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Chapter XV.

Salus Publica Suprema Lex.

The unhappy restoration of the Stuarts brought with it a whole train of evils, from which the nation still suffers. In 1660 a House of Commons, in which the landlords were supreme, relieved their estates of all feudal dues, then amounting to about one-half of the entire revenues of the State. Military service, purveyance, aids, relief, premier seisin, wardship, alienation, escheat, all disappeared in a day. In their place were substituted Excise duties. By 12 Charles II. c. 24 the great bulk of taxation was for the first time transferred from the land to the people, who have borne it ever since. In 1883 the revenue proper—i.e., exclusive of receipts from the Post-office, Telegraphs, &c.—amounted to £73,128,000. Towards this sum Customs and Excise alone contributed £46,587,000. The Land-tax yielded £1,055,000! Our rulers tax the vices of smoking and drinking at home as a means of murdering Afghans, Zulus, Egyptians, and Soudanese abroad. Raise all taxes from the land, and we shall speedily hear of the last of these enormities.

For every shilling paid over the counter for cocoa, 1¼d. is for tax; for coffee, 1½d.; for currants, 2½d.; for raisins, 2½d.; for tea, over 4¼d.; while a shilling's worth of spirits is raised to 4s. 4¼d.; and a shilling's worth of tobacco to 6s. 8¾d. The smoker who buys an ounce of tobacco for 3d. pays 2½d, for tax and ½d. for tobacco. And this is exemplary free-trade England! It is noteworthy that this infamous statute of Charles II., which abolished the feudal burdens of the land page 119 lords, while leaving them in full enjoyment of their privileges, was carried by a majority of two, the numbers being—for the measure, 151; against, 149.

The Land-tax was fixed in 1692 at 4s. in the pound of true annual rental, but the landlords soon found this charge too onerous, and in 1697 they reduced their payments to a fixed sum, which was raised in 1798 to £2,037,627, and declared to be perpetual, subject to redemption. To-day the tax, if honestly levied on true annual rental, would yield about £35,000,000. Had it been honestly levied all along, there would have been no National Debt, and probably very few wars. Landlord parliaments, it is pretty certain, would have been careful to keep out of wars for which they themselves would have had to pay, and pay at once out of rent instead of the mortgaged wages of industry.

Still, the Restoration period was not wholly unfavourable to liberty. The Act of Uniformity drove two thousand Presbyterian clergymen out of the Church, and laid the foundation of political as well as ecclesiastical nonconformity deep and strong. Standing armies were declared to be illegal, and the Habeas Corpus Act guaranteeing to the people immunity from arbitrary imprisonment was passed. Nevertheless, standing armies exist to our cost, and during the present parliament we have seen nearly a thousand Irishmen and Irish women under lock and key at one time "on suspicion."

The expulsion of the Stuarts and the choice of William as king by a majority of two votes in the Convention Parliament made England beyond cavil an elective monarchy. The Act of Settlement has only to be abolished in order to bring royalty to a legal end, for what parliament has done it is clearly competent for parliament to undo. To the Dutch king's reign we are indebted for the Civil List as well as the abominable funding system, which enables "sovereigns and statesmen" by anticipating revenue to carry on flagitious wars at the cost of posterity.

In George the First's time, parliament passed the Septennial Act as a temporary measure to keep out the Pretender. Honourable members have since fraudulently retained it on the Statute Book to keep themselves in power a little longer.

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As early as 1780 a great public meeting in Westminster demanded Annual Parliaments, Universal Suffrage, Equal Electoral Districts, Payment of Members, No Money Qualification, and Vote by Ballot. The then Duke of Richmond, who was president of the "Society for Constitutional Information," and Charles James Fox, considered these propositions reasonable, and maintained their urgency. Yet more than a hundred years have elapsed, and with the exception of vote by ballot not one of them has been made good. There is nominally, it is true, no money qualification demanded of parliamentary candidates, but they have to bear the charge of official election expenses, and that is a money qualification in the very worst form. Who shall say that in this "land of old renown freedom has not slowly broadened down from precedent to precedent?"

The Reform Bill of 1832 was a step towards the emancipation of the people, but a step marked by the basest perfidy on the part of the middle class, who, once inside the fortress of citizenship, faithlessly helped to bolt the door in the face of their working-class brethren, whom they had solemnly undertaken promptly to admit. This treachery brought into existence the famous People's Charter, which was first published in May, 1838. It re-affirmed with emphasis the Richmond-Fox "points" of 1780, and secured an amount of zealous and intelligent advocacy unparalleled in the history of political reform. It gave birth to a generation of workmen patriots, whose honourable "records" are among the most precious memorials of their day and country.

But the Oligarchy was not to be overthrown by such feeble weapons as reason, eloquence, and justice. Peaceable meetings were broken up by armed force, and the leaders of the movement were arrested, imprisoned, and exiled. The late Napoleon III. endeared himself to "Society" by playing the part of an Anti-Chartist special constable.

