State Socialism

My Lords,—In calling attention to the socialistic character of the legislation of the last fifteen years, I must throw myself on your lordships' indulgence; and if, in order to enforce the subject and give weight to my words which they would not otherwise have, I quote at some length from authorities upon this question to which even your lordships must bow, I trust your lordships will bear with me.

My lords, I gave this notice, or an equivalent notice, in the autumn of last year; but I did not bring the matter forward, because it appeared to me as time went on that the socialistic character of our legislation was so apparent, and that from writings in the press and from public speeches, the spread and advance of socialism were so manifest, that I ought not needlessly to occupy your lordships' time by bringing the subject under your consideration. I felt, indeed, that I should be like unto a man holding up a lantern to the sun. But, a short time back, my noble friend, the Duke of Argyll, in calling attention to the circumstances under which the change of Government had taken place, made use of these words or words to the effect:—"That upon social questions there was little or no difference between the two parties in the State,"

I believe then, that this is not only a peril which hangs over the country, but an evil from which we are now suffering.

In calling attention to this question, I am well aware of the vastness of the subject. I well recollect being

^* Essays by Henry Fawcett

page break present at a public dinner, where a distinguished literary man was called upon to return thanks for literature. He began his speech by asking—" What is literature?" I own that I had a sinking at heart when I heard a convivial speech, at a convivial meeting, begin with such a question; and I am afraid if I ask your lordships "What is socialism?" you will have the same sinking at heart that I then had. But I trust, so to treat this subject as to prove that your lordships' very natural alarm caused by my question is without foundation.

My lords, there are various kinds of socialism. There is the socialism of the communist, or what I might call the socialism of the street; for that kind of socialism has been fought out more than once in the streets of Paris, and may some day have to be fought out even in the streets of London. Then there is the socialism of the professor, or, as the Germans call it, the socialism of the chair; and there is also the socialism of the statesman.

That, I believe, to be a very fair description of a communist, with the exception that I greatly doubt his page 12 readiness to fork out his penny. But, nevertheless, I have a great respect for him. The communist knows what he means. He means business. His business is "the equal division of unequal earnings." There is no theory about him. He is a thoroughly practical man, and one respects thoroughly practical men; but remember, it is towards communism that all our sentimental socialism is surely and steadily tending.

I come next to the socialism of the professor-the socialism of the chair. Now, we live, in a time when, perhaps, more than in any other, men feel for the sufferings of their fellow-creatures. It is essentially an era of humanitarianism. Philosophers and professors in their writings, are casting aside the old school of political economy and laissez-faire, and advocate State-intervention as a cure for all evils. They look to the State to protect the weak against the strong, and to equalize the conditions of life. I believe, my lords, that all these attempts will end in signal failure, and that in the long run, it will be proved that the older school of political economy is on the whole sounder, aye, and more humane than that of the modern humanitarian school of philosophy. For all philosophy of the kind, whether right or wrong, which is evolved out of the heart and the inner consciousness of the writer, I have, for one, the utmost respect. But, my lords, there is another kind of professor, the professor of political economy who squares his principles page 13 with politics and party needs; who, when his party leader sends common sense and experience in the government of men to Jupiter or Saturn, finds admirable reasons in his writings why the old school must be thoroughly wrong, and why political economy should be banished to distant planets. I will say, with regard to professors of this type, what Lord Beaconsfield stated in another place, that Prince Bismarck had said to him:—" Beware of professors." And it is to your lordships that one should especially say, "Beware of these professors;" for if I mistake not, in the course of last autumn, one of them said that everyone of your lordships should be hanged. Nay more, I think he said that none of your lordships ought to have any existence at all, because your ancestors ought to have been hanged, and that if they were not, they had not met with their deserts. So much for the professors.

