigs, such as those we see depicted in old portraits, may yet be found on the heads of judges and barristers. The Beefeaters at the Tower wear the costume of Henry VIIth’s body-guard. The University dress of the present year varies but little from that worn soon after the Reformation. The claret-coloured coat, knee-breeches, lace shirt-frills, white silk stockings, and buckled shoes, which once formed the usual attire of a gentleman, still survive as the court-dress. And it need scarcely be said that at levées and drawing-rooms, the ceremonies are prescribed with an exactness, and enforced with a rigour, not elsewhere to be found.

Can we consider these two series of coincidences as accidental and unmeaning? Must we not rather conclude that some necessary relationship obtains between them? Are there not such things as a constitutional conservatism, and a constitutional tendency to change? Is there not a class which clings to the old in all things; and another class so in love with progress as often to mistake novelty for {4} improvement? Do we not find some men ready to bow to established authority of whatever kind; while others demand of every such authority its reason, and reject it if it fails to justify itself? And must not the minds thus contrasted tend to become respectively conformist and nonconformist, not only in politics and religion, but in other things? Submission, whether to a government, to the dogmas of ecclesiastics, or to that code of behaviour which society at large has set up, is essentially of the same nature; and the sentiment which induces resistance to the despotism of rulers, civil or spiritual, likewise induces resistance to the despotism of the world’s usages. All enactments, alike of the legislature, the consistory, and the saloon—all regulations, formal or virtual, have a common character: they are all limitations of men’s freedom. “Do this—Refrain from that,” are the blank forms into which they may severally be written; and throughout the understanding is that obedience will bring approbation here and paradise hereafter; while disobedience will entail imprisonment, or sending to Coventry, or eternal torments, as the case may be. And if restraints, however named, and through whatever apparatus of means exercised, are one in their action upon men, it must happen that those who are patient under one kind of restraint, are likely to be patient under another; and conversely, that those impatient of restraint in general, will, on the average, tend to show their impatience in all directions.

That Law, Religion, and Manners are thus related, and that they have in certain contrasted char­ac­ter­is­tics of men a common support and a common danger, will, however, be most clearly seen on discovering that they have a common origin. Little as from present appearances we should suppose it, we shall yet find that at first, the control of religion, the control of laws, and the control of manners, were all one control. Strange as it now seems, we believe it to be demonstrable that the rules of etiquette, the provisions of the statute-book, and the commands of the {5} decalogue, have grown from the same root. If we go far enough back into the ages of primeval Fetishism, it becomes manifest that originally Deity, Chief, and Master of the Ceremonies were identical. To make good these positions, and to show their bearing on what is to follow, it will be necessary here to traverse ground that is in part somewhat beaten, and at first sight irrelevant to our topic. We will pass over it as quickly as consists with the exigencies of the argument.

That the earliest social aggregations were ruled solely by the will of the strong man, few dispute.[2] That from the strong man proceeded not only Monarchy, but the conception of a God, few admit: much as Carlyle and others have said in evidence of it. If, however, those who are unable to believe this, will lay aside the ideas of God and man in which they have been educated, and study the aboriginal ideas of them, they will at least see some probability in the hypothesis. Let them remember that before experience had yet taught men to distinguish between the possible and the impossible; and while they were ready on the slightest suggestion to ascribe unknown powers to any object and make a fetish of it; their conceptions of humanity and its capacities were necessarily vague, and without specific limits. The man who by unusual strength, or cunning, achieved something that others had failed to achieve, or something which they did not understand, was considered by them as differing from themselves; and, as we see in the belief of some Polynesians that only their chiefs have souls, or in that of the ancient Peruvians that their nobles were divine by birth, the ascribed difference was apt to be not one of degree only, but one of kind. Let them remember next, how gross were the notions of God, or {6} rather of gods, prevalent during the same era and afterwards—how concretely gods were conceived as men of specific aspects dressed in specific ways—how their names were literally “the strong,” “the destroyer,” “the powerful one,”—how, according to the Scandinavian mythology, the “sacred duty of blood-revenge” was acted on by the gods themselves,—and how they were not only human in their vindictiveness, their cruelty, and their quarrels with each other, but were supposed to have amours on earth, and to consume the viands placed on their altars. Add to which, that in various mythologies, Greek, Scandinavian, and others, the oldest beings are giants; that according to a traditional genealogy the gods, demi-gods, and in some cases men, are descended from these after the human fashion; and that while in the East we hear of sons of God who saw the daughters of men that they were fair, the Teutonic myths tell of unions between the sons of men and the daughters of the gods. Let them remember, too, that at first the idea of death differed widely from that which we have; that there are still tribes who, on the decease of one of their number, attempt to make the corpse stand, and put food into its mouth; that the Peruvians had feasts at which the mummies of their dead Incas presided, when, as Prescott says, they paid attention “to these insensible remains as if they were instinct with life;” that among the Fijians it is believed that every enemy has to be killed twice; that the Eastern Pagans give extension and figure to the soul, and attribute to it all the same members, all the same substances, both solid and liquid, of which our bodies are composed; and that it is the custom among most barbarous races to bury food, weapons, and trinkets along with the dead body, under the manifest belief that it will presently need them. Lastly, let them remember that the other world, as originally conceived, is simply some distant part of this world—some Elysian fields, some happy hunting-ground, accessible even to the living, and to which, {7} after death, men travel in anticipation of a life analogous in general character to that which they led before. Then, co-ordinating these general facts—the ascription of unknown powers to chiefs and medicine men; the belief in deities having human forms, passions, and behaviour; the imperfect comprehension of death as distinguished from life; and the proximity of the future abode to the present, both in position and character—let them reflect whether they do not almost unavoidably suggest the conclusion that the aboriginal god is the dead chief: the chief not dead in our sense, but gone away, carrying with him food and weapons to some rumoured region of plenty, some promised land, whither he had long intended to lead his followers, and whence he will presently return to fetch them. This hypothesis once entertained, is seen to harmonize with all primitive ideas and practices. The sons of the deified chief reigning after him, it necessarily happens that all early kings are held descendants of the gods; and the fact that alike in Assyria, Egypt, among the Jews, Phœnicians, and ancient Britons, kings’ names were formed out of the names of the gods, is fully explained. The genesis of Polytheism out of Fetishism, by the successive migrations of the race of god-kings to the other world—a genesis illustrated in the Greek mythology, alike by the precise genealogy of the deities, and by the specifically-asserted apotheosis of the later ones—tends further to bear it out. It explains the fact that in the old creeds, as in the still extant creed of the Otaheitans, every family has its guardian spirit, who is supposed to be one of their departed relatives; and that they sacrifice to these as minor gods—a practice still pursued by the Chinese and even by the Russians. It is perfectly congruous with the Grecian myths concerning the wars of the Gods with the Titans and their final usurpation; and it similarly agrees with the fact that among the Teutonic gods proper was one Freir who came among them by adoption, “but was born {8} among the Vanes, a somewhat mysterious other dynasty of gods, who had been conquered and superseded by the stronger and more warlike Odin dynasty.” It harmonizes, too, with the belief that there are different gods to different territories and nations, as there were different chiefs; that these gods contend for supremacy as chiefs do; and it gives meaning to the boast of neighbouring tribes—“Our god is greater than your god.” It is confirmed by the notion universally current in early times, that the gods come from this other abode, in which they commonly live, and appear among men—speak to them, help them, punish them. And remembering this, it becomes manifest that the prayers put up by primitive peoples to their gods for aid in battle, are meant literally—that their gods are expected to come back from the other kingdom they are reigning over, and once more fight the old enemies they had before warred against so implacably; and it needs but to name the Iliad, to remind every one how thoroughly they believed the expectation fulfilled.[3]

[2] The few who disputed it would be right however. There are stages preceding that in which chiefly power becomes established; and in many cases it never does become established.

[3] In this paragraph, which I have purposely left standing word for word as it did when republished with other essays in Dec. 1857, will be seen the outline of the ghost-theory. Though there are references to fetishism as a primitive form of belief, and though at that time I had passively accepted the current theory (though never with satisfaction, for the origin of fetishism as then conceived seemed in­comp­re­hen­si­ble) yet the belief that inanimate objects may possess supernatural powers (which is what was then understood as fetishism) is not dwelt upon as a primitive belief. The one thing which is dwelt upon is the belief in the double of the dead man as continuing to exist, and as becoming an object of propitiation and eventually of worship. There are clearly marked out the rudiments which, when supplied with the mass of facts collected in the Descriptive Sociology developed into the doctrine elaborated in Part I. of The Principles of Sociology.

All government, then, being originally that of the strong man who has become a fetish by some manifestation of superiority, there arises, at his death—his supposed departure on a long-projected expedition, in which he is accompanied by the slaves and concubines sacrificed at his tomb—there arises, then, the incipient division of religious {9} from political control, of spiritual rule from civil. His son becomes deputed chief during his absence; his authority is cited as that by which his son acts; his vengeance is invoked on all who disobey his son; and his commands, as previously known or as asserted by his son, become the germ of a moral code: a fact we shall the more clearly perceive if we remember, that early moral codes inculcate mainly the virtues of the warrior, and the duty of exterminating some neighbouring tribe whose existence is an offence to the deity. From this point onwards, these two kinds of authority, at first complicated together as those of principal and agent, become slowly more and more distinct. As experience accumulates, and ideas of causation grow more precise, kings lose their supernatural attributes; and, instead of God-king, become God-descended king, God-appointed king, the Lord’s anointed, the vicegerent of Heaven, ruler reigning by Divine right. The old theory, however, long clings to men in feeling, after it has disappeared in name; and “such divinity doth hedge a king,” that even now, many, on first seeing one, feel a secret surprise at finding him an ordinary sample of humanity. The sacredness attaching to royalty attaches afterwards to its appended institutions—to legislatures, to laws. Legal and illegal are synonymous with right and wrong; the authority of Parliament is held unlimited; and a lingering faith in governmental power continually generates unfounded hopes from its enactments. Political scepticism, however, having destroyed the divine prestige of royalty, goes on ever increasing, and promises ultimately to reduce the State to a purely secular institution, whose regulations are limited in their sphere, and have no other authority than the general will. Meanwhile, the religious control has been little by little separating itself from the civil, both in its essence and in its forms. While from the God-king of the barbarian have arisen in one direction, secular rulers who, age by age, have been losing {10} the sacred attributes men ascribed to them; there has arisen in another direction, the conception of a deity, who, at first human in all things, has been gradually losing human materiality, human form, human passions, human modes of action: until now, anthropomorphism has become a reproach. Along with this wide divergence in men’s ideas of the divine and civil ruler has been taking place a corresponding divergence in the codes of conduct respectively proceeding from them. While the king was a deputy-god—a governor such as the Jews looked for in the Messiah—a governor considered, as the Czar still is, “our God upon earth,”—it, of course, followed that his commands were the supreme rules. But as men ceased to believe in his supernatural origin and nature, his commands ceased to be the highest; and there arose a distinction between the regulations made by him, and the regulations handed down from the old god-kings, who were rendered ever more sacred by time and the accumulation of myths. Hence came respectively, Law and Morality: the one growing ever more concrete, the other more abstract; the authority of the one ever on the decrease, that of the other ever on the increase; originally the same, but now placed daily in more marked antagonism. Simultaneously there has been going on a separation of the institutions administering these two codes of conduct. While they were yet one, of course Church and State were one: the king was arch-priest, not nominally, but really—alike the giver of new commands and the chief interpreter of the old commands; and the deputy-priests coming out of his family were thus simply expounders of the dictates of their ancestry: at first as recollected, and afterwards as ascertained by professed interviews with them. This union between sacred and secular—which still existed practically during the middle ages, when the authority of kings was mixed up with the authority of the pope, when there were bishop-rulers having all the powers of feudal lords, and when priests punished {11} by penances—has been, step by step, becoming less close. Though monarchs are still “defenders of the faith,” and ecclesiastical chiefs, they are but nominally such. Though bishops still have civil power, it is not what they once had. Protestantism shook loose the bonds of union; Dissent has long been busy in organizing a mechanism for religious control, wholly independent of law; in America, a separate organization for that purpose already exists; and if anything is to be hoped from the Anti-State-Church Association—or, as it has been newly named, “The Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control”—we shall presently have a separate organization here also. Thus, in authority, in essence, and in form, political and spiritual rule have been ever more widely diverging from the same root. That increasing division of labour which marks the progress of society in other things, marks it also in this separation of government into civil and religious; and if we observe how the morality which now forms the substance of religions in general, is beginning to be purified from the associated creeds, we may anticipate that this division will be ultimately carried much further.

Passing now to the third species of control—that of Manners—we shall find that this, too, while it had a common genesis with the others, has gradually come to have a distinct sphere and a special embodiment. Among early aggregations of men before yet social observances existed, the sole forms of courtesy known were the signs of submission to the strong man; as the sole law was his will, and the sole religion the awe of his supposed supernaturalness. Originally, ceremonies were modes of behaviour to the god-king. Our commonest titles have been derived from his names. And all salutations were primarily worship paid to him. Let us trace out these truths in detail, beginning with titles.

The fact already noticed, that the names of early kings among divers races are formed by the addition of certain {12} syllable to the names of their gods—which certain syllables, like our Mac and Fitz, probably mean “son of,” or “descended from”—at once gives meaning to the term Father as a divine title. And when we read, in Selden, that “the composition out of these names of Deities was not only proper to Kings: their Grandees and more honorable Subjects” (no doubt members of the royal race) “had sometimes the like;” we see how the term Father, properly used by these also, and by their multiplying descendants, came to be a title used by the people in general. As bearing on this point, it is significant that in the least advanced country of Europe, where belief in the divine nature of the ruler still lingers, Father in this higher sense, is still a regal distinction. When, again, we remember how the divinity at first ascribed to kings was not a complimentary fiction but a supposed fact; and how, further, the celestial bodies were believed to be personages who once lived among men; we see that the appellations of oriental rulers, “Brother to the Sun,” &c., were probably once expressive of a genuine belief; and have simply, like many other things, continued in use after all meaning has gone out of them. We may infer, too, that the titles God, Lord, Divinity, were given to primitive rulers literally—that the nostra divinitas applied to the Roman emperors, and the various sacred designations that have been borne by monarchs, down to the still extant phrase, “Our Lord the King,” are the dead and dying forms of what were once living facts. From these names, God, Father, Lord, Divinity, originally belonging to the God-king, and afterwards to God and the king, the derivation of our commonest titles of respect is traceable. There is reason to think that these titles were originally proper names. Not only do we see among the Egyptians, where Pharaoh was synonymous with king, and among the Romans, where to be Cæsar, meant to be Emperor, that the proper names of the greatest men were transferred to their successors, and so became class-names; {13} but in the Scandinavian mythology we may trace a human title of honour up to the proper name of a divine personage. In Anglo-Saxon bealdor, or baldor, means Lord; and Balder is the name of the favourite of Odin’s sons. How these names of honour became general is easily understood. The relatives of the primitive kings—the grandees described by Selden as having names formed on those of the gods, and shown by this to be members of the divine race—necessarily shared in the epithets descriptive of superhuman relationships and nature. Their ever-multiplying offspring inheriting these, gradually rendered them comparatively common. And then they came to be applied to every man of power: partly from the fact that, in those early days when men conceived divinity simply as a stronger kind of humanity, great persons could be called by divine epithets with but little exaggeration; partly from the fact that the unusually potent were apt to be considered as unrecognised or illegitimate descendants of “the strong, the destroyer, the powerful one;” and partly, also, from compliment and the desire to propitiate. As superstition diminished, this last became the sole cause. And if we remember that it is the nature of compliment, to attribute more than is due—that in the ever widening application of “esquire,” in the perpetual repetition of “your honour” by the fawning Irishman, and in the use of the name “gentleman” to any coalheaver or dustman by the lower classes of London, we have current examples of the depreciation of titles consequent on compliment—and that in barbarous times, when the wish to propitiate was stronger than now, this effect must have been greater; we shall see that there naturally arose from this cause an extensive misuse of all early distinctions. Hence the facts that the Jews called Herod a god; that Father, in its higher sense, was a term used among them by servants to masters; that Lord was applicable to any person of worth and power. Hence, too, the fact that, in the later periods of the Roman Empire, every man saluted his neighbour as {14} Dominus or Rex. But it is in the titles of the middle ages, and in the growth of our modern ones out of them, that the process is most clearly seen. Herr, Don, Signor, Seigneur, Señor, were all originally descriptive names of rulers. By the complimentary use of these names to all who could, on any pretence, be supposed to merit them, and by successive descents to still lower grades, they have come to be common forms of address. At first the phrase in which a serf accosted his despotic chief, mein Herr is now familiarly applied in Germany to ordinary people. The Spanish title Don, once proper to noblemen and gentlemen only, is now accorded to all classes. So, too, is it with Signor in Italy. Seigneur and Monseigneur, by contraction in Sieur and Monsieur, have produced the term of respect claimed by every Frenchman. And whether Sire be or be not a like contraction of Signor, it is clear that, as it was borne by sundry of the ancient feudal lords of France, who, as Selden says, “affected rather to bee stiled by the name of Sire than Baron, as Le Sire de Montmorencie, Le Sire de Beaujeu, and the like,” and as it has been commonly used to monarchs, our word Sir, which is derived from it, originally meant lord or king. Thus, too, is it with feminine titles. Lady, which, according to Horne Tooke, means exalted, and was at first given only to the few, is now given to all women of education. Dame, once an honourable name to which, in old books, we find the epithets of “high-born” and “stately” affixed, has now, by repeated widenings of its application, become relatively a term of contempt. And if we trace the compound of this, ma Dame, through its contractions—Madam, ma’am, mam, mum, we find that the “Yes’m” of Sally to her mistress is originally equivalent to “Yes, my exalted,” or “Yes, your highness.” Throughout, therefore, the genesis of words of honour has been the same. Just as with the Jews and with the Romans, has it been with the modern Europeans. Tracing these everyday names to their primitive significations of lord and king, and {15} remembering that in aboriginal societies these were applied only to the gods and their descendants, we arrive at the conclusion that our familiar Sir and Monsieur are, in their primary and expanded meanings, terms of adoration.

Further to illustrate this gradual depreciation of titles, and to confirm the inference drawn, it may be well to notice in passing, that the oldest of them have, as might be expected, been depreciated to the greatest extent. Thus, Master—a word proved by its derivation, and by the similarity of the connate words in other languages (Fr., maître for maistre; Dutch, meester; Dan., mester; Ger., meister) to have been one of the earliest in use for expressing lordship—has now become applicable to children only, and, under the modification of “Mister,” to persons next above the labourer. Again, knighthood, the oldest kind of dignity, is also the lowest; and Knight Bachelor, which is the lowest order of knighthood, is more ancient than any other of the orders. Similarly, too, with the peerage: Baron is alike the earliest and least elevated of its divisions. This continual degradation of all names of honour has, from time to time, made it requisite to introduce new ones having the distinguishing effects which the originals had lost by generality of use; just as our habit of misapplying superlatives has, by gradually destroying their force, entailed the need for fresh ones. And if, within the last thousand years, this process has worked results thus marked, we may readily conceive how, during previous thousands, the titles of gods and demi-gods came to be used to all persons exercising power; as they have since come to be used to persons of respectability.

If from names of honour we turn to phrases of honour, we find similar facts. The oriental styles of address, applied to ordinary people—“I am your slave,” “All I have is yours,” “I am your sacrifice”—attribute to the individual spoken to the same greatness that Monsieur and My Lord do: they ascribe to him the character of an {16} all-powerful ruler, so immeasurably superior to the speaker as to be his owner. So, likewise, with the Polish expressions of respect—“I throw myself under your feet,” “I kiss your feet.” In our now meaningless subscription to a formal letter—“Your most obedient servant”—the same thing is visible. Nay, even in the familiar signature “Yours faithfully,” the “yours,” if interpreted as originally meant, is the expression of a slave to his master. All these dead forms were once living embodiments of fact; were primarily the genuine indications of that submission to authority which they verbally assert; were afterwards naturally used by the weak and cowardly to propitiate those above them; gradually grew to be considered the due of such; and, by a continually wider misuse, have lost their meanings, as Sir and Master have done. That, like titles, they were in the beginning used only to the God-king, is indicated by the fact that, like titles, they were subsequently used in common to God and the king. Religious worship has ever largely consisted of professions of obedience, of being God’s servants, of belonging to him to do what he will with. Like titles, therefore, these common phrases of honour had a devotional origin. Perhaps, however, it is in the use of the word you as a singular pronoun that the popularizing of what were once supreme distinctions is most markedly illustrated. This addressing of a single individual in the plural, was originally an honour given only to the highest—was the reciprocal of the imperial “we” assumed by such. Yet now, by being applied to successively lower and lower classes, it has become all but universal. Only by one sect of Christians, and in a few secluded districts, is the primitive thou still used. And the you, in becoming common to all ranks, has simultaneously lost every vestige of the distinction once attaching to it.

But the genesis of Manners out of forms of allegiance and worship, is above all shown in modes of salutation. Note first the significance of the word. Among the Romans, the {17} salutatio was a daily homage paid by clients and inferiors to their superiors. This was alike the case with civilians and in the army. The very derivation of our word, therefore, is suggestive of submission. Passing to particular forms of obeisance (mark the word again), let us begin with the Eastern one of baring the feet. This was, primarily, a mark of reverence, alike to a god and a king. The act of Moses before the burning bush, and the practice of Mahometans, who are sworn on the Koran with their shoes off, exemplify the one employment of it; the custom of the Persians, who remove their shoes on entering the presence of their monarch, exemplifies the other. As usual, however, this homage, paid next to inferior rulers, has descended from grade to grade. In India it is a common mark of respect; the lower orders of Turks never enter the presence of their superiors but in their stockings; and in Japan, this baring of the feet is an ordinary salutation of man to man. Take another case. Selden, describing the ceremonies of the Romans, says:—“For whereas it was usuall either to kiss the Images of their Gods, or, adoring them, to stand somewhat off before them, solemnly moving the right hand to the lips, and then, casting it as if they had cast kisses, to turne the body on the same hand (which was the right forme of Adoration), it grew also by custom, first that the Emperors, being next to Deities, and by some accounted as Deities, had the like done to them in acknowledgment of their Greatness.” If, now, we call to mind the awkward salute of a village school-boy, made by putting his open hand up to his face and describing a semicircle with his forearm; and if we remember that the salute thus used as a form of reverence in country districts, is most likely a remnant of the feudal times; we shall see reason for thinking that our common wave of the hand to a friend across the street, represents what was primarily a devotional act.

Similarly have originated all forms of respect depending {18} upon inclinations of the body. Entire prostration is the aboriginal sign of submission. The passage of Scripture—“Thou hast put all under his feet,” and that other one, so suggestive in its anthropomorphism—“The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool,” imply, what the Assyrian sculptures bear out, that it was the practice of the ancient god-kings of the East to trample on the conquered. As there are existing savages who signify submission by placing the neck under the foot of the person submitted to, it becomes obvious that all prostration, especially when accompanied by kissing the foot, expressed a willingness to be trodden upon—was an attempt to mitigate wrath by saying, in signs, “Tread on me if you will.” Remembering, too, that kissing the foot, as of the Pope and of a saint’s statue, still continues in Europe to be a mark of extreme reverence; that prostration to feudal lords was once general, and that its disappearance must have taken place, not abruptly, but by gradual change into something else; we have ground for deriving from these deepest of humiliations all inclinations of respect: especially as the transition is traceable. The reverence of a Russian serf, who bends his head to the ground, and the salaam of the Hindoo, are abridged prostrations; a bow is a short salaam; a nod is a short bow. Should any hesitate to admit this conclusion, then perhaps, on being reminded that the lowest of these obeisances are common where the submission is most abject; that among ourselves the profundity of the bow marks the amount of respect; and lastly, that the bow is even now used devotionally in our churches—by Catholics to their altars, and by Protestants at the name of Christ—they will see sufficient reason for thinking that this salutation also was originally worship.

The same may be said, too, of the curtsy, or courtesy, as it is otherwise written. Its derivation from courtoisie, courteousness, that is, behaviour like that at court, at once {19} shows that it was primarily the reverence paid to a monarch. And if we call to mind that falling on the knees, or on one knee, has been a common obeisance of subjects to rulers; that in ancient manuscripts and tapestries, servants are depicted as assuming this attitude while offering the dishes to their masters at table; and that this same attitude is assumed towards our own queen at every presentation; we may infer, what the character of the curtsy itself suggests, that it is an abridged act of kneeling. As the word has been contracted from courtoisie into curtsy; so the motion has been contracted from a placing of the knee on the floor, to a lowering of the knee towards the floor. Moreover, when we compare the curtsy of a lady with the awkward one a peasant girl makes, which, if continued, would bring her down on both knees, we may see in this last a remnant of that greater reverence required of serfs. And when, from considering that simple kneeling of the West, still represented by the curtsy, we pass Eastward, and note the attitude of the Mahommedan worshipper, who not only kneels but bows his head to the ground, we may infer that the curtsy also, is an evanescent form of the aboriginal prostration. In further evidence of this it may be remarked, that there has but recently disappeared from the salutations of men, an action having the same proximate derivation with the curtsy. That backward sweep of the right foot with which the conventional stage-sailor accompanies his bow—a movement which prevailed generally in past generations, when “a bow and a scrape” went together, and which, within the memory of living persons, was made by boys to their master when entering school, with the effect of wearing a hole in the floor—is pretty clearly a preliminary to going on one knee. A motion so ungainly could never have been intentionally introduced; even if the artificial introduction of obeisances were possible. Hence we must regard it as the remnant of something antecedent: and {20} that this something antecedent was humiliating may be inferred from the phrase, “scraping an acquaintance;” which, being used to denote the gaining of favour by obsequiousness, implies that the scrape was considered a mark of servility—that is, of servile position.

Consider, again, the uncovering of the head. Almost everywhere this has been a sign of reverence, alike in temples and before potentates; and it yet preserves among us some of its original meaning. Whether it rains, hails, or shines, you must keep your head bare while speaking to the monarch; and no one may keep his hat on in a place of worship. As usual, however, this ceremony, at first a submission to gods and kings, has become in process of time a common civility. Once an acknowledgment of another’s unlimited supremacy, the removal of the hat is now a salute accorded to very ordinary persons; and that uncovering originally reserved for entrance into “the house of God” or the residence of the ruler, good manners now dictates on entrance into a labourer’s cottage.

Standing, too, as a mark of respect, has undergone like extensions in its application. Shown, by the practice in our churches, to be intermediate between the humiliation signified by kneeling and the self-respect which sitting implies, and used at courts as a form of homage when more active demonstrations of it have been made, this posture is now employed in daily life to show consideration; as seen alike in the attitude of a servant before a master, and in that rising which politeness prescribes on the entrance of a visitor.

Many other threads of evidence might have been woven into our argument. As, for example, the significant fact, that if we trace back our still existing law of primogeniture—if we consider it as displayed by Scottish clans, in which not only ownership but government devolved from the beginning on the eldest son of the eldest—if we look further back, and observe that the old titles of lordship, {21} Signor, Seigneur, Señor, Sire, Sieur, all originally mean senior, or elder—if we go Eastward, and find that Sheick has a like derivation, and that the Oriental names for priests, as Pir, for instance, are literally interpreted old man—if we note in Hebrew records how far back dates the ascribed superiority of the first-born, how great the authority of elders, and how sacred the memory of patriarchs—and if, then, we remember that among divine titles are “Ancient of Days,” and “Father of Gods and men;”—we see how completely these facts harmonize with the hypothesis, that the aboriginal god is the first man sufficiently great to become a tradition, the earliest whose power and deeds made him remembered; that hence antiquity unavoidably became associated with superiority, and age with nearness in blood to “the powerful one;” that so there naturally arose that domination of the eldest which characterizes the history of all the higher races, and that theory of human degeneracy which even yet survives. We might further dwell on the facts, that Lord signifies high-born, or, as the same root gives a word meaning heaven, possibly heaven-born; that, before it became common, Sir or Sire, as well as Father, was the distinction of a priest; that worship, originally worth-ship—a term of respect that has been used commonly, as well as to magistrates—is also our term for the act of attributing greatness or worth to the Deity; so that to ascribe worth-ship to a man is to worship him. We might make much of the evidence that all early governments are more or less distinctly theocratic; and that among ancient Eastern nations even the commonest forms and customs had religious sanctions. We might enforce our argument respecting the derivation of ceremonies, by tracing out the aboriginal obeisance made by putting dust on the head, which symbolizes putting the head in the dust; by affiliating the practice found in certain tribes, of doing another honour by presenting him with a portion of hair torn from the head—an act which {22} seems tantamount to saying, “I am your slave;” by investigating the Oriental custom of giving to a visitor any object he speaks of admiringly, which is pretty clearly a carrying out of the compliment, “All I have is yours.”

Without enlarging, however, on these and minor facts, we venture to think that the evidence assigned is sufficient. Had the proofs been few, or of one kind, little faith could have been placed in the inference. But numerous as they are, alike in the case of titles, in that of complimentary phrases, and in that of salutes—similar and simultaneous, too, as the process of depreciation has been in all of these; the evidences become strong by mutual confirmation. And when we recollect, also, that not only have the results of this process been visible in various nations and in all times, but that they are occurring among ourselves at the present moment, and that the causes assigned for previous depreciations may be seen daily working out others—when we recollect this, it becomes scarcely possible to doubt that the process has been as alleged; and that our ordinary words, acts, and phrases of civility originally expressed submission to another’s omnipotence.

Thus the general doctrine, that all kinds of government exercised over men were at first one government—that the political, the religious, and the ceremonial forms of control are divergent branches of a general and once indivisible control—begins to look tenable. When, with the above facts fresh in mind, we read that in Eastern traditions Nimrod, among others, figures in all the characters of hero, king, and divinity—when we turn to the sculptures exhumed by Mr. Layard, and contemplating in them the effigies of kings driving over enemies, and adored by prostrate slaves, then observe how their actions correspond to the primitive names for gods, “the strong,” “the destroyer,” “the powerful one”—and when, lastly, we discover that among races of men still living, there are current {23} superstitions analogous to those which old records and old buildings indicate; we begin to realize the probability of the hypothesis that has been set forth. Representing to ourselves the conquering chief as figured in ancient myths, and poems, and ruins; we may see that all rules of conduct spring from his will. Alike legislator and judge, quarrels among his subjects are decided by him; and his words become the Law. Awe of him is the incipient Religion; and his maxims furnish his first precepts. Submission is made to him in the forms he prescribes; and these give birth to Manners. From the first, time developes political allegiance and the ad­min­i­stra­tion of justice; from the second, the worship of a being whose personality becomes ever more vague, and the inculcation of precepts ever more abstract; from the third, forms and names of honour and the rules of etiquette. In conformity with the law of evolution of all organized bodies, that general functions are gradually separated into the special functions constituting them, there have grown up in the social organism for the better performance of the governmental office, an apparatus of law-courts, judges, and barristers; a national church, with its bishops and priests; and a system of caste, titles, and ceremonies, administered by society at large. By the first, overt aggressions are cognized and punished; by the second, the disposition to commit such aggressions is in some degree checked; by the third, those minor breaches of good conduct which the others do not notice, are denounced and chastised. Law and Religion control behaviour in its essentials; Manners control it in its details. For regulating those daily actions which are too numerous and too unimportant to be officially directed there comes into play this subtler set of restraints. And when we consider what these restraints are—when we analyze the words, and phrases, and movements employed, we see that in origin as in effect, the system is a setting up of temporary {24} governments between all men who come in contact, for the purpose of better managing the intercourse between them.

From the proposition, that these several kinds of government are essentially one, both in genesis and function, may be deduced several important corollaries, directly bearing on our special topic.

Let us first notice, that there is not only a common origin and office for all forms of rule, but a common necessity for them. The aboriginal man, coming fresh from the killing of bears and from lying in ambush for his enemy, has, by the necessities of his condition, a nature requiring to be curbed in its every impulse. Alike in war and in the chase, his daily discipline has been that of sacrificing other creatures to his own needs and passions. His character, bequeathed to him by ancestors who led similar lives, is moulded by this discipline—is fitted to this existence. The unlimited selfishness, the love of inflicting pain, the blood-thirstiness, thus kept active, he brings with him into the social state. These dispositions put him in constant danger of conflict with his equally savage neighbour. In small things as in great, in words as in deeds, he is aggressive; and is hourly liable to the aggressions of others like natured. Only, therefore, by rigorous control exercised over all actions, can the primitive unions of men be maintained. There must be a ruler strong, remorseless, and of indomitable will; there must be a creed terrible in its threats to the disobedient; there must be servile submission of inferiors to superiors. The law must be cruel; the religion must be stern; the ceremonies must be strict. The co-ordinate necessity for these several kinds of restraint might be largely illustrated from history were there space. Suffice it to point out that where the civil power has been weak, the multiplication of thieves, assassins, and banditti, has indicated the approach of social dissolution; that when, {25} from the corruptness of its ministry, religion has lost its influence, as it did just before the Flagellants appeared, the State has been endangered; and that the disregard of established social observances has ever been an accompaniment of political revolutions. Whoever doubts the necessity for a government of manners proportionate in strength to the co-existing political and religious governments, will be convinced on calling to mind that until recently even elaborate codes of behaviour failed to keep gentlemen from quarrelling in the streets and fighting duels in taverns; and on remembering that even now people exhibit at the doors of a theatre, where there is no ceremonial law to rule them, an aggressiveness which would produce confusion if carried into social intercourse.

As might be expected, we find that, having a common origin and like general functions, these several controlling agencies act during each era with similar degrees of vigour. Under the Chinese despotism, stringent and multitudinous in its edicts and harsh in the enforcement of them, and associated with which there is an equally stern domestic despotism exercised by the eldest surviving male of the family, there exists a system of observances alike complicated and rigid. There is a tribunal of ceremonies. Previous to presentation at court, ambassadors pass many days in practising the required forms. Social intercourse is cumbered by endless compliments and obeisances. Class distinctions are strongly marked by badges. And if there wants a definite measure of the respect paid to social ordinances, we have it in the torture to which ladies submit in having their feet crushed. In India, and indeed throughout the East, there exists a like connexion between the pitiless tyranny of rulers, the dread terrors of immemorial creeds, and the rigid restraint of unchangeable customs. Caste regulations continue still unalterable; the fashions of clothes and furniture have remained the same for ages; suttees are so ancient as to be mentioned by Strabo and {26} Diodorus Siculus; justice is still administered at the palace-gates as of old; in short, “every usage is a precept of religion and a maxim of jurisprudence.” A similar relationship of phenomena was exhibited in Europe during the Middle Ages. While its governments, general and local, were despotic, while the Church was unshorn of its power, while the criminal code was full of horrors and the hell of the popular creed full of terrors, the rules of behaviour were both more numerous and more carefully conformed to than now. Differences of dress marked divisions of rank. Men were limited by law to certain widths of shoe-toes; and no one below a specified degree might wear a cloak less than so many inches long. The symbols on banners and shields were carefully attended to. Heraldry was an important branch of knowledge. Precedence was strictly insisted on. And those various salutes of which we now use the abridgments, were gone through in full. Even during our own last century, with its corrupt House of Commons and little-curbed monarchs, we may mark a correspondence of social formalities. Gentlemen were still distinguished from lower classes by dress; and children addressed their parents as Sir and Madam.

A further corollary naturally following this last, and almost, indeed, forming part of it, is, that these several kinds of government decrease in stringency at the same rate. Simultaneously with the decline in the influence of priesthoods, and in the fear of eternal torments—simultaneously with the mitigation of political tyranny, the growth of popular power, and the amelioration of criminal codes; has taken place that diminution of formalities and that fading of distinctive marks, now so observable. Looking at home, we may note that there is less attention to precedence than there used to be. No one in our day ends an interview with the phrase “your humble servant.” The employment of the word Sir, once general in social intercourse, is at present considered bad breeding; and on the occasions {27} calling for them, it is held vulgar to use the words “Your Majesty,” or “Your Royal Highness,” more than once in a conversation. People no longer formally drink one another’s healths; and even the taking wine with one another at dinner has ceased to be fashionable. It is remarked of us by foreigners, that we take off our hats less than any other nation in Europe—a remark which should be coupled with the other, that we are the freest nation in Europe. As already implied, this association of facts is not accidental. These modes of address and titles and obeisances, bearing about them, as they all do, something of that servility which marks their origin, become distasteful in proportion as men become more independent themselves, and sympathize more with the independence of others. The feeling which makes the modern gentleman tell the labourer standing bareheaded before him to put on his hat—the feeling which gives us a dislike to those who cringe and fawn—the feeling which makes us alike assert our own dignity and respect that of others—the feeling which thus leads us more and more to discountenance forms and names which confess inferiority and submission; is the same feeling which resists despotic power and inaugurates popular government, denies the authority of the Church and establishes the right of private judgment.

