A Patched Society. (Digest:—Continued.)

IV.

We will specify more particularly the rationale of the assertion that the system of uncurbed competition is pernicious, and baneful in its effects.

Of the writers whose influence is manifested in the wiser utterances of this age's thought, few of the more noteworthy are more powerfully directing the decided, though hidden tendencies of modern thought than Mr. Herbert Spencer, to whose work allusion has already been made. Although some of his dicta must be guardedly mistrusted, his broad general principles are for the most part lucidly enunciated, and of irresistible truth, with a single remarkable exception. By accomplishing the object which he set before him of indicating a sure and unimpugnable basis for the Science of Morality, and for a trustworthy moral code, he has rendered a signal service to humanity, as likewise by placing so vividly before the eyes of a self-steeped world the divinely-appointed and immutable law that so clearly defines the inalienable, though disregarded, rights of all men. It will be useful therefore to sift the pure ore of this really remarkable work from statements which from their erroneousness or incompleteness must mislead the too confiding reader.

In disposing of the difficulty that arises in the allotment of the earth's surface, resulting from the equal right of all men to the use of the soil, he concludes, justly enough, that the land must be rented by the holders of the soil of Society. When however, shortly afterwards, he is prompted by some incomprehensible freak to ran a tilt against the French theory of the "droit au travail," or as interpreted by himself "the right to the opportunity of labouring," he feels compelled to ignore the synonymousness of the two expressions, and must needs make a distinction without a difference between the use of the raw material of the earth, which alone confers the possibility of work being performed, and this same opportunity of labouring. And further, although it was a simple matter that Society should let the land to one of its members i.e. A.B.C. and D. to A. he finds it an inconceivable absurdity that A.B.C. and D should guarantee his natural right, or the equivalent of this use of the soil to B.—(" Social Statics." pages 123, 313.)

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In his "Social Statics" he elaborates merely such general principles of social organization, as are applicable to the perfect condition of man, which he admits are not applicable to this imperfect and unadapted state. Yet in defining and limiting the proper functions of Government, after proving that all Governments are compromises rendered necessary by Man's unadapted condition, he lays down the unyielding dogma of laissez faire,—or that no circumstances can justify the modification of that compromise which must be limited to the administration of justice. Taking, for instance, his dictum respecting Poor Laws—he somewhat triumphantly proves that every million of money collected in rates is directly taken from the pockets of the labouring classes themselves; i.e., from the wage fund of the country, thence concluding, with strange imprudence, that all such efforts stultify themselves. He does not appear to see that the Poor Law is a species of insurance—though of clumsy and undivine contrivance—that Society effects for the benefit of such of its members as misfortune may overtake unawares. Supposing, by way of example, that in any given section of the Country twelve and a half millions form the wage fund, that is to be divided amongst twenty-five thousand labourers, and that half-a-million be levied from this amount as a poor's rate. Now under the competition system it is a matter of certainty, that a very considerable number of labourers will at all times be out of work by the chances of circumstances beyond their own control, and it cannot be asserted that were that half million unlevied it would flow spontaneously as wages precisely to these unemployed. It is, on the contrary, a matter of certainty that such would not be the case, and it is equally certain that until we can achieve the tremendous impossibility of rendering crowds of labourers as mobile as water or air, causing them to move instinctively and instantly, before their stomachs can feel the pangs of hunger, to the distant and unknown locality where work may be waiting for them, some Poor Law scheme must be the concomitant of the competition system. When philosophers allow themselves to float enraptured in blissful confidence in their laws of compensation, and of supply-and-demand that are streaming their "beneficent currents" whithersoever there may be a void, and that even as the ocean, and air require no "tinkering at human hands," it might prove instructive to such optimists were they to page 74 experience the compensative blessedness of the West Indian hurricane, or the regulated largesse of the Simoon, or were they planted in the position of operatives that unforeseen sickness, or slackness of trade, has reduced to the last extremity. They might then discover the fact, that the divine scheme of compensation includes as an element the wise co-operation of rational human beings.

The attitude of the upholders of the "laissez-faire" theory is this. They see the great body of the labouring classes, forming the majority of mankind, down-crushed by the ponderous iron-loaded fetters of circumstances into the mire of ignorance and vicious propensities, and to the helpless mortals writhing beneath the intolerable weight they, in the plenitude of their inspiration, cry—" Individuate yourselves as speedily as ye may! Forthwith adapt your constitutions to your condition, and mould your own social surroundings and institutions! Great is Allah. When you have developed the laws of morality out of your own consciousness in the midst of your toil you will be moral. When you have discovered the laws of intellectual development, and learnt to appreciate education, you will educate your children, and want no help from Society, nor from any Government. When you do not work, or get out of employment, you will starve. Whilst you are so ignorant as not to educe by your own power of ratiocination the rationale of cholera, or the conditions of typhoid fever, you will die. Allah is Great. Speedily inviduate yourselves. Beware the blundering would-be regenerators, who would help you with teaching or with laws."