I pass on to the socialism of the statesman. Now, there are also two distinct types of socialistic statesmen. There is the truly genuine philanhropic statesman, who, seeing the evils with which the world is encumbered, the suffering and distress, the oppression and cruelty by which we are surrounded, and acting on the impulses of a noble nature, makes war on these evils, and that, too, with all his energy and soul. Occasionally he succeeds, and in some cases he perhaps does good to his fellow-men; and if in the course of his warfare against page 14 evil, he indulges, doubtless, in exaggerated language, or has recourse to ill-considered action, yet, we cannot but honour and respect a man of this kind. We have, indeed, statutes on the Statute Book, which do honour to the good intentions of such men as, for instance, the Factory Act. But the evil of that act and all similar acts is this; that what is good in itself-in this instance the desire to protect young persons and children—is followed up by some one who tries to carry the principles of the act a great deal further; and we have now societies formed, whose object is to apply the principles of the Factory Act to adult labour, in every shop in London. And if there, why not carry them into your lordships' households and kitchens? I say we, nevertheless, cannot but respect the philanthropic statesman, who works on these lines. But there is another kind of philanthropic socialistic statesman—the political partizan. My lords, I can conceive such a man as this, at one time, a denouncer of State-interference, and of what is called "grandmotherly government"—an admirable expression, which he, perhaps, plagiarised—and at another time, I can understand this philanthropic party statesman, bringing in a Bill by which he is to prescribe the drinks, clothing, brushes, and number of ablutions that are to be applied under heavy penalties to full-grown male and female labourers engaged in certain occupations. I can understand this partizan statesman when addressing one constituency denouncing every man who would deprive the poor man of his beer; possibly at some convivial meeting page 15 of his constituents singing a well-known popular song, which imposes a heavy penalty on the eyes of those who would "rob a poor man of his beer"; and I can understand this same partisan when representing a different constituency, going in for local option, and the tyranny of majorities over minorities. Lastly, I can understand this same partizan statesman, when invited to apply the principle of that meanest of ministerial measures, the Hares and Rabbits Bill—I call it advisedly that meanest of ministerial measures—to existing leases, repudiating the proposal as an insult; and I can imagine him two years later, bringing in an Agricultural Holdings Bill, which broke every lease in England and in Scotland. For a philanthropic socialistic party statesman of this type, I own I entertain feelings of very limited respect.

My lords, I do not wish to trouble your lordships more than I have done with definitions and the theory of socialism. I thought the best way to bring it home to your lordships was to illustrate it in the way I have done. I have, however, now done with theory, and would come to the concrete, and invite your consideration of Bills that have been passed during the last fifteen years, all of which show, more or less, a socialistic tendency on the part of both parties, and especially on the part of the Radical party, in the State. Now, I have put in my notice that I would call attention to the tendency of legislation during the last fifteen page 16 years. I say the last fifteen years, because in the year 1870 we had the first Irish Land Bill, and in that Irish Land Bill you find the germ of socialism in the way of dealing with property which has since been followed up by so many similar measures; a germ which I venture to think has spread as rapidly, and is as fatal in legislation as the phylloxera in the vine, or the "pèrt microbe," as the French call the germ of the cholera poison. And when my noble friend, the Duke of Argyll—I regret that he is not here—makes eloquent speeches and writes able letters, denouncing the evil effects of the Irish Land Act of 1881, I wish to point out to him that in the Irish Land Bill of 1870 you find the germ of all subsequent land bills, and that by assenting to that Bill—for he was then a member of the Cabinet-he has hatched the chickens which since then have come to roost in the crofts of Mull and Tiree.

My lords, I will now point out what our recent legislation has been. It would be absurd to go into too many details, but I can classify some of the chief measures under different heads.

First, we have, as regards

Land and Houses:—

Well, my lords, all of these measures assume the right of the State to regulate the management of or to confiscate real property—steps in the direction of substituting "land nationalization" for individual ownership.