A fourth fact, akin to the foregoing, is, that with decreasing coerciveness in these several kinds of government, their respective forms lose their meanings. The same process which has made our monarch put forth as his own acts what are the acts of ministers approved by the people, and has thus changed him from master into agent—the same process which, making attendance at church very much a matter of respectability, has done away with the telling of beads, the calling on saints, and the performance of penances; is a process by which titles and ceremonies that once had a meaning and a power have been reduced to empty forms. Coats of arms which served to distinguish {28} men in battle, now figure on the carriage panels of retired merchants. Once a badge of high military rank, the shoulder-knot has become, on the modern footman, a mark of servitude. The name Banneret, which originally marked a partially-created Baron—a Baron who had passed his military “little go”—is now, under the modification of Baronet, applicable to any one favoured by wealth or interest or party feeling. Knighthood has so far ceased to be an honour, that men honour themselves by declining it. The military dignity Escuyer has, in the modern Esquire, become a wholly unmilitary affix.

But perhaps it is in that class of social observances comprehended under the term Fashion (which we must here discuss parenthetically) that this process is seen with the greatest distinctness. As contrasted with Manners, which dictate our minor acts in relation to other persons, Fashion dictates our minor acts in relation to ourselves. While the one prescribes that part of our deportment which directly affects our neighbours; the other prescribes that part of our deportment which is primarily personal, and in which our neighbours are concerned only as spectators. Thus distinguished as they are, however, the two have a common source. For while, as we have shown, Manners originate by imitation of the behaviour pursued towards the great; Fashion originates by imitation of the behaviour of the great. While the one has its derivation in the titles, phrases, and salutes used to those in power; the other is derived from the habits and appearances exhibited by those in power. The Carrib mother who squeezes her child’s head into a shape like that of the chief; the young savage who makes marks on himself similar to the scars carried by the warriors of his tribe; the Highlander who adopts the plaid worn by the head of his clan; the courtiers who affect greyness, or limp, or cover their necks, in imitation of their king, and the people who ape the courtiers; are alike acting under a kind of government connate with that of Manners, {29} and, like it too, primarily beneficial. For notwithstanding the numberless absurdities into which this copying has led people, from nose-rings to ear-rings, from painted faces to beauty-spots, from shaven heads to powdered wigs, from filed teeth and stained nails to bell-girdles, peaked shoes, and breeches stuffed with bran, it must yet be concluded that as the men of will, intelligence, and originality, who have got to the top, are, on the average, more likely to show judgment in their habits and tastes than the mass, the imitation of such is advantageous. By and by, however, Fashion, decaying like these other forms of rule, almost wholly ceases to be an imitation of the best, and becomes an imitation of quite other than the best. As those who take orders are not those having a special fitness for the priestly office, but those who hope to get livings; as legislators and public functionaries do not become such by virtue of their political insight and power to rule, but by virtue of birth, acreage, and class influence; so, the self-elected clique who set the fashion, do this, not by force of nature, by intellect, by higher worth or better taste, but solely by unchecked assumption. Among the initiated are to be found neither the noblest in rank, the chief in power, the best cultured, the most refined, nor those of greatest genius, wit, or beauty; and their reunions, so far from being superior to others, are noted for their inanity. Yet, by the example of these sham great, and not by that of the truly great, does society at large now regulate its habits, its dress, its small usages. As a natural consequence, these have generally little of that suitableness which the theory of fashion implies they should have. Instead of a progress towards greater elegance and convenience, which might be expected to occur did people copy the ways of the really best, or follow their own ideas of propriety, we have a reign of mere whim, of unreason, of change for the sake of change, of wanton oscillations from either extreme to the other. And so life à la mode, instead of being life conducted in the {30} most rational manner, is life regulated by spendthrifts and idlers, milliners and tailors, dandies and silly women.

To these several corollaries—that the various orders of control exercised over men have a common origin and a common function, are called out by co-ordinate necessities and co-exist in like stringency, decline together and decay together—it now only remains to add that they simultaneously become less needful. The social discipline which has already wrought out great changes in men, must go on eventually to work out greater ones. That daily curbing of the lower nature and culture of the higher, which out of cannibals and devil-worshippers has evolved philanthropists, lovers of peace, and haters of superstition, may be expected to evolve out of these, men as much superior to them as they are to their progenitors. The causes that have produced past modifications are still in action; must continue in action as long as there exists any incongruity between men’s desires and the requirements of the social state; and must eventually make them organically fit for the social state. As it is now needless to forbid man-eating, so will it ultimately become needless to forbid murder, theft, and the minor offences of our criminal code. Along with growth of human nature into harmony with the moral law, there will go decreasing need for judges and statute-books; when the right course has become the course spontaneously chosen, prospects of future reward or punishment will not be wanted as incentives; and when due regard for others has become instinctive, there will need no code of ceremonies to say how behaviour shall be regulated.

Thus, then, may be recognized the meaning of those eccentricities of reformers which we set out by describing. They are not accidental; they are not mere personal caprices. They are inevitable results of the law of relationship above illustrated. That community of genesis, function, {31} and decay which all forms of restraint exhibit, is simply the obverse of the fact at first pointed out, that they have in two sentiments of human nature a common preserver and a common destroyer. Awe of power originates and cherishes them all; love of freedom undermines and weakens them all. The one defends despotism and asserts the supremacy of laws, adheres to old creeds and supports ecclesiastical authority, pays respect to titles and conserves forms; the other, putting rectitude above legality, achieves periodical instalments of political liberty, inaugurates Protestantism and works out its consequences, ignores the senseless dictates of Fashion and emancipates men from dead customs. To the true reformer no institution is sacred, no belief above criticism. Everything shall conform itself to equity and reason; nothing shall be saved by its prestige. Conceding to each man liberty to pursue his own ends and satisfy his own tastes, he demands for himself like liberty; and consents to no restrictions on this, save those which other men’s equal claims involve. No matter whether it be an ordinance of one man, or an ordinance of all men, if it trenches on his legitimate sphere of action, he denies its validity. The tyranny that would impose on him a particular style of dress and a set mode of behaviour, he resists equally with the tyranny that would limit his buyings and sellings, or dictate his creed. Whether the regulation be formally made by a legislature, or informally made by society at large—whether the penalty for disobedience be imprisonment, or frowns and social ostracism, he sees to be a question of no moment. He will utter his belief notwithstanding the threatened punishment; he will break conventions spite of the petty persecutions that will be visited on him. Show him that his actions are inimical to his fellow-men, and he will pause. Prove that he is disregarding their legitimate claims, and he will alter his course. But until you do this—until you demonstrate that his proceedings are essentially inconvenient or {32} inelegant, essentially irrational, unjust, or ungenerous, he will persevere.

Some, indeed, argue that his conduct is unjust and ungenerous. They say that he has no right to annoy other people by his whims; that the gentleman to whom his letter comes with no “Esq.” appended to the address, and the lady whose evening party he enters with gloveless hands, are vexed at what they consider his want of respect or want of breeding; that thus his eccentricities cannot be indulged save at the expense of his neighbours’ feelings; and that hence his nonconformity is in plain terms selfishness.

He answers that this position, if logically developed, would deprive men of all liberty whatever. Each must conform all his acts to the public taste, and not his own. The public taste on every point having been once ascertained, men’s habits must thenceforth remain for ever fixed; seeing that no man can adopt other habits without sinning against the public taste, and giving people disagreeable feelings. Consequently, be it an era of pig-tails or high-heeled shoes, of starched ruffs or trunk-hose, all must continue to wear pig-tails, high-heeled shoes, starched ruffs, or trunk-hose to the crack of doom.

If it be still urged that he is not justified in breaking through others’ forms that he may establish his own, and so sacrificing the wishes of many to the wishes of one, he replies that all religious and political changes might be negatived on like grounds. He asks whether Luther’s sayings and doings were not extremely offensive to the mass of his cotemporaries; whether the resistance of Hampden was not disgusting to the time-servers around him; whether every reformer has not shocked men’s prejudices and given immense displeasure by the opinions he uttered. The affirmative answer he follows up by demanding what right the reformer has, then, to utter these opinions—whether he is not sacrificing the feelings {33} of many to the feelings of one; and so he proves that, to be consistent, his antagonists must condemn not only all nonconformity in actions, but all nonconformity in beliefs.

His antagonists rejoin that his position, too, may be pushed to an absurdity. They argue that if a man may offend by the disregard of some forms, he may as legitimately do so by the disregard of all; and they inquire—Why should he not go out to dinner in a dirty shirt, and with an unshorn chin? Why should he not spit on the drawing-room carpet, and stretch his heels up to the mantle-shelf?

The convention-breaker answers, that to ask this, implies a confounding of two widely-different classes of actions—the actions which are essentially displeasurable to those around, with the actions which are but incidentally displeasurable to them. He whose skin is so unclean as to offend the nostrils of his neighbours, or he who talks so loudly as to disturb a whole room, may be justly complained of, and rightly excluded by society from its assemblies. But he who presents himself in a surtout in place of a dress-coat, or in brown trousers instead of black, gives offence not to men’s senses, or their innate tastes, but merely to their bigotry of convention. It cannot be said that his costume is less elegant or less intrinsically appropriate than the one prescribed; seeing that a few hours earlier in the day it is admired. It is the implied rebellion, therefore, which annoys. How little the cause of quarrel has to do with the dress itself, is seen in the fact that a century ago black clothes would have been thought preposterous for hours of recreation, and that a few years hence some now forbidden style may be nearer the requirements of Fashion than the present one. Thus the reformer explains that it is not against the natural restraints, but against the artificial ones, that he protests; and that manifestly the fire of angry glances which he has to bear, {34} is poured upon him because he will not bow down to the idol which society has set up.

Should he be asked how we are to distinguish between conduct which is in itself disagreeable to others, and conduct which is disagreeable by its implication, he answers, that they will distinguish themselves, if men will let them. Actions intrinsically repugnant will ever be frowned upon, and must ever remain as exceptional as now. Actions not intrinsically repugnant will establish themselves as proper. No relaxation of customs will introduce the practice of going to a party in muddy boots, and with unwashed hands; for the dislike of dirt would continue were Fashion abolished to-morrow. That love of approbation which now makes people solicitous to be en règle would still exist—would still make them careful of their personal appearance—would still induce them to seek admiration by making themselves ornamental—would still cause them to respect the natural laws of good behaviour, as they now do the artificial laws. The change would simply be from a repulsive monotony to a picturesque variety. And if there be any regulations respecting which it is uncertain whether they are based on reality or on convention, experiment will soon decide, if due scope be allowed.

When at length the controversy comes round, as controversies often do, to the point whence it started, and the “party of order” repeat their charge against the rebel, that he is sacrificing the feelings of others to gratify his own wilfulness, he replies once for all that they cheat themselves by mis-statements. He accuses them of being so despotic, that, not content with being masters over their own ways and habits, they would be masters over his also; and grumble because he will not let them. He merely asks the same freedom which they exercise; they, however, propose to regulate his course as well as their own—to cut and clip his mode of life into {35} agreement with their approved pattern; and then charge him with wilfulness and selfishness, because he does not quietly submit! He warns them that he shall resist, nevertheless; and that he shall do so, not only for the assertion of his own independence, but for their good. He tells them that they are slaves, and know it not; that they are shackled, and kiss their chains; that they have lived all their days in prison, and complain because the walls are being broken down. He says he must persevere, however, with a view to his own release; and, in spite of their present expostulations, he prophesies that when they have recovered from the fright which the prospect of freedom produces, they will thank him for aiding in their emancipation.

Unamiable as seems this find-fault mood, offensive as is this defiant attitude, we must beware of overlooking the truths enunciated, in dislike of the advocacy. It is an unfortunate hindrance to all innovation, that in virtue of their very function, the innovators stand in a position of antagonism; and the disagreeable manners, and sayings, and doings, which this antagonism generates, are commonly associated with the doctrines promulgated. Quite forgetting that whether the thing attacked be good or bad, the combative spirit is necessarily repulsive; and quite forgetting that the toleration of abuses seems amiable merely from its passivity; the mass of men contract a bias against advanced views, and in favour of stationary ones, from intercourse with their respective adherents. “Conservatism,” as Emerson says, “is debonnair and social; reform is individual and imperious.” And this remains true, however vicious the system conserved, however righteous the reform to be effected. Nay, the indignation of the purists is usually extreme in proportion as the evils to be got rid of are great. The more urgent the required change, the more intemperate is the vehemence of its promoters. Let no one, then, confound with the principles {36} of this social nonconformity the acerbity and the disagreeable self-assertion of those who first display it.

The most plausible objection raised against resistance to conventions, is grounded on its impolicy, considered even from the progressist’s point of view. It is urged by many of the more liberal and intelligent—usually those who have themselves shown some independence of behaviour in earlier days—that to rebel in these small matters is to destroy your own power of helping on reform in greater matters. “If you show yourself eccentric in manners or dress, the world,” they say, “will not listen to you. You will be considered as crotchety, and impracticable. The opinions you express on important subjects, which might have been treated with respect had you conformed on minor points, will now inevitably be put down among your singularities; and thus, by dissenting in trifles, you disable yourself from spreading dissent in essentials.”

Only noting, as we pass, that this is one of those anticipations which bring about their own fulfilment—that it is because most who disapprove these conventions do not show their disapproval, that the few who do show it look eccentric—and that did all act out their convictions, no such argument as the above would have force;—noting this as we pass, we go on to reply that these social restraints are not small evils but among the greatest. Estimate their sum total, and we doubt whether they would not exceed most others. Could we add up the trouble, the cost, the jealousies, vexations, mis­un­der­stand­ings, the loss of time and the loss of pleasure, which these conventions entail—we should perhaps come to the conclusion that the tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny. Let us look at a few of its hurtful results; beginning with those of minor importance.

It produces extravagance. The desire to be comme il faut, which underlies all conformities, whether of manners, {37} dress, or styles of entertainment, is the desire which makes many a spendthrift and many a bankrupt. To “keep up appearances,” to have a house in an approved quarter furnished in the latest taste, to give expensive dinners and crowded soirées, is an ambition forming the natural outcome of the conformist spirit. It is needless to enlarge on these follies: they have been satirized by hosts of writers, and in every drawing-room. All which here concerns us, is to point out that the respect for social observances, which men think so praiseworthy, has the same root with this effort to be fashionable in mode of living; and that, other things equal, the last cannot be diminished without the first being diminished also. If, now, we consider what this extravagance entails—if we count up the robbed tradesmen, the stinted governesses, the ill-educated children, the fleeced relatives, who have to suffer from it—if we mark the anxiety and the many moral delinquencies which its perpetrators involve themselves in; we shall see that this regard for conventions is not quite so innocent as it looks.

Again, it decreases the amount of social intercourse. Passing over the reckless, and those who make a great display on speculation with the occasional result of getting on in the world to the exclusion of better men, we come to the far larger class who, being prudent and honest enough not to exceed their means, and yet wishing to be “respectable,” are obliged to limit their entertainments to the smallest possible number; and that each of these may be turned to the greatest advantage in meeting the claims on their hospitality, issue their invitations with little or no regard to the comfort or mutual fitness of their guests. A few inconveniently-large assemblies, made up of people mostly strange to each other or but distantly acquainted, are made to serve in place of many small parties of friends intimate enough to have some bond of sympathy. Thus the quantity of intercourse is diminished, and the quality deteriorated. Because it is the custom to make costly {38} preparations and provide costly refreshments; and because it entails both less expense and less trouble to do this for many persons on few occasions than for few persons on many occasions; the reunions of our less wealthy classes are rendered alike infrequent and tedious.

Let it be further observed, that the existing formalities of social intercourse drive away many who most need its refining influence; and drive them into injurious habits and associations. Not a few men, and not the least sensible men either, give up in disgust this going out to stately dinners and stiff evening-parties; and instead, seek society in clubs, and cigar-divans, and taverns. “I’m sick of this standing about in drawing-rooms, talking nonsense, and trying to look happy,” will answer one of them when taxed with his desertion. “Why should I any longer waste time and money, and temper? Once I was ready enough to rush home from the office to dress; I sported embroidered shirts, submitted to tight boots, and cared nothing for tailors’ and haberdashers’ bills. I know better now. My patience lasted a good while; for though I found each night pass stupidly, I always hoped the next would make amends. But I’m undeceived. Cab-hire and kid gloves cost more than any evening party pays for; or rather—it is worth the cost of them to avoid the party. No, no; I’ll no more of it. Why should I pay five shillings a time for the privilege of being bored?” If, now, we consider that this very common mood tends towards billiard-rooms, towards long sittings over cigars and brandy-and-water, towards Evans’s and the Coal Hole; it becomes a question whether these precise observances which hamper our set meetings, have not to answer for much of the prevalent dissoluteness. Men must have excitements of some kind or other; and if debarred from higher ones will fall back upon lower. It is not that those who thus take to irregular habits are essentially those of low tastes. Often it is quite the reverse. Among half a dozen intimate friends, abandoning {39} formalities and sitting at ease round the fire, none will enter with greater enjoyment into the highest kind of social intercourse—the genuine communion of thought and feeling; and if the circle includes women of intelligence and refinement, so much the greater is their pleasure. It is because they will no longer be choked with the mere dry husks of conversation which society offers them, that they fly its assemblies, and seek those with whom they may have discourse that is at least real, though unpolished. The men who thus long for substantial mental sympathy, and will go where they can get it, are often, indeed, much better at the core than the men who are content with the inanities of gloved and scented party-goers—men who feel no need to come morally nearer to their fellow-creatures than they can come while standing, tea-cup in hand, answering trifles with trifles; and who, by feeling no such need, prove themselves shallow-thoughted and cold-hearted. It is true, that some who shun drawing-rooms do so from inability to bear the restraints prescribed by a genuine refinement, and that they would be greatly improved by being kept under these restraints. But it is not less true that, by adding to the legitimate restraints, which are based on convenience and a regard for others, a host of factitious restraints based only on convention, the refining discipline, which would else have been borne with benefit, is rendered unbearable, and so misses its end. Excess of government defeats itself by driving away those to be governed. And if over all who desert its entertainments in disgust either at their emptiness or their formality, society thus loses its salutary influence—if such not only fail to receive that moral culture which the company of ladies, when rationally regulated, would give them, but, in default of other relaxation, are driven into habits and companionships which often end in gambling and drunkenness; must we not say that here, too, is an evil not to be passed over as insignificant?

Then consider what a blighting effect these {40} multitudinous preparations and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they profess to subserve. Who, on calling to mind the occasions of his highest social enjoyments, does not find them to have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu? How delightful a pic-nic of friends, who forget all observances save those dictated by good nature! How pleasant the unpretending gatherings of small book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well known to each other! Then, indeed, we may see that “a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Cheeks flush, and eyes sparkle. The witty grow brilliant, and even the dull are excited into saying good things. There is an overflow of topics; and the right thought, and the right words to put it in, spring up unsought. Grave alternates with gay: now serious converse, and now jokes, anecdotes, and playful raillery. Everyone’s best nature is shown; everyone’s best feelings are in pleasurable activity; and, for the time, life seems well worth having. Go now and dress for some half-past eight dinner, or some ten o’clock “at home;” and present yourself in spotless attire, with every hair arranged to perfection. How great the difference! The enjoyment seems in the inverse ratio of the preparation. These figures, got up with such finish and precision, appear but half alive. They have frozen each other by their primness; and your faculties feel the numbing effects of the atmosphere the moment you enter it. All those thoughts, so nimble and so apt awhile since, have disappeared—have suddenly acquired a preternatural power of eluding you. If you venture a remark to your neighbour, there comes a trite rejoinder, and there it ends. No subject you can hit upon outlives half a dozen sentences. Nothing that is said excites any real interest in you; and you feel that all you say is listened to with apathy. By some strange magic, things that usually give pleasure seem to have lost all charm. You have a taste for art. Weary of frivolous {41} talk, you turn to the table, and find that the book of engravings and the portfolio of photographs are as flat as the conversation. You are fond of music. Yet the singing, good as it is, you hear with utter indifference; and say “Thank you” with a sense of being a profound hypocrite. Wholly at ease though you could be, for your own part, you find that your sympathies will not let you. You see young gentlemen feeling whether their ties are properly adjusted, looking vacantly round, and considering what they shall do next. You see ladies sitting disconsolately, waiting for some one to speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to occupy their fingers. You see the hostess standing about the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which to greet her guests as they enter. You see numberless traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have any fellow feeling, these cannot fail to produce a sense of discomfort. The disorder is catching; and do what you will, you cannot resist the general infection. You struggle against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise a simper or a forced laugh: intellect and feeling are alike asphyxiated. And when, at length, yielding to your disgust, you rush away, how great is the relief when you get into the fresh air, and see the stars! How you “Thank God, that’s over!” and half resolve to avoid all such boredom for the future! What, now, is the secret of this perpetual miscarriage and disappointment? Does not the fault lie with these needless adjuncts—these elaborate dressings, these set forms, these expensive preparations, these many devices and arrangements that imply trouble and raise expectation? Who that has lived thirty years in the world has not discovered that Pleasure is coy; and must not be too directly pursued, but must be caught unawares? An air from a street-piano, heard while at work, will often gratify more than the {42} choicest music played at a concert by the most accomplished musicians. A single good picture seen in a dealer’s window, may give keener enjoyment than a whole exhibition gone through with catalogue and pencil. By the time we have got ready our elaborate apparatus by which to secure happiness, the happiness is gone. It is too subtle to be contained in these receivers, garnished with compliments, and fenced round with etiquette. The more we multiply and complicate appliances, the more certain are we to drive it away. The reason is patent enough. These higher emotions to which social intercourse ministers, are of extremely complex nature; they consequently depend for their production upon very numerous conditions; the more numerous the conditions, the greater the liability that one or other of them will not be fulfilled. It takes a considerable misfortune to destroy appetite; but cordial sympathy with those around may be extinguished by a look or a word. Hence it follows, that the more multiplied the unnecessary requirements with which social intercourse is surrounded, the less likely are its pleasures to be achieved. It is difficult enough to fulfil continuously all the essentials to a pleasurable communion with others: how much more difficult, then, must it be continuously to fulfil a host of non-essentials also! What chance is there of getting any genuine response from the lady who is thinking of your stupidity in taking her in to dinner on the wrong arm? How are you likely to have agreeable converse with the gentleman who is fuming internally because he is not placed next to the hostess? Formalities, familiar as they may become, necessarily occupy attention—necessarily multiply the occasions for mistake, misunderstanding, and jealousy, on the part of one or other—necessarily distract all minds from the thoughts and feelings which should occupy them—necessarily, therefore, subvert those conditions under which only any sterling intercourse is to be had.

And this, indeed, is the fatal mischief which these {43} conventions entail—a mischief to which every other is secondary. They destroy those pleasures which they profess to subserve. All institutions are alike in this, that however useful, and needful even, they originally were, they in the end cease to be so, but often become detrimental. While humanity is growing, they continue fixed; daily get more mechanical and unvital; and by and by tend to strangle what they before preserved. Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror. Old creeds end in being dead formulas, which no longer aid but distort and arrest the general mind; while the State-churches administering them, come to be instruments for subsidizing conservatism and repressing progress. Old schemes of education, incarnated in public schools and colleges, continue filling the heads of new generations with what has become relatively useless knowledge, and, by consequence, excluding knowledge which is useful. Not an organization of any kind—political, religious, literary, philanthropic—but what, by its ever-multiplying regulations, its accumulating wealth, its yearly addition of officers, and the creeping into it of patronage and party feeling, eventually loses its original spirit, and sinks into a lifeless mechanism, worked with a view to private ends—a mechanism which not merely fails of its first purpose, but is a positive hindrance to it. Thus is it, too, with social usages. We read of the Chinese that they have “ponderous ceremonies transmitted from time immemorial,” which make social intercourse a burden. The court forms prescribed by monarchs for their own exaltation, have, in all times and places, ended in consuming the comfort of their lives. And so the artificial observances of the dining-room and saloon, in proportion as they are many and strict, extinguish that agreeable communion which they were intended to secure. The dislike with which people commonly speak of society that is “formal,” and “stiff,” and “ceremonious,” {44} implies a general recognition of this fact; and this recognition involves the inference that all usages of behaviour which are not based on natural requirements, are injurious. That these conventions defeat their own ends is no new assertion. Swift, criticising the manners of his day, says—“Wise men are often more uneasy at the over-civility of these refiners than they could possibly be in the conversation of peasants and mechanics.”

But it is not only in these details that the self-defeating action of our arrangements is traceable; it is traceable in the very substance and nature of them. Our social intercourse, as commonly managed, is a mere semblance of the reality sought. What is it that we want? Some sympathetic converse with our fellow-creatures:—some converse that shall not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living thoughts and feelings—converse in which the eyes and the face shall speak, and the tones of the voice be full of meaning—converse which shall make us feel no longer alone, but shall draw us closer to others, and double our own emotions by adding their’s to them. Who is there that has not, from time to time, felt how cold and flat is all this talk about politics and science, and the new books and the new men, and how a genuine utterance of fellow-feeling outweighs the whole of it? Mark the words of Bacon:—“For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.” If this be true, then it is only after acquaintance has grown into intimacy, and intimacy has ripened into friendship, that the real communion which men need becomes possible. A rationally-formed circle must consist almost wholly of those on terms of familiarity and regard, with but one or two strangers. What folly, then, underlies the whole system of our grand dinners, our “at homes,” our evening parties—crowds made up of many who never met before, many who just bow to one another, many who though well known feel mutual indifference, with just a few {45} real friends lost in the general mass! You need but look round at the artificial expressions of face, to see at once how it is. All have their disguises on; and how can there be sympathy between masks? No wonder that in private every one exclaims against the stupidity of these gatherings. No wonder that hostesses get them up rather because they must than because they wish. No wonder that the invited go less from the expectation of pleasure than from fear of giving offence. The whole thing is an organized disappointment.

And then note, lastly, that in this case, as in others, an organization inoperative for its proper purpose, it is employed for quite other purposes. What is the usual plea put in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? “I admit that they are dull and frivolous enough,” replies every man to your criticisms; “but then, you know, one must keep up one’s connexions.” And could you get from his wife a sincere answer, it would be—“Like you, I am sick of these formal parties; but then, we must get our daughters married.” The one knows that there is a profession to push, a business to extend; or parliamentary influence, or county patronage, or votes, or office, to be got: position, berths, favours, profit. The other’s thoughts run upon husbands and settlements, wives and dowries. Worthless for their ostensible purpose of daily bringing human beings into pleasurable relations with each other, these cumbrous appliances of our social intercourse are now perseveringly kept in action with a view to the pecuniary and matrimonial results which they indirectly produce.

Who then shall say that the reform of our system of observances is unimportant? When we see how this system induces fashionable extravagance, with its occasional ruin—when we mark how greatly it limits the amount of social intercourse among the less wealthy classes—when we find that many who most need to be disciplined by mixing {46} with the refined are driven away by it, and led into bad courses—when we count up the many minor evils it inflicts, the extra work which its costliness entails on all professional and mercantile men, the damage to public taste in dress and decoration by the setting up of its absurdities as standards for imitation, the injury to health indicated in the faces of its devotees at the close of the London season, the mortality of milliners and the like, which its sudden exigencies yearly involve;—and when to all these we add its fatal sin, that it withers up and kills that high enjoyment it professedly ministers to—shall we not conclude that to rationalize etiquette and fashion, is an aim yielding to few in urgency?

There needs, then, a protestantism in social usages. Forms which have ceased to facilitate and have become obstructive—have to be swept away. Signs are not wanting that some change is at hand. A host of satirists, led on by Thackeray, have long been engaged in bringing our sham-festivities, and our fashionable follies, into contempt; and in their candid moods, most men laugh at the frivolities with which they and the world in general are deluded. Ridicule has always been a revolutionary agent. Institutions that have lost their roots in men’s respect and faith are doomed; and the day of their dissolution is not far off. The time is approaching, then, when our system of social observances must pass through some crisis, out of which it will come purified and comparatively simple.

How this crisis will be brought about, no one can say. Whether by the continuance and increase of individual protests, or whether by the union of many persons for the practice and diffusion of better usages, the future alone can decide. The influence of dissentients acting without co-operation, seems inadequate. Frowned on by conformists, and expostulated with even by those who secretly sympathize with them; subject to petty persecutions, and {47} unable to trace any benefit produced by their example; they are apt, one by one, to give up their attempts as hopeless. The young convention-breaker eventually finds that he pays too heavily for his nonconformity. Hating, for example, everything that bears about it any remnant of servility, he determines, in the ardour of his independence, that he will uncover to no one. But what he means simply as a general protest, he finds that ladies interpret into a personal disrespect. In other cases his courage fails him. Such of his un­con­ven­tional­i­ties as can be attributed only to eccentricity, he has no qualms about; for, on the whole, he feels rather complimented than otherwise in being considered a disregarder of public opinion. But when they are liable to be put down to ignorance, to ill-breeding, or to poverty, he becomes a coward. However clearly the recent innovation of eating some kinds of fish with knife and fork proves the fork-and-bread practice to have had little but caprice for its basis, yet he dares not wholly ignore that practice while fashion partially maintains it.[4] Though he thinks that a silk handkerchief is quite as appropriate for drawing-room use as a white cambric one, he is not altogether at ease in acting out his opinion. Then, too, he begins to perceive that his resistance to prescription brings round disadvantageous results which he had not calculated upon. He had expected that it would save him from a great deal of social intercourse of a frivolous kind—that it would offend the silly people, but not the sensible people; and so would serve as a self-acting test by which those worth knowing would be separated from those not worth knowing. But the silly people prove to be so greatly in the majority that, by offending them, he closes against himself nearly all the avenues through which the sensible people are to be reached. Thus he finds, that his nonconformity is frequently misinterpreted; that there are but few directions in which he dares {48} to carry it consistently out; that the disadvantages it entails are greater than he anticipated; and that the chances of his doing any good are very remote. Hence he gradually loses resolution, and lapses, step by step, into the ordinary routine of observances.

[4] This was written before the introduction of silver fish-knives.

Abortive as individual protests thus generally turn out, it may possibly be that nothing effectual will be done until there arises some organized resistance to this invisible despotism, by which our modes and habits are dictated. It may happen, that the government of Manners and Fashion will be rendered less tyrannical, as the political and religious governments have been, by some antagonistic union. Alike in Church and State, men’s first emancipations from excesses of restriction were achieved by numbers, bound together by a common creed or a common political faith. What remained undone while there were but individual schismatics or rebels, was effected when there came to be many acting in concert. It is tolerably clear that these earliest instalments of freedom could not have been obtained in any other way; for so long as the feeling of personal independence was weak and the rule strong, there could never have been a sufficient number of separate dissentients to produce the desired results. Only in these later times, during which the secular and spiritual controls have been growing less coercive, and the tendency towards individual liberty greater, has it become possible for smaller and smaller sects and parties to fight against established creeds and laws; until now men may safely stand even alone in their antagonism. The failure of individual nonconformity to customs, suggests that an analogous series of changes may have to be gone through in this case also. It is true that the lex non scripta differs from the lex scripta in this, that, being unwritten, it is more readily altered; and that it has, from time to time, been quietly ameliorated. Nevertheless, we shall find that the analogy holds substantially good. For in this case, as {49} in the others, the essential revolution is not the substituting of any one set of restraints for any other, but the limiting or abolishing the authority which prescribes restraints. Just as the fundamental change inaugurated by the Reformation, was not a superseding of one creed by another, but an ignoring of the arbiter who before dictated creeds—just as the fundamental change which Democracy long ago commenced, was not from this particular law to that, but from the despotism of one to the freedom of all; so, the parallel change yet to be wrought out in this supplementary government of which we are treating, is not the replacing of absurd usages by sensible ones, but the dethronement of that power which now imposes our usages, and the assertion of the rights of individuals to choose their own usages. In rules of living, a West-end clique is our Pope; and we are all papists, with but a mere sprinkling of heretics. On those who decisively rebel, comes down the penalty of excommunication, with its long catalogue of disagreeable and, indeed, serious consequences. The liberty of the subject asserted in our constitution, and ever on the increase, has yet to be wrested from this subtler tyranny. The right of private judgment, which our ancestors wrung from the church, remains to be claimed from this dictator of our habits. Or, as before said, to free us from these idolatries and superstitious conformities, there has still to come a protestantism in social usages. Parallel, therefore, as is the change to be wrought out, it seems not improbable that it may be wrought out in an analogous way. That influence which solitary dissentients fail to gain, and that perseverance which they lack, may come into existence when they unite. That persecution which the world now visits upon them from mistaking their nonconformity for ignorance or disrespect, may diminish when it is seen to result from principle. The penalty which exclusion now entails may disappear when they become numerous enough to form {50} visiting circles of their own. And when a successful stand has been made, and the brunt of the opposition has passed, that large amount of secret dislike to our observances which now pervades society, may manifest itself with sufficient power to effect the desired emancipation.

Whether such will be the process, time alone can decide. That community of origin, growth, supremacy, and decadence, which we have found among all kinds of government, suggests a community in modes of change also. On the other hand, Nature often performs substantially similar operations, in ways apparently different. Hence these details can never be foretold.

Meanwhile, let us glance at the conclusions that have been reached. On the one side, government, originally one, and afterwards subdivided for the better fulfilment of its function, must be considered as having ever been, in all its branches—political, religious, and ceremonial—beneficial; and, indeed, absolutely necessary. On the other side, government, under all its forms, must be regarded as subserving an office, made needful by the unfitness of aboriginal humanity for social life; and the successive diminutions of its coerciveness in State, in Church, and in Custom, must be looked upon ac­com­pa­ny­ing the increasing adaptation of humanity to its conditions. To complete the conception, there requires to be borne in mind the third fact, that the genesis, the maintenance, and the decline of all governments, however named, are alike brought about by the humanity to be controlled; from which may be drawn the inference that, on the average, restrictions of every kind cannot last much longer than they are wanted, and cannot be destroyed much faster than they ought to be. Society, in all its developments, undergoes the process of exuviation. These old forms which it successively throws off, have all been once vitally united with it—have severally served as the protective envelopes within which a higher humanity {51} was being evolved. They are cast aside only when they become hindrances—only when some inner and better envelope has been formed; and they bequeath to us all that there was in them of good. The periodical abolitions of tyrannical laws have left the ad­min­i­stra­tion of justice not only uninjured, but purified. Dead and buried creeds have not carried with them the essential morality they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the sloughs of superstition. And all that there is of justice and kindness and beauty, embodied in our cumbrous forms of etiquette, will live perennially when the forms themselves have been forgotten.

{52}

RAILWAY MORALS AND RAILWAY POLICY.

[First published in the Edinburgh Review for October 1854.]

