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Title: The Rise of the Democracy
Author: Joseph Clayton
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THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY
by
JOSEPH CLAYTON
Author of "Leaders of the People" "Bishops as Legislators," etc. etc.
With Eight Full-Page Plates
Cassell and Company, Ltd.
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1911
All Rights Reserved
[Illustration: KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA
From the Fresco in the Royal Exchange, by Ernest Normand.
_By permission of Messrs. S. Hildesheimer & Co., Ltd._]
PREFACE
This short account of the rise of political democracy is necessarily but an
outline of the matter, and while it is not easy to define the exact limits,
there is no difficulty in noting omissions. For instance, there is scarcely
any reference to the work of poets or pamphleteers. John Ball's rhyming
letters are quoted, but not the poems of Langland, and the political songs
of the Middle Ages are hardly mentioned. The host of political pamphleteers
in the seventeenth century are excluded, with the exception of Lilburne and
Winstanley, whose work deserves better treatment from posterity than it
received from contemporaries. Defoe's vigorous services for the Whigs are
unnoticed, and the democratic note in much of the poetry of Burns, Blake,
Byron and Shelley is left unconsidered, and the influence of these poets
undiscussed. The anti-Corn Law rhymes of Ebenezer Eliot, and the Chartist
songs of Ernest Jones were notable inspirations in their day, and in our
own times Walt Whitman and Mr. Edward Carpenter have been the chief singers
of democracy. But a whole volume at least might be written on the part the
pen has played in the struggle towards democracy.
Again, there is no mention of Ireland in this short sketch. A Nationalist
movement is not necessarily a democratic movement, and the Irish
Nationalist Party includes men of very various political opinions, whose
single point of agreement is the demand for Home Rule. In India and Egypt
the agitation is for representative institutions. Ireland might, or might
not, become a democracy under Home Rule--who can say?
The aim of the present writer has been to trace the travelled road of the
English people towards democracy, and to point out certain landmarks on
that road, in the hope that readers may be turned to examine more closely
for themselves the journey taken. For the long march teems with adventure
and spirited enterprise; and, noting mistakes and failures in the past, we
may surely and wisely, and yet with greater daring and finer courage,
pursue the road, not unmindful of the charge committed to us in the
centuries left behind.
J.C.
HAMPSTEAD,
_September, 1911._
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
The British Influence--"Government of the People, by the People, for the
People"--The Foundations of Democracy--British Democracy Experimental not
Doctrinaire--Education to Democracy
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN
The Great Churchmen--Archbishop Anselm and Norman Autocracy--Thomas à
Becket and Henry II.--Stephen Langton and John--The Great Charter
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION
Democracy and Representative Government--Representative Theory First found
in Ecclesiastical Assemblies--The Misrule of Henry III.--Simon of Montfort,
Leader of the National Party--Edward I.'s Model Parliament, 1295--The
Nobility Predominant in Parliament--The Medieval National Assemblies--The
Electors of the Middle Ages--Payment of Parliamentary Representatives--The
Political Position of Women in the Middle Ages--No Theory of Democracy in
the Middle Ages
CHAPTER III
POPULAR INSURRECTION IN ENGLAND
General Results of Popular Risings--William FitzOsbert, 1196--The Peasant
Revolt and its Leaders, 1381--Jack Cade, Captain of Kent, 1450--The Norfolk
Rising under Ket, 1549
CHAPTER IV
THE STRUGGLE RENEWED AGAINST THE CROWN
Parliament under the Tudors--Victory of Parliament over the Stuarts--The
Democratic Protest: Lilburne--Winstanley and "The Diggers"--The Restoration
CHAPTER V
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT--ARISTOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
Government by Aristocrats--Civil and Religious Liberty--Growth of Cabinet
Rule--Walpole's rule--The Change in the House of Lords--"Wilkes and
Liberty"
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA
The Witness of the Middle Ages--The "Social Contract" Theory--Thomas
Hobbes--John Locke--Rousseau and French Revolution--American
Independence--Thomas Paine--Major Cartwright and the "Radical
Reformers"--Thomas Spence--Practical Politics and Democratic Ideals
CHAPTER VII
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE
The Industrial Revolution--The Need for Parliamentary Reform--Manufacturing
Centres Unrepresented in Parliament--The Passage of the Great Reform
Bill--The Working Class still Unrepresented--Chartism--The Hyde Park
Railings, 1866--Household Suffrage--Working-class Representation in
Parliament--Removal of Religious Disabilities: Catholics, Jews and
Freethinkers--The Enfranchisement of Women
CHAPTER VIII
DEMOCRACY AT WORK
Local Government--The Workman in the House of Commons--Working-class
Leaders in Parliament--The Present Position of the House of Lords--The
Popularity of the Crown--The Democratic Ideals: Socialism and Social
Reform--Land Reform and the Single Tax
CHAPTER IX
THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
East and West--Tyranny under Democratic Forms--The Obvious Dangers--Party
Government--Bureaucracy--Working-Class Ascendancy--On Behalf of Democracy
LIST OF PLATES
KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA
MAGNA CHARTA--A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM
SIR JOHN ELIOT
JOHN HAMPDEN
THE GORDON RIOTS
THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.
THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY
INTRODUCTION
THE BRITISH INFLUENCE
Our business here is to give some plain account of the movement towards
democracy in England, only touching incidentally on the progress of that
movement in other parts of the world. Mainly through British influences the
movement has become world wide; and the desire for national
self-government, and the adoption of the political instruments of
democracy--popular enfranchisement and the rule of elected
representatives--are still the aspirations of civilised man in East and
West. The knowledge that these forms of democratic government have by no
means at all times and in all places proved successful does not check the
movement. As the British Parliament and the British Constitution have in
the past been accepted as a model in countries seeking free political
institutions, so to-day our Parliament and our Constitutional Government
are still quoted with approval and admiration in those lands where these
institutions are yet to be tried.
The rise of democracy, then, is a matter in which Britain is largely
concerned; and this in spite of the fact that in England little respect and
less attention has been paid to the expounders of democracy and their
constructive theories of popular government. The notion that philosophers
are the right persons to manage affairs of state and hold the reins of
Government has always been repugnant to the English people, and, with us,
to call a man "a political theorist" is to contemn him. The English have
not moved towards democracy with any conscious desire for that particular
form of government, and no vision of a perfect State or an ideal
commonwealth has sustained them on the march. Our boast has been that we
are a "practical" people, and so our politics are, as they ever have been,
experimental. Reforms have been accomplished not out of deference to some
moral or political principle, but because the abuse to be remedied had
become intolerable. Dissatisfaction with the Government and the conviction
that only by enfranchisement and the free election of representatives can
Parliament remove the grounds of dissatisfaction, have carried us towards
democracy.
GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE
We have been brought to accept Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, "Government
of the people, by the people, for the people," as a definition of
democracy; but in that acceptance there is no harking back to the early
democracies of Greece or Rome, so beloved by the French democrats of the
eighteenth century, who, however, knew very little about those ancient
states--or any vain notion of restoring primitive Teutonic democracy.
The sovereign assemblies of Greece--the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella
of Sparta--the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to
democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British
Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither
to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved from
Anglo-Saxon times. The early democracies of Athens and Sparta were confined
to small states, and were based on a slave population without civic rights.
There was not even a conception that slaves might or should take part in
politics, and the slaves vastly outnumbered the citizens. Modern democracy
does not tolerate slavery, it will not admit the permanent exclusion of any
body of people from enfranchisement; though it finds it hard to ignore
differences of race and colour, it is always enlarging the borders of
citizenship. So that already in the Australian Commonwealth, in New
Zealand, in certain of the American States, in Norway, and in Finland, we
have the complete enfranchisement of all men and women who are of age to
vote.
Apart from this vital difference between a slave-holding democracy and a
democracy of free citizens--a difference that rent the United States in
civil war, and was only settled in America by democracy ending
slavery--ancient democracy was government by popular assembly, and modern
democracy is government through elected representatives. The former is only
possible in small communities with very limited responsibilities--a parish
meeting can decide questions of no more than strictly local interest; for
our huge empires of to-day nothing better than representative government
has been devised for carrying out the general will of the majority.
As for the early English Witenagemot, it was simply an assembly of the
chiefs, and, though crowds sometimes attended, all but the great men were
the merest spectators. Doubtless the folk-moot of the tribe was democratic,
for all free men attended it, and the English were a nation of freeholders,
and the slaves were few--except in the west--and might become free men.[1]
The shire-moot, too, with its delegates from the hundred-moots, was equally
democratic. But with feudalism and the welding of the nation, tribal
democracies passed away, leaving, however, in many places a valuable
tradition of local self-government.
THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY
A steady and invincible belief that those who maintain the defence of the
country and pay for the cost of government should have a voice in the great
council of the nation, and the conviction that effective utterance can be
found for that voice in duly chosen representatives, are the foundations on
which democracy has built. Democracy itself comes in (1) when it is seen
that all are being taxed for national purposes; and (2) the opinion finds
acceptance that responsibilities of citizenship should be borne by all who
have reached the age of manhood and are of sound mind.
To sketch the rise of democracy in England is to trace the steady
resistance to kings who would govern without the advice of counsellors, and
to note the growing determination that these counsellors must be elected
representatives. Only when the absolutism of the Crown is ended and a
Parliament of elected members has become the real centre of government, is
it possible, without a revolution, for democracy to be established.
Much of this book is given up, then, to the old stories of kingly rule
checked and slowly superseded by aristocracy. And all the old attempts at
revolution by popular insurrection are again retold, not only because of
the witness they bear to the impossibility in England of achieving
democracy by the violent overthrow of government, but because they also
bear witness to the heroic resolution of the English people to take up arms
and plunge into a sea of troubles rather than bear patiently ills that were
unseemly for men to endure in silence. Popular insurrection failed, but
over and over again violence has been resorted to in the resistance to
tyranny, and has been justified by its victory. If Wat Tyler, Jack Cade,
and Robert Ket are known as beaten revolutionaries, Stephen Langton, Simon
of Montfort, and John Hampden are acclaimed as patriots for not disdaining
the use of armed resistance.
The conclusion is that a democratic revolution was not to be accomplished
in England by a rising of the people, but that forcible resistance even to
the point of civil war was necessary to guard liberties already won, or to
save the land from gross misgovernment. But always the forcible resistance,
when successful, has been made not by revolutionaries but by the strong
champions of constitutional government. The fruit of the resistance to John
was the Great Charter; of Simon of Montfort's war against Henry III., the
beginning of a representative Parliament; of the war against Charles, the
establishment of Parliamentary government. Lilburne and his friends hoped
that the civil war and the abolition of monarchy would bring in democracy,
though democracy was never in the mind of men like Hampden, who made the
war, and was utterly uncongenial to Cromwell and the Commonwealth men. But
the sanctity of monarchy received its death-blow from Cromwell, and
perished with the deposing of James II.; and there has been no
resurrection. To the Whig rule we owe the transference of political power
from the Crown to Parliament. Once it is manifest that Parliament is the
instrument of authority, that the Prime Minister and his colleagues rule
only by the permission and with the approval of the House of Commons, and
that the House of Commons itself is chosen by a certain number of electors
to represent the nation, then it is plain that the real sovereignty is in
the electors who choose the House of Commons. As long as the electors are
few and consist of the great landowners and their satellites, then the
constitutional government is aristocracy, and democracy is still to come.
And just as discontent with monarchy, and its obvious failure as a
satisfactory form of government, brought in aristocracy, so at the
beginning of the nineteenth century discontent with aristocracy was rife,
and a new industrial middle-class looked for "Parliamentary reform," to
improve the condition of England.
BRITISH DEMOCRACY EXPERIMENTAL, NOT DOCTRINAIRE
Resistance to royal absolutism, culminating in the acknowledged ascendancy
of Parliament and the triumphant aristocracy of 1688, was never based on
abstract principles of the rights of barons and landowners, but sprang from
the positive, definite conviction that those who furnished arms and men for
the king, or who paid certain moneys in taxation, were entitled to be heard
in the councils of the king; and the charters given in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries--from Henry I. to Henry III.--confirmed this
conviction. The resistance to the Stuarts was still based on the conviction
that direct taxation conferred political privileges, but now the claim to
speak in the great council of the realm had become a request to be listened
to by the king, and passed rapidly from that to a resolution that the king
should have no money from Parliament if he refused to listen. The practical
inconvenience of a king altogether at variance with Parliament was held to
be sufficient justification for getting rid of James II., and for hobbling
all future kings with the Bill of Rights.
The dethronement of aristocracy in favour of democracy has proceeded on
very similar lines. The mass of English people were far too wretched and
far too ignorant at the end of the eighteenth century to care anything
about abstract "rights of man," and only political philosophers and a few
artisans hoped for improvement in their condition by Parliamentary reform.
Agricultural England accepted the rule of landowners as an arrangement by
providence. It was the industrial revolution that shattered the feudal
notions of society, and created a manufacturing population which knew
nothing of lowly submission to pastors and masters. A middle-class emerged
from the very ranks of the working people. The factory system brought
fortunes to men who a few years earlier had been artisans, and to these new
capitalists in the nineteenth century the aristocracy in power was as
irksome as the Stuarts had been to the Whigs. If, as the Whigs taught,
those who paid the taxes were entitled to a voice in the government, then
the manufacturing districts ought to send representatives to Parliament. It
seemed monstrous that places like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham had no
one in the House of Commons to plead for the needs of their inhabitants.
The manufacturer wanted Parliamentary representation because he hoped
through Parliament to secure the abolition of the political disabilities of
Nonconformists, and to get financial changes made that would make the
conditions of trade more profitable. And he felt that it would be better
for the country if he and the class he represented could speak freely in
Parliament.
The workman wanted the vote because he had been brought to believe that,
possessing the vote, he could make Parliament enact laws that would lighten
the hardships of his life. The whole of the manufacturing class--capitalist
and workman alike--could see by 1820 that the House of Commons was the
instrument of the electorate, and that to get power they must become
electors. (Yet probably not one per cent. of them could express clearly any
theory of popular sovereignty.) The old Whig families, kept out of office
by the Tories whom George III. had placed in power, and who now controlled
the House of Commons, supported reform and the enfranchisement of the
middle class because they saw no way of getting back into power except by a
new electorate and a redistribution of Parliamentary seats. At the
beginning of the twentieth century the landowner, still Whig, though now,
as a general rule enrolled with the Unionist Party, has not been excluded
from political power, but the representatives of the middle-class and of
the working people are predominant in the House of Commons. The claim of
the House of Lords to reject the bills of the Commons has been, in our
time, subjected to the criticism formerly extended to the royal
prerogative, and an Act--the Parliament Act--has now been passed which
formally requires the Lords to accept, without serious amendment, every
Bill sent up from the Commons in three successive sessions.
The transition from monarchy to aristocracy in England was brought about at
the price of civil war. In many countries democracy has been born in
revolution, and the birth pains have been hard and bitter. But in England
in the nineteenth century democracy was allowed to come into being by
permission of the aristocracy, and has not yet reached its full stature. It
is true that violence, bloodshed, loss of life, and destruction of property
marked the passage of the great Reform Bill; that more than once riots and
defiance of law and order have been the expression of industrial
discontent; but on the whole the average Englishman is content to wait for
the redress of wrongs by Parliamentary action. Women have quite recently
defied the law, refused to pay taxes, and made use of "militant methods" in
their agitation for enfranchisement. But the women's plea has been that, as
they are voteless, these methods have been necessary to call attention to
their demands. Democratic advance has often been hindered and delayed by
government, and by a national disinclination from rapid political change;
but as the character of government has changed with the changed character
of the electorate and the House of Commons, so resistance to democracy has
always been abandoned when the advance was widely supported, and further
delay seemed dangerous to the public order.
The House of Lords is thus seen to yield to the popular representatives in
the House of Commons, and the government, dependent on the House of
Commons, to listen to the demand of women for enfranchisement.
While the House of Commons completes its assertion of political supremacy,
and insists on the absolute responsibility of the chosen representatives of
the electorate, the agitation for the enfranchisement of women is the
reminder that democracy has yet to widen its borders. Progress to democracy
in the last one hundred years is visible not only in the enlarged number of
enfranchised citizens, but in the general admission that every extension of
the franchise has been to the public good; not only in the fact that men of
all classes and trades now have their representatives in Parliament, but in
the very wide acknowledgment that women without votes cannot get that
attention by members of the House of Commons that is given to male
electors. That the majority of electors have expressed a decided opinion
that the power of the House of Lords should be curtailed, as the power of
the monarchy has been curtailed, and that the decisions of the House of
Commons are only to be corrected by the House of Commons, is evidence that
under our obviously imperfect Parliamentary system the will of the electors
does get registered on the Statute Book.
EDUCATION TO DEMOCRACY
Apart from the direct political education to democracy, it is well to note
the other agencies that have been at work, preparing men and women for the
responsible task of national self-government.
In the Middle Ages the religious guilds and the trade guilds, managed by
their own members, gave men and women a training in democratic government.
The parish, too, was a commune, and its affairs and finances were
administered by duly elected officers.[2]
But the guilds, with their numerous almshouses and hospitals, were all
suppressed early in Edward VI.'s reign, and their funds confiscated. As for
the parish, it was shorn of all its property, save the parish church, in
the same reign, and its old self-governing life dwindled away to the
election of churchwardens.
It was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that the working
classes, by the formation of trade unions, once more took up the task of
education in self-government. From that time onward, through trade unions,
co-operative societies, and friendly societies, with their annual
conferences and congresses, a steady training in democracy has been
achieved; and our Labour Party of to-day, with its Members of Parliament,
its members of county and district councils, and its Justices of the Peace,
would hardly have been possible but for this training. Other agencies may
be mentioned. The temperance movement, the organisation of working-men's
clubs, and the local preaching of the Nonconformist Churches--particularly
the Primitive Methodist denomination--have all helped to educate workmen in
the conduct of affairs, and to create that sense of personal responsibility
which is the only guarantee of an honest democracy.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN
THE GREAT CHURCHMEN
We are far from any thoughts of democracy in the early struggles against
the absolutism of the Crown. The old love of personal liberty that is said
to have characterised the Anglo-Saxon had no political outlet under Norman
feudalism. What we note is that three Archbishops of Canterbury were strong
enough and brave enough to stand up against the unchecked rule of kings,
and the names of these great Archbishops--Anselm, Thomas à Becket, and
Stephen Langton--are to be honoured for all time for the services they
rendered in the making of English liberties. Not one of the three was in
any sense a democrat. It is not till the latter part of the fourteenth
century that we find John Ball, a wandering, revolutionary priest, uttering
for the first time in England a democratic doctrine. Anselm, Becket, and
Langton did their work, as Simon of Montfort, and as Eliot and Hampden
worked later, not for the sake of a democracy, but for the restriction of
an intolerable autocracy. All along in English history liberties have been
gained and enlarged by this process of restriction, and it was only when
the powers of the Crown had been made subject to Parliament that it was
possible, at the close of the nineteenth century, for Parliament itself to
become converted from an assembly of aristocrats to a governing body that
really represented the nation.
But in considering the rise of democracy we can no more omit the early
struggles against the absolutism of the Crown than we can pass over Simon
of Montfort's Parliament, or the unsuccessful popular revolts, or the war
with Charles I., or the Whig revolution of 1688. They are all incidents of
pre-democratic days, but they are all events of significance. Democracy is
no new order of society, conceived in the fertile mind of man; it has been
slowly evolved and brought to birth after centuries of struggle, to be
tried as a form of government only when other forms are outgrown, and cease
to be acceptable.
All the great men--heroic and faulty--who withstood the tyranny of their
day, not only wrested charters from kings, they left a tradition of
resistance; and this tradition has been of incalculable service to a nation
seeking self-government. It is easy to dismiss the work of Anselm and
Becket as mere disputes between monarch and Churchman, to treat lightly the
battle for the Great Charter as a strife between king and barons. Just as
easy is it to regard the Peasant Revolt of the fourteenth century and Jack
Cade's rebellion in the fifteenth century as the tumults of a riotous mob.
The great point is to see clearly in all these contests, successful and
unsuccessful, the movement for liberty, for greater security and expansion
of life in England, and to note that only by a stern endurance and a
willingness not to bear an irksome oppression have our liberties been won.
In the winning of these liberties we have proved our fitness for democracy,
for a government that will allow the fullest measure of self-development.
Now, what was it that Anselm contended for, first with William II. and then
with Henry I.?
ARCHBISHOP ANSELM AND NORMAN AUTOCRACY
Anselm was sixty when, in 1093, William II. named him for the Archbishopric
of Canterbury. In vain Anselm, who was Abbot of the famous monastery of
Bec, in Normandy, protested that he was too old, and that his business was
not with high place and power in this world. The King seemed to be dying,
and the bishops gathered round the sick bed would not hear of any refusal
on Anselm's part. They pushed the pastoral staff into his hands, and
carried him off to a neighbouring church, while the people shouted "Long
live the bishop!"
What everybody felt was that with Anselm as Archbishop things might be
better in England, for Anselm's reputation stood very high. He had been the
friend of Lanfranc, the late Archbishop; he had been an honoured guest at
the Court of William the Conqueror; and he was known for his deep learning,
his sanctity of life, and simple, disinterested devotion to duty. It was
hoped that with a man of such holiness at Canterbury some restraint might
be placed on the lawless tyranny of the Red King. Lanfranc had been the
trusted counsellor and right hand of the Red King's father: why should not
Anselm bring back the son to the paths of decency--at least? The Archbishop
of Canterbury was the chief man in the realm next to the king, and for
three years since Lanfranc's death the see had been kept vacant that
William Rufus might enjoy its revenues for his own pleasure. It was not
unreasonable that men should look to the appointment of Anselm as the
beginning of an amendment in Church and State. The trouble was that William
stuck to his evil courses.
The rule of William the Conqueror had been stern and harsh, and his hand
had been heavy on the English people. But there had been law and justice in
the rule; religion and morality had been respected, and peace and security
obtained.
The rule of the Red King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary,
capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the
Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of
his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that
vacancies in the Church were filled up quickly and wisely. The Red King
preferred to leave bishoprics and churches empty so that he might annex the
profits. Lanfranc, a wise and just man, had been the Minister of the
Conqueror; the Red King made Ranulf (nicknamed the Torch or Firebrand)--a
clever, unprincipled clerk--Bishop of Durham and Justiciar. It was Ranulf
who did the King's business in keeping churches and bishoprics vacant, in
violation of law and custom; it was Ranulf who plundered the King's vassals
and the people at large by every kind of extortion, thwarted the protests
of Anselm, and encouraged William in his savage profligacies.
Meek and gentle as Anselm was, he had all the courage that comes of a lofty
sense of responsibility to God, and he stood before kings as the Hebrew
prophets of old had stood, calm and fearless. At Christmas, 1092, three
months before his nomination to the See of Canterbury, Anselm was in
England over the affairs of his monastery, and William invited him to Court
and treated him with great display of honour. Then some private talk took
place between the two, and Anselm said plainly that "Things were spoken
daily of the King, openly or secretly, by nearly all the men of his realm,
which were not seemly for the King's dignity." From that time Anselm stayed
in England, for William refused to give him leave to return to Normandy.
Then in March, 1093 came the King's sickness, which most men expected to be
mortal. Anselm was summoned, and on his arrival bade the King "make a clean
confession of all that he knows that he has done against God, and promise
that, should he recover, he will without pretence amend in all things. The
King at once agreed to this, and with sorrow of heart engaged to do all
that Anselm required and to keep justice and mercy all his life long. To
this he pledged his faith, and made his bishops witness between himself and
God, sending persons in his stead to promise his word to God on the altar.
An edict was written and sealed with the King's seal that all prisoners
should be set free in all his dominions, all debts forgiven, all offences
heretofore committed pardoned and forgotten for ever. Further, good and
holy laws were promised to the whole people, and the sacred upholding of
right and such solemn inquest into wrongdoing as may deter others."[3]
William did not die, and his repentance was short-lived; but the one act of
grace he did before leaving his sick bed was to fill up the empty throne at
Canterbury by the appointment of Anselm--Anselm's protests of unfitness
notwithstanding. Then, on the King's recovery, as though to make up for the
penitence displayed, all the royal promises of amendment were broken
without shame, and "all the evil which the King had wrought before he was
sick seemed good by the side of the wrong which he did when he was returned
to health." The prisoners who had been pardoned were sent back to prison,
the debts which had been cancelled were re-claimed, and all legal actions
which had been dropped were resumed. Anselm was now enthroned at
Canterbury, and his appointment could not be revoked; but the King was
quick to show his displeasure at the new Archbishop.
The first point raised by William was that those lands belonging to the See
of Canterbury, which had been made over to military vassals of the Crown
while the archbishopric was vacant, should remain with their holders.
Anselm said at once that this was impossible. He was responsible for the
administration of all the estates of Canterbury, and to allow these lands
to be alienated to the Crown was to rob the poor and needy who, it was
held, had a just claim on the property of the Church. Besides, Anselm saw
that the lands would never be restored once an Archbishop confirmed their
appropriation by the King's military tenants. There was no one in all
England save Anselm who dared withstand the Crown, and had he yielded on
this matter resistance to the tyranny of the Red King would only have been
harder on the next occasion.
Then came the question of a present of money to the King, the customary
offering. Anselm brought five hundred marks (£333), a very considerable sum
in those days, and William, persuaded by some of his courtiers that twice
the amount ought to have been given, curtly declined the present. Anselm,
who disliked the whole business of these gifts to the Crown, for he knew
that many a Churchman bought his office by promising a "free" gift after
institution, solemnly warned William that money given freely as his was
given was better than a forced tribute, and to this William answered that
he wanted neither the Archbishop's money nor his preaching or company.
Thereupon Anselm retired and gave the money to the poor, determined that
he, for his part, would make no attempt to purchase William's goodwill.
Henceforth William was equally determined that Anselm should have no peace
in England. It was hateful to the King that there should be anyone in the
realm who acknowledged a higher authority than the Crown, and Anselm made
it too plain that the Archbishop rested his authority not on the favour of
the Crown, but on the discipline of the Christian religion. William was
King of England indisputably, but there was a higher power than the King,
and that was the Pope. William himself never dreamed of denying the divine
authority of the Pope in spiritual matters; no one in all Christendom in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries questioned that at Rome was a court of
appeal higher than the courts of kings. Strong rulers like William the
Conqueror might decline to submit to Rome on a personal question of
marriage, but Rome was the recognised centre of religion, the headquarters
of the Christian Church, and the supreme court of appeal. Apart from Rome
there was no power that could curb the fierce unbridled tyranny of the
kings of the earth, and the power of Rome was a spiritual weapon, for the
Pope had no army to enforce his decisions. So Anselm, conscious of this
spiritual authority, refused to bow to the lawless rule of the Red King;
and his very attitude, while it encouraged men to lift up their hearts who
erstwhile had felt that it was hopeless and useless to strive against
William,[4] enraged the Red King to fury.
The things he wanted to forget were that the chief representative of the
Christian religion was a greater person than the King of England, and that
the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a Christian minister rather than a
King's man.[5] And Anselm was the constant witness to the Christian
religion, and, by his very presence, a rebuke to the crimes and cruelties
of the Court of the Red King. William actually wrote to the Pope, naturally
without any success, praying him to depose Anselm, and promising a large
annual tribute to Rome if the request was granted.
For years the uneven contest was waged. The bishops generally avoided
Anselm, and were only anxious to be accepted by the King as good servants
of the Crown, with the result that William despised them for their
servility. But the barons began to declare their respect for the brave old
man at Canterbury.
At last, when Anselm was summoned to appear before the King's Court, to "do
the King right," on a trumped-up charge of having failed to send an
adequate supply of troops for the King's service, he felt the position was
hopeless. Anselm's longing had been to labour with the King, as Lanfranc
had laboured, to promote religion in the country, and he had been
frustrated at every turn. The summons to the King's Court was the last
straw, for the defendant in this Court was entirely at the mercy of the
Crown. "When, in Anglo-Norman times you speak of the King's Court, it is
only a phrase for the King's despotism."[6] Anselm took no notice of the
King's summons, and decided to appeal to Rome. For a time William refused
permission for any departure from England, but he yielded in 1097, and
Anselm set out for Rome.
He stayed at Rome and at Lyons till William was dead, for the Pope would
not let him resign Canterbury, and could do nothing to bring the King to a
better mind. Then, on the urgent request of Henry I., he returned to
England, and for a time all went well. Henry was in earnest for the
restoration of law and religion in England, and his declaration, at the
very beginning of his reign--the oft-quoted "charter" of Henry I.--to stop
the old scandals of selling and farming out Church lands, and to put down
all unrighteousness that had been in his brother's time, was hailed with
rejoicing.
Anselm stood loyally by Henry over the question of his marriage with Edith
(who claimed release from vows taken under compulsion in a convent at
Romsey), and his fidelity at the critical time when Robert of Normandy and
the discontented nobles threatened the safety of the Crown was invaluable.
But Henry was an absolutist, anxious for all the threads of power to be in
his own hands; and just when a great Church Council at the Lateran had
decided that bishops must not be invested by kings with the ring and staff
of their office, because by such investiture they were the king's vassals,
Henry decided to invite Anselm to receive the archbishopric afresh from the
King's hands by a new act of investiture. To Anselm the abject submission
of the bishops to the Red King had been a painful spectacle; and now Henry
was making a demand that would emphasise the royal supremacy, and the
demand was intolerable and impossible. Again Anselm stood practically alone
in his resistance to the royal will, and again the question in dispute was
whether there was any power in England higher than the Crown. The papal
supremacy was no more under discussion than it had been under William. All
that Henry wanted was that the archbishops and bishops should acknowledge
that their authority came from the Crown; and at Henry's request Anselm,
then 70 years old, again journeyed to Rome to lay the matter before the
Pope.
Pope Paschal was fully alive to the mischief of making the bishops and
clergy mere officers of kings, and it was soon seen there could be no
dispensations from Rome even for Henry. All that the Pope would allow was
that bishops might do homage to the Crown for their temporal rights, and
with this Henry had to be content.
It was three years later before Anselm returned, and his course was now
nearly run. He died at peace on April 21st, 1109, having wrought to no
small purpose for religious liberty and the independence of the clergy.
(The demand for political and social independence always follows the
struggle for independence in religion.) Anselm spent the greater part of
his life after his enthronement at Canterbury in battling for independence
of the Crown; a century later Archbishop Stephen was to carry the battle
still further, and win wider liberties for England from the Crown.
Of Anselm's general love of liberty and hatred of all tyranny many stories
are told. One fact may be recalled. The Church Synod, which met at
Westminster in 1102, at Anselm's request, attacked the slave trade as a
"wicked trade used hitherto in England, by which men are sold like brute
animals," and framed a Church rule against its continuance.
In spite of this decree, serfdom lingered in England for centuries, but
hiring superseded open buying and selling of men. (The African slave trade
was the work of the Elizabethan seamen, and was excused, as slavery in the
United States was excused, by the Protestant Churches on the ground of the
racial inferiority of the negro.)
THOMAS À BECKET AND HENRY II.
Resistance to autocracy is often more needed against a strong and just king
than it is against an unprincipled profligate. Henry II.'s love of order
and peace, the strength and energy he spent in curtailing the power of the
barons, and in making firm the foundations of our national system of petty
sessions and assize courts have made for him an enduring fame. Henry II.
was a great lawyer; he was "the flower of the princes of his world," in
contemporary eyes; but it was as an autocrat he would rule. Against this
autocracy Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, protested, and the
protest cost him five years of exile, and finally his life. The manner of
his death earned for the Archbishop the title of martyr, and popular
acclamation required him to be canonised as a saint,[7] and his name to be
long cherished with deep devotion by the English people. Both Henry and
Thomas stand out honourably, but the former would have brought all England
under one great centralised authority, with the Crown not only predominant
but absolute in its supremacy, and the Archbishop contended for the great
mass of poor and needy people to mitigate the harshness of the law, and to
maintain the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of
sovereignty. "Nothing is more certain," as the old writer put it, "than
that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for the sake of his
realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether of the two was
zealous in wisdom is not plain to man, who is so easily mistaken, but to
the Lord, Who will judge between them at the last day."
Becket was the first English-born Archbishop of Canterbury since the Norman
Conquest. Henry, on his accession, clove to him in friendship, made him
Lord Chancellor in 1155, and on Archbishop Theobald's death, the monks of
Canterbury at once accepted Henry's advice and elected him to the vacant
see. Becket himself knew the King too well to desire the appointment, and
warned Henry not to press the matter, and prophesied that their friendship
would be turned to bitter enmity. But Henry's mind was made up. As
Chancellor, Becket had shown no ecclesiastical bias. He had taxed clergy
and laity with due impartiality, and his legal decisions had been given
without fear or favour. Henry counted on Becket to act with the same
indifference as Archbishop, to be the King's vicegerent during the royal
absence in France. And here Henry, wise as he was in many things, mistook
his man. As Chancellor of England Becket conceived his business to be the
administration of the laws: as Archbishop he was first and foremost the
champion of the Christian religion, the protector of the poor, and the
defender of the liberties of the Church. All unwilling, like his great
predecessor, St. Anselm, to become archbishop, from the hour of his
consecration to the See of Canterbury, in 1162, Becket was as firm as
Anselm had been in resisting the absolutism of the King. To the King's
extreme annoyance the Chancellorship was at once given up--the only
instance known of the voluntary resignation of the Chancellorship by layman
or ecclesiastic,[8] and all the amusements of the Court and the business of
the world were laid aside by the new archbishop. The care of his diocese,
the relief of the poor and the sick, and attendance at the sacred offices
of the Church were henceforth the work of the man who had been Henry's
best-loved companion, and within a year of his enthronement friendship with
the King was broken.
The first point at issue was whether there should be one common
jurisdiction in all the land, or whether the Church courts should still
exist. These Church courts had been set up by William the Conqueror and
Lanfranc, in order that the clergy should not be mixed up in ordinary law
matters, and should be excluded strictly from the common courts. No penalty
involving bloodshed could be inflicted in the Church courts, and all the
savage barbarities of mutilation, common enough as punishments in the
King's court, were forbidden. Henry II., apart from his strong desire for
centralisation in government, wanted these Church courts abolished, because
every clerk who offended against the law escaped ordinary punishment, no
matter what the charge might be. Archbishop Thomas saw that in the Church
courts there was some protection, not only for the clergy, but for all
minor ecclesiastics, and for widows and orphans, against the horrible legal
cruelties of the age. "It must be held in mind that the Archbishop had on
his side the Church or _Canon Law_, which he had sworn to obey, and
certainly the law courts erred as much on the side of harshness and cruelty
as those of the Church on that of foolish pity towards evil doers."[9]
Before this dispute had reached its climax Thomas had boldly taken measures
against some of the King's courtiers who were defrauding the See of
Canterbury; and he had successfully withstood Henry's plan for turning the
old Dane-geld shire tax, which was paid to the sheriff for the defence of
the country and the up-keep of roads, into a tax to be collected by the
Crown as part of the royal revenue. Thomas told the King plainly that this
tax was a voluntary offering to be paid to the sheriffs only "so long as
they shall serve as fitly and maintain and defend our defendants," and said
point blank that he would not suffer a penny to be taken off his lands for
the King's purposes. Henry was obliged to yield, and this is the first case
known of resistance to the royal will in the matter of taxation.
The case of clerical offenders, and the jurisdiction of the courts came
before a great council at Westminster in 1163. Henry declared that
criminous clerks should be deprived of their office in the Church courts,
and then handed over to the King's courts for punishment. Thomas replied
that the proposal was contrary to the religious liberties of the land, but
he met with little support from the rest of the bishops. "Better the
liberties of the Church perish than that we perish ourselves," they cried
in fear of the King. Henry followed up his proposal by calling on the
bishops to abide by the old customs of the realm, as settled by his
grandfather, Henry I., and to this they all agreed, adding "saving the
rights of our order."
A list of the old customs was drawn up, and sixteen _Constitutions_, or
articles, were presented to the bishops at the Great Council of Clarendon,
in January, 1164. To many of these Constitutions Thomas objected; notably
(1) That clerks were to be tried in the King's courts for offences of
common law. (2) That neither archbishops, bishops, nor beneficed clerks
were to leave the kingdom without royal permission. (This would not only
stop appeals to Rome, it would make pilgrimages or attendance at General
Councils impossible without the King's consent.) (3) That no member of the
King's household was to be excommunicated without the King's permission.
(4) That no appeals should be taken beyond the Archbishop's court, except
to be brought before the King. (This definite prohibition of appeals to
Rome left the King absolute master in England.) The last article declared
that neither serfs nor the sons of villeins were to be ordained without the
consent of the lord on whose land they were born. Against his own judgment
Thomas yielded to the entreaties of the bishops, and agreed to accept the
Constitutions of Clarendon, but no sooner had he done so than he bitterly
repented, and wrote off to the Pope acknowledging his mistake. Pope
Alexander III. was mainly anxious to prevent open hostilities between Henry
and the Archbishop, and wrote calmly that he was absolved, without
suggesting any blame to the King.
Henry now saw that the Archbishop, and only the Archbishop, stood in the
way of the royal will, and when another Council met at Northampton, in
October, 1164, the King was ready to drive Thomas out of office. Before
this Council Thomas was charged with having refused justice to John, the
Treasury-Marshall, and with contempt of the King's court, and was heavily
fined. It was difficult to get sentence pronounced, for the barons declined
to sit as judges on an archbishop; but at length, Henry, Bishop of
Winchester, on the King's order, declared the sentence. Henry followed up
the attack next day by calling upon Thomas to account for 30,000 marks
spent by him while Chancellor. In vain he proved that the Justiciar had
declared him free of all claims when he laid down the Chancellorship, that
the charge was totally unexpected; the King refused to stay the proceedings
unless Thomas would sign the Constitutions of Clarendon.
Consultation with the bishops brought no help. "The King has declared, so
it is said, that he and you cannot both remain in England as king and
archbishop. It would be much safer to resign everything and submit to his
mercy"; thus spake Hilary, of Chichester, and his fellow-bishops all urged
resignation or submission.
Two days later the Archbishop came into the Council in full robes with the
Cross in his hand. Earl Robert, of Leicester, rose to pass sentence upon
him and at once the Archbishop refused to hear him. "Neither law nor reason
permit children to pass sentence on their father," he declared. "I will not
hear this sentence of the King, or any judgment of yours. For, under God, I
will be judged by the Pope alone, to whom before you all here I appeal,
placing the Church of Canterbury under God's protection and the protection
of the Pope."