We then come to the question of corporate property, and we find that corporate property, like individual property, is now equally handed over to the spoiler by the State. Thus we have affecting

Corporate Property:—

Livery Companies.:—

Water Companies:—

This year there was a bill introduced called the Corporate Property Security Bill, which was a most comical bill. The object of the bill was nominally to secure corporate property. But for whom? Not for the owners, but for those who wished to get hold of it in another session. It provided the security which the butcher extends to his sheep, when he pens them preparatory to slaughter. These bills with regard to corporate property assume, contrary to all historical evidence, that what is absolutely private property is public property, and then proceed to subject it to State-management. As to the Water Companies; my noble friend Lord Bramwell, showed the other day how your lordships were about to confiscate to a great extent the property of Water Companies. These measures both run in the same direction. They are attempts to subject the chartered rights of private page 19 enterprise in water supply to municipal monopolies, by first reducing the value of the companies' property by harassing legislation.

Then we come to

Ships:—

All these are successive assertions by the Board of Trade of its right to regulate private enterprise and individual management in the mercantile marine; with the result of complete failure, as confessed by the Board of Trade in its memorandum of November, 1883. We have now a Royal Commission enquiring into this matter; and our shipowners have been so harassed, that at one time they seriously contemplated putting their shipping under the flag of Spain, or some other foreign country.

Then we find Acts dealing with

Mines:—

These acts constitute a State code for the regulation of the mining industry, with the effect of lessening the sense of personal responsibility among mine owners, and of promoting a fallacious confidence in government inspection; and as these Acts in the main, fail to effect their purpose, further legislation is asked for, more inspectors are demanded, and the Home Office, fearing unpopularity, listens to the demand. There is accordingly a perfect army of inspectors growing up in consequence of this kind of legislation.

Then there are Acts regulating

Railways:—

All these are encroachments by the Board of Trade upon the self-government of private enterprise in railways; successive steps in the direction of State railways.

In reference to trade and commerce, there are the following Acts, and Bills now before Parliament this Session, regulating

Manufactures, Trades, &c.:—

These measures may be summed up as being invasions by the State of the self-government of the various interests of the country, and curtailments of freedom of contract between employers and employed. I must, just in passing, allude to the Pawnbrokers' Act of 1872. That, my lords, was the thin edge of the wedge for reducing the business of the "poor man's banker" to a State monopoly like the monts de piété in France. Then you have the Parcel Post Act of 1882, whereby the State comes in and undertakes the function of trader, and enters into an unequal competition with private enterprise for carrying parcels. There are also regulations for bakers; in fact, there is hardly any industry that is not regulated in some way or other.

When we come to liquor, the following is the state of things. We find for the regulation of the trade in

Liquor:—

Now what are all these liquor measures? I was speaking just now as to the action of philanthropic and partizan statesmen with reference to liquor, and the tyranny of majorities over minorities, but these and all similar measures are nothing less than backward legislation. In physiology, page 24 there is what is called "retrograde metamorphosis;" while in sporting phraseology, there is a term, "running heel." This legislation, my lords, is "retrograde metamorphosis," "running heel," back to the time of the Plantagenets when the State vainly attempted to regulate prices, wages, and all things else. It is a return to the Tippling Acts of James I., which had to be abandoned because they so signally failed. These measures are all attempts on the part of the State to regulate the dealings and habits of buyers and sellers of alcoholic drinks—attempts to coerce the sober many on account of the drunken few. But, my lords, although we have recently read a letter calling upon the new constituencies to make local option the test question at the coming general election, yet I hope that the common sense of Englishmen, and their love of liberty, will assert themselves, and that if put to the test at a general election, local option will go to the wall.

Next, we have Acts and Bills dealing with the

Dwellings of the Working Classes, etc.:—

All of these embody the principle that it is the duty of the State to provide dwellings, private gardens, and other conveniences for the working classes, and assume its right to appropriate land for these purposes.