Believers in the intrinsic virtues of political forms, might draw an instructive lesson from the politics of our railways. If there needs a conclusive proof that the most carefully-framed constitutions are worthless, unless they be embodiments of the popular character—if there needs a conclusive proof, that governmental arrangements in advance of the time will inevitably lapse into congruity with the time; such proof may be found over and over again repeated in the current history of joint-stock enterprises. As devised by Act of Parliament, the ad­min­i­stra­tions of our public companies are almost purely democratic. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive system is carried out in them with scarcely a check. Shareholders elect their directors, directors their chairman; there is an annual retirement of a certain proportion of members of the board, giving facilities for superseding them; and, by this means, the whole ruling body may be changed in periods varying from three to five years. Yet, not only are the characteristic vices of our political state reproduced in each of these mercantile corporations—some even in an intenser degree—but the very form of government, while remaining nominally democratic, is substantially so remodelled as to become a miniature of our national constitution. The direction, ceasing to fulfil its theory as a {53} council formed of members who possess equal powers, falls under the control of some one member of superior cunning, will, or wealth, to whom the majority become so subordinate, that the decision on every question depends on the course he takes. Proprietors, instead of constantly exercising their franchise, allow it to become on all ordinary occasions a dead letter. Retiring directors are so habitually re-elected without opposition, and have so great a power of insuring their own election when opposed, that the board becomes practically a close body; and it is only when the misgovernment grows extreme enough to produce a revolutionary agitation among the shareholders, that any change can be effected. Thus, a mixture of the monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic elements, is repeated with such modifications only as the circumstances involve. The modes of action, too, are substantially the same; save in this, that the copy outruns the original. Threats of resignation, which ministries hold out in extreme cases, are commonly made by railway-boards to stave off disagreeable inquiries. By no means regarding themselves as servants of the shareholders, directors rebel against dictation from them; and construe any amendment to their proposals into a vote of want of confidence. At half-yearly meetings, disagreeable criticisms and objections are met by the chairman with the remark, that if the shareholders cannot trust his colleagues and himself, they had better choose others. With most, this assumption of offended dignity tells; and, under fear that the company’s interests may suffer from any disturbance, measures quite at variance with the wishes of the proprietary are allowed to be carried. The parallel holds yet further. If it be true of national ad­min­i­stra­tions, that those in power have the support of public employés; it is not less true of incorporated companies, that the directors are aided by the officials in their struggles with shareholders. If, in times past, there have been ministries who spent public money to secure party ends; there are, in {54} times present, railway-boards who use the funds of the shareholders to defeat the shareholders. Nay, even in detail, the similarity is maintained. Like their prototype, joint-stock companies have their expensive election contests, managed by election committees, employing election agents; they have their canvassing with its sundry illegitimate accompaniments; they have their occasional manufacture of fraudulent votes. And, as a general result, that class-legislation, which has been habitually charged against statesmen, is now habitually displayed in the proceedings of these trading associations: constituted though they are on purely rep­re­sen­ta­tive principles.

These last assertions will surprise not a few. The general public who never see a railway-journal, and who skip the reports of half-yearly meetings which appear in the daily papers, are under the impression that dishonesties like those gigantic ones so notorious during the mania, are no longer committed. They do not forget the doings of stags and stock-jobbers and runaway-directors. They remember how men-of-straw held shares amounting to £100,000, and even £200,000; how numerous directorates were filled by the same persons—one having a seat at twenty-three boards; how sub­scrip­tion-con­tracts were made up with signatures bought at 10s and even 4s each, and porters and errand-boys made themselves liable for £30,000 and £40,000 a-piece. They can narrate how boards kept their books in cipher, made false registries, and refrained from recording their proceedings in minute-books; how in one company, half-a-million of capital was put down to unreal names; how in another, directors bought for account more shares than they issued, and so forced up the price; and how in many others, they repurchased for the company their own shares, paying themselves with the depositors’ money. But, though more or less aware of the iniquities which have been practised, the generality think of them solely as the accompaniments {55} of bubble schemes. More recent enterprises they know to have been bonâ fide ones, mostly carried out by old-established companies; and knowing this, they do not suspect that in the getting-up of branch lines and extensions, there are chicaneries near akin to those of Capel Court; and quite as disastrous in their ultimate results. Associating the ideas of wealth and respectability, and habitually using respectability as synonymous with morality, it seems to them incredible that many of the large capitalists and men of station who administer railway affairs, should be guilty of indirectly enriching themselves at the expense of their constituents. True, they occasionally meet with a law-report disclosing some enormous fraud; or read a Times leader, characterising directorial acts in terms which are held libellous. But they regard the cases thus brought to light as entirely exceptional; and, under that feeling of loyalty which ever idealises men in authority, they constantly tend towards the conviction, if not that directors can do no wrong, yet that they are very unlikely to do wrong.

A history of railway management and railway intrigue, however, would quickly undeceive them. In such a history, the tricks of projectors and the mysteries of the share-market would occupy less space than the analysis of the multiform dishonesties which have been committed since 1845, and the genesis of that elaborate system of tactics by which companies are betrayed into ruinous undertakings which benefit the few at the cost of the many. Such a history would not only have to detail the doings of the personage famed for “making things pleasant;” nor would it have merely to add the misdeeds of his colleagues; but it would have to describe the kindred corruptness of other railway ad­min­i­stra­tions. From the published report of an investigation-committee, it would be shown how, not many years since, the directors of one of our lines allotted among themselves 15,000 new shares then at a premium in the {56} market; how to pay the deposits on these shares they used the company’s funds; and how one of their number thus accommodated himself in meeting both deposits and calls to the extent of more than £80,000. We should read in it of one railway chairman who, with the secretary’s connivance, retained shares exceeding a quarter of a million in amount, intending to claim them as his allotment if they rose to a premium; and who, as they did not do so, left them as unissued shares on the hands of the proprietors, to their vast loss. We should also read in it of directors who made loans to themselves out of the company’s floating balances at a low rate of interest, when the market rate was high; and who paid themselves larger salaries than those assigned: entering the difference in an obscure corner of the ledger under the head of “petty disbursements.” There would be a description of the manœuvres by which a delinquent board, under impending investigation, gets a favourable committee nominated—“a whitewashing committee.” There would be documents showing that the proxies enabling boards to carry contested measures, have in some cases been obtained by garbled statements; and, again, that proxies given for a specified purpose have been used for other purposes. One of our companies would be proved to have projected a line, serving as a feeder, for which it obtained shareholders by offering a guaranteed dividend, which, though understood by the public to be unconditional, was really contingent upon a condition not likely to be fulfilled. The managers of another company would be convicted of having carried party measures by the aid of preference-shares standing in the names of station-masters; and of being aided by the proxies of the secretary’s children too young to write.

That the corruptions here glanced at are not exceptional evils, but result from some deep-seated vice in our system of railway-government, is sufficiently proved by the fact, that notwithstanding the falling of railway-dividends {57} produced by the extension policy, that policy has been year after year continued. Does any tradesman, who, having enlarged his shop, finds a proportionate diminution in his rate of profits, go on, even under the stimulus of competition, making further enlargements at the risk of further diminutions? Does any merchant, however strong his desire to take away an opponent’s markets, make successive mortgages on his capital, and pay for each sum thus raised a higher interest than he gains by trading with it? Yet this course, so absurd that no one would insult a private individual by asking him to follow it, is the course which railway-boards, at meeting after meeting, persuade their clients to pursue. Since 1845, when the dividends of our leading lines ranged from 8 to 10 per cent., they have, notwithstanding an ever-growing traffic, fallen from 10 per cent. to 5, from 8 to 4, from 9 to 3 ¹⁄₄; and yet the system of extensions, leases, and guarantees, notoriously the cause of this, has been year by year persevered in. Is there not something needing explanation here—something more than the world is allowed to see? If there be any one to whom the broad fact of obstinate persistence in unprofitable expenditure does not alone carry the conviction that sinister influences are at work, let him read the seductive statements by which shareholders are led to authorize new projects, and then compare these with the proved results. Let him look at the estimated cost, anticipated traffic, and calculated dividend on some proposed branch line; let him observe how the proprietary before whom the scheme is laid, are induced to approve it as promising a fair return; and then let him contemplate, in the resulting depreciation of stock, the extent of their loss. Is there any avoiding the inference? Railway-shareholders can never have habitually voted for new undertakings which they knew would be injurious to them. Every one knows, however, that these new undertakings have almost uniformly proved injurious to them. Obviously, therefore, railway-shareholders have been {58} continually deluded by false representations. The only possible escape from this conclusion is in the belief that boards and their officers have been themselves deceived; and were the discrepancies between promises and results occasional only, there would be grounds for this lenient interpretation. But to suppose that a railway-government should repeatedly make such mistakes, and yet gain no wisdom from disastrous experiences—should after a dozen disappointments again mislead half-yearly meetings by bright anticipations into dark realities, and all in good faith—taxes credulity somewhat too far. Even, then, were there no demonstrated iniquities to rouse suspicion, we think that the continuous depreciation in the value of railway-stock, the determined perseverance of boards in the policy which has produced this depreciation, and the proved untruth of the statements by which they have induced shareholders to sanction this policy, would of themselves suffice to show the viciousness of rail­way-ad­min­i­stra­tion.

That the existing evils, and the causes conspiring to produce them, may be better understood, it will be needful to glance at the mode in which the system of extensions grew up. Earliest among the incentives to it was a feeling of rivalry. Even while yet their main lines were unfinished, a contest for supremacy arose between our two greatest companies. This presently generated a confirmed antagonism; and the same impulse which in election contests has sometimes entailed the squandering of a fortune to gain a victory, has largely aided to make each of these great rivals submit to repeated sacrifices rather than be beaten. Feuds of like nature are in other cases perpetually prompting boards to make aggressions on each other’s territories—every attack on the one side leading to a reprisal on the other; and so violent is the hostility occasionally produced, that directors might be pointed out whose votes are wholly determined by the desire to be revenged on their opponents. {59} Among the first methods used by leading companies to strengthen themselves and weaken their competitors, was the leasing or purchase of subordinate neighbouring lines. Of course those to whom overtures were made, obtained bids from both sides; and it naturally resulted that the first sales thus effected, being at prices far above the real values, brought great profits to the sellers. What resulted? A few recurrences of this proceeding, made it clear to quick-witted speculators, that constructing lines so circumstanced as to be bid for by competing companies, would be a lucrative policy. Shareholders who had once pocketed these large and easily-made gains, were eager to repeat the process; and cast about for districts in which it might be done. Even the directors of the companies by whom these high prices were given, were under the temptation to aid in this; for it was manifest to them that by obtaining a larger interest in any such new undertaking than they possessed in the purchasing company, and by using their influence in the purchasing company to obtain a good price or guarantee for the new undertaking, a great advantage would be gained. That this motive has been largely operative, railway history abundantly proves. Once commenced, sundry other influences conspired to stimulate this making of feeders and extensions. The non-closure of capital-accounts rendered possible the “cooking” of dividends, which was at one period carried to a great extent. Expenditure that should have been charged against revenue was charged against capital; works and rolling stock were allowed to go unrepaired, or insufficient additions made to them, by which means the current expenses were rendered delusively small; long-credit agreements with contractors permitted sundry disbursements that had virtually been made, to be kept out of the accounts; and thus the net returns were made to appear greater than they really were. Naturally new undertakings put before the moneyed world by companies whose stock and dividends had been thus artificially raised, {60} were received with proportionate favour. Under the prestige of their parentage their shares came out at high premiums, bringing large profits to the projectors. The hint was soon taken; and it presently became an established policy, under the auspices of a prosperity either real or mock, to get up these subsidiary lines—“calves,” as they were called in the slang of the initiated—and to traffic in the premiums their shares commanded. Meanwhile had been developing, a secondary set of influences which also contributed to foster unwise enterprises; namely, the business interests of the lawyers, engineers, contractors, and others directly or indirectly employed in railway construction. The ways of getting up and carrying new schemes, could not fail, in the course of years, to become familiar to all concerned; and there could not fail to grow up among them a system of concerted tactics for achieving their common end. Thus, partly from the jealousy of rival boards, partly from the greediness of shareholders in purchased lines, partly from the dishonest schemings of directors, partly from the manœuvres of those whose occupation it is to carry out the projects legally authorized, partly, and perhaps mainly, from the delusive appearance of prosperity maintained by many established companies, there came the wild speculations of 1844 and 1845. The consequent disasters, while they pretty well destroyed the last of these incentives, left the rest much as they were. Though the painfully-undeceived public have ceased to aid as they once did, the various private interests that had grown up have since been working together as before—have developed their methods of co-operation into still more complex and subtle forms; and are even now daily thrusting unfortunate shareholders into losing undertakings.

Before proceeding to analyze the existing state of things, however, we would have it clearly understood that we do not suppose those implicated to be on the average morally lower than the community at large. Men taken at random {61} from any class, would, in all probability, behave much in the same way when placed in like positions. There are unquestionably directors grossly dishonest. Unquestionably also there are others whose standard of honour is far higher than that of most persons. And for the remainder, they are, doubtless, as good as the mass. Of the engineers, parliamentary agents, lawyers, contractors, and others concerned, it may be admitted that though custom has induced laxity of principle, yet they would be harshly judged were the transactions which may be recorded against them, used as tests. Those who do not see how in these involved affairs, bad deeds may be wrought out by men not correspondingly bad, will readily do so on considering all the conditions. In the first place, there is the familiar fact that the corporate conscience is inferior to the individual conscience—that a body of men will commit as a joint act, that which each one of them would shrink from, did he feel personally responsible. And it may be remarked that not only is the conduct of a corporate body thus comparatively lax, but also the conduct towards one. There is ever a more or less distinct perception, that a broad-backed company scarcely feels what would be ruinous to a private person; and this perception is in constant operation on all railway-boards and their employés, as well as on all contractors, landowners, and others concerned: leading them to show a want of principle foreign to their general behaviour. Again, the indirectness and remoteness of the evils produced, greatly weaken the restraints on wrongdoing. Men’s actions are proximately caused by mental representations of the results to be anticipated; and the decisions come to, largely depend on the vividness with which these results can be imagined. A consequence, good or bad, that is immediate and clearly apprehended, influences conduct far more potently than a consequence that has to be traced through a long chain of actions or influences, and, as eventually reached, is not a particular and {62} readily conceivable one, but a general and vaguely conceivable one. Hence, in railway affairs, a questionable share-transaction, an exorbitant charge, a proceeding which brings great individual advantage without apparently injuring any one, and which, even if traced to its ultimate results, can but very circuitously affect unknown persons living no one knows where, may be brought home to men who, could the results be embodied before them, would be shocked at the cruel injustices they had committed—men who in their private business, where the results can be thus embodied, are sufficiently equitable. Further, it requires to be noted that most of these great delinquencies are ascribable not to the extreme dishonesty of any one man or group of men, but to the combined self-interest of many men and groups of men, whose minor delinquencies are cumulative. Much as a story which, passing from mouth to mouth, and receiving a slight exaggeration at each repetition, comes round to the original narrator in a form scarcely to be recognised; so, by a little improper influence on the part of landowners, a little favouritism on the part of members of Parliament, a little intriguing of lawyers, a little manœuvring by contractors and engineers, a little self-seeking on the part of directors, a little under-statement of estimates and over-statement of traffic, a little magnifying of the evils to be avoided and the benefits to be gained—it happens that shareholders are betrayed into ruinous undertakings by grossly untrue representations, without any one being guilty of more than a small portion of the fraud. Bearing in mind then, the comparative laxity of the corporate conscience; the diffusion and remoteness of the evils which malpractices produce; and the composite origin of these malpractices; it becomes possible to understand how, in railway affairs, gigantic dishonesties can be perpetrated by men who, on the average, are little if at all below the generality in moral character.

With this preliminary mitigation we proceed to detail the {63} various illegitimate influences by which these seemingly insane extensions and this continual squandering of shareholders’ property are brought about.

Conspicuous among these is the self-interest of landowners. Once the greatest obstacles to railway enterprise, owners of estates have of late years been among its chief promoters. Since the Liverpool and Manchester line was first defeated by landed opposition, and succeeded with its second bill only by keeping out of sight of all mansions, and avoiding game preserves—since the time when the London and Birmingham Company, after seeing their project thrown out by a committee of peers who ignored the evidence, had to “conciliate” opponents by raising the estimate for land from £250,000 to £750,000—since the time when Parliamentary counsel justified resistance by the flimsiest excuses, even to reproaching engineers with having “trodden down the corn of widows” and “destroyed the strawberry-beds of gardeners”—since then, a marked change of policy has taken place. Nor was it in human nature that it should be otherwise. When it became known that railway-companies commonly paid for “land and compensation,” sums varying from £4000 to £8000 per mile; that men were indemnified for supposed injury to their property, by sums so inordinate that the greater part has been known to be returned by the heir as conscience-money; that in one case £120,000 was given for land said to be worth but £5000—when it was noised abroad that large bonuses in the shape of preference shares and the like, were granted to buy off opposition—when it came to be an established fact that estates are greatly enhanced in value by the proximity of railways; it is not surprising that country gentlemen should have become active friends of schemes to which they were once the bitterest enemies. On considering the many temptations, we shall see nothing wonderful in the fact that in 1845 they were zealous {64} provisional committee-men; nor in the fact that their influence as promoters enabled them to get large sums for their own acres. If we are told of squires soliciting interviews with the engineer of a projected railway; prompting him to take their side of the country; promising support if he did, and threatening opposition if he did not; dictating the course to be followed through their domains; and hinting that a good price would be expected; we are simply told of the special modes in which certain private interests show themselves. If we hear of an extensive landowner using his influence as chairman of a board of directors, to project a branch running for many miles through his own estate, and putting his company to the cost of a parliamentary contest to carry this line; we hear only of that which was likely to occur under such circumstances. If we find now before the public, a line proposed by a large capitalist, serving among other ends to effect desirable communications with his property, and the estimates for which line, though considered by the engineering world insufficient, are alleged by him to be ample; we have but a marked case of the distorted representations which under such conditions self-interest is sure to engender. If we discover of this or that scheme, that it was got up by the local nobility and gentry—that they employed to make the survey a third-rate engineer, who was ready in anticipation of future benefit to do this for his bare expenses—that principals and agent wearied the directors of an adjacent trunk-line to take up their project; threatened that if they did not their great rival would; alarmed them into concession; asked for a contribution to their expenses; and would have gained all these points but for shareholders’ resistance—we do but discover the organized tactics which, in course of time, naturally grow up under such stimuli. It is not that these facts are particularly remarkable. From the gross instance of the landowner who asked £8000 for that which he eventually accepted £80 for, down to the {65} every-day instances of influence used to get railway accommodation for the neighbourhood, the acts of the landed class are simply manifestations of the average character acting under special conditions. All that it now behoves us to notice, is, that we have here a large and powerful body whose interests are ever pressing on railway extension, irrespective of its intrinsic propriety.

The great change in the attitude of the Legislature towards railways, from “the extreme of determined rejection or dilatory acquiescence, to the opposite extreme of unlimited concession,” was simultaneous with the change above described. It could not well fail to be so. Supplying, as the landowning community does, so large a portion of both Houses of Parliament, it necessarily follows that the play of private interests seen in the first, repeats itself in the last under modified forms, and complicated by other influences. Remembering the extent to which legislators were themselves implicated in the speculations of the mania, it is unlikely that they should since have been free from personal bias. A return proved, that in 1845 there were 157 members of Parliament whose names were on the registers of new companies for sums varying from £291,000 downwards. The supporters of new projects boasted of the numbers of votes they could command in the House. Members were personally canvassed, and peers were solicited. It was publicly complained in the upper chamber, that “it was nearly impossible to bring together a jury, some members of which were not interested in the railway they were about to assess.” Doubtless this state of things was in a great degree exceptional; and there has since been not only a diminution of the temptations, but a marked increase of equitable feeling. Still, it is not to be expected that private interests should cease to act. It is not to be expected that a landowner who, out of Parliament, exerts himself to get a railway for his district, should, when in Parliament, not employ the power his new position gives him to the same {66} end. It is not to be expected that the accumulation of such individual actions should leave the legislative policy unchanged. Hence the fact, that the influence once used to throw out railway bills is now used to carry them. Hence the fact, that railway committees no longer require a good traffic case to be made out in justification for the powers asked. Hence the fact, that railway directors having seats in the House of Commons, are induced to pledge their companies to carry out extensions. We could name a member of Parliament who, having bought an estate fitly situated, offered to an engineer, also in Parliament, the making of a railway running through it; and having obtained the Act (in doing which the influence of himself and his friend was of course useful), pitted three railway companies against each other for the purchase of it. We could name another member of Parliament who, having projected and obtained powers for an extension through his property, induced the directors of the main line, with whom he had great influence, to subscribe half the capital for his extension, to work it for fifty per cent. of the gross receipts, and to give up all traffic brought by it on to the main line until he received four per cent. on his capital; which was tantamount to a four per cent. guarantee. But it is not only, nor indeed mainly, from directly personal motives that legislators have of late years unduly fostered railway enterprises. Indirectly personal motives of various kinds have been largely operative. The wish to satisfy constituents has been one. Inhabitants of an unaccommodated district, are naturally urgent with their rep­re­sen­ta­tives to help them to a line. Not unfrequently such rep­re­sen­ta­tives are conscious that their next elections may perhaps turn upon their successful response to this appeal. Even when there is no popular pressure there is the pressure of their leading political supporters—of large landholders whom it will not do to neglect; of local lawyers, important as electioneering friends, to whom a railway always brings {67} business. Thus, without having immediately private ends, members of Parliament are often almost coerced into urging forward schemes which, from a national point of view, or from a shareholder’s point of view, are very unwise ones. Then there come the still less direct stimuli. Where neither personal nor political ends are to be gained, there are still the interests of a relative to be subserved; or, if not those of a relative, still those of a friend. And where there is no decided impulse to the contrary, these motives, of course, have their weight. Moreover, it requires in fairness to be said, that possessed as most members of Parliament are, with the belief that all railway-making is nationally beneficial, there exist in their minds few or no reasons for resisting the influences brought to bear on them. True, shareholders may be injured; but that is their own affair. The public will be better served; constituents will be satisfied; friends will be pleased; perhaps private ends gained: and under some or all of these incentives, affirmative votes are readily given. Thus, from the Legislature also, there has of late years proceeded a factitious stimulus to railway extensions.

From Parliament to Parliamentary agents, and the general body of lawyers concerned in railway enterprise, is a ready transition. With these, the getting up and carrying of new lines and branches is a matter of business. Whoever traces the process of obtaining a railway Act, or considers the number of legal transactions involved in the execution of railway works, or notes the large sums that figure in half-yearly reports under the head of “law charges;” will at once see how strong are the temptations which a new project holds out to solicitors, conveyancers, and counsel. It has been shown that in past years, parliamentary expenses have varied from £650 to £3000 per mile; of which a large proportion has gone into the pockets of the profession. In one contest, £57,000 was spent among six counsel and twenty solicitors. At a late {68} meeting of one of our companies it was pointed out, that the sum expended in legal and parliamentary expenses during nine years, had reached £480,000; or had averaged £53,500 a-year. With these and scores of like facts before them, it would be strange did not so acute a body of men as lawyers use vigorous efforts and sagacious devices to promote fresh enterprises. Indeed, if we look back at the proceedings of 1845, we shall suspect, not only that lawyers are still the active promoters of fresh enterprises, but often the originators of them. Many have heard how in those excited times the projects daily announced were not uncommonly set afloat by local solicitors—how these looked over maps to see where plausible lines could be sketched out—how they canvassed the local gentry to obtain provisional committeemen—how they agreed with engineers to make trial surveys—how, under the wild hopes of the day, they found little difficulty in forming companies—and how most of them managed to get as far as the Committee on Standing Orders, if no farther. Remembering all this, and remembering that those who were successful are not likely to have forgotten their cunning, but rather to have yearly exercised and increased it, we may expect to find railway lawyers among the most influential of the many parties conspiring to urge railway proprietaries into disastrous undertakings; and we shall not be deceived. To a great extent they are in league with engineers. From the proposal to the completion of a new line, the lawyer and the engineer work together; and their interests are throughout identical. While the one makes the survey, the other prepares the book of reference. The parish plans which the one gets ready, the other deposits. The notices to owners and occupiers which the one fills in, the other serves upon those concerned. And there are frequent consultations between them as to the dealing with local opposition and the obtainment of local support. In the getting up of {69} their case for Parliament, they necessarily act in concert. While, before committee, the one gets his ten guineas per day for attending to give evidence, the other makes profits on all the complicated transactions which carrying a bill involves. During the execution of the works they are in constant correspondence; and alike profit by any expansion of the undertaking. Thus there naturally arises in each, the perception that in aiding the other he is aiding himself; and gradually as, in course of years, the proceedings come to be often repeated, and a perfect familiarity with railway politics gained, there grows up a well-organized system of co-operation between them—a system rendered the more efficient by the wealth and influence which each has year by year accumulated.

Among the manœuvres employed by railway solicitors thus established and thus helped, not the least remarkable is that of getting their own nominees elected as directors. It is a fact, which we state on good authority, that there are puppet-directors who vote for this or that at the instigation of the company’s lawyer. The obtainment of such tools is not difficult. Vacancies are about to occur in the directorate. Almost always there are men over whom a solicitor, conducting the extensive law-business of a railway, has considerable power: not only connexions and friends, but persons to whom in his legal capacity he can do great benefit or great injury. He selects the most suitable of these; giving the preference, if other things are equal, to one living in the country near the line. On opening the matter to him, he points out the sundry advantages attendant on a director’s position—the free pass and the many facilities it gives; the annual £100 or so which the office brings; the honour and influence accruing; the opportunities for profitable investment that are likely to occur; and so forth. Should ignorance of railway affairs be raised as an objection, the tempter, in whose eyes this ignorance is a chief recommendation, {70} replies that he shall always be at hand to guide his votes. Should non-possession of a due amount of the company’s stock be pleaded, the tempter meets the difficulty by offering himself to furnish the needful qualification. Thus incited and flattered, and perhaps conscious that it would be dangerous to refuse, the intended puppet allows himself to be put in nomination; and as it is the habit of half-yearly meetings, unless under great indignation, to elect any one proposed to them by those in authority, the nomination is successful. On subsequent occasions this proceeding can, of course, be repeated; and thus the company’s legal agent and those leagued with him, may command sufficient votes to turn the scale in their own favour.

Then, to the personal interest and power of the head solicitor, have to be added those of the local solicitors, with whom he is in daily intercourse. They, too, profit by new undertakings; they, therefore, are urgent in pressing them forwards. Acting in co-operation with their chief, they form a dispersed staff of great influence. They are active canvassers; they stimulate and concentrate the feeling of their districts; they encourage rivalry with other lines; they alarm local shareholders with rumours of threatened competition. When the question of extension or non-extension comes to a division, they collect proxies for the extension party. They bring pressure to bear on their shareholding clients and relatives. Nay, so deep an interest do they feel in the decision, as sometimes to create votes with the view of influencing it. We have before us the case of a local solicitor, who, before the special meeting called to adopt or reject a contemplated branch, transferred portions of his own shares into the names of sundry members of his family, and so multiplied his seventeen votes into forty-one; all of which he recorded in favour of the new scheme.

The morality of railway engineers is not much above {71} that of railway lawyers. The gossip of Great George Street is fertile in discreditable revelations. It tells how So-and-so, like others before him, testified to estimates which he well knew were insufficient. It makes jocose allusion to this man as being employed to do his senior’s “dirty work”—his hard-swearing; and narrates of the other that, when giving evidence before committee, he was told by counsel that he was not to be believed even on his knees. It explains how cheaply the projector of a certain line executed the parliamentary survey, by employing on it part of the staff in the pay of another company to which he was engineer. Now it alludes to the suspicion attaching to a certain member of the fraternity from his having let a permanent-way contract, for a term of years, at an extravagant sum per mile. Again it rumours the great profits which some of the leaders of the profession made in 1845, by charging for the use of their names at so much the prospectus: even up to a thousand guineas. And then, it enlarges on the important advantages possessed by engineers who have seats in the House of Commons.

Thus lax as is the ethical code of engineers, and greatly as they are interested in railway enterprise, it is to be expected that they should be active and not very scrupulous promoters of it. To illustrate the vigour and skill with which they further new undertakings, a few facts may be cited. Not far from London, and lying between two lines of railway, is an estate lately purchased by one of our engineers. He has since obtained Acts for branches to both of the adjacent lines. One of these branches he has leased to the company whose line it joins; and he has tried to do the like with the other, but as yet without success. Even as it is, however, he is considered to have doubled the value of his property. Again, an engineer of celebrity once nearly succeeded in smuggling through Parliament, in the bill for a proposed railway, a clause extending the limits of deviation, to several miles on each side of the line, {72} throughout a certain district—the usual limits being but five chains on each side; and the attempt is accounted for by the fact, that this engineer possessed mines in this district. To press forward extensions by the companies with which they are connected, they occasionally go to great lengths. Not long since, at a half-yearly meeting, certain projects which the proprietary had already once rejected, were again brought forward by two engineers who attended in their capacity of shareholders. Though known to be personally interested, one of them moved and the other seconded, that some new proposals from the promoters of these schemes be considered without delay by the directors. The motion was carried; the directors approved the proposals; and again, the proprietors negatived them. A third time a like effort was made; a third time a conflict arose; and within a few days of the special meeting at which the division was to take place, one of these engineers circulated among the shareholders a pamphlet denying the allegations of the dissentient party and making counter-statements which it was then too late to meet. Nay, he did more: he employed agents to canvass the shareholders for proxies in support of the new undertaking; and was obliged to confess as much when charged with it at the meeting.

Turn we now to contractors. Railway-enterprise has given to this class of men a gigantic development; not only in respect of numbers, but in respect of the vast wealth to which some of them have acquired. Originally, half a dozen miles of earthwork, fencing, and bridges, was as much as any single contractor undertook. Of late years, however it has become common for one man to engage to construct an entire railway; and deliver it to the company in a fit condition for opening. Great capital is required for this. Great profits are made by it. And the fortunes accumulated in course of time have been such, that sundry contractors are named as being each able to make a railway at his own {73} cost. But they are as insatiable as millionaires in general; and so long as they continue in business at all, are, in some sort, forced to provide new undertakings to keep their plant employed. As may be imagined, enormous stocks of working appliances are needed: many hundreds of earth-waggons and of horses; many miles of temporary rails and sleepers; some dozen locomotive engines, and several fixed ones; innumerable tools; besides vast stores of timber, bricks, stone, rails, and other constituents of permanent works, that have been bought on speculation. To keep the capital thus invested, and also a large staff of employés, standing idle, entails loss, partly negative, partly positive. The great contractor, therefore, is both under a strong stimulus to get fresh work, and enabled by his wealth to do this. Hence the not unfrequent inversion of the old arrangement under which companies and engineers employed contractors, into an arrangement under which contractors employ engineers and form companies. Many recent undertakings have been thus set on foot. The most gigantic project which private enterprise has yet dared, originated with a distinguished contracting firm. In some cases this mode of procedure may, perhaps, be advantageous; but in far more numerous cases its results are disastrous. Interested in promoting railway extensions, even in a greater degree than engineers and lawyers, contractors habitually co-operate with these, either as agents or as coadjutors. Lines are fostered into being, which it is known from the beginning, will not pay. Of late, it has become common for landowners, merchants, and others personally interested, who, under the belief that their indirect gains will compensate for their meagre dividends, have themselves raised part of the capital for a local railway, but cannot raise the rest—it has become common for such to make an agreement with a wealthy contractor to construct the line, taking in part payment a portion of the shares, amounting to perhaps a third of the whole, and to charge for his work according to {74} a schedule of prices to be thereafter settled between himself and the engineer. By this last clause the contractor renders himself secure. It would never answer his purpose to take part payment in shares likely to return some £2 per cent., unless he compensated himself by unusually high profits; and this subsequent settlement of prices with one whose interests, like his own, are wrapped up in the prosecution of the undertaking, ensures him high profits. Meanwhile, it is noised abroad that all the capital has been subscribed and the line contracted for; these facts unduly raise the public estimate of the scheme; the shares are quoted at much above their true worth; unwary persons buy; the contractor from time to time parts with his moiety at fair prices; and the new shareholders ultimately find themselves part owners of a railway which, unprofitable as it originally promised to be, had been made yet more unprofitable by expensiveness of construction. Nor are these the only cases in which contractors gain after this fashion. They do the like with lines of their own projecting. To obtain Acts for these, they sign the sub­scrip­tion-con­tracts for large amounts; knowing that in the way above described, they can always make it answer to do this. So general had the practice latterly become, as to attract the attention of committees. As was remarked by a personage noted for his complicity in these transactions—“Committees are getting too knowing; they won’t stand that dodge now.” Nevertheless, the thing is still done under a disguised form. Though contractors no longer enter their own names on subscription lists for thousands of shares; yet they effect the same end by making nominal holders of their foremen and others: themselves being the real ones.

Of directorial misdoings some samples have already been given; and more might be added. Besides those arising from directly personal aims, there are sundry others. One of these is the increasing community between railway {75} boards and the House of Commons. There are eighty-one directors sitting in Parliament; and though some of these take little part in the affairs of their respective railways, many of them are the most active members of the boards to which they belong. We have but to look back a few years, and mark the unanimity with which companies adopted the policy of getting themselves represented in the Legislature, to see that the furtherance of their respective interests—especially in cases of competition—was the incentive. How well this policy is understood by the initiated, may be judged from the fact, that gentlemen are now in some cases elected on boards, simply because they are members of Parliament. Of course this implies that railway legislation is affected by a complicated play of private influences; and that these influences generally work towards the facilitation of new enterprises, is obvious. It naturally happens that directors having seats in the House of Commons can more or less smooth the way of their annual batch of new bills through committees. It naturally happens that those whose companies are not opposed, exchange good offices. Not only do they aid the passing of schemes in which they are interested, but they are solicited to undertake further schemes by those around them. It is a common-sense conclusion that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of small towns and country districts needing railway accommodation, who are daily thrown in contact with the chairman of a company capable of giving this accommodation, do not neglect the opportunity of furthering their ends. It is a common-sense conclusion that by hospitalities, by favours, by flattery, by the many means used to bias men, they seek to obtain his assistance. And it is an equally common-sense conclusion that in many cases they succeed—that by some complication of persuasions and temptations they swerve him from his calmer judgment; and so introduce into the company he represents, influences at variance with its welfare.

Under some motives however—whether those of direct {76} self-interest, of private favour, or of antagonistic feeling, matters not here—it is certain that directors are constantly committing their constituents to unwise enterprises; and that they frequently employ unjustifiable means for either eluding or overcoming their opposition. Shareholders occasionally find that their directors have given to Parliament, pledges of extension much exceeding any they were authorised to give; and they are then persuaded that they are bound to endorse the promises made for them by their agents. In some cases, among the misleading statements laid before shareholders to obtain their consent to a new project, will be found an abstract of the earnings of a previously-executed branch to which the proposed one bears some analogy. These earnings are shown (not always without “cooking”) to be tolerably good and improving; and it is argued that the new project, having like prospects, offers a fair investment. Meanwhile, it is not stated that the capital for this previously-executed branch was raised on debentures or by guaranteed shares at a higher rate of interest than the dividend pays; it is not stated that as the capital for this further undertaking will be raised on like terms, the annual interest on debt will swallow up more than the annual revenue; and thus unsuspecting shareholders—some unacquainted with the company’s antecedents, some unable to understand its complicated accounts—give their proxies, or raise their hands, for new works which will tell with disastrous effect on their future dividends. In pursuit of their ends, directors will from time to time go directly in the teeth of established regulations. Where it has been made a rule that proxies shall be issued only by order of a meeting of the proprietors, they will yet issue them without any such order, when by so doing they can steal a march on dissentients. If it suits their purpose, they will occasionally bring forward most important measures without due notice. In stating the amount of the company’s stock which has {77} voted with them on a division, they have been known to include thousands of shares on which a small sum only was paid up, counting them as though fully paid up.

To complete the sketch, something must be said on the management of board meetings and meetings of shareholders. For the first—their decisions are affected by various manœuvres. Of course, on fit occasions, there is a whipping-up of those favourable to any project which it is desired to carry. Were this all, there would be little to complain of; but something more than this is done. There are boards in which it is the practice to defeat opposition by stratagem. The extension party having summoned their forces for the occasion, and having entered on the minutes of business a notice worded with the requisite vagueness, shape their proceedings according to the character of the meeting. Should their antagonists muster more strongly than was expected, this vaguely-worded notice serves simply to introduce some general statement or further information concerning the project named in it; and the matter is passed over as though nothing more had been meant. On the contrary, should the proportion of the two sides be more favourable, the notice becomes the basis of a definite motion committing the board to some important act. If due precautions have been taken, the motion is passed; and once passed, those who, if present, would have resisted it, have no remedy; for in railway government there is no “second reading,” much less a third. So determined and so unscrupulous are the efforts sometimes made by the stronger party to overcome and silence their antagonists, that when a contested measure, carried by them at the board, has to go before a general meeting for confirmation, they have been known to pass a resolution that their dissentient colleagues shall not address the proprietary!