There were shouts of anger at these words, and some tore rushes from the
floor and flung at him, but no one dared to stop the Archbishop's passage
as he passed from the hall. It was useless to look for help or justice in
England, and that very night Thomas left England for Flanders to appeal to
Rome.
But Pope Alexander could do no more for Thomas than his predecessor had
done for Anselm; only he would not allow any resignation from Canterbury.
Henry himself appealed to the Pope in 1166, fearing excommunication by the
Archbishop; "thus by a strange fate it happened that the King, while
striving for those 'ancient customs' by which he endeavoured to prevent any
right of appeal (to the Pope), was doomed to confirm the right of appeal
for his own safety." The Pope did what he could to arrange a
reconciliation, but it was not till 1170 that the King, seriously alarmed
that Thomas would place England under an interdict, agreed to a
reconciliation.
On December 1st the exile was over, and Thomas landed at Sandwich, and went
at once to Canterbury. There were many who doubted whether there could be
lasting peace between the King and the Archbishop, and while the bishops
generally hated the Primate's return, the nobles spoke openly of him as a
traitor to the King.
The end was near. Thomas, asked to withdraw the sentence of excommunication
he had passed against the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London and
Salisbury for violating the privileges of Canterbury, answered that the
matter must go before the Pope. The bishops, instead of going to Rome,
hastened to Henry, who was keeping his Court at Bur, in France.
Henry, at the complaint of the bishops, broke out into one of those
terrible fits of anger which overcame him from time to time, and four
knights left the Court saying, "All this trouble will be at an end when
Thomas is dead, and not before." On December 29th these knights were at
Canterbury, and at nightfall, just when vespers had begun, they slew
Archbishop Thomas by the great pillar in the Cathedral. So died this great
Archbishop for the liberties of the Church, and, as it seemed to him, for
the welfare of the people.
Henry was horrified at the news of the Archbishop's death, and hastened to
beg absolution from Rome for the rash words that had provoked the murder.
In the presence of the Papal legate he promised to give up the
Constitutions of Clarendon, nor in the remaining eighteen years of his
reign did Henry make any fresh attempt to bring the Church under the
subjection of the Crown.
To the great bulk of English people Thomas was a saint and martyr, and
numerous churches were dedicated in his name. More than three hundred years
later Henry VIII. decided that St. Thomas was an enemy of princes, that his
shrine at Canterbury must be destroyed, and his festival unhallowed. But
the fame of Thomas à Becket has survived the censure of Henry VIII., and
his name shines clearly across the centuries. Democracy has been made
possible by the willingness of brave men in earlier centuries to resist, to
the death, an absolutism that would have left England bound and chained to
the king's throne.
STEPHEN LANGTON AND JOHN
Stephen Langton was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in June, 1207, on
the nomination of Pope Innocent III.; the monks of Canterbury, who had
proposed their own superior, consenting to the appointment, for Langton had
a high reputation for learning and was known to be of exalted character.
But King John, who had wanted a man of his own heart for the
archbishopric--John of Gray, Bishop of Norwich, commonly spoken of as "a
servant of Mammon, and an evil shepherd that devoured his own sheep"--was
enraged, and refusing to acknowledge Langton, defied the Pope, drove the
monks out of the country, and declared that anyone who acknowledged Stephen
Langton as archbishop should be accounted a public enemy. So it came about
that the great English statesman who broke down the foulest and worst
tyranny the land had known, and won for England the Great Charter of its
liberties, was a nominee of the Pope, and was to find himself under the
displeasure of the Papal legate when the Charter had been signed! For six
years John kept Stephen out of Canterbury, while England lay under an
interdict, with its King excommunicate and outside the pale of the Church.
Most of the bishops fled abroad, "fearing the King, but afraid to obey him
for dread of the Pope," and John laid hands on Church property and filled
the royal treasury with the spoils of churchmen and Jews. But in 1213
John's position had become precarious, for the northern barons were
plotting his overthrow, and the Pope had absolved all his subjects from
allegiance, and given sentence that "John should be thrust from his throne
and another worthier than he should reign in his stead," naming Philip of
France as his successor. John was aware that he could not count on the
support of the barons in a war with France, and a prophecy of Peter, the
Wakefield Hermit, that the crown would be lost before Ascension Day, made
him afraid of dying excommunicate. Accordingly John decided to get the Pope
on his side. He agreed to receive Pandulf, the Papal legate; to acknowledge
Stephen; make good the damage done to the Church, and, in addition,
voluntarily ("of our own good free will and by the common counsel of our
barons") surrendered "to God and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to
Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors," the whole realm of England and
Ireland, "with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back and
hold them thenceforth as a feudatory of God and the Roman Church." He swore
fealty to the Pope for both realms, and promised a yearly tribute of 1,000
marks.
This abject submission to the Pope was a matter of policy. John cared
nothing for any appearance of personal or national humiliation, and as he
had broken faith with all in England, so, if it should suit his purpose,
would he as readily break faith with Rome. But the immediate advantage of
having the Pope for his protector seemed considerable. "For when once he
had put himself under apostolical protection and made his realms a part of
the patrimony of St. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign
who durst attack him or would invade his lands, in such awe was Pope
Innocent held above all his predecessors for many years past."[10]
Stephen landed in June, 1213, and at Winchester John was formally absolved
and the coronation oaths were renewed. It was very soon seen what manner of
man the Archbishop was. In August a great gathering of the barons took
place in St. Paul's, and there Langton recited the coronation charter of
Henry I., and told all those assembled that these rights and liberties were
to be recovered; and "the barons swore they would fight for these
liberties, even unto death if it were needful, and the Archbishop promised
that he would help with all his might." The weakness of the barons hitherto
had been their want of cohesion, their endless personal feuds, and the lack
of any feeling of national responsibility. Langton laboured to create a
national party and to win recognition of law and justice for all in
England; and the Great Charter was the issue of his work.
The state of things was intolerable. The whole administration of justice
was corrupt. The decisions of the King's courts were as arbitrary as the
methods employed to enforce sentence. Free men were arrested, evicted,
exiled, and outlawed without even legal warrant or the semblance of a fair
trial. All the machinery of government set up by the Norman kings, and
developed under Henry II., had, in John's hands, become a mere instrument
of despotic extortion, to be used against anybody and everybody, from earl
to villein, who could be fleeced by the King's servants.
John saw the tide rising against him, and endeavoured to divide barons from
Churchmen by proclaiming that the latter should have free and undisturbed
right of election when bishoprics and other ecclesiastical offices were
vacant. But the attempt failed. Langton was too resolute a statesman, and
his conception of the primacy of Canterbury was too high for any turning
back from the work he had set himself to accomplish. The rights of election
in the Church were important, but the restoration of justice and order and
the ending of tyranny were, in his eyes, hardly less important. John, who
had been at war in France, returned defeated from his last attempt to
recover for the Crown the lost Angevin provinces, to face a discontent that
was both wide and general. The people, and in especial the barons and
knights whom for fourteen years John had robbed, insulted, and spurned, and
whose liberties he had trampled upon, were ready at last under wise
leadership to end the oppression.
In November, 1214, the Archbishop saw that the time was come for action,
and again the barons met in council. Before the high altar in the Abbey
Church of St. Edmundsbury they swore that if the King sought to evade their
demand for the laws and liberties of Henry I.'s charter, they would make
war upon him until he pledged himself to confirm their rights in a charter
under royal seal. "They also agreed that after Christmas they would go all
together to the King and ask him for a confirmation of these liberties, and
that meanwhile they would so provide themselves with horses and arms that
if the King should seek to break his oath, they might, by seizing his
castles, compel him to make satisfaction. And when these things were done
every man returned to his own home."[11]
John now asked for time to consider these requests, and for the next six
months worked hard to break up the barons' confederacy, to gain friends and
supporters, and to get mercenaries from Poitou. It was all to no purpose.
As a last resource he took the Cross, expecting to be saved as a crusader
from attack, and at the same time he wrote to the Pope to help his faithful
vassal. The Pope's letters rebuking the barons for conspiracy against the
King were unheeded, and the mercenaries were inadequate when John was
confronted by the whole baronage in arms.
THE GREAT CHARTER
In May a list of articles to be signed was sent to John; and on his refusal
the barons formally renounced their homage and fealty and flew to arms.
John was forced to surrender before this host. On June 15th he met the
barons at Runnymede, between Staines and Windsor, and there, in the
presence of Archbishop Stephen and "a multitude of most illustrious
knights," sealed the Great Charter of the Liberties of England.
This Great Charter was in the main a renewal of the old rights and
liberties promised by Henry I. It set up no new rights, conferred no new
privileges, and sanctioned no changes in the Constitution. Its real and
lasting importance is due to its being a written document--for the first
time in England it was down in black and white, for all to read, what the
several rights and duties of King and people were, and in what the chief
points of the Constitution consisted.
[Illustration: MAGNA CHARTA
A facsimile of the Original in the British Museum.]
The Great Charter is a great table of laws. It marks the beginning of
written legislation, and anticipates Acts of Parliament. Unwritten laws and
traditions were not abolished: they remain with us to this day; but the
written law had become a necessity when "the bonds of unwritten custom"
failed to restrain kings and barons. The Great Charter also took into
account the rights of free men, and of the tenants of the King's vassals.
If the barons and knights had their grievances to be redressed, the commons
and the freeholding peasants needed protection against the lawless
exactions of their overlords.[12]
Sixty-three clauses make up Magna Charta, and we may summarise them as
follows:--
(1) The full rights and liberties of the Church are acknowledged; bishops
shall be freely elected, so that the Church of England shall be free.[13]
(2-8) The King's tenants are to have their feudal rights secured against
abuse. Widows--in the wardship of the Crown--are to be protected against
robbery and against compulsion to a second marriage.
(9-11) The harsh rules for securing the payment of debts to the Crown and
to the Jews (in whose debts the Crown had an interest) are to be relaxed.
(12-14) No scutage or aid (save for the three regular feudal aids--the
ransom of the King, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of
his eldest daughter) is to be imposed except by the Common Council of the
nation; and to this Council archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and
greater barons are to be called by special writ, while all who held their
land directly from the King, and were of lesser rank, were to be summoned
by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of the county. Forty days'
notice of the meeting was to be given, and also the cause of the assembly.
The action of those who obeyed the summons was to be taken to represent the
action of all.[14] (This last clause is never repeated in later
confirmations of the Great Charter.)
(15-16) The powers of lords over their tenants are limited and defined.
(17-19) A Court of Common Pleas is to be held in some fixed place so that
suitors are not obliged to follow the King's Curia. Cases touching the
ownership of land are to be tried in the counties by visiting justices, and
by four knights chosen by the county.
(20-23) No freeman is to be fined beyond his offence, and the penalty is to
be fixed by a local jury. Earls and barons to be fined by their peers; and
clerks only according to the amount of their lay property.
(24-33) The powers of sheriffs, constables, coroners, and bailiffs of the
King are strictly defined. No sheriff is to be a justice in his own county.
Royal officers are to pay for all the goods taken by requisition; money is
not to be taken in lieu of service from those who are willing to perform
the service. The horses and carts of freemen are not to be seized for royal
work without consent. The weirs in the Thames, Medway, and other rivers in
England are to be removed.
(34-38) Uniformity of weights and measures is directed. Inquests are to be
granted freely. The sole wardship of minors who have other lords will not
be claimed by the King, except in special cases. No bailiff may force a man
to ordeal without witnesses.
(39-40) No free man is to be taken, imprisoned, ousted of his land,
outlawed, banished, or hurt in any way save by the judgment of his peers,
or the law of the land. The King is not to sell, delay, or deny right or
justice to anyone.
(41-42) Merchants may go out or come in without paying exorbitant customs.
All "lawful" men are to have a free right to pass in and out of England in
time of peace.
(44-47) An inquiry into the Forest Laws and a reform of the forest abuses
are promised. All forests made in present reign to be disforested, and all
fences in rivers thrown down.
(49-60) The foreign mercenaries of the King, all the detested gang that
came with horses and arms to the hurt of the realm, are to be sent out of
the country. The Welsh princes and the King of Scots (who had sided with
the barons) are to have justice done. A general amnesty for all political
offences arising from the struggle is made.
The last three articles appointed twenty-five barons, chosen out of the
whole baronage, to watch over the keeping of the Charter. They were
empowered to demand that any breach of the articles should at once be put
right, and, in default to make war on the King till the matter was settled
to their satisfaction. Finally there was the oath to be taken on the part
of the King, and on the part of the barons that the articles of the Charter
should be observed in good faith according to their plain meaning.
The Great Charter was signed, and then in a wild burst of rage John shouted
to his foreign supporters, "They have given me five-and-twenty over-kings!"
Within a week of Runnymede the Great Charter was published throughout
England, but neither King nor barons looked for peace. John was ready to
break all oaths, and while he set about increasing his army of mercenaries,
he also appealed to the Pope, as his overlord, protesting that the Charter
had been wrested from him by force.
Langton and the bishops left for Rome to attend a general council. Pope
Innocent declared the Charter annulled on the ground that both King and
barons had made the Pope overlord of England, and that consequently nothing
in the government could be changed without his consent. But with Langton,
the bishops, and the Papal legate all away at Rome, there was no one to
publish the Papal repudiation of the Charter, and the King and barons were
already at civil war. Pope Innocent III. was dead in the spring of 1216,
and John's wretched reign was over when the King lay dying at Newark in
October.
Stephen Langton was back again at Canterbury in 1217, and for eleven more
years worked with William the Marshall and Hubert of Burgh to maintain
public peace and order during Henry III.'s boyhood. At Oxford, in 1223, the
Charter was confirmed afresh, and two years later it was solemnly
proclaimed again when the King wanted a new subsidy. As long as the great
statesmen were in office Henry III. was saved from the weakness that cursed
his rule in England for nearly forty years. But William the Marshall died
in 1219, Archbishop Stephen in 1228, and Hubert was dismissed from the
justiciarship in 1234. A horde of greedy aliens from Poitou fed at the
Court of Henry and devoured the substance of England, until men arose, as
Langton had arisen, to demand the enforcement of charters and a just
administration of the laws.
Again a national party arises under the leadership of Simon of Montfort,
and in their victory over the King we get the beginnings of Parliamentary
government and popular representation. Every step forward is followed by
reaction, but the ground lost is recovered, and the next step taken marks
always a steady advance. Over and over again it has seemed that all the
liberties won in the past were lost, but looking back we can see that there
has been no lasting defeat of liberty. Only for a time have the forces of
oppression triumphed; it is soon found impossible in England to rest under
tyranny, or to govern without the consent of the governed. And every fresh
campaign for the restriction of kingly power brings us nearer the day of
democratic government.
* * * * *
CHAPTER II
THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION
DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT
To-day democracy takes the form of representative government in civilised
countries; and for representative government contend the nations and
peoples seeking democracy.
The weak spots in all popular electoral systems are obvious, and the
election of representatives is always a subject for jokes and satire. It
could hardly be otherwise. For the best machinery in the world needs some
sort of sympathetic intelligence in the person who manipulates it, and the
machinery of popular elections can only be worked successfully with a large
measure of sincerity and good will. In the hands of the ambitious, the
self-seeking, and the unscrupulous, democratic politics are a machine for
frustrating popular representation, and as this state of things is always
prevalent somewhere, the humorist and the satirist naturally treat politics
without respect.
But in spite of all its faults and failings--glaring as these are--mankind
can at present devise nothing better than representative government, and
the abuse of power, the cunning, roguery, and corruption that too often
accompany popular elections and democratic administration, rather stir
honest men to action than make them incline to dictatorship and absolutism.
The present notion about representative government is that it makes
possible the expression of popular will, and can ensure the fulfilment of
that will. In the thirteenth century, when we get the beginnings of
representative government, there is no question of the people making
positive proposals in legislation, but there is a distinct belief that the
consent of the governed ought to be obtained by the ruling power. The mere
legal maxim from the Code of Justinian, that "that which touches all shall
be approved by all,"[15] "becomes transmuted by Edward I. into a great
political and constitutional principle."[16]
REPRESENTATIVE THEORY FIRST FOUND IN ECCLESIASTICAL ASSEMBLIES
More than a century earlier the first recorded appearances of town
representatives are found in the Spanish Cortes of Aragon and Castile.[17]
St. Dominic makes a representative form of government the rule in his Order
of Preaching Friars, each priory sending two representatives to its
provincial chapter, and each province sending two representatives to the
general chapter of the Order.
In England, Simon of Montfort, the son of Simon, the great warrior of the
Albigensian wars and the warm friend of Dominic, was in close association
with the friars. Hence there was nothing so very remarkable in Earl Simon
issuing writs for the Full Parliament of 1265 for the return of two
burgesses from each city and borough. He had seen representative government
at work among the friars in their chapters. Why should the plan be not
equally useful in the government of the country?[18] There is no evidence
that the summons to the burgesses was regarded as a revolutionary
proposal--so lightly comes political change in England.
The name of Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, must always be associated
with the beginning of representative government in England. Let us recall
how it was the great Earl came to be in power in 1265.
THE MISRULE OF HENRY III.
Henry III. was always in want of money, and his crew of royal parasites
from Poitou drained the exchequer. Over and over again the barons called on
the King to get rid of his favourites, and to end the misrule that
afflicted the country; and the King from time to time gave promises of
amendment. But the promises were always broken. As long as Henry could get
money he was averse from all constitutional reform. In 1258 the barons were
determined that a change must be made. "If the King can't do without us in
war, he must listen to us in peace," they declared. "And what sort of peace
is this when the King is led astray by bad counsellors, and the land is
filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?"
William of Rishanger, a contemporary writer, expressed the popular feeling
in well-known verses:
"The King that tries without advice to seek his country's weal
Must often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.
The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best,
And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.
A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.
Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."
"The King's mistakes call for special treatment," said Richard, Earl of
Gloucester.
SIMON OF MONTFORT, LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY
So that year a Parliament met in Oxford, in the Dominican Priory. It was
called the "Mad Parliament," because the barons all came to it fully armed,
and civil war seemed imminent. But Earl Simon and Richard of Gloucester
carried the barons with them in demanding reform. Henry was left without
supporters, and civil war was put off for five years.
The work done at this Parliament of Oxford was an attempt to make the King
abide loyally by the Great Charter; and the Provisions of Oxford, as they
were called, set up a standing council of fifteen, by whom the King was to
be guided, and ordered that Parliament was to meet three times a year: at
Candlemas (February 2nd), on June 1st, and at Michaelmas. Four knights were
to be chosen by the King's lesser freeholders in each county to attend this
Parliament, and the baronage was to be represented by twelve commissioners.
It was an oligarchy that the Provisions of Oxford established, "intended
rather to fetter the King than to extend or develop the action of the
community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as
competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the
expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of
select committees betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat
irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central
legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It
must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim
to the character of a final arrangement."[19]
For a time things went better in England. The aliens at Henry's Court fled
over-seas, and their posts were filled by Englishmen. Parliament also
promised that the vassals of the nobles should have better treatment, and
that the sheriffs should be chosen by the shire-moots, the county
freeholders.
But Henry's promises were quickly broken, and war broke out on the Welsh
borders between Simon of Montfort's friend Llewellyn and Mortimer and the
Marchers. Edward, Prince of Wales, stood by the Provisions of Oxford for a
few years, but supported his father when the latter refused to re-confirm
the Provisions in 1263. As a last resource to prevent civil war, Simon and
Henry agreed to appeal to King Louis of France to arbitrate on the
fulfilment of the Provisions. The Pope had already absolved Henry from
obedience to the Provisions, and the Award of Louis, given at Amiens and
called the _Mise of Amiens_, was entirely in Henry's favour. It annulled
the Provisions of Oxford, left the King free to appoint his own ministers,
council, and sheriffs, to employ aliens, and to enjoy power uncontrolled.
But the former charters of the realm were declared inviolate, and no
reprisals were to take place.
To Simon and most of the barons the Award was intolerable, and when Henry
returned from France with a large force ready to take the vengeance which
the Award had forbidden, civil war could not be prevented. London rallied
to Simon, and Oxford, the Cinque Ports, and the friars were all on the side
of the barons against the King.
On May 14th, 1264, a pitched battle at Lewes ended in complete victory for
Simon, and found the King, Prince Edward, and the kinsmen and chief
supporters of the Crown prisoners in his hands.
Peace was made, and a treaty--the _Mise of Lewes_--drawn up and signed.
Once more the King promised to keep the Provisions and Charters, and to
dismiss the aliens. He also agreed to live thriftily till his debts were
paid, and to leave his sons as hostages with Earl Simon.
Simon at once set about the work of reform. The King's Standing, or Privy,
Council was reconstituted, and the Parliamentary Commissioners were
abolished, "for Simon held it as much a man's duty to think and work for
his country as to fight for it." A marked difference is seen between
Simon's policy at Oxford and the policy after Lewes. The Provisions of 1258
were restrictive. The Constitution of 1264 deliberately extended the limits
of Parliament. "Either Simon's views of a Constitution had rapidly
developed, or the influences which had checked them in 1258 were removed.
Anyhow, he had genius to interpret the mind of the nation, and to
anticipate the line which was taken by later progress."[20] What Simon
wanted was the approval of all classes of the community for his plans, and
to that end he issued writs for the Parliament--the _Full Parliament_--of
1265.
The great feature of this Parliament was that for the first time the
burgesses of each city and borough were summoned to send two
representatives. In addition, two knights were to come from each shire, and
clergy and barons as usual--though in the case of the earls and barons only
twenty-three were invited, for Simon had no desire for the presence of
those who were his enemies. The Full Parliament sat till March, and then
two months later war had once more blazed out. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester
broke away from Simon, Prince Edward escaped from custody, and these two
joined Lord Mortimer and the Welsh Marchers.
On August 4th Edward surprised and routed the army of the younger Simon
near Kenilworth, and then advanced to crush the great Earl, who was
encamped at Evesham, waiting to join forces with his son. All hope of
escape for Earl Simon was lost, and he was outnumbered by seven to two. But
fly he would not. One by one the barons who stood by Simon were cut down,
but though wounded and dismounted, the great Earl "fought on to the last
like a giant for the freedom of England, till a foot soldier stabbed him in
the back under the mail, and he was borne down and slain." For three hours
the unequal fight lasted in the midst of storm and darkness, and when it
was over the Grey Friars carried the mangled body of the dead Earl into the
priory at Evesham, and laid it before the high altar, for the poorer clergy
and the common people all counted Simon of Montfort for a saint.
"Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol his
prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple fare
and plain russet dress, bear witness to his kindly speech and firm
friendship to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and unjust
men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such that
neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside from keeping
the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause 'like a pillar
that cannot be moved, and, like a second Josiah, esteemed righteousness the
very healing of his soul.' As a statesman he wished to bind the King to
rule according to law, and to make the King's Ministers responsible to a
Full Parliament; and though he did not live to see the success of his
policy, he had pointed out the way by which future statesmen might bring it
about."[21]
In the hour of Simon's death it might seem that the cause of good
government was utterly lost, and for a time Henry triumphed with a fierce
reaction. But the very barons who had turned against Simon were quite
determined that the Charters should be observed, and Edward was to show, on
his coming to the throne, that he had grasped even more fully than Simon
the notion of a national representative assembly, and that he accepted the
principle, "that which touches all shall be approved by all."
Henry III. died in 1272, and it was not till two years later that Edward I.
was back in England from the crusades to take up the crown. It was an age
of great lawgivers; an age that saw St. Louis ruling in France, Alfonso the
Wise in Castile, the Emperor Frederick II.--the Wonder of the World--in
Sicily. In England Edward shaped the Constitution and settled for future
times the lines of Parliamentary representative government.
EDWARD I.'S MODEL PARLIAMENT, 1295
For the first twenty years Edward's Parliaments were great assemblies of
barons and knights, and it was not till 1295 that the famous Model
Parliament was summoned. "It is very evident that common dangers must be
met by measures concerted in common," ran the writ to the bishops. Every
sheriff was to cause two knights to be elected from each shire, two
citizens from each city, two burgesses from each borough. The clergy were
to be fully represented from each cathedral and each diocese.
Hitherto Parliament, save in 1265, had been little else than a feudal
court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national
assembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates--clergy, barons, and
commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work--should be
represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their
own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots
only attended because they were great holders of land and important feudal
lords.
Although the knights of the shire were of much the same class as the
barons, the latter received personal summons to attend, and the knights
joined with the representatives of the cities and boroughs. So the two
Houses of Parliament consisted of barons and bishops--lords spiritual and
lords temporal--and knights and commons; and we have to-day the House of
Lords and the House of Commons; the former, as in the thirteenth century,
lords spiritual and temporal, the latter, representatives from counties and
boroughs.
The admission of elected representatives was to move, in course of time,
the centre of government from the Crown to the House of Commons; but in
Edward I.'s reign Parliament was just a larger growth of the King's
Council--the Council that Norman and Plantagenet kings relied on for
assistance in the administration of justice and the collection of revenue.
The judges of the supreme court were always summoned to Parliament, as the
law lords sit in the Upper House to-day.
Money, or rather the raising of money, was the main cause for calling a
Parliament. The clergy at first voted their own grants to the Crown in
convocation, but came to agree to pay the taxes voted by Lords and Commons,
And Lords and Commons, instead of making separate grants, joined in a
common grant.
"And, as the bulk of the burden fell upon the Commons, they adopted a
formula which placed the Commons in the foreground. The grant was made by
the Commons, with the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal. This
formula appeared in 1395, and became the rule. In 1407, eight years after
Henry IV. came to the throne, he assented to the important principle that
money grants were to be initiated by the House of Commons, were not to be
reported to the King until both Houses were agreed, and were to be reported
by the Speaker of the Commons' House. This rule is strictly observed at the
present day. When a money bill, such as the Finance bill for the year or
the Appropriation bill, has been passed by the House of Commons and agreed
to by the House of Lords, it is, unlike all other bills, returned to the
House of Commons."[22] The Speaker, with his own hand, delivers all money
bills to the Clerk of Parliaments, the officer whose business it is to
signify the royal assent.
In addition to voting money, the Commons, on the assembly of Parliament,
would petition for the redress of grievances. In the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, they were not legislators, but petitioners for
legislation; and as it often happened that their petitions were not granted
in the form they asked, it became a matter of bitter complaint that the
laws did not correspond with the petitions. Henry V. in 1414 granted the
request that "nothing should be enacted to the petition of the Commons
contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their
assent"; and from that time it became customary for bills to be sent up to
the Crown instead of petitions, leaving the King the alternative of assent
or reaction.
THE NOBILITY PREDOMINANT IN PARLIAMENT
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the power of Parliament was
strong enough to force the abdication of two kings--Edward II. and Richard
II.--but not strong enough to free the land of the turbulent authority of
the nobles. This authority went down in the struggles of the Lancastrians
and Yorkists.
"The bloody faction fights known as the Wars of the Roses brought the
Plantagenet dynasty to a close, weeded out the older nobility, and cleared
the way for a new form of monarchy."[23]
"The high nobility killed itself out. The great barons who adhered to the
'Red Rose' or the 'White Rose,' or who fluctuated from one to the other,
became poorer, fewer, and less potent every year. When the great struggle
ended at Bosworth, a large part of the greatest combatants were gone. The
restless, aspiring, rich barons, who made the civil war, were broken by it.
Henry VII. attained a kingdom in which there was a Parliament to advise,
but scarcely a Parliament to control."[24]
It is important to note the ascendancy of the barons in the medieval
Parliaments, and their self-destruction in the Wars of the Roses. Unless we
realise how very largely the barons were the Parliament, it is difficult to
understand how it came about that Parliament was so utterly impotent under
the Tudors. The Wars of the Roses killed off the mighty parliamentarians,
and it took a hundred years to raise the country landowners into a party
which, under Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, was to make the House of Commons
supreme.
"The civil wars of many years killed out the old councils (if I might so
say): that is, destroyed three parts of the greater nobility, who were its
most potent members, tired the small nobility and gentry, and overthrew the
aristocratic organisation on which all previous effectual resistance to the
sovereign had been based."[25]
To get an idea of the weakness of Parliament when the Tudors ruled, we have
but to suppose at the present day a Parliament deprived of all front-bench
men on both sides of the House, and of the leaders of the Irish and Labour
parties, and a House of Lords deprived of all Ministers and ex-Ministers.
THE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL ASSEMBLIES
Before passing to the Parliamentary revival of the seventeenth century,
there still remain one or two points to be considered relating to the early
national assemblies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
(1) _Who were the electors in the Middle Ages?_--In the counties, all who
were entitled to attend and take part in the proceedings of the county
court had the right of electing the knight of the shire; and "it is most
probable, on the evidence of records, on the analogies of representative
usage, and on the testimony of later facts, that the knights of the shire
were elected by the full county court."[26]
The county court or shire-moot not only elected knights for Parliament; it
often enough elected them for local purposes as well. The county coroner
was elected in similar fashion by the county. All the chief tenants and
small freeholders were therefore the county electors; but the
tenants-in-chief (who held their lands from the Crown) and the knights of
the county had naturally considerably more influence than the smaller men.
"The chief lord of a great manor would have authority with his tenants,
freeholders as they might be, which would make their theoretical equality a
mere shadow, and would, moreover, be exercised all the more easily because
the right which it usurped was one which the tenant neither understood nor
cared for."[27]
It is difficult to decide to what extent the smaller freeholders could take
an active interest in the affairs of the county. As for the office of
knight of the shire, there was no competition in the thirteenth or
fourteenth century for the honour of going to Parliament, and it is likely
enough that the sheriff, upon whom rested the responsibility for the
elections, would in some counties be obliged to nominate and compel the
attendance of an unwilling candidate.
(2) _Payment of Parliamentary Representatives._--The fact that Members of
Parliament were paid by their constituents in the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries[28] made certain small freeholders as anxious not
to be included in the electorate as others were anxious not to be elected
to Parliament. It was recognised as "fair that those persons who were
excluded from the election should be exempt from contribution to the wages.
And to many of the smaller freeholders the exemption from payment would be
far more valuable than the privilege of voting."[29] But the Commons
generally petitioned for payment to be made by all classes of freeholders,
and when all allowance has been made for varying customs and for local
diversities and territorial influence, it is safe to take it that the
freeholders were the body of electors.
In 1430, the eighth year of Henry VI., an Act was passed ordering that
electors must be resident in the country, and must have free land or
tenement to the value of 40s. a year at least; and this Act was in
operation till 1831.
The county franchise was a simple and straightforward matter compared with
the methods of electing representatives from the boroughs. All that the
sheriff was ordered to do by writ was to provide for the return of two
members for each city or borough in his county; the places that were to be
considered as boroughs were not named. In the Middle Ages a town might have
no wish to be taxed for the wages of its Parliamentary representative, and
in that case would do its best to come to an arrangement with the sheriff.
(It was not till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that a
considerable increase of boroughs took place. The Tudors created "pocket"
and "rotten" boroughs in order to have the nominees of the Crown in
Parliament.) The size of the borough bore no relation to its membership
till the Reform Act of the nineteenth century, and as the selection of
towns to be represented was arbitrary, so the franchise in the towns was
equally unsettled. One or two places had a wide franchise, others confined
the vote to freemen and corporation members. But in spite of the
extraordinary vagaries of the borough franchise, and the arbitrary
selection of towns to be represented, these early medieval Parliaments
really did in an imperfect way represent the nation--all but the peasants
and artisans.
"Our English Parliaments were _un_symmetrical realities. They were elected
anyhow. The sheriff had a considerable licence in sending writs to
boroughs, that is, he could in part pick its constituencies; and in each
borough there was a rush and scramble for the franchise, so that the
strongest local party got it whether few or many. But in England at that
time there was a great and distinct desire to know the opinion of the
nation, because there was a real and close necessity. The nation was wanted
to do something--to assist the sovereign in some war, to pay some old debt,
to contribute its force and aid in the critical juncture of the time. It
would not have suited the ante-Tudor kings to have had a fictitious
assembly; they would have lost their sole _feeler_, their only instrument
for discovering national opinion. Nor could they have manufactured such an
assembly if they wished. Looking at the mode of election, a theorist would
say that these Parliaments were but 'chance' collections of influential
Englishmen. There would be many corrections and limitations to add to that
statement if it were wanted to make it accurate, but the statement itself
hits exactly the principal excellence of these Parliaments. If not 'chance'
collections of Englishmen, they were 'undesigned' collections; no
administrations made them, or could make them. They were bona fide
counsellors, whose opinion might be wise or unwise, but was anyhow of
paramount importance, because their co-operation was wanted for what was in
hand."[30]
(3) _The political position of women in the Middle Ages._--Abbesses were
summoned to the convocations of clergy in Edward I.'s reign. Peeresses were
permitted to be represented by proxy in Parliament. The offices of sheriff,
high constable, governor of a royal castle, and justice of the peace have
all been held by women. In fact, the lady of the manor had the same rights
as the lord of the manor, and joined with men who were freeholders in
electing knights of the shire without question of sex disability.[31] (A
survival of the medieval rights of women may be seen in the power of women
to present clergy to benefices in the Church of England.)
In the towns women were members of various guilds and companies equally
with men, and were burgesses and freewomen. Not till 1832 was the word
"male" inserted before "persons" in the charters of boroughs. "Never before
has the phrase 'male persons' appeared in any statute of the realm. By this
Act (the Reform Bill), therefore, women were technically disfranchised for
the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of
abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion."
NO THEORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
The years of Simon of Montfort and Edward I., which saw the beginnings of a
representative national assembly, were not a time of theoretical discussion
on political rights. The English nation, indeed, has ever been averse from
political theories. The notion of a carefully balanced constitution was
outside the calculations of medieval statesmen, and the idea of political
democracy was not included among their visions.
"Even the scholastic writers, amid their calculations of all possible
combinations of principles in theology and morals, well aware of the
difference between the 'rex politicus' who rules according to law, and the
tyrant who rules without it, and of the characteristics of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy, with their respective corruptions, contented
themselves for the most part with balancing the spiritual and secular
powers, and never broached the idea of a growth into political
enfranchisement. Yet, in the long run, this has been the ideal towards
which the healthy development of national life in Europe has constantly
tended, only the steps towards it have not been taken to suit a
preconceived theory."[32]
Each step towards democracy has been taken "to suit the convenience of
party or the necessities of kings, to induce the newly admitted classes to
give their money, to produce political contentment."
The only two principles that are apparent in the age-long struggles for
political freedom in England, that are recognised and acknowledged, are:
(1) That that which touches all shall be approved by all; (2) that
government rests on the consent of the governed. Over and over again these
two principles may be seen at work.
* * * * *
CHAPTER III
POPULAR INSURRECTION IN ENGLAND
GENERAL RESULTS OF POPULAR RISINGS
Popular insurrection has never been successful in England; a violent death
and a traitor's doom have been the lot of every leader of the common people
who took up arms against the Government. The Civil War that brought Charles
I. to the scaffold, and the Revolution that deposed James II. and set
William of Orange on the throne, were the work of country gentlemen and
Whig statesmen, not of the labouring people.
But if England has never seen popular revolution triumphant and democracy
set up by force of arms, the earlier centuries witnessed more than one
effort to gain by open insurrection some measure of freedom for the working
people of the land.
No other way than violent resistance seemed possible to peasants and
artisans in the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, if
their wrongs were to be mitigated and their rulers to be called to account.
Langton and Simon of Montfort had placed some check on the power of the
Crown, had laid the foundations of political liberty, and marked the road
to be travelled; but the lot of the labouring people remained unheeded and
voiceless in the councils of the nation. What could they do but take up
arms to end an intolerable oppression?
WILLIAM FITZOSBERT, CALLED LONGBEARD, 1196
The first serious protest came from the London workmen in the reign of
Richard I.; and FitzOsbert, known as Longbeard, was the spokesman of the
popular discontent.
The King wanted money, chiefly for his crusades in Palestine. He had no
inclination to personal government, and the business of ruling England was
in the hands of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, the justiciar or
King's lieutenant. Richard left England for Normandy in 1194, and returned
no more. England to him was a country where money could be raised, a
subject-province to be bled by taxation. Archbishop Hubert did his best to
satisfy the royal demands; and though by his inquisitions "England was
reduced to poverty from one sea to the other"--it is estimated that more
than £1,000,000 was sent to Richard in two years--the King was left
unsatisfied. The nation generally came to hate the Archbishop's taxation,
the Church suffered by his neglect, and he was finally compelled to resign
the justiciarship.
It was the London rising, under FitzOsbert's leadership, that directly
caused Archbishop Hubert's retirement, and FitzOsbert is notable as the
first of the long line of agitators.
The political importance of the capital was seen in the reigns of Cnut and
William the Conqueror. It was conspicuous on the arrival of Stephen in
1135, and its influence on national politics lasted till the middle of the
nineteenth century.[33]
By its charter London had the right of raising taxes for the Crown in its
own way, and in 1196 the method proposed by the Corporation provoked the
outbreak. "When the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings
for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare
their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor" (Hoveden).
The poorer citizens were voteless, and the plan of the aldermen was to levy
the tallages per head, and not in proportion to the property of the
inhabitants. This meant, practically, that the whole, except a very small
fraction of the sum to be raised, must be paid by the working people.
Thereupon FitzOsbert protested, and the people rose in arms against the
demand.
FitzOsbert was an old crusader, and he was something of a lawyer and a
powerful speaker. Not a rich man by any means, FitzOsbert was yet a member
of the city council when, "burning with zeal for justice and fair play, he
made himself the champion of the poor." To his enemies he was a demagogue
and disreputable--so Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's at that time,
described him. To others of more popular sympathies he was heroic and died
a martyr's death. Across the centuries he is seen as "an agitator"--the
first English agitator, the first man to stand up boldly against the
oppression of the common people. This palpably unjust taxation of the poor
was intolerable to FitzOsbert.
Fifteen thousand men banded themselves together in London under an oath
that they would stand by each other and by their leader; and FitzOsbert,
after a vain journey to Normandy to arouse Richard's attention to the
wrongs of his subjects, bade open defiance to the justiciar and his
tax-gatherers.