We have the following Acts and Bills pushing to an unlimited extent the principle of State-interference in the matter of

Education:—

All these measures are based on the assumption that it is the duty of the State to act in loco parentis; and they constitute a progressive code of State education, which, by being supplied at less than the market value is bringing about the extinction of voluntary systems and" free trade "in education, and their page 27 replacement by a universal State monopoly after the manner of the French Lycées. Many of them provide those things that ought to be left to the instincts and affections of parents.

Then there are Acts regarding

Recreation:—

Whereby the State having educated the people in common school-rooms, proceeds to provide them with common reading rooms, and afterwards turns them out at stated times into the street for common holidays.

Besides these, there are

Local Government Provisional Orders.

Local "Improvement" Acts and Bills.

These measures constitute a vast mass of local legislation, which is every session smuggled through Parliament, containing interferences in every conceivable particular with liberty and property. They afford an indication of the evil effects of the example set by State socialists to municipal socialists.

Now, my lords, I have said enough, I think, with reference to the tendency of the legislation of the last fifteen years. I have explained what the character of the legislation is. Now what is its economic effect?

I believe I may justly summarise it as follows:—liberty curtailed, property plundered, robbery rampant, land unsaleable, enterprise checked, capital flying away, and industry crippled. I believe all this legislation has checked enterprise and banished capital; and, in proof of the fact, that capital is flying from the country, and that people are investing money rather in foreign than English funds, I will mention a conversation I had with a wealthy Liberal Peer eighteen months ago. He said, "What do you think of the state of things?" I answered, "I think they are as bad as can be." He replied, "So do I," and then went on to say—" I thought land was safe; I find it is not. I comforted myself with the reflection that house property was at any rate secure. It turns out to be no more safe than land. There remains, I said to myself, at least the funds—Childers has abolished them! I will tell you what I have done—I have put all my money into the Dutch 2½ per cents." We have thus realised Lord Sherbrooke's saying in 1866, that "capital was a coy nymph, and had wings with which she would take flight abroad, if no longer safe in this country." Now what has been the result of the legislation during the last fifteen years, from 1870? You have taken from the landlord in page 29 Ireland, and given to the tenant, a capital sum o £300,000,000. ^* I have, indeed, heard the late Lord Privy Seal, ^† the executioner of the landed interest, pitifully prating on this subject, and saying, "True, we have taken from the Irish landlord one-fourth of his income, but we have thus made the remainder secure." Why, my lords, it is just as if I were to find a policeman in my plate-closet, handing out some of the spoons to a man with very short hair, a low forehead, and pronounced under jaw, and the policeman, on my asking what he was doing there, were to say to me, "This young man has a great fancy for all your spoons, and I am only giving him one-fourth of them to make the rest safe."' Such is the kind of reasoning on which the landlords of Ireland have been despoiled of a quarter of their property; and the effect of all this kind of legislation is, that in the long run, those sought to be benefitted, are not benefitted at all, for you are practically killing the goose that lays golden eggs, by destroying confidence, and driving capital away from English enterprise. The general social results of such socialistic legislation may be summed up in "dynamite," "detectives," and "general demoralisation." Of the dynamite scare, we have recently had a curious instance it a very short distance from this. I recently asked the Lord Great Chamberlain to allow models for the new War

^* This sum is really an under-estimate of the capitalised value of compensation for disturbance, tenants' improvements, right of free sale of tenancies, and State-enforced reductions of rent.—W.

^† Lord Carlingford.

page 30 Office and Admiralty, now in the Victoria Gallery, to be open to the inspection of architects and other persons interested. But the Lord Great Chamberlain dared not exhibit them, lest some one should thus obtain admission to the Houses of Parliament and blow them up. So much, then, for dynamite. How as to detectives? Why, every member of the late Cabinet went about with the shadow of a detective at his heels; and the late Home Secretary, besides his familiar, the detective, had daily fifteen policemen told off for the protection of his house—five at a time, in three relays.