That, at half-yearly and special meetings, shareholders should be so readily misled by boards, even after repeated {78} experience of their un­trust­worth­i­ness, seems at first sight difficult to understand. The mystery disappears, however, on inquiry. Very frequently, contested measures are carried against the sense of the meetings before which they are laid, by means of the proxies previously collected by the directors. These proxies are obtained from proprietors scattered everywhere throughout the kingdom, who are mostly weak enough to sign the first document sent to them. Then, of those present when the question is brought to an issue, not many dare attempt a speech. Of those who dare, but few are clear-headed enough to see the full bearings of the measure they are about to vote upon; and such as can see them are often prevented by nervousness from doing justice to the views they hold. Moreover, it must be borne in mind that proprietors displaying antagonism to the board are usually regarded by their brother proprietors with more or less reprobation. Unless the misconduct of the governing body has been very glaring and very recent, there ever arises in the mass a prejudice against all playing the part of an opposition. They are condemned as noisy, and factious, and obstructive; and often only by determined courage avoid being put down. Besides these negative reasons for the general inefficiency of shareholders’ resistance, there are sundry positive ones. As writes to us a Member of Parliament who has been an extensive holder of stock in many companies from the first days of railway enterprise:—“My large and long acquaintance with Railway Companies’ affairs, enables me to say, that a large majority of shareholders trust wholly to their directors, having little or no information, nor caring to have any opinion of their own. . . . . Some others, better informed but timid, are afraid, by opposing the directors, of causing a depreciation of the value of their stock in the market, and are more alarmed at the prospect of this temporary depreciation than at the permanent loss entailed on the company by the useless, and therefore {79} unprofitable, outlay of additional capital. . . . . Others again, believing that the impending permanent evil is inevitable, resolve on the spot to sell out immediately, and to keep up the prices of their shares, also give their support to the directors.” Thus, from lack of organization and efficiency among those who express their opposition, and from the timidity and double-facedness of those who do not, it happens that extremely unwise projects are carried by large majorities. Nor is this all. The tactics of the aggressive party are commonly as skilful as those of their antagonists are bungling. The chairman, who is generally the chief promoter of the contested scheme, has it in his power to favour those who take his own side, and to throw difficulties in the way of opponents; and this he not unfrequently does to a great extent—refusing to hear, putting down on some plea of breach of order, browbeating, even using threats.[5] It generally turns out too, that, whether intentionally or not, some of the most important motions are postponed until nearly the close of the meeting, when the greater part of the shareholders are gone. Large money-votes, extensive powers, unlimited permits to directors to take, in certain matters, “such steps as in their judgment they may deem most expedient,”—these, and the like, are hurried over during the last half-hour, when the tired and impatient remnant will no longer listen to objectors; and when those who have personal ends to serve by outstaying the rest, carry everything their own way. Indeed, in some cases, the arrangements are such as almost ensure the meeting becoming a pro-extension one towards the end. {80} This result is brought about thus:—A certain portion of the general body of proprietors are also proprietors of some subordinate work—some branch line, or canal, or steamboats, which the Company has purchased or leased; and as holders of guaranteed stock, ready to take up further such stock if they can get it, these lean towards projects that are to be executed on the preference-share system. They hold their meeting for the declaration of dividend, &c., as soon as the meeting of the Company at large has been dissolved; and in the same room. Hence it happens that being kept together by the prospect of subsequent business, they gradually, towards the close of the general meeting, come to form the majority of those present; and the few ordinary shareholders who have been patient enough to stay, are outvoted by those having interests distinct from their own and quite at variance with the welfare of the Company.

[5] We may remark in passing, that the practice of making the chairman of the board also chairman of the half-yearly meetings, is a very injudicious one. The directors are the servants of the proprietary; and meet them from time to time to render an account of their stewardship. That the chief of these servants, whose proceedings are about to be examined, should himself act as chief of the jury is absurd. Obviously, the business of each meeting should be conducted by some one independently chosen for the purpose; as the Speaker is chosen by the House of Commons.

And here this allusion to the preference-share system, introduces us to a fact which may fitly close this detail of private interests and questionable practices—a fact serving at once to illustrate the subtlety and concert of railway officialism, and the power it can exert. That this fact may be fully appreciated, it must be premised, that though preference-shares do not usually carry votes, they are sometimes specially endowed with them; and further, that they occasionally remain unpaid up until the expiration of a time after which no further calls can be legally made. In the case in question, a large number of £50 preference-shares had thus long stood with but £5 paid. Promoters of extensions, &c., had here a fine opportunity of getting great power in the Company at small cost; and, as we shall see, they duly availed themselves of it. Already had their party twice tried to thrust the proprietors into a new undertaking of great magnitude. Twice had they entailed on them an expensive and harassing contest. A third time, notwithstanding a professed relinquishment of it, they {81} brought forward substantially the same scheme, and were defeated only by a small majority. The following extracts from the division lists we take from the statement of one of the scrutineers.

To this list, some seven or eight of the Company’s tradesmen, similarly armed, might be added; raising the number of the almost factitious shares held by functionaries to about 5200, and increasing the votes commanded by them, from its present total of 1068 to upwards of 1100. If now we separate the £380,000, which these gentlemen bring to bear against their brother shareholders, into real and nominal; we find that while not quite £120,000 of it is bonâ fide property invested, the remaining £260,000 is nine {82} parts shadow and one part substance. And thus it results, that by virtue of certain stock actually representing but £26,000, these lawyers, engineers, counsel, conveyancers, contractors, bankers, and others interested in the promotion of new schemes, outweigh more than a quarter of a million of the real capital held by shareholders whom these schemes will injure!

Need we any longer wonder, then, at the persistence of Railway Companies in seemingly reckless competition and ruinous extensions? Is not this obstinate continuance of a policy that has year after year proved disastrous, sufficiently explicable on contemplating the many illegitimate influences at work? Is it not manifest that the small organized party always out-manœuvres the large unorganized one? Consider their respective characters and circumstances. Here are the shareholders diffused throughout the kingdom, in towns and country houses; knowing nothing of each other, and too remote to co-operate were they acquainted. Very few of them see a railway journal; and scarcely any know much of railway politics. Necessarily a fluctuating body, only a small number are familiar with the Company’s history—its acts, engagements, policy, management. A great proportion are incompetent to judge of the matters that come before them, and lack decision to act out such judgments as they may form—executors who do not like to take steps involving much responsibility; trustees fearful of interfering with the property under their care, lest possible loss should entail a lawsuit; widows who have never in their lives acted for themselves in any affair of moment; maiden ladies, alike nervous and innocent of all business knowledge; clergymen whose daily discipline has been little calculated to make them acute men of the world; retired tradesmen whose retail transactions have given them small ability for grasping large considerations; servants possessed of {83} accumulated savings and cramped notions; with sundry others of like helpless characters—all of them rendered more or less conservative by ignorance or timidity, and proportionately inclined to support those in authority. To these should be added the temporary shareholders, who, having bought stock on speculation, and knowing that a revolution in the Company is likely to depress prices for a time, have an interest in supporting the board irrespective of the goodness of its policy. Turn now to those whose efforts are directed to railway expansion. Consider the constant pressure of local populations—of small towns, of rural districts, of landowners: all of them eager for branch accommodation; all of them with great and definite advantages in view; few of them conscious of the loss those advantages may entail on others. Remember the influence of legislators, prompted, some by their constituents, some by personal aims, and encouraged by the belief that additional railway facilities are in every case nationally beneficial; and then infer the extent to which as stated to Mr. Cardwell’s committee, Parliament has “excited and urged forward” Companies into rivalry. Note the temptations under which lawyers are placed—the vast profits accruing to them from every railway contest, whether ending in success or failure; and then imagine the range and subtlety of their extension manœuvring. Conceive the urgency of engineers; to the richer of whom more railway-making means more wealth; to the mass of whom more railway-making means daily bread. Estimate the capitalist-power of contractors; whose unemployed plant brings heavy loss; whose plant when employed brings great gain. Then recollect that to lawyers, engineers, and contractors the getting up and executing of new undertakings is a business—a business to which every energy is directed; in which many years of practice have given great skill; and to the facilitation of which, all means tolerated by men of the world are thought justifiable. {84} Finally, consider that the classes interested in carrying out new schemes, are in constant communication, and have every facility for combined action. A great part of them live in London, and most of these have offices at Westminster—in Great George Street, in Parliament Street, clustering round the Legislature. Not only are they thus concentrated—not only are they throughout the year in frequent business intercourse; but during the session they are daily together, in Palace-Yard Hotels, in the lobbies, in the committee-rooms, in the House of Commons itself. Is it any wonder then, that the wide-spread, ill-informed unorganized body of shareholders, standing severally alone, and each pre-occupied with his private affairs, should be continually out-generalled by the comparatively small but active, skilful, combined body opposed to them, whose very occupation is at stake in gaining the victory?

“But how about the directors?” it will perhaps be asked. “How can they be parties to these obviously unwise undertakings? They are themselves shareholders; they gain by whatever benefits the proprietary at large; they lose by whatever injures it. And if without their consent, or rather their agency, no new scheme can be adopted by the Company, the classes interested in fostering railway enterprise are powerless to do harm.”

This belief in the identity of directorial and proprietary interests, is the fatal error commonly made by shareholders. It is this which, in spite of bitter experiences, leads them to be so careless and so trustful. “Their profit is our profit; their loss is our loss; they know more than we do; therefore let us leave the matter to them.” Such is the argument which more or less definitely passes through the shareholding mind—an argument of which the premises are delusive, and the inference disastrous. Let us consider it in detail.

Not to dwell on the disclosures that have in years past {85} been made respecting the share-trafficking of directors, and the large profits realized by it—disclosures which alone suffice to disprove the assumed identity between the interests of board and proprietary—and taking for granted that little, if any, of this now takes place; let us go on to notice the still-prevailing influences which render this apparent community of aims illusive. The immediate interests which directors have in the prosperity of the Company, are often much less than is supposed. Occasionally they possess only the bare qualification of £1000 worth of stock. In some instances even this is partly nominal. Admitting, however, as we do frankly, that in the great majority of cases the full qualification, and much more than the qualification, is held; yet it must be borne in mind that the indirect advantages which a wealthy member of a board may gain from the prosecution of a new undertaking, will often far outweigh the direct injury it will inflict on him by lowering the value of his shares. A board usually consists, to a considerable extent, of gentlemen residing at different points throughout the tract of country traversed by the railway they control: some of them landowners; some merchants or manufacturers; some owners of mines or shipping. Almost always some or all of them are advantaged by a new branch or feeder. Those in close proximity to it, gain either by enhanced value of their lands, or by increased facilities of transit for their commodities. Those at more remote parts of the main line, though less directly interested, are still frequently interested in some degree; for every extension opens up new markets either for produce or raw materials; and if it is one effecting a junction with some other system of railways, the greater mercantile conveniences afforded to directors thus circumstanced, become important. Obviously, therefore, the indirect profits accruing to such from one of these extensions, may more than counterbalance the direct loss upon their railway investments; {86} and though there are, doubtless, men too honourable to let such considerations sway them, yet the generality can scarcely fail to be affected by temptations so strong. Then we have to remember the influences brought to bear upon directors having seats in Parliament. Already these have been noticed; and we recur to them only for the purpose of pointing out that the immediate evil of an increased discount on his £1000 worth of stock, may be to a director of much less consequence than the favours, patronage, connexions, which his aid in carrying a new scheme will bring him. So that here too the supposed identity of interests between directors and shareholders does not hold.

Moreover, this disunion of interests is increased by the system of preference-stock. Were there no other cause in action, the raising of capital for supplementary undertakings, by issuing shares bearing a guaranteed interest of 5, 6, and 7 per cent., would destroy that community of motives supposed to exist between a railway proprietary and its executive. Little as the fact is recognized, it is yet readily demonstrable that by raising one of these mortgages, a Company is forthwith divided into two classes; the one consisting of the richer shareholders, inclusive of the directors, and the other of the poorer shareholders; of which classes the richer one can protect itself from the losses which the poorer one has to bear—nay, can even profit by the losses of the poorer one. This assertion, startling as it will be to many, we will proceed to prove.

When the capital required for a branch or extension is raised by means of guaranteed shares, it is the custom to give each proprietor the option of taking up a number of such shares proportionate to the number of his original shares. By availing himself of this offer, he partially protects himself against any loss which the new undertaking may entail. Should this, not fulfilling the promises of its advocates, diminish in some degree the general {87} dividend; yet, a high dividend on the due proportion of preference-stock, may nearly or quite compensate for this. Hence, it becomes the policy of all who can do so, to take up as many guaranteed shares as they can get. But what happens when the circular announcing this apportionment of guaranteed shares is sent round? Those who possess much stock, being generally capitalists, accept as many as are allotted to them. On the other hand, the smaller holders, constituting as they do the bulk of the Company, having no available funds with which to pay the calls on new shares, are obliged to part with their letters of allotment. What results? When this additional line has been opened, and it turns out, as usual, that its revenue is insufficient to meet the guaranteed dividend on its shares—when the general income of the Company is laid under contribution to make up this guaranteed dividend—when as a consequence, the dividend on the original stock is diminished; then the poorer shareholders who possess original stock only, find themselves losers; while the richer ones, possessing guaranteed shares in addition, find that their gain on preference-dividends nearly or quite counterbalances their loss on general dividends. Indeed, as above hinted, the case is even worse. For as the large share-proprietor who has obtained his proportion of guaranteed stock, is not obliged to retain his original stock—as, if he doubts the paying character of the new undertaking, he can always sell such of his shares as will suffer from it; it is obvious that he may, if he pleases, become the possessor of preference-shares only; and may so obtain a handsome return for his money at the expense of the Company at large and the small shareholders in particular. How far this policy is pursued we do not pretend to say; though the table given some pages back suggests extensive pursuit of it. All which it here concerns us to notice, is, that directors, being mostly men of large means, and being therefore able to avail themselves of this guaranteed {88} stock, are liable to be swayed by motives different from those of the general proprietary. And that they often are so swayed there cannot be a doubt. Without assuming that any of them deliberately intend to benefit at the cost of their co-proprietors; and believing, as we do, that few of them duly perceive that the protection they will have, is a protection not available by the shareholders at large; we think it is a rational deduction from common experience, that this prospect of compensation often turns the scale in the minds of those who are hesitating, and diminishes the opposition of those who disapprove.

Thus, the belief which leads most railway shareholders to place implicit faith in their directors, is an erroneous one. It is not true that there is an identity of interest between the proprietary and its executive. It is not true that the board forms an efficient guard against the intrigues of lawyers, engineers, contractors, and others who profit by railway-making. Contrariwise, its members are not only liable to be drawn from their line of duty by various indirect motives, but by the system of guaranteed shares they are placed under a positive temptation to betray their constituents.

And now what is the proximate origin of these corruptions? and what is the remedy for them? What error in railway legislation is it that has made possible such complicated chicaneries? Whence arises this facility with which interested persons thrust companies into unwise enterprises? We believe there is a very simple answer to these questions. It is an answer, however, which will at first sight seem quite irrelevant; and we doubt not that the corollary we propose drawing from it, will be forthwith condemned by so-called practical men. Nevertheless, we are not without hope of showing, both that the evils laboured under would be excluded were this corollary recognized, and that recognition of it is not only feasible, but would {89} even open the way out of sundry perplexities in which railway legislation is at present involved.

We conceive, then, that the fundamental vice of our system, as hitherto carried out, lies in the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the proprietary contract—the contract tacitly entered into between each shareholder and the body of shareholders with whom he unites; and that the remedy for these evils which have now become so great, lies simply in the enforcement of an equitable interpretation of this contract. In reality the contract is a strictly limited one. In practice it is treated as altogether unlimited. And the thing needed is, that it should be clearly defined and abided by.

Our popular form of government has so habituated us to seeing public questions decided by the voice of the majority, and the system is so manifestly equitable in the cases daily before us, that there has been produced in the general mind, an unhesitating belief that the majority’s right is unbounded. Under whatever circumstances men co-operate, it is held that if difference of opinion arises among them, justice requires that the will of the greater number shall be executed rather than that of the smaller number; be the question at issue what it may. So confirmed is this conviction, that to most this mere suggestion of a doubt will cause astonishment. Yet it needs but a brief analysis to show that the conviction is little better than a political superstition. Instances may readily be selected which prove, by reductio ad absurdum, that the right of a majority is a purely conditional right, valid only within specific limits. Let us take a few. Suppose that at the general meeting of some philanthropic association, it was resolved that in addition to relieving distress the association should employ home-missionaries to preach down popery. Might the subscriptions of Catholics, who had joined the body with charitable views, be rightfully used for this end? Suppose that of the members of a book-club, the greater number, thinking {90} that under existing circumstances rifle-practice is more important than reading, should decide to change the purpose of their union, and to apply the funds in hand for the purchase of powder, ball, and targets. Would the rest be bound by this decision? Suppose that under the excitement of news from Australia, the majority of a Freehold Land Society should determine, not simply to start in a body for the gold diggings, but to use their accumulated capital to provide outfits. Would this appropriation of property be just to the minority? and must these join the expedition? Scarcely any one would venture an affirmative answer even to the first of these questions; much less to the others. And why? Because everyone must perceive that by joining with others, no man can equitably be committed to acts utterly foreign to the purpose for which he joined them. Each of these supposed minorities would properly reply to those seeking to coerce them:—“We combined with you for a defined object; we gave money and time for the furtherance of that object; on all questions thence arising, we tacitly agreed to conform to the will of the greater number; but we did not agree to conform on any other questions. If you induce us to join you by professing a certain end, and then undertake some other end of which we were not apprised, you obtain our support under false pretences; you exceed the expressed or understood compact to which we committed ourselves; and we are no longer bound by your decisions.” Clearly this is the only rational interpretation of the matter. The general principle underlying the right government of every incorporated body, is, that its members contract with each other severally to submit to the will of the majority in all matters concerning the fulfilment of the objects for which they are incorporated; but in no others. To this extent only can the contract hold. For as it is implied in the very nature of a contract, that those entering into it must know what they contract to do; and as those who unite with others for a specified object, {91} cannot contemplate all the unspecified objects which it is hypothetically possible for the union to undertake; it follows that the contract entered into cannot extend to such unspecified objects. And if there exists no expressed or understood contract between the union and its members respecting unspecified objects, then for the majority to coerce the minority into undertaking them, is nothing less than gross tyranny.

Now this almost self-evident principle is wholly ignored, alike in our railway legislation and the proceedings of our companies. Definite as is the purpose with which the promoters of a public enterprise combine, many other purposes not dreamed of at the outset are commonly added to it; and this, apparently, without any suspicion that such a course is unwarrantable, unless taken with the unanimous consent of the proprietors. The unsuspecting shareholder who signed the subscription contract for a line from Greatborough to Grandport, did so under the belief that this line would not only be a public benefit but a good investment. He was familiar with the country. He had been at some trouble to estimate the traffic. And, fully believing that he knew what he was embarking in, he put down his name for a large amount. The line has been made; a few years of prosperity have justified his foresight; when, at some fatal special meeting, a project is put before him for a branch from Littlehomestead to Stonyfield. The will of the board and the intrigues of the interested, overbear all opposition; and in spite of the protests of many who like him see its impolicy, he presently finds himself involved in an undertaking which, when he joined the promoters of the original line, he had not the remotest conception would ever be proposed. From year to year this proceeding is repeated. His dividends dwindle and his shares go down; and eventually the congeries of enterprises to which he is committed, grows so vast that the first enterprise of the series becomes but a small fraction of the whole. Yet it is in virtue of his {92} consent to this first of the series, that all the rest are thrust upon him. He feels that there is injustice somewhere; but, believing in the unlimited right of a majority, fails to detect it. He does not see that when the first of these extensions was proposed, he should have denied the power of his brother-shareholders to implicate him in an undertaking not named in their deed of incorporation. He should have told its proposers that they were perfectly free to form a separate Company for the execution of it; but that they could not rightfully compel dissentients to join in a new undertaking, any more than they could rightfully have compelled dissentients to join in the original. Had such a shareholder united with others for the specified purpose of making railways, he would have had no ground for protest. But he united with others for the specified purpose of making a particular railway. Yet such is the confusion of ideas on the subject, that there is absolutely no difference recognized between these cases!

It will doubtless be alleged in defence of all this, that these secondary enterprises are supplementary to the original one—are in part undertaken for the furtherance of it; professedly minister to its prosperity; cannot, therefore, be regarded as altogether separate enterprises. And it is true that they have this for their excuse. But if it is a sufficient excuse for accessories of this kind, it may be made a sufficient excuse for any accessories whatever. Already, Companies have carried the practice beyond the making of branches and extensions. Already, under the plea of bringing traffic to their lines, they have constructed docks; bought lines of steam-packets; built vast hotels; deepened river-channels. Already, they have created small towns for their workmen; erected churches and schools; salaried clergymen and teachers. Are these warranted on the ground of advancing the Companies’ interests? Then thousands of other undertakings are similarly warranted. If a view to the development of traffic, justifies the making {93} of a branch to some neighbouring coal-mines; then, should the coal-mines be inefficiently worked, the same view would justify the purchase of them—would justify the Company in becoming coal-miner and coal-seller. If anticipated increase of goods and passengers is a sufficient reason for carrying a feeder into an agricultural district; then, it is a sufficient reason for organizing a system of coaches and waggons to run in connexion with this feeder; for making the requisite horse-breeding establishments; for hiring the needful farms; for buying estates; for becoming agriculturists. If it be allowable to purchase steamers plying in conjunction with the railway; it must be allowable to purchase merchant vessels to trade in conjunction with it; it must be allowable to set up a yard for building such vessels; it must be allowable to erect depôts at foreign ports for the receipt of goods; it must be allowable to employ commission agents for collecting such goods; it must be allowable to extend a mercantile organization all over the world. From making its own engines and carriages, a Company may readily progress to manufacturing its own iron and growing its own timber. From giving its employés secular and religious instruction, and providing houses for them, it may go on to supply them with food, clothing, medical attendance, and all the needs of life. Beginning simply as a corporation to make and work a railway between A and B; it may become a miner, manufacturer, merchant, shipowner, canal-proprietor, hotel-keeper, landowner, house-builder, farmer, retail-trader, priest, teacher—an organization of indefinite extent and complication. There is no logical alternative between permitting this, and strictly limiting the corporation to the object first agreed upon. A man joining with others for a specific purpose, must be held to commit himself to that purpose only; or else to all purposes whatever which they may choose to undertake.

But proprietors dissenting from one of these supplementary projects are told that they have the option of {94} selling out. So might the dissentients from a new State-enforced creed be told, that if they did not like it they might leave the country. The one reply is little more satisfactory than the other would be. The opposing shareholder sees himself in possession of a good investment—one perhaps which, as an original subscriber, he ran some risk in obtaining. This investment is about to be endangered by an act not named in the deed of incorporation. And his protests are met by saying, that if he fears the danger he may part with his investment. Surely this choice between two evils scarcely meets his claims. Moreover, he has not even this in any fair sense. It is often an unfavourable time to sell. The very rumour of one of these extensions frequently causes a depreciation of stock. And if many of the minority throw their shares on the market, this depreciation is greatly increased; a fact which further hinders them from selling. So that each is in a dilemma: he has to part with a good investment at much less than its value; or to run the risk of having its value greatly diminished.

The injustice thus inflicted on minorities is, indeed, already recognized in a vague way. The recently-established Standing Order of the House of Lords, that before a Company carry out any new undertaking, three-fourths of the votes of the proprietors shall be recorded in its favour, clearly implies a perception that the usual rule of the majority does not apply. And again, in the case of The Great Western Railway Company versus Rushout, the decision that the funds of the Company could not be used for purposes not originally authorized, without a special legislative permit, involves the doctrine that the will of the greater number is not of unlimited validity. In both these cases, however, it is taken for granted that a State-warrant can justify an act which without it would be unjustifiable. We must take leave to question this. If it be held that an Act of Parliament can make murder proper, or can give rectitude to robbery; it may be consistently held that it {95} can sanctify a breach of contract; but not otherwise. We are not about to enter upon the vexed question of the standard of right and wrong; and to inquire whether it is the function of a government to make rules of conduct, or simply to enforce rules deducible from the laws of social life. We are content, for the occasion, to adopt the expediency-hypothesis; and adopting it, must yet contend that, rightly interpreted, it gives no countenance to this supposed power of a Government to alter the limits of an equitable contract against the wishes of some of the contracting parties. For, as understood by its teachers and their chief disciples, the doctrine of expediency is not a doctrine implying that each particular act is to be determined by the particular consequences that may be expected to flow from it; but that the general consequences of entire classes of acts having been ascertained by induction from experience, rules shall be framed for the regulation of such classes of acts, and each rule shall be uniformly applied to every act coming under it. Our whole ad­min­i­stra­tion of justice proceeds on this principle of invariably enforcing an ordained course, regardless of special results. Were immediate consequences to be considered, the verdict gained by the rich creditor against the poor debtor would generally be reversed; for the starvation of the last is a much greater evil than the inconvenience of the first. Most thefts arising from distress would go unpunished; a large proportion of men’s wills would be cancelled; many of the wealthy would be dispossessed of their fortunes. But it is clearly seen that were judges thus guided by proximate evils and benefits, the ultimate result would be social confusion; that what was immediately expedient would be ultimately inexpedient; and hence the aim at rigorous uniformity, spite of incidental hardships. Now, the binding nature of agreements is one of the commonest and most important principles of civil law. A large part of the causes daily heard in our courts, involve the {96} question, whether in virtue of some expressed or understood contract, some of those concerned are, or are not, bound to certain acts or certain payments. And when it has been decided what the contract implies, the matter is settled. The contract itself is held sacred. This sacredness of a contract being, according to the expediency-hypothesis, justified by the experience of all nations in all times that it is generally beneficial, it is not competent for a Legislature to declare that contracts are violable. Assuming that the contracts are themselves equitable, there is no rational system of ethics which warrants the alteration or dissolving of them, save by the consent of all concerned. If then it be shown, as we think it has been shown, that the contract tacitly entered into by railway shareholders with each other, has definite limits; it is the function of the Government to enforce, and not to abolish, those limits. It cannot decline to enforce them without running counter, not only to all theories of moral obligation, but to its own judicial system. It cannot abolish them without glaring self-stultification.

Returning, now, to the manifold evils of which the cause was asked; it only remains to point out that, were the just construction of the proprietary contract insisted upon, such evils would, in great part, be excluded. The various illicit influences by which Companies are daily betrayed into disastrous extensions, would necessarily be inoperative when such extensions could not be undertaken by them. When such extensions had to be undertaken by independent bodies of shareholders, with no one to guarantee them good dividends, those who are locally and professionally interested would find it a less easy matter than at present to aggrandize themselves at the expense of others.

And now as to the policy of thus modifying railway legislation—the commercial policy we mean. Leaving out of sight the more general social interests, let us glance at {97} the effects on business interests—the proximate instead of the ultimate effects. The implication contained in the last paragraph, that the making of supplementary lines would no longer be so facile, will be thought to prove the disadvantage of any such limit as the one advocated. Many will argue, that to restrict Companies to their original undertakings would fatally cripple railway enterprise. Many others will remark, that, however detrimental to shareholders this extension system may have been, it has manifestly proved beneficial to the public. Both these positions seem to us more than questionable. We will first look at the last of them.

Even were travelling accommodation the sole thing to be considered, it would not be true that prodigality in new lines has been advantageous. The districts supplied have, in many cases, themselves been injured by it. It is shown by the evidence given before the Select Committee on Railway and Canal Bills, that in Lancashire, the existence of competing lines has, in some cases, both diminished the facilities of communication and increased the cost. It is further shown by this evidence, that a town obtaining branches from two antagonist Companies, by-and-by, in consequence of a working arrangement between these Companies, comes to be worse off than if it had but one branch; and Hastings is quoted as an example. It is again shown that a district may be wholly deprived of railway accommodation by granting a superfluity of lines; as in the case of Wilts and Dorset. In 1844–5, the Great Western and the South Western Companies projected rival systems of lines, supplying these and parts of the adjacent counties. The Board of Trade, “asserting that there was not sufficient traffic to remunerate an outlay for two independent railways,” reported in favour of the Great Western schemes; and bills were granted for them: a certain agreement, suggested by the Board of Trade, being at the same time made with the South Western, which, in {98} return for specified advantages, conceded this district to its rival. Notwithstanding this agreement, the South Western, in 1847, projected an extension calculated to take most of the traffic from the Great Western extensions; and in 1848, Parliament, though it had virtually suggested this agreement, and though the Great Western Company had already spent a million and a half in part execution of the new lines, authorized the South Western project. The result was, that the Great Western Company suspended their works; the South Western Company were unable, from financial difficulties, to proceed with theirs; the district has remained for years unaccommodated; and only since the powers granted to the South Western have expired from delay, has the Great Western recommenced its long-suspended undertakings.

And if this undue multiplication of supplementary lines has often directly decreased the facilities of communication, still more has it done this indirectly, by maintaining the cost of travelling on the main lines. Little as the public are conscious of the fact, it is nevertheless true, that they pay for the accommodation of unremunerative districts, by high fares in remunerative districts. Before this reckless branch-making commenced, 8 and 9 per cent. were the dividends returned by our chief railways; and these dividends were rapidly increasing. The maximum dividend allowed by their Acts is 10 per cent. Had there not been unprofitable extensions, this maximum would have been reached many years since; and in the absence of the power to undertake new works, the fact that it had been reached could not have been hidden. Lower rates for goods and passengers would necessarily have followed. These would have caused much additional traffic; and with the aid of the natural increase otherwise going on, the maximum would shortly again have been reached. There can scarcely be a doubt that repetitions of this process would, before now, have reduced the fares and {99} freights on our main lines by at least one-third. This reduction, be it remembered, would have affected those railways which subserve commercial and social intercourse in the greatest degree—would, therefore, have applied to the most important part of the traffic throughout the kingdom. As it is, however, this greater proportion of the traffic has been heavily taxed for the benefit of the smaller proportion. That the tens who travel on branches might have railway communication, the hundreds who travel along main lines have been charged 30, or 40 per cent. extra. Nay, worse: that these few might be accommodated, the many who would have been brought on to the main lines by lower fares have gone unaccommodated. Is it then so clear that undertakings which have been disastrous to shareholders have yet been beneficial to the public?

But it is not only in greater cost of transit that the evil has been felt; it has been felt also in diminished safety. The multiplication of railway accidents, which has of late years drawn so much attention, has been in no inconsiderable degree caused by the extension policy. The relation is not obvious; and we had ourselves no conception that such a relation existed, until the facts illustrative of it were furnished to us by a director who had witnessed the whole process of causation. When preference-share dividends and guarantees began to make large draughts upon half-yearly returns—when original stock was greatly depreciated, and the dividends upon it fell from 9 and 8 per cent. to 4 ¹⁄₂ and 4 and 3 ¹⁄₂, great dissatisfaction necessarily arose among shareholders. There were stormy meetings, motions of censure, and committees of investigation. Retrenchment was the general cry; and retrenchment was carried to a most imprudent extent. Directors with an indignant proprietary to face, and under the fear that their next dividend would be no greater, perhaps less, than the last, dared not to lay out money for the needful repairs. {100} Permanent way, reported to them as requiring to be replaced, was made to serve awhile longer. Old rolling stock was not superseded by new to the proper extent; nor increased in proportion to the demand. Committees, appointed to examine where the expenditure could be cut down, went round discharging a porter here, dispensing with a clerk there, and diminishing the salaries of the officials in general. To such a length was this policy carried, that in one case, to effect a saving of £1200 per annum, the working staff was so crippled as to cause, in the course of a few years, a loss of probably £100,000: such, at least, is the opinion of the gentleman on whose authority we make this statement, who was himself one of the retrenchment committee. What, now, was the necessary result of all this? With the line out of condition; with engines and carriages neither sufficient in number nor in the best working order; with drivers, guards, porters, clerks, and the rest, decreased to the smallest number with which it was possible to work; with inexperienced managers in place of the experienced ones driven away by reduced salaries; what was likely to occur? Was it not certain that an apparatus of means just competent to deal with the ordinary traffic, would be incompetent to deal with extraordinary traffic? that a decimated body of officials under inferior regulation, would fail in the emergencies sure from time to time to occur? that with way and works and rolling stock all below par, there would occasionally be a concurrence of small defects, permitting something to go wrong? Was not a multiplication of accidents inevitable? No one can doubt it. And if we trace back this result step by step to its original cause—the reckless expenditure on new lines—we shall see further reason to doubt whether such expenditure has been as advantageous to the public as is supposed. We shall hesitate to indorse the opinion of the Select Committee on Railway and Canal Bills, that it is {101} desirable “to increase the facility for obtaining lines of local convenience.”

Still more doubtful becomes the alleged benefit accruing to the public from extensions which cause loss to shareholders, when, from considering the question as one of traffic, we turn to consider it as a general commercial question—a question of political economy. Were there no facts showing that the travelling facilities gained were counterbalanced, if not more than counterbalanced, by the travelling facilities lost; we should still contend that the making of branches which do not return fair dividends, is a national evil, and not a national good. The prevalent error committed in studying matters of this nature, consists in looking at them separately, rather than in connexion with other social wants and social benefits. Not only does one of these undertakings, when executed, affect society in various ways, but the effort put forth in the execution of it affects society in various ways; and to form a true estimate, the two sets of results must be compared. The axiom that “action and re-action are equal, and in opposite directions,” is true, not only in mechanics—it is true everywhere. No power can be put forth by a nation to achieve a given end, without producing, for the time being, a corresponding inability to achieve some other end. No amount of capital can be abstracted for one purpose, without involving an equivalent lack of capital for another purpose. Every advantage wrought out by labour, is purchased by the relinquishment of some alternative advantage which that labour might else have wrought out. In judging, therefore, of the benefits flowing from any public undertaking, it is requisite to consider them not by themselves, but as compared with the benefits which the invested capital would otherwise have secured. But how can these relative benefits be measured? it may be asked. Very simply. The rate of interest which the capital will bring as thus respectively {102} employed, is the measure. Money which, if used for a certain end, gives a smaller return than it would give if otherwise used, is used dis­ad­van­tag­eous­ly, not only to its possessors, but to the com­munity. This is a corollary from the commonest principles of political economy—a corollary so obvious that we can scarcely understand how, after the free-trade controversy, a committee, numbering among its members Mr. Bright and Mr. Cardwell, should have overlooked it. Have we not been long ago taught, that in the mercantile world capital goes where it is most wanted—that the business which is at any time attracting capital by unusually high returns, is a business proved by that very fact to be unusually active—that its unusual activity shows society to be making great demands upon it; giving it high profits; wanting its commodities or services more than other commodities or services? Do not comparisons among our railways demonstrate that those paying large dividends are those subserving the public needs in a greater degree than those paying small dividends? and is it not obvious that the efforts of capitalists to get these large dividends led them to supply the greater needs before the lesser needs? Surely, the same law which holds in ordinary commerce, and also holds between one railway investment and another, holds likewise between railway investments and other investments. If the money spent in making branches and feeders is yielding an average return of from 1 to 2 per cent.; while if employed in land-draining or ship-building, it would return 4 or 5 per cent.; it is a conclusive proof that money is more wanted for land-draining and ship-building than for branch-making. And the general conclusions to be drawn are, that that large proportion of railway capital which does not pay the current rate of interest, is capital ill laid out; that if the returns on such proportion were capitalized at the current rate of interest, the resulting sum would represent its real value; and that {103} the difference between this sum and the amount expended, would indicate the national loss—a loss which, on the lowest estimate, would exceed £100,000,000. And however true it may be that the sum invested in unprofitable lines will go on increasing in productiveness; yet as, if more wisely invested, it would similarly have gone on increasing in productiveness, perhaps even at a greater rate, this vast loss must be regarded as a permanent and not as a temporary one.