For a time the Archbishop's men were powerless, but weakness crept in
amongst the citizens, and the aldermen were naturally on the side of
constituted authority. FitzOsbert's success meant a readjustment of
taxation quite unpalatable to the City Fathers.
In the end FitzOsbert was deserted by all but a handful of his followers
and fled with them for sanctuary to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in
Cheapside. Pursued by the officers of the law, FitzOsbert climbed up into
the tower of the church, and to fetch him down orders were given to set the
church on fire. This was done, and the only chance of life that now
remained for the rebels was to get out of the church and cut their way
through the ranks of their enemies.
At the church door FitzOsbert was struck down, and his little company
quickly overpowered.
Heavily chained, and badly wounded, FitzOsbert was carried off to the
Tower, to be tried and sentenced to a traitor's death without delay.
A few days later--it was just before Easter--FitzOsbert was stripped naked,
and dragged at the tail of a horse over the rough streets of London to
Tyburn. He was dead before the place of execution was reached, but the
body, broken and mangled, was hung up in chains under the gallows elm all
the same; and nine of his companions were hanged with him.
The very people who had fallen away from their leader in the day of his
need now counted FitzOsbert for a saint, and pieces of his gibbet and of
the bloodstained earth underneath the tree were carried away and treasured
as sacred relics. It was alleged that miracles were performed when these
relics were touched--so wide was now the popular reverence for the dead
champion of the poor.
Archbishop Hubert put a stop to this devotion by ordering sermons to be
preached on FitzOsbert's iniquities; and an alleged death-bed confession,
containing an account of many evil deeds, was published. It is likely
enough that an old crusader had plenty of sins to answer for, but
FitzOsbert's one crime before the law was that he had taught the people of
London to stand up and resist by force of arms the payment of taxes--taxes
levied with gross unfairness in popular judgment.
The monks of Canterbury, to whom the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside
belonged, had long had their own quarrels with Archbishop Hubert, and on
this firing of their church, and the violation of sanctuary, they appealed
to the King and the Pope--Innocent III.--that Hubert should give up his
political work and attend exclusively to his duties as Archbishop. Both the
Pope and the great barons were against him, and in 1198 Archbishop Hubert
was compelled to resign the judiciarship.
THE PEASANT REVOLT AND ITS LEADERS, 1381
The great uprising of the peasants in 1381 was a very different matter from
the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in
those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up
and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been admitted in
the Great Charter.
The Peasant Revolt was national. It was carefully prepared and skilfully
organised, and its leaders were men of power and ability--men of character.
It was not only a definite protest against positive evils, but a vigorous
attempt to create a new social order--to substitute a social democracy for
feudal government.[34]
The old feudal order had been widely upset by the Black Death in 1349, and
the further ravages of pestilence in 1361 and 1369. The heavy mortality
left many country districts bereft of labour, and landowners were compelled
to offer higher wages if agriculture was to go on. In vain Parliament
passed Statutes of Labourers to prevent the peasant from securing an
advance. These Acts of Parliament expressly forbade a rise in wages; the
landless man or woman was "to serve the employer who shall require him to
do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the
neighbourhood two years before the pestilence." The scarcity of labour
drove landowners to compete for the services of the labourer, in spite of
Parliament.
Discontent was rife in those years of social change. The Statutes of
Labourers were ineffectual; but they galled the labourers and kept serfdom
alive. The tenants had their grievance because they were obliged to give
labour-service to their lords. Freehold yeomen, town workmen, and
shopkeepers were irritated by heavy taxation, and vexed by excessive market
tolls. All the materials were at hand for open rebellion, and leaders were
found as the days went by to kindle and direct the revolt.
John Ball, an itinerant priest, who came from St. Mary's, at York, and then
made Colchester the centre of his wanderings, spent twenty years organising
the revolt, and three times was excommunicated and imprisoned by the
Archbishop of Canterbury for teaching social "errors, schisms, and
scandals," but was in no wise contrite or cast down.
Chief of Ball's fellow-agitators were John Wraw, in Suffolk, Jack Straw, in
Essex--both priests these--William Grindcobbe, in Hertford, and Geoffrey
Litster, in Norfolk. In Kent lived Wat Tyler, of whom nothing is told till
the revolt was actually afire, but who at once was acknowledged leader and
captain by the rebel hosts.
From village to village went John Ball in the years that preceded the
rising, organising the peasants into clubs, and stirring the people with
revolutionary talk. It was the way of this vagrant priest to preach to the
people on village greens, and his discourses were all on the same text--"In
the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created
equal."[35] Inequalities of wealth and social position were to be ended:
"Good people, things will never go well in England, so long as goods be not
kept in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what
right are they whom men call lords greater folk than we? If all come from
the same father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that
they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by
our toil what they spend in their pride?
"They are clothed in velvet, and are warm in their furs and ermines, while
we are covered in rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, and we
oatcake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses;
we have pain and labour, the wind and rain in the fields. And yet it is of
us and of our toil that these men hold their state.
"We are called slaves; and if we do not perform our services, we are
beaten, and we have not any sovereign to whom we can complain, or who
wishes to hear us and do us justice."
The poet, William Langland, in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs
of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on a
familiar couplet:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Besides the sermons, some of the rhymed letters that John Ball sent about
the country have been preserved:
"John Ball, Priest of St. Mary's, greets well all manner of men, and
bids them in the name of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to
stand together manfully in truth. Help truth and truth shall help you.
"John Ball greeteth you all,
And doth to understand he hath rung your bell.
Now with right and might, will and skill,
God speed every dell.
John the Miller asketh help to turn his mill right:
He hath ground small, small:
The King's Son of Heaven will pay for it all.
Look thy mill go right, with its four sails dight.
With right and with might, with skill and with will,
And let the post stand in steadfastness.
Let right help might, and skill go before will,
Then shall our mill go aright;
But if might go before right, and will go before skill,
Then is our mill mis-a-dight."
Sometimes it is under the signature of John Trueman that John Ball writes:
"Beware ere ye be woe;
Know your friend from your foe;
Take enough and cry "Ho!"
And do well and better and flee from sin,
And seek out peace and dwell therein--
So biddeth John Trueman and all his fellows."
A more definite note was struck when it seemed to Ball and his colleagues
that the time was ripe for revolution, and the word was given that appeal
must be made to the boy-king--Richard was only eleven years old when he
came to the throne in 1377.
"Let us go to the King, and remonstrate with him, telling him we must have
it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy. He is young. If we
wait on him in a body, all those who come under the name of serf, or are
held in bondage, will follow us in the hope of being free. When the King
shall see us we shall obtain a favourable answer, or we must then ourselves
seek to amend our condition."
In another letter John Ball greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John
Carter, and bids them stand together in God's name, and beware of guile: he
bids Piers Plowman "go to his work and chastise well Hob the Robber (Sir
Robert Hales, the King's Treasurer); and take with you John Trueman and all
his fellows, and look that you choose one head and no more."
These letters and the preaching were accepted by willing minds. John Ball
was in prison--in the jail of Archbishop Sudbury at Maidstone--in the
spring of 1381, but the peasants were organised and ready to revolt. If Wat
Tyler is the recognised leader of the rebel forces--"the one head"--John
Ball's was the work of preparing the uprising. The vagrant priest had rung
his bell to some purpose. In every county, from Somerset to York, the
peasants flocked together, "some armed with clubs, rusty swords, axes, with
old bows reddened by the smoke of the chimney corner, and odd arrows with
only one feather."
At Whitsuntide, early in June, 1381, the great uprising began--the Hurling
time of the peasants--long to be remembered with horror by the governing
classes. A badly ordered poll-tax was the match that kindled the fire.
The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age.
Two years later it was graduated, every man and woman of the working class
being rated at 4d., and dukes and archbishops at £6 13s. 4d. More money was
still wanted by the Government, and early in 1381, John of Gaunt, the chief
man in the realm, called Parliament together at Northampton, and demanded
£160,000. Parliament agreed that £100,000 should be raised, and the
clergy--owning a third of the land--promised £60,000. But the only way of
raising the £100,000 that the Government could think of was by another
poll-tax, and this time everybody over fifteen was required to pay 1s. Of
course, the thing was impossible. In many parishes the mere returns of
population were not filled in; numbers evaded payment--which spelt ruin--by
leaving their homes. £22,000 was all that came to hand.
Then a man named John Legge came to the assistance of the Government, and
was appointed chief commissioner, and empowered to collect the tax.
The methods of Legge and his assistants provoked hostility, and when the
villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope, in Essex, were
summoned to meet the commissioner at Brentwood, their reply was to kill the
collectors.
The Government answered this by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to
punish the offenders, but the people drove the chief justice out of the
place, and Belknap was glad to escape with his life.
This was on Whit-Sunday, June 2nd, and two days later the revolt had spread
to Kent; Gravesend and Dartford were in tumult. In one place Sir Simon
Burley, a friend of Richard II., seized a workman, claiming him as a
bondservant, and refusing to let him go under a fine of £300; while at
Dartford a tax-collector had made trouble by gross indecency to the wife
and daughter of one John Tyler.[36]
Thereupon this John Tyler, "being at work in the same town tyling of an
house, when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand, and ran
reaking home; where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold,
the collector answered with stout words, and strake at the tyler; whereupon
the tyler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with his lathing staff,
so that the brains flew out of his head. Wherethrough great noise arose in
the streets, and the poor people being glad, everyone prepared to support
the said John Tyler."
Now, with the fire of revolt in swift blaze, it was for the men of Kent to
see that it burned under some direction. Authority and discipline were
essential if the rising was not to become mob rule or mere anarchy, and if
positive and intolerable wrongs were to find remedies.
At Maidstone, on June 7th--after Rochester Castle had been stormed, its
prisoners set free and Sir John Newton its governor placed in safe
custody--Wat Tyler was chosen captain of the rebel hosts.
History tells us nothing of the antecedents of this remarkable man. For
eight days, and eight days only, he plays his part on the stage of national
events: commands with authority a vast concourse of men; meets the King
face to face, and wrests from sovereignty great promises of reform; orders
the execution of the chief ministers of the Crown, and then, in what seems
to be the hour of triumph, is struck to the ground, and goes to his death.
Under the accredited leadership of Wat Tyler the revolt at once took form.
Five days were spent in Kent before the peasant army marched on London. The
manor houses were attacked, and all rent rolls, legal documents, lists of
tenants and serfs destroyed. The rising was not a ferocious massacre like
the rising of the Jacquerie in France; there was no general massacre of
landlords, or reign of terror. The lawyers who managed the landowners'
estates were the enemy, and against them--against the instruments of
landlord tyranny--was the anger of the peasants directed. In the same way
John of Gaunt, and not the youthful King, was recognised as the evil
influence in government; and while a vow was taken by the men of Kent that
no man named "John" should be King of England, the popular cry was "King
Richard and the Commons," and all who joined in this were accounted friends
of the insurgent populace.
Blackheath was reached on the evening of June 12th, and early the following
morning, which was Corpus Christi Day, John Ball--released by a thousand
hands from his prison at Maidstone--preached to the multitude on the work
before them:
"Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take
it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom
they have always desired. Wherefore, let us take good courage and behave
like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his
barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good
grain. The tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of
harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with
them all--the wicked lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers--every man,
indeed, who is dangerous to the common good. Then shall we all have peace
in our time and security for the future. For when the great ones have been
rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom and nobility, rank
and power shall we have in common."
Thirty-thousand men--yeomen, craftsmen, villeins, and peasants, were at
Blackheath, and these were soon joined by thousands more from Surrey.
John Wraw and Grindcobbe came to consult with Wat Tyler, and then returned
to Suffolk and Hertford to announce that the hour had come to strike.
The Marshalsea and King's Bench prisons, and the houses of ill-fame that
clustered round London Bridge, were destroyed before Wat Tyler led his army
into the city. An attempt to meet the King in conference was frustrated by
the royal counsellors. Richard came down in the royal barge as far as
Rotherhithe, but was dissuaded by Sir Robert Hales, and the Earls of
Suffolk, Salisbury, and Warwick, from "holding speech with the shoeless
ruffians."
Richard rowed back swiftly to the Tower, and Tyler and his army swept into
London. The city was in the hands of the rebel captain, but the citizens
welcomed the invaders, and offered bread and ale when Tyler proclaimed that
death would be the instant punishment for theft.
John of Gaunt's palace at the Savoy, on the river strand, was the first
place to be burnt; but Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt's son (eighteen
years later to reign as Henry IV., in place of Richard), was allowed to
pass out uninjured, and a wretched man caught in the act of stealing off
with a silver cup was promptly executed.
The Savoy destroyed, the Temple--a hive of lawyers--was the next to be
burnt, and before nightfall the Fleet Prison and Newgate had been
demolished.
Again Tyler demanded conference with the King, and Richard, lying in the
Tower with his counsellors, unable to prevent the work of conference,
boldly decided to come out and meet the rebels. Mile End was appointed for
the conference, and to Mile End Richard came with a very modest retinue.
The King was only fifteen, but he was the son of the Black Prince, and he
had both courage and cunning. He was fully aware that the people did not
lay on him responsibility for the sins of the Government. "If we measure
intellectual power by the greatest exertion it ever displays, rather than
by its average results, Richard II. was a man of considerable talents. He
possessed along with much dissimulation a decisive promptitude in seizing
the critical moment for action."[37]
At Mile End Tyler stated the grievances of the people. But first he asked
that all traitors should be put to death, and to this the King agreed.
Four positive articles of reform were put forward, and were at once
assented to by the King:--
1. A free and general pardon to all concerned in the rising.
2. The total abolition of all villeinage (forced labour) and serfdom.
3. An end to all tolls and market dues--"freedom to buy and sell in all
cities, burghs, mercantile towns, and other places within our kingdom of
England."
4. All customary tenants to become leaseholders at a fixed rental of
fourpence an acre for ever.
That all doubts might be removed, thirty clerks were set to work on the
spot to draw up charters of manumission, and banners were presented to each
county. At nightfall thousands returned home convinced that the old order
was ended, and that the Royal charters were genuine assurances of freedom.
But Tyler and the bulk of the men of Kent and Surrey remained in the city.
It seemed to Wat Tyler that better terms still were to be wrung from the
King. It looked that night as though the insurrection had triumphed
completely. Not only were the charters signed and the royal promises given,
but several in high office, whom Tyler held to be "traitors," had gone to
their doom. Sir Robert Hales, the Treasurer, Archbishop Sudbury, the
Chancellor--a gentle and kindly old man, "lenient to heretics"--John Legge,
the hated poll-tax commissioner, with Appleton, John of Gaunt's chaplain,
and Richard Lyons, a thoroughly corrupt contractor of Edward III.'s reign,
were all dragged out of the Tower and beheaded on Tower Hill on Friday,
June 15th.
On Tyler's request for another conference with Richard on the following
day, the King saw he had no choice but to yield. For the second time Wat
Tyler and Richard met face to face. The conference was held at Smithfield,
in the square outside St. Bartholomew's Priory. The King and two hundred
retainers, with Walworth the mayor, were on the east side of the square.
Tyler and his army were on the west side, opposite the Priory.
In the open space Tyler, mounted on a little horse, presented his demands;
more sweeping were the reforms now asked for than those of the previous
day.
"Let no law but the law of Winchester[38] prevail throughout the land, and
let no man be made an outlaw by the decree of judges and lawyers. Grant
also that no lord shall henceforth exercise lordship over the commons; and
since we are oppressed by so vast a horde of bishops and clerks, let there
be but one bishop in England; and let the property and goods of Holy Church
be divided fairly according to the needs of the people in each parish,
after in justice making suitable provision for the present clergy and
monks. Finally, let there be no more villeins in England, but grant us all
to be free and of one condition."
Richard answered that he promised readily all that was asked, "if only it
be consistent with the regality of my Crown." He then bade the commons
return home, since their requests had been granted.
Nobles and counsellors stood in sullen and silent anger at the King's
words, but were powerless to act. Tyler, conscious of victory, called for a
draught, and when his attendant brought him a mighty tankard of ale, the
rebel leader drank good-humouredly to "King Richard and the Commons." A
knight in the royal service, a "valet of Kent," was heard to mutter that
Wat Tyler was the greatest thief and robber in all the county, and Tyler
caught the abusive words, drew his dagger, and made for the man.
Mayor Walworth, as angry as the nobles at the King's surrender, shouted
that he would arrest all who drew weapons in the King's presence; and on
Tyler striking at him impatiently, the Mayor drew a cutlass and slashed
back, wounding Tyler in the neck so that he fell from his horse. Before he
could recover a footing, two knights plunged their swords into him, and
Tyler, mortally wounded, could only scramble on to his little horse, ride a
yard or two, call on the commons to avenge him, and then drop--a dead
man.[39]
And with Wat Tyler's death the whole rebellion collapsed. Confusion fell
upon the people at Smithfield. Some were for immediate attack, but when
Richard, riding out into the middle of the square, claimed that he and not
Tyler was their King, and bade them follow him into the fields towards
Islington, the great mass, convinced that Richard was honestly their
friend, obeyed. At nightfall they were scattered.
Wat Tyler's body was taken into the Priory, and his head placed on London
Bridge.
Walworth hastily gathered troops together, and the leader of the rebels
being dead, the nobles recovered their courage.
The rising was over; the people without leaders were as sheep for the
slaughter. Jack Straw was taken in London and hanged without the formality
of a trial; and on June 22nd Tresilian, the new chief justice, went on a
special assize to try the rebels, and "showed mercy to none and made great
havock." The King's charters and promises were declared null and void when
Parliament met, and some hundreds of peasants were hanged in various parts
of the country.
John Ball and Grindcobbe were hanged at St. Albans on July 15th, John Wraw
and Geoffrey Litster suffered the same fate.
All that Wat Tyler and the peasants had striven for was lost; but the
rising was not quite in vain. For one thing, the poll-tax was stopped, and
the end of villeinage was hastened.
The great uprising was the first serious demonstration of the English
people for personal liberty. "It taught the King's officers and gentle
folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to
behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and
to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their
customary tenants, so that in a hundred years' time there were very few
bondsmen left in England."[40]
JACK CADE, CAPTAIN OF KENT, 1450
To understand the character and importance of the rising of the men of Kent
under Jack Cade in 1450, the first thing to be done is to clear the mind of
Shakespeare's travesty in _King Henry VI._, Part 2. In the play the name of
Cade has been handed down in obloquy, and all that he and his followers
aimed at caricatured out of recognition. The part that Jack Cade really
played in national affairs has no likeness to the low comedy performance
imagined by Shakespeare.
It was a popular rising in 1450, but it was not a peasant revolt. Men of
substance in the county rallied to Cade's banner, and in many parishes in
Kent the village constable was employed to enrol willing recruits in the
army of disaffection.[41]
The peasant revolt was at bottom a social movement, fostered and fashioned
by preachers of a social democracy. Cade's rising was provoked by
misgovernment and directed at political reform. It was far less
revolutionary in purpose than the revolt that preceded it, or the rising
under Ket a hundred years later.
The discontent was general when Cade encamped on Blackheath with the
commons of Kent at the end of May, 1450. Suffolk, the best hated of Henry
VI.'s ministers, had already been put to death by the sailors of Dover, and
Lord Say-and-Sele, the Treasurer, was in the Tower under impeachment.
Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, another Minister, was hanged by his
infuriated flock in Wiltshire, and Bishop Moleyns, of Chichester, Keeper of
the Privy Seal, was executed in Portsmouth by a mob of sailors. Piracy
prevailed unchecked in the English Channel, and the highways inland were
haunted by robbers--soldiers back from France and broken in the wars.
The ablest statesman of the day, the Duke of York, was banished from the
royal council, and there was a wide feeling that an improvement in
government was impossible until York was recalled.
Whether Cade, who was known popularly as "Mortimer," was related to the
Duke of York, or was merely a country landowner, can never be decided. The
charges made against him after his death were not supported by a shred of
evidence, but it was necessary then for the Government to blacken the
character of the Captain of Kent for the utter discouragement of his
followers. All we _know_ of Cade is that by the Act of Attainder he must
have been a man of some property in Surrey--probably a squire or yeoman.
The army that encamped on Blackheath numbered over 40,000, and included
squires, yeomen, county gentlemen, and at least two notable ecclesiastics
from Sussex, the Abbot of Battle and the Prior of Lewes. The testimony to
Cade's character is that he was the unquestioned and warmly respected
leader of the host. The Cade depicted by his enemies--a dissolute,
disreputable ruffian--was not the kind of man to have had authority as a
chosen captain over country gentlemen and clerical landowners in the
fifteenth century.
The "Complaints" of the commons of Kent, drawn up at Blackheath and
forwarded to the King and his Parliament, then sitting at Westminster,
called attention in fifteen articles to the evils that afflicted the land.
These articles dealt with a royal threat to lay waste Kent in revenge for
the death of the Duke of Suffolk; the wasting of the royal revenue raised
by heavy taxation; the banishment of the Duke of York--"to make room for
unworthy ministers who would not do justice by law, but demanded bribes and
gifts"; purveyance of goods for the royal household without payment; arrest
and imprisonment on false charges of treason by persons whose goods and
lands were subsequently seized by the King's servants, who then "either
compassed their deaths or kept them in prison while they got possession of
their property by royal grant"; interference by "the great rulers of the
land" with the old right of free election of knights of the shire; the
mismanagement of the war in France. A certain number of purely local
grievances, chiefly concerned with the maladministration of justice, were
also included in the "Complaints," and five "Requests"--including the
abolition of the Statutes of Labourers--were added.
Henry and his counsellors dismissed these "Complaints" with contempt. "Such
proud rebels," it was said, "should rather be suppressed and tamed with
violence and force than with fair words or amicable answer." But when the
royal troops moved into Kent to disperse the rising, Cade's army cut them
to pieces at Sevenoaks. Henry returned to London; his nobles rode away to
their country houses; and after a fruitless attempt at negotiations by the
Duke of Buckingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury,[42] the King himself
fled to Kenilworth--leaving London at the mercy of the Captain of Kent.
On July 2nd Cade crossed London Bridge on horseback, followed by all his
army. The Corporation had already decided to offer no opposition to his
entry, and one of its members, Thomas Cocke, of the Drapers' Company--later
sheriff and M.P.--had gone freely between the camp at Blackheath and the
city, acting as mutual friend to the rebels and the citizens. All that Cade
required was that the foreign merchants in London should furnish him with a
certain number of arms and horses, "and 1,000 marks of ready money"; and
this was done. "So that it was found that the Captain and Kentishmen at
their being in the city did no hurt to any stranger."[43]
On the old London stone, in Cannon Street, Cade laid his sword, in the
presence of the Mayor and a great multitude of people, and declared
proudly: "Now is Mortimer lord of this city." Then at nightfall he went
back to his headquarters at the White Hart Inn in Southwark.
The following day Lord Say-and-Sele, and his son-in-law, Crowmer, Sheriff
of Kent, were removed by Cade's orders from the Tower to the Guildhall,
tried for "divers treasons" and "certain extortions," and quickly beheaded.
Popular hatred, not content with this, placed the heads of the fallen
minister and his son-in-law on poles, made them kiss in horrible embrace,
and then bore them off in triumph to London Bridge.
A third man, one John Bailey, was also hanged for being a necromancer; and
as Cade had promised death to all in his army convicted of theft, it fell
out that certain "lawless men" paid the penalty for disobedience, and were
hanged in Southwark--where the main body of the army lay.
Cade's difficulties began directly after Lord Say-and-Sele's execution.
London assented willingly to the death of an unpopular statesman, but had
no mind to provision an army of 50,000 men, and, indeed, had no liking for
the proximity of such a host. Plunder being forbidden, and strict
discipline the rule, the urgent question for the Captain of Kent was how
the army was to be maintained.
Getting no voluntary help from the city. Cade decided that he must help
himself. He supped with a worthy citizen named Curtis in Tower Street on
July 4th, and insisted before he left that Curtis must contribute money for
the support of the Kentish men. Curtis complied--how much he gave we know
not--but he resented bitterly the demand, and he told the tale of his
wrongs to his fellow-merchants.[44] The result was that while Cade slept in
peace as usual at the White Hart, the Mayor and Corporation took counsel
with Lord Scales, the Governor of the Tower, and resolved that at all costs
the Captain of Kent and his forces must be kept out of the city. After the
treatment of Curtis the fear was that disorder and pillage might become
common.
On the evening of Sunday, July 5th, and all through the night battle waged
hotly on London Bridge, which had been seized and fortified before Cade was
awake, and by the morning the rebels, unsuccessful in their attack, were
glad to agree to a hasty truce.
The truce gave opportunity to Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York, the King's
Chancellor, to suggest a lasting peace to Cade. Messengers were sent
speedily from the Tower, where Kemp, with Archbishop Stafford, of
Canterbury, had stayed in safety, to the White Hart, urging a conference
"to the end that the civil commotions and disturbances might cease and
tranquillity be restored."
Cade consented, and when the two Archbishops, with William Waynfleet,
Bishop of Winchester, met the Captain of Kent in the Church of St.
Margaret, Southwark, and promised that Parliament should give consideration
to the "Complaints" and "Requests" of the commons, and that a full pardon
should be given to all who would straightway return home, the rising was at
an end.
Cade hesitated, and asked for the endorsement of the pardons by Parliament;
but this was plainly impossible because Parliament was not sitting. The
bulk of the commons were satisfied with their pardons, and with the promise
that Parliament would attend to their grievances. There was nothing to be
gained, it seemed, by remaining in arms. On July 8th, the rebel army had
broken up, taking the road back to the towns and villages, farms and
cottages in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. Cade, with a small band of followers,
retreated to Rochester, and attempted without success, the capture of
Queenborough Castle. On the news that the commons had dispersed from
Southwark, the Government at once took the offensive. Alexander Iden was
appointed Sheriff of Kent, and, marrying Crowmer's widow, subsequently
gained considerable profit. Within a week John Cade was proclaimed by the
King's writ a false traitor throughout the countryside, and Sheriff Iden
was in eager pursuit--for a reward of 1,000 marks awaited the person who
should take Cade, alive or dead.
Near Heathfield, in Sussex, Cade, broken and famished, was found by Iden,
and fought his last fight on July 13th, preferring to die sword in hand
than to perish by the hangman. He fell before the overwhelming odds of the
sheriff and his troops, and the body was immediately sent off to London for
identification.
The landlady of the White Hart proved the identity of the dead captain, and
all that remained was to stick the head on London Bridge, and dispatch the
quartered body to Blackheath, Norwich, Salisbury and Gloucester for public
exhibition.
Iden got the 1,000 marks reward and, in addition, the governorship of
Rochester Castle at a salary of £36 a year.
By special Act of Attainder all Cade's goods, lands and tenements were made
forfeit to the Crown, and statements were published for the discrediting of
Cade's life.
No allusion was made in Parliament to the "Complaints" and "Requests," and,
in spite of Cardinal Kemp's pardons, a number of men were hanged at
Canterbury and Rochester for their share in the rising, when Henry VI. and
his justices visited Kent in January, 1451.
The revolt failed to amend the wretched misrule. It remained for civil war
to drive Henry VI. from the throne, and make Edward IV. of York his
successor.
THE NORFOLK RISING UNDER ROBERT KET, 1549
A century after the rising of the commons of Kent came the last great
popular rebellion--the Norfolk Rising, led by Ket. This insurrection was
agrarian and social, concerned neither with the fierce theological
differences of the time, nor with the political rivalries of Protector
Somerset and his enemies in Edward VI.'s Council.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century England was in the main a nation
of small farmers, but radical changes were taking place, and these changes
meant ruin to thousands of yeomen and peasants.
The enclosure, by many large landowners, of the fields which for ages past
had been cultivated by the country people, the turning of arable land into
pasture, were the main causes of the distress.[45] Whole parishes were
evicted in some places and dwelling houses destroyed, and contemporary
writers are full of the miseries caused by these clearances.
Acts of Parliament were passed in 1489 and 1515, prohibiting the "pulling
down of towns," and ordering the reversion of pasture lands to tillage, but
the legislation was ignored. Sir Thomas More, in his "Utopia" (1516),
described very vividly what the enclosures were doing to rural England; and
a royal commission, appointed by Cardinal Wolsey, reported in the following
year that more than 36,000 acres had been enclosed in seven Midland
counties. In some cases, waste lands only were enclosed, but landowners
were ordered to make restitution within forty days where small occupiers
had been dispossessed. Royal commissions and royal proclamations were no
more effective than Acts of Parliament. Bad harvests drove the Norfolk
peasantry to riot for food in 1527 and 1529. The dissolution of the
monasteries in 1536 and 1539 abolished a great source of charity for the
needy, and increased the social disorder. Finally, in 1547, came the
confiscation by the Crown of the property of the guilds and brotherhoods,
and the result of this enactment can only be realised by supposing the
funds of friendly societies, trade unions, and co-operative societies taken
by Government to-day without compensation.
All that Parliament would do in the face of the starvation and unemployment
that brooded over many parts of England, was to pass penal legislation for
the homeless and workless--so that it seemed to many that Government had
got rid of Papal authority only to bring back slavery. The agrarian misery,
the violent changes in the order of church services and social customs, the
confiscation of the funds of the guilds, and the wanton spoiling of the
parish churches[46]--all these things drove the people to revolt.
Early in 1549 the men of Devon and Cornwall took up arms for "the old
religion," and were hanged by scores. In Norfolk that same year the rising
under Ket was social, and unconcerned with religion. Lesser agrarian
disturbances took place in Somerset, Lincoln, Essex, Kent, Oxford, Wilts,
and Buckingham. But there was no cohesion amongst the insurgents, and no
organisation of the peasants such as England had seen under John Ball and
his companion in 1381.
In 1548 Somerset, the Lord Protector, made an honest attempt to check the
rapacity of the landowners, but his proclamation and royal commission were
no more successful than Wolsey's had been, and only earned for the
Protector the hatred of the landowners.
The Norfolk Rising was the one strong movement to turn the current that was
sweeping the peasants into destitution. It failed, as all popular
insurrection in England has failed, and it brought its leaders to the
gallows; but for six weeks hope lifted its head in the rebel camp outside
Norwich, and many believed that oppression and misery were to end.
The rising began at Attleborough, on June 20th, when the people pulled down
the fences and hedges set up round the common fields. On July 7th, at the
annual feast in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury, at Wymondham, a mighty
concourse of people broke down the fences at Hetherset, and then appealed
to Robert Ket and his brother to help them.
Both the Kets were well-known locally. They were men of old family,
craftsmen, and landowners. Robert was a tanner by trade, William a butcher.
Three manors--valued at 1,000 marks, with a yearly income of £50--belonged
to Robert Ket: church lands mostly, leased from the Earl of Warwick.
Ket saw that only under leadership and guidance could the revolt become a
revolution, and he threw himself into the cause of his poorer neighbours
with whole-hearted fervour. "I am ready," he said, "and will be ready at
all times to do whatever, not only to repress, but to subdue the power of
great men. Whatsoever lands I have enclosed shall again be made common unto
ye and all men, and my own hands shall first perform it. You shall have me,
if you will, not only as a companion, but as a captain; and in the doing of
the so great a work before us, not only as a fellow, but for a leader,
author, and principal."
Ket's leadership was at once acclaimed with enthusiasm by the thousand men
who formed the rebel band at the beginning of the rising. The news spread
quickly that Ket was leading an army to Norwich, and on July 10th, when a
camp was made at Eaton Wood, every hour brought fresh recruits. It is clear
from Ket's speeches, and from "The Rebels' Complaint," issued by him at
this time, that the aim of the leaders of the Norfolk Rising was not merely
to stop the enclosures, but to end the ascendancy of the landlord class for
all time, and to set up a social democracy.
Ket's address at Eaton Wood was revolutionary:
"Now are ye overtopped and trodden down by gentlemen, and put out of
possibility ever to recover foot. Rivers of riches run into the coffers of
your landlords, while you are par'd to the quick, and fed upon pease and
oats like beasts. You are fleeced by these landlords for their private
benefit, and as well kept under by the public burdens of State, wherein
while the richer sort favour themselves, ye are gnawn to the very bones.
Your tyrannous masters often implead, arrest, and cast you into prison, so
that they may the more terrify and torture you in your minds, and wind your
necks more surely under their arms.... Harmless counsels are fit for tame
fools; for you who have already stirred, there is no hope but in
adventuring boldly."
"The Rebels' Complaint" is equally definite and outspoken. It rehearsed the
wrongs of a landless peasantry, and called on the people to end these
wrongs by open rebellion. The note of social equality is struck by Ket
throughout the rising.
"The present condition of possessing land seemeth miserable and
slavish--holding it all at the pleasure of great men; not freely, but by
prescription, and, as it were, at the will and pleasure of the lord. For as
soon as any man offend any of these gorgeous gentlemen, he is put out,
deprived, and thrust from all his goods.
"The common pastures left by our predecessors for our relief and our
children are taken away.
"The lands which in the memory of our fathers were common, those are
ditched and hedged in and made several; the pastures are enclosed, and we
shut out.
"We can no longer bear so much, so great, and so cruel injury; neither can
we with quiet minds behold so great covetousness, excess, and pride of the
nobility. We will rather take arms, and mix Heaven and earth together, than
endure so great cruelty.
"Nature hath provided for us, as well as for them; hath given us a body and
a soul, and hath not envied us other things. While we have the same form,
and the same condition of birth together with them, why should they have a
life so unlike unto ours, and differ so far from us in calling?
"We see that things have now come to extremities, and we will prove the
extremity. We will rend down hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for
every man into the common pasture. Finally, we will lay all even with the
ground, which they, no less wickedly than cruelly and covetously, have
enclosed.
"We desire liberty and an indifferent (or equal) use of all things. This
will we have. Otherwise these tumults and our lives shall only be ended
together."
But though the method was revolution and the goal social democracy, Ket was
no anarchist. He proved himself a strong, capable leader, able to enforce
discipline and maintain law and order in the rebel camp. And with all his
passionate hatred against the rule of the landlord, Ket would allow neither
massacre nor murder. There is no evidence that the life of a single
landowner was taken while the rising lasted, though many were brought
captive to Ket's judgment seat.
Ket was equally averse from civil war between the citizens of Norwich and
the peasants. When the Mayor of Norwich, Thomas Cod, refused to allow Ket's
army to cross the city on its way to Mousehold Heath, where the permanent
camp was to be made, Ket simply led his forces round by Hailsdon and
Drayton, and so reached Mousehold on July 12th without bloodshed. A week
later, and 20,000 was the number enrolled under the banner of revolt--for
the publication of "The Rebels' Complaint" and the ringing of bells and
firing of beacons roused all the countryside to action.
On Mousehold Heath, Robert Ket, with his brother William, gave directions
and administered justice under a great tree, called the Oak of Reformation.
Mayor Cod, and two other respected Norwich citizens, Aldrich, an alderman,
and Watson, a preacher, joined Ket's council, thinking their influence
might restrain the rebels from worse doings.
Twenty-nine "Requests and Demands," signed by Ket, Cod, and Aldrich, were
dispatched to the King from Mousehold, and this document gave in full the
grievances of the rebels. The chief demands were the cessation of
enclosures, the enactment of fair rents, the restoration of common fishing
rights, the appointment of resident clergymen to preach and instruct the
children, and the free election or appointment of local "commissioners" for
the enforcement of the laws. There was also a request "that all bond men
may be made free, for God made all free with His precious bloodshedding."
The only answer to the "Requests and Demands" was the arrival of a herald
with a promise that Parliament would meet in October to consider the
grievances, if the people would in the meantime quietly return to their
homes.
But this Ket would by no means agree to, and for the next few weeks his
authority was supreme in that part of the country. He established a rough
constitution for the prevention of mere disorder, two men being chosen by
their fellows from the various hundreds of the eastern half of the county.
A royal messenger, bearing commissions of the peace to certain country
gentlemen, falling into the hands of Ket, was relieved of his documents and
dismissed. Ket then put in these commissions the names of men who had
joined the rising, and declared them magistrates with authority to check
all disobedience to orders.
To feed the army at Mousehold, men were sent out with a warrant from Ket
for obtaining cattle and corn from the country houses, and "to beware of
robbing, spoiling, and other evil demeanours." No violence or injury was to
be done to "any honest or poor man." Contributions came in from the smaller
yeomen "with much private good-will," but the landowners generally were
stricken with panic, and let the rebels do what they liked. Those who could
not escape by flight were, for the most part, brought captive to the Oak of
Reformation, and thence sent to the prisons in Norwich and St. Leonard's
Hill.
Relations between Ket and the Norwich authorities soon became strained to
breaking point. Mayor Cod was shocked at the imprisonment of county
gentlemen, and refused permission for Ket's troops to pass through the city
on their foraging expeditions. Citizens and rebels were in conflict on July
21st, but "for lack of powder and want of skill in the gunners" few lives
were lost, and Norwich was in the hands of Ket the following day. No
reprisals followed; but a week later came William Parr, Marquis of
Northampton--Henry VIII.'s brother-in-law--with 1,500 Italian mercenaries
and a body of country squires, to destroy the rebels. Northampton's forces
were routed utterly, and Lord Sheffield was slain, and many houses and
gates were burnt in the city.
Then for three weeks longer Robert Ket remained in power, still hoping
against hope that some attention would be given by the Government to his
"Requests and Demands." Protector Somerset, beset by his own difficulties,
could do nothing for rebellious peasants, could not countenance in any way
an armed revolt, however great the miseries that provoked insurrection.
The Earl of Warwick was dispatched with 14,000 troops to end the
rebellion, and arrived on August 24th. For two days the issue seemed
uncertain--half the city only was in Warwick's hands. The arrival of 1,400
mercenaries--"lanzknechts," Germans mostly--and a fatal decision of the
rebels to leave their vantage ground at Mousehold Heath and do battle in
the open valley that stretched towards the city, gave complete victory to
Warwick.
The peasants poured into the meadows beyond Magdalen and Pockthorpe gates,
and were cut to pieces by the professional soldiers.
When all seemed over Ket galloped away to the north, but was taken, worn
out, at the village of Swannington, eight miles from Norwich.
More than 400 peasants were hanged by Warwick's orders, and their bodies
left to swing on Mousehold and in the city. Robert Ket and William Ket were
sent to London, and after being tried and condemned for high treason, were
returned to Norwich in December for execution. Robert Ket was hanged in
chains from Norwich Castle, and William suffered in similar fashion from
the parish church at Wymondham--to remind all people of the fate that
befall those who venture, unsuccessfully, to take up arms against the
government in power.