And, as to "general demoralisation," it is not confined to Irish tenants, or Scotch crofters; it is visible everywhere. Even some of the Scotch Lowland farmers are asking to have their leases broken, rents fixed by the State, fixity of tenure, and to be repaid all the money which they have expended on their holdings during the currency of their lease. Do not think, moreover, that demoralisation is confined to Scotland or to Ireland. It has even penetrated to Grosvenor Square, and to Belgravia. The other day a West-End friend entertained me with a denunciation of the monstrous injustice to which he was subject through his landlord, at the end of his lease, having the power to confiscate—as he expressed it—his town tenants' improvements. In other words, my lords, he might have said it was monstrous that he should have made a bad bargain for himself. Yes, my lords, I was not ill-advised, when two years page 31 ago I counselled two Whig dukes, who between them own a large portion of London, to keep their political weather eyes open, and to rest assured that the doctrines they applied to Ireland would very soon apply to houses in Grosvenor Square, Belgravia, and Covent Garden.

And why have we now a block of business in Parliament? Because the table has been for years encumbered with unnecessary bills, which no sooner become acts than they lead to and necessitate further legislation on the same lines. While on the continent people are thinking and vapouring about socialism, we in this country are adopting it in our legislation. Louise Michel, the French Communist, epitomised the matter very effectively when she said, "that whereas in France socialists stand in the dock, in England they sit in the House of Commons." She might have added, "and Communism in the Cabinet."

My lords, I have now shown, I think, with sufficient clearness, the direction in which we have been, and are travelling; but to fully appreciate the situation, we require a gauge of pace. Here it is. It is is only twenty years since Lord Palmerston died, and he, be it remembered, said that "tenant right was landlord wrong." Again, Lord Sherbrooke, speaking in 1866, at the time of the "Cave," said, with reference to the politics of the time, that "Happily there was an oasis upon which all men, without distinction of page 32 party, could take their common stand, and that was the sound ground of political economy." Well, my lords, that oasis has turned out to be an Irish bog, possessed of its walking qualities, for it has already crossed the Irish sea and invaded the lands of England and Scotland.

Which, then, do your lordships prefer—the old philosophy of Bentham, or the new philosophy of Birmingham? But I do wrong to call it new; in reality it is a very old philosophy. You will see it any day in the Zoological Gardens, where the monkeys having nuts are made war upon by those who have none; it is, at any rate, as old as Barabbas, and may be termed the "Barabbasian philosophy." It has, ineeed, in all times and in all lands had many professors; but they have not all been successful in their vocation, for, happily for the human race, the majority of them find their way, here at least, to Broadmoor, Pentonville, and other similar establishments, where they are maintained at the public expense.

My lords, I have now traced this question down to the time when the late Government left office. How they found themselves in a minority I care not. I shall not speculate as to how it came about that the House of Commons that had stuck to them through all their hopeless vacillations in foreign policy, that waded along with them through oceans of purposeless bloodshed, that had connived at and condoned the

^* Contemporary criticism by Bentham on the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen" decreed in the Constituent Assembly of France in 1971. Bentham's Works. Collected Edition. Vol, II. p. 497 et seq.

page 35 death of Gordon, finally deserted them when it came to a tax on beer. Harassed interests have still, perhaps, power in the State, and we know that beer was once potent in turning out a Liberal Government. One large brewer, I have heard, would have lost £60,000, and another £40,000 a year, if the financial proposals of the late Liberal Government had been carried.