Again then, we ask, is it so obvious that undertakings which have been disastrous to shareholders have been advantageous to the public? Is it not obvious, rather, that, in this respect, as in others, the interests of shareholders and the public are in the end identical? And does it not seem that instead of recommending “increased facilities for obtaining lines of local convenience,” the Select Committee might properly have reported that the existing facilities are abnormally great, and should be decreased?

There remains still to be considered the other of the two objections above stated as liable to be raised against the proposed interpretation of the proprietary contract—the objection, namely, that it would be a serious hindrance to railway enterprise. After what has already been said, it is scarcely needful to reply, that the hindrance would be no greater than is natural and healthful—no greater than is requisite to hold in check the private interests at variance with public ones. This notion that railway enterprise will not go on with due activity without artificial incentives—that bills for local extensions “rather need encouragement,” as the Committee say, is nothing but a remnant of protectionism. The motive which has hitherto led to the formation of all independent railway companies—the search of capitalists for good investments—may safely be left to form others as fast as local requirements become great enough to promise fair returns—as fast, that is, as local requirements {104} should be satisfied. This would be manifest enough without illustration; but there are facts proving it.

Already we have incidentally referred to the circumstance, that it has of late become common for landowners, merchants, and others locally interested, to get up railways for their own accommodation, which they do not expect to pay satisfactory dividends; and in which they are yet content to invest considerable sums, under the belief that the indirect profits accruing to them from increased facilities of traffic, will outbalance the direct loss. To so great an extent is this policy being carried that, as stated to the Select Committee, “in Yorkshire and Northumberland, where branch lines are being made through mere agricultural districts, the landowners are giving their land for the purpose, and taking shares.” With such examples before us, it cannot rationally be doubted that there will always be capital forthcoming for making local lines as soon as the sum of the calculated benefits, direct and indirect, justifies its expenditure.

“But,” it will be urged, “a branch that would be unremunerative as an independent property, is often remunerative to the company which has made it, in virtue of the traffic it brings to the trunk line. Though yielding meagre returns on its own capital, yet, by increasing the returns on the capital of the trunk line, it compensates, or more than compensates. Were the existing company, however, forbidden to extend its undertaking, such a branch would not be made; and injury would result.” This is all true, with the exception of the last assertion, that such a branch would not be made. Though in its corporate capacity the company owning the trunk line would be unable to execute a work of this nature, there would be nothing to prevent individual shareholders in the trunk line from uniting to execute it; and were the prospects as favourable as is assumed, this course, being manifestly advantageous to individual shareholders, would be pursued by many of them. If, acting in concert with others similarly {105} circumstanced, the owner of £10,000 worth of stock in the trunk line, could aid the carrying out of a proposed feeder promising to return only 2 per cent. on its cost, by taking shares to the extent of £1000, it would answer his purpose to do this, providing the extra traffic it brought would raise the trunk-line dividend by one-fourth per cent. Thus, under a limited proprietary contract, companies would still, as now, foster extensions where they were wanted: the only difference being that, in the absence of guaranteed dividends, due caution would be shown; and the poorer shareholders would not, as at present, be sacrificed to the richer.

In brief, our position is, that whenever, by the efforts of all parties to be advantaged—local landowners, manufacturers, merchants, trunk-line shareholders, &c., the capital for an extension can be raised—whenever it becomes clear to all such, that their indirect profits plus their direct profits will make the investment a paying one; the fact is proof that the line is wanted. On the contrary, whenever the prospective gains to those interested are insufficient to induce them to undertake it, the fact is proof that the line is not wanted so much as other things are wanted, and therefore ought not to be made. Instead, then, of the principle we advocate being objectionable as a check to railway enterprise, one of its merits is, that by destroying the artificial incentives to such enterprise, it would confine it within normal limits.

A perusal of the evidence given before the Select Committee will show that it has sundry other merits, which we have space only to indicate.

It is estimated by Mr. Laing—and Mr. Stephenson, while declining to commit himself to the estimate, “does not believe he has overstated it,”—that out of the £280,000,000 already raised for the construction of our railways, £70,000,000 has been needlessly spent in contests, in duplicate lines, in “the multiplication of an immense number of schemes prosecuted at an almost reckless {106} expense;” and Mr. Stephenson believes that this sum is “a very inadequate rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the actual loss in point of convenience, economy, and other circumstances connected with traffic, which the public has sustained by reason of parliamentary carelessness in legislating for railways.” Under an equitable interpretation of the proprietary contract, the greater part of this would have been avoided.

The competition between rival companies in extension and branch-making, which has already done vast injury, and the effects of which, if not stopped, will, in the opinion of Mr. Stephenson, be such that “property now paying 5 ¹⁄₂ per cent. will in ten years be worth only 3 per cent., and that on twenty-one millions of money”—this competition could never have existed in its intense and deleterious form under the limiting principle we advocate.

Prompted by jealousy and antagonism, our companies have obtained powers for 2000 miles of railway which they have never made. The millions thus squandered in surveys and parliamentary contests—“food for lawyers and engineers”—would nearly all have been saved, had each supplementary line been obtainable only by an independent body of proprietors with no one to shield them from the penalties of reckless scheming.

It is admitted that the branches and feeders constructed from competitive motives have not been laid out in the best directions for the public. To defeat, or retaliate upon, opponents, having been one of the ends—often the chief end—in making them, routes have been chosen especially calculated to effect this end; and the local traffic has in consequence been ill provided for. Had these branches and feeders, however, been left to the enterprise of their respective districts, aided by such other enterprise as they could attract, the reverse would have been the fact; seeing that on the average, in these smaller cases as in the greater ones, the routes which most accommodate the public must be the routes most profitable to projectors.

Were the illegitimate competition in extension-making {107} done away, there would remain between companies just that normal competition which is advantageous to all. It is not true, as is alleged, that there cannot exist between railways a competition analogous to that which exists between traders. The evidence of Mr. Saunders, the secretary of the Great Western Company, proves the contrary. He shows that where the Great Western and the North Western railways communicate with the same towns, as at Birmingham and Oxford, each has tacitly adopted the fare which the other was charging; and that while there is thus no competition in fares, there is competition in speed and accommodation. The results are, that each takes that portion of the traffic which, in virtue of its position and local circumstances, naturally falls to its share; that each stimulates the other to give the greatest advantages it can afford; and that each keeps the other in order by threatening to take away its natural share of the traffic if, by ill-behaviour or inefficiency, it counterbalances the special advantages it offers. Now, this is just the form which competition eventually assumes between traders. After it has been ascertained by underselling what is the lowest remunerative price at which any commodity can be sold, the general results are, that that becomes the established price; that each trader is content to supply those only who, from proximity or other causes, naturally come to him; and that only when he treats his customers ill, need he fear that they will inconvenience themselves by going elsewhere for their goods.

Is there not, then, pressing need for an amendment of the laws affecting the proprietary contract—an amendment which shall transform it from an unlimited into a limited contract; or rather—not transform it into such, but recognize it as such? If there be truth in our argument, the absence of any limitation has been the chief cause of the manifold evils of our railway ad­min­i­stra­tion. The share-trafficking {108} of directors; the complicated intrigues of lawyers, engineers, contractors, and others; the betrayal of proprietaries—all the complicated corruptions which we have detailed, have primarily arisen from it, have been made possible by it. It has rendered travelling more costly and less safe than it would have been; and while apparently facilitating traffic, has indirectly hindered it. By fostering antagonism, it has led to the ill laying-out of supplementary lines; to the wasting of enormous sums in useless parliamentary contests; to the loss of an almost incredible amount of national capital in the making of railways for which there is no due requirement. Regarded in the mass, the investments of shareholders have been reduced by it to less than half the average productiveness which such investments should possess; and, as all authorities admit, railway property is, even now, kept below its real value, by the fear of future depreciations consequent on future extensions. Considering, then, the vastness of the interests at stake—considering that the total capital of our companies will soon reach £300,000,000—considering, on the one hand, the immense number of persons owning this capital (many of them with no incomes but what are derived from it), and, on the other hand, the great extent to which the community is concerned, both directly as to its commercial facilities, and indirectly as to the economy of its resources—considering all this, it becomes extremely important that railway property should be placed on a secure footing, and railway enterprise confined within normal bounds. The change is demanded alike for the welfare of shareholders and the public. No charge of over-legislation can be brought against it. It is simply an extension to joint-stock contracts, of the principle applied to all other contracts; it is merely a fulfilment of the State’s judicial function in cases hitherto neglected; it is nothing but a better ad­min­i­stra­tion of justice.

POSTSCRIPT.—That the proprietary contract should be {109} strictly ad­hered to, and no under­tak­ings be­yond those specified in the deed of in­cor­por­a­tion entered upon, is a doctrine unpalatable to those in authority. A friend who, as chairman of one of our great railway-companies, has been familiar with railway-politics and parliamentary usages in connexion with them, contends that such a restrictive interpretation would be unworkable; and, further, that the legislature would never allow itself to be shackled in the implied way.

That he is right in the last of these assertions I think highly probable. In face of the currently accepted dogma that an Act of Parliament can do anything, it is foolish to expect that Parliament would, by ethical considerations, be restrained from breaking contracts and authorizing the breaking of contracts. When we see this dogma habitually acted upon to the extent of trampling under foot State-guarantees (as in the case of those who purchased land under the Irish Encumbered Estates Act, or as in the case of agreements originally entered into with companies to confer on them certain powers under certain conditions) it would be absurd to suppose that any tender regard for the claims of dissentient proprietors would deter the ruling body from cancelling the understanding under which shareholders consented to co-operate. Men must be much more conscientious than they are before any such check is likely to be effective.

To the other objection—that such a restriction would entail an unworkable complication—I entirely demur. That its consequences would be awkward under our present form of railway-ad­min­i­stra­tion may be true; but it is also true that had such a restriction been insisted on, another and better form of railway-ad­min­i­stra­tion would have arisen. This will probably be thought an unwarranted assertion. Nevertheless I make it with some confidence, since the form of ad­min­i­stra­tion to which I refer is one which was, in a different guise, contemplated when railways {110} were originally authorized. To those whose only conception of the mode of carrying on railway-traffic is that derived from their daily observations, this will be an in­comp­re­hen­si­ble statement; but those who remember how railways were originally intended to be used will know what I mean.

Novel schemes are always more or less shaped by old habits. At the time when the first railways were authorized, the experience men had of coach-travelling on high roads, affected in various ways the structures of the new appliances and the natures of the new arrangements. The railway gauge was determined by the width between the wheels of a stage-coach. Early first-class carriages were made to appear like the central parts of three stage-coaches joined together: preserving their convex panels and curved outlines, and frequently having, on the centre one, the words “Tria juncta in uno.” The inside of the first-class carriage was fitted up to resemble the inside of a stage-coach; and the original second-class carriage, having bare wooden seats over which, on vertical iron rods, was supported a roof allowing the wind and rain to blow through from side to side, was so designed as to be scarcely more comfortable than the outside of a coach. For some years the guard had a seat on the outside, at the end of a carriage, as on a coach; and for many years the luggage, covered with tarpaulin, was placed on the roofs of carriages, as on the outsides of coaches. Once more the booking-offices were at first like the booking-offices for stage-coaches—places where passengers entered their names to secure seats. Little as the fact is now recognized, this kinship of ideas extended to the contemplated arrangements for working. Men thought that traffic on railways might be carried on after the same manner as traffic on high roads. It was assumed that on lines of rails, where the passing of vehicles going in the same direction is impracticable, the system pursued might be like that in use on high roads, {111} where vehicles can pass and re-pass in any direction and join or leave the stream at will. Does the reader ask proof of this? The proof lies in the fact, well-known to those who were adult in the early days of railways, that in the office or waiting-room of every railway-station was fixed up a table of tolls, like that which was fixed up at every toll-gate; but in this case specifying the rate chargeable per mile for all things carried—passengers, horses, cattle, goods, &c. This table of tolls implied that it was within the power of others besides the company to run vehicles on the company’s line, and pay them at such and such rates for the privilege of doing so—a privilege which, so far as I know, was never made use of, for the sufficient reason that it would have been impossible to carry on business amid the confusion which would have resulted.

But while this arrangement, in the form implied, would have been impracticable, it foreshadows an arrangement which would have been practicable; and one which would have grown up had each railway company been limited to the undertaking specified in its deed of incorporation. After experience of inefficient co-operation, when so many independent bodies owning branches and extensions had to adjust their train services, &c., there would, in all probability, have been formed what we may call running-companies or traffic-companies, separate from the original railway-companies. Each one of these would have proposed to the companies owning the various main lines, extensions, and branches, within some large district conveniently delimited, to undertake the working of their various lines: either taking them severally on lease, or agreeing to give a specified share of the net returns annually received, or agreeing to pay certain tolls for passengers and goods. Under such an arrangement the original companies, standing in the position of landlords, would have had for their chief business to keep the embankments, cuttings, bridges, permanent way, stations, &c., in working {112} order; while the running-companies, standing in the position of tenants, but owning the rolling-stock, would have had for their business to conduct the passenger and goods traffic throughout the whole area, with power to arrange the workings of the various subdivisions of the system in a harmonious manner. Clearly, if there is an advantage in division of labour in other cases, there would have been an advantage in this case. The fixed works constituting each of these inter-connected railways would have been kept in more perfect repair, had preservation of them been the exclusive business of the companies owning them; while the running-companies, with nothing to attend to beyond the keeping in order of their rolling-stock and the management of train-services &c. would have done this more satisfactorily.

A further reason for believing that better results would have been achieved than are now achieved, is that under such circumstances there would have been no absorption of directors’ time in carrying on railway-wars and getting new acts of parliament—a business which, under the existing system, has chiefly occupied the attention of boards.

The enforcement of equitable arrangements is often fraught with unanticipated benefits; and there seems reason to think that unanticipated benefits would have resulted in this case also.

{113}

THE MORALS OF TRADE.

[First published in The Westminster Review for April 1859.]

We are not about to repeat, under the above title, the often-told tale of adulterations: albeit, were it our object to deal with this familiar topic, there are not wanting fresh materials. It is rather the less-observed and less-known dishonesties of trade, to which we would here draw attention. The same lack of con­scien­tious­ness which shows itself in the mixing of starch with cocoa, in the dilution of butter with lard, in the colouring of confectionery with chromate of lead and arsenite of copper, must of course come out in more concealed forms; and these are nearly, if not quite, as numerous and as mischievous.

It is not true, as many suppose, that only the lower classes of the commercial world are guilty of fraudulent dealing. Those above them are to a great extent blameworthy. On the average, men who deal in bales and tons differ but little in morality from men who deal in yards and pounds. Illicit practices of every form and shade, from venial deception up to all but direct theft, may be brought home to the higher grades of our commercial world. Tricks innumerable, lies acted or uttered, elaborately-devised frauds, are prevalent: {114} many of them established as “customs of the trade;” nay, not only established, but defended.

Passing over, then, the much-reprobated shopkeepers, of whose delinquencies most people know something, let us turn our attention to the delinquencies of the classes above them in the mercantile scale.

The business of wholesale houses—in the clothing-trades at least—is chiefly managed by a class of men called “buyers.” Each wholesale establishment is usually divided into several departments; and at the head of each department is placed one of these functionaries. A buyer is a partially-independent sub-trader. At the beginning of the year he is debited with a certain share of the capital of his employers. With this capital he trades. From the makers he orders for his department such goods as he thinks will find a market; and for the goods thus bought he obtains as large a sale as he can among the retailers of his connexion. The accounts show at the end of the year what profit has been made on the capital over which he has command; and, according to the result, his engagement is continued—perhaps at an increased salary—or he is discharged.

Under such circumstances, bribery would hardly be expected. Yet we learn, on unquestionable authority, that buyers habitually bribe and are bribed. Giving presents, as a means of obtaining custom, is an established practice between them and all with whom they have dealings. Their connexions among retailers they extend by treating and favours; and they are themselves influenced in their purchases by like means. It might be presumed that self-interest would in both cases negative this. But apparently, no very obvious sacrifice results from yielding to such influences. When, as usually happens, there are many manufacturers producing articles of like goodness at the same prices, or many buyers between whose commodities and whose terms there is little room for choice, there exists no {115} motive to purchase of one rather than another; and then the temptation to take some immediate bonus turns the scale. Whatever be the cause, however, the fact is testified to us alike in London and the provinces. By manufacturers, buyers are sumptuously entertained for days together, and are plied throughout the year with hampers of game, turkeys, dozens of wine, etc.: nay, they receive actual money-bribes; sometimes, as we hear from a manufacturer, in the shape of bank-notes, but more commonly in the shape of discounts on the amounts of their purchases. The extreme prevalence—universality we might say—of this system, is proved by the evidence of one who, disgusted as he is, finds himself inextricably entangled in it. He confessed to us that all his transactions were thus tainted. “Each of the buyers with whom I deal,” he said, “expects an occasional bonus in one form or other. Some require the bribe to be wrapped up; and some take it without disguise. To an offer of money, this one replies—‘Oh, I don’t like that sort of thing,’ but nevertheless, does not object to money’s-worth; while my friend So-and-so, who promises to bring me a large trade this season, will, I very well know, look for one per cent. discount in cash. The thing is not to be avoided. I could name sundry buyers who look askance at me, and never will inspect my goods; and I have no doubt about the cause—I have not bought their patronage.” And then our informant appealed to another of the trade, who agreed in the assertion that in London their business could not be done on any other terms. So greedy do some of these buyers become, that their perquisites absorb a great part of the profits, and make it a question whether it is worth while to continue the dealing with them. Next, as above hinted, there comes a like history of transactions between buyers and retailers—the bribed being now the bribers. One of those above referred to as habitually expecting douceurs, said to the giver of them, whose testimony we have just repeated—“I’ve spent pounds and pounds over —— {116} (naming a large tailor), and now I think I have gained him over.” To which confession this buyer added the complaint, that his house did not make him any allowance for sums thus disbursed.

Under the buyer, who has absolute control of his own department in a wholesale house, come sundry assistants, who transact the business with retail traders; much as retail trader’s assistants transact the business with the general public. These higher-class assistants, working under the same pressure as the lower, are similarly unscrupulous. Liable to prompt dismissal as they are for failure in selling; gaining higher positions as they do in proportion to the quantities of goods they dispose of at profitable rates; and finding that no objections are made to any dishonest artifices they use, but rather that they are applauded for them; these young men display a scarcely credible demoralization. As we learn from those who have been of them, their duplicity is unceasing—they speak almost continuous falsehood; and their tricks range from the simplest to the most Machiavellian. Take a few samples. When dealing with a retailer, it is an habitual practice to bear in mind the character of his business; and to delude him respecting articles of which he has least experience. If his shop is in a neighbourhood where the sales are chiefly of inferior goods (a fact ascertained from the traveller), it is inferred that, having a comparatively small demand for superior goods, he is a bad judge of them; and advantage is taken of his ignorance. Again, it is usual purposely to present samples of cloths, silks, etc., in such order as to disqualify the perceptions. As, when tasting different foods or wines, the palate is disabled by something strongly flavoured, from appreciating the more delicate flavour of another thing afterwards taken; so with the other organs of sense, a temporary disability follows an excessive stimulation. This holds not only with the eyes in judging of colours, but also, as we are told by one who has been in the trade, it holds with the fingers in judging of textures; and cunning {117} salesmen are in the habit of thus partially paralysing the customers’ perceptions, and then selling second-rate articles as first-rate ones. Another common manœuvre is that of raising a false belief of cheapness. Suppose a tailor is laying in a stock of broad cloths. He is offered a bargain. Three pieces are put before him—two of good quality, at, perhaps, 14s. per yard; and one of much inferior quality, at 8s. per yard. These pieces have been purposely a little tumbled and creased, to give an apparent reason for a pretended sacrifice upon them. And the tailor is then told that he may have these nominally-damaged cloths as “a job lot,” at 12s. per yard. Misled by the appearances into a belief of the professed sacrifice; impressed, moreover, by the fact that two of the pieces are really worth considerably more than the price asked; and not sufficiently bearing in mind that the great inferiority of the third just balances this; the tailor probably buys; and he goes away with the comfortable conviction that he has made a specially-advantageous purchase, when he has really paid the full price for every yard. A still more subtle trick has been described to us by one who himself made use of it, when engaged in one of these wholesale-houses—a trick so successful that he was often sent for to sell to customers who could be induced to buy by none other of the assistants, and who ever afterwards would buy only of him. His policy was to seem extremely simple and honest, and, during the first few purchases, to exhibit his honesty by pointing out defects in the things he was selling; and then, having gained the customer’s confidence, he proceeded to pass off upon him inferior goods at superior prices. These are a few out of the various manœuvres in constant practice. Of course there is a running accompaniment of falsehoods, uttered as well as acted. It is expected of the assistant that he will say whatever is needed to effect a sale. “Any fool can sell what is wanted,” said a master in reproaching a shopman for not having persuaded a customer to buy something quite unlike that which he asked {118} for. And the unscrupulous mendacity thus required by employers, and encouraged by example, grows to a height of depravity that has been described to us in words too strong to be repeated. Our informant was obliged to relinquish his position in one of these establishments, because he could not lower himself to the required depth of degradation. “You don’t lie as though you believe what you say,” observed one of his fellow-assistants. And this was uttered as a reproach!

As those subordinates who have fewest qualms of conscience are those who succeed the best, are soonest promoted to more remunerative posts, and have therefore the greatest chances of establishing businesses of their own; it may be inferred that the morality of the heads of these establishments, is much on a par with that of their employés. The habitual malpractices of wholesale houses, confirm this inference. Not only, as we have just seen, are assistants under a pressure impelling them to deceive purchasers respecting the qualities of the goods they buy, but purchasers are also deceived in respect to the quantities; and that, not by an occasional unauthorized trick, but by an organized system, for which the firm itself is responsible. The general practice is to make up goods, or to have them made up, in lengths that are shorter than they profess to be. A piece of calico nominally thirty-six yards long, never measures more than thirty-one yards—is understood throughout the trade to measure only so much. And the long-accumulating delinquencies which this custom indicates—the successive diminutions of length, each introduced by some adept in dishonesty, and then imitated by his competitors—are now being daily carried to a still greater extent, wherever they are not likely to be immediately detected. Articles that are sold in small bundles, knots, packets, or such forms as negative measurement at the time of sale, are habitually deficient in quantity. Silk-laces called six quarters, or fifty-four {119} inches, really measure four quarters, or thirty-six inches. Tapes were originally sold in grosses containing twelve knots of twelve yards each; but these twelve-yard-knots are now cut of all lengths, from eight yards down to five yards, and even less—the usual length being six yards. That is to say, the 144 yards which the gross once contained, has now in some cases dwindled down to 60 yards. In widths, as well as in lengths, this deception is practised. French cotton-braid, for instance (French only in name), is made of different widths; which are respectively marked 5, 7, 9, 11, etc.: each figure indicating the number of threads of cotton which the width includes, or rather should include, but does not. For those which should be marked 5 are marked 7; and those which should be marked 7 are marked 9: out of three samples from different houses shown to us by our informant, only one contained the alleged number of threads. Fringe, again, which is sold wrapped on card, will often be found two inches wide at the end exposed to view, but will diminish to one inch at the end next the card; or perhaps the first twenty yards will be good, and all the rest, hidden under it, will be bad. These frauds are committed unblushingly, and as a matter of business. We have ourselves read in an agent’s order-book, the details of an order, specifying the actual lengths of which the articles were to be cut, and the much greater lengths to be marked on the labels. And we have been told by a manufacturer who was required to make up tapes into lengths of fifteen yards, and label them “warranted 18 yards,” that when he did not label them falsely, his goods were sent back to him; and that the greatest concession he could obtain was to be allowed to send them without labels.

It is not to be supposed that in their dealings with manufacturers, these wholesale-houses adopt a code of morals differing much from that which regulates their dealings with retailers. The facts prove it to be much the {120} same. A buyer for instance (who exclusively conducts the purchases of a wholesale-house from manufacturers) will not unfrequently take from a first-class maker, a small supply of some new fabric, on the pattern of which much time and money have been spent; and this new-pattern fabric he will put into the hands of another maker, to have copied in large quantities. Some buyers, again, give their orders orally, that they may have the opportunity of afterwards repudiating them if they wish; and in a case narrated to us, where a manufacturer who had been thus deluded, wished on a subsequent occasion to guarantee himself by obtaining the buyer’s signature to his order, he was refused it. For other unjust acts of wholesale-houses, the heads of these establishments are, we presume, responsible. Small manufacturers working with insufficient capital, and in times of depression not having the wherewith to meet their engagements, are often obliged to become dependants on the wholesale-houses with which they deal; and are then cruelly taken advantage of. One who has thus committed himself, has either to sell his accumulated stock at a great sacrifice—thirty to forty per cent. below its value—or else to mortgage it; and when the wholesale-house becomes the mortgagee, the manufacturer has little chance of escape. He is obliged to work at the wholesale-dealer’s terms; and ruin almost certainly follows. This is especially the case in the silk-hosiery business. As was said to us by one of the larger silk-hosiers, who had watched the destruction of many of his smaller brethren—“They may be spared for a time as a cat spares a mouse; but they are sure to be eaten up in the end.” And we can the more readily credit this statement from having found that a like policy is pursued by some provincial curriers in their dealings with small shoe-makers; and also by hop-merchants and maltsters in their dealings with small publicans. We read that in Hindostan the ryots, when crops fall short, borrow from the Jews to buy seed; and {121} once in their clutches are doomed. It seems that our commercial world can furnish parallels.

Of another class of wholesale-traders—those who supply grocers with foreign and colonial produce—we may say that though, in consequence of the nature of their business, their malpractices are less numerous and multiform, as well as less glaring, they bear the same stamp as the foregoing. Unless it is to be supposed that sugar and spices are moral antiseptics as well as physical ones, it must be expected that wholesale dealers in them will transgress much as other wholesale dealers do, in those directions where the facilities are greatest. And the truth is that, both in the qualities and quantities of the articles they sell, they take advantage of the retailers. The descriptions they give of their commodities are habitually mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions. Samples sent round to their customers are characterized as first-rate when they are really second-rate. The travellers are expected to endorse these untrue statements; and unless the grocer has adequate keenness and extensive knowledge, he is more or less deceived. In some cases, indeed, no skill will save him. There are frauds that have grown up little by little into customs of the trade, which the retailer must submit to. In the purchase of sugar, for example, he is imposed on in respect alike of the goodness and the weight. The history of the dishonesty is this. Originally the tare allowed by the merchant on each hogshead, was 14 per cent. of the gross weight. The actual weight of the wood of which the hogshead was made, was at that time about 12 per cent. of the gross weight. And thus the trade-allowance left a profit of 2 per cent. to the buyer. Gradually, however, the hogshead has grown thicker and heavier; until now, instead of amounting to 12 per cent. of the gross weight, it amounts to 17 per cent. As the allowance of 14 per cent. still continues, the result is that the retail grocer loses 3 per cent.: to the extent of 3 per cent. he buys wood {122} in place of sugar. In the quality of the sugar, he is deluded by the practice of giving him a sample from the best part of the hogshead. During its voyage from Jamaica or elsewhere, the contents of a hogshead undergo a slow drainage. The molasses, of which more or less is always present, filters from the uppermost part of the mass of sugar to the lowermost part; and this lowermost part, technically known as the “foots,” is of darker colour and smaller value. The quantity of it contained in a hogshead varies greatly; and the retailer, receiving a false sample, has to guess what the quantity of “foots” may be; and, to his cost, often under-estimates it. As will be seen from the following letter, copied from the Public Ledger for the 20th Oct., 1858, these grievances, more severe even than we have represented them, are now exciting an agitation.

“To the Retail Grocers of the United Kingdom.

“Gentlemen,—The time has arrived for the trade at once to make a move for the revision of tares on all raw sugars. Facts prove the evil of the present system to be greatly on the increase. We submit a case as under, and only one out of twenty. On the 30th August, 1858, we bought 3 hogsheads of Barbados, mark

TG

K

“We make a claim for £2. 1s. 3d.; we are told by the wholesale grocer there is no redress.

“There is another evil which the retail grocer has to contend with, that is, the mode of sampling raw sugars: the foots are excluded from the merchants’ samples. Facts will prove that in thousands of hogsheads of Barbados this season there is an average of 5 cwt. of foots in each; we have turned out some with 10 cwt., which are at least 5s. per cwt. less value than sample, and in these cases we are told again there is no redress.

“These two causes are bringing hundreds of hard-working men to ruin {123} and will bring hundreds more unless the trade take it up, and we implore them to unite in obtaining so important a revision.

“We are, Gentlemen, your obedient servants,

“WALKER and STAINES.[6]

“Birmingham, October 19, 1858.”

[6] The abuses described in this letter have now, we believe, been abolished.

A more subtle method of imposition remains to be added. It is the practice of sugar-refiners to put moist, crushed sugar into dried casks. During the time that elapses before one of these casks is opened by the retailer, the desiccated wood has taken up the excess of water from the sugar; which is thus brought again into good condition. When the retailer, finding that the cask weighs much more than was allowed as tare by the wholesale dealer, complains to him of this excess, the reply is—“Send it up to us, and we will dry it and weigh it, as is the custom of the trade.”

Without further detailing these malpractices, of which the above examples are perhaps the worst, we will advert only to one other point in the transactions of these large houses—the drawing-up of trade-circulars. It is the habit of many wholesale dealers to send round to their customers, periodic accounts of the past transactions, present condition, and prospects of the markets. Serving as checks on each other, as they do, these documents are prevented from swerving very widely from the truth. But it is scarcely to be expected that they should be quite honest. Those who issue them, being in most cases interested in the prices of the commodities referred to in their circulars, are swayed by their interests in the representations they make respecting the probabilities of the future. Far-seeing retailers are on their guard against this. A large provincial grocer, who thoroughly understands his business, said to us—“As a rule, I throw trade-circulars on the fire.” And that this estimate of their trustworthiness is not unwarranted, we gather from the expressions of those engaged in other businesses. From two leather-dealers, one in the country and one in London, we have heard the same complaint {124} against the circulars published by houses in their trade, that they are misleading. Not that they state untruths; but that they produce false impressions by leaving out facts which they should have stated.

In illustrating the morality of manufacturers, we shall confine ourselves to one class—those who work in silk. And it will be the most convenient method of arranging facts, to follow the silk through its various stages; from its state when imported, to its state when ready for the wearer.

Bundles of raw silk from abroad—not uncommonly weighted with rubbish, stones, or rouleaux of Chinese copper coin, to the loss of the buyer—are disposed of by auction. Purchases are made on behalf of the silk-dealers by “sworn brokers;” and the regulation is, that these sworn brokers shall confine themselves to their functions as agents. From a silk-manufacturer, however, we learn that they are currently understood to be themselves speculators in silk, either directly or by proxy; and that as thus personally interested in prices, they become faulty as agents. We give this, however, simply as a prevailing opinion, for the truth of which we do not vouch.

The silk bought by the London dealer, he sends into the manufacturing districts to be “thrown;” that is, to be made into thread fit for weaving. In the established form of bargain between the silk-dealer and the silk-throwster, we have a strange instance of an organized and recognized deception; which has seemingly grown out of a check on a previous deception. The throwing of silk is necessarily accompanied by some waste, from broken ends, knots, and fibres too weak to wind. This waste varies in different kinds of silk from 3 per cent. to 20 per cent.: the average being about 5 per cent. The per-centage of waste being thus variable, it is obvious that in the absence of restraint, a dishonest silk-throwster might abstract a portion of the silk; and, on returning the rest to the dealer, might plead {125} that the great diminution in weight had resulted from the large amount of loss in the process of throwing. Hence there has arisen a system, called “working on cost,” which requires the throwster to send back to the dealer the same weight of silk which he receives: the meaning of the phrase being, we presume, that whatever waste the throwster makes must be at his own cost. Now, as it is impossible to throw silk without some waste—at least 3 per cent., and ordinarily 5 per cent.—this arrangement necessitates a deception; if, indeed, that can be called a deception which is tacitly understood by all concerned. The silk has to be weighted. As much as is lost in throwing, has to be made up by some foreign substance introduced. Soap is largely used for this. In small quantity, soap is requisite to facilitate the running of the threads in the process of manufacture; and the quantity is readily increased. Sugar also is used. And by one means or other, the threads are made to absorb enough matter to produce the desired weight. To this system all silk-throwsters are obliged to succumb; and some of them carry it to a great extent, as a means of hiding either carelessness or something worse.

The next stage through which silk passes, is that of dyeing. Here, too, impositions have grown chronic and general. In times past, as we learn from a ribbon-manufacturer, the weighting by water was the chief dishonesty. Bundles returned from the dyer’s, if not manifestly damp, still, containing moisture enough to make up for a portion of the silk that had been kept back; and precautions had to be taken to escape losses thus entailed. Since then, however, there has arisen a method of deception which leaves this far behind—that of employing heavy dyes. The following details have been given us by a silk-throwster. It is now, he says, some five-and-thirty years since this method was commenced. Before that time silk lost a considerable part of its weight in the copper. The ultimate fibre of silk is coated, in issuing from the spinneret of the silk-worm, with {126} a film of varnish which is soluble in boiling water. In dyeing, therefore, this film, amounting to 25 per cent. of the entire weight of the silk, is dissolved off; and the silk is rendered that much lighter. So that originally, for every sixteen ounces of silk sent to the dyer’s, only twelve ounces were returned. Gradually, however, by the use of heavy dyes, this result has been reversed. The silk now gains in weight; and sometimes to a scarcely credible extent. According to the requirement, silk is sent back from the dyer’s of any weight, from twelve ounces to the pound up to forty ounces to the pound. The original pound of silk, instead of losing four ounces, as it naturally would, is actually, when certain black dyes are used, made to gain as much as twenty-four ounces! Instead of 25 per cent. lighter, it is returned 150 per cent. heavier—is weighted with 175 per cent. of foreign matter! Now as, during this stage of its manufacture, the transactions in silk are carried on by weight, it is manifest that in the introduction and development of this system, we have a long history of frauds. At present all in the trade are aware of it, and on their guard against it. Like other modes of adulteration, in becoming established and universal, it has ceased to be profitable to any one. But it still serves to indicate the morals of those concerned.

The thrown and dyed silk passes into the hands of the weaver; and here again we come upon dishonesties. Manufacturers of figured silks sin against their fellows by stealing their patterns. The laws which have been found necessary to prevent this species of piracy, show that it has been carried to a great extent. Even now it is not prevented. One who has himself suffered from it, tells us that manufacturers still get one another’s designs by bribing the workmen. In their dealings with “buyers,” too, some manufacturers resort to deceptions: perhaps tempted to do so by the desire to compensate themselves for the heavy tax paid in treating, etc. Goods which have already been seen {127} and declined by other buyers, are brought before a subsequent one with artfully-devised appearances of secrecy, accompanied by professions that these goods have been specially reserved for his inspection: a manœuvre by which an unwary man is sometimes betrayed. That the process of production has its delusions, scarcely needs saying. In the ribbon-trade, for example, there is a practice called “top-ending;” that is, making the first three yards good, and the rest (which is covered when rolled up) of bad or loose texture—80 “shutes” to the inch instead of 108. And then there comes the issuing of imitations made of inferior materials—textile adulterations as we may call them. This practice of debasement, not an occasional but an established one, is carried to a surprising extent, and with surprising rapidity. Some new fabric, first sold at 7s. 6d. per yard, is supplanted by successive counterfeits; until at the end of eighteen months a semblance of it is selling at 4s. 3d. per yard. Nay, still greater depreciations of quality and price take place—from 10s. down to 3s., and even 2s. per yard. Until at length the badness of these spurious fabrics becomes so conspicuous, that they are unsaleable; and there ensues a reaction, ending either in the reintroduction of the original fabric, or in the production of some novelty to supply its place.

Among our notes of malpractices in trade, retail, wholesale, and manufacturing, we have many others that must be passed over. We cannot here enlarge on the not uncommon trick of using false trade-marks; or of imitating another maker’s wrappers. We must be satisfied with simply referring to the doings of apparently-reputable houses, which purchase goods known to be dishonestly obtained. And we are obliged to refrain from particularizing certain established arrangements, existing under cover of the highest respectability, which seem intended to facilitate these nefarious transactions. The frauds we have detailed {128} are but samples of a state of things which it would take a volume to describe in full.