So the Norfolk Rising ended, and with it ended all serious popular
insurrection in England. Riots and mob violence have been seen even to our
own time, but no great, well-organised movement to overthrow authority and
establish a social democracy by force of arms has been attempted since
1549.
The characters of Robert Ket and his brother have been vindicated by time,
and the rebel leader is now recognised as a disinterested, capable,
high-minded man. Ket took what seemed to him the only possible course to
avert the doom of a ruined peasantry, and failed. But his courage and
humaneness are beyond question.[47]
The enclosures did not end with the sixteenth century, and for another one
hundred years complaints are heard of the steady depopulation of rural
England. In the eighteenth century came the second great series of
enclosures--the enclosing of the commons and waste spaces, by Acts of
Parliament. Between 1710 and 1867 no less than 7,660,439 acres were thus
enclosed.
To-day the questions of land tenure and land ownership are conspicuous
items in the discussion of the whole social question, for the relations of
a people to its land are of very first importance in a democratic state.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV
THE STRUGGLE RENEWED AGAINST THE CROWN
PARLIAMENT UNDER THE TUDORS
The English Parliament throughout the sixteenth century was but a servile
instrument of the Crown. The great barons were dead. Henry VIII. put to
death Sir Thomas More and all who questioned the royal absolutism.
Elizabeth, equally despotic, had by good fortune the services of the first
generation of professional statesmen that England produced. These
statesmen--Burleigh, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Thomas
Smith, and Sir Francis Walsingham--all died in office. Burleigh was
minister for forty years, Bacon and Mildmay for more than twenty, and Smith
and Walsingham for eighteen years.[48]
[Illustration: SIR JOHN ELIOT]
Parliament was not only intimidated by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, its
membership was recruited by nominees of the Crown.[49] And then it is also
to be borne in mind that both Henry and Elizabeth made a point of getting
Parliament to do their will. They governed through Parliament, and ruled
triumphantly, for it is only in the later years of Elizabeth that any
discontent is heard. The Stuarts, far less tyrannical, came to grief just
because they never understood the importance of Parliament in the eyes of
Englishmen in the middle ranks, and attempted to rule while ignoring the
House of Commons.
Elizabeth scolded her Parliaments, and more than once called the Speaker of
the House of Commons to account. The business of Tudor Parliaments was to
decree the proposals of the Crown. "Liberty of speech was granted in
respect of the aye or no, but not that everybody should speak what he
listed." Bacon declared, "the Queen hath both enlarging and restraining
power; she may set at liberty things restrained by statute and may restrain
things which be at liberty."
Yet Elizabeth raised no objection to the theory that Parliament was the
sovereign power, for her authority controlled Parliament; and so we have
Sir Thomas Smith writing in 1589 that "the most high and absolute power of
the realm of England consisteth in the Parliament."
In his "Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I. (1592-3), Hooker argues that "Laws
human, of what kind soever are available by consent," and that "laws they
are not which public approbation hath not made so"; deciding explicitly
that sovereignty rests ultimately in the people.
VICTORY OF PARLIAMENT OVER THE STUARTS
When he came to the throne in 1603, James I. was prepared to govern with
all the Tudor absolutism, but he had neither Elizabeth's Ministers--Cecil
excepted--nor her knowledge of the English mind. The English Parliament and
the English people had put up with Elizabeth's headstrong, capricious rule,
because it had been a strong rule, and the nation had obviously thriven
under it.[50] But it was another matter altogether when James I. was king.
"By many steps the slavish Parliament of Henry VIII. grew into the
murmuring Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, the mutinous Parliament of James
I., and the rebellious Parliament of Charles I."
The twenty years of James I.'s reign saw the preaching up of the doctrine
of the divine right of kings by the bishops of the Established Church, and
the growing resolution of the Commons to revive their earlier rights and
privileges. If the Stuarts were as unfortunate in their choice of Ministers
as Elizabeth had been successful, the House of Commons was equally happy in
the remarkable men who became its spokesmen and leaders. In the years that
preceded the Civil War--1626-42--three men are conspicuous on the
Parliamentary side: Eliot, Hampden, and Pym. All three were country
gentlemen, of good estate, high principle, and religious
convictions[51]--men of courage and resolution, and of blameless personal
character. Eliot died in prison, in the cause of good government, in 1632;
Hampden fell on Chalgrove Field in 1643.
As in earlier centuries the struggle in the seventeenth century between the
King and the Commons turned mainly on the questions of taxation. (At the
same time an additional cause of dispute can be found in the religious
differences between Charles I. and the Parliamentarians. The latter were
mainly Puritan, accepting the Protestantism of the Church of England, but
hating Catholicism and the high-church views of Laud. The King was in full
sympathy with high Anglicanism, and, like his father, willing to relax the
penal laws against Catholics.)
"By the ancient laws and liberties of England it is the known birthright
and inheritance of the subject that no tax, tallage, or other charge shall
be levied or imposed but by common consent in England, and that the
subsidies of tonnage and poundage are no way due or payable but by a free
gift and special Act of Parliament."
In these memorable words began the declaration moved by Sir John Eliot in
the House of Commons on March 2nd, 1629. A royal message ordering the
adjournment of the House was disregarded, the Speaker was held down in his
chair, and the key of the House of Commons was turned against intrusion,
while Eliot's resolutions, declaring that the privileges of the Commons
must be preserved, were carried with enthusiasm.
Charles answered these resolutions by dissolving Parliament and sending
Eliot to the Tower.
For eleven years no Parliament was summoned. Eliot refused altogether to
make any defence for his Parliamentary conduct. "I hold that it is against
the privilege of Parliament to speak of anything which is done in the
House," was his reply to the Crown lawyers. So Sir John Eliot was left in
prison, for nothing would induce this devoted believer in representative
government to yield to the royal pressure, and three years later, at the
age of forty-two, he died in the Tower.
It was for the liberties of the House of Commons that Eliot gave his life.
Wasted with sickness, health and freedom were his if he would but
acknowledge the right of the Crown to restrain the freedom of Parliamentary
debate; but such an acknowledgment was impossible from Sir John Eliot. For
him the privilege of the House of Commons in the matter of free speech was
a sacred cause, to be upheld by Members of Parliament, even to the death--a
cause every whit as sacred to Eliot as the divine right of kings was to the
Stuart bishops.
Charles hoped to govern England through his Ministers without interference
from the Commons, and only the need of money compelled him to summon
Parliament.
John Hampden saw that if the King could raise money by forced loans and
other exactions, the days of constitutional government were over. Hence his
memorable resistance to ship-money. London and the seaports were induced to
provide supplies for ships in 1634, on the pretext that piracy must be
prevented. In the following year the demand was extended to the inland
counties, and Hampden refused point blank to pay--though the amount was
only a matter of 20s.--falling back, in justification of his refusal, on
the Petition of Right--acknowledged by Charles in 1628--which declared that
taxes were not to be levied without the consent of Parliament. The case was
decided in 1636, and five of the twelve judges held that Hampden's
objection was valid. The arguments in favour of non-payment were circulated
far and wide, so that, in spite of the adverse verdict, "the judgment
proved of more advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned than to the
King's service."[52]
The personal rule of Charles and his Ministers, Laud and Strafford, came to
an end in the autumn of 1640, when there was no choice left to the King but
to summon Parliament, if money was to be obtained. Earlier in the year the
"Short Parliament" had met, only to be dissolved by the folly of the King
after a sitting of three weeks, because of its unwillingness to vote
supplies without the redress of grievances.
The disasters of the King's campaign against the Scots, an empty treasury,
and a mutinous army, compelled the calling of Parliament. But the temper of
the men who came to the House of Commons in November was vastly different
from the temper of the "Short Parliament."[53] For this was the famous
"Long Parliament" that assembled in the dark autumn days of 1640, and it
was to sit for thirteen years; to see the impeachment and execution of Laud
and Strafford, the trial and execution of the King, the abolition of
monarchy and the House of Lords, the establishment of the Commonwealth; and
was itself to pass away finally only before Cromwell's military
dictatorship.
Hampden was the great figure at the beginning of this Parliament. "The eyes
of all men were fixed upon him, as their _patriæ pater_, and the pilot that
must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. I
am persuaded (wrote Clarendon) his power and interest at that time were
greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than any man
of his rank hath had at any time; for his reputation of honesty was
universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no corrupt or
private ends could bias them."
Politically, neither Hampden nor Pym was Republican. Both believed in
government by King, Lords, and Commons; but both were determined that the
King's Ministers should be answerable to Parliament for the policy of the
Crown, and that the Commons, who found the money for government, should
have a definite say in the spending of that money. As for the royal claim
of "Divine right," and the royal view that held passive obedience to be the
duty of the King's subjects, and saw in Parliament merely a useful
instrument for the raising of funds to be spent by the royal pleasure
without question or criticism--these things were intolerable to Hampden,
Pym, and the men of the House of Commons. The King would not govern through
Parliament; the House of Commons could govern without a King. It was left
to the Civil War to decide the issue between the Crown and Parliament, and
make the House of Commons supreme.
Things moved quickly in the first year of the Long Parliament. The Star
Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. Strafford was impeached
for high treason, and executed on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud lay in
prison, to be executed four years later. The Grand Remonstrance of the
House of Commons was presented to Charles in December, 1641. The demands of
the Commons in the Remonstrance were not revolutionary, but they stated,
quite frankly, the case for the Parliament. The main points were the need
for securities for the administration of justice, and an insistence on the
responsibility of the King's Ministers to the Houses of Parliament. The
Grand Remonstrance was only carried by eleven votes in the House of
Commons, 159 to 148, after wild scenes. "Some waved their hats over their
heads, and others took their swords in their scabbards out of their belts,
and held them by the pummels in their hands, setting the lower part on the
ground." Actual violence was only prevented "by the sagacity and great
calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech."
Charles promised an answer to the deputation of members who waited upon him
with the Grand Remonstrance, and early in the new year came the reply. The
King simply demanded the surrender of five members--Pym, Hampden, Holles,
Strode, and Hazlerig--and their impeachment on the charge of high treason.
All constitutional law was set aside by a charge which proceeded personally
from the King, which deprived the accused of their legal right to a trial
by their peers, and summoned them before a tribunal which had no pretence
to a justification over them. On the refusal of the Commons to surrender
their members, Charles came in person to Westminster with 300 cavaliers to
demand their arrest. But the five members, warned of the King's venture,
were well out of the way, and rested safely within the City of London--for
the citizens were strongly for the Parliament. "It was believed that if the
King had found them there (in the House of Commons), and called in his
guards to have seized them, the members of the House would have endeavoured
the defence of them, which might have proved a very unhappy and sad
business."
As it was, Charles could only retire "in a more discontented and angry
passion than he came in." The step was utterly ill-advised. Parliament was
in no mood to favour royal encroachments, and the citizens of London were
at hand, with their trained bands, to protect forcibly members of the House
of Commons.
War was now imminent. "The attempt to seize the five members was
undoubtedly the real cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal
confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard
the King was turned into hatred and suspicion. From that moment, the
Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive arms. From that
moment, the city assumed the appearance of a garrison.
"The transaction was illegal from beginning to end. The impeachment was
illegal. The process was illegal. The service was illegal. If Charles
wished to prosecute the five members for treason, a bill against them
should have been sent to a grand jury. That a commoner cannot be tried for
high treason by the Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very
alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is
equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence even in
the time of Edward the Fourth. 'A subject,' said Chief Justice Markham to
that Prince, 'may arrest for treason; the King cannot; for, if the arrest
be illegal, the party has no remedy against the King.'"[54]
Both King and Parliament broke rudely through all constitutional precedents
in their preparations for hostilities.
The King levied troops by a royal commission, without any advice from
Parliament, and Pym got an ordinance passed, in both Houses, appointing the
Lords-Lieutenant of the counties to command the Militia without warrant
from the Crown.
A last attempt at negotiations was made at York, in April, when the
proposals of Parliament--nineteen propositions for curtailing the power of
the Monarchy in favour of the Commons--were rejected by Charles with the
words: "If I granted your demands, I should be no more than the mere
phantom of a king."
By August, Charles had raised the royal standard at Nottingham, and war was
begun.
Five years later and Charles was a prisoner, to die in 1649 on the
scaffold. That same year monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished by
law; the Established Church had already fallen before the triumphant arms
of the Puritans.
Then, in 1653, the House of Commons itself fell--expelled by Cromwell; and
the task of the Lord Protector was to fashion a constitution that would
work.[55] What happened was the supremacy of the army. Parliament,
attenuated and despised, contended in vain against the Protector. On
Cromwell's death, and the failure of his son, Richard, the army declared
for Charles II., and there was an end to the Commonwealth.
THE DEMOCRATIC PROTEST--LILBURNE
In all these changes the great mass of the people had neither part nor lot;
and the famous leaders of the Parliamentary Party, resolute to curtail the
absolutism of the Crown, were no more concerned with the welfare of the
labouring people than the barons were in the time of John. The labouring
people--generally--were equally indifferent to the fortunes of Roundheads
and Cavaliers, though the townsmen in many places held strong enough
opinions on the matters of religion that were in dispute.[56]
That the common misery of the people was not in any way lightened by
Cromwell's rule we have abundant evidence, and it cannot be supposed that
the substitution of the Presbyterian discipline for episcopacy in the
Church, and the displacement of Presbyterians by Independents, was likely
to alleviate this misery.
Taxation was heavier than it had ever been before, and in Lancashire,
Westmorland, and Cumberland the distress was appalling.
Whitelocke, writing in 1649,[57] notes "that many families in Lancashire
were starved." "That many in Cumberland and Westmorland died in the
highways for want of bread, and divers left their habitations, travelling
with their wives and children to other parts to get relief, but could find
none. That the committees and Justices of the Peace of Cumberland signed a
certificate, that there were 30,000 families that had neither seed nor
bread-corn, nor money to buy either, and they desired a collection for
them, which was made, but much too little to relieve so great a multitude."
Cromwell, occupied with high affairs of State, had neither time nor
inclination to attend to social reform. Democracy had its witnesses;
Lilburne and the Levellers made their protest against military rule, and
were overpowered; Winstanley and his Diggers endeavoured to persuade the
country that the common land should be occupied by dispossessed peasants,
and were quickly suppressed.
Lilburne was concerned with the establishment of a political democracy,
Winstanley with a social democracy, and in both cases the propaganda was
offensive to the Protector.
Had Cromwell listened to Lilburne, and made concessions towards democracy,
the reaction against Puritanism and the Commonwealth might have been
averted.[58]
John Lilburne had been a brave soldier in the army of the Parliament in the
early years of the Civil War, and he left the army in 1645 with the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel (and with £880 arrears of pay due to him) rather than
take the covenant and subscribe to the requirements of the "new model."
The monarchy having fallen, Lilburne saw the possibilities of tyranny in
the Parliamentary government, and at once spoke out. With considerable
legal knowledge, a passion for liberty, clear views on democracy, an
enormous capacity for work, and great skill as a pamphleteer, Lilburne was
not to be ignored. The Government might have had him for a supporter; it
unwisely decided to treat him as an enemy, and for ten years he was an
unsparing critic, his popularity increasing with every fresh pamphlet he
issued--and at every fresh imprisonment.
Lilburne urged a radical reform of Parliament and a general manhood
suffrage in 1647, and the "Case for the Army," published by the Levellers
in the same year, on the proposal of the Presbyterian majority in
Parliament that the army should be disbanded, demanded the abolition of
monopolies, freedom of trade and religion, restoration of enclosed common
lands, and abolition of sinecures.
Both Cromwell and Ireton were strongly opposed to manhood suffrage, and
Cromwell--to whom the immediate danger was a royalist reaction--had no
patience for men who would embark on democratic experiments at such a
season.
Lilburne and the Levellers were equally distrustful of Cromwell's new
Council of State. "We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by
a General, Court-martial, and Commons; and, we pray you, what is the
difference?" So they put the question in 1648.
To Cromwell the one safety for the Commonwealth was in the loyalty of the
army to the Government. To Lilburne the one guarantee for good government
was in the supremacy of a Parliament elected by manhood suffrage. He saw
plainly that unless steps were taken to establish democratic institutions
there was no future for the Commonwealth; and he took no part in the trial
of Charles I., saying openly that he doubted the wisdom of abolishing
monarchy before a new constitution had been drawn up.
But Lilburne overestimated the strength of the Leveller movement in the
army, and the corporals who revolted were shot by sentence of
courts-martial.[59]
In vain the democratic troopers argued, "the old king's person and the old
lords are but removed, and a new king and new lords with the commons are in
one House, and so we are under a more absolute arbitrary monarchy than
before." The Government answered by clapping Lilburne in the Tower, where,
in spite of a petition signed by 80,000 for his release, he remained for
three months without being brought to trial. Released on bail, Lilburne,
who from prison had issued an "Agreement of the Free People," calling for
annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage and the free election of
unendowed church ministers in every parish, now published an "Impeachment
for High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton,"
and declared that monarchy was preferable to a military despotism. At last,
brought to trial on the charge of "treason," Lilburne was acquitted with "a
loud and unanimous shout" of popular approval.[60] "In a revolution where
others argued about the respective rights of King and Parliament, he spoke
always of the rights of the people. His dauntless courage and his power of
speech made him the idol of the mob."[61]
Lilburne was again brought to trial, in 1653, and again acquitted, with
undiminished enthusiasm. But "for the peace of the nation," Cromwell
refused to allow the irrepressible agitator to be at large, and for two
years Lilburne, "Free-born John," was kept in prison. During those years
all power in the House of Commons was broken by the rule of the Army of the
Commonwealth, and Parliament stood in abject submission before the Lord
Protector. Only when his health was shattered, and he had embraced Quaker
principles, was Lilburne released, and granted a pension of 40s. a week.
The following year, at the age of 40, Lilburne died of consumption--brought
on by the close confinement he had suffered. A year later, 1658, and
Cromwell, by whose side Lilburne had fought at Marston Moor, and against
whose rule he had contended for so many a year, was dead, and the
Commonwealth Government was doomed.
WINSTANLEY AND "THE DIGGERS"
The "Digger" movement was a shorter and much more obscure protest on behalf
of the people than Lilburne's agitation for democracy; but it is notable
for its social significance.
While Lilburne strove vigorously for political reforms that are still
unaccomplished, Gerrard Winstanley preached a revolutionary gospel of
social reform--as John Ball and Robert Ket had before him. But Winstanley's
social doctrine allowed no room for violence, and included the
non-resistance principles that found exposition in the Society of Friends.
Hence the "Diggers," preaching agrarian revolution; but denying all right
to force of arms, never endangered the Commonwealth Government as Lilburne
and the Levellers did.
Free Communism was the creed of more than one Protestant sect in the
sixteenth century, and the Anabaptists on the Continent had been
conspicuous for their experiments in community of goods and anarchist
society.
Winstanley confined his teaching and practice to common ownership of land,
pleading for the cultivation of the enclosed common lands, "that all may
feed upon the crops of the earth, and the burden of poverty be removed."
There was to be no forcible expropriation of landlords.
"If the rich still hold fast to this propriety of Mine and Thine, let them
labour their own lands with their own hands. And let the common people,
that say the earth is _ours_, not _mine_, let them labour together, and eat
bread together upon the commons, mountains, and hills.
"For as the enclosures are called such a man's land, and such a man's land,
so the Commons and Heath are called the common people's. And let the world
see who labour the earth in righteousness, and those to whom the Lord gives
the blessing, let them be the people that shall inherit the earth.
"None can say that their right is taken from them. For let the rich work
alone by themselves; and let the poor work together by themselves."[62]
With the common ownership and cultivation of land, an end was to be made of
all tyranny of man over his fellows.
[Illustration: JOHN HAMPDEN
_After the Engraving by G. Houbraken._]
"Leave off dominion and lordship one over another; for the whole bulk of
mankind are but one living earth. Leave off imprisoning, whipping, and
killing, which are but the actings of the curse. Let those that have
hitherto had no land, and have been forced to rob and steal through
poverty; henceforth let them quietly enjoy land to work upon, that everyone
may enjoy the benefit of his creation, and eat his own bread with the sweat
of his own brow."
Winstanley's argument was quite simple:
"If any man can say that he makes corn or cattle, he may say, _That is
mine_. But if the Lord made these for the use of His creation, surely then
the earth was made by the Lord to be a Common Treasury for all, not a
particular treasury for some."
Two objections were urged against private property in land:
"First, it hath occasioned people to steal from one another. Secondly, it
hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil
action, and then kills them for doing it." It was a prolific age for
pamphlets, the seventeenth century; the land teemed with preachers and
visionaries, and Winstanley's writings never attracted the sympathy that
was given to the fierce controversialists on theological and political
questions.
Only when Winstanley and his Diggers set to work with spade and shovel on
the barren soil of St. George's Hill, in Surrey, in the spring of 1649, was
the attention of the Council of State called to the strange proceedings.
The matter was left to the local magistrates and landowners, and the
Diggers were suppressed. A similar attempt to reclaim land near
Wellingboro' was stopped at once as "seditious and tumultuous." It was
quite useless for Winstanley to maintain that the English people were
dispossessed of their lands by the Crown at the Norman Conquest, and that
with the execution of the King the ownership of the Crown lands ought to
revert to the people; Cromwell and the Council of State had no more
patience with prophets of land nationalisation than with agitators of
manhood suffrage. Indeed, the Commonwealth Government never took the
trouble to distinguish between the different groups of disaffected people,
but set them all down as "Levellers," to be punished as disturbers of the
peace if they refused to obey authority.
Winstanley's last pamphlet was "True Magistracy Restored," an open letter
to Oliver Cromwell, 1652, and after its publication Gerrard Winstanley and
his Diggers are heard of no more.
To-day both Lilburne and Winstanley are to be recalled because the
agitation for political democracy is always with us, and the question of
land tenure is seen to be of profound importance in the discussion of
social reform. No democratic statesman in our time can propose an
improvement in the social condition of the people without reference to the
land question, and no social reformer of the nineteenth century has had
more influence or been more widely read and discussed than Henry
George--the exponent of the Single Tax on Land Values.
Winstanley was very little heeded in his own day, but two hundred and fifty
years later the civilised countries of the earth are found in deep debate
over the respective rights of landowners and landless, and the relation of
poverty to land ownership. State ownership, taxation of land values,
peasant proprietorship, co-operative agriculture--all have their advocates
to-day, but to Winstanley's question whether the earth was made "for to
give ease to a few or health to all," only one answer is returned.
THE RESTORATION
Under the Commonwealth the landowners were as powerful as they had been
under the monarchy. Enclosures continued. Social reform was not
contemplated by Cromwell nor by Councils of State; democracy was equally
outside the political vision of government. Church of England ministers
were dispossessed in favour of Nonconformists, Puritanism became the
established faith, Catholicism remained proscribed.
The interest in ecclesiastical and theological disputes was considerable,
and Puritanism was popular with large numbers of the middle-class. But to
the mass of the people Puritanism was merely the suppression of further
liberties, the prohibition of old customs, the stern abolition of Christmas
revels and May-day games.
Lilburne did his best to get Cromwell to allow the people some
responsibility in the choice of its rulers. Winstanley proposed a remedy
for the social distress. To neither of these men was any concession made,
and no consideration was given to their appeals.
Hence the bulk of the nation, ignored by the Commonwealth Government, and
alienated by Puritanism, accepted quite amiably--indeed, with
enthusiasm--the restoration of the monarchy on the return of Charles II.,
and was unmoved by the royalist reaction against Parliamentary Government
that followed on the Restoration.
The House of Commons itself, when Monk and his army had gone over to the
side of Charles, voted, in the Convention Parliament of 1660, "that
according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this Kingdom, the
government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons," and Charles
II. was received in London with uproarious enthusiasm.
The army was disbanded; a royalist House of Commons restored the Church of
England and ordered general acceptance of its Prayer Book. Puritanism,
driven from rule, could only remain in power in the heart and conscience of
its adherents.
To the old Commonwealth man it might seem, in the reaction against
Puritanism, and in the popularity of the King, that all that had been
striven for in the civil war had been lost, in the same way as after the
death of Simon of Montfort it might have appeared that "the good cause" had
perished with its great leader. In reality the House of Commons stood on
stronger ground than ever, and was to show its strength when James II.
attempted to override its decisions. In the main the very forms of
Parliamentary procedure were settled in the seventeenth century, to remain
undisturbed till the nineteenth century. "The Parliamentary procedure of
1844 was essentially the procedure on which the House of Commons conducted
its business during the Long Parliament."[63]
With Charles II. on the throne the absolutism of the Crown over Parliament
passed for ever from England. Cromwell had set up the supremacy of the army
over the Commons: this, too, was gone, never to be restored.
Henceforth government was to be by King, Lords, and Commons; but
sovereignty was to reside in Parliament. Not till a century later would
democracy again be heard of, and its merits urged, as Lilburne had urged
them under the Commonwealth.
* * * * *
CHAPTER V
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT--ARISTOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
GOVERNMENT BY ARISTOCRACY
For nearly two centuries--from 1660 to 1830--England was governed by an
aristocracy of landowners. Charles II. kept the throne for twenty-five
years, because he had wit enough to avoid an open collision with
Parliament. James II. fled the country after three years--understanding no
more than his father had understood that tyranny was not possible save by
consent of Parliament or by military prowess. At the Restoration the royal
prerogative was dead, and nothing in Charles II.'s reign tended to diminish
the power of Parliament in favour of the throne. Charles was an astute
monarch who did not wish to be sent on his travels again, and consequently
took care not to outrage the nation by any attempt upon the liberties of
Parliament. Only by the Tudor method of using Parliament as the instrument
of the royal will could James II. have accomplished the constitutional
changes he had set his heart upon. In attempting to set up toleration for
the Roman Catholic religion, and in openly appointing Roman Catholics to
positions of importance, James II. set Parliament at defiance and ranged
the forces of the Established Church against himself. The method was doomed
to failure. "None have gone about to break Parliaments but in the end
Parliaments have broken them."[64] In any case the notion of restoring
political liberty to Catholics was a bold endeavour in 1685. Against the
will of Parliament the project was folly. To overthrow the rights of
corporations and of the Universities, and to attempt to bully the Church of
England, after Elizabeth's fashion, at the very beginning of a pro-Catholic
movement, was to provoke defeat.
Parliament decided that James II. had "abdicated," when, deserted by
Churchill, he fled to France, and William and Mary came to the throne at
the express invitation of Parliament. The Revolution completed the work of
the Long Parliament by defining the limits of monarchy, and establishing
constitutional government. It was not--this Revolution, of 1688--the first
time Parliament had sanctioned the deposing of the King of England and the
appointment of his successor,[65] but it was the last. Never again since
the accession of William and Mary have the relations of the Crown and
Parliament been strained to breaking point; never has the supremacy of
Parliament been seriously threatened by the power of the throne.
The full effects of the Revolution of 1688 were seen in the course of the
next fifty years. Aristocracy, then mainly Whig, was triumphant, and under
its rule, while large measures of civil and religious liberty were passed,
the condition of the mass of labouring people was generally wretched in the
extreme. The rule of the aristocracy saw England become a great power among
the nations of the world, and the British Navy supreme over the navies of
Europe; but it saw also an industrial population, untaught and uncared for,
sink deeper and deeper into savagery and misery. For a time in the
eighteenth century the farmer and the peasant were prosperous, but by the
close of that century the small farmer was a ruined man, and with the
labourer was carried by the industrial revolution into the town. The worst
times for the English labourer in town and country since the Norman
Conquest were the reign of Edward VI. and the first quarter of the
nineteenth century.
The development of our political institutions into their present form; the
establishment of our Party system of government by Cabinet, and of the
authority of the Prime Minister; the growth of the supreme power of the
Commons, not only over the throne but over the Lords also: these were the
work of the aristocracy of the eighteenth century, and were attained by
steps so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. No idea of democracy guided
the process; yet our modern democratic system is firm-rooted upon the
principles and privileges of the Constitution as thus established. Social
misery deepened, without check from the politicians; and the most
enlightened statesmen of the Whig regime were very far from our present
conceptions of the duties and possibilities of Parliament.
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
James II. was tumbled from the throne for his vain attempt to establish
toleration for Catholics and Nonconformists without consent of Parliament.
Yet the Whig aristocracy which followed, while it did nothing for
Catholics, laid broad principles of civil and religious liberty for
democracy to build upon.[66]
The Declaration of Right, presented by Parliament to William and Mary on
their arrival in London, was turned into the Bill of Rights, and passed
into law in 1689. It stands as the last of the great charters of political
liberty, and states clearly both what is not permitted to the Crown, and
what privileges are allowed to the people.
Under the Bill of Rights the King was denied the power of suspending or
dispensing, of levying money, or maintaining a standing army without
consent of Parliament. The people were assured of the right of the subject
to petition the Crown, and of the free election of representatives in
Parliament, and of full and free debate in Parliament. Any profession of
the Catholic religion, or marriage with a Catholic, disqualified from
inheritance to or possession of the throne.
So there was an end to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, and four
hundred non-juring clergymen--including half-a-dozen bishops--of the Church
of England were deprived of their ecclesiastical appointments for refusing
to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledge William III. as the lawful
King of England. By making William King, to the exclusion of the children
of James II., Parliament destroyed for all future time in England the
belief in the sacred character of kingship. The King was henceforth a part
of the constitution, and came to the throne by authority of Parliament, on
conditions laid down by Parliament.
William resented the decision of Parliament not to allow the Crown a
revenue for life, but to vote an annual supply; but the decision was
adhered to, and has remained in force ever since. The Mutiny Act, passed
the same year, placed the army under the control of Parliament, and the
annual vote for military expenses has, in like manner, remained.
The Toleration Act (1689) gave Nonconformists a legal right to worship in
their own chapels, but expressly excluded Unitarians and Roman Catholics
from this liberty. Life was made still harder for Roman Catholics in
England by the Act of 1700, which forbade a Catholic priest, under penalty
of imprisonment for life, to say mass, hear confessions, or exercise any
clerical function, and denied the right of the Catholic laity to hold, buy
or inherit property, or to have their children educated abroad. The
objection to Roman Catholics was that their loyalty to the Pope was an
allegiance to a "foreign" ruler which prevented their being good citizens
at home. Against this prejudice it was useless to point to what had been
done by Englishmen for their country, when all the land was Catholic, and
all accepted the supremacy of the Pope. It was not till 1778 that the first
Catholic Relief Bill was carried, a Bill that "shook the general prejudice
against Catholics to the centre, and restored to them a thousand
indescribable charities in the ordinary intercourse of social life which
they had seldom experienced."
The last Roman Catholic to die for conscience' sake was Oliver Plunket,
Archbishop of Armagh, who was executed at Tyburn, when Charles II. was
King, in 1681. After the Revolution, Nonconformists and Catholics were no
longer hanged or tortured for declining the ministrations of the
Established Church, but still were penalised in many lesser ways. But the
spirit of the eighteenth century made for toleration, and the Whigs were as
unostentatious in their own piety as they were indifferent to the piety of
others.
The killing of "witches," however, went on in Scotland and in England long
after toleration had been secured for Nonconformists. As late as 1712 a
woman was executed for witchcraft in England.[67]
GROWTH OF CABINET RULE
William III. began with a mixed ministry of Whigs and Tories, which
included men like Danby and Godolphin, who had served under James II. But
the fierce wrangling that went on over the war then being waged on the
Continent was decidedly inconvenient, and by 1696 the Whigs had succeeded
in driving all the Tories--who were against the war--out of office. Then
for the first time a united ministry was in power, and from a Cabinet of
men with common political opinions the next step was to secure that the
Cabinet should represent the party with a majority in the House of Commons.
Our present system of Cabinet rule, dependent on the will of the majority
of the Commons, is found in full operation by the middle of the eighteenth
century. The fact that William III., George I., and George II. were all
foreigners necessitated the King's ministers using considerable powers. But
George III. was English, and effected a revival in the personal power of
the King by his determination that the choice of ministers should rest with
the Crown, and not with the House of Commons. He succeeded in breaking up
the long Whig ascendancy, and so accustomed became the people to the King
making and unmaking ministries, that on George IV.'s accession in 1820 it
was fully expected the new King would turn out the Tories and put in Whigs.
William IV. in 1835 did what no sovereign has done since--dissolved
Parliament against the wish of the government.
From 1696 to 1701 the Whigs were in office. Then on the death of William
and the accession of Anne, Tory ministers were included in the government,
and for seven years the Cabinet was composite again. But Marlborough and
Godolphin found that if they were to remain in power it must be by the
support of the Whigs, who had made the support of the war against France a
party question; and from 1708 to 1710 the ministry was definitely Whig. By
1710 the war had ceased to be popular, and the general election of that
year sent back a strong Tory majority to the House of Commons, with the
result that the Tory leaders, Harley (Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John
(Bolingbroke) took office. The Tories fell on the death of Anne, because
their plot to place James (generally called the Chevalier or the old
Pretender), the Queen's half-brother, on the throne was defeated by the
readiness of the Whig Dukes of Somerset and Argyll to proclaim George,
Elector of Hanover, King of England. By the Act of Settlement, 1701,
Parliament had decided that the Crown should pass from Anne to the heirs of
Sophia, Electress of Hanover and daughter of James I.; and the fact that
the Chevalier was a Catholic made his accession impossible according to
law, and the policy of Bolingbroke highly treasonable.
George I. could not speak English, and relied entirely on his Whig
ministers. Bolingbroke fled to the Continent, but was permitted to return
from exile nine years later. Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower.
The Whigs were left in triumph to rule the country for nearly fifty
years--until the restiveness of George III. broke up their dominion--and
for more than twenty years of that period Walpole was Prime Minister.
Cabinet government--that is, government by a small body of men, agreed upon
main questions of policy, and commanding the confidence of the majority of
the House of Commons--was now in full swing, and in spite of the monarchist
revival under George III., no King henceforth ever refused consent to a
Bill passed by Parliament.
The Whigs did nothing in those first sixty years of the eighteenth century
to make the House of Commons more representative of the people. They were
content to repeat the old cries of the Revolution, and to oppose all
proposals of change. But they governed England without oppression, and
Walpole's commercial and financial measures satisfied the trading classes
and kept national credit sound.
WALPOLE'S RULE
Walpole remained in power from 1720 to 1742 by sheer corruption--there was
no other way open to him. He laughed openly at all talk of honesty and
purity, and his influence lowered the whole tone of public life.[68] But he
kept in touch with the middle classes, was honest personally, and had a
large amount of tact and good sense. His power in the House of Commons
endured because he understood the management of parliamentary affairs, and
had a genius for discerning the men whose support he could buy, and whose
support was valuable.
George III. went to work in much the same way as Walpole had done, and only
succeeded in breaking down the power of the Whig houses by using the same
corrupt methods that Walpole had employed. The "King's friends," as they
were called, acted independently of the party leaders, and in the pay of
the King were the chief instrument of George III.'s will.
THE CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
But George III. not only turned the Whigs out of office, he altered
permanently the political complexion of the House of Lords. From the time
of the Revolution of 1688 to the death of George II. in 1760, the Lords
were Whiggish, and the majority of English nobles held Whig principles.
They were, on the whole, men of better education than the average member of
the House of Commons, who was in most cases a fox-hunting squire, of the
Squire Western type. The House of Lords stood in the way of the Commons
when, in the Tory reaction of 1701, the Commons proposed to impeach Somers,
the Whig Chancellor, a high-minded and skilful lawyer, "courteous and
complaisant, humane and benevolent," for his share in the Second Partition
Treaty of 1699, and this was the beginning of a bitter contest between the
Tory Commons and the Whig Lords. An attempt was made by the Commons to
impeach Walpole on his fall in 1742, but the Lords threw out a Bill
proposing to remit the penalties to which his prosecutor might be liable,
and the King made Walpole a peer. George III., by an unsparing use of his
prerogative, changed the character and politics of the Upper House. His
creations were country gentlemen of sufficient wealth to own "pocket"
boroughs in the House of Commons, and lawyers who supported the Royal
prerogative.[69]
From George III.'s time onward there has always been a standing and
ever-increasing majority of Tory peers in the House of Lords. And while the
actual number of members of the Upper House has been enlarged enormously,
this majority has became enlarged out of all proportion. Liberal and Tory
Prime Ministers were busy throughout the nineteenth century adding to the
peerage--no less than 376 new peers were created between 1800 and 1907; but
comparatively few Liberals retained their principles when they became
peers, and two of the present chiefs of the Unionist Party in the House of
Lords--Lords Lansdowne and Selborne--are the sons of eminent Liberals.
So it has come about that while the House of Commons has been steadily
opening its doors to men of all ranks and classes, and in our time has
become increasingly democratic in character, the House of Lords, confined
in the main to men of wealth and social importance, has become an enormous
assembly of undistinguished persons, where only a small minority are active
politicians, and of this minority at least three-fourths are Conservatives.
This change in the House of Lords began, as we have seen, in the reign of
George III., when the Whig ascendancy in Parliament had passed. But the
Whigs did nothing during their long lease of power to bring democracy
nearer, and were entirely contemptuous of popular aspirations. At the very
time when the democratic idea was the theme of philosophers, and was to be
seen expressed in the constitution of the revolted American colonies, and
in the French Revolution, England remained under an aristocracy, governed
first by Whigs, and then by Tories. It is true democracy was not without
its spokesmen in England in the eighteenth century, but there was no
popular movement in politics to stir the masses of the people, as the
preaching of the Methodists stirred their hearts for religion. Democratic
ideas were as remote from popular discussion in the eighteenth century as
they had been made familiar by Lilburne for a brief season in the
seventeenth century.