How long the present Government will remain in office, what the result of the general election will be, I do not pretend to say; but my own impression is, that the new agricultural voters will follow the blatent brazen agitator who makes the largest promises, pointing to what has been done in Ireland in the matter of land as earnest of their fulfilment. I know one county where the agricultural labourer is saying:—"No more parsons—no more landlords-no more farmers-the land is ours." And elsewhere candidates are saying to the labourer—" Do you want a new cottage and three or four acres of land? You shall have them." While the farmer is addressed thus: "I should like you to have security of tenure, the payment by the landlord of all your improvements, whether made with or without his consent; and something besides—this, no doubt, will be difficult to estimate, but it can be done. I further wish to see copartnery established between the landlord and tenant. I wish him to be a shareholder in the land." This, my lords, is no page 36 exaggeration of the speeches now being addressed to agricultural constituencies, and they may be summed up thus: "You gives your votes, and you takes your choice."

But be this as it may, looking at the state of things which has grown up under the late Government, both at home and abroad, I confess that I heard of their defeat with satisfaction; so much so, indeed, that I gave expression to my feelings in the words with which the late Cannon Kingsley, in the title of a very pleasant little book, described the realization of his life-long longing to visit the West Indian Islands. I, from the bottom of my soul, exclaimed "At Last!"

And now we have a new Government, what are we to expect from them? I feel that in the matter of foreign policy, my noble friend at the head of Her Majesty's Government will do much, be his time of office long or short, to tie up the broken threads of our traditional foreign policy, to the undoing of which it was the boast of the late Prime Minister that he had given his thoughts by day, and his dreams by night; and I hope that my noble friend will so tie these broken threads, that, be his successor who he may, he will not be able, even if he wished, again to break them; and we shall have the further security that the undoing of the policy of a predecessor has not been so successful as to encourage its repetition.

But what will the present Government do with reference to economic and social questions. A fortnight ago, I should have expressed hopes on this point, not fears; but we have had a taste of the quality of the Prime Minister lately; and, giving as I do, full credit to my noble friends desire to benefit the poor, still, in his proposals and in the arguments by which he supported them, I see a danger of that socialistic race between the two parties in the State, foretold by Mr. Fawcett. The noble Marquis supported a bogus railway in Regent's Park, Lord Salisbury: "Not bogus." Lord Wemyss: Then I will drop the bogus and stick to my noble friend's argument. He suspended a standing order of your lordships' House, on the ground that employment was scarce in London; and if that argument means anything, it means travaux publiques. Again, my noble friend has defended his Housing of the Working-classes Bill on the ground, that it is the duty of the State to provide, or by selling property below its value, to help to provide houses for those in its employ. Where, let me ask, will he draw the line—will he house the Foreign Office clerks, and all others in Government employment, including the tide waiters and police? And, if not, why not? What otherwise does he propose, but the most glaring class legislation.

Now, my lords, I believe all this to be a mistake—a mistake, as regards those for whose supposed benefit sound principles are set aside, which in the long run, never answers.

I believe, my lords, that this is far safer ground for the Conservative party to stand upon than that of socialistic administration. If the Conservative Government stand upon this ground, there is hope, good hope alike for true Conservatism and our nation. But if they enter upon a race of page 39 legislative toboggening clown the slippery socialistic slide, they must infallibly be distanced and beaten by their political opponents.

Having thus pointed the moral of my tale, I am satisfied to leave the matter in your lordships' hands. I will only add, that General Gordon, in that admirable journal of his * "The Man versus the State," by Herbert Spencer. Page 23. et seq. page 41 which is the real, true, monument to the man, says—" It is not, remember, the Government that made the British nation." No, my lords, it is not the Government that has made the British nation, but it is the Government that, as I have shown, is in a fair way to unmake it, by strangling the spirit of independence, and the self-reliance of the people, and by destroying the moral fibre of our race in the anaconda coils of State socialism.

Self-help versus State-help.

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—Westminster Review.

"Treating an essentially dry and technical subject with a pleasant freshness and aptness of illustration."

—Standard.

"We have met with no work on political economy more suggestive than the present."

—Edinburgh Daily Review.

Serfdom, Wagedom and Freedom. By the same Author. Price is. A solution of the Labour Question.

Dispauperization. By J. R. Pretyman. Second Edition.