Were some communistic form of Society established amongst us in which each individual bore an equal share of life's burdens and labours; and had Nature gifted all men with equal faculties then [unclear: ceieris] paribus, it might be true that self individuation should be left to be achieved by all men for themselves. But when we see certain individuals supremely gifted with capacity, or by the favour of fortune freed from the cares of providing for physical wants, how can we otherwise conclude than that the appointed work for these is the elaboration of the principles of Social and other sciences, and the imparting to their fellows such instruction as may enable them to profit by the results of the great mind work in which they have been prevented from taking an active part. If we summon before us the different gradations in the past career of human progress since man emerged from the gloom of the dark ages, and since printing and science, with slowly brightening lanterns, enabled Religion to know herself more and more, and to go on up to this present moment doffing sundry wrappages and muffling gear of the ugliest for so fair a form,—still remaining other unaesthetic petticoats yet to follow the rest,—is it not instantly cognizable that the wiser and more gifted have precisely in this way effected all that has been accomplished?

But it might be urged that this is a truism, and that the question at issue is whether these more capable persons shall be limited to teaching by precept, or should be armed with the powers of Government. Whilst it is acknowledged that the tendency of the various enactments of paternal governments is to paralyse individual energy, foresight, and self-help in the community, and whilst it is a deplorable fact that the vast majority of men have at all times been content, and do universally submit to have their religions and their institutions page 75 thought out and framed for them, inducing a state of things that nullifies all such governmental efforts, it can be as certainly asserted that Governments whose constitutions comprise the due degree of the democratic element can in many ways work beneficently with a contrary result, Whilst they should abstain from the assumption of functions which the ideal of a healthful Society demands should be performed by the members of the community, or by local organizations, the conditions and necessities of the social state dictate another duty,—the intervention in instances, capable of definition and limitation, for the protection of certain classes from such intolerable oppression of circumstances as renders the due exercise of some faculties impossible to them. In short, Government machinery may and must be employed for the purpose of furthering the desirable object of rendering all individuals capable of governing themselves, and affording an invaluable incentive to all to exercise their higher faculties in the establishing an organisation which shall aid, instead of impeding, the general growth towards a more perfect state. It is useless, to instance a common objection, to bring forward the sceptical query,—shall we then turn the state into a patent educator? and if so, what shall we teach? The reply to this, if reply is needed, is, that the function of the state is to provide, instead of the so-called National School Masters, the most capable teachers it can find, to do a needful work,—the imparting amidst this chaos of nescience what little knowledge and science the world's brain has evolved, as speedily as possible to all, and not to dogmatise about abstract principles of morality or forms of creeds that shall be inculcated. What are the decrees of a democratic government but the embodied wishes of an association of persons who fashion the conditions of their intercourse with one another after the wisest ideas that are current amongst them. The argument that, since man's ideas are constantly progressing towards an exacter conception of the perfect condition, to crystallise the crude opinions of one generation in government institutions that must eventually be demolished and cleared away to make room for more perfect forms has, as we have seen, some force, and must be accepted as finally condemnatory of State Churches and State-supported religious institutions, because these do not admit of modification by the human reason, which is the moulding agency of all normal institutions, and are incompatible with man's right to the fullest freedom.

This consideration of the requirements resulting from man's progressive state must also modify most legislative enactments in some degree, although the conservative policy prompted by the selfishness of persons interested in the perpetuation of effete institutions may be expected gradually to diminish to the minimum of resistance desirable in order to afford a safeguard against too hasty and ill considered innovations, as the choice of such persons becomes better regulated by man's improved moral sense.

All this leads to the conclusions, that as long as the unlimited competition system continues, Society will be compelled to organise some more or less efficient protection against the chances of destitution;—that the vicious and ignorant parent who prevents the education of his child is interfering with the development and exercise of faculties that are needful to his harmonising with the requirements of the modern social condition;—that to refuse to accept and page 76 follow the direction of the best authorities on sanitary matters is to infringe that liberty of others which Governments are created to protect. Further, if Governments and governing institutions are insufficient and bad, they are so in precise proportion to the imperfect condition of the elective body, and whilst the evil of having bad laws and bad institutions is altogether secondary to the internal immorality and molecular rottenness of which it is the fruit, it serves as a useful index by which a people may know itself.

By such considerations then we have been persuaded that—"all this mammon gospel of supply-and-demand, competition, laissez faire, and devil-take-the hindmost begins to be one of the shabbiest gospels ever preached on earth, that all social growths in this world have at a certain stage of their development required organising, and Work the grandest of all human interests, does now require it". Such organisation cannot, however, be originated by any existing government: it must first be elaborated, and familiarised to the national mind by the efforts of a few devoted teachers, and subjected to the most crucial testing of experiment. The principles of such an organisation as applied to a small country town may now be indicated.