"WILKES AND LIBERTY"
A word must be said about John Wilkes, a man of disreputable character and
considerable ability, who for some ten years--1763-73--contended for the
rights of electors against the Whig Government. The battle began when
George Grenville, the Whig Prime Minister, had Wilkes arrested on a general
warrant for an article attacking the King's Speech in No. 45 of the _North
Briton_, a scurrilous newspaper which belonged to Wilkes. Chief Justice
Pratt declared the arrest illegal on the ground that the warrant was bad,
and that Wilkes, being at the time M.P. for Aylesbury, enjoyed the
privilege of Parliament. A jury awarded Wilkes heavy damages against the
Government for false imprisonment, and the result of the trial made Wilkes
a popular hero. Then, in 1764, the Government brought a new charge of
blasphemy and libel, and Wilkes, expelled from the House of Commons, and
condemned by the King's Bench, fled to France, and was promptly declared an
outlaw. He returned, however, a year or two later, and while in prison was
elected M.P. for Middlesex. The House of Commons, led by the Government,
set the election aside, and riots for "Wilkes and Liberty" broke out in
London. The question was: Had the House of Commons a right to exclude a
member duly elected for a constituency?--the same question that was raised
over Charles Bradlaugh, a man of very different character, in the
Parliament of 1880. Again and again in 1768 and 1769 Wilkes was re-elected
for Middlesex, only to be expelled, and finally the House decided that
Wilkes' opponent, Colonel Luttrell, was to sit, although Luttrell was
manifestly not chosen by the majority of electors. The citizens of London
replied to this by choosing Wilkes for Sheriff and Alderman in 1770, and by
making him Lord Mayor four years later. The Government gave up the contest
at last, and Wilkes was allowed to take his seat. Besides vindicating the
right of constituencies against the claim of Parliament to exclude
undesirable persons, Wilkes did a good deal towards securing that right of
Parliamentary debating which was practically admitted after 1771.
But the "Wilkes and Liberty" movement was no more than a popular enthusiasm
of the London mob for an enemy of the Government, and a determination of
London citizens and Middlesex electors not to be brow-beaten by the
Government. Wilkes himself always denied that he was a "Wilkesite," and he
had no following in the country or in Parliament.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA
THE WITNESS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The idea of constitutional government has its witnesses in the Middle Ages,
democratic theories are common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
but it is not till the eighteenth century that France, aflame to realise a
political ideal, proves that democracy has passed from the books of
schoolmen and philosophers, and is to be put in practice by a nation in
arms.
In the thirteenth century the friars rallied to Simon of Montfort and
preached, not democracy, but constitutional liberty.[70] Thomas Aquinas,
the great Dominican doctor, became the chief exponent of political theory,
and maintained that sovereignty expressed in legislative power should be
exercised for the common good, and that a mixed government of monarch,
nobles, and people, with the Pope as a final Court of Appeal, would best
attain that end.[71]
A hundred years later, John Ball and his fellow agitators preached a gospel
of social equality that inspired the Peasant Revolt. But communism was the
goal of the peasant leaders in 1381, and freedom from actual oppression the
desire of their followers. No conception of political democracy can be
found in the speeches and demands of Wat Tyler.
In the sixteenth century Robert Ket in Norfolk renewed the old cries of
social revolution, and roused the countryside to stop the enclosures by
armed revolt. And again the popular rising is an agrarian war to end
intolerable conditions, not a movement for popular government.
THE "SOCIAL CONTRACT" THEORY
The theory of a pact or contract between the Government and the people
became the favourite assumption of political writers from the sixteenth
century onward, and it was this theory that Rousseau popularised in his
"Social Contract," the theory, too, which triumphed for a season in the
French Revolution.
The theory is, of course, pure assumption, without any basis in history,
and resting on no foundation of fact. It assumes that primitive man was
born with enlightened views on civil government, and that for the greater
well-being of his tribe or nation he deposited the sovereign authority
which belonged to himself, in a prince or king--or in some other form of
executive government--retaining the right to withdraw his allegiance from
the government if the authority is abused, and the contract which conferred
sovereignty violated. It was not maintained that the contract was an
actually written document; it was supposed to be a tacit agreement. The
whole theory seems to have sprung from the study of Roman law and the
constitutions of Athens and Sparta. Nothing was known of primitive man or
of the beginnings of civilisation till the nineteenth century. The Bible
and the classical literature of Greece and Rome are all concerned with
civilised, not primitive, man, and with slaves and "heathens" who are
accounted less than men. The "sovereign people" of Athens and Sparta became
the model of later republican writers, while the choosing of a king by the
Israelites recorded in the Old Testament sanctioned the idea, for early
Protestant writers, that sovereignty was originally in the people.
The Huguenot Languet, in his _Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_ (1579), maintained
on scriptural grounds that kingly power was derived from the will of the
people, and that the violation by the king of the mutual compact of king
and people to observe the laws absolved the people from all allegiance.[72]
The Jesuit writers, Bellarmine and Mariana, argued for the sovereignty of
the people as the basis of kingly rule; and when the English divines of the
Established Church were upholding the doctrine of the divine right of
kings, the Spanish Jesuit, Suarez, was amongst those who attacked that
doctrine, quoting a great body of legal opinion in support of the
contention that "the prince has that power of law giving which the people
have given him." Suarez, too, insists that all men are born equal, and that
"no one has a political jurisdiction over another." Milton, in his "Tenure
of Kings and Magistrates" (1649), had taken a similar line: the people had
vested in kings and magistrates the authority and power of self-defence and
preservation. "The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else but what
is only derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the
people to the common good of all, in whom the power yet remains
fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their
natural birthright." Hooker, fifty years earlier (1592-3), in his
"Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I., had affirmed the sovereignty or
legislative power of the people as the ultimate authority, and had also
declared for an original social contract, "all public regiment of what kind
soever seemeth evidently to have risen from deliberate advice,
consultation, and composition between men, judging it convenient and
behoveful." Hobbes made the social contract a justification for Royal
absolutism, and Locke, with a Whig ideal of constitutional government,
enlarged on the right of a people to change its form of government, and
justified the Revolution of 1688. The writings of Hobbes and Locke have had
a lasting influence, and Locke is really the source of the democratic
stream of the eighteenth century. It rises in Locke to become the torrent
of the French Revolution.
But Huguenots and Jesuits, Hooker and Milton--what influence had their
writings on the mass of English people? None whatever, as far as we can
see. Milton could write of "the power" of "the people" as a "natural
birthright," but the power was plainly in Cromwell's army, and "the people"
had no means of expression concerning its will, and no opportunity for the
assertion of sovereignty. Lilburne and the Levellers held that democracy
could be set up on the ruins of Charles I.'s Government, and the
sovereignty of the people become a fact; and with a ready political
instinct Lilburne proposed the election of popular representatives on a
democratic franchise. Cromwell rejected all Lilburne's proposals; for him
affairs of State were too serious for experiments in democracy; and
Lilburne himself was cast into prison by the Commonwealth Government.
Lilburne's pamphlets were exceedingly numerous, and his popularity, in
London particularly, enormous. He was the voice of the unrepresented,
powerless citizens in whom the republican theorists saw the centre of
authority. The one effort to persuade the Commonwealth Republic to give
power to the people was made by John Lilburne, and it was defeated. The
Whig theory that an aristocratic House of Commons, elected by a handful of
people, and mainly at the dictation of the landowners, was "the People,"
triumphed. The bulk of the English people were left out of all account in
the political struggles of Whigs and Tories, and democracy was not dreamed
of till America was free and France a republic. The industrial revolution
compelled the reform of the British House of Commons, and democracy has
slowly superseded aristocracy, not from any enthusiasm for the "sovereign
people," but from the traditional belief that representative government
means the rule of the people.
Precedent, not theory, has been the argument for democracy in England.
THOMAS HOBBES (1588-1679)
The writings of Hobbes are important, because they state the case for
absolute rule, or "a strong government," as we call it to-day. Hobbes was
frankly rationalist and secular. Holding the great end of government to be
happiness, he made out that natural man lived in savage ill-will with his
fellows. To secure some sort of decency and safety men combined together
and surrendered all natural rights to a sovereign--either one man, or an
assembly of men--and in return civil rights were guaranteed. But the
sovereignty once established was supreme, and to injure it was to injure
oneself, since it was composed of "every particular man." The sovereign
power was unlimited, and was not to be questioned. Whether monarchy,
aristocracy, or democracy was the form of government was unimportant,
though Hobbes preferred monarchy, because popular assemblies were unstable
and apt to need dictators. Civil laws were the standard of right and wrong,
and obedience to autocracy was better than the resistance which led to
civil war or anarchy--the very things that induced men to establish
sovereignty. Only when the safety of the state was threatened was rebellion
justifiable.
At bottom, the objection to the theories of Hobbes is the same objection
that must be taken to the theories of Locke and Rousseau. All these writers
assume not only the fiction of a social contract, but a _static_ view of
society. Society is the result of growth: it is not a fixed and settled
community. Mankind proceeds experimentally in forms of government. To
Hobbes and his followers, security of life and property was the one
essential thing for mankind--disorder and social insecurity the things to
be prevented at all cost. Now, this might be all very well but for
evolution. Mankind cannot rest quietly under the strongest and most stable
government in the world. It will insist on learning new tricks, on thinking
new thoughts, and if it is not allowed to teach itself fresh habits, it
will break out in revolt, and either the government will be broken or the
subjects will wither away under the rule of repression.
Hobbes may be quoted as a supporter of the rule of the Stuarts, and equally
of the rule of Cromwell. Every kind of strong tyranny may be defended by
his principles.
In the nineteenth century Carlyle was the finest exponent of "strong"
government, and generally the leaders of the Tory party have been its
advocates, particularly in the attitude to be taken towards subject races.
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704)
Locke, setting out to vindicate the Whig Revolution of 1688, rejects
Hobbes' view of the savagery of primitive man, and invents "a state of
peace, goodwill, mutual assistance and preservation"--equally, as we know
to-day, far from the truth. Locke's primitive men have a natural right to
personal property--"as much land as a man tills, plants, improves,
cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property"--but they
are as worried and as fearful as Hobbes' savages. So they, too, renounce
their natural rights in favour of civil liberty, and are happy when they
have got "a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society,
and made by the legislative power erected on it."
According to Hobbes, once having set up a government, there was no possible
justification for changing it--save national peril; and a bad government
was to be obeyed rather than the danger of civil war incurred.
But Locke never allows the government to be more than the trustee of the
people who placed it in power. It rules by consent of the community, and
may be removed or altered when it violates its trust. Hobbes saw in the
break-up of a particular government the dissolution of society. Locke made
a great advance on this, for he saw that a change of government could be
accomplished without any very serious disturbance in the order of society
or the peace of a nation. Hobbes did not believe that the people could be
trusted to effect a change of government, while Locke had to justify the
change which had just taken place in 1688.
Only when we have dropped all Locke's theories of primitive man's
happiness, and the social-contract fiction, does the real value of his
democratic teaching become clear, and the lasting influence of his work
become visible.
Mankind is compelled to adopt some form of government if it is to sleep at
nights without fear of being murdered in its bed, or if it wishes to have
its letters delivered by the postman in the morning. As the only purpose of
government is to secure mutual protection, mankind must obey this
government, or the purpose for which government exists will be defeated.
But the powers of government must be strictly limited if this necessary
consent of the governed is to continue, and if the government has ceased to
retain the confidence that gives consent, then its form may be changed to
some more appropriate shape.
Now all this theory of Locke's has proved to be true in the progress of
modern democracy. It was pointed out that the danger of his doctrine--that
a nation had the right to choose its form of government, and to change or
adapt its constitution--lay in the sanction it gave to revolution; but
Locke answered that the natural inertia of man was a safeguard against
frequent and violent political changes, and as far as England was concerned
Locke was right. The average Englishman grumbles, but only under great
provocation is he moved to violent political activity. As a nation, we have
acknowledged the right of the majority to make the political changes that
have brought in democracy, and we have accepted the changes loyally.
Occasionally, since Locke, the delay of the government in carrying out the
wishes of the majority has induced impatience, but, generally, the
principle has been acted upon that government is carried on with the
consent of the governed, and that the Parliamentary party which has
received the largest number of votes has the authority from the people to
choose its ministry, and to make laws that all must obey.
The power of the people is demonstrated by the free election of members of
Parliament, and, therefore, democracy requires that its authority be obeyed
by all who are represented in Parliament. There is no social contract
between the voter and the government; but there is a general feeling that
it is not so much participation in politics as the quiet enjoyment of the
privileges of citizenship that obliges submission to the laws. The
extension of the franchise was necessary whenever a body of people excluded
from the electorate was conscious of being unrepresented and desired
representation. Otherwise the consent of the voteless governed was
obviously non-existent, and government was carried on in defiance of the
absence of that consent.
It is not Locke's theories that have guided politically the great masses of
the people, for Locke's writings have had no very considerable popularity
in England. But it has happened that these theories have influenced the
conduct of statesmen, and with reason, since they offer an explanation of
political progress, and constrain politicians to act, experimentally
indeed, but with some reasonable anticipation of safety to the nation.
British statesmen and politicians have made no parade of Locke's opinions;
they have done nothing to incur the charge of "theorist," but the influence
of Locke can be seen all the same--chiefly in the loyal acceptance of
political change, in the refusal to be shocked or alarmed at a "leap in the
dark," and by a willingness to adjust the machinery of government to the
needs of the time. In England Locke's influence has been less dynamic than
static; it has helped us to preserve a moderation in politics; to be
content with piecemeal legislation, because to attempt too much might be to
alienate the sympathies of the majority; to keep our political eye, so to
speak, on the ebb and flow of public opinion--since it is public opinion
that is the final court of appeal; to tolerate abuses until it is quite
plain a great number of people are anxious to have the abuse removed; and
above all to settle down in easy contentment under political defeat, and
make the best of accomplished reforms, not because we like them, but
because a Parliamentary majority has decreed them.
For England, in fact, the essence of Locke's teaching has helped to produce
a deference almost servile to political majorities and to public opinion, a
reluctance to make any reform until public opinion has pronounced loudly
and often in favour of reform, and an emphatic assurance that every reform
enacted by Parliament is the unmistakable expression of the will of the
people. Locke has discouraged us from hasty legislation and from political
panics.
ROUSSEAU AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
Locke's influence in France and in America has been altogether different.
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot were all students and admirers of Locke,
and his political theories were at the base of Rousseau's "Social
Contract." A return to nature, a harking back to an imaginary primitive
happiness of mankind, the glorification of an ideal of simplicity and
innocence,--supposed to have been the ideal of early politics--the
restoration of a popular sovereignty built up on natural rights alleged to
have been lost: these were the articles of faith Rousseau preached with
passionate conviction in his "Discourses" and in the "Social Contract."
Individual man was born naturally "free," and had become debased and
enslaved by laws and civilisation. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is
in chains," is the opening sentence of the "Social Contract." This liberty
and equality of primitive man was acclaimed as a law of nature by
eighteenth century writers in France, and to some extent in England too.
Pope could write, "The state of nature was the reign of God." Instead of a
forward movement the business of man was to recover the lost happiness of
the childhood of the world, to bring back a golden age of liberty and
equality. Locke's "state of peace, goodwill, mutual assistance, and
preservation" is to be the desire of nations, and with wistful yearning
Rousseau's disciples gazed on the picture painted by their master.
It was all false, all a fiction, all mischievous and misleading, this
doctrine of a return to an ideal happiness of the past, and it was the most
worthless portion of Locke's work. To-day it is easy for us to say this,
when we have learnt something of the struggle for existence in nature,
something of the habits and customs of primitive man, and something of
man's upward growth. But Locke and Rousseau were born before our limited
knowledge of the history of man and his institutions had been learnt;
before science, with patient research, had revealed a few incidents in the
long story of man's ascent. Even the history of Greece and Rome, as
Rousseau read it, was hopelessly inaccurate and incomplete. Therefore,
while we can see the fallacy in all the eighteenth century teaching
concerning the natural happiness of uncivilised man, we must at the same
time remember it as a doctrine belonging to a pre-scientific era. The
excuse in France, too, for its popularity was great. Civilisation weighed
heavily on the nation. The whole country groaned under a misrule, and
commerce and agriculture were crippled by the system of taxation. It seemed
that France was impoverished to maintain a civilisation that only a few,
and they not the most useful members of the community, could enjoy.
How mankind had passed from primitive freedom to civilised slavery neither
Locke nor Rousseau inquired. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in
chains," cries Rousseau, in sublime disregard of facts. For man was not
born free in the ancient republics of Greece and Rome that Rousseau
revered; children were not born free in his day any more than they are in
ours; and any assembly or community of people necessarily involves mutual
consideration and forbearance which are at once restrictive.
The truth is, of course, that man is not born free, but is born with free
will to work out political freedom or to consent to servitude. He is not
born with "natural" political rights, but born to acquire by law political
rights.
The fiction of primitive man's happiness and of the natural goodness and
freedom of man did little harm in England, for Locke was not a popular
author, and Wesley's religious revival in the eighteenth century laid awful
stress on man's imperfections. The sovereign people ruled in an unreformed
House of Commons, and the "contract" theory was exhibited by ministers
holding office on the strength of a majority in the Commons.
Rousseau's writings depicted, with a clearness that fascinated the reader,
the contrast between the ideal state that man had lost and the present
condition of society with its miseries and corruption; and by its
explanation of the doctrines of a contract and the sovereignty of the
people, suggested the way to end these miseries and corruptions. The
"Social Contract" became the text-book of the men who made the French
Revolution, and if the success of the Revolution is due to the teaching of
Rousseau more than to that of any other French philosopher, the crimes and
mistakes of the Revolution are directly to be traced to his influence, and
this in spite of Rousseau's deprecation of violence.[73]
As there is a certain tendency in England to-day to attempt the
resuscitation of Rousseau's theories of popular sovereignty and the natural
rights of man, and as so distinguished a writer as Mr. Hilaire Belloc is at
pains to invite the English working class to seek illumination from
Rousseau and to proceed to democracy guided by the speculative political
doctrines of the eighteenth century rather than on the tried experimental
lines of representative government and an extended franchise, it is
necessary to devote to Rousseau and his "Social Contract" more space than
the subject deserves.
The "Social Contract" is full of inaccuracies in its references to history;
it is often self-contradictory, and it has not even the merit of
originality. From Hobbes Rousseau borrowed the notion of authority in the
State; from Locke the seat of this authority; the nature of the original
pact and of citizenship from Spinoza; from the Huguenot Languet the
doctrine of fraternity; and from Althusius the doctrine of the
inalienability of citizenship. Where Locke was content to maintain that the
people collectively had the right to change the form of government,
Rousseau would give the community continual exercise in sovereignty, while
voting and representation are signs of democratic decadence in Rousseau's
eyes. The sovereign people governing, not through elected representatives
but by public meeting, has only been found possible in small slave-ridden
states.
At the Revolution France had to elect its deputies. But the theory of the
sovereignty of the people has over and over again, in France, upset the
Government, and destroyed the authority of the deputies. In England we
accept the rule of Parliament, and are satisfied that the election of
representatives by an enfranchised people is the most satisfactory form of
democracy, though we retain a healthy instinct of criticism of the
Government in power. In France has happened what Locke's critics foretold:
the sovereign people never wholeheartedly delegates its powers to its
deputies, and indulges in revolution when impatient of government. During
the Revolution the passionate clamour of the sovereign people overpowered
the votes and voices of elected representatives, and revolution and
reaction were the rule in France from 1793 to 1871.
We may be frankly against the Government all the time in England; we may
resist it actively and passively, for the purpose of calling attention to
some political grievance, some disability that needs removal. But we never
forget that it is the Government, or believe that it can be overturned save
by the votes of the electorate. At the time of the European revolutions of
1848, when crowns were falling, and ministers flying before the rage of the
sovereign people, Chartism never seriously threatened the stability of the
British Government, and its great demonstrations were no real menace to the
existing order. Nothing seems able to shake the British confidence in its
elected representatives, and in the Government that is supported by a
majority of those representatives. We have never accepted the gospel of
Jean Jacques Rousseau; Priestley and Price are almost the only names that
can be mentioned as disciples of Rousseau before the advent of Mr. H.
Belloc.
France, still following Rousseau, does not associate political sovereignty
with representation as England does. It never invests the doings of its
Cabinet with a sacred importance, and it readily transfers the reins of
government from Ministry to Ministry. France has submitted to the
sovereignty of an Emperor and to the rule of kings since the great
Revolution, and though its Republic is now forty years old, and at present
there are no signs of dictatorship on the horizon, the Government of the
Republic is never safe from a revolutionary rising of the sovereign people,
and only by the strength of its army has revolution been kept at bay. If
Louis XVI. had possessed the army of modern France he too might have kept
the revolution at bay. All this revolution and reaction, disbelief in the
authority of representative government, and lively conviction that
sovereignty is with the citizens, and must be asserted from time to
time--to the confusion of deputies and delegates--is Rousseau's work, the
reaping of the harvest sown by the "Social Contract." Let us sum up the
character of Rousseau's work, and then leave him and his doctrines for ever
behind us.
"Rousseau's scheme is that of a doctrinaire who is unconscious of the
infinite variety and complexity of life, and its apparent simplicity is
mainly due to his inability to realise and appreciate the difficulties of
his task. He evinced no insight into the political complications of his
time; and his total ignorance of affairs, together with his contempt for
civilised life, prevented him from framing a theory of any practical
utility. Indeed, the disastrous attempt of the Jacobins to apply his
principles proved how valueless and impracticable most of his doctrines
were. He never attempted to trace social and political evils to their
causes, in order to suggest suitable modifications of existing conditions.
He could not see how impossible it was to sweep away all institutions and
impose a wholly new social order irrespective of the natures, faculties,
and desires of those whom he wished to benefit; on the contrary, he
exaggerates the passivity and plasticity of men and circumstances, and
dreams that his model legislator, who apparently is to initiate the new
society, will be able to repress all anti-social feelings. He aims at order
and symmetry, oblivious that human nature does not easily and rapidly bend
to such treatment. It is his inability to discover the true mode of
investigation that accounts for much of Rousseau's sophistry. His truisms
and verbal propositions, his dogmatic assertions and unreal demonstrations,
savour more of theology than of political science, while his
quasi-mathematical method of reasoning from abstract formulæ, assumed to be
axiomatic, gives a deceptive air of exactness and cogency which is apt to
be mistaken for sound logic. He supports glaring paradoxes with an array of
ingenious arguments, and with fatal facility and apparent precision he
deduces from his unfounded premises a series of inconsequent conclusions,
which he regards as authoritative and universally applicable. At times he
becomes less rigid, as when (under the influence of Montesquieu) he studies
the relations between the physical constitution of a nation, its territory,
its customs, its form of government, and its deep-rooted opinions, or avows
that there has been too much dispute about the forms of government. But
such considerations are not prominent. In certain cases his inconsistencies
may be due to re-handling, but he is said to have observed that those who
boasted of understanding the whole contract were more clever than he."[74]
This may sound very severe, but it is entirely just. The "Social Contract"
consists of four books: (1) The founding of the civilized state by a social
pact. (2) The theory of the sovereignty of the people. (3) and (4). The
different forms of government; the indestructible character of the general
will of the community; and civil religion.
The whole work teems with generalisations, mostly ill-founded, and the
details are not in agreement. The one thing of permanent value is the
conception that the State represents the "general will" of the community.
How that "general will" finds expression and gets its way is of great
importance to democracy. Even more important is the nature of that "general
will." Individualist as Rousseau was in his views about personal property
(following Locke in an apparent ideal of peasant proprietorship), he
insisted on the subjection of personal rights to the safety of the
Commonwealth.
AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE
The resistance of the American colonies to the British Government did not
commence with any spirit of independence. The tea incident at Boston took
place in 1773, and it was not till three years later that the Declaration
of Independence was drawn up. The Whig principles of 1688 are at the
foundation of American liberties, and Locke's influence is to be seen both
in the Declaration of Independence and in the American constitution. The
colonists from the first had in many states a Puritanism that was hostile
to the prerogatives of governors, and appeals to the British Government
against the misuse of the prerogative were generally successful. The
colonists wanted no more, and no less, than the constitutional rights
enjoyed by Englishmen in Great Britain, and while the Whigs were in power
these rights were fairly secure. George III., attempting a reversion to
monarchist rule, drove the colonists to war and to seek independence; with
the aid of France this independence was won.
If the French officers who assisted the Americans brought the doctrines of
Rousseau to the revolted colonists, which is possible, it is quite certain
that the establishment of the American Republic, and the principles of La
Fayette and Paine, who had fought in the American War, were not without
effect in France.
The American Constitution was the work of men who believed in democratic
government as Locke had defined it, and America has been the biggest
experiment in democracy the world has seen. The fact that the President and
his Cabinet are not members of Congress makes the great distinction between
the British and American Constitution. The College of Electors is elected
only to elect the President; that done, its work is over. Congress,
consisting of members elected from each state, and the Senate, consisting
of representatives from each state, need not contain a majority of the
President's party, and the President is in no way responsible to Congress
as the British Prime Minister is to the House of Commons. The relation of
the State Governments to the Federal Government has presented the chief
difficulty to democracy in America.
The Whigs, or Republicans, as they came to be called, stood for a strong
Federal Government; the Democrats were jealous for the rights of State
Governments. The issue was not decided till the Civil War of 1861-1865,
when the southern slave-holding States, seeing slavery threatened,
announced their secession from the United States. Abraham Lincoln, the
newly-elected President, declared that the Government could not allow
secession, and insisted that the war was to save the union. Slavery was
abolished and the Union saved by the defeat of the Secessionists; but for a
time the fortunes of the Union were more desperate than they had been at
any time since the Declaration of Independence.
Hamilton was the real founder of the Republican party, as Jefferson was of
the Democrats. Both these men were prominent in the making of the American
Constitution in 1787, and Jefferson was the responsible author of the
Declaration of Independence. But Franklin and Paine made large
contributions to the democratic independence of America.
THOMAS PAINE (1737-1809)
Edmund Randolph, the first Attorney-General of the United States, was on
Washington's staff at the beginning of the War, and he ascribed
independence in the first place to George III., but next to "Thomas Paine,
an Englishman by birth."[75]
Paine's later controversies with theological opponents have obscured his
very considerable services to American Independence, to political democracy
in England, and to constitutional government in the French Revolution; and
as mankind is generally, and naturally, more interested in religion than in
politics, Paine is remembered rather as an "infidel"--though he was a
strong theist--than as a gifted writer on behalf of democracy and a
political reformer of original powers.
Paine--who came of a Suffolk Quaker family--reached America in 1774, on the
very threshold of the war. His Quaker principles made him attack negro
slavery on his arrival, and he endeavoured, without success, to get an
anti-slavery clause inserted in the "Declaration of Independence." He
served in the American ranks during the war, and was the friend of
Washington, who recognised the value of his writings. For Paine's "Common
Sense" pamphlet and his publication, "The Crisis," had enormous
circulation, and were of the greatest value in keeping the spirit of
independence alive in the dark years of the war. They were fiercely
Republican; and though they were not entirely free from contemporary
notions of government established on the ruins of a lost innocence, they
struck a valiant note of self-reliance, and emphasised the importance of
the average honest man. "Time makes more converts than reason," wrote
Paine. Of monarchy he could say, "The fate of Charles I. hath only made
kings more subtle--not more just"; and, "Of more worth is one honest man to
society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever
lived."
Paine was in England in 1787, busy with scientific inventions, popular in
Whig circles and respected. The fall of the Bastille won his applause, as
it did the applause of Fox and the Whigs, but it was not till the
publication of Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France," in 1790,
that Paine again took up his pen on behalf of democracy.
Burke had been the hero of Paine and the Americans in the War of
Independence, and his speeches and writings had justified the republic. And
now it was the political philosophy of Hobbes that Burke seemed to be
contending for when he insisted that the English people were bound for ever
to royalty by the act of allegiance to William III.
Paine replied to Burke the following year with the "Rights of Man" which he
wrote in a country inn, the "Angel," at Islington. It was not so much to
demolish Burke as to give the English nation a constitution that Paine
desired; for it seemed to the author of "Common Sense" that, America having
renounced monarchy and set up a republican form of government, safely
guarded by a written constitution, England must be anxious to do the same
thing, and was only in need of a constitution.
The flamboyant rhetoric of the American Declaration of Independence--"We
hold these truths to be self-evident--that all men are created equal; that
they are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"--was not the sort of
language that appealed to English Whigs (America itself cheerfully admitted
the falseness of the statement by keeping the negro in slavery), and the
glittering generalities of the "Rights of Man" made no impression on the
Whig leaders in Parliament. Paine was back in the old regions of a social
contract, and of a popular sovereignty antecedent to government. It was all
beside the mark, this talk of a popular right inherent in the nation, a
right that gave the power to make constitutional changes not _through_
elected representatives in Parliament, but by a general convention.
Parliament in the sight of the Whigs was the sovereign assembly holding its
authority from the people, and only by a majority in the House of Commons
could the people express its will. What made the "Rights of Man" popular
with the English democrats of the "Constitutional Society" and the
sympathisers with the French Revolution was not so much the old
pre-historic popular "sovereignty" fiction--though it is true that there
were many Englishmen, of whom Godwin was one, who could see no hope of
Parliament reforming itself or of granting any measure of enfranchisement
to the people, and therefore were willing to fall back on any theory for
compelling Parliament to move towards a more liberal constitution--as the
programme of practical reforms that was unfolded in its pages and the
honest defence of the proceedings in Paris. That Parliament had no right to
bind posterity, as Burke maintained, and that if the revolution of 1688 was
authoritative, why should a revolution in 1788 be less authoritative? were
matters of less interest than the clear statement of events in France, and
the proposals for a democratic constitution in England and for social
reform. Fifty thousand copies of the "Rights of Man" were quickly sold, and
it obtained a large number of readers in America, and was translated into
French. The total sales were estimated at 200,000 in 1793. Paine followed
it up with Part II. while he was an elected member of the National
Convention in Paris, and in 1792, when a cheap edition of the "Rights of
Man" was issued, its author was tried for high treason, and in his absence
convicted and outlawed.
Part I. of the "Rights of Man," while relying on the popular "sovereignty"
fiction for getting a national convention, contained a careful definition
of representative government. It showed that government by democracy--i.e.
by popular meeting, suitable enough for small and primitive societies--must
degenerate into hopeless confusion in a large population; that monarchy and
aristocracy which sprang from the political confusion of the people must
degenerate into incapacity. A representative government was the control of
a nation by persons elected by the whole nation, and the Rights of Man were
the rights of all to this representation.
As a nation we have never admitted any "natural" political rights to man,
but we have steadily insisted on the constitutional right of representation
in Parliament to those who possess a fixed abode and contribute by taxation
to the national revenue.
Paine attacked all hereditary authority and all titles, but approved a
double chamber for Parliament. He claimed that the whole nation ought to
decide on the question of war with a foreign country, and urged that no
member of Parliament should be a government pensioner.
In Part II. there is a confident announcement that "monarchy and
aristocracy will not continue seven years longer in any of the enlightened
countries of Europe," so sure was Paine that civilised mankind would hasten
to follow the examples of France and America, and summon national
conventions for the making of republican constitutions. As the old form of
government had been hereditary, the new form was to be elective and
representative. The money hitherto spent on the Crown was to be devoted to
a national system of elementary education--all children remaining at school
till the age of 14--and to old-age pensions for all over 60. It is in these
financial proposals and the suggested social reforms that Paine is seen as
a pioneer of democracy. A progressive income tax is included in this Part
II., the tax to be graduated from 3d. in the £ on incomes between £50 to
£500; 6d. on incomes between £500 and £1,000; an additional 6d. up to
£4,000; and then 1s. on every additional £1,000 until we get to an income
tax of 20s. in the £ on an income of £22,000 a year.
The popularity of Paine's proposals in England and the Reign of Terror in
France frightened the British Government into a policy of fierce
persecution against all who bought, sold, lent or borrowed the "Rights of
Man." "Constitutional Societies" were suppressed, and all who dared openly
express sympathy with revolutions or republics were promptly arrested.
Paine, outlawed by the British Government, contended in the National
Convention for a republican constitution for France, did his best to
prevent the execution of Louis XVI., fell with the Girondins, was thrown
into prison, and only escaped with his life by an accident. Then, under the
very shadow of the guillotine Paine wrote his "Age of Reason," to recall
France from atheism to a mild humanitarian theism. This book was fatal to
Paine's reputation. Henceforth the violent denunciation of theological
opponents pursued him to the grave, and left his name a byword to the
orthodox. As Paine's contribution to the body of democratic belief in the
"Rights of Man" was submerged in the discussion on his religious opinions,
so was his early plea for what he called "Agrarian Justice." On his release
from a prison cell in the Luxembourg, in 1795, Paine published his "Plan
for a National Fund." This plan was an anticipation of our modern proposals
for Land Reform. Paine urged the taxation of land values--the payment to
the community of a ground-rent--and argued for death duties as "the least
troublesome method" of raising revenue. It was in the preface to this
pamphlet on "Agrarian Justice" that Paine replied to Bishop Watson's sermon
on "The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor." "It
is wrong," wrote Paine, "to say God made rich and poor; He made only male
and female, and gave them the earth for their inheritance."
Napoleon organised the plebiscite, which conferred on him the Consulate for
life, in 1802, and the French Revolution and Constitution making having
yielded to a military dictatorship, Paine returned to America, and died in
New York in 1809.
MAJOR CARTWRIGHT AND THE "RADICAL REFORMERS"
John Cartwright, the "Father of Reform," is notable as the first of the
English "Radical Reformers." His direct influence on politics was
small--none of his writings had the success of the "Rights of Man"--but,
like Paine, he laboured to turn England by public opinion from aristocracy
to democracy, and for more than forty years Cartwright was to the fore with
his programme of Radical reform. The problem for Cartwright and the Radical
reformers was how to get the changes made which would give political power
to the people--with whom was the sovereignty, as they had learnt from
Locke--and make Parliament the instrument of democracy. A hundred years and
more have not sufficed to get this problem answered to everybody's
satisfaction, but in the latter part of the eighteenth century, to the
minds of simple, honest men, it seemed enough that the argument should be
stated plainly and reasonably; it would follow that all mankind would be
speedily convinced; so great was the faith in the power of reason.
What neither Cartwright nor Paine understood was, that it was not the
reasonableness of a proposed reform but the strength of the demand that
carried the day. The revolt and independence of the American Colonies were
not due to a political preference for a republic, but were the work of
public opinion driven by misgovernment to protest. The difficulty in
England was that the mass of people might be in great wretchedness, badly
housed, ill-fed, and generally neglected, but they were not conscious of
any desire for democracy. They were against the government, doubtless, and
willing enough, in London, to shout for "Wilkes and Liberty," but the time
had not yet come for the working class to believe that enfranchisement was
a remedy for the ills they endured.
Major Cartwright was an exceedingly fine type of man; conscientious, public
spirited, humane, and utterly without personal ambition. He resigned his
commission in the Navy because he believed it wrong to fight against the
American Colonies, and he organised a county militia for the sake of
national defence. On the pedestal beneath his statue in Cartwright Gardens,
just south of Euston Road, in London, the virtues of the "Father of Reform"
are described at length, and he is mentioned as "the firm, consistent and
persevering advocate of _universal suffrage_, equal representation, vote by
ballot, and annual Parliaments." It was in 1777 that Cartwright published
his first pamphlet entitled "Legislative Rights Vindicated," and pleaded
for "a return to the ancient and constitutional practice of Edward III."
and the election of annual Parliaments. Long Parliaments were the root of
all social political evil, Cartwright argued. War, national debt, distress,
depopulation, land out of cultivation, Parliamentary debate itself become a
mockery--these calamities were all due to long Parliaments; and would be
cured if once a year--on June 1st--a fresh Parliament was elected by the
votes of every man over eighteen--by ballot and without any plural
voting--and a payment of two guineas a day was made to members on their
attendance. Of course, Cartwright could not help writing "all are by nature
free, all are by nature equal"--no political reformer in the eighteenth
century could do otherwise--but, unlike his contemporaries, the Major was a
stout Christian, and insisted that as the whole plan of Christianity was
founded on the equality of all mankind, political rights must have the same
foundation. By the political axiom that "no man shall be taxed but with his
own consent, given either by himself or his own representative in
Parliament," Cartwright may be quoted as one who had some perception of
what democracy meant in England; but he is off the track again in arguing
that personality, and not the possession of property, was the sole
foundation of the right of being represented in Parliament. It was the
possession of property that brought taxation, and with taxation the right
to representation. We cannot repeat too often that in England the progress
to democracy has never been made on assumptions of an abstract right to
vote. We have come to democracy by experience, and this experience has
taught us that people who are taxed insist, sooner or later, on having a
voice in the administration of the national exchequer. But we have never
admitted "personality" as a title to enfranchisement.
[Illustration: THE GORDON RIOTS
_From the Painting by Seymour Lucas, R.A._]
Cartwright followed with the multitude of political writers of his time to
deduce a right to vote, and his deduction is as worthless as the rest of
the _a priori_ reasoning. But the brave old man--he was tried for
"sedition" at the age of eighty in the Government panic of 1820--was an
entirely disinterested champion of the poor and a real lover of liberty. He
believed the affairs of government ought to be a matter of common concern,
and that they were quite within the capacities of ordinary men.
Cartwright's life--much more than his writings--kept the democratic ideal
unshaken in the handful of "Radical Reformers" who survived the Tory
reaction on the war with the French Republic in 1793, and his glowing
enthusiasm helped to kindle the fire for political enfranchisement that was
burning in the hearts of the manufacturing population by 1818. But in 1777
the electorate was not anxious for reform, and the unenfranchised gave no
thought to their political disabilities. On the very day in 1780 that the
Duke of Richmond proposed, in the House of Lords, a resolution in favour of
manhood suffrage and annual Parliaments, the London mob, stirred up by the
anti-Catholic fanaticism of Lord George Gordon, marched to Westminster with
a petition to repeal Savile's Act of 1778, which allowed Catholics to
bequeath land and to educate their own children. There was a riot, and in
the course of the next six days the mob burnt Newgate, sacked Catholic
chapels, and generally plundered and ravaged the City.
In the House of Commons Pitt made three attempts to get reform
considered--in 1782, 1783 and 1785--and on each occasion his resolution was
defeated by an overwhelming majority. After that Pitt made no further
effort for reform, and from 1793 to 1795 the Government he led passed the
Acts of repressive legislation which made all democratic propaganda
illegal, and crushed all political agitation.
But "the Cause" was not dead.
Sir Francis Burdett, M.P. for Westminster, Henry Hunt, better known as
"Orator Hunt," and Cobbett with his "Political Register," in various ways
renewed the campaign for manhood suffrage, and the growth of the
manufacturing districts made a change in the constitution of Parliament
imperative.