The further instances of trading-immorality which it seems desirable here to give, are those which carry with them a certain excuse: showing as they do how insensibly, and almost irresistibly, men are thrust into vicious practices. Always, no doubt, some utterly unconscientious trader is the first to introduce a new form of fraud. He is by-and-by followed by others who wear their moral codes but loosely. The more upright traders are continually tempted to adopt this questionable device which those around them are adopting. The greater the number who yield, and the more familiar the device becomes, the more difficult is it for the remainder to stand out against it. The pressure of competition upon them becomes more and more severe. They have to fight an unequal battle: debarred as they are from one of the sources of profit which their antagonists possess. And they are finally almost compelled to follow the lead of the rest. Take for example what has happened in the candle-trade. As all know, the commoner kinds of candles are sold in bunches, supposed to weigh a pound each. Originally, the nominal weight corresponded with the real weight. But at present the weight is habitually short by an amount varying from half an ounce to two ounces—is sometimes depreciated 12 ¹⁄₂ per cent. If, now, an honest chandler offers to supply a retailer at, say, six shillings for the dozen pounds, the answer he receives is—“Oh, we get them for five-and-eightpence.” “But mine,” replies the chandler, “are of full weight; while those you buy at five-and-eightpence are not.” “What does that matter to me?” the retailer rejoins—“a pound of candles is a pound of candles: my customers buy them in the bunch, and won’t know the difference between yours and another’s.” And the honest chandler, being everywhere met with this argument, finds that he must either make his bunches of short weight, or give up business. Take another case, which, {129} like the last, we have direct from the mouth of one who has been obliged to succumb. It is that of a manufacturer of elastic webbing, now extensively used in making boots, etc. From a London house with which he dealt largely, this manufacturer recently received a sample of webbing produced by some one else, accompanied by the question, “Can you make us this at —— per yard?” (naming a price below that at which he had before supplied them); and hinting that if he could not do so they must go elsewhere. On pulling to pieces the sample (which he showed to us), this manufacturer found that sundry of the threads which should have been of silk were of cotton. Indicating this fact to those who sent him the sample, he replied that, if he made a like substitution, he could furnish the fabric at the price named; and the result was that he eventually did thus furnish it. He saw that if he did not do so, he must lose a considerable share of his trade. He saw further, that if he did not at once yield, he would have to yield in the end; for that other elastic-webbing-makers would one after another engage to produce this adulterated fabric at correspondingly diminished prices; and that when at length he stood alone in selling an apparently-similar article at a higher price, his business would leave him. This manufacturer we have the best reasons for knowing to be a man of fine moral nature, both generous and upright; and yet we here see him obliged, in a sense, to implicate himself in one of these processes of vitiation. It is a startling assertion, but it is none the less a true one, that those who resist these corruptions often do it at the risk of bankruptcy; sometimes the certainty of bankruptcy. We do not say this simply as a manifest inference from the conditions, as above described. We say it on the warrant of instances which have been given to us. From one brought up in his house, we have had the history of a draper who, carrying his conscience into his shop, refused to commit the current frauds of the trade. He would not represent his {130} goods as of better quality than they really were; he would not say that patterns were just out, when they had been issued the previous season; he would not warrant to wash well, colours which he knew to be fugitive. Refraining from these and the like malpractices of his competitors; and, as a consequence, daily failing to sell various articles which his competitors would have sold by force of lying; his business was so unremunerative that he twice became bankrupt. And in the opinion of our informant, he inflicted more evil upon others by his bankruptcies, than he would have done by committing the usual trade-dishonesties. See, then, how complicated the question becomes; and how difficult to estimate the trader’s criminality. Often—generally indeed—he has to choose between two wrongs. He has tried to carry on his business with strict integrity. He has sold none but genuine articles, and has given full measure. Others in the same business adulterate or otherwise delude, and are so able to undersell him. His customers, not adequately appreciating the superiority in the quality or quantity of his goods, and attracted by the apparent cheapness at other shops, desert him. Inspection of his books proves the alarming fact that his diminishing returns will soon be insufficient to meet his engagements, and provide for his increasing family. What then must he do? Must he continue his present course; stop payment; inflict heavy losses on his creditors; and, with his wife and children, turn out into the streets? Or must he follow the example of his competitors; use their artifices; and give his customers the same apparent advantages? The last not only seems the least detrimental to himself, but also may be considered the least detrimental to others. Moreover, the like is done by men regarded as respectable. Why should he ruin himself and family in trying to be better than his neighbours? He will do as they do.

Such is the position of the trader; such is the reasoning by which he justifies himself; and it is hard to visit him {131} with harsh condemnation. Of course this statement of the case is by no means universally true. There are businesses in which, competition being less active, the excuse for falling into corrupt practices does not hold; and here, indeed, we find corrupt practices much less prevalent. Many traders, too, have obtained connexions which secure to them adequate returns without descending to small rogueries; and they have no defence if they thus degrade themselves. Moreover, there are the men—commonly not prompted by necessity but by greed—who introduce these adulterations and petty frauds; and on these should descend unmitigated indignation: both as being themselves criminals without excuse, and as causing criminality in others. Leaving out, however, these comparatively small classes, most traders by whom the commoner businesses are carried on, must receive a much more qualified censure than they at first sight seem to deserve. On all sides we have met with the same conviction, that for those engaged in the ordinary trades there are but two courses—either to adopt the practices of their competitors, or to give up business. Men in different occupations and in different places—men naturally conscientious, who manifestly chafed under the degradations they submitted to, have one and all expressed to us the sad belief that it is impossible to carry on trade with strict rectitude. Their concurrent opinion, independently given by each, is that the scrupulously honest man must go to the wall.

But that it has been, during the past year, frequently treated by the daily press, we might here enter at some length on the topic of banking-delinquencies. As it is, we may presume all to be familiar with the facts, and shall limit ourselves to making a few comments.

In the opinion of one whose means of judging have been second to those of few, the directors of joint-stock-banks have rarely been guilty of direct dishonesty. Admitting {132} notorious exceptions, the general fact appears to be that directors have had no immediate interests in furthering these speculations which have proved so ruinous to depositors and shareholders; but have usually been among the greatest sufferers. Their fault has rather been the less flagitious, though still grave fault, of indifference to their responsibilities. Often with very inadequate knowledge they have undertaken to trade with property belonging in great part to needy people. Instead of using as much care in the investment of this property as though it were their own, many of them have shown culpable recklessness: either themselves loaning the entrusted capital without adequate guarantee, or else passively allowing their colleagues to do this. Sundry excuses may doubtless be made for them. The well-known defects of a corporate conscience, caused by divided responsibility, must be remembered in mitigation. And it may also be pleaded for such delinquents that if shareholders, swayed by reverence for mere wealth and position, choose as directors, not the most intelligent, the most experienced, and those of longest-tried probity, but those of largest capital or highest rank, the blame must not be cast solely on the men so chosen, but must be shared by the men who choose them. Nay, further, it must fall on the public as well as on shareholders; seeing that this unwise selection of directors is in part determined by the known bias of depositors. But after all allowances have been made, it must be admitted that these bank-administrators who risk the property of their clients by lending it to speculators, are near akin in morality to the speculators themselves. As these speculators risk other men’s money in undertakings which they hope will be profitable; so do the directors who lend them the money. If these last plead that the money thus lent is lent with the belief that it will be repaid with good interest, the first may similarly plead that they expect their investment to return the borrowed capital along with a {133} handsome profit. In each case the transaction is one of which the evil consequences, if they come, fall more largely on others than on the actors. And though it may be contended, on behalf of the director, that what he does is done chiefly for the benefit of his constituents, whereas the speculator has in view only his own benefit; it may be replied that the director’s blameworthiness is not the less because he took a rash step with a comparatively weak motive. The truth is that when a bank-director lends the capital of shareholders to those to whom he would not lend his own capital, he is guilty of a breach of trust. In tracing the gradations of crime, we pass from direct robbery to robbery one, two, three, or more degrees removed. Though a man who speculates with other people’s money is not chargeable with direct robbery, he is chargeable with robbery one degree removed: he deliberately stakes his neighbour’s property, intending to appropriate the gain, if any, and to let his neighbour suffer the loss, if any: his crime is that of contingent robbery. And hence any one who, standing like a bank-director in the position of trustee, puts the money with which he is entrusted into a speculator’s hands, must be called an accessory to contingent robbery.

If so grave a condemnation is to be passed on those who lend trust-money to speculators, as well as on the speculators who borrow it, what shall we say of the still more delinquent class who obtain loans by fraud—who not only pawn other men’s property when obtained, but obtain it under false pretences? For how else than thus must we describe the doings of those who raise money by accommodation-bills? When A and B agree, the one to draw and the other to accept a bill of £1000 for “value received;” while in truth there has been no sale of goods between them, or no value received; the transaction is not simply an embodied lie, but it becomes thereafter a living and active lie. Whoever discounts the bill, does so in the {134} belief that B, having become possessed of £1000 worth of goods, will, when the bill falls due, have either the £1000 worth of goods or some equivalent, with which to meet it. Did he know that there were no such goods in the hands of either A or B, and no other property available for liquidating the bill, he would not discount it—he would not lend money to a man of straw without security. Had A taken to the bank a forged mortgage-deed, and obtained a loan upon it, he would not have committed a greater wrong. Practically, an accommodation-bill is a forgery. It is an error to suppose that forgery is limited to the production of documents that are physically false—that contain signatures or other symbols which are not what they appear to be: forgery, properly understood, equally includes the production of documents that are morally false. What constitutes the crime committed in forging a bank-note? Not the mere mechanical imitation. This is but a means to the end; and, taken alone, is no crime at all. The crime consists in deluding others into the acceptance of what seems to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of so much money, but which actually represents nothing. It matters not whether the delusion is effected by copying the forms of the letters and figures, as in a forged bank-note, or by copying the form of expression, as in an accommodation-bill. In either case a semblance of value is given to that which has no value; and it is in giving this false appearance of value that the crime consists. It is true that generally, the acceptor of an accommodation-bill hopes to be able to meet it when due. But if those who think this exonerates him, will remember the many cases in which, by the use of forged documents, men have obtained possession of moneys which they hoped presently to replace, and were nevertheless judged guilty of forgery, they will see that the plea is insufficient. We contend, then, that the manufacturers of accommodation-bills should be classed as forgers. That if the law so classed them, much good would result, we are {135} not prepared to say. Several questions present themselves:—Whether such a change would cause inconvenience, by negativing the many harmless transactions carried on under this fictitious form by solvent men? Whether making it penal to use the words “value received,” unless there had been value received, would not simply originate an additional class of bills in which these words were omitted? Whether it would be an advantage if bills bore on their faces proofs that they did or did not represent actual sales? Whether a restraint on undue credit would result, when bankers and discounters saw that certain bills coming to them in the names of speculative or unsubstantial traders, were avowed accommodation-bills? But these are questions we need not go out of our way to discuss. We are here concerned only with the morality of the question.

Duly to estimate the greatness of the evils indicated, however, we must bear in mind both that the fraudulent transactions thus entered into are numerous, and that each generally becomes the cause of others. The original lie is commonly the parent of further lies, which again give rise to an increasing progeny; and so on for successive generations, multiplying as they descend. When A and B find their £1000 bill about to fall due, and the expected proceeds of their speculation not forthcoming—when they find, as they often do, either that the investment has resulted in a loss instead of a gain; or that the time for realizing their hoped-for profits, has not yet come; or that the profits, if there are any, do not cover the extravagances of living which, in the meantime, they have sanguinely indulged in—when, in short, they find that the bill cannot be taken up; they resort to the expedient of manufacturing other bills with which to liquidate the first. And while they are about it, they usually think it will be as well to raise a somewhat larger sum than is required to meet their outstanding engagements. Unless it happens that great success enables {136} them to redeem themselves, this proceeding is repeated, and again repeated. So long as there is no monetary crisis, it continues easy thus to keep afloat; and, indeed, the appearance of prosperity which is given by an extended circulation of bills in their names, bearing respectable indorsements, creates a confidence in them which renders the obtainment of credit easier than at first. And where, as in some cases, this process is carried to the extent of employing men in different towns throughout the kingdom, and even in distant parts of the world, to accept bills, the appearances are still better kept up, and the bubble reaches a still greater development. As, however, all these transactions are carried on with borrowed capital, on which interest has to be paid; as, further, the maintenance of this organized fraud entails constant expenses, as well as occasional sacrifices; and as it is in the very nature of the system to generate reckless speculation; the fabric of lies is almost certain ultimately to fall; and, in falling, to ruin or embarrass others besides those who had given credit.

Nor does the evil end with the direct penalties from time to time inflicted on honest traders. There is also a grave indirect penalty which they suffer from the system. These forgers of credit are habitually instrumental in lowering prices below their natural level. To meet emergencies, they are obliged every now and then to sell goods at a loss: the alternative being immediate stoppage. Though with each such concern, this is but an occasional incident, yet, taking the whole number of them connected with any one business, it results that there are generally some who are making sacrifices—generally some who are unnaturally depressing the market. In short, the capital fraudulently obtained from some traders is, in part, dissipated in rendering the business of other traders deficiently remunerative: often to their serious embarrassment.

If, however, the whole truth must be said, the condemnation visited on these commercial vampires is not to be {137} confined to them; but is in some degree deserved by a much more numerous class. Between the penniless schemer who obtains the use of capital by false pretences, and the upright trader who never contracts greater liabilities than his estate will liquidate, there lie all gradations. From businesses carried on entirely with other people’s capital, obtained by forgery, we pass to businesses in which there is a real capital of one-tenth and a credit-capital of nine-tenths; to other businesses in which the ratio of real to fictitious capital is somewhat greater; and so on until we reach the very extensive class of men who trade but a little beyond their means. To get more credit than would be given were the state of the business known, is in all cases the aim; and the cases in which this credit is partially unwarranted, differ only in degree from those in which it is wholly unwarranted. As most are beginning to see, the prevalence of this indirect dishonesty has not a little to do with our commercial disasters. Speaking broadly, the tendency is for every trader to hypothecate the capital of other traders, as well as his own. And when A has borrowed on the strength of B’s credit; B on the strength of C’s; and C on the strength of A’s—when, throughout the trading world, each has made engagements which he can meet only by direct or indirect aid—when everybody is wanting help from some one else to save him from falling; a crash is certain. The punishment of a general un­con­scien­tious­ness may be postponed, but it is sure to come eventually.

The average commercial morality cannot, of course, be accurately depicted in so brief a space. On the one hand, we have been able to give but a few typical instances of the malpractices by which trade is disgraced. On the other hand, we have been obliged to present these alone; unqualified by the large amount of honest dealing throughout which they are dispersed. While, by accumulating such evidences, the indictment may be made heavier; by diluting them {138} with the immense mass of equitable transactions daily carried on, the verdict would be mitigated. After making every allowance, however, we fear that the state of things is very bad. Our impression on this point is due less to the particular facts above given, than to the general opinion expressed by our informants. On all sides we have found the result of long personal experience, to be the conviction that trade is essentially corrupt. In tones of disgust or discouragement, reprehension or derision, according to their several natures, men in business have one after another expressed or implied this belief. Omitting the highest mercantile classes, a few of the less common trades, and those exceptional cases where an entire command of the market has been obtained, the uniform testimony of competent judges is, that success is incompatible with strict integrity. To live in the commercial world it appears necessary to adopt its ethical code: neither exceeding nor falling short of it—neither being less honest nor more honest. Those who sink below its standard are expelled; while those who rise above it are either pulled down to it or ruined. As, in self-defence, the civilized man becomes savage among savages; so, it seems that in self-defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become as little scrupulous as his competitors. It has been said that the law of the animal creation is—“Eat and be eaten;” and of our trading community it may similarly be said that its law is—Cheat and be cheated. A system of keen competition, carried on, as it is, without adequate moral restraint, is very much a system of commercial cannibalism. Its alternatives are—Use the same weapons as your antagonists or be conquered and devoured.

Of questions suggested by these facts, one of the most obvious is—Are not the prejudices which have ever been entertained against trade and traders, thus fully justified? do not these meannesses and dishonesties, and the moral degradation they imply, warrant the disrespect shown to men in business? A prompt affirmative answer will {139} probably be looked for; but we very much doubt whether it should be given. We are rather of opinion that these delinquencies are products of the average character placed under special conditions. There is no reason for assuming that the trading classes are intrinsically worse than other classes. Men taken at random from higher and lower ranks, would, most likely, if similarly circumstanced, do much the same. Indeed the mercantile world might readily recriminate. Is it a solicitor who comments on their misdoings? They may quickly silence him by referring to the countless dark stains on the reputation of his fraternity. Is it a barrister? His frequent practice of putting in pleas which he knows are not valid, and his established habit of taking fees for work he does not perform, make his criticism somewhat suicidal. Does the condemnation come through the press? The condemned may remind those who write, of the fact that it is not quite honest to utter a positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to pen glowing eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend while slighting the good one of an enemy; and they may further ask whether those who, at the dictation of an employer, write what they disbelieve, are not guilty of the serious offence of adulterating public opinion. Moreover, traders might contend that many of their delinquencies are thrust on them by the injustice of their customers. They, and especially drapers, might point to the fact that the habitual demand for an abatement of price, is made in utter disregard of their reasonable profits; and that, to protect themselves against attempts to gain by their loss, they are obliged to name prices greater than those they intend to take. They might also urge that the straits to which they are often brought by non-payment of large sums due from their wealthier customers, is itself a cause of their malpractices: obliging them, as it does, to use all means, illegitimate as well as legitimate, for getting the wherewith to meet their engagements. And then, after proving that those without {140} excuse show this disregard of other men’s claims, traders might ask whether they, who have the excuse of having to contend with a merciless competition, are alone to be blamed if they display a like disregard in other forms. Nay, even to the guardians of social rectitude—members of the legislature—they might use the tu quoque argument: asking whether bribery of a customer’s servant, is any worse than bribery of an elector? or whether the gaining of suffrages by clap-trap hustings-speeches, containing insincere professions adapted to the taste of the constituency, is not as bad as getting an order for goods by delusive representations respecting their quality? No; few if any classes are free from immoralities which are as great, relatively to the temptations, as these we have been exposing. Of course they will not be so petty or so gross where the circumstances do not prompt pettiness or grossness; nor so constant and organized where the class-conditions have not tended to make them habitual. But, taken with these qualifications, we think that much might be said for the proposition that the trading classes, neither better nor worse intrinsically than other classes, are betrayed into their flagitious habits by external causes.

Another question, here naturally arising, is—Are not these evils growing worse? Many of the facts we have cited seem to imply that they are. Yet there are many other facts which point as distinctly the other way. In weighing the evidence, we must bear in mind that the greater public attention at present paid to such matters, is itself a source of error—is apt to generate the belief that evils now becoming recognized are evils that have recently arisen; when in truth they have merely been hitherto disregarded, or less regarded. It has been clearly thus with crime, with distress, with popular ignorance; and it is very probably thus with trading-dishonesties. As it is true of individual beings, that their height in the scale of creation may be measured by the degree of their self-consciousness; {141} so, in a sense, it is true of societies. Advanced and highly-organized societies are distinguished from lower ones by the evolution of something that stands for a social self-consciousness. Among ourselves there has, happily, been of late years a remarkable growth of this social self-consciousness; and we believe that to this is chiefly ascribable the impression that commercial malpractices are increasing. Such facts as have come down to us respecting the trade of past times, confirm this view. In his Complete English Tradesman, Defoe mentions, among other manœuvres of retailers, the false lights which they introduced into their shops, for the purpose of giving delusive appearances to their goods. He comments on the “shop rhetorick,” the “flux of falsehoods,” which tradesmen habitually uttered to their customers; and quotes their defence as being that they could not live without lying. He says, too, that there was scarce a shopkeeper who had not a bag of spurious or debased coin, from which he gave change whenever he could; and that men, even the most honest, triumphed in their skill in getting rid of bad money. These facts show that the mercantile morals of that day were, at any rate, not better than ours; and if we call to mind the numerous Acts of Parliament passed in old times to prevent frauds of all kinds, we perceive the like implication. As much may, indeed, be safely inferred from the general state of society. When, reign after reign, governments debased the coinage, the moral tone of the middle classes could scarcely have been higher than now. Among generations whose sympathy with the claims of fellow-creatures was so weak, that the slave-trade was not only thought justifiable, but the initiator of it was rewarded by permission to record the feat in his coat of arms, it is hardly possible that men respected the claims of their fellow-citizens more than at present. Times characterized by an ad­min­i­stra­tion of justice so inefficient, that there were in London nests of criminals who defied the law, and on all high roads robbers who eluded it, cannot {142} have been distinguished by just mercantile dealings. While, conversely, an age which, like ours, has seen so many equitable social changes thrust on the legislature by public opinion, is very unlikely to be an age in which the transactions between individuals have been growing more inequitable. Yet, on the other hand, it is undeniable that many of the dishonesties we have described are of modern origin. Not a few of them have become established during the last thirty years; and others are even now arising. How are these seeming contradictions to be reconciled?

The reconciliation is not difficult. It lies in the fact that while the direct frauds have been diminishing, the indirect frauds have been increasing: alike in variety and in number. And this admission we take to be consistent with the opinion that the standard of commercial morals is higher than it was. For if we omit, as excluded from the question, the penal restraints—religious and legal—and ask what is the ultimate moral restraint to the aggression of man on man, we find it to be—sympathy with the pain inflicted. Now the keenness of the sympathy, depending on the vividness with which this pain is realized, varies with the conditions of the case. It may be active enough to check misdeeds which will manifestly cause great suffering, and yet not be active enough to check misdeeds which will cause but slight annoyance. While sufficiently acute to prevent a man from doing that which will entail immediate injury on a known person, it may not be sufficiently acute to prevent him from doing that which will entail remote injuries on unknown persons. And we find the facts to agree with this deduction, that the moral restraint varies according to the clearness with which the evil consequences are conceived. Many a one who would shrink from picking a pocket does not scruple to adulterate his goods; and he who never dreams of passing base coin will yet be a party to joint-stock-bank deceptions. Hence, as we say, the multiplication of the more subtle and complex forms of {143} fraud, is consistent with a general progress in morality; provided it is accompanied with a decrease in the grosser forms of fraud.

But the question which most concerns us is, not whether the morals of trade are better or worse than they have been? but rather—why are they so bad? Why in this civilized state of ours, is there so much that betrays the cunning selfishness of the savage? Why, after the careful inculcations of rectitude during education, comes there in after-life all this knavery? Why, in spite of all the exhortations to which the commercial classes listen every Sunday, do they next morning recommence their evil deeds? What is this so potent agency which almost neutralizes the discipline of education, of law, of religion?

Various subsidiary causes that might be assigned, must be passed over, that we may have space to deal with the chief cause. In an exhaustive statement, something would have to be said on the credulity of consumers, which leads them to believe in representations of impossible advantages; and something, too, on their greediness, which, ever prompting them to look for more than they ought to get, encourages sellers to offer delusive bargains. The increased difficulty of living consequent on growing pressure of population, might perhaps come in as a part cause; and that greater cost of bringing up a family, which results from the higher standard of education, might be added. But the chief inciter of these trading malpractices is intense desire for wealth. And if we ask—Why this intense desire? the reply is—It results from the indiscriminate respect paid to wealth.

To be distinguished from the common herd—to be somebody—to make a name, a position—this is the universal ambition; and to accumulate riches is alike the surest and the easiest way of fulfilling this ambition. Very early in life all learn this. At school, the court paid to one whose {144} parents have called in their carriage to see him, is conspicuous; while the poor boy whose insufficient stock of clothes implies the small means of his family, soon has burnt into his memory the fact that poverty is contemptible. On entering the world, the lessons which may have been taught about the nobility of self-sacrifice, the reverence due to genius, the admirableness of high integrity, are quickly neutralized by experience: men’s actions proving that these are not their standards of respect. It is soon perceived that while abundant outward marks of deference from fellow-citizens may almost certainly be gained by directing every energy to the accumulation of property, they are but rarely to be gained in any other way; and that even in the few cases in which they are otherwise gained, they are not given with entire unreserve, but are commonly joined with a more or less manifest display of patronage. When, seeing this, the young man further sees that while the acquisition of property is possible with his mediocre endowments, the acquirement of distinction by brilliant discoveries, or heroic acts, or high achievements in art, implies faculties and feelings which he does not possess; it is not difficult to understand why he devotes himself heart and soul to business.

We do not mean to say that men act on the consciously reasoned-out conclusions thus indicated; but we mean that these conclusions are the unconsciously-formed products of their daily experiences. From early childhood the sayings and doings of all around them have generated the idea that wealth and respectability are two sides of the same thing. This idea, growing with their growth, and strengthening with their strength, becomes at last almost what we may call an organic conviction. And this organic conviction it is which prompts the expenditure of all their energies in money-making. We contend that the chief stimulus is not the desire for the wealth itself, but for the applause and position which the wealth brings. And in this belief, we {145} find ourselves at one with various intelligent traders with whom we have talked on the matter. It is incredible that men should make the sacrifices, mental and bodily, which they do, merely to get the material benefits which money purchases. Who would undertake an extra burden of business for the purpose of getting a cellar of choice wines for his own drinking? He who does it, does it that he may have choice wines to give his guests and gain their praises. What merchant would spend an additional hour at his office daily, merely that he might move into a house in a more fashionable quarter? He submits to the tax not to gain health and comfort but for the sake of the increased social consideration which the new house will bring him. Where is the man who would lie awake at nights devising means of increasing his income, in the hope of being able to provide his wife with a carriage, were the use of the carriage the sole consideration? It is because of the éclat which the carriage will give, that he enters on these additional anxieties. So manifest, so trite, indeed, are these truths, that we should be ashamed of insisting on them, did not our argument require it.

For if the desire for that homage which wealth brings, is the chief stimulus to these strivings after wealth, then the giving of this homage (when given, as it is, with but little discrimination) is the chief cause of the dishonesties into which these strivings betray mercantile men. When the shopkeeper, on the strength of a prosperous year and favourable prospects, has yielded to his wife’s persuasions, and replaced the old furniture with new, at an outlay greater than his income covers—when, instead of the hoped-for increase, the next year brings a decrease in his returns—when he finds that his expenses are out-running his revenue; then does he fall under the strongest temptation to adopt some newly-introduced adulteration or other malpractice. When, having by display gained a certain recognition, the wholesale trader begins to give dinners {146} appropriate only to those of ten times his income, with other expensive entertainments to match—when, having for a time carried on this style at a cost greater than he can afford, he finds that he cannot discontinue it without giving up his position; then is he most strongly prompted to enter into larger transactions, to trade beyond his means, to seek undue credit, to get into that ever-complicating series of misdeeds which ends in disgraceful bankruptcy. And if these are the facts then is it an unavoidable conclusion that the blind admiration which society gives to mere wealth, and the display of wealth, is the chief source of these multitudinous immoralities.

Yes, the evil is deeper than appears—draws its nutriment from far below the surface. This gigantic system of dishonesty, branching out into every conceivable form of fraud, has roots which run underneath our whole social fabric, and, sending fibres into every house, suck up strength from our daily sayings and doings. In every dining-room a rootlet finds food, when the conversation turns on So-and-so’s successful speculations, his purchase of an estate, his probable worth—on this man’s recent large legacy, and the other’s advantageous match; for being thus talked about is one form of that tacit respect which men struggle for. Every drawing-room furnishes nourishment in the admiration awarded to costliness—to silks that are “rich,” that is, expensive; to dresses that contain an enormous quantity of material, that is, are expensive; to laces that are hand-made, that is, expensive; to diamonds that are rare, that is, expensive; to china that is old, that is, expensive. And from scores of small remarks and minutiæ of behaviour which, in all circles, hourly imply how completely the idea of respectability involves that of costly externals, there is drawn fresh pabulum.

We are all implicated. We all, whether with self-approbation or not, give expression to the established feeling. Even he who disapproves this feeling finds himself unable to {147} treat virtue in threadbare apparel with a cordiality as great as that which he would show to the same virtue endowed with prosperity. Scarcely a man is to be found who would not behave with more civility to a knave in broadcloth than to a knave in fustian. Though for the deference which they have shown to the vulgar rich, or the dishonestly successful, men afterwards compound with their consciences by privately venting their contempt; yet when they again come face to face with these imposing externals covering worthlessness, they do as before. And so long as imposing worthlessness gets the visible marks of respect, while the disrespect felt for it is hidden, it naturally flourishes.

Hence, then, is it that men persevere in these evil practices which all condemn. They can so purchase a homage which, if not genuine, is yet, so far as appearances go, as good as the best. To one whose wealth has been gained by a life of frauds, what matters it that his name is in all circles a synonym of roguery? Has he not been conspicuously honoured by being twice elected mayor of his town? (we state a fact) and does not this, joined to the personal consideration shown him, outweigh in his estimation all that is said against him; of which he hears scarcely anything? When, not many years after the exposure of his inequitable dealing, a trader attains to the highest civic distinction which the kingdom has to offer, and that, too, through the instrumentality of those who best know his delinquency, is not the fact an encouragement to him, and to all others, to sacrifice rectitude to aggrandizement? If, after listening to a sermon that has by implication denounced the dishonesties he has been guilty of, the rich ill-doer finds, on leaving church, that his neighbours cap to him, does not this tacit approval go far to neutralize the effect of all he has heard? The truth is that with the great majority of men, the visible expression of social opinion is far the most efficient of incentives and restraints. Let any one who wishes to estimate the strength {148} of this control, propose to himself to walk through the streets in the dress of a dustman, or hawk vegetables from door to door. Let him feel, as he probably will, that he had rather do something morally wrong than commit such a breach of usage and suffer the resulting derision. He will then better estimate how powerful a curb to men is the open disapproval of their fellows, and how, conversely, the outward applause of their fellows is a stimulus surpassing all others in intensity. Fully realizing which facts, he will see that the immoralities of trade are in great part traceable to an immoral public opinion.

Let none infer, from what has been said, that the payment of respect to wealth rightly acquired and rightly used, is deprecated. In its original meaning, and in due degree, the feeling which prompts such respect is good. Primarily, wealth is the sign of mental power; and this is always respectable. To have honestly-acquired property, implies intelligence, energy, self-control; and these are worthy of the homage that is indirectly paid to them by admiring their results. Moreover, the good ad­min­i­stra­tion and increase of inherited property, also requires its virtues; and therefore demands its share of approbation. And besides being applauded for their display of faculty, men who gain and increase wealth are to be applauded as public benefactors. For he who, as manufacturer or merchant, has, without injustice to others, realized a fortune, is thereby proved to have discharged his functions better than those who have been less successful. By greater skill, better judgment, or more economy than his competitors, he has afforded the public greater advantages. His extra profits are but a share of the extra produce obtained by the same outlay: the other share going to the consumers. And similarly, the landowner who, by judicious investment of money, has increased the value (that is, the productiveness) of his estate, has thereby added to the stock of national capital. By all means, then, {149} let the right acquisition and proper use of wealth have their due share of admiration.

But that which we condemn as the chief cause of commercial dishonesty, is the indiscriminate admiration of wealth—an admiration that has little or no reference to the character of the possessor. When, as generally happens, the external signs are reverenced where they signify no internal worthiness—nay, even where they cover internal unworthiness; then does the feeling become vicious. It is this idolatry which worships the symbol apart from the thing symbolized, that is the root of all these evils we have been exposing. So long as men pay homage to those social benefactors who have grown rich honestly, they give a wholesome stimulus to industry; but when they accord a share of their homage to those social malefactors who have grown rich dishonestly, then do they foster corruption—then do they become accomplices in all these frauds of commerce.

As for remedy, it manifestly follows that there is none save a purified public opinion. When that abhorrence which society now shows to direct theft, is shown to theft of all degrees of indirectness; then will these mercantile vices disappear. When not only the trader who adulterates or gives short measure, but also the merchant who over-trades, the bank-director who countenances an exaggerated report, and the railway-director who repudiates his guarantee, come to be regarded as of the same genus as the pickpocket, and are treated with like disdain; then will the morals of trade become what they should be.

We have little hope, however, that any such higher tone of public opinion will shortly be reached. The present condition of things appears to be, in great measure, a necessary accompaniment of our present phase of progress. Throughout the civilized world, especially in England, and above all in America, social activity is almost wholly expended in material development. To subjugate Nature {150} and bring the powers of production and distribution to their highest perfection, is the task of our age, and probably will be the task of many future ages. And as in times when national defence and conquest were the chief desiderata, military achievement was honoured above all other things; so now, when the chief desideratum is industrial growth, honour is most conspicuously given to that which generally indicates the aiding of industrial growth. The English nation at present displays what we may call the commercial diathesis; and the undue admiration for wealth appears to be its concomitant—a relation still more conspicuous in the worship of “the almighty dollar” by the Americans. And while the commercial diathesis, with its ac­com­pa­ny­ing standard of distinction, continues, we fear the evils we have been delineating can be but partially cured. It seems hopeless to expect that men will distinguish between that wealth which represents personal superiority and benefits done to society, from that which does not. The symbols, the externals, have all the world through swayed the masses, and must long continue to do so. Even the cultivated, who are on their guard against the bias of associated ideas, and try to separate the real from the seeming, cannot escape the influence of current opinion. We must therefore content ourselves with looking for a slow amelioration.

Something, however, may even now be done by vigorous protest against adoration of mere success. And it is important that it should be done, considering how this vicious sentiment is being fostered. When we have one of our leading moralists preaching, with increasing vehemence, the doctrine of sanctification by force—when we are told that while a selfishness troubled with qualms of conscience is contemptible, a selfishness intense enough to trample down everything in the unscrupulous pursuit of its ends is worthy of admiration—when we find that if it be sufficiently great, power, no matter of what kind or how directed, is held up for our reverence; we may fear lest the prevalent applause {151} of mere success, together with the commercial vices which it stimulates, should be increased rather than diminished. Not at all by this hero-worship grown into brute-worship is society to be made better, but by exactly the opposite—by a stern criticism of the means through which success has been achieved, and by according honour to the higher and less selfish modes of activity.

And happily the signs of this more moral public opinion are showing themselves. It is becoming a tacitly-received doctrine that the rich should not, as in bygone times, spend their lives in personal gratification; but should devote them to the general welfare. Year by year is the improvement of the people occupying a larger share of the attention of the upper classes. Year by year are they voluntarily devoting more energy to furthering the material and mental progress of the masses. And those among them who do not join in the discharge of these high functions, are beginning to be looked upon with more or less contempt by their own order. This latest and most hopeful fact in human history—this new and better chivalry—promises to evolve a higher standard of honour, and so to ameliorate many evils: among others those which we have detailed. When wealth obtained by illegitimate means inevitably brings nothing but disgrace—when to wealth rightly acquired is accorded only its due share of homage, while the greatest homage is given to those who consecrate their energies and their means to the noblest ends; then may we be sure that, along with other ac­com­pa­ny­ing benefits, the morals of trade will be greatly purified.

{152}

PRISON-ETHICS.

[First published in The British Quarterly Review for July 1860.]