Though stifled by oligarchic force and fraud, the democratic cause, however, was not dead, but it unhappily slumbered for many years. In 1867, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli caught the Whigs bathing, and made off with the suffrage clothes in which they had for years been masquerading as friends of the people. It was decided to admit, by "a leap in the dark," urban artisans to citizenship, but carefully to page 121 exclude their brethren in the country, as well as the whole class of agricultural labourers. Of course, no honest effort was made either by Conservatives or Liberals to redistribute political power; consequently, as usual the flattering promise of reform made to the ear has been broken to the hope. The vast interest of labour—the only interest in a properly-constituted society—is represented in the House of Commons by two members all told, and one of these unfortunately, generally acts as henchman and decoy-duck to the capitalist.

On the other hand, the peers have no fewer than 272 relatives in "the People's House;" the Fighting Interests, 168; the Landlords, 282; the Lawyers, 122; Liquor, 18; Money (bankers, &c.), 25; Literary, Professional, and Scientific Interests, 94; Placemen (past and present), 113; and Trade, Commerce, and Manufactures, 155.

The producing classes, while contributing at least three-fifths of the revenue, have certainly not more than a score of even passable representatives in parliament. The spending classes have the rest, the fighting interest alone making away with no less than thirty millions of the national income!

Now, however, it is proposed to redress some of these startling anomalies. For the first time in the history of parliamentary reform we have a Ministry which almost unsolicited comes forward to extend the liberties of the people. They have raised the banner of household suffrage in the counties and encouraged the hope that a Redistribution Bill is to follow. But desirable as it is in every way that the toilers in field and mine should be promptly enrolled in the ranks of citizens, it is quite possible to effect this object, as was done by the Bill of 1867, without perceptibly altering what Lord Salisbury calls "the balance of the constitution." Household suffrage in the boroughs has given us six years of Tory Jingoism, supplemented by Whig coercion in Ireland, the thrice-infamous bondholders' war in Egypt, and a crushing expenditure never exceeded in time of peace by the worst of recent Governments.

The cure for these and many other evils that afflict the body politic is to be found in the numerical equalisation of constituencies—in the one man one equal vote contention of the Chartists. To extend the franchise without redistribution is merely to increase the cost of elections, and thereby page 122 make the "rich man's club at St. Stephen's" even less accessible to honest poverty than it is at present. The equalisation of voting districts, on the other hand, would undoubtedly "alter the balance of the Constitution," transforming oligarchic England into a democracy, in which those who toil and spin might lead lives really worth living.

This being so, the question arises whether the franchise being once conceded to the counties, there will be any anxiety on the part either of Liberals or Conservatives to proceed to redistribution. All previous experience is against the supposition. Time—twenty or thirty years—it will plausibly be alleged, is needed to get at the wishes of the new voters whose choice of candidates will meanwhile lie between Dives and Croesus. This is the rock ahead, and genuine democrats must beware lest their bark be wrecked within measurable distance of the land of promise.

The anomalies of our representative, or rather misrepresentative, system can hardly be exaggerated. One hundred and eighty borough constituencies, with 3,500,000 inhabitants, return 231 members to parliament; while seventy-one others, with 11,500,000, return only 129 representatives! Forty-two boroughs, with less than 7,000 inhabitants, have one member each; while 178 towns, with an aggregate population of 3,630,000, and in no case counting less than 10,000 souls, are for voting purposes included in counties. Could there be a better reason than this for getting rid once and for all of the obsolete distinction between boroughs and counties? While say a Lambeth journalist, accustomed to handle every political topic of the day, has the twenty-fifth thousandth part of a representative in parliament, the enlightened Portarlington voter has the hundred and fortieth share in an honourable member all to himself! Could the perverse ingenuity of man invent a more preposterous system of government? Indeed, slight as have been the achievements of British democracy, as compared with the triumphs of our Republican "kin beyond sea," they are great and laudable in view of the mighty barriers which the craft of oligarchy has erected on every hand.

But barrier or no barrier, ultimate victory is assured. Democracy, it has been well said, like death, never gives up a victim, never abandons an ideal. It is something that the page 123 people should know what they want. With equal land and suffrage rights democracy becomes possible. Without both it is impossible, and liberty, its offspring, remains unborn. A great future, a mighty inheritance, is opening up to the honest toilers of every land. The triple alliance of monarchy, aristocracy, and plutocracy is strong, but it can and shall be broken. Even if they are let alone they are sure ultimately to quarrel among themselves. The profit-monger will quarrel with the rent-monger because the latter neither toils nor spins, or for some other reason. Providence is on the side of the heavy democratic battalions. The people will at last enjoy their own and sit down under their vine and fig-tree, with none to make them afraid. The golden age—the age of Republican brotherhood—"when man to man the world o'er shall brothers be, an' a' that," is not in the past, but in the future. To us it is given to see it only in visions and glimpses, as Moses saw the Promised Land from the height of Mount Pisgah; to see it only, like him,

"Who, rowing hard against the stream,
Saw distant gates of Eden gleam.
And did not dream it was a dream."