Burdett was sent to the Tower in 1810 for contempt of Parliament, but lived
to see the Reform Bill of 1831 passed into law, and died a Tory. Cobbett
spent two years in prison, and became M.P. for Oldham in 1832. What Cobbett
did with pen--and no man at that day wrote with greater ability for the
common people, or with greater acceptance--Hunt did on the platform. Both
strove to arouse the working class to demand enfranchisement. Hunt presided
at the mass meeting at Peterloo, by Manchester, in 1819--an entirely
peaceful meeting which was broken up by the military with some loss of
life--and was sent to prison for two years for doing so. He also was
elected M.P. (for Preston) in the first reformed Parliament.
Again the Government tried coercion, and after Peterloo, for the next few
years, intimidation and numerous arrests kept down all outward
manifestation of the reform movement.
In spite of this, the movement could not be stayed. Each year saw political
indifference changed to positive desire for enfranchisement, and the
British public, which, in the main, had been left untouched by the vision
of a democracy and the call for a national convention and a new
constitution, became impatient for the reform of Parliament and the
representation of the manufacturing interest.
THOMAS SPENCE (1750-1814)
The name of Spence must be mentioned amongst those who preached the
democratic idea at the close of the eighteenth century. A Newcastle
schoolmaster, Spence, in 1775, expounded his "Plan" for land
nationalisation on the following lines:--
"The land, with all that appertains to it, is in every parish made the
property of the Corporation or parish, with as ample power to let, repair,
or alter all or any part thereof, as a lord of the manor enjoys over his
lands, houses, etc.; but the power of alienating the least morsel, in any
manner, from the parish, either at this or any time thereafter, is denied.
For it is solemnly agreed to, by the whole nation, that a parish that shall
either sell or give away any part of its landed property shall be looked
upon with as much horror and detestation as if they had sold all their
children to be slaves, or massacred them with their own hands. Thus are
there no more or other landlords in the whole country than the parishes,
and each of them is sovereign lord of its territories.
"Then you may behold the rent which the people have paid into the parish
treasuries employed by each parish in paying the Parliament or National
Congress at any time grants; in maintaining and relieving its own poor
people out of work; in paying the necessary officers their salaries; in
building, repairing, and adorning its houses, bridges, and other
structures; in making and maintaining convenient and delightful streets,
highways, and passages both for foot and carriages; in making and
maintaining canals and other conveniences for trade and navigation; in
planting and taking in waste grounds; in providing and keeping up a
magazine of ammunition and all sorts of arms sufficient for all the
inhabitants in case of danger from enemies; in premiums for the
encouragement of agriculture, or anything else thought worthy of
encouragement; and, in a word, doing whatever the people think proper, and
not as formerly, to support and spread luxury, pride, and all manner of
vice."
No taxes of any kind were to be paid by native or foreigner "but the
aforesaid rent, which every person pays to the parish according to the
quantity, quality, and conveniences of the land, housing, etc., which he
occupies in it. The Government, poor, roads, etc., are all maintained by
the parishes with the rent, on which account all wares, manufactures,
allowable trade employments, or actions are entirely duty free."
The "Plan" ends with the usual confidence of the idealist reformer of the
time in the speedy triumph of right, and in the world-wide acceptance of
what seemed to its author so eminently reasonable a proposal.
"What makes this prospect yet more glowing is that after this empire of
right and reason is thus established it will stand for ever. Force and
corruption attempting its downfall shall equally be baffled, and all other
nations, struck with wonder and admiration at its happiness and stability,
shall follow the example; and thus the whole earth shall at last be happy,
and live like brethren."
The American War and the French Revolution hindered the consideration of
Spence's "empire of right and reason," but, in the course of nearly forty
years' advocacy of land nationalisation, Spence gathered round him a band
of disciples in London, and the Spenceans were a recognised body of
reformers in the early part of the nineteenth century. The attacks on
private property in land, and the revolutionary proposals for giving the
landlords notice to quit, brought down the wrath of the Government on
Spence, and he was constantly being arrested, fined and imprisoned for
"seditious libel," while his bookshop in Holborn was as frequently
ransacked by the authorities.
Spence died in 1814, and the movement for abolishing the landlords in
favour of common ownership languished and stopped. The interesting thing
about Spence's "Plan" is its anticipation of Henry George's propaganda for
a Single Tax on Land Values, and the extinction of all other methods of
raising national revenue, a propaganda that, in a modified form for the
taxation of land values, has already earned the approval of the House of
Commons.
PRACTICAL POLITICS AND DEMOCRATIC IDEALS
Because we insist on the experimental character of our British political
progress, and the steady refusal to accept speculative ideas and _a priori_
deductions in politics, it does not follow that the services of the
idealist are to be unrecognised.
The work of the idealist, whether he is a writer or a man of action--and
sometimes, as in the case of Mazzini, he is both--is to stir the souls of
men and shake them out of sluggish torpor, or rouse them from gross
absorption in personal gain, and from dull, self-satisfied complacency. He
is the prophet, the agitator, the pioneer, and after him follow the
responsible statesmen, who rarely see far ahead or venture on new paths.
Once or twice in the world's history the practical statesman is an
idealist, as Abraham Lincoln was, but the combination of qualities is
unusual. The political idealist gets his vision in solitary places, the
democratic statesman gets his experience of men by rubbing shoulders with
the crowd.
A democratic nation must have its seers and prophets, lest it forget its
high calling to press forward, and so sink in the slough of contented ease.
The preacher of ideals is the architect of a nation's hopes and desires,
and the fulfilment of these hopes and desires will depend on the wisdom of
its political builders--the practical politicians. Often enough the
structural alterations are so extensive that the architect does not
recognise his plan; and that is probably as it should be; for it is quite
likely that the architect left out of account so simple a matter as the
staircase in his house beautiful, and the builder is bound to adapt the
plan to ordinary human needs.
The idealist has a faith in the future of his cause that exceeds the
average faith, and in his sure confidence fails to understand why his
neighbours will not follow at his call, or move more rapidly; and so he
fails as a practical leader.
Here the work of the statesman and politician comes in. They are nearer to
the mass of people, they hold their authority by election of the people,
and they understand that the rate of speed must be slow. Under the guidance
of their political leaders, the people are willing to move.
Sometimes the idealist is frankly revolutionary, is for beginning anew in
politics, and starting society all over again. If the state of things is
bad enough, he may get into power, as he did in France at the Revolution,
and for a time the world will stagger at his doings. But there is no
beginning _de novo_ in politics, and the revolutions wrought by men who
would give the world an entirely fresh start (to be distinguished from mere
changes of dynasty, such as our English Revolution was) have their sandy
foundations washed away by the floods of reaction.
There is no such absolute escape from the past for men or nations, and we
can only build our new social and political order on the foundations of
experience. But we may not be moved to build at all but for the prophet and
the agitator, and therefore the instinct that makes governments slay or
imprison the political agitator and suppress the writings of political
prophets can be understood. For the existence of every government is
threatened by prophets and agitators, and in self-defence it resists
innovation. A healthy democracy will allow too many opportunities for
popular expression to fear innovation; yet even under a democracy the
prophets have been stoned--their sepulchres to be subsequently erected by
public subscription and handsomely decorated.
Democracy owes too much to its prophets in the past not to rejoice at their
presence in its midst. But it will prudently leave the direction of its
public affairs to men who, less gifted it may be in finding new paths, are
more experienced in making the roads that others have discovered fit for
the heavy tread of multitudes.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM AND THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF THE PEOPLE
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The industrial revolution of the eighteenth century changed the face of
England and brought to the manufacturing class wealth and prominence. The
population of Lancashire was not more than 300,000 in 1760, the West Riding
of Yorkshire about 360,000, and the total population of England 6,000,000.
The inventions of Arkwright, Hargreaves, Crompton, Watt, and Cartwright
revolutionised the cotton trade in the last twenty years of the eighteenth
century, and increased enormously the production of woollen goods. England
ceased to be mainly a nation of farmers and merchants; domestic manufacture
gave way to the factory system; the labouring people, unable to make a
living in the country, gathered into the towns. The long series of
Enclosure Acts--1760-1843--turned seven million acres of common land into
private property, and with this change in agrarian conditions and the
growth of population England ceased to be a corn-exporting country, and
became dependent on foreign nations for its food supply.
While these industrial and agrarian changes meant a striking increase in
wealth and population, they were accompanied by untold misery to the common
people.
"Instead of the small master working in his own home with his one or two
apprentices and journeymen, the rich capitalist-employer with his army of
factory hands grew up. Many of these masters were rough, illiterate and
hard, though shrewd and far-seeing in business. The workmen were forced to
work for long hours in dark, dirty and unwholesome workshops. The State did
nothing to protect them; the masters only thought of their profits; the
national conscience was dead, and unjust laws prevented them combining
together in trade unions to help themselves. Women and children were made
to work as long and as hard as the men. A regular system grew up of
transporting pauper and destitute children to weary factory work. There was
no care for their health. There were few churches and chapels, though the
Methodists often did something to prevent the people from falling back into
heathendom. The workmen were ignorant, brutal, poor and oppressed. There
were no schools and plenty of public houses. In hard times distress was
widespread, and the workmen naturally listened to agitators and fanatics,
or took to violent means of avenging their wrongs, for they had no
constitutional means of redress. Even the masters had no votes, as the new
towns sent no members to Parliament. The transfer of the balance of
population and wealth from the south and east to the north and Midlands
made Parliamentary reform necessary."[76]
With this transfer of the balance of economic power came a good deal of
rivalry between the manufacturers and the landed gentry, the latter
becoming more and more Tory, the former more and more Radical. As all
political power, in the main, was in the landowner's hands, men anxious to
take part in politics eagerly bought up the small estates, and the old
yeoman class disappeared, except in out-of-the-way places. These yeomen and
small landowners had been the backbone of the Parliamentary Party in the
days of the Stuarts, but they were left hopelessly behind in an age of
mechanical inventions and agrarian changes, and were in most cases glad to
sell out and invest their property in other ways.
The story of the misery of rural depopulation in the first half of the
sixteenth century repeats itself at the close of the eighteenth.
"A single farmer held as one farm the lands that once formed fourteen
farms, bringing up respectably fourteen families. The capitalist farmer
came in like the capitalist employer. His gangs of poor and ignorant
labourers were the counterpart of the swarm of factory hands. The business
of farming was worked more scientifically, with better tools and greater
success; but after the middle of the eighteenth century the condition of
the agricultural labourer got no better, and now the great mass of the
rural population were mere labourers.... Pauperism became more and more a
pressing evil, especially after 1782, when _Gilbert's Act_ abolished the
workhouse test (which compelled all who received relief from the rates to
go into the half-imprisonment of a poor-house), and the system of poor law
doles in aid of wages was encouraged by the high prices at the end of the
century. In 1803 one-seventh of the people was in receipt of poor law
relief."[77]
But with all the considerable distress, in town and country alike amongst
the working people, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, swift
progress was taking place in agriculture and in manufactures. Only, the
accumulated wealth fell into fewer hands, and the fluctuations in the
demand for goods, caused partly by the opening up of new markets, brought
successions of good times and bad times. "The workmen shared but partially
in the prosperity, and were the first to bear the brunt of hard times."[78]
THE NEED FOR PARLIAMENTARY REFORM
The point for us to note here is that the changed economic conditions made
Parliamentary reform a necessity, and brought the question of popular
enfranchisement within sight. It was useless for Burke to maintain the
incomparable beauty of the British constitution; English politicians might
be indifferent to political theories of democracy, and heartily dislike any
notion of radical change, but the abuses were too obvious to prevent
reform.
Whatever the size of the county it returned two members elected by
freeholders, and the cost of a county election was enormous. Some of the
boroughs, especially in Cornwall, were tiny villages. Eighteen members were
returned from such boroughs in that part of Cornwall which now returns one
member for the Liskeard Division. The fields of Old Sarum belonged to seven
electors and returned two members. As there was no habitation whatever in
this "borough" of Old Sarum, a tent was put up for the convenience of the
returning officer at election times. No general law decided the borough
franchise. Local custom and various political and personal considerations
settled who should vote for members of Parliament. Places like Westminster
and Preston had practically manhood suffrage. In most of the "corporation
boroughs" the franchise was restricted exclusively to freemen of the
borough, and to the self-elected non-resident persons who composed the
governing body before the Municipal Corporation Act of 1835. A small number
of rich and powerful men really worked nearly all the elections. Seats were
openly bought and sold, and a candidate had either to find a patron who
would provide him with a seat, or, failing a patron, to purchase a seat
himself. Fox first entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Midhurst,
and Sir George Trevelyan has described how it took place. Midhurst was
selected by the father of Charles James Fox as "the most comfortable of
constituencies from the point of view of a representative; for the right of
election rested in a few small holdings, on which no human being resided,
distinguished among the pastures and the stubble that surrounded them by a
large stone set up on end in the middle of each portion. These burbage
tenures, as they were called, had all been bought up by a single
proprietor, Viscount Montagu, who when an election was in prospect,
assigned a few of them to his servants, with instructions to nominate the
members and then make back the property to their employer. This ceremony
was performed in March, 1768, and the steward of the estate, who acted as
the returning officer, declared that Charles James Fox had been duly chosen
as one of the burgesses for Midhurst, at a time when that young gentleman
was still amusing himself in Italy."
Three years earlier Burke had entered Parliament as a nominee of Lord
Rockingham's. Gibbon sat in the House for some years under patronage.
Gladstone first became a member by presentation to a pocket borough, and
later spoke in praise of this method of bringing young men of promise into
Parliament. John Wilson Croker estimated that of six hundred and
fifty-eight members of the House of Commons at the end of the eighteenth
century, two hundred and seventy-six were returned by patrons. Men of more
independence of mind who could afford to buy seats did so, and many of the
reformers--including Burdett, Romilly and Hume--thus sat in the House.
MANUFACTURING CENTRES UNREPRESENTED IN PARLIAMENT
It was not so much that the landowning aristocracy were over-represented in
Parliament by their control of so many pocket boroughs, as that great
manufacturing centres were entirely unrepresented. The middle-class
manufacturers had no means of making their influence felt in the unreformed
House of Commons, for towns of such importance as Leeds, Manchester and
Birmingham sent no representatives to Parliament. This meant that
Parliament was out of touch with all the industrial life of the nation, and
that nothing was done till after the Reform Act in the way of serious
industrial legislation.
35 constituencies with hardly any voters at all returned 75 members
46 constituencies with less than 50 voters in each returned 90 "
19 constituencies with less than 100 voters in each returned 37 "
26 constituencies with less than 200 voters in each returned 52 "
84 male electors in other constituencies returned 157 "
The Reform Act of 1832 changed all this. It disfranchised all boroughs with
less than 2,000 inhabitants--fifty-six in all; allowed one member only to
boroughs with between 2,000 and 4,000; gave representatives to Manchester,
Birmingham, Leeds, and to several other large manufacturing towns and
London boroughs; extended the county franchise to leaseholders and £50
tenants at will; and settled the borough franchise on a uniform
qualification of occupation in a house of £10 rateable value. It also fixed
two days, instead of fifteen, as the limit for county elections, and one
day for boroughs.
THE PASSAGE OF THE GREAT REFORM BILL
The Reform Bill was not carried without much rioting in the country, and
some loss of life.
The Duke of Wellington was at the head of the Tory Ministry in 1830; and
though he declared in face of an Opposition that was headed by the Whig
aristocrats, and included the middle-class manufacturers and the great bulk
of the working class in the industrial districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire
and the Midlands, that "no better system (of Parliamentary representation)
could be devised by the wit of man" than the unreformed House of Commons,
and that he would never bring forward a reform measure himself, and should
always feel it his duty to resist such measure when proposed by others,
yet, in less than two years after this speech Wellington's resistance had
ended, and the Reform Bill was carried into law.
What happened in those two years was this: At the general election in the
summer of 1831, the popular cry was "the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing
but the Bill."
"The whole countless multitude of reformers had laid hold of the principle
that the most secure and the shortest way of obtaining what they wanted was
to obtain representation. The non-electors felt themselves called upon to
put forth such power as they had as a means to obtaining the power which
they claimed." And the non-electors were enormously successful. For they
"combined their will, their knowledge, and their manifest force in
political unions, whence they sent forth will, knowledge, and influence
over wide districts of the land. And the electors, seeing the importance of
the crisis--the unspeakable importance that it should be well
conducted--joined these unions."
The Reformers carried the day at the elections, and the new House of
Commons passed the second reading of the Bill on July 8th, by 136: 367-231.
On September 21st the third reading passed by 345 to 236. Then on the 8th
of October the House of Lords threw out the Bill by 199 to 158, and at once
fierce riots broke out all over the country, in especial at Derby,
Nottingham, and Bristol.
At Derby the jail was stormed. At Nottingham the castle was burned, and of
nine men subsequently convicted of riot, three were hanged. At Bristol, the
jail, the Mansion House, the Customs House, the Excise Office, and the
Bishop's Palace were burned, and twelve lives were lost in three days.
The new session opened in December, and again the Bill was introduced, and
this time the second reading had a majority of 162: 324-162. The House of
Lords hesitated when the Bill came up to them at the end of March, 1832;
allowed the second reading to pass by 184 to 175, and then in Committee
struck out those clauses which disfranchised the "rotten"
boroughs--uninhabited constituencies like Old Sarum. Grey, the Whig Prime
Minister, at once resigned, and the Duke of Wellington endeavoured to form
a Tory anti-reform Ministry. But the task was beyond him, the temper of the
country was impatient of any further postponement of the Bill. Petitions
poured in urging Parliament to vote no supplies, and resolutions were
passed refusing to pay taxes till the Bill became law.
On Wellington's failure to make a Government, William IV. had to recall
Grey, and the Whigs resumed office with an assurance that, if necessary,
the King would create sufficient peers favourable to reform, so that the
Bill should pass.
The battle was over, the anti-Reformers retired, and on June 4th, 1832, the
Reform Bill passed the Lords by 106 to 22, receiving the Royal Assent three
days later.
The Whigs protested that the Reform Bill was _a final measure_, and Sir
Francis Burdett, the veteran reformer, was content to vote with the Tories
when the Act had become law. But there is no finality in politics, and the
Reform Bill was only the removal of a barrier on the road to democracy. The
Tories described the Bill as revolutionary, but as a matter of fact the Act
of 1832 neither fulfilled the hopes of its friends nor the fears of its
foes. What the Act did was to transfer the balance of power from the landed
aristocracy, which had been in the main predominant since 1688, to the
richer members of the middle class--the big farmers in the country, the
prosperous shopkeepers in the towns. The working class was still voteless,
and the old democratic franchise of Preston and Westminster was gone from
those boroughs.
The first reformed Parliament met early in 1833, and the change in the
character of the House of Commons was seen at once. Government accepted
responsibility for legislation in a way that had never been known before.
The New Poor Law, 1834, and the new Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, were
the beginning of our present system of local government. Slavery was
abolished in all British Colonies in 1833.
Greville, in his Memoirs, gives us an impression of the new regime in
Parliament as it appeared to one who belonged to the old dethroned
aristocracy.
"The first thing that strikes one is its inferiority to preceding Houses of
Commons, and the presumption, impertinence, and self-sufficiency of the new
members.... There exists no _party_ but that of the Government; the Irish
act in a body under O'Connell to the number of about forty; the Radicals
are scattered up and down without a leader, numerous, restless, turbulent,
bold, and active; the Tories, without a head, frightened, angry, and
sulky."
THE WORKING CLASS STILL UNREPRESENTED
But the working classes were the really disappointed people in the country.
They had worked for the reformers, and their energies--and their
violence--had been the driving force that had carried the Bill into law. If
their expectations were extravagant and their hopes over-heated, the more
bitter was their distress at the failure of the Reform Act to accomplish
the social improvements that had been predicted.
CHARTISM
So the working class in despair of help from the Government, decided to get
the franchise for themselves, and for twelve years, 1838-1850, Chartism was
the great popular movement. The _Five Points of the People's Charter_ were
proclaimed in 1838: (1) Universal Suffrage; (2) Vote by Ballot; (3) Annual
Parliaments; (4) Abolition of Property Qualification for Members of
Parliament; (5) Payment of Members. A Sixth Point--Equal Electoral
Districts--was left out in the National Petition.
Although the Chartist demands were political, it was the social misery of
the time that drove men and women into the Chartist movement. The
wretchedness of their lot--its hopeless outlook, and the horrible housing
conditions in the big towns--these things seemed intolerable to the more
intelligent of the working people, and thousands flocked to the monster
Chartist demonstrations, and found comfort in the orations of Feargus
O'Connor, Bronterre O'Brien, and Ernest Jones.
The Charter promised political enfranchisement to the labouring people, and
once enfranchised they could work out by legislation their own social
salvation. So it seemed in the 'Forties--when one in every eleven of the
industrial population was a pauper.
Stephens, a "hot-headed" Chartist preacher, put the case as he, a typical
agitator of the day, saw it in 1839: "The principle of the People's Charter
is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his happiness.
The question of universal suffrage is, after all, a knife-and-fork
question. It means that every workman has a right to have a good hat and
coat, a good roof, a good dinner, no more work than will keep him in
health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty."[79]
The lot of the labourer and the artisan was found to be worse than it was
in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, before the great Reform Act
had been passed.[80] And while the Anti-Corn Law League, the Socialist
propaganda of Robert Owen, and the agitation for factory legislation, all
promised help and attracted large numbers of workmen, the Chartist movement
was by far the strongest and most revolutionary of all the post-reform
popular agitations. Chartism went to pieces because the leaders could not
work together, and were, in fact, greatly divided as to the methods and
objects of the movement. By 1848 Bronterre O'Brien had retired from the
Chartist ranks, Feargus O'Connor was M.P. for Nottingham--to be led away
from the House of Commons hopelessly insane, to die in 1855--and Ernest
Jones could only say when the Chartist Convention broke up in hopeless
disagreement, "amid the desertion of friends, and the invasion of enemies,
the fusee has been trampled out, and elements of our energy are scattered
to the winds of heaven."
In spite of its failure, Chartism kept alive for many years the desire for
political enfranchisement in the labouring classes. That desire never died
out. Although Palmerston, the "Tory chief of a Radical Cabinet"--so
Disraeli accurately enough described him--was Prime Minister from 1855 to
1865 (with one short interval), and during that period gave no
encouragement to political reform, the opinion in the country grew steadily
in favour of working-class enfranchisement. Palmerston's very inactivity
drove Liberals and the younger Conservatives to look to the working classes
for support for the measures that were planned. The middle class was
satisfied that the artisans could be admitted to the franchise without
danger to the Constitution. Palmerston's death in 1865 left the Liberal
Party to Earl Russell's premiership, with Gladstone as its leader in the
Commons. Reform was now inevitable.
The Bill as first introduced in 1866 was a moderate measure, making a £7
rental the qualification for a vote in the boroughs. It was too moderate to
provoke any enthusiasm, and it was hateful to the old Palmerstonian Whigs
and most of the Conservatives, who objected to any enfranchisement of the
working class. By a combination of these opponents the Bill was defeated,
the Liberals retired from office, and a Conservative ministry under Lord
Derby, with Disraeli leading the House of Commons, was formed.
THE HYDE PARK RAILINGS (1866)
It was seen quickly that there was a very real demand for the
enfranchisement of the town workman--the agricultural districts remained
unawakened--and Reform Leagues and Reform Unions sprang up as they had done
in 1831. Then in London came the incident of the Hyde Park railings, which
gave a distinct impetus to the Reform movement. What happened at Hyde Park
was this: the London Reform Union decided to hold a monster demonstration
in Hyde Park on July 23rd, but the Chief Commissioner of Police had
declared the meeting must not take place, and ordered the gates to be
closed at five o'clock. Mr. Edmund Beales, and other leaders of the London
Reform Union, on being refused admittance, drove away calmly to hold a
meeting in Trafalgar Square, but the great mass of people remained outside
the park, "pressed and pressing round the railings." Some were clinging to
the railings; others deliberately weakened the supports of the railings.
Park Lane was thronged, and all along the Bayswater Road there was a dense
crowd. The line was too long for the police to defend, and presently, when
the railings yielded to the pressure, the people poured in to the park.
"There was a simultaneous, impulsive rush, and some yards of railing were
down, and men in scores were tumbling and floundering and rushing over
them. The example was followed along Park Lane, and in a moment half a mile
of iron railings was lying on the grass, and a tumultuous and delighted mob
was swarming over the park. The news ran wildly through the town. Some
thought it a revolt; others were of opinion it was a revolution. The first
day of liberty was proclaimed here--the breaking loose of anarchy was
shrieked at there. The mob capered and jumped over the sward for half the
night through. Flower beds and shrubs suffered a good deal, not so much
from wanton destruction, as from the pure boisterousness which came of an
unexpected opportunity for horseplay. There were a good many little
encounters with the police; stones were thrown on the one side, and
truncheons used on the other pretty freely. A few heads were broken on both
sides, and a few prisoners were made by the police; but there was no
revolution, no revolt, no serious riot even."[81]
The Guards were called out, and a detachment arrived at the park, but the
people only cheered the soldiers good-humouredly. Not even a blank
cartridge was fired that day.
The Government, however, took the Hyde Park disturbance with extreme
seriousness. "Nothing can well be more certain than the fact that the Hyde
Park riot, as it was called, convinced Her Majesty's ministers of the
necessity of an immediate adoption of the reform principle."[82] Disraeli,
who in 1859 had proposed reform without getting any support, now saw that a
great opportunity had come for a constructive Conservative policy, and
boldly insisted to his party that Parliamentary Reform was a necessity.
"You cannot establish a party of mere resistance to change, for change is
inevitable in a progressive country," he told his followers.
All through the autumn and winter great demonstrations took place in the
large towns and cities of the country in support of the demand for the
enfranchisement of the workman, and when Parliament met in February, 1867,
a Reform Bill was promised in the Queen's Speech. To Lord Derby the measure
was frankly a "leap in the dark," and one or two Conservative ministers
(including Cranborne, afterwards Lord Salisbury) left the Government in
disgust. But the Conservatives generally chuckled at "dishing the Whigs,"
and the Bill, with considerable revision, was passed through both Houses of
Parliament by August.
HOUSEHOLD SUFFRAGE
By the Reform Bill of 1867 all male householders in boroughs were
enfranchised, and all male lodgers who paid £10 a year for unfurnished
rooms. The town workman was enfranchised by this Act as the middle-class
man had been enfranchised by the Act of 1832, and the electorate was
increased from about 100,000 to 2,000,000. An amendment that women should
not be excluded from the franchise was moved by John Stuart Mill, and
defeated. Some redistribution of seats took place under the Act of 1867,
eleven boroughs were disfranchised, thirty-five with less than 10,000
inhabitants were made single-member constituencies, and additional
representation was given to Chelsea, Hackney, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester,
Salford, Glasgow, Birmingham, Dundee, and Merthyr. "Thus was _Household
Suffrage_ brought in in the boroughs, and a great step was made towards
democracy, for it was plain that the middle-class county constituencies
could not last very much longer now that all workmen who happened to live
in boroughs had their votes."[83]
The third Reform Act, giving household suffrage to the country districts,
was passed by Gladstone in 1884, and it was followed by a Redistribution of
Seats Act in 1885. By these two Acts the agricultural labourer was
enfranchised, a service franchise was created for those who were qualified
neither as householders nor lodgers, and the principle of single-member
equal electoral districts--on a basis of 54,000 inhabitants--was adopted.
Only twenty-three boroughs, the City of London and the Universities of
Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin, retained double-member representation. The
membership of the House of Commons was increased from six hundred and
fifty-eight to six hundred and seventy, the present total; and the
franchise remains as it was fixed in 1885--occupation and ownership giving
the right to vote.
From time to time, for more than a hundred years, a plea has been put
forward for universal or adult suffrage for men on the ground of an
abstract right to vote, but it has met with little encouragement.[84] There
is, however, a wide feeling in favour of simplifying the registration laws,
so that a three-months' residence, instead of, as at present, a year's
residence from one July to the next, should be sufficient to qualify for
the franchise. There is also a strong demand for "one man, one vote." At
present, while no elector may give more than one vote in any constituency,
he may, if he has property in various places, give a vote in each of these
districts, and some men thus give as many as a dozen votes at a general
election. This plural voting by property and residential qualifications in
different constituencies is not customary in other constitutional
countries, and a Bill for its abolition passed the House of Commons in
1906, but was rejected by the Lords.
While Liberals urge "one man, one vote" as the more democratic arrangement,
Conservatives reply by asking for "one vote, one value"--that is, a new
redistribution of seats, for in the last twenty-five years there have been
deep and extensive changes in the distribution of populations, and Ireland
in particular is over-represented, it is maintained. But then the
representation of Ireland in the House of Commons was really guaranteed by
the Act of Union, 1800.[85]
WORKING-CLASS REPRESENTATION IN PARLIAMENT
With the extension of the franchise the change in the _personnel_ of the
House of Commons has become marked. The more wealthy of the middle class
entered in considerable numbers after 1832; the Acts of 1867 and 1884 made
the entry of the workman inevitable. The miners were the first to send
Labour representatives to Parliament, and to-day their members outnumber
those of any other trade. Since 1892 industrial constituencies, chiefly in
Yorkshire, Lancashire, South Wales, and the mining districts, have gone on
steadily electing and re-electing working-class representatives--trade
union secretaries and officers for the most part--and with the formation of
a National Labour Representation Committee in 1900, these representatives
became a separate and distinct party--the Labour Party after 1906--in the
House of Commons.
Enfranchisement to secure representation for the redress of grievances has
been the principle that has guided the English people towards democracy.
Both the middle class and the working class were convinced that
enfranchisement was necessary if the House of Commons was to be in any real
sense a representative assembly, and both have used enfranchisement for
obtaining representation in Parliament. The return of forty Labour Members
at recent general elections is evidence that a large electorate supports
the Labour Party in its desire to carry in Parliament legislation that will
make life a better thing for the labourer and his family; and in the House
of Commons the Labour Members have won a general respect. As a matter of
fact, the House of Commons to-day is in every way a more orderly, a more
intelligent, more business-like, and better-mannered assembly than it was
in the days before 1832.
No stronger evidence of the value of Parliamentary representation to the
working-class can be offered than the large output of what may be called
labour legislation in recent years. It is true that Lord Shaftesbury's
benevolent and entirely disinterested activities promoted Factory Acts in
the first half of the nineteenth century, but in the last twenty years
measures for the amelioration of the lot of the workman have been
constantly before Parliament.
REMOVAL OF RELIGIOUS DISABILITIES--CATHOLICS, JEWS, AND FREETHINKERS
The nineteenth century was not only the century of popular enfranchisement;
it was the century that saw the removal of religious disabilities, and the
free admission to Parliament and to the Government of Roman Catholics,
Nonconformists, Jews, and Freethinkers.
In the year 1800 Roman Catholics in England were excluded from Parliament,
from the franchise, from the magistracy, the Bar, the Civil Service, from
municipal corporations, and from commissions in the Army and Navy. Pitt was
willing to abolish these disabilities on the passing of the Act of Union,
and the Irish people were bitterly disappointed that the disabilities
remained. But George III. refused all assent to the proposals, and Pitt
resigned. Several times the House of Commons passed Catholic Relief Bills,
which were thrown out by the Lords, and it was not till 1829, when "the
English ministry had to choose between concession and civil war," that Peel
and the Duke of Wellington yielded and persuaded their party to admit
Catholics to Parliament and to the Civil and Military Services.
The repeal of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholics--Acts of Elizabeth
that inflicted penalties on priests who said mass in England, and on Roman
Catholics who attended mass--took place in 1844, and in 1866 the
Parliamentary Oath was amended and made unobjectionable to Roman Catholics.
A Roman Catholic is still excluded by law from the Crown, the Lord
Chancellorship, and the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland, but many Roman
Catholics are members of Parliament--members of all parties--and the late
Lord Ripon, a Catholic, sat in a Liberal Cabinet.
In 1846 Rothschild was elected as a Liberal M.P. for the City of London,
but the law did not permit him to take his seat. Then for some years Jewish
M.P.'s were allowed to take part in debates and sit on committees, but were
not allowed to vote. Finally, in 1858, the Lords, after rejecting the
measure for ten years, passed the Jews' Disabilities Bill, which removed
all restriction. The Right Hon. Herbert Samuel, M.P., is the first Jew to
sit in the Cabinet, for though Disraeli was of the Jewish race, he was a
Christian in belief.
Although in 1800 various Acts on the Statute Book required Nonconformists
to subscribe to the religion of the Church of England before taking part in
municipal affairs, these Acts had long been a dead letter. All that was
done in the nineteenth century was to repeal these Acts, and to throw open
the universities and public offices to Nonconformists. It is only, however,
in recent years that Nonconformists have filled posts of high importance in
the Cabinet.
The last attempt at restriction on the religious beliefs of members of
Parliament was made in the House of Commons itself, when Charles Bradlaugh,
after being duly elected M.P. for Northampton, was by the action of the
House excluded from his seat. Bradlaugh was a frank disbeliever in
Christianity, and the House of Commons refused to allow him either to take
the oath or make an affirmation. For five years (1880-5) the struggle
lasted--a Liberal Government being in power all the time--and three times
during that period the electors of Northampton triumphantly returned
Charles Bradlaugh as their member, only to be answered by resolutions of
refusal and expulsion passed by the House of Commons against their
representative. It was a repetition of the battle Wilkes had fought one
hundred and twenty years earlier, and it ended in the same way. A new
Parliament assembled in January, 1886 (after a general election in
November), the new Speaker (Mr. Peel) permitted Bradlaugh to take the oath
in the usual way, declined to allow any interference, and the battle was
over. Two years later a general Affirmation Bill was carried on the motion
of Bradlaugh, and became law. When Charles Bradlaugh lay dying in January,
1891, the House of Commons passed, without dissent, a resolution expunging
from the journals of the House the old resolutions of exclusion.
THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMEN
The nineteenth century then will always be noted as the era of steady
advance towards democracy, especially in England. Enfranchisement of the
workman, and his representation in Parliament, have transferred the
government of the country from an aristocracy to the middle class and the
working class, for to-day, alike in Parliament and in the permanent Civil
Service, men of the middle class predominate, assisted by those who served
apprenticeship in mine or workshop. The removal of religious disabilities
has ended the old rule that confined the business of the legislature and
the administration of justice to members of the Established Church of
England, and Roman Catholics, Jews, Nonconformists, and Freethinkers now
take their share in all public work.
One disability only remains--the sex disability that denies the
parliamentary franchise to women. In the middle ages women were excused
from parliamentary attendance, but there was no notion that their powers
and privileges as landowners were shortened because, on account of their
sex, they were granted exemption from Parliament and from juries. In 1868 a
test case--Chorlton _v._ Lings--was brought, and the judges decided that
women householders were not to be registered as electors, and it was left
to Parliament to pass a Women's Enfranchisement Bill. From the time of John
Stuart Mill's advocacy in 1867 there have always been supporters of Women's
Suffrage in the House of Commons, and in the last five years these
supporters have been growing in numbers. Only the refusal of the Government
to give time for the discussion of the Bill in Committee has prevented a
Woman's Enfranchisement measure, which on several occasions has received a
second reading, from passing the House of Commons; and the announcement by
the present (1911) Government that full facilities for such discussion are
to be granted next year (1912) would indicate that the removal of political
sex disabilities is close at hand. Women are not asking for adult suffrage,
but are willing to receive enfranchisement on the terms that qualify men as
electors, and the Conciliation Bill, as it is called--because members of
every political party have agreed to make it their Bill--would place on the
roll of electors rather more than a million of women voters.
Meantime, while waiting for the removal of the anti-democratic barrier that
excludes them from full political citizenship, women are admitted in the
United Kingdom to an equal share with men in all local government. Since
1869 women who are householders have enjoyed the municipal franchise, and
as Poor Law guardians and members of school boards, they have been freely
elected to sit side by side with men. In 1907 women were declared eligible
by Parliament for membership on county and borough councils, and for the
chairmanship of county councils and the mayoralty of boroughs. Since this
Act was passed we have seen women elected to the councils of great
cities--Manchester and Liverpool, for instance--and chosen as mayors in
several towns. No political movement in recent years has been of greater
public interest or importance than the agitation for "Votes for Women." The
demand for enfranchisement is based on the old constitutional ground of the
Parliamentarians of the seventeenth century--that those who are directly
taxed by Government must have some political control of the public
expenditure--and it is supported by the present leader of the Conservative
Party[86] on the ground that government can only be carried on in England
by consent of the governed.
The demand for the parliamentary franchise is with us the expression of
that deep dissatisfaction at the unequal relations of the sexes that is
felt by many men, and by far more women, all over the civilised world. As
the middle-class man and the workmen of Great Britain were sure that they
could not get from Parliament an understanding of popular grievances, still
less fair treatment, until they possessed the right to choose their own
parliamentary representatives, so women are convinced that there can be no
adequate adjustment of these unequal relations until they too enjoy the
same privilege of citizenship; for enfranchisement and representation are
the two chosen instruments of democratic government in our day.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VIII
DEMOCRACY AT WORK
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
To-day in Great Britain, in America, in the self-governing colonies, and in
many European countries, we can sec the principles of democracy in working
order.
The whole system of local government in Great Britain and Ireland is
essentially democratic. The municipal councils of all the large cities are
elected on household suffrage, and have enormous powers. There is now no
sex disability to prevent the election of women to these bodies, and,
except in the case of the clergy of the Established Church, who are
disqualified from sitting on town councils (but not on county or district
councils), all ratepayers are eligible for nomination. The result is that
on nearly every city council, and on a great number of county councils,
London borough councils, urban and rural district councils, boards of
guardians, and parish councils, there are working-class representatives,
while women members have been elected to the great councils of Liverpool
and Manchester, and sit on many boards of guardians and parish councils.
All these councils are of recent creation. The Municipal Corporations Act
of 1835 placed the election of town councils for the first time in the
hands of the ratepayers, but the real reform of local government dates from
1888. In that year the Conservative Government established county and
district councils and Lord Rosebery became the first chairman of the London
County Council. Six years later the Liberals set up parish councils in the
rural districts, with parish meetings where the population did not exceed
three hundred. In 1899 the Conservatives displaced the old London vestries
by borough councils, and in 1902-3 abolished in England the school boards
created in 1870, and made the county council the local authority for public
elementary education. Scotland was allowed to retain its school boards, and
strong but unsuccessful opposition was made in London and the chief cities
to the suppression of the specially elected education authority.