The two antagonist theories of morals, like many other antagonist theories, are both right and both wrong. The a priori school has its truth; the a posteriori school has its truth; and for the proper guidance of conduct, there must be due recognition of both. On the one hand, it is asserted that there is an absolute standard of rectitude; and, respecting certain classes of actions, it is rightly so asserted. From the fundamental laws of life and the conditions of social existence, are deducible certain imperative limitations to individual action—limitations which are essential to a perfect life, individual and social; or, in other words, essential to the greatest happiness. And these limitations, following inevitably as they do from undeniable first principles, deep as the nature of life itself, constitute what we may distinguish as absolute morality. On the other hand it is contended, and in a sense rightly contended, that with men as they are and society as it is, the dictates of absolute morality are impracticable. Legal control, which involves infliction of pain, alike on those who are restrained and on those who pay the cost of restraining them, is proved by this fact to be not absolutely moral; seeing that absolute morality is the regulation of conduct in such way that pain shall not be inflicted. {153}

Wherefore, if it be admitted that legal control is at present indispensable, it must be admitted that these a priori rules cannot be immediately carried out. And hence it follows that we must adapt our laws and actions to the existing character of mankind—that we must estimate the good or evil resulting from this or that arrangement, and so reach, a posteriori, a code fitted for the time being. In short, we must fall back on expediency. Now, each of these positions being valid, it is a grave mistake to adopt either to the exclusion of the other. They should be respectively appealed to for mutual qualification. Progressing civilization, which is of necessity a succession of compromises between old and new, requires a perpetual readjustment of the compromise between the ideal and the practicable in social arrangements: to which end both elements of the compromise must be kept in view. If it is true that pure rectitude prescribes a system of things too good for men as they are; it is not less true that mere expediency does not of itself tend to establish a system of things any better than that which exists. While absolute morality owes to expediency the checks which prevent it from rushing into utopian absurdities; expediency is indebted to absolute morality for all stimulus to improvement. Granted that we are chiefly interested in ascertaining what is relatively right; it still follows that we must first consider what is absolutely right; since the one conception presupposes the other. That is to say, though we must ever aim to do what is best for the present times, yet we must ever bear in mind what is abstractedly best; so that the changes we make may be towards it, and not away from it. Unattainable as pure rectitude is, and will long continue to be, we must keep an eye on the compass which tells us whereabout it lies; or we shall otherwise wander in the opposite direction.

Illustrations from our recent history will show very conclusively, we think, how important it is that {154} considerations of abstract expediency should be joined with those of concrete expediency—how immense would be the evils avoided and the benefits gained, if a posteriori morality were enlightened by a priori morality. Take first the case of free trade. Until recently it has been the practice of all nations, artificially to restrict their commerce with other nations. Throughout past centuries this course was defensible as conducing to safety. Without saying that law-givers had the motive of promoting industrial independence, it may yet be said that in ages when national quarrels were perpetual, it would not have been well for any people to be much dependent on others for necessary commodities. But though there is this ground for asserting that commercial restrictions were once expedient, it cannot be asserted that our corn-laws were thus justified: it cannot be alleged that the penalties and prohibitions which, until lately, hampered our trade, were needful to prevent us from being industrially disabled by a war. Protection in all its forms was established and maintained for other reasons of expediency; and the reasons for which it was opposed and finally abolished were also those of expediency. Calculations of immediate and remote consequences were set forth by the antagonist parties; and the mode of decision was by a balancing of these various anticipated consequences. And what, after generations of mischievous legislation and long years of arduous struggle, was the conclusion arrived at, and since justified by the results? Exactly the one which abstract equity plainly teaches. The moral course proves to be the politic course. That ability to exercise the faculties, the total denial of which causes death—that liberty to pursue the objects of desire, without which there cannot be complete life—that freedom of action which his nature prompts every individual to claim, and on which equity puts no limit save the like freedom of action of other individuals, involves, among other corollaries, freedom of exchange. {155} Government which, in protecting citizens from murder, robbery, assault or other aggression, shows us that it has the all-essential function of securing to each this free exercise of faculties within the assigned limits, is called on, in the due discharge of its function, to maintain this freedom of exchange; and cannot abrogate it without reversing its function, and becoming aggressor instead of protector. Thus, absolute morality would all along have shown in what direction legislation should tend. Qualified only by the consideration that in turbulent times they must not be so carried out as to endanger national life, through suspensions in the supply of necessaries, these a priori principles would have guided statesmen, as fast as circumstances allowed, towards the normal condition. We should have been saved from thousands of needless restrictions. Such restrictions as were needful would have been abolished as soon as was safe. An enormous amount of suffering would have been prevented. That prosperity which we now enjoy would have commenced much sooner. And our present condition would have been one of greater power, wealth, happiness, and morality.

Our railway-politics furnish another instance. A vast loss of national capital has been incurred, and great misery has been inflicted, in consequence of the neglect of a simple principle clearly dictated by abstract justice. Whoso enters into a contract, though he is bound to do that which the contract specifies, is not bound to do some other thing which is neither specified nor implied in the contract. We do not appeal to moral perception only in warranty of this position. It is one deducible from that first principle of equity which, as above pointed out, follows from the laws of life, individual and social; and it is one which the accumulated experience of mankind has so uniformly justified, that it has become a tacitly-recognized doctrine of civil law among all nations. In cases of disputes about agreements, the question in each case brought to trial {156} always is, whether the terms bind one or other of the contracting parties to do this or that; and it is assumed, as a matter of course, that neither of them can be called upon to do more than is expressed or understood in the agreement. Now this almost self-evident principle has been wholly ignored in railway-legislation. A shareholder, uniting with others to make and work a line from one specified place to another specified place, binds himself to pay certain sums in furtherance of the project; and, by implication, agrees to yield to the majority of his fellow-shareholders on all questions raised respecting the execution of this project. But he commits himself no further than this. He is not required to obey the majority concerning things not named in the deed of incorporation. Though with respect to the specified railway he has bound himself, he has not bound himself, with respect to any unspecified railway which his co-proprietors may wish to make; and he cannot be committed to such unspecified railway by a vote of the majority. But this distinction has been wholly passed over. Shareholders in joint-stock undertakings have been perpetually involved in other undertakings subsequently decided on by their fellow-shareholders; and, against their will, have had their properties heavily mortgaged for the execution of projects that were ruinously unremunerative. In every case the proprietary contract for making a particular railway, has been dealt with as though it were a proprietary contract for making railways! Not only have directors thus misinterpreted it, and not only have shareholders allowed it to be thus misinterpreted, but legislators have so little understood their duties as to have endorsed the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion. To this simple cause has been owing most of our railway-companies’ disasters. Abnormal facilities for getting capital have caused reckless competition in extension-making and branch-making, and in needless opposition lines, got up to be purchased by the companies they threatened. Had each new scheme been {157} executed by an independent body of shareholders, without any guarantee from another company—without any capital raised by preference shares—there would have been little or none of the ruinous expenditure we have seen. Something like a hundred millions of money would have been saved, and thousands of families preserved from misery, had the proprietary-contract been enforced according to the dictates of pure equity.

These cases go far to justify our position. The general reasons we gave for thinking that the ethics of immediate experience must be enlightened by abstract ethics, to ensure correct guidance, are strongly enforced by these instances of the gigantic errors which are made when the dictates of abstract ethics are ignored. The complex estimates of relative expediency, cannot do without the clue furnished by the simple deductions of absolute expediency.

We propose to study the treatment of criminals from this point of view. And first, let us set down those temporary requirements which have hitherto prevented, and do still, in part, prevent the establishment of a just system.

The same average popular character which necessitates a rigorous form of government, necessitates also a rigorous criminal code. Institutions are ultimately determined by the natures of the citizens living under them; and when these citizens are too impulsive or selfish for free institutions, and unscrupulous enough to supply the requisite staff of agents for maintaining tyrannical institutions, they are proved by implication to be citizens who will tolerate, and will probably need, severe forms of punishment. The same mental defect underlies both results. The character which originates and sustains political liberty, is a character swayed by remote considerations—a character not at the mercy of immediate temptations, but one which contemplates the consequences likely to arise in future. We have only to remember that, among ourselves, a political encroachment is {158} resisted, not because of any direct evil it inflicts, but because of the evils likely hereafter to flow from it, to see how the maintenance of freedom presupposes the habit of weighing distant results, and being chiefly guided by them. Conversely, it is manifest that men who dwell only in the present, the special, the concrete—who do not realize with clearness the contingencies of the future—will put little value on those rights of citizenship which profit them nothing, save as a means of warding off unspecified evils that can possibly affect them only at a distant time in an obscure way. Well, is it not obvious that the forms of mind thus contrasted, will require different kinds of punishment for misconduct? To restrain the second, there must be penalties which are severe, prompt, and specific enough to be vividly conceived; while the first may be deterred by penalties which are less definite, less intense, less immediate. For the more civilized, dread of a long, monotonous, criminal discipline may suffice; but for the less civilized there must be inflictions of bodily pain and death. Thus we hold, not only that a social condition which generates a harsh form of government, also generates harsh retributions; but also, that in such a social condition, harsh retributions are requisite. And there are facts which illustrate this. Witness the case of one of the Italian states, in which the punishment of death having been abolished in conformity with the wish of a dying duchess, assassinations increased so greatly that it became needful to re-establish it.

Besides the fact that in the less-advanced stages of civilization, a bloody penal code is both a natural product of the time and a needful restraint for the time, there must be noted the fact that a more equitable and humane code could not be carried out from want of fit ad­min­i­stra­tion. To deal with delinquents not by short and sharp methods but by such methods as abstract justice indicates, implies a class of agencies too complicated to exist in a low society, {159} and a class of officers more trustworthy than can be found among its citizens. Especially would the equitable treatment of criminals be impracticable where the amount of crime was very great. The number to be dealt with would be unmanageable. Some simpler method of purging the community of its worst members becomes, under such circumstances, a necessity.

The inapplicability of an absolutely just system of penal discipline to a barbarous or semi-barbarous people, is thus, we think, as manifest as is the inapplicability of an absolutely just form of government to them. And in the same manner that, for some nations, a despotism is warranted; so may a criminal code of the extremest severity be warranted. In either case the defence is, that the institution is as good as the average character of the people permits—that less stringent institutions would entail social confusion and its far more severe evils. Bad as a despotism is, yet where anarchy is the only alternative, we must say that, as anarchy would bring greater suffering than despotism brings, despotism is justified by the circumstances. And similarly, however inequitable in the abstract were the beheadings, crucifyings, and burnings of ruder ages, yet, if it be shown that, without penalties thus extreme, the safety of society could not have been insured—if, in their absence, the increase of crime would have inflicted a larger total of evil, and that, too, on peaceable members of the community; then it follows that morality warranted this severity. In the one case, as in the other, we must say that, measured by the quantities of pain respectively inflicted and avoided, the course pursued was the least wrong; and to say that it was the least wrong is to say that it was relatively right.

But while we thus admit all that can be alleged by the defenders of Draconian codes, we go on to assert a correlative truth which they overlook. While fully recognizing the evils that must follow the premature establishment of a {160} penal system dictated by pure equity, let us not overlook the evils that have arisen from altogether rejecting the guidance of pure equity. Let us note how terribly the one-sided regard for immediate expediency has retarded the ameliorations from time to time demanded.

Consider, for instance, the immense amount of suffering and demoralization needlessly caused by our severe laws in the last century. Those many merciless penalties which Romilly and others succeeded in abolishing, were as little justified by social necessities as by abstract morality. Experience has since proved that to hang men for theft, was not requisite for the security of property. And that such a measure was opposed to pure equity, scarcely needs saying. Evidently, had considerations of relative expediency been all along qualified by considerations of absolute expediency, these severities, with their many concomitant evils, would have ceased long before they did.

Again, the dreadful misery, demoralization, and crime, generated by the harsh treatment of transported convicts, would have been impossible, had our authorities considered what seemed just as well as what seemed politic. There would never have been inflicted on transports the shocking cruelties proved before the Parliamentary Committee of 1848. We should not have had men condemned to the horrors of the chain-gang even for insolent looks. There could not have been perpetrated such an atrocity as that of locking up chain-gangs “from sunset to sunrise in the caravans or boxes used for this description of prisons, which hold from twenty to twenty-eight men, but in which the whole number can neither stand upright nor sit down at the same time, except with their legs at right angles to their bodies.” Men would never have been doomed to tortures extreme enough to produce despair, desperation, and further crimes—tortures under which “a man’s heart is taken from him, and there is given to him the heart of a {161} beast,” as said by one of these law-produced criminals before his execution. We should not have been told, as by a chief justice of Australia, that the discipline was “carried to an extent of suffering, such as to render death desirable, and to induce many prisoners to seek it under its most appalling aspects.” Sir G. Arthur would not have had to testify that, in Van Diemen’s Land, convicts committed murder for the purpose “of being sent up to Hobart Town for trial, though aware that in the ordinary course they must be executed within a fortnight after arrival;” nor would tears of commiseration have been drawn from Judge Burton’s eyes, by one of these cruelly-used transports placed before him for sentence. In brief, had abstract equity joined with immediate expediency in devising convict discipline, not only would untold suffering, degradation, and mortality have been prevented; but those who were responsible for atrocities like those above-named, would not themselves be chargeable with crime, as we now hold them to be.

Probably we shall meet with a less general assent when, as a further benefit which the guidance of absolute morality would have conferred, we instance the prevention of such methods as those in use at Pentonville. How the silent and the separate systems are negatived by abstract justice we shall by and by see. For the present, the position we have to defend is that these systems are bad. That but a moderate per-centage of the prisoners subjected to them are re-convicted, may be true; though, considering the fallaciousness of negative statistics, this by no means proves that those not re-convicted are reformed. But the question is not solely how many prisoners are prevented from again committing crime? A further question is, how many of them have become self-supporting members of society? It is notorious that this prolonged denial of human intercourse not unfrequently produces insanity or imbecility; and on those who remain sane, its depressing influence must almost {162} of necessity entail serious debility, bodily and mental.[7] Indeed, we think it probable that much of the apparent success is due to an enfeeblement which incapacitates for crime as much as for industry. Our own objection to such methods, however, has always been, that their effect on the moral nature is the reverse of that required. Crime is anti-social—is prompted by self-regarding feelings and checked by social feelings. The natural prompter of right conduct to others, and the natural opponent of misconduct to others, is sympathy; for out of sympathy grow both the kindly emotions, and that sentiment of justice which restrains us from aggressions. Well, this sympathy, which makes society possible, is cultivated by social intercourse. By habitual participation in the pleasures of others, the faculty is strengthened; and whatever prevents this participation, weakens it. Hence, therefore, shutting up prisoners within themselves, or forbidding all interchange of feeling, inevitably deadens such sympathies as they have; and so tends rather to diminish than to increase the moral check to transgression. This a priori conviction, which we have long entertained, we now find confirmed by facts. Captain Maconochie states, as a result of observation, that a long course of separation so fosters the self-regarding desires, and so weakens the sympathies, as to make even well-disposed men very unfit to bear the little trials of domestic life on their return to their homes. Thus there is good reason to think that, while silence and solitude may cow the spirit or undermine the energies, it cannot produce true reformation.

[7] Mr. Baillie-Cochrane says:—“The officers at the Dartmoor prison inform me that the prisoners who arrive there even after one year’s confinement at Pentonville, may be distinguished from the others by their miserable downcast look. In most instances their brain is affected; and they are unable to give satisfactory replies to the simplest questions.”

“But how can it be shown,” asks the reader, “that these injudicious penal systems are inequitable? Where is the method which will enable us to say what kind of {163} punishment is justified by absolute morality, and what kind is not?” These questions we will now attempt to answer.

So long as the individual citizen pursues the objects of his desires without diminishing the equal freedom of any of his fellow citizens to do the like, society cannot equitably interfere with him. While he contents himself with the benefits won by his own energies, and attempts not to intercept any of the benefits similarly won for themselves by others, or any of those which Nature has conferred on them; no legal penalties can rightly be inflicted on him. But when, by murder, theft, assault, arson, or minor aggression, he has broken through these limits, the community is warranted in putting him under restraint. On the relative propriety of doing this we need say nothing: it is demonstrated by social experience. Its absolute propriety not being so manifest, we will proceed to point out how it is deducible from the ultimate laws of life.

Life depends on the maintenance of certain natural relations between actions and their results. If respiration does not supply oxygen to the blood, as in the normal order of things it should do, but instead supplies carbonic acid, death quickly results. If the swallowing of food is not followed by the usual organic sequences—the contractions of the stomach, and the pouring into it of gastric juice—indigestion arises, and the energies flag. If active movements of the limbs fail in exciting the heart to supply blood more rapidly, or if the extra current propelled by the heart is greatly retarded by an aneurism through which it passes, speedy prostration ensues. In which, and endless like cases, we see that bodily life depends on the maintenance of the established connexions between physiological causes and their consequences. Among the intellectual processes, the same thing holds. If certain impressions made on the senses do not induce the appropriate muscular adjustments—if the brain is clouded with wine, or consciousness is {164} pre-occupied, or the perceptions are naturally obtuse; the movements are so ill-controlled that accidents happen. Where, as in paralytic patients, the natural link between mental impressions and the appropriate motions is broken, the life is greatly vitiated. And when, as during insanity, evidence fitted, according to the usual order of thought, to produce certain convictions, produces convictions of an opposite kind, conduct is reduced to chaos, and life endangered—perhaps cut short. So it is with more involved phenomena. Just as we here find that, throughout both its physical and intellectual divisions, healthful life implies continuance of the established successions of antecedents and consequents among our vital actions; so shall we find it throughout the moral division. In our dealings with external Nature and our fellow men, there are relations of cause and effect, on the maintenance of which, as on the maintenance of the internal ones above instanced, life depends. Conduct of this or that kind tends to bring results which are pleasurable or painful; and the welfare of every one demands that these natural sequences shall not be interfered with. To speak more specifically, we see that in the order of Nature, inactivity entails want. There is a connexion between exertion and the fulfilment of certain imperative needs. If, now, this connexion is broken—if labour of body or mind has been gone through, and the produce of the labour is intercepted by another, one of the conditions to complete life is unfulfilled. The defrauded person is physically injured by deprivation of the wherewithal to make good the wear and tear he had undergone; and if the robbery be continually repeated, he must die. Where all men are dishonest a reflex evil results. When, throughout a society, the normal relation between work and benefit is habitually broken, not only are the lives of many directly undermined, but the lives of all are indirectly undermined by destruction of the motive for work, and by the consequent poverty. Thus, to demand that there shall {165} be no breach of the natural sequence between labour and the rewards obtained by labour, is to demand that the laws of life shall be respected. What we call the right of property, is simply a corollary from certain necessary conditions to complete living. It is a formulated recognition of the relation between expenditure of force and the need for force-sustaining objects obtainable by the expenditure of force—a recognition in full of a relation which cannot be wholly ignored without causing death. And all else regarded as individual rights, are indirect implications of like nature—similarly insist on certain relations between man and man, as conditions without which there cannot be fully maintained that correspondence between inner and outer actions which constitutes life. It is not, as some moralists and most lawyers absurdly assert, that such rights are derived from human legislation; nor is it, as asserted by others with absurdity almost as great, that there is no basis for them save the inductions of immediate expediency. These rights are deducible from the established connexions between our acts and their results. As certainly as there are conditions which must be fulfilled before life can exist, so certainly are there conditions which must be fulfilled before complete life can be enjoyed by the respective members of a society; and those which we call the requirements of justice, simply answer to the most important of such conditions.

Hence, if life is our legitimate aim—if absolute morality means, as it does, conformity to the laws of complete life; then absolute morality warrants the restraint of those who force their fellow-citizens into non-conformity. Our justification is, that life is impossible save under certain conditions; that it cannot be entire unless these conditions are maintained unbroken; and that if it is right for us to live completely, it is right for us to remove any one who either breaks these conditions in our persons or constrains us to break them.

Such being the basis of our right to coerce the criminal, {166} there next come the questions:—What is the legitimate extent of the coercion? Can we from this source derive authority for certain demands on him? and are there any similarly-derived limits to such demands? To both these questions there are affirmative answers.

First, we find authority for demanding restitution or compensation. Conformity to the laws of life being the substance of absolute morality; and the social regulations which absolute morality dictates, being those which make this conformity possible; it is a manifest corollary that whoever breaks these regulations, may be justly required to undo, as far as possible, the wrong he has done. The object being to maintain the conditions essential to complete life, it follows that, when one of these conditions has been transgressed, the first thing to be required of the transgressor is, that he shall put matters as nearly as may be in the state they previously were. The property stolen shall be restored, or an equivalent for it given. Any one injured by an assault shall have his surgeon’s bill paid, compensation for lost time, and also for the suffering he has borne. And similarly in all cases of infringed rights.

Second, we are warranted by this highest authority in restricting the actions of the offender as much as is needful to prevent further aggressions. Any citizen who will not allow others to fulfil the conditions to complete life—who takes away the produce of his neighbour’s labour, or deducts from that bodily health and comfort which his neighbour has earned by good conduct, must be forced to desist. And society is warranted in using such force as may be found requisite. Equity justifies the fellow-citizens of such a man in limiting the free exercise of his faculties to the extent necessary for preserving the free exercise of their own faculties.

But now mark that absolute morality countenances no restraint beyond this—no gratuitous inflictions of pain, no revengeful penalties. The conditions it insists on being such as make possible complete life, we cannot rightly abrogate {167} these conditions, even in the person of a criminal, further than is needful to prevent greater abrogations of them. Freedom to fulfil the laws of life being the thing insisted on, to the end that the sum of life may be the greatest possible, it follows that the life of the offender must be taken into account as an item in this sum. We must permit him to live as completely as consists with social safety. It is commonly said that the criminal loses all his rights. This may be so according to law, but it is not so according to justice. Such portion of them only is justly taken away, as cannot be left to him without danger to the community. Those exercises of faculty, and consequent benefits, which are possible under the necessary restraint, cannot be equitably denied. If any do not think it proper that we should be thus regardful of an offender’s claims, let them consider for a moment the lesson which Nature reads us. We do not find that those processes of life by which bodily health is maintained, are miraculously suspended in the person of the prisoner. In him, as in others, good digestion waits on appetite. If he is wounded, the healing process goes on with the usual rapidity. When he is ill, as much effect is expected from the vis medicatrix naturæ by the medical officer, as in one who has not transgressed. His perceptions yield him guidance as they did before he was imprisoned; and he is capable of much the same pleasurable emotions. When we thus see that the beneficent arrangements of things, are no less uniformly sustained in his person than in that of another, are we not bound to respect in his person such of these beneficent arrangements as we have power to thwart? are we not bound to interfere with the laws of life no further than is needful? If any still hesitate, there is another lesson for them having the same implication. Whoso disregards any one of those simpler laws of life out of which, as we have shown, the moral laws originate, has to bear the evil necessitated by the transgression—just that, and no more. If, careless of your footing, you fall, the {168} consequent bruise, and possibly some constitutional disturbance entailed by it, are all you have to suffer: there is not the further gratuitous penalty of a cold or an attack of small-pox. If you have eaten something which you know to be indigestible, there follow certain visceral derangements and their concomitants; but, for your physical sin, there is no vengeance in the shape of a broken bone or a spinal affection. The punishments, in these and other cases, are neither greater nor less than flow from the natural workings of things. Well, should we not with all humility follow this example? Must we not infer that, similarly, a citizen who has transgressed the conditions to social welfare, ought to bear the needful penalties and restraints, but nothing beyond these? Is it not clear that neither by absolute morality nor by Nature’s precedents, are we warranted in visiting on him any pains besides those involved in remedying, as far as may be, the evil committed, and preventing other such evils? To us it seems manifest that if society exceeds this, it trespasses against the criminal.

Those who think that we are tending towards a mischievous leniency, will find that the next step in our argument disposes of any such objection; for while equity forbids us to punish the criminal otherwise than by making him suffer the natural consequences, these, when rigorously enforced, are quite severe enough.

Society having proved in the high court of absolute morality, that the offender must make restitution or compensation, and submit to the restraints requisite for public safety; and the offender having obtained from the same court the decision, that these restraints shall be no greater than the specified end requires; society thereupon makes the further demand that, while living in durance, the offender shall maintain himself; and this demand absolute morality at once endorses. The community having taken measures for self-preservation, and having inflicted on the aggressor no punishments or disabilities beyond those {169} involved in these necessary measures, is no further concerned in the matter. With the support of the prisoner it has no more to do than before he committed the crime. It is the business of society simply to defend itself against him; and it is his business to live as well as he can under the restrictions society is obliged to impose on him. All he may rightly ask is, to have the opportunity of labouring, and exchanging the produce of his labour for necessaries; and this claim is a corollary from that already admitted, that his actions shall not be restricted more than is needful for the public safety. With these opportunities, however, he must make the best of his position. He must be content to gain as good a livelihood as the circumstances permit; and if he cannot employ his powers to the best advantage, if he has to work hard and fare scantily, these evils must be counted among the penalties of his transgression—the natural reactions of his wrong action.

On this self-maintenance equity sternly insists. The reasons which justify his imprisonment, equally justify the refusal to let him have any other sustenance than he earns. He is confined that he may not further interfere with the complete living of his fellow-citizens—that he may not again intercept any of those benefits which the order of Nature has conferred on them, or any of those procured by their exertions and careful conduct. And he is required to support himself for exactly the same reasons—that he may not interfere with others’ complete living—that he may not intercept the benefits they earn. For, if otherwise, whence must come his food and clothing? Directly from the public stores, and indirectly from the pockets of all tax-payers. And what is the property thus abstracted from tax-payers? It is the equivalent of so much benefit earned by labour. It is so much means to complete living. And when this property is taken away—when the toil has been gone through, and the produce of it is intercepted by the tax-gatherer on behalf of the convict; the conditions to {170} complete life are broken: the convict commits by deputy a further aggression on his fellow-citizens. It matters not that such abstraction is made according to law. We are here considering the dictum of that authority which is above law; and which law ought to enforce. And this dictum we find to be, that each individual shall take the evils and benefits of his own conduct—that the offender must suffer, as far as is possible, all pains entailed by his offence; and must not be allowed to visit part of them on the unoffending. Unless the criminal maintains himself, he indirectly commits an additional crime. Instead of repairing the breach he has made in the conditions to complete social life, he widens this breach. He inflicts on others that very injury which the restraint imposed on him was to prevent. As certainly, therefore, as such restraint is warranted by absolute morality; so certainly does absolute morality warrant us in refusing him gratuitous support.

These, then, are the requirements of an equitable penal system:—That the aggressor shall make restitution or compensation; that he shall be placed under the restraints requisite for social security; that neither any restraints beyond these, nor any gratuitous penalties, shall be inflicted on him; and that while living in confinement, or under surveillance, he shall maintain himself. We are not prepared to say that such dictates may at once be fully obeyed. Already we have admitted that the deductions of absolute expediency must, in our transition state, be qualified by the inductions of relative expediency. We have pointed out that in rude times, the severest criminal codes were morally justified if, without them, crime could not be repressed and social safety insured. Whence, by implication, it follows that our present methods of treating criminals are warranted, if they come as near to those of pure equity as circumstances permit. That any system now feasible must fall short of the ideal sketched out, is probable. It may be that the enforcement of restitution or {171} compensation, is in many cases impracticable. It may be that on some convicts, penalties more severe than abstract justice demands must be inflicted. On the other hand, it may be that entire self-maintenance would entail on the wholly-unskilled criminal, a punishment too grievous to be borne. But any such shortcomings do not affect our argument. All we insist on is, that the commands of absolute morality shall be obeyed as far as possible—that we shall fulfil them up to those limits beyond which experiment proves that more evil than good results—that, ever keeping in view the ideal, each change we make shall be towards its realization.

But now we are prepared to say, that this ideal may be in great part realized at the present time. Experience in various countries, under various circumstances, has shown that immense benefits result from substituting for the old penal systems, systems that approximate to that above indicated. Germany, France, Spain, England, Ireland, and Australia, send statements to the effect that the most successful criminal discipline, is a discipline of decreased restraints and increased self-dependence. And the evidence proves the success to be greatest, where the nearest approach is made to the arrangements prescribed by abstract justice. We shall find the facts striking: some of them even astonishing.

When M. Obermair was appointed Governor of the Munich State-Prison—

“He found from 600 to 700 prisoners in the jail, in the worst state of insubordination, and whose excesses, he was told, defied the harshest and most stringent discipline; the prisoners were all chained together, and attached to each chain was an iron weight, which the strongest found difficulty in dragging along. The guard consisted of about 100 soldiers, who did duty not only at the gates and around the walls, but also in the passages, and even in the workshops and dormitories; and, strangest of all protections against the possibility of an outbreak or individual invasion, twenty to thirty large savage dogs, of the bloodhound breed, were let loose at night in the passages and courts to keep their watch and ward. {172} According to his account the place was a perfect Pandemonium, comprising, within the limits of a few acres, the worst passions, the most slavish vices, and the most heartless tyranny.”

M. Obermair gradually relaxed this harsh system. He greatly lightened the chains; and would, if allowed, have thrown them aside. The dogs, and nearly all the guards, were dispensed with; and the prisoners were treated with such consideration as to gain their confidence. Mr. Baillie-Cochrane, who visited the place in 1852, says the prison-gates were

“Wide open, without any sentinel at the door, and a guard of only twenty men idling away their time in a guard-room off the entrance-hall. . . . . None of the doors were provided with bolts and bars; the only security was an ordinary lock, and as in most of the rooms the key was not turned, there was no obstacle to the men walking into the passage. . . . . Over each workshop some of the prisoners with the best characters were appointed overseers, and M. Obermair assured me that if a prisoner transgressed a regulation, his companions generally told him, ‘Es ist verboten’ (it is forbidden), and it rarely happened that he did not yield to the opinion of his fellow-prisoners. . . . . Within the prison walls every description of work is carried on; the prisoners, divided into different gangs and supplied with instruments and tools, make their own clothes, repair their own prison walls, and forge their own chains, producing various specimens of manufacture which are turned to most excellent account—the result being, that each prisoner, by occupation and industry, maintains himself; the surplus of his earnings being given him on his emancipation, avoids his being parted with in a state of destitution.”

And further, the prisoners “associate in their leisure hours, without any check on their intercourse, but at the same time under an efficient system of observation and control”—an arrangement by which, after many years’ experience, M. Obermair asserts that morality is increased.

And now what has been the result? During his six-years’ government of the Kaiserslauten (the first prison under his care), M. Obermair discharged 132 criminals, of which number 123 have since conducted themselves well, and 7 have been recommitted. From the Munich prison, between 1843 and 1845, 298 prisoners were discharged.

Of these, 246 have been restored, improved, to society. Those whose characters are doubtful, but have not been {173} remanded for any criminal act, 26; again under examination, 4; punished by the police, 6; remanded, 8; died, 8. This statement, says M. Obermair, “is based on irrefutable evidence.” And to the reality of his success, we have the testimony not only of Mr. Baillie-Cochrane, but of the Rev. C. H. Townsend, Mr. George Combe, Mr. Matthew Hill, and Sir John Milbanke, our Envoy at the Court of Bavaria.

Take, again, the case of Mettray. Every one has heard something about Mettray, and its success as a reformatory of juvenile criminals. Observe how nearly the successful system there pursued, conforms to the abstract principles above enunciated.

This “Colonie Agricole” is “without wall or enclosure of any sort, for the purposes at least of confinement;” and except when for some fault a child is temporarily put in a cell, there is no physical restraint. The life is industrial: the boys being brought up to trades or agriculture as they prefer; and all the domestic services being discharged by them. “They all do their work by the piece;” are rewarded according to the judgment of the chef d’atelier; and, a portion being placed at the disposal of the child, the rest is deposited in the savings-bank at Tours. “A boy in receipt of any money has to make payment for any part of his dress which requires to be renewed before the stated time arrives at which fresh clothing is given out; . . . . . on the other hand, if his clothes are found in good condition at such time, he receives the benefit of it by having the money which would have been laid out in clothes placed to his account. Two hours per day are allowed for play. Part-singing is taught; and if a boy shows any turn for drawing he receives a little instruction in it. . . . . . Some of the boys also are formed into a fire-brigade, and have rendered at times substantial assistance in the neighbourhood.” In which few leading facts do we not clearly see that the essential peculiarities {174} are—no more restraint than is absolutely necessary; self-support as far as possible; extra benefits earned by extra labour; and as much gratifying exercise of faculties as the circumstances permit.

The “intermediate system” which has of late been carried out with much success in Ireland, exemplifies, in a degree, the practicability of the same general principles. Under this system, prisoners working as artizans are allowed “such a modified degree of liberty as shall in various ways prove their power of self-denial and self-dependence, in a manner wholly incompatible with the rigid restraints of an ordinary prison.” An offender who has passed through this stage of probation, is tested by employment “on messenger’s duties daily throughout the city, and also in special works required by the department outside the prison-walls. The performance of the duties of messengers entails their being out until seven or eight in the evening, unaccompanied by an officer; and although a small portion of their earnings is allowed them weekly, and they would have the power of compromising themselves if so disposed, not one instance has as yet taken place of the slightest irregularity, or even the want of punctuality, although careful checks have been contrived to detect either, should it occur.” A proportion of their prison-earnings is set aside for them in a savings-bank; and to this they are encouraged to add during their period of partial freedom, with a view to subsequent emigration. The results are:—“In the penitentiary the greatest possible order and regularity, and an amount of willing industry performed that cannot be obtained in the prisons.” Employers to whom prisoners are eventually transferred, “have on many occasions returned for others in consequence of the good conduct of those at first engaged.” And according to Captain Crofton’s pamphlet of 1857, out of 112 conditionally discharged during the previous year, 85 were going on satisfactorily, “9 have been discharged {175} too recently to be spoken of, and 5 have had their licences revoked. As to the remaining 13, it has been found impossible to obtain accurate information, but it is supposed that 5 have left the country, and 3 enlisted.”

The “mark system” of Captain Maconochie, is one which more fully carries out the principle of self-maintenance, under restraints no greater than are needful for safety. The plan is to join with time-sentences certain labour-sentences—specific tasks to be worked out by the convicts. “No rations, or other supplies of any kind, whether of food, bedding, clothing, or even education or indulgences, to be given gratuitously, but all to be made exchangeable, at fixed rates, at the prisoners’ own option, for marks previously earned; it being understood, at the same time, that only those shall count towards liberation which remain over and above all so exchanged; the prisoners being thus caused to depend for every necessary on their own good conduct; and their prison-offences to be in like manner restrained by corresponding fines imposed according to the measures of each.” The use of marks, which thus play the part of money, was first introduced by Captain Maconochie in Norfolk Island. Describing the working of his method, he says—

“First, it gave me wages and then fines. One gave me willing and progressively-skilled labourers, and the other saved me from the necessity of imposing brutal and demoralizing punishments. . . . . My form of money next gave me school fees. I was most anxious to encourage education among my men, but as I refused them rations gratuitously, so I would not give them schooling either, but compelled them to yield marks to acquire it. . . . . I never saw adult schools make such rapid progress. . . . . My form of money next gave me bailbonds in cases of minor or even great offences; a period of close imprisonment being wholly or in part remitted in consideration of a sufficient number of other prisoners of good character becoming bound, under a penalty, for the improved conduct of the culprit.”

Even in the establishment of a sick-club and a burial-club, Captain Maconochie applied “the inflexible principle of giving nothing for nothing.” That is to say, here, as throughout, he made the discipline of the prisoners as {176} much like the discipline of ordinary life as possible: let them experience just such good or evil as naturally flowed from their conduct—a principle which he rightly asserts is the only true one. What were the effects? The extreme debasement of Norfolk Island convicts was notorious; and on a preceding page we have described some of the horrible sufferings inflicted on them. Yet, starting with these most demoralized of criminals, Captain Maconochie obtained highly-favourable results. “In four years,” he says, “I discharged 920 doubly-convicted men to Sydney, of whom only 20, or 2 per cent., had been re-convicted up to January, 1845;” while, at the same time, the ordinary proportion of re-convicted Van Diemen’s Land men, otherwise trained, was 9 per cent. “Captain Maconochie,” writes Mr. Harris in his Settlers and Convicts, “did more for the reformation of these unhappy wretches, and amelioration of their physical circumstances, than the most sanguine practical mind could beforehand have ventured even to hope.” Another witness says—“a reformation far greater than has been hitherto effected in any body of men by any system, either before or after yours, has taken place in them.” “As pastor of the island, and for two years a magistrate, I can prove that at no period was there so little crime,” writes the Rev. B. Naylor. And Thomas H. Dixon, Chief Superintendent of Convicts in Western Australia, who partially introduced the system there in 1856, asserts that not only was the amount of work done under it extraordinary, but that “even although the characters of some of the party were by no means good previously (many of them being men whose licences had been revoked in England), yet the transformation which in this and all other respects they underwent, was very remarkable indeed.” If such were the results, when the method was imperfectly carried out (for the Government all along refused to give any fixed value to the marks as a means to liberation); what might be {177} expected if its motives and restraints were allowed their full influence?