[Illustration: THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.
_Photo: Moyse, Putney._]
As far as rural England is concerned, county councils, district councils,
and parish councils are, generally speaking, very reluctant to put into
operation the wide powers they possess. The average county council, though
popularly elected, is composed in agricultural England of landowners and
the bigger farmers, who, as a common rule, do not favour a land programme
for labourers, and are anxious to keep down the rates. The rural district
council and board of guardians are equally averse from any display of
public enterprise, and the parish council, which often consists mainly of
labourers, rarely accomplishes anything except at the prompting, or with
the sanction, of the parochial landowner. The result is that allotments,
rural housing, village baths and washhouses, an adequate water supply,
public halls and libraries, are not regarded as the concern of rural
elected authorities, but are left to the private enterprise of landowners.
Civic pride, which glories in the public proprietorship of lands and
libraries, tramways and lodging-houses, waterworks and workmen's dwellings,
art galleries and swimming baths, and is a living influence in the
municipalities of, let us say, London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford,
Manchester, Birmingham, West Ham, and many a smaller borough, does not
exist in rural councils. To the farmer and the peasant public ownership is
a new and alien thing. The common lands and all the old village communal
life have gone out of the memory of rural England; but the feudal tradition
that the landowner is the real centre of authority has survived, and it is
the benevolent landowner who is expected to build cottages, grant
allotments, and see to the water supply, as fifty years ago he built and
managed the village school. Political organisation could break through this
tradition, but farmers and agricultural labourers are without this
organisation; and so the authority of the landowner remains, in spite of
the democratic constitution of local government. The people can allow their
power to remain in the hands of others, just as a king can be content to
reign without ruling, and the local government of rural England is an
oligarchy elected by a popular franchise.
In the factory towns and the mining districts it is a very different
matter. Here the people are organised, and take their share in local
government. In the county of Durham, for instance, the working class
predominates on local councils, and the influence of trade unions prevails
in these assemblies wherever a strong Labour party exists. Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain began his public career on the Birmingham Town Council, and his
municipal services earned for him the enthusiastic support of Birmingham
for all his later political ventures. It would be difficult to mention the
name of a great statesman who laid the foundations of his fame in rural
local government.
As in local government, so in the Imperial Parliament. Rural England sends
no Labour member to the House of Commons. Only in very exceptional cases
has a tenant farmer been elected. It is the social labour of the mine and
the mill that has produced the Labour member of Parliament.
Mr. Joseph Arch made a valiant attempt to organise the agricultural
labourers of England, and from 1880 to 1890 a rural labourers' union, with
some thousands of members, was in existence. For a time this secured a rise
in wages, and when Mr. Arch was in Parliament, as a Liberal M.P.
(1885-1895), the rural labourer hoped for lasting improvement in the
conditions of life. But the Union fell to pieces, and Mr. Arch was not
strong enough single-handed to force the claims of his constituents on the
House of Commons.
THE WORKMAN IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
To-day there are more than forty workmen in the House of Commons, and the
great majority of these have served an apprenticeship in municipal and
trade union offices. Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire,
Stafford, South Wales, Glasgow, Dundee, Leicester, Norwich and London, all
have their elected Labour members in Parliament, and a marked preference is
shown for the man who has proved his honesty and capacity in the
municipality, or as the leader of his trade union. All the miners'
representatives are tried and experienced men. Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P., was
for ten years the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers. Mr. Clynes, M.P., was elected to the office of district
secretary of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union twenty years
ago; Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been general secretary of the same union
since 1889, and has sat on the West Ham Corporation for more than sixteen
years. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., are well known
for their work on the London County Council and on their local borough
council and board of guardians. Similarly with other Labour members of
Parliament. Their lives are marked by a sense of public responsibility,
with the result that in the House of Commons they are grave, business-like,
and undemonstrative. The Labour members do not make "scenes"; they respect
the rules of the House and the dignity of the National Assembly, partly
because they are all in sober middle age, but more because they have learnt
that public business can only be carried on by due observance of order; and
they are in Parliament to get business done for their constituents, to
promote legislation that will make life easier for the working class. When
Mr. Victor Grayson, in the exuberance of youth, and with a passion that
blazed out against the misery of the poor, made a "scene" in the House of
Commons, and was expelled, the Labour members were quite sincere in their
disapproval. They understood, with a wider knowledge than Mr. Grayson
possessed, that "scenes" alienated sympathy in the House, were not helpful
in debate, and were not popular with the electors.
The member who would succeed in the House of Commons must respect the
usages of the House, and show himself loyal to its laws of debate. As long
as this respect and loyalty are shown the Labour member is accepted by his
fellow-members as one who has been elected to the greatest club in the
world, and is justly entitled to all the privileges of membership. For the
British House of Commons is a democratic assembly, and in its collective
pride it cares nothing for the opinions or social rank of its members. All
it asks is that the newly-elected member should be alive to the honour of
membership, should be modest in his bearing, and should as soon as possible
"catch the tone of the House." He may be a labourer, or the son of a belted
earl; the House is indifferent so long as his parliamentary manners are
good.
The House of Commons is a far more orderly assembly than it was a hundred
years ago; it is more sober and less noisy, and the arrival of Labour
members has increased rather than diminished its good behaviour. It is also
a far more industrious assembly, and the influence of the Labour party
compels an amount of legislation that honourable members would have thought
impossible fifty years ago.
WORKING-CLASS LEADERS IN PARLIAMENT
Three representative working-class leaders in the House of Commons stand
out pre-eminently in contemporary politics--the Right Hon. John Burns, Mr.
J. Keir Hardie, and Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald. The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George
is conspicuous rather as the representative of the industrious
Nonconformist middle class, but the success of his career is no less
significant of the advance of democracy. The very Cabinet is now no longer
an aristocratic committee, and the highest offices of executive government
are held by men who are neither wealthy nor of distinguished family.
Two working-class leaders of an earlier generation--the Right Hon. T. Burt,
M.P., and Mr. H. Broadhurst--held office as Under-Secretaries in the
Liberal Government of 1892-5; but Mr. John Burns is the first trade
unionist to sit in the Cabinet. He, too, might have been an Under-Secretary
in the days of that short-lived Ministry, but decided, with characteristic
vigour, that if he was fit to be an Under-Secretary he was fit for the
Cabinet. At the close of 1905 the opportunity came, and the offer of Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman to preside over the Local Government Board was promptly
accepted. The workman first took his place in the Cabinet when Mr. John
Burns, at the age of forty-seven, went to the Local Government Board--to
the complete satisfaction of Mr. Burns. For the robust egoism of Mr. Burns
is largely a class pride. His invincible belief in himself is part of an
equally invincible belief in the working class. His ambitions thrive on the
conviction that whatever Mr. John Burns does, that the working class does
in the person of their representative. Always does he identify himself with
the mechanics and labourers with whom his earlier years were spent, and by
whose support he has risen to office. The more honours for Mr. John Burns,
the more does it seem to this stalwart optimist that the working class is
honoured. He arrays himself in court dress at the palaces of kings,
receives honorary degrees at Universities, and is kept before the public by
the newspaper paragraphist, without wincing or pretending to dislike it.
Why should the workman not be esteemed by kings and universities? Mr. Burns
asks. So great is his self-respect that the respect of others is taken as a
matter of course. Much of the criticism that has been directed against Mr.
John Burns misses the mark, because it does not recognise that the motive
power at work all the time in his career is the triumph of his class. It is
the triumph of a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, of a
London workman, that Mr. John Burns beholds with unconcealed pleasure in
his own success.
There are drawbacks, of course, to this complete self-satisfaction. Since
the workman has triumphed in the person of Mr. John Burns, the working
class would do well to follow his example, and heed his advice on all
matters affecting its welfare, Mr. Burns argues. The failures of
working-class life and the misery of the poor are due to the lack of those
virtues that he possesses, he is apt to maintain. Hence Mr. Burns is hated
as a Pharisee in certain quarters when he extols self-reliance and total
abstinence as essential to working-class prosperity, and points to gambling
and strong drink as the root of all evil in the State. It is sometimes
urged that Mr. Burns over-praises his own merits; but the fault is really
in the opposite direction; he does not appreciate sufficiently that the
gifts he possesses--the gifts he has used so fully and so freely--are
exceptional. These gifts are a powerful physique, a great voice, a
tremendous energy, and a love of literature; and they are not the common
equipment of the skilled mechanic and the labourer. True, they are often
wasted and destroyed when they do exist; and in the case of Mr. Burns a
strongly disciplined will has made them abundantly fruitful. But from the
first the physique, the voice, and the untiring energy were far above those
that fall to the lot of the average workman; and the love of books stored
the mind with rich supplies of language to be drawn upon when speeches were
to be made. Not as an administrator at the Local Government Board has Mr.
Burns become famous. His fame as a champion of the working class was
established by popular ovations in Hyde Park and at dock gates. Battersea
has been won and held by the speeches of its member. It is not the mighty
voice alone, silencing interruption often enough by sheer volume of sound,
but the plainly pointed epigram, the ready jest and the quick repartee that
endear Mr. John Burns' speeches to the multitude. His sayings and phrases
are quoted. His wit is the wit of the Londoner--the wit that Dickens knew
and studied, the wit of the older cabmen and 'bus drivers, the wit of the
street boy. It is racy, it is understood, and the illustrations are always
concrete and massive, never vague or unsubstantial. Apt Shakespearian
quotations, familiar and unfamiliar, embellish the speeches. Personality,
vital personality, counts for so much in the orator of the market place.
The speaker must be alive to his audience, he must convince by his presence
no less than by his arguments. And Mr. Burns is so obviously alive. He
warms the shrunken, anæmic vitality of followers, and overpowers the
protests of enemies by sheer force of character.
Mr. John Burns is at his real vocation when addressing a great multitude.
His energy finds an outlet in speech on those occasions, an outlet it can
never find in the necessary routine of office administration. He was made
for a life of action, and when once, in youth, he had thrown himself into
the active study of political and industrial questions, every opportunity
was seized for stating the results of that study. As a Social Democratic
candidate for Parliament, Mr. Burns polled 598 votes at West Nottingham in
1885. In 1886 he was charged (with Messrs. Hyndman, Champion, and Williams)
with seditious conspiracy--after an unemployed riot in the West End--and
acquitted. In 1887 he suffered six weeks imprisonment (with Mr. R.B.
Cunninghame Graham) for contesting the right of free speech in Trafalgar
Square. In 1889 came the great London dock strike, and, with Messrs. Mann
and Tillett, Mr. Burns was a chief leader of the dockers. Battersea
returned him to the London County Council in 1889 and to the House of
Commons in 1892. The Liberal Party promised a wider sphere of work than the
Socialists could offer; political isolation was a barren business; and Mr.
Burns gradually passed from the councils of the trade union movement to the
Treasury Bench of a Liberal Ministry. But the Socialist convictions of
early manhood had a lasting influence on their owner. These convictions
have been mellowed by work; responsibility has checked and placed under
subjection the old revolutionary ardour; experience finds the road to a
co-operative commonwealth by no means a quick or easy route, and admits the
necessity of compromise. But there is still a consciousness of the working
class as a class in the speeches of Mr. Burns; and there is still the
belief expressed that the working class must work out their own salvation,
and that it is better the people should have the power to manage their own
national and municipal affairs, and the wisdom to use that power aright,
rather than that a benevolent bureaucracy should manage things for them.
Mr. John Burns is an older man by twenty-five years than he was in the
stormy days of the Trafalgar Square riots, and he is now a Privy Councillor
and Cabinet Minister, but his character is little changed. His speeches on
the settlement of the great Dock Strike of August, 1911, are the speeches
of the man of 1889. Parliamentary life made sharper changes in the minds of
Gladstone and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain than it has made in the mind of the
Right Hon. John Burns. But Mr. Burns never admits that he possesses health
and vigour beyond the average.
A working class leader of vastly different qualities is Mr. J. Keir Hardie,
M.P. He, too, no less significant of democracy, stands as the
representative of his class, claims always to be identified with it, to be
accepted as its spokesman. A Lanarkshire miner and active trade unionist,
Mr. Hardie has striven to create a working-class party in politics
independent of Liberals and Conservatives; to him, more than to any other
man, the existence of the Independent Labour Party and the Parliamentary
Labour Party--the latter consisting of the Independent Labour Party and the
trade unions--may justly be said to be due. The political independence of
an organised working class has been the one great idea of Mr. Hardie's
public life. Not by any means his only idea, for Mr. Hardie has been the
ever-ready supporter of all democratic causes and the faithful advocate of
social reforms; but the _great_ idea, the political pearl of great price,
for which, if necessary, all else must be sacrificed. Only by this
independence can democracy be achieved, and a more equal state of society
be accomplished--so Mr. Hardie has preached to the working people for the
last twenty-five years at public meetings and trade union congresses,
travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain in his mission.
There is something of the poet in Mr. Keir Hardie but much more of the
prophet, and withal a good deal of shrewd political common sense. Where Mr.
John Burns wants, humanly, the approval and goodwill of his friends and
neighbours for his work, Mr. Keir Hardie is content with the assurance of
his own conscience; and in times of difficulty he chooses rather to walk
alone, communing with his own heart, than to seek the consolations of
social intercourse.
Mr. Burns is a citizen of London, a lover of its streets, at home in all
its noise, a reveller in its festivities. Mr. Hardie belongs to his native
land; he is happier on the hills of Lanarkshire than in the Parliament of
Westminster; solitude has no terrors for him. Both men entered the House in
1892. Personal integrity, blameless private life, and a doggedness that
will not acknowledge defeat, have had much to do with the success that both
have won. For if Mr. Hardie remains a private member of the House of
Commons while Mr. Burns is a Cabinet Minister, Mr. Hardie has lived to see
an independent Labour Party of forty members in Parliament, and has himself
been its accredited leader.
Again, exceptional gifts may be noted. An eloquence of speech, a rugged
sincerity that carries conviction, a love of nature and of literature--all
these things, controlled and tempered by will and refined by use, have won
for Mr. Hardie a high regard and an affection for the cause he champions.
For years Mr. Hardie was misrepresented in the Press, abused by political
opponents and misunderstood by many of the working class. From 1895 to 1900
he was out of Parliament, rejected by the working-class electorate of South
West Ham. But nothing turned Mr. Hardie from his policy of independence, or
shook his faith in the belief that only by forming a political party of
their own could the working people establish a social democracy. Merthyr
Tydvil re-elected him to the House of Commons in 1900 at the very time when
he was braving a strong public opinion by denouncing the South African War;
and for Merthyr Mr. Hardie will sit as long as he is in Parliament.
It may safely be said that Mr. Hardie will never take office in a Liberal
Ministry. The sturdy republicanism that keeps him from court functions and
from the dinner parties of the rich and the great, and the strong
conviction that Labour members do well to retain simple habits of life, are
not qualities that impel men to join Governments.
Visionary as he is--and no less a visionary because he has seen some
fulfilment of his hopes--so indifferent to public opinion that many have
exclaimed at his indiscretions, with a religious temperament that makes him
treat his political work as a solemn calling of God and gives prophetic
fire to his public utterances, Mr. Keir Hardie may remain a private member
of Parliament; but he also remains an outstanding figure in democratic
politics, conspicuous in an age that has seen the working class rising
cautiously to power. Mr. Hardie's influence with the politically minded of
the working class has contributed in no small degree to the changes that
are now at work. The ideal of a working class, educated and organised,
taking up the reins of government and using its power in sober
righteousness, has been preached by Mr. Hardie with a fervour that commands
respect. He has made an appeal that has moved the hearts of men and women
by its religious note, and hence it is very considerably from the ranks of
Nonconformists with Puritan traditions that the Independent Labour Party
has been recruited. Mr. Hardie is now fifty-five years of age. He has never
been afraid of making mistakes, and he has never sought the applause of
men. He has succeeded in arousing large numbers of people from a passive
allegiance to the party governments of Liberals and Conservatives, and
constrained them to march under a Labour banner at political contests.
Whether the Labour Party in Parliament will remain a separate organisation
or will steadily become merged in the Liberal Party, forming perhaps a
definite left wing of that party: whether a sufficiently large number of
voters will ever be found to make the Labour Party anything more than a
group in Parliament: and whether the Independent Labour movement is not
passing as Robert Owen's socialist movement and as the Chartist movement
passed away in the middle of the nineteenth century, are questions that are
yet to be answered. Democracy will go its own way in spite of the prophets.
In any case, the work of Mr. Keir Hardie has been fruitful and valuable.
For it has made for a quickened intelligence, and a more exalted view of
human life amongst the working people; and it has increased the sense of
personal and civic responsibility. It has made for civilisation, in fact,
and it has insisted on the importance of things that democracy can only
forget to its own destruction.
The third distinguished working-class leader in Parliament is Mr. J. Ramsay
MacDonald, the elected leader of the Labour Party, and its secretary since
its formation. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is for the working class, but, though
born of labouring people, and educated in a Scotch board school, has long
ceased to be of them. Never a workman, and never associated with the
workman's trade union, Mr. MacDonald went from school teaching to
journalism and to a political private secretaryship, and so settled down
quickly into the habits and customs of the ruling middle class. Marriage
united him still more closely with the middle class, and strengthened his
position by removing all fear of poverty, and providing opportunities for
travel.
From the first Mr. MacDonald's political life has been directed clearly to
one end--the assumption of power to be used for the social improvement of
the people. And this ambition has carried him far, and may carry him
farther. With the industry and persistence that are common to his race, Mr.
MacDonald has taken every means available to educate himself on all
political questions; with the result that he is accepted to-day as one of
the best informed members of the House of Commons. He taught himself to
speak, and his speeches are appreciated. He taught himself to write, and
his articles on political questions have long been welcome in the monthly
reviews, and his books on Socialism are widely read. Twenty years ago the
Liberal Party promised no political career to earnest men like Mr.
MacDonald, men anxious for social reform. The future seemed to be with the
Socialists, and with the Independent Labour Party. When the Liberal
downfall came in 1895, it was thought that the fortunes of Liberalism were
ended. Native prudence has restrained Mr. Ramsay MacDonald from pioneering,
but once the Independent Labour Party, of Mr. Keir Hardie's desire, was set
going, and promised an effectual means for political work, Mr. MacDonald
joined it, and did well to do so. As an ordinary Liberal or Radical Member
of Parliament, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald would never have had the opportunities
the Labour Party has given him. He only entered the House of Commons in
1906--at the age of forty--and already as leader of the Labour Party he is
a distinguished Parliamentary figure, of whose future great things are
foretold.
Mr. MacDonald has studied politics as other people study art or science. He
has trained himself to become a statesman as men and women train themselves
to become painters and musicians. He has learnt the rules of the game,
marked the way of failure and the road to success, and his career may be
pondered as an example to the young. No generous outburst of wrath
disfigures Mr. MacDonald's speeches, no rash utterance is ever to be
apologised for, no hasty impulse to be regretted. In the Labour movement
Mr. MacDonald won success over older men by an indefatigable industry, a
marked aptitude for politics, and by an obvious prosperity. Other things
being equal, it is inevitable that in politics, as in commerce, the needy,
impecunious man will be rejected in favour of the man with an assured
balance at the bank, and the man of regular habits preferred before a
gifted but uncertain genius. The Socialist and Labour movements of our time
have claimed the services of many gifted men and women, and the annals of
these movements are full of heroic self-sacrifice. But an aptitude for
politics was not a distinguishing mark of Socialists, and therefore Mr.
MacDonald's experience and abilities gave him at once a prominent place in
the council of the Independent Labour Party, and soon made him the
controlling power in that organisation. With the formation of the National
Labour Party a very much wider realm was to be conquered, and Mr. MacDonald
has been as successful here as in the earlier Independent Labour Party. But
now the Labour Party having made Mr. MacDonald its chairman, it can do no
more for him. He is but forty-five years old, his health is good, his
talents are recognised; by his aversion from everything eccentric or
explosive, the public have understood that he is trustworthy. We may expect
to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour
Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a
Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity
for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to
extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to
exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist
principles does not require any violent disturbance of the existing order,
and is compatible with social respectability and political authority. A
public opinion that would revolt against the notion of an ex-workman
becoming Prime Minister would not be outraged in any way by Mr. MacDonald
holding that office. Mr. Burns and Mr. Hardie have remained in their own
and in the public eye representatives of the working class, all education
notwithstanding. Mr. MacDonald has long cut himself off from the labouring
class of his boyhood. He has adapted himself easily and naturally to the
life and manners of the wealthier professional classes, and he moves
without constraint in the social world of high politics, as one born to the
business. No recognition of the workman is possible in Mr. Ramsay
MacDonald's case, and this fact is greatly in his favour with the
multitudes who still hold that England should be ruled by "gentlemen."
The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George is a striking figure in our new democracy,
and his character and position are to be noted. It was not as a labour
representative but as the chosen mouthpiece of the working middle class,
enthusiastic for Welsh nationalism, that Mr. Lloyd George entered
Parliament in 1890, at the age of twenty-seven. With his entry into the
Cabinet, in company with Mr. John Burns, at the Liberal revival in 1905,
government by aristocracy was ended; and when Mr. Lloyd George went from
the Board of Trade to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, startling
changes were predicted in national finance. These predictions were held to
have been fulfilled in the Budget of 1909. The House of Lords considered
the financial proposals of the Budget so revolutionary that it took the
unprecedented course of rejecting the Bill, and thus precipitated the
dispute between the two Houses of Parliament, which was brought to a
satisfactory end by the Parliament Act of 1911. Romantic and idealist from
the first, and with unconcealed ambition and considerable courage, Mr.
Lloyd George, with the strong backing of his Welsh compatriots, fought his
way into the front rank of the Liberal Party during the ten years
(1895-1905) of opposition. More than once Mr. George pitted himself against
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in the days of the Conservative ascendancy and the
South African War, and his powers as a Parliamentary debater won general
acknowledgment. In youth Mr. Lloyd George, full of the fervour of Mazzini's
democratic teaching, dreamed of Wales as a nation, a republic, with
himself, perhaps, as its first president. Welsh nationalism could not breed
a Home Rule Party as Irish nationalism has done, and Mr. Lloyd George has
found greater scope for his talents in the Liberal Party. The Welsh
"question" has dwindled into a campaign for the Disestablishment of the
Church in Wales, a warfare of Dissenters and Churchmen, and to Mr. Lloyd
George there were bigger issues at stake than the position of the Welsh
Church.
[Illustration: THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.
_Photo: Reginald Haines, Southampton Row, W.C._]
Already Mr. Lloyd George's Budget and his speeches in support of the Budget
have made the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer familiar to the
people of Great Britain; and now, in the eager discussion on his Bill for
National Insurance, that name is still more loudly spoken. Hated by
opponents and praised by admirers, denounced and extolled, Mr. Lloyd George
enjoys the tumult he arouses. His passionate speeches for the poor provoke
the sympathy of the working class; his denunciations of the rich stir the
anger of all who fear social revolution. Hostile critics deny any
constructive statesmanship in Mr. Lloyd George's plans and orations, and
prophesy a short-lived tenure of office. Radical supporters hail him as a
saviour of society, and are confident that under his leadership democracy
will enter the promised land of peace and prosperity for all. Neutral minds
doubt whether Mr. Lloyd George is sufficiently well-balanced for the
responsibilities of high office, and express misgivings lest the era of
social reform be inaugurated too rapidly. The obvious danger of a fall
always confronts ambition in politics, but the danger is only obvious to
the onlooker. Pressing forward the legislative measures he has set his
heart upon, and impatient to carry out the policy that seems to him of
first importance to the State, Mr. Lloyd George pays little heed to the
criticism of friends or foes. A supreme self-confidence carries him along,
and the spur of ambition is constantly pricking. Political co-operation is
difficult for such a man, and an indifference to reforms that are not of
his initiation, and a willingness to wreck legislation that cannot bear his
name, are a weakness in Mr. Lloyd George that may easily produce a fall.
Only a very strong man can afford to say that a reform shall be carried in
his way, or not at all, in cheerful disregard of the wishes of colleagues
and followers. Mr. Lloyd George's attitude on the question of Women's
Suffrage is characteristic. Professing a strong belief in the justice of
women's enfranchisement, he assumes that he can safely oppose all Women's
Suffrage Bills that are not of his framing, even when these Bills are the
work of ardent Liberals. He would have the measure postponed until he
himself can bring in a Reform Bill, to the end that the enfranchisement of
women may be associated with his name for all time.
It is dangerous to the statesman, the ambition that finds satisfaction less
in the success of a party or the triumph of a cause, than in the personal
victory. Dangerous, because it brings with it an isolation from friends and
colleagues. These come to stand coldly aloof, and then, if a slip occurs or
a mistake is made, and there comes a fall, no hands are stretched out to
repair the damage or restore the fallen. The statesman who is suspected of
"playing for his own hand" may laugh at the murmurs of discontent amongst
his followers while all goes well for him, but when he falls he falls
beyond recovery. No one can foretell the end of Mr. Lloyd George's career,
but his popularity with the multitude will not make up to him for the want
of support in Parliament should an error of judgment undo him. The pages of
political history are strewn with the stories of high careers wrecked in a
feverish haste for fame, that overlooked dangers close at hand; of eminent
politicians broken in the full course of active life by the mere
forgetfulness of the existence of other persons. A simple miscalculation of
forces, and from lofty station a minister tumbles into the void.
The stability of the working-class leaders makes their future a matter of
fairly safe conjecture. Mr. Lloyd George, romantic in temperament, covetous
of honour, confident of popularity, but heedless of good-will alienated and
of positive ill-will created, has reached the Chancellorship of the
Exchequer. Will he climb still higher in office, or will he pass to the
limbo peopled by those who were and are not? Time alone can tell. But in
this year of grace 1911 Mr. Lloyd George, incarnation of the hard-working
middle class, is a very distinct personality in the government of the
country, and his presence in the Cabinet a fact in the history of
democracy.
THE PRESENT POSITION OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS
More than once since 1831 the House of Lords has come into conflict with
the House of Commons when a Liberal Government has been in power. A
compromise was effected between the two Houses over the Disestablishment of
the Irish Church in 1869, the Lords, on the whole, giving way. When the
Lords proposed to "amend" the Army Reform Bill (for abolishing the purchase
of commissions) in 1871, Gladstone overpowered their opposition by advising
the Crown to cancel the Royal Warrant which made purchase legal, and to
issue a new warrant ending the sale of commissions. This device completely
worsted the House of Lords, for a refusal to pass the Bill under the
circumstances merely deprived the holders of commissions of the
compensation awarded in the Bill. The Army Reform Bill became law, but
strong objection was taken by many Liberals to the sudden exercise of the
Royal Prerogative. In 1884 the Lords refused to pass the Bill for the
enfranchisement of the rural labourer unless a Bill was brought in at the
same time for a redistribution of seats. After some discussion Gladstone
yielded, the Redistribution Bill was drawn up, and passed the Commons
simultaneously with the Franchise Bill in the Lords.
Several Bills have been rejected or "amended" by the Lords since the
Liberals came into power in 1906, and the crisis came when the Budget was
rejected in 1909. In June, 1907, the following resolution was passed by the
House of Commons by 432 to 147 votes: "That in order to give effect to the
will of the people, as expressed by their elected representatives, it is
necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed
by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the
limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall
prevail." This resolution was embodied in the Parliament Bill of 1911.
Between 1907 and 1911 came (1) the rejection of the Budget, November, 1909;
(2) the General Election of January, 1910, and the return of a majority of
124 (Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist) in support of the Government;
(3) the passing of resolutions (majority, 105) for limiting the Veto of the
Lords; (4) the failure of a joint Conference between leading Liberals and
Conservatives on the Veto question, followed by (5) the General Election of
December, 1910, and the return of the Liberals with a united majority of
126.
The Parliament Bill declared that every Money Bill sent up by the Commons,
if not passed unamended by the Lords within a month, should receive the
Royal assent and become an Act of Parliament notwithstanding, and that
every Bill sent up for three successive sessions shall in the third session
become an Act of Parliament without the assent of the Lords.
The Lords passed this Bill with amendments which the Commons refused to
accept, and the Parliament Bill was returned to the Lords in August. But,
as in 1832, the Prime Minister announced that he had received guarantees
from the Crown that peers should be created to secure the passage of the
Bill if it was again rejected; and to avoid the making of some three or
four hundred Liberal peers, Lord Lansdowne--following the example of the
Duke of Wellington--advised the Conservatives in the House of Lords to
refrain from opposition. The result of this abstention was that the Lords'
amendments were not persisted in, and the Bill passed the Lords on August
10th, 1911, by 131 to 114 votes.
By this Parliament Act the Lords' veto is now strictly limited. The Lords
may reject a Bill for two sessions, but if the Commons persist, then the
Bill passes into law, whether the Lords approve or disapprove.
The real grievance against the House of Lords, from the democratic
standpoint, has been that its veto was only used when a Liberal government
was in power. There is not even a pretence by the Upper House of revising
the measures sent from the Commons by a Conservative ministry; yet over and
over again, and especially in the last five years, Liberal measures have
been rejected, or "amended" against the will of the Commons, by the Lords
after the electors have returned the Liberals to power. The permanent and
overwhelming Conservative majority in the Lords acts on the assumption that
a Liberal ministry does not represent the will of the people, an assumption
at variance with the present theory of democratic government, and in
contradiction to the constitutional practice of the Crown. The great size
of the House of Lords makes the difficulty of dealing with this majority so
acute. In 1831 the creation of forty peerages would have been sufficient to
meet the Tory opposition to the Reform Bill; to-day it is said that about
four hundred are required to give the Liberals a working majority in the
Lords. The rapid making of peers began under George III., but from 1830 to
the present day Prime Minister after Prime Minister has added to the
membership of the House of Lords with generous hand. Satire, savage and
contemptuous, has been directed against the new peers by critics of various
opinions, but still the work of adding to the House of hereditary
legislators goes gaily on, and Liberal Prime Ministers have been as active
as their Tory opponents in adding to the permanent Conservative majority in
the Lords; for only a small minority of Liberal peers retain their
allegiance to the Liberal Party.
Thackeray gave us his view of the making of peers in the years when Lord
Melbourne and his Whig successors were steadily adding to the Upper House.
(Between 1835 and 1841 Melbourne made forty-four new peers, and
twenty-eight more were added by 1856.)
"A man becomes enormously rich, or he jobs successfully in the aid of a
Minister, or he wins a great battle, or executes a treaty, or is a clever
lawyer who makes a multitude of fees and ascends the bench; and the country
rewards him for ever with a gold coronet (with more or less balls or
leaves) and a title, and a rank as legislator. 'Your merits are so great,'
says the nation, 'that your children shall be allowed to reign over us, in
a manner. It does not in the least matter that your eldest son is a fool;
we think your services so remarkable that he shall have the reversion of
your honours when death vacates your noble shoes.'"
J.H. Bernard, in his "Theory of the Constitution" (1835), was no less
emphatic:--
"As the affair is managed now, the peerage, though sometimes bestowed as
the reward of merit, on men who have adorned particular professions, is yet
much more frequently--nine times out of ten--employed by the minister of
the day as his instrument to serve particular views of public policy; and
is often given to actual demerit--to men who hire themselves out to do his
commands through thick and thin. The peerage is now full of persons who
have obtained possession of it by disreputable means."
But in spite of satire and hostile criticism members of the House of Lords
have always enjoyed a considerable social popularity. They are widely
esteemed for their titles, even by those who denounce hereditary
legislators and desire to abolish the Second Chamber.
Disraeli created six new peers in 1867-8, and seventeen more from 1875 to
1880, in addition to conferring the earldom of Beaconsfield on himself. Yet
Disraeli had written in "Coningsby" (1844):--
"We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church,
the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts, and the
borough-mongering of our own times. Those are the three main sources of the
existing peerage of England, and, in my opinion, disgraceful ones."
Gladstone made fifty peers in his four premierships, and Mr. Herbert Paul,
the Liberal historian of "Modern England," makes the following comments:--
"No minister since Pitt had done so much as Mr. Gladstone to enlarge and
thereby to strengthen the House of Lords.
"Mr. Gladstone was lavish in his distribution of peerages, and rich men who
were politically active, either in the House of Commons or behind the
scenes, might hope to be rewarded with safe seats elsewhere."
[Illustration: THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
_From the Drawing by S. Begg._]
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman exceeded all previous records of the last
century by making twenty new peers in less than two years--1905 to
1907--and Mr. Asquith maintained this vigorous policy by thirteen new
creations in the first year of his premiership. Already many of these
peers, whose titles are not more than six years old, vote with the
Conservatives. Great Britain is now the only country in the world that
combines a democratic form of government with a second chamber of
hereditary legislators, and many proposals are on foot for the reform of
the House of Lords. While the Conservatives are more anxious to change the
constitution of the Upper House, and to make it a stronger and more
representative assembly, the Liberals prefer that its power of veto should
be abolished. No Act of Parliament was required to abolish the veto of the
Crown on Acts of Parliament, but the growth of a democratic public opinion
did not prove strong enough to end the veto of the Lords on the Bills
passed by a Liberal majority in the Commons, and therefore the Parliament
Act was passed.
THE POPULARITY OF THE CROWN
The popularity of the Crown has become increasingly wider and more general
in the years that have seen the British people steadily taking up the work
of self-government. The fear of a hostile demonstration by the inhabitants
of London kept William IV. from visiting the Mansion House in 1830, and the
death of that monarch in 1837 evoked no national mourning. Queen Victoria,
unknown to the people on her accession, had the very great advantage of
Lord Melbourne's political advice in the early years of her reign. Her
marriage, in 1840, with the Prince Consort--who himself learnt much from
Melbourne--brought a wise counsellor to the assistance of the throne. "I
study the politics of the day with great industry," wrote the Prince
Consort. "I speak quite openly to the Ministers on all subjects, and
endeavour quietly to be of as much use to Victoria as I can." The Prince
Consort saw quickly that "if monarchy was to rise in popularity, it could
only be by the sovereign leading a good life, and keeping quite aloof from
party." The days of a profligate court and of "the King's friends" in
politics were past and gone; the royal _influence_ was to succeed the royal
_prerogative_.[87]
The aloofness from political partisanship has been faithfully maintained by
the successors of Queen Victoria, and great as the royal influence may be
in the social life of the wealthier classes, it is certain that no such
influence operates in the casting of votes by the people at Parliamentary
elections. No one suspects the King of desiring the return of Liberals over
Tories, or of favouring the Tory programme rather than the Liberal; and
this neutrality is the surest guarantee of the continued popularity of the
Crown.
For some years in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties of the nineteenth
century Republicanism was the creed of many ardent working-class Radicals
in England. Charles Bradlaugh was its chief exponent, and both Mr. Joseph
Chamberlain and the late Sir Charles Dilke were regarded as Republicans
before they entered Gladstone's Ministry in 1880. The Republican movement
waned before Bradlaugh's death. He himself was "led to feel that agitation
for an ideal form of government was less directly fruitful than agitation
against the abuses of class privilege; and in the last dozen years of his
life, his political work went mainly to reforms within the lines of the
Constitution."[88]
With the rise of the Socialist movement in England in 1884-5, and the
celebration of the Queen's Jubilee in 1887, Republicanism became utterly
moribund, and nothing save an attempt on the part of the sovereign to take
a definite side in party politics, or a notorious lapse from the morals
required of persons in office of State, could revive it.
The interest in Socialism was fatal to the Republican movement, because it
turned the enthusiasm of the active spirits in democratic politics from the
desire for radical changes in the _form_ of government, to the crusade for
economic changes, and the belief in a coming social revolution. The
existence of monarchy seemed a small and comparatively unimportant affair
to men and women who were hoping to get poverty abolished, and the
landlords and capitalists expropriated either by direct revolution, or by
the act of a House of Commons, dominated by working men with Socialist
convictions.
The national celebrations at the Queen's Jubilee in 1887 marked the
beginning of the popular revival in pageantry and official ceremonial. In
the Church of England this revival began some forty years earlier, and it
has, in our day, changed the whole conduct of public worship. The revival
of Roman Catholicism in England with its processions and solemn ritual has
been equally significant. By gratifying the common human instinct for
spectacle and drama the monarchy has gained the popular affections.
The Whigs scoffed at pageants and symbols; the earlier Puritans had
proscribed ceremonial as savouring of idolatry, and feared any
manifestation of beauty as a snare of the devil. In the latter half of the
nineteenth century, England began to throw off the shackles of Puritanism,
and to lose all interest in Whiggery. The new democracy was neither coldly
Deist, nor austerely Republican. It has shown no inclination to inaugurate
a reign of "pure reason" in religion or politics, but has boldly and
cheerfully adopted symbolism and pageantry. Friendly societies and trade
unions have their badges, banners, and buttons. The Roman Catholic Church
grows in popularity with the working class, and in many towns and cities
the Church of England and the Salvation Army are distinctly popular. On the
other hand, the Nonconformist churches confess annually to a decreasing
membership, and Secularist and Ethical societies have but the smallest
following.
The royal processions and the pageantry of monarchy have provided a
spectacular display that average human nature enjoys. The symbols and
trappings of monarchy must be shown if the sovereign is to be popular; they
add to the gaiety of life, and people are grateful for the warmth of colour
they impart to our grey streets. The sovereign in encouraging the renewed
and growing love for pageants and ceremonial has discerned the signs of the
times. Modern democracy does not desire that kings or priests shall rule;
but it does require that they shall on State occasions and in the
performance of their office, be clad in kingly and priestly robes, and by
their proceedings enrich the dignity of public life, and the beauty of
public worship.
THE DEMOCRATIC IDEALS: SOCIALISM AND SOCIAL REFORM
The rise of Socialism in the 'eighties not only diverted the attention of
working-class leaders from political reform, but it substituted for the
destruction of monarchy and the House of Lords a reconstruction of society
as the goal of democracy; and the Socialist teaching has been of enduring
and penetrating influence.
Fifty years earlier in the nineteenth century, Robert Owen had preached a
Socialist crusade with strenuous persuasion--but, ignoring politics, he
outlived the temporary success of his cause. The utopian Socialism of Owen
flourished and died, as Chartism, under different treatment, flourished and
died.
The "scientific" Socialism of Karl Marx was planned on stronger
foundations. It brought a message of hope; it revealed how the change was
to be wrought that would "emancipate the workers of the world from the
slavery of wage service"; and it insisted that this change was inevitable.
On the Continent, and more particularly in Germany, the Social Democratic
Party has gained an enormous working-class support, and every election adds
to its strength.
In England the Social Democratic Federation--now the Social Democratic
Party--was founded in 1884 by Mr. H.M. Hyndman; but in spite of its
untiring efforts, it has never won the sympathy of the trade unions, nor
the confidence of the working-class electorate. Its Parliamentary
candidatures rarely attract attention, and it is not a force in Labour
politics. Nevertheless, indirectly, the influence of the Social Democratic
Party has been very considerable. Mr. John Burns, and many another Labour
leader, have passed through its ranks, and a social conscience has been
made sensitive to the miseries of the poor, largely by the voices--that
will not be silenced--of this comparatively small company.
The Fabian Society also began its work of educating public opinion to
Socialism in 1884, but, unlike the Social Democratic Federation, it made no
proposals for the creation of a Socialist Party or the organisation of the
working class into a separate political party. Mainly, its influence can be
seen in the increase of statistical knowledge and of State interference in
the conditions of life and labour in the working class.
The Independent Labour Party was not formed till 1892, and while professing
Socialism, it has aimed rather at securing the return of labour members to
Parliament, and to local governing councils than at the conversion of the
working class to a dogmatic social democracy. Often frankly opportunist and
experimental, the Independent Labour Party and its offspring, the Labour
Party in the House of Commons, have followed the national custom in
politics of attacking and redressing evident evils, and have done this with
considerable success.
But while the Socialists have compelled the attention of all classes to
existing social ills, and have made social reform the chief concern of all
politicians, the idea of a social democracy steadily recedes from the
political vision, and the conscious movement to Socialism falters.
Socialist workmen in Parliament or on city councils soon find themselves
absorbed in the practical work of legislation or administration, and learn
that there is neither leisure nor outlet for revolutionary propaganda. The
engrossing character of public work destroys the old inclination to break
up the existing order, for the Socialist member of Parliament, or city
councillor interested in his work, has become part of the machinery
responsible for the existing order, and without losing his sympathy for the
labouring people is content that the amelioration of society shall come, as
it now seems to him it must come, by slow and orderly stages and without
violence. The very return of so many Labour members to Parliament and to
local councils has damped down the fires of Socialism, by placing in
positions of authority and responsibility, and thereby withdrawing them
from the army of disaffection, the ablest leaders of the working-class
movement. The Labour member who cannot settle down to legislative or
administrative work, but attempts to play the agitator's part in the House
of Commons or the council chamber, is generally doomed to banishment from
official public life, and is allowed to remain an agitator.
Mr. John Burns may be denounced as a renegade by Socialist critics, but a
working-class electorate returns him to Parliament. Mr. Cunninghame Graham
and Mr. Victor Grayson may be applauded for their consistency by Socialist
audiences, but working-class constituencies are loth to return such
representatives to the House of Commons.
As Socialism quietly passes out of the vision of the political world, and
from a definite inspiration to democracy becomes a dim and remote
possibility of the future, Social Reform takes its place. Not only in Great
Britain, but throughout Europe, the social reformers or "revisionists" are
gaining the mastery over the scientific Marxian Socialists in democratic
politics. In Great Britain where "practical," or experimental, politics
have always prevailed over political theory, the passing of positive
Socialist dogma is naturally more obvious. Social Reform is now the cry of
Liberals and Conservatives alike. The old Liberal doctrines of _laissez
faire_, unrestricted competition, and the personal liberty of the subject
are as dead as the Stuart doctrine of the divine right of kings. The old
Liberal hostility to State interference in trade or commerce, and to
compulsory social legislation has melted away at the awakened social
conscience. It still has its adherents--Lord Cromer and Mr. Harold Cox
repeat the ancient watch-words of Victorian Liberalism, and they are
regarded with a respect mingled with curiosity, as strange survivals of a
far-off age--but no popular echo follows their utterances. Pensions for the
aged, better provision for the sick and the infirm, a more careful
attention to the well-being of children, national health, some cure for
destitution, and some remedy for unemployment--these are the matters that a
Liberal Government is concerned about to-day. And the Conservatives are no
less sincere in their willingness to help in these matters. Legislative
proposals for social reform are treated as non-party questions, and the
chief item in the Conservative programme, Tariff Reform, was adopted and is
advocated mainly as a social reform, a cure for industrial evils, and the
misery of unemployment.
Socialism proposed the abolition of poverty, and the common ownership and
control of the land and the means of production, distribution, and exchange
as the solution of economic questions.
Social Reform proposes to mitigate the hardships of life for the multitude,
and, while leaving land and capital in private hands, to compel by taxation
provision for the wants of the people. Its aim is the abolition of
destitution by State assistance to voluntary effort, and the gradual
raising of the standard of life. It does not propose to remove the cause of
poverty.
Socialism would place the democracy in possession of the means of wealth.
Social Reform requires the State to tax wealth and provide for the people.
It promises a living wage, decent housing accommodation, an insurance
against unemployment, and security in old age, and leaves the question of
national ownership or private ownership to be settled by posterity.
LAND REFORM AND THE SINGLE TAX
Apart from the ideals of Socialism, the democratic ideal of a community
owning the full value of its land was presented by Henry George, an
American economist, in 1879, and his book "Progress and Poverty," was at
once received with enthusiasm by certain reformers in England and America.
George visited England in 1881, 1884, and 1889, and his visits resulted in
a strong movement for the taxation of land values. This movement has been
inspired by an ideal of a democratic community as definite as the Socialist
ideal, and it has grown steadily in popular favour as the justice of a tax
on land values has been recognised. "Progress and Poverty" is the bible of
the Land Reformers, as Marx's "Capital" is (or was) the bible of
Socialists. It is claimed that a tax on land values is the true remedy of
social and economic ills, and that democracy can eradicate the root-cause
of poverty by such a tax. In this belief the followers of Henry George have
preached the Single Tax, as it is called, with unquenchable fervour, and
the Liberal Party has been gradually won over--if not to the Single Tax, at
least to a tax on land values. Many Conservatives, too, favour the taxation
of land values in cities, and all the principal municipalities have
petitioned Parliament in favour of this method of taxation. But it is the
democratic ideals of Henry George that have been the life of the movement
for the Single Tax, and but for these ideals the movement would never have
become a living influence towards democracy, or inspired a social
enthusiasm.
The charm about the Single Tax propaganda is that its ideals of democracy
do not discourage the practical politician and the average citizen from
supporting what seems a necessary and reasonable proposal. Without
committing themselves at all to Henry George's full scheme for the total
abolition of land monopoly by a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on all
land values, and without abandoning the common British suspicion of the
doctrinaire and the political idealist, the ordinary shopkeeper and
householder are quite of opinion that urban values in land can be taxed
legitimately for the benefit of the community, and that democracy would do
well to decree some moderate tax on land values for the relief of the
overtaxed non-landowner.
So the taxation of land values is presented by its advocates as a social
reform more radical and democratic than all other social reforms, as a
reform that in fact would make democracy master of its own land, and the
people free from the curse of poverty; and it is accepted by the great mass
of working people as a just and useful method of raising revenue for local
and imperial needs.
Socialism, social reform, the Single Tax--various are the ideals of a
democratic people at work at the business of government, and various are
the means proposed to establish the democracy in economic freedom.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IX
THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
EAST AND WEST
The movement towards democracy is world-wide to-day, and the political
constitutions of the West are desired with fervour in the East.
For generations there has been agitation in Russia for representative
government, and men and women--in countless numbers--have sacrificed
wealth, reputation, liberty, and life itself in the cause of political
freedom. On the establishment in 1906 of the Duma, a national chamber of
elected members, there was general rejoicing, because it seemed that, at
length, autocracy was to give place to representative government. But the
hopes of the political reformers were short lived. The Duma still exists,
but its powers were closely restricted in 1907, and the franchise has been
narrowed, to secure an overwhelming preponderance of the wealthy, so that
it is altogether misleading to regard it as a popular assembly.
In Egypt and in India the Nationalist movements are directed to
self-government, and are led by men who have, in most cases, spent some
years at an English University, or have been trained at the English Bar.
Residence in England, and a close study of British politics make the
educated Indian anxious for political rights in his own country, similar to
those that are given to him in Great Britain. In England the Indian has all
the political rights of a British subject. He can vote for a member of
Parliament, he can even be a member of the House of Commons. On two
occasions in recent years, an Indian has been elected to Parliament: Mr.
Dadabhai Naoroji sat as Liberal M.P. for Finsbury, 1892-5; Sir M.M.
Bhownagree as a Conservative for Bethnal Green, 1895-1906. Back in his
native land, the Indian finds that he belongs to a subject race, and that
the British garrison will neither admit him to social equality, nor permit
him the right of legislation. Hence with eyes directed to Western forms of
government, the Indian is discontented with the bureaucracy that rules his
land, and disaffected from the Imperial power. But so many are the nations
in India, and so poverty-stricken is the great multitude of its peasantry
that the Nationalist movement can touch but the fringe of the population,
and the millions of India live patiently and contentedly under the British
Crown. Nevertheless, the national movement grows steadily in numbers and in
influence, for it is difficult for those who, politically minded, have once
known political freedom, to resign themselves to political subjection.
In Egypt the Nationalist movement is naturally smaller and more
concentrated than in India and the racial divisions hinder its unity. Egypt
is nominally under the suzerainty of Turkey, though occupied by Great
Britain, and now that Turkey has set up a Constitution and a Parliament,
patriotic Egyptian politicians are impatient at the blocking out by the
British authorities of every proposal for self-government.
As in India, so in Egypt: it is the men of education who are responsible
for the Nationalist movement. And in both countries it is the desire to
experiment in representative government, to test the constitutional forms
in common use in the West, and to practise the responsibilities of
citizenship, that stimulates the movement. The unwillingness of the British
Government to gratify this desire explains the hostility to British rule in
India and Egypt.
Japan received a Constitution from the Emperor in 1890, and in 1891 its
Diet was formally opened with great national enthusiasm. It is a
two-chamber Parliament--a Council of nobles, and a popularly elected
assembly--and only in the last few years have the business men given their
attention to it. Although the Cabinet is influenced by Japanese public
opinion, it is not directly responsible to the Diet, but is the Ministry of
the Mikado. The resolution of the Japanese statesmen of forty years ago to
make Japan a world-power made Constitutional Government, in their eyes, a
necessity for the nation.
In Europe, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all possess democratic
constitutions, and only the removal of sex disabilities in the latter two
is needed to achieve complete adult suffrage. Finland established complete
democracy nine years ago, and, with equal electoral districts, complete
adult suffrage, and the free election of women equally with men to its
Diet, is a model democratic state. But the liberties of Finland are gravely
threatened by the Russian Government, and there is no security for the
Finns that their excellent self-government will be preserved. In Germany,
with universal manhood suffrage, the struggle is to make the Government
responsible to the elected Reichstag.
The British self-governing Colonies show a tendency of democracy to
federate. The Australian Colonies are federated into a Commonwealth, and
their example has been followed by the South African Colonies. New Zealand
and Australia are at one in their franchise, which allows no barrier of
sex; but South Africa still restricts the vote to males. In Australia the
working class are in power, and the Commonwealth Prime Minister is a Labour
representative. There is no willingness to grant political rights to those
who are not of European race, either in South Africa or in Australia; and
the universal republic dreamed of by eighteenth century democrats, a
republic which should know no racial or "colour" bar, is not in the vision
of the modern colonial statesmen of democracy, who are frankly exclusive.
Only in New Zealand does a native race elect its own members to
Parliament--and four Maori M.P.'s are returned.
TYRANNY UNDER DEMOCRATIC FORMS
Experience has proved that democratic and republican forms of government
are no guarantee that the nation possesses political liberty.
Mexico, nominally a republic under President Diaz, was in reality a
military autocracy of the severest kind. The South American Republics are
merely unstable monarchies, at the mercy of men who can manipulate the
political machinery and get control of the army.
It is too early yet to decide whether the constitutional form of government
set up in Turkey in 1908, or the republic created on the abolition of
monarchy in Portugal in 1910, mark national movements to democracy. In
neither country is there evidence that general political freedom has been
the goal of the successful revolutionist, or that the people have obtained
any considerable measure of political power or civil liberty. Ambitious and
unscrupulous men can make full use of republican and democratic forms to
gain political mastery over their less cunning fellows, and no machinery of
government has ever yet been devised that will safeguard the weak and the
foolish from the authority of the strong and the capable.
Those who put their trust in theories of popular sovereignty, and urge the
referendum and initiative as the surer instruments of democracy than
Parliamentary representation, may recall that a popular plebiscite
organised by Napoleon in 1802 conferred on him the Consulate for life; that
Louis Napoleon was made President of the French Republic in 1848 by a
popular vote, obtained a new constitution by a plebiscite in 1851, and a
year later arranged another plebiscite which declared him hereditary
Emperor, Napoleon III. France, where naturally Rousseau's theories have
made the deepest impression, has since the Revolution gloried in the right
of the "sovereign people" to overthrow the government, and its elected
representatives have been alternately at the mercy of dictators and social
revolutionists.
On the whole, the stability of the British Government, rooted in the main
on the traditional belief in the representation of the electorate, would
seem to make more surely for national progress and wider political liberty
than the alternation of revolution and reaction which France has known in
the last hundred and twenty years.
England has not been without its popular outbursts against what the
American poet called "the never-ending audacity of elected persons," but
these outbursts are commonly accepted as manifestations of intolerable
conditions; and while the outbursts are repressed means are taken by
Government to amend the conditions. When the Government fails to amend
things, the House of Commons takes the matter up; and if the Commons
neglect to do so, then the electors make it plain that amendment and reform
are necessary by returning men to Parliament pledged to change matters, and
by rejecting those who have failed to meet the situation.
THE OBVIOUS DANGERS
The dangers that threaten democracy are obvious. Universal adult suffrage,
short Parliaments, proportional representation, equal electoral districts,
second ballots--none of these things can insure democracy against
corruption. For a government which rests on the will of a people--a will
expressed by the election of representatives--is inevitably exposed to all
the evils attendant on the unruly wills and affections of the average man.
The orator can play upon the feelings of the crowd, and sway multitudes
against a better judgment; and he has greater chance of working mischief
when a referendum or other direct instrument of democracy is in vogue than
he has when government is by elected representatives. For the party system,
itself open to plenty of criticism, constantly defeats the orator by the
superior power of organisation. Hence it frequently happens at
Parliamentary elections that a candidate whose meetings are enthusiastic
and well attended fails lamentably at the poll. His followers are a crowd;
they are not a party. They do not know each other, and they have not the
confidence that comes of membership in a large society.
PARTY GOVERNMENT
If the orator is a menace to the wise decisions of the people by a
referendum, the party organiser and political "boss" can easily be a curse
to representative government on party lines. By all manner of unholy
devices he can secure votes for his candidate and his party, and he has
raised (or lowered) the simple business of getting the people to choose
their representative into the art of electioneering. The triumph of
political principles by the election of persons to carry out those
principles becomes of less importance than the successful working of the
party machine, when the boss and the organiser are conspicuous. Patronage
becomes the method for keeping the party in power, and the promise of
rewards and spoils enables an opposition to defeat the Government and
obtain office. To be outside the party is to lose all chance of sharing in
the spoils, and to take an interest in politics means, under these
circumstances, to expect some consideration in the distribution of honours.
The "spoils system" is notorious in America, but in England it has become
practically impossible for a man to take any serious part in politics
except by becoming part of the machine. An independent attitude means
isolation. To belong to a party--Liberal, Unionist, or Labour--and to
criticise its policy, or differ from its leaders, is resented as
impertinence. The machine is master of the man. A troublesome and dangerous
critic is commonly bought or silenced. He is given office in the
Government, or rewarded with a legal appointment; perhaps made a peer if
his tastes are in that direction. A critic who cannot command a
considerable backing among the electorate will probably be driven out of
public life. The disinterested activity in politics that puts the
commonwealth before party gain is naturally discouraged by the party
organisers.
Yet when public interest in national affairs sinks to the merely sporting
instinct of "backing your candidate" at elections as a horse is backed at
race meetings, and of "shouting for your party" as men shout for their
favourite football team, or sinks still lower to the mercenary speculation
of personal gain or loss on election results, then another danger comes
in--the indifference of the average honest citizen to all politics, and the
cynical disbelief in political honesty.
The warnings of John Stuart Mill against leaving politics to the
politicians and against the professional position may be quoted:
"Representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere
instrument of tyranny or intrigue when the generality of electors are not
sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote; or, if
they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrages on public grounds, but sell
them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them,
or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular elections as
thus practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, are but an
additional wheel in its machinery."
Mill himself was a striking example of the entirely disinterested
politician, who, caring a great deal more for principles than for party,
finds little favour with the electors, and less with the party managers,
and retires from politics to the relief of his fellows.
A general lack of interest in politics can prove fatal to democracy. The
party managers, without the fear of the electorate before their eyes, will
increase the number of salaried officials and strengthen their position by
judicious appointments. Nominally, these inspectors and officers will be
required for the public service, and the appointments will be justified on
patriotic grounds. There will be little criticism in Parliament, because
the party not in power will be anxious to create similar "jobs" when its
own turn comes. Besides, as the public pays for these officials, there is
no drain on the party funds; and this is a matter of congratulation to
party managers, who are always anxious not to spend more than they can help
on the political machinery.
BUREAUCRACY
But the horde of officials and inspectors will change democracy into
bureaucracy, and the discovery is sometimes made too late that a land is
ruled by permanent officials, and not by elected representatives. The
elected representatives may sit and pass laws, but the bureaucracy which
administers them will be the real authority.
It may be an entirely honest and efficient bureaucracy, as free from
political partisanship as our British Civil Service and police-court
magistracy are, but if it is admitted to be outside the jurisdiction of the
House of Commons, and to be under no obedience to local councils, and if
its powers involve a close inquisition into the lives of the people, and
include the right to interfere daily with these lives, then bureaucracy and
not democracy is the actual government.
A host of salaried political workers--agents, organisers, secretaries,
etc.--will make popular representative government a mere matter of
political rivalry, an affair of "ins and outs," and by this development of
the party system will exclude from active politics all who are not loyal to
the "machine," and are not strong enough to break it. But a host of public
officers--inspectors, clerks, etc.--paid out of the public funds will do
more than pervert representative government: they will make it subordinate
to the permanent official class; and bureaucracy, once firmly in the
saddle, is harder to get rid of than the absolutism of kings, or the rule
of an aristocracy.
Yet a permanent Civil Service is better in every way in a democracy than a
Civil Service which lives and dies with a political party, and is changed
with the Cabinet.
On the whole, the best thing for democracy is that the paid workers in
politics should be as few as possible, and the number of salaried state
officials strictly limited. The fewer the paid political workers, the fewer
people will be concerned to maintain the efficiency of the political
machine, and the more freely will the electorate act in the choice of its
representatives. The fewer the salaried officials of State, the less
inspection and restriction, and the less encouragement to habits of
submission in the people. Democracy must depend on a healthy, robust sense
of personal responsibility in its citizens, and every increase in the
inspectorate tends to diminish this personal responsibility, and to breed a
"servile state" that will fall a willing prey to tyranny and bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, whilst in self-defence democracy will avoid increasing its
officials, it will distinguish between officials and employees. It is bound
to add to the number of its employees every year, as its municipal and
imperial responsibilities grow steadily larger, and these employees,
rightly regarded as public servants, cannot threaten to become our masters.
WORKING-CLASS ASCENDANCY
Still one more danger to democracy may be mentioned, and that is the notion
that from the working class must necessarily come our best rulers.
"Rulers are not wise by reason of their number or their poverty, or their
reception of a weekly wage instead of a monthly salary or yearly income. It
is worse and more unpleasant and more dangerous to be ruled by many fools
than by one fool, or a few fools. The tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly
mob is a worse tyranny than the tyranny of an ignorant and cowardly clique
or individual.
"Workers are not respectable or to be considered because they work more
with their hands or feet than with their brains, but because the work they
do is good. If it is not good work they do, they are as unprofitable as any
other wasters. A plumber is not a useful or admirable creature because he
plumbs (if he plumbs ignorantly or dishonestly, he is often either a
manslayer or a murderer), but because he plumbs well, and saves the
community from danger and damp, disease, and fire and water. Makers of
useless machine-made ornaments are, however 'horny-handed,' really
'anti-social persons,' baneful to the community as far as their bad work
goes; more baneful, possibly, than the consumers of these bad articles,
quite as baneful as the _entrepreneurs_ who employ them.
"The only good institutions are those that do good work; the only good work
done is that which produces good results, whether they be direct, as the
plough-man's, or navvy's, or sailor's; or indirect, as the policeman, or
the schoolmaster, or the teacher of good art, or the writer of books that
are worth reading. A man is no better or wiser than others by reason of his
position or lack of position, but by reason of his stronger body, wiser
head, better skill, greater endurance, keener courage."[89]
There it is. Democracy needs for its counsellors, legislators and
ministers, strength, wisdom, skill, endurance and courage, and must get
these qualities in whomsoever they are to be found. Democracy can afford
the widest range of choice in the election of popular representatives, or
it will never reach its full stature.
In the choice of its representatives, a democracy will do well to elect
those who know the life of the working people, and who share its toils;
just as it will do well to shun the mere talker, and to seek out for itself
candidates for election rather than have candidates thrust upon its
attention by some caucus in London. But the main thing is that it should
first discern men and women of ability and of character and then elect them
for its representatives, rejecting those, it may be of more dazzling
qualities, who are unstable in mind and consumed with vanity. It would be
well if the elected representative were always an inhabitant of the county
or the borough, known to his neighbours, and of tested worth. True, the
prophet is often without honour in his own country, and a constituency acts
wisely in electing a representative of national repute. But to search for a
man of wealth who will subsidise every club and charitable institution in
the constituency, and to rejoice when such a candidate is procured from
some political headquarters, is a wretched proceeding in a democratic
state. The member who buys a constituency by his gifts will always feel
entitled to sell his constituents should occasion arise.
Again, the delegate theory of representation can be a danger to democracy.
A Parliamentary representative is something better than a mechanical
contrivance for registering the opinions of electors on certain subjects.
Otherwise all Parliamentary debate is a mockery. A representative he is of
the majority of electors, but he must act freely and with initiative. Often
enough he may be constrained to vote, not as many of his constituents would
prefer, but using his own judgment. Of course when the choice is between
obedience to the party whip and the wishes of his constituents, and
personal conviction is with the latter, then at all costs the decision
should be to stand by his constituents, or popular representation is a
delusion.
To-day the pressure is far greater from the party whips than from the
constituents, especially when in so many cases election expenses are paid,
in part at least, from the party funds. And to overcome this constant
danger to popular representation a sure plan would be the payment of all
necessary election expenses out of the local rates, and the prohibition by
law of all payments by the candidate or by political associations. When
members are paid for their attendance in Parliament, far better would it
be, too, if such payment were made by the constituents in each case, and
not from the national exchequer.[90] Worse than the delegate theory is the
opinion that a representative of the people is in Parliament chiefly to
keep his party in power. Political parties are inevitable, and they are
effective and convenient when principles divide people. But popular
representation is older than a party system of government, and when it
becomes utterly subordinate to the welfare of parties it is time for a
democratic people to realise the possible loss of their instrument of
liberty.
Great Britain is not partial to groups, it has always broadly been divided
politically into two camps, but a few men of strong independent judgment
are invaluable in a popular assembly. There need be no fear lest
governments totter and fall at the presence of men who dare to take a line
of their own, and to speak out boldly on occasion. The bulk of members of
Parliament will always cleave to their party, as the bulk of electors do,
and the dread of being thought singular is a potent influence on the
average man, in or out of Parliament. Democracy is in danger of losing the
counsel of its best men when it insists that its representatives must be
merely delegates of the electors, without minds or wills of their own; but
it is in greater danger if it allows its representatives to be nothing but
the tools of the party in power or in opposition. For when Parliamentary
representation is confined to those who are willing to be the mechanical
implements of party leaders and managers, the House of Commons becomes an
assembly of place-hunters and self-seekers, for whom the profession of
politics affords the gratification of vanity or enrichment at the public
expense. In such an assembly the self-respecting man with a laudable
willingness to serve the State is conspicuous by his absence.
With a Press in the hands of party politicians, and with editors and
journalists engaged to write up their party through thick and thin, and to
write down every honest effort at political independence of mind, the
danger of losing from all political service the few rare minds that can ill
be spared is a very real and present danger.
ON BEHALF OF DEMOCRACY
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance," and often enough we sleep at
our vigils. But when all the dangers and difficulties that beset democracy
are enumerated, and all its weak spots are laid bare, we can still hold
democracy to be the only suitable form of government for persons possessing
free will, and the representation of the people the most satisfactory
expression of democracy.
Government by autocrat, by despotism, benevolent or otherwise, by expert
officials, or by an oligarchy of superior intelligences is irksome to the
average man or woman of reasonable education, and in each case has been
intolerable to the British people. They have all been tried and found
wanting--royal absolutism, aristocracy, military dictatorship, and only of
late have we been threatened by an expert bureaucracy.
Parliamentary representation adapted, by the removal of disabilities of
creed and rank and income, to meet the demands of the nation, has been
proved by experience a clumsy but useful weapon for checking oppression.
Nowadays, we are using it less for defence against oppression, or as an
instrument for removing political grievances, and are testing its worth for
the provision of positive social reform. More and more it is required of
Parliament that means be found for getting rid of the ills around us, for
preventing disease and destitution, for promoting health and decency.
And just because legislation is, at the prompting of a social conscience,
invading our homes and workshops, penetrating into prisons, workhouses, and
hospitals, touching the lives of all of us from the cradle to the grave,
the more imperative is it that our legislators should be chosen freely by
the widest electorate of men and women. We fall back on the old maxim:
"That which touches all shall be approved by all," and can perceive no
other way of obtaining that general approbation for the laws than by the
popular election of our representatives.
Demagogues may exploit the popular will, the cunning and unscrupulous in
power may have us at their mercy, in our folly and indifference the nation
may be brought to grave losses; but still there is always the means of
recovery for the well-disposed while the vote remains in their hands.
So it is that, in spite of obvious failings and shortcomings, democracy by
representative government remains for nations throughout the world that
have not yet tried it the goal of their political striving. We are alive to
the imperfections of democracy. It is no automatic machine for conferring
benefits in return for taxes. It is the creation of mankind, not a
revelation from heaven; and it needs, like all good human things, constant
attention and can bear many improvements. It has to be adjusted from time
to time to suit the growing capacities of mankind--as the popular assembly
gave way to the representative assembly--and only on the failure to make
the adjustment does it get rusty and out of order. It has to meet the
requirements of vast empires and mighty confederations of states, and to
fulfil the wants of small republics and parish councils.
What but democracy can answer to the call for political liberty that sounds
from so many lands and in so many varying tongues? Did any other form of
government devised by the wit of man make such universal appeal?
And when all is said and done--what does this democracy, this government by
popular representatives, mean, but government by the consent of the
governed--the only form of government tolerable to civilised mankind in the
twentieth century?
Given a fairly good standard of common honesty in the ordinary dealings of
life, and the honesty of our public life, whether in Parliament or in the
Civil Service, in executive or administration, will serve. If the private
and commercial life is corroded with dishonesty, then democracy will be
bitten by knaves and rascals. For our chosen rulers have a way of
faithfully reflecting the morality of their electors, and are not free to
indulge their fancies, as kings of old were.
Politics are not, and never will be, or ought to be, the chief interest and
concern of the mass of people in a healthy community where slavery is
extinct. And democracy makes no demand that would involve such interest and
concern. The choice of honest representatives, persons of goodwill, and
reasonable intelligence, is no tremendous task in a community where
honesty, goodwill, and intelligence prevail. And if these things do not
prevail, if honesty is contemned in business, and goodwill between man and
man despised, and intelligence frowned upon, then it is of small importance
what the government of such a nation is, for that nation is doomed, and it
is well for the world that it should be doomed.
But, on the whole, it seems indisputable that the common people of the
great nations do cleave to honesty and goodwill, and that the desire for
intelligence is being widely fostered. As long, then, as we can count on
honesty, goodwill, and intelligence in our streets and market-places, as we
can to-day, mankind does well to elect its representatives to council and
Parliament and proclaim democracy--"Government of the people, by the
people, for the people"--as the proper government for mankind.
* * * * *
Notes.
[1] We cannot be sure about the constitution of the Witenagemot. The
evidence is conflicting, and, at best, we can only offer a statement of
opinion.
[2] "The parish was the community of the township organised for Church
purposes and subject to Church discipline, with a constitution which
recognised the rights of the whole body as an aggregate, and the right of
every adult member, _whether man or woman_, to a voice in self-government,
but at the same time kept the self-governing community under a system of
inspection and restraint by a central authority outside the parish
boundaries."--Bishop Hobhouse, _Somerset Record Society_, Vol. IV.
"The community had its own assembly--the parish meeting--which was a
deliberative assembly. It had its own officers, who might be either men or
women, duly elected, sometimes for a year, sometimes for life, but in all
cases subject to being dismissed for flagrant offences. The larger number
of these officials had well-defined duties to discharge, and were paid for
their services out of funds provided by the parishioners."--DR. JESSOPP,
_Before the Great Pillage_.
[3] Radmer, _Life of Anselm_. (Rolls Series.)
[4] "The boldness of Anselm's attitude not only broke the tradition of
ecclesiastical servitude, but infused through the nation at large a new
spirit of independence."--J.R. GREEN, _History of the English People_.
[5] "For as long as any one in all the land was said to hold any power
except through him, even in the things of God, it seemed to him that the
royal dignity was diminished."--EADMER, _Life of Anselm_.
[6] See Palgrave's _History of Normandy and England_.
[7] "A martyr he clearly was, not merely to the privileges of the Church or
to the rights of the See of Canterbury, but to the general cause of law and
order as opposed to violence."--FREEMAN, _Historical Essays_.
[8] _See_ Campbell's _Lives of the Chancellors_.
[9] F. York Powell, _England to 1509_.
"Ecclesiastical privileges were not so exclusively priestly privileges as
we sometimes fancy. They sheltered not only ordained ministers, but all
ecclesiastical officers of every kind; the Church courts also claimed
jurisdiction in the causes of widows and orphans. In short, the privileges
for which Thomas contended transferred a large part of the people, and that
the most helpless part, from the bloody grasp of the King's courts to the
milder jurisdiction of the bishop."--FREEMAN, _Historical Essays_.
[10] Walter of Coventry. (Rolls Series.)
[11] Roger of Wendover. (Rolls Series.)
[12] "Clause by clause the rights of the commons are provided for as well
as the rights of the nobles; the interest of the freeholder is everywhere
coupled with that of the barons and knights; the stock of the merchant and
the wainage of the villein are preserved from undue severity of amercement
as well as the settled estate of the earldom or barony. The knight is
protected against the compulsory exaction of his services, and the horse
and cart of the freeman against the irregular requisition even of the
sheriff."--STUBBS, _Constitutional History_.
[13] "Quod Anglicana Ecclesia libera sit."--_Magna Charta_, I.
[14] "This most important provision may be regarded as a summing-up of the
history of Parliament so far as it can be said yet to exist. It probably
contains nothing which had not been for a long time in theory a part of the
Constitution: the kings had long consulted their council on taxation; that
council consisted of the elements that are here specified. But the right
had never yet been stated in so clear a form, and the statement thus made
seems to have startled even the barons.... It was for the attainment of
this right that the struggles of the reign of Henry III. were carried on;
and the realisation of the claim was deferred until the reign of his
successor. In these clauses the nation had now obtained a comparatively
clear definition of the right on which their future political power was to
be based."--STUBBS, _Constitutional History_.
[15] "Ut quod omnes similiter tangit ab omnibus approbetur."
[16] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[17] Stubbs, _Ibid_.
[18] "Analogous examples may be taken from the practice of the
ecclesiastical assemblies, in which the representative theory is introduced
shortly before it finds its way into parliament."--STUBBS, _Constitutional
History_.
[19] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[20] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[21] F. York Powell, _England to 1509_.
[22] Sir Courtenay Ilbert, _Parliament_.
[23] Ilbert, _Parliament_.
[24] Bagehot, _The English Constitution_.
[25] Bagehot, _Ibid_.
[26] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[27] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[28] Andrew Marvell, the poet, who sat for Hull in the reign of Charles
II., was paid by the mayor and aldermen of the borough. In return Marvell
wrote letters describing passing events in London. There are stray cases of
the payment of members in the early years of the eighteenth century. Four
shillings a day, including the journey to and from London, for the knight
of the shire, and two shillings a day for the borough member were the wages
fixed by law in 1323.
[29] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[30] Bagehot, _The English Constitution_.
[31] _See_ Stopes' _British Freewomen_ for a full examination of this
matter.
[32] Stubbs, _Constitutional History_.
[33] For the last fifty years the political influence of London has been
less than that of the manufacturing districts.
[34] "The project was clearly to set up a new order of things founded on
social equality--a theory which in the whole history of the Middle Ages
appears for the first time in connection with this movement."--DR.
GAIRDNER, _Introduction to Paston Letters_.
[35] Four centuries later and this doctrine of all men having been born
free at the beginning was to be preached again in popular fashion by
Rousseau and find expression in American Independence and the French
Revolution.
[36] Froissart seems to be chiefly responsible for the notion, found in the
writings of later historians, that this John Tyler was the leader of the
revolt, and for the confusion that mistakenly identifies him with Wat
Tyler, of Maidstone, the real leader. Three other Tylers are mentioned in
the records of the Peasant Revolt--Walter, of Essex, and two of the City of
London.
[37] Hallam, _Middle Ages_.
[38] This law of Winchester was the statute of Edward I., 1285, which
authorised local authorities to appoint constables and preserve the peace.
According to a statement made by Jack Straw, Tyler and his lieutenants
intended, amongst other things, to get rid of the King's Council, and make
each county a self-governing commune.
[39] There are some grounds for believing that a plot had been made to slay
Wat Tyler at Smithfield. _See_ Dr. G. Kriehn _American Review_, 1902.
[40] F. York Powell, _England to 1509_.
[41] Durrant Cooper, _John Cade's Followers in Kent_.
[42] "These lords found him sober in talk, wise in reasoning, arrogant in
heart, and stiff in opinions; one who by no means would dissolve his army,
except the King in person would come to him, and assent to the things he
would require."--HOLINSHED.
[43] Stow.
[44] "Whereof he (Cade) lost the people's favour and hearts. For it was to
be thought if he had not executed that robbery he might have gone far and
brought his purpose to good effect."--FABYAN'S _Chronicle_.
"And for this the hearts of the citizens fell from him, and every thrifty
man was afraid to be served in likewise, for there was many a man in London
that awaited and would fain have seen a common robbery."--STOW.
[45] "During the period, which may be roughly defined as from 1450 to 1550,
enclosure meant to a large extent the actual dispossession of the tenants
by their manorial lords. This took place either in the form of the violent
ousting of the sitting tenant, or of a refusal on the death of one tenant
to admit the son, who in earlier centuries would have been treated as his
natural successor. Proofs abound."--W.J. ASHLEY, _Economic History_.
[46] _See_ Dr. Jessop, _The Great Pillage_.
[47] "That a populous and wealthy city like Norwich should have been for
three weeks in the hands of 20,000 rebels, and should have escaped utter
pillage and ruin, speaks highly for the rebel leaders."--W. RYE, _Victoria
County History of Norfolk_.
"Robert Ket was not a mere craftsman: he was a man of substance, the owner
of several manors; his conduct throughout was marked by considerable
generosity; nor can the name of patriot be denied to him who deserted the
class to which he might have belonged or aspired, and cast in his lot with
the suffering people."--CANON DIXON, _History of the Church of England_.
[48] "There was something in the temper of these celebrated men which
secured them against the proverbial inconstancy both of the Court and of
individuals.... No Parliament attacked their influence. No mob coupled
their names with any odious grievance.... They were, one and all,
Protestants. But ... none of them chose to run the smallest personal risk
during the reign of Mary. No men observed more accurately the signs of the
times.... Their fidelity to the State was incorruptible. No intrigue, no
combination of rivals could deprive them of the confidence of their
Sovereign."--MACAULAY, _Burleigh, his Times._
[49] "The Tudor monarchs exercised freely their power of creating boroughs
by charter. They used their Parliaments, and had to find means of
controlling them. In the creation of 'pocket' or 'rotten' boroughs, Queen
Elizabeth was probably the worst offender. She had much influence in her
Duchy of Cornwall, and many of the Cornish boroughs which obtained such a
scandalous reputation in later times were created by her for the return of
those whom the lords of her council would consider 'safe' men."--ILBERT,
_Parliament._
[50] Elizabeth's popularity steadily diminished in her last years. The
death of Essex, ecclesiastical persecutions, increased taxation, and the
irritations caused by royal expenditure were all responsible for the
discontent. James I. failed from the first to secure the goodwill of the
people.
[51] Oxford men all three. Sir John Eliot was at Exeter College, 1607; John
Hampden at Magdalen, 1609; and John Pym at Broadgate Hall (later called
Pembroke), 1599.
[52] Clarendon, _History of the Great Rebellion_.
[53] "The same men who, six months before, were observed to be of very
moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied, talked
now in another dialect both of Kings and persons; and said that they must
now be of another temper than they were the last Parliament."--CLARENDON,
_ibid._
[54] Macaulay, _Hallam's Constitutional History_.
[55] "The great rule of Cromwell was a series of failures to
reconcile the authority of the 'single person' with the authority of
Parliament."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
[56] "A very large number of persons regarded the struggle with
indifference.... In one case, the inhabitants of an entire county pledged
themselves to remain neutral. Many quietly changed with the times (as
people changed with the varying fortunes of York and Lancaster). That this
sentiment of neutrality was common to the greater mass of the working
classes is obvious from the simultaneous appearance of the club men in
different parts of the country with their motto: 'If you take our cattle,
we will give you battle.'"--G.P. GOOCH, _History of Democratic Ideas in the
Seventeenth Century_.
[57] See _Memorial of English Affairs_.
[58] "By its injudicious treatment of the most popular man in England,
Parliament was arraying against itself a force which only awaited an
opportunity to sweep it away."--G.P. GOOCH, _History of Democratic Ideas in
the Seventeenth Century_.
[59] "So die the Leveller corporals. Strong they