Perhaps, however, of all evidence, the most conclusive is that afforded by the prison of Valencia. When, in 1835, Colonel Montesinos was appointed governor, “the average of re-committals was from 30 to 35 per cent. per annum—nearly the same that is found in England and other countries in Europe; but such has been the success of his method, that for the last three years there has not been even one re-committal to it, and for the ten previous years they did not, on an average, exceed 1 per cent.” And how has this marvellous change been brought about? By diminished restraint and industrial discipline. The following extracts, taken irregularly from Mr. Hoskins’s Account of the Public Prison at Valencia, will prove this:—

“When first the convict enters the establishment he wears chains, but on his application to the commander they are taken off, unless he has not conducted himself well.”

“There are a thousand prisoners, and in the whole establishment I did not see above three or four guardians to keep them in order. They say there are only a dozen old soldiers, and not a bar or bolt that might not be easily broken—apparently not more fastenings than in any private house.”

“When a convict enters, he is asked what trade or employment he will work at or learn, and above forty are open to him. . . . . There are weavers and spinners of every description; . . . . blacksmiths, shoemakers, basketmakers, ropemakers, joiners, cabinetmakers, making handsome mahogany drawers; and they had also a printing machine hard at work.”

“The labour of every description for the repair, rebuilding, and cleaning the establishment, is supplied by the convicts. They were all most respectful in demeanour, and certainly I never saw such a good-looking set of prisoners, useful occupations (and other considerate treatment) having apparently improved their countenances. . . . . [And besides a] garden for exercise planted with orange trees, there was also a poultry yard for their amusement, with pheasants and various other kinds of birds; washing-houses, where they wash their clothes; and a shop, where they can purchase, if they wish, tobacco and other little comforts out of one-fourth of the profits of their labour, which is given to them. Another fourth they are entitled to when they leave; the other half goes to the establishment, and often this is sufficient for all expenses, without any assistance from the Government.”

Thus the highest success, regarded by Mr. Hoskins as {178} “really a miracle,” is achieved by a system most nearly conforming to those dictates of absolute morality on which we have insisted. The convicts are almost, if not quite, self-supporting. They are subject neither to gratuitous penalties nor unnecessary restrictions. While made to earn their living, they are allowed to purchase such enjoyments as consist with their confinement: the avowed principle being, in the words of Colonel Montesinos, to “give as much latitude to their free agency as can be made conformable to discipline at all.” Thus they are (as we found that equity required they should be) allowed to live as satisfactorily as they can, under such restraints only as are needful for the safety of their fellow-citizens.

To us it appears extremely significant that there should be so close a correspondence between a priori conclusions, and the results of experiments tried without reference to such conclusions. On the one hand, neither in the doctrines of pure equity with which we set out, nor in the corollaries drawn from them, is there any mention of criminal-reformation: our concern has been solely with the rights of citizens and convicts in their mutual relations. On the other hand, those who have carried out the improved penal systems above described, have had almost solely in view the improvement of the offender: the just claims of society, and of those who sin against it, having been left out of the question. Yet the methods which have succeeded so marvellously in decreasing criminality, are the methods which most nearly fulfil the requirements of abstract justice.

That the most equitable system is the one best calculated to reform the offender, may indeed be deductively shown. The internal experience of every one must prove to him, that excessive punishment begets, not penitence, but indignation and hatred. So long as an aggressor suffers nothing beyond the evils which have naturally resulted from his misconduct—so long as he perceives that his fellow-men have done no more than was needful for self-defence—he {179} has no excuse for anger; and is led to contemplate his crime and his punishment as cause and effect. But if gratuitous sufferings are inflicted on him, a sense of injustice is produced. He regards himself as an injured man. He cherishes animosity against all who have brought this harsh treatment on him. Glad of any plea for forgetting the injury he has done to others, he dwells instead on the injury others have done to him. Thus nurturing a desire for revenge rather than atonement, he re-enters society not better but worse; and if he does not commit further crimes, as he often does, he is restrained by the lowest of motives—fear. Again, this industrial discipline, to which criminals subject themselves under a purely equitable system, is the discipline they especially need. Speaking generally, we are all compelled to work by the necessities of our social existence. For most of us this compulsion suffices; but there are some whose aversion to labour cannot be thus overcome. Not labouring, and yet needing sustenance, they are compelled to obtain it in illegitimate ways; and so bring on themselves the legal penalties. The criminal class being thus in great part recruited from the idle class; and the idleness being the source of the criminality; it follows that a successful discipline must be one which shall cure the idleness. The natural compulsions to labour having been eluded, the thing required is that the offender shall be so placed that he cannot elude them. And this is just what is done under the system we advocate. Its action is such that men whose natures are ill-adapted to the conditions of social life, bring themselves into a position in which a better adaptation is forced on them by the alternative of starvation. Lastly, let us not forget that this discipline which absolute morality dictates, is salutary, not only because it is industrial, but because it is voluntarily industrial. As we have shown, equity requires that the confined criminal shall be left to maintain himself—that is, shall be {180} left to work much or little, and to take the consequent plenitude or hunger. When, therefore, under this sharp but natural spur, a prisoner begins to exert himself, he does so by his own will. The process which leads him into habits of labour, is a process by which his self-control is strengthened; and this is what is wanted to make him a better citizen. It is to no purpose that you make him work by external coercion; for when he is again free, and the coercion absent, he will be what he was before. The coercion must be an internal one, which he shall carry with him out of prison. It avails little that you force him to work; he must force himself to work. And this he will do, only when placed in those conditions which equity dictates.

Here, then, we find a third order of evidences. Psychology supports our conclusion. The various experiments above detailed, carried out by men who had no political or ethical theories to propagate, have established facts which we find to be quite concordant, not only with the deductions of absolute morality, but also with the deductions of mental science. Such a combination of different kinds of proof, cannot, we think, be resisted.

And now let us try whether, by pursuing somewhat further the method thus far followed, we can see our way to the development of certain improved systems which are coming into use.

Equity requires that the restraint of the criminal shall be as great as is needful for the safety of society; but not greater. In respect to the quality of the restraint, there is little difficulty in interpreting this requirement; but there is considerable difficulty in deciding on the duration of the restraint. No obvious mode presents itself of finding out how long a transgressor must be held in legal bondage, to insure society against further injury from him. A longer period than is necessary, implies an actual injustice to {181} the offender. A shorter period than is necessary, implies a potential injustice to society. And yet, without good guidance, one or other of these extremes is almost sure to be fallen into.

At present, the lengths of penal sentences are fixed in a manner that is wholly empirical. For offences defined in certain technical ways, Acts of Parliament assign transportations and imprisonments, having durations not greater than so much nor less than so much: these partially-determined periods being arbitrarily fixed by legislators, under the promptings of moral feeling. Within the assigned limits the judge exercises his discretion; and in deciding on the time over which the restraint shall extend, he is swayed, partly by the special quality of the offence, partly by the circumstances under which it was committed, partly by the prisoner’s appearance and behaviour, partly by the character given to him. And the conclusion he arrives at after consideration of these data, depends very much on his individual nature—his moral bias and his theories of human conduct. Thus the mode of fixing the lengths of penal restraints, is from beginning to end, little else than guessing. How ill this system of guessing works, we have abundant proofs. “Justices’ justice,” which illustrates it in its simplest form, has become a bye-word; and the decisions of higher criminal court frequently err in the directions of both undue severity and undue lenity. Daily there occur cases of extremely-trifling transgressions visited with imprisonments of considerable lengths; and daily there occur cases in which the punishments are so inadequate, that the offenders time after time commit new crimes, when time after time discharged from custody.

Now the question is whether, in place of this purely empirical method which answers so ill, equity can guide us to a method which shall more correctly adjust the period of restraint to the requirement. We believe it can. We believe that by following out its dictates, we shall arrive {182} at a method that is in great measure self-acting; and therefore less liable to be vitiated by errors of individual judgment or feeling.

We have seen that were the injunctions of absolute morality obeyed, every transgressor would be compelled to make restitution or compensation. Throughout a considerable range of cases, this would itself involve a period of restraint varying in proportion to the magnitude of the offence. It is true that when the malefactor possessed ample means, the making restitution or compensation would usually be to him but a slight punishment. But though in these comparatively few cases, the regulation would fall short of its object, in so far as its effect on the criminal was concerned, yet in the immense majority of cases—in all cases of aggressions committed by the poorer members of the community—it would act with efficiency. It would involve periods of detention that would be longer or shorter according as the injury done was greater or less, and according as the transgressor was idle or industrious. And although between the injury done by an offender and his moral turpitude, there is no constant and exact proportion, yet the greatness of the injury done, affords, on the average of cases, a better measure of the discipline required, than do the votes of Parliamentary majorities and the guesses of judges.

But our guidance does not end here. An endeavour still further to do that which is strictly equitable, will carry us still nearer to a correct adjustment of discipline to delinquency. When, having enforced restitution, we insist on some adequate guarantee that society shall not again be injured, and accept any guarantee that is sufficient, we open the way to a self-acting regulator of the period of detention. Already our laws are in many cases satisfied with securities for future good behaviour. Already this system manifestly tends to separate the more vicious from the less vicious; seeing that, on the average, the difficulty of {183} finding securities is great in proportion as the character is bad. And what we propose is that this system, now confined to particular kinds of offences, shall be made general. But let us be more specific.

A prisoner on his trial calls witnesses to testify to his previous character—that is, if his character has been tolerably good. The evidence thus given weighs more or less in his favour, according to the respectability of the witnesses, their number, and the nature of their testimony. Taking into account these several elements, the judge forms his conception of the delinquent’s general disposition, and modifies the length of punishment accordingly. Now, may we not fairly say that if the current opinion respecting a convict’s character could be brought directly to bear in qualifying the statutory sentence, instead of being brought indirectly to bear, as at present, it would be a great improvement? Clearly the estimate made by a judge from such testimony, must be less accurate than the estimate made by the prisoner’s neighbours and employers. Clearly, too, the opinion expressed by such neighbours and employers in the witness-box, is less trustworthy than an opinion which entails on them serious responsibility. The desideratum is, that a prisoner’s sentence shall be qualified by the judgment of those who have had life-long experience of him; and that the sincerity of this judgment shall be tested by their readiness to act on it.

But how is this to be done? A very simple method of doing it has been suggested.[8] When a convict has fulfilled his task of making restitution or compensation, let it be possible for one or other of those who have known him, to take him out of confinement, on giving adequate bail for his good behaviour. Always premising that such an arrangement shall be possible only under an official permit, to be withheld if the prisoner’s conduct has been unsatisfactory; and always premising that the person who offers bail shall {184} be of good character and means; let it be competent for such a one to liberate a prisoner by being bound on his behalf for a specific sum, or by undertaking to make good any injury which he may do to his fellow-citizens within a specified period. This will doubtless be thought a startling proposal. We shall, however, find good reasons to believe it might be safely acted on—nay, we shall find facts proving the success of a plan that is obviously less safe.

[8] We owe the suggestion to the late Mr. Octavius H. Smith.

Under such an arrangement, the liberator and the convict would usually stand in the relation of employer and employed. Those to be thus conditionally released, would be ready to work for somewhat lower wages than were usual in their occupation; and those who became bound for them, besides having this economy of wages as an incentive, would be in a manner guaranteed by it against the risk undertaken. In working for less money, and in being under the surveillance of his master, the convict would still be undergoing a mitigated discipline. And while, on the one hand, he would be put on his good behaviour by the consciousness that his master might at any time cancel the contract and surrender him back to the authorities, he would, on the other hand, have a remedy against his master’s harshness, in the option of returning to prison, and there maintaining himself for the remainder of his term.

Observe, next, that the difficulty of obtaining such conditional release would vary with the gravity of the offence which had been committed. Men guilty of heinous crimes would remain in prison; for none would dare to become responsible for their good behaviour. Any one convicted a second time would remain unbailed for a much longer period than before; seeing that having once inflicted loss on some one bound for him, he would not again be so soon offered the opportunity of doing the like: only after a long period of good behaviour testified to by prison-officers, would he be likely to get another chance. Conversely, those whose transgressions were not serious, and who had usually been {185} well-conducted, would readily obtain recognizances; while to venial offenders this qualified liberation would come as soon as they had made restitution. Moreover, when innocent persons had been pronounced guilty, as well as when solitary misdeeds had been committed by those of really superior natures, the system we have described would supply a remedy. From the wrong verdicts of the law and its mistaken estimates of turpitude, there would be an appeal; and long-proved worth would bring its reward in the mitigation of grievous injustices.

A further advantage would by implication result, in the shape of a long industrial discipline for those who most needed it. Speaking generally, diligent and skilful workmen, who were on the whole useful members of society, would, if their offences were not serious, soon obtain employers to give bail for them. Whereas members of the criminal class—the idle and the dissolute—would remain long in confinement; since, until they had been brought by habitual self-maintenance under restraint, to something like industrial efficiency, employers would not be tempted to become responsible for them.

We should thus have a self-acting test, not only of the length of restraint required for social safety, but also of that apprenticeship to labour which many convicts need; while there would be supplied a means of rectifying sundry failures and excesses of our present system. The plan would practically amount to an extension of trial by jury. At present, the State calls in certain of a prisoner’s fellow-citizens to decide whether he is guilty or not guilty: the judge, under guidance of the penal laws, being left to decide what punishment he deserves, if guilty. Under the arrangement we have described, the judge’s decision would admit of modification by a jury of the convict’s neighbours. And this natural jury, while it would be best fitted by previous knowledge of the man to form an opinion, would be rendered cautious by the sense of grave responsibility; inasmuch as {186} any one of its number who gave a conditional release, would do so at his own peril.

And now mark that all the evidence forthcoming to prove the safety and advantages of the “intermediate system,” proves, still more conclusively, the safety and advantages of this system which we would substitute for it. What we have described, is nothing more than an intermediate system reduced to a natural instead of an artificial form—carried out with natural checks instead of artificial checks. If, as Captain Crofton has experimentally shown, it is safe to give a prisoner conditional liberation, on the strength of good conduct during a certain period of prison-discipline; it is evidently safer to let his conditional liberation depend not alone on good conduct while under the eyes of his jailors, but also on the character he had earned during his previous life. If it is safe to act on the judgments of officials whose experience of a convict’s behaviour is comparatively limited, and who do not suffer penalties when their judgments are mistaken; then, manifestly, it is safer (when such officials can show no reason to the contrary), to act on the additional judgment of one who has not only had better opportunities of knowing the convict, but who will be a serious loser if his judgment proves erroneous. Further, that surveillance over each conditionally-liberated prisoner, which the “intermediate system” exercises, would be still better exercised when, instead of going to a strange master in a strange district, the prisoner went to some master in his own district; and, under such circumstances, it would be easier to get information respecting his after-career. There is every reason to think that this method would be workable. If, on the recommendation of the officers, Captain Crofton’s prisoners obtain employers “who have on many occasions returned for others, in consequence of the good conduct of those at first engaged;” still better would be the action of the system when, instead of the employers having “every {187} facility placed at their disposal for satisfying themselves as to the antecedents of the convict,” they were already familiar with his antecedents.

Finally, let us not overlook the fact, that this course is the only one which, while duly consulting social safety, is also entirely just to the prisoner. As we have shown, the restraints imposed on a criminal are warranted by absolute equity, only to the extent needful to prevent further aggressions on his fellow-men; and when his fellow-men impose greater restraints than these, they trespass against him. Hence, when a prisoner has worked out his task of making restitution, and, so far as is possible, undone the wrong he had done, society is, in strict justice, bound to accept any arrangement which adequately protects its members against further injury. And if, moved by the expectation of profit, or other motive, any citizen sufficiently substantial and trustworthy, will take on himself to hold society harmless, society must agree to his proposal. All it can rightly require is, that the guarantee against contingent injury shall be adequate; which, of course, it never can be where the contingent injury is of the gravest kind. No bail could compensate for murder; and therefore against this, and other extreme crimes, society would rightly refuse any such guarantee, even if offered, which it would be very unlikely to be.

Such, then, is our code of prison-ethics. Such is the ideal which we ought to keep ever in view when modifying our penal system. Again we say, as we said at the outset, that the realization of such an ideal wholly depends on the advance of civilization. Let no one carry away the impression that we regard all these purely equitable regulations as immediately practicable. Though they may be partially carried out, we think it highly improbable that they could at present be carried out in full. The number of offenders, the low average of enlightenment, the ill-working of {188} administrative machinery, and above all, the difficulty of obtaining officials of adequate intelligence, good feeling, and self-control, are obstacles which must long stand in the way of a system so complex as that which morality dictates. And we here assert, as emphatically as before, that the harshest penal system is ethically justified if it is as good as the circumstances of the time permit. However great the cruelties it inflicts, yet if a system theoretically more equitable would not be a sufficient terror to evil-doers, or could not be worked, from lack of officers sufficiently judicious, honest, and humane—if less rigorous methods would entail a diminution of social security; then the methods in use are extrinsically good though intrinsically bad. They are, as before said, the least wrong, and therefore relatively right.

Nevertheless, as we have endeavoured to prove, it is immensely important that, while duly considering the relatively right, we should keep the absolutely right constantly in view. True as it is that, in this transition state, our conceptions of the ultimately expedient must ever be qualified by our experience of the proximately expedient; it is not the less true that the proximately expedient cannot be determined unless the ultimately expedient is known. Before we can say what is as good as the time permits, we must say what is abstractedly good; for the first idea involves the last. We must have some fixed standard, some invariable measure, some constant clue; otherwise we shall inevitably be misled by the suggestions of immediate policy, and wander away from the right rather than advance towards it. This conclusion is fully borne out by the facts we have cited. In other cases, as well as in the case of penal discipline, the evidence shows how terribly we have erred from obstinately refusing to consult first principles and clinging to an unreasoning empiricism. Though, during civilization, grievous evils have occasionally arisen from attempts suddenly to realize absolute rectitude, yet a {189} greater sum total of evils has arisen from the more usual course of ignoring absolute rectitude. Age after age, effete institutions have been maintained far longer than they would else have been, and equitable arrangements have been needlessly postponed. Is it not time for us to profit by past lessons?

POSTSCRIPT.—Since the publication of this essay in 1860 further evidence supporting its conclusions has been made public. Dr. F.J. Mouat, late Inspector-General of Gaols in Lower Bengal, has given, in various pamphlets and articles, dating from 1872, accounts of his experiences, which entirely harmonize with the foregoing general argument. Speaking of three leading systems of prison-discipline, “based on opposite theories,” he says:—

“The oldest is, that a prison should be rendered a terror to evil doers by the infliction of as much pain as can be inflicted, without direct injury to health or risk to life. The second plan is a graduated system of punishment, from which the direct infliction of pain is eliminated, and the prisoner is allowed to work his way to freedom and mitigation of sentence, by mere good conduct in jail. The third, and in my humble judgment the best, is to convert every prison into a school of industry, labour being used as an instrument of punishment, discipline, and reformation.”—Prison Industry in its Primitive, Reformatory, and Economic Aspects (London, Nov. 1889).

In his pamphlet on the Prison System of India, published in 1872, Dr. Mouat contends:—

“That remunerative prison labour is an efficient instrument of punishment and reformation by occupying the whole available time of criminals in uncongenial and compulsory employments; by teaching them the means of gaining an honest livelihood on release; by the inculcation of habits of order and industry, to the displacement of the irregularity and idleness which are the sources of so much vice and crime; and by repaying to the State the whole or part of the cost of repression of crime by the compulsory industry of the unproductive classes, and thus relieving the community at large from a burden which it is at present compelled to bear.

“That the economic objections to the remunerative employment of convicts are unsound and untenable; and that even if they were true as respects individuals and small sections of the community, the interests of the minority should yield to the general welfare.”

Once more, under the title Prison Discipline and its Results in Bengal, first published in the Journal of the {190} Society of Arts in 1872, Dr. Mouat, after describing an exhibition of gaol-manufactures held in Calcutta in 1856, urges “that every prisoner sentenced to labour should be made to repay to the State the whole cost of his punishment in gaol; . . . and that prisons should be made, as much as possible, schools of industry, as combining, more completely than can be effected by any other system, the punishment of the offender, with the protection of society.” He then goes on to show what have been the results of the self-supporting system:—

“The net profits realized from the labour of the convicts actually employed in handicrafts, after deducting the cost of production, were, in round numbers, as follows:—

	£		£
1855–56	11,019	1864–65	32,988
’56–57	12,300	’65–66	35,543
’57–58	10,841	’66	14,287
’59–60	14,065	’67	41,168
’60–61	23,124	’68	56,817
’61–62	54,542	’69	46,588
’62–63	30,604	’70	45,274
’63–64	54,542

In all, nearly half a million of money. In 1866, the accounts were made up for only eight months, to introduce the calendar in place of the official year, which ended on the 30th of April.

“If the limits of time and space permitted, I could show you in minute detail that each skilled prisoner employed in handicrafts, striking the average of all the jails, earned considerably more than he cost; that five of the prisons under my charge were at various times self-supporting, and that one of them, the great industrial prison at Alipore, a suburb of Calcutta, has repaid very considerably more than its cost, for the last ten years continuously.”

As Dr. Mouat held the position of Inspector-General of Gaols in Lower Bengal for 15 years, and as, during that period, he had under his control an average of 20,000 prisoners, it may, I think, be held that his experiences have been tolerably extensive, and that a system justified by such experiences is worthy of adoption. Unfortunately, however, men pooh-pooh those experiences which do not accord with their foregone conclusions.

I have occasionally vented the paradox that mankind go {191} right only when they have tried all possible ways of going wrong: intending it to be taken with some qualification. Of late, however, I have observed that in some respects this paradox falls short of the truth. Sundry instances have shown me that even when mankind have at length stumbled into the right course, they often deliberately return to the wrong.

{192}

THE ETHICS OF KANT.

[From the Fortnightly Review for July 1888. This essay was called forth by attacks on me made in essays published in preceding numbers of the Fortnightly Review—essays in which the Kantian system of ethics was lauded as immensely superior to the system of ethics defended by me. The last section now appears for the first time.]

If, before Kant uttered that often-quoted saying in which, with the stars of Heaven he coupled the conscience of Man, as being the two things that excited his awe, he had known more of Man than he did, he would probably have expressed himself somewhat otherwise. Not, indeed, that the conscience of Man is not wonderful enough, whatever be its supposed genesis; but the wonderfulness of it is of a different kind according as we assume it to have been supernaturally given or infer that it has been naturally evolved. The knowledge of Man in that large sense which Anthropology expresses, had made, in Kant’s day, but small advances. The books of travel were relatively few, and the facts which they contained concerning the human mind as existing in different races, had not been gathered together and generalized. In our days the conscience of Man, as inductively known, has none of that universality of presence and unity of nature, which Kant’s saying tacitly assumes. Sir John Lubbock writes:—

“In fact, I believe that the lower races of men may be said to be deficient {193} in the idea of right. . . . . That there should be any races of men so deficient in moral feeling, was altogether opposed to the preconceived ideas with which I commenced the study of savage life, and I have arrived at the conviction by slow degrees, and even with reluctance.”—Origin of Civilization, 1882, pp. 404–5.

But now let us look at the evidence from which this impression is derived, as we find it in the testimonies of travellers and missionaries.

Praising his deceased son, Tui Thakau, a Fijian Chief, concluded “by speaking of his daring spirit and consummate cruelty, as he could kill his own wives if they offended him, and eat them afterwards.”—Western Pacific. J. E. Erskine, p. 248.

“Shedding of blood is to him no crime, but a glory . . . . to be somehow an acknowledged murderer is the object of the Fijian’s restless ambition.”—Fiji and the Fijians. Rev. T. Williams, i., p. 112.

“It is a melancholy fact that when they [the Zulu boys] have arrived at a very early age, should their mothers attempt to chastise them, such is the law, that these lads are at the moment allowed to kill their mothers.”—Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa. G. Thompson, ii., p. 418.

“Murther, adultery, thievery, and all other such like crimes, are here [Gold Coast] accounted no sins.”—Description of the Coast of Guinea. W. Bosman, p. 130.

“The accusing conscience is unknown to him [the East African]. His only fear after committing a treacherous murder is that of being haunted by the angry ghost of the dead.”—Lake Regions of Central Africa. R. F. Burton, ii., p. 336.

“I never could make them [East Africans] understand the existence of good principle.”—The Albert N’Yanza. S. W. Baker, i., pp. 241.

“The Damaras kill useless and worn-out people; even sons smother their sick fathers.”—Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa. F. Galton, p. 112.

The Damaras “seem to have no perceptible notion of right and wrong.”—Ibid. p. 72.

Against these we may set some converse facts. At the other extreme we have a few Eastern tribes—pagans they are called—who practise the virtues which Western nations—Christians they are called—do but teach. While Europeans thirst for blood-revenge in much the same way as the lowest savages, there are some simple peoples of the Indian Hills, as the Lepchas, who “are singularly forgiving of injuries;”[9] and Campbell exemplifies “the effect of a {194} very strong sense of duty on this savage.”[10] That character which the creed of Christendom is supposed to foster is exhibited in high degree by the Arafuras (Papuans) who live in “peace and brotherly love with one another”[11] to such extent that government is but nominal. And concerning various of the Indian Hill-tribes, as the Santáls, Sowrahs, Marias, Lepchas, Bodo and Dhimáls, different observers testify of them severally that “they were the most truthful set of men I ever met,”[12] “crime and criminal officers are almost unknown,”[13] “a pleasing feature in their character is their complete truthfulness,”[14] “they bear a singular character for truthfulness and honesty,”[15] they are “wonderfully honest,”[16] “honest and truthful in deed and word.”[17] Irrespective of race, we find these traits in men who are, and have long been, absolutely peaceful (the uniform antecedent), be they the Jakuns of the South Malayan Peninsula, who “are never known to steal anything, not even the most insignificant trifle,”[18] or be it in the Hos of the Himalaya, among whom “a reflection on a man’s honesty or veracity may be sufficient to send him to self-destruction.”[19] So that in respect of conscience these uncivilized people are as superior to average Europeans, as average Europeans are superior to the brutal savages previously described.

[9] Campbell in Journal of the Ethnological Society, July, N. S. vol. i., 1869, p. 150.

[10] Ibid. p. 154.

[11] Dr. H. Kolff, Voyages of the Dutch brig “Dourga.” Earl’s translation, pp. 161.

[12] W. W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, p. 248.

[13] Ibid. p. 217.

[14] Dr. J. Shortt, Hill Ranges of Southern India, pt. iii., p. 38.

[15] Glasfind in Selections from the Records of Government of India (Foreign Department), No. xxxix., p. 41.

[16] Campbell in Journal of the Ethnological Society, N. S. vol. i., 1869, p. 150.

[17] B. H. Hodgson in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, xviii., p. 745.

[18] Rev. P. Favre in Journal of the Indian Archipelago, ii., p. 266.

[19] Col. E. T. Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 206.

Had Kant had these and kindred facts before him, {195} his conception of the human mind, and consequently his ethical conception, would scarcely have been what they were. Believing, as he did, that one object of his awe—the stellar Universe—has been evolved, he might by evidence like the foregoing have been led to suspect that the other object of his awe—the human conscience—has been evolved, and has consequently a real nature unlike its apparent nature.

For the disciples of Kant living in our day there can be made no such defence as that which may be made for their master. On all sides of them lie classes of facts of various kinds, which might suffice to make them hesitate, if nothing more. Here are a few such classes of facts.

Though, unlike the uncultured, who suppose everything to be what it appears, chemists had for many generations known that multitudinous substances which seem simple are really compound, and often highly compound; yet, until the time of Sir Humphrey Davy, even chemists had believed that certain substances which resisted all their powers of decomposition, were to be classed among the elements. Davy, however, by subjecting the alkalies to a force not before applied, proved that they are oxides of metals; and, suspecting the like to be the case with the earths, similarly proved the composite nature of these also. Not only the common sense of the uncultured, but the common sense of the cultured was shown to be wrong. Wider knowledge has, as usual, led to greater modesty, and, since Davy’s day, chemists have felt less certain that the so-called elements are elementary. Contrariwise, increasing evidence of sundry kinds leads them to suspect more and more strongly that they are all compound.

Alike to the labourer who digs it out and to the carpenter who uses it in his workshop, a piece of chalk appears a thing than which nothing can be simpler; and ninety-nine people out of a hundred would agree with them. Yet a {196} piece of chalk is highly complex. A microscope shows it to consist of myriads of shells of Foraminifera; shows, further, that it contains more kinds than one; and shows, further still, that each minute shell, whole or broken, is formed of many chambers, every one of which once contained a living unit. Thus by ordinary inspection, however close, the true nature of chalk cannot be known; and to one who has absolute confidence in his eyes the assertion of its true nature appears absurd.

Take again a living body of a seemingly uncomplicated kind—say a potato. Cut it through and observe how structureless is its substance. But though unaided vision gives this verdict, aided vision gives a widely different one. Aided vision discovers, in the first place, that the mass is everywhere permeated by vessels of complex formation. Further, that it is made up of innumerable units called cells, each of which has walls composed of several layers. Further still, that each cell contains a number of starch-grains. And yet still further, that each of these grains is formed of layer within layer, like the coats of an onion. So that where there appears perfect simplicity there is really complexity within complexity.

From these examples which the objective world furnishes, let us turn to some examples furnished by the subjective world—some of our states of consciousness. Up to modern times any one who, looking out on the snow, was told that the impression of whiteness it gave him was composed of impressions such as those given by the rainbow, would have regarded his informant as a lunatic; as would even now the great mass of mankind. But since Newton’s day, it has become well known to a relatively small number that this is literal fact. Not only may white light be resolved by a prism into a number of brilliant colours, but, by an appropriate arrangement, these colours can be re-combined into white light: the visual sensation which seems perfectly simple proves to be highly compound. Those who {197} habitually suppose that things are what they seem, are wrong here as in multitudinous other cases.

Another example is supplied by the sensation of sound. A solitary note struck on the piano, or a blast from a horn, yields through the ear a feeling which appears homogeneous; and the uninstructed are incredulous if told that it is an intricate combination of noises. In the first place, that which constitutes the more voluminous part of the tone is accompanied by a number of over-tones, producing what is known as its timbre: instead of one note, there are half a dozen notes, of which the chief has its character specialized by the others. In the second place, each of these notes, consisting objectively of a rapid series of aërial waves, produces subjectively a rapid series of impressions on the auditory nerve. Either by the appliance of Hooke or by Savart’s machine or by the siren, it is proved to demonstration that every musical sound is the product of successive units of sound, each in itself unmusical, which, as they succeed one another with increasing rapidity, produce a tone which progressively rises in pitch. Here again, then, under an apparent simplicity there is a double complexity.

Most of these examples of the illusiveness of unaided perception, whether exercised upon objective or subjective existences, were unknown to Kant. Had they been known to him they might have suggested other views concerning certain of our states of consciousness, and might have given a different character to his philosophy. Let us observe what would possibly have been the changes in two of his cardinal conceptions—metaphysical and ethical.

Our consciousness of Time and Space appeared to him, as they appear to everyone, perfectly simple; and the apparent simplicity he accepted as actual simplicity. Had he suspected that, just as the seemingly homogeneous and undecomposable consciousness of Sound really consists of multitudinous units of consciousness, so might the {198} apparently homogeneous and undecomposable consciousness of Space, he would possibly have been led to inquire whether the consciousness of Space is not wholly composed of infinitely numerous relations of position, such as those which every portion of it presents. And finding that every portion of Space, immense or minute, cannot be either known or conceived save in some relative position to the conscious subject, and that, besides involving the relations of distance and direction, it invariably contains within itself relations of right and left, top and bottom, nearer and farther; he might perhaps have concluded that our consciousness of that matrix of phenomena we call Space, has been built up in the course of Evolution by accumulated experiences registered in the nervous system. And had he concluded this, he would not have committed himself to the many absurdities which his doctrine involves.[20]

Similarly, if, instead of assuming that conscience is simple because it seems simple to ordinary introspection, he had entertained the hypothesis that it is perhaps complex—a consolidated product of multitudinous experiences received, mainly by ancestors and added to by self—he might have arrived at a consistent system of Ethics. That the habitual association of pains with certain things and acts, generation after generation, may produce organic repugnance to such things and acts,[21] might, had it been known to him, have made him suspect that conscience is a product of Evolution. And in that case his conception of it would not have been incongruous with the facts above named, showing that there are widely different degrees of conscience in different races.

[20] See Principles of Psychology, § 399.

[21] See Principles of Psychology, § 189 (note) and § 520.

In brief, as already implied, had Kant, instead of his incongruous beliefs that the celestial bodies have had an evolutionary origin, but that the minds of living beings on them, or at least on one of them, have had a {199} non-evolutionary origin, entertained the belief that both have arisen by Evolution, he would have been saved from the impossibilities of his Metaphysics, and the untenabilities of his Ethics. To the consideration of these last, let us now pass.

Before doing this, however, something must be said concerning abnormal reasoning as compared with normal reasoning.

Knowledge which is of the highest order in respect of certainty, and which we call exact science, is distinguished from other knowledge by its definitely quantitative previsions.[22] It sets out with data, and proceeds by steps which, taken together, enable it to say under what specified conditions a specified relation of phenomena will be found; and to say in what place, or at what time, or in what quantity, or all of them, a certain effect will be witnessed. Given the factors of any arithmetical operation, and there is absolute certainty in the result reached, supposing there are no stumblings: stumblings which always admit of detection and disproof by the method which we shall presently find is pursued. Base and angles having been accurately measured, that sub-division of geometry which is called trigonometry yields with certainty the distance or the height of the object of which the position is sought. The ratio of the arms of a lever having been stated, mechanics tells us what weight at one end will balance an assigned weight at the other. And by the aid of these three exact sciences, the Calculus, Geometry, and Mechanics, Astronomy can predict to the minute, for each separate place on the Earth, when an eclipse will begin and end, and how near it will approach to totality. Knowledge of this order has infinite justifications in the successful guidance of infinitely numerous human actions. The accounts of every trader, the operations of every workshop, the navigation of every vessel, depend for their trustworthiness {200} on these sciences. The method they pursue, therefore, verified in cases which pass all human power to enumerate, is a method not to be transcended in certainty.

[22] See Essay on “Genesis of Science.”

What is this method? Whichever of these sciences we examine, we find the course uniformly pursued to be that of setting out with propositions of which the negations are inconceivable, and advancing by successive dependent propositions, each of which has the like character—that its negation is inconceivable. In a developed consciousness (and of course I exclude minds of which the faculties are unformed) it is impossible to represent things that are equal to the same thing as being themselves unequal; and in a developed consciousness, action and re-action cannot be thought of as other than equal and opposite. In like manner, every because and every therefore, used in a mathematical argument, connotes a proposition of which the terms are absolutely coherent in the mode alleged: the proof being that an attempt to bring together in consciousness the terms of the opposite proposition is futile. And this method of testing, alike the fundamental propositions and all members of the fabrics of propositions raised upon them, is consistently pursued in verifying the conclusion. Inference and observation are compared; and when they agree, it is held inconceivable that the inference is other than true.

In contrast to the method which I have just described, distinguishable as the legitimate a priori method, there is one which may be called—I was about to say, the illegitimate a priori method. But the word is not strong enough; it must be called the inverted a priori method. Instead of setting out with a proposition of which the negation is inconceivable, it sets out with a proposition of which the affirmation is inconceivable, and therefrom proceeds to draw conclusions. It is not consistent, however: it does not continue to do that which it does at first. Having posited an inconceivable proposition to begin with, it does not {201} frame its argument out of a series of inconceivable propositions. All steps after the first are of the kind ordinarily accepted as valid. The successive therefores and becauses have the usual connotations. The peculiarity lies in this, that in every proposition save the first, the reader is expected to admit the logical necessity of an inference drawn, for the reason that the opposite is not thinkable; but he is not supposed to expect a like conformity to logical necessity in the primary proposition. The dictum of a logical consciousness which must be recognized as valid in every subsequent step, must be ignored in the first step. We pass now to an illustration of this method which here concerns us.

The first sentence in Kant’s first chapter runs thus:—“Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a Good Will.”[23] And then on the next page we come upon the following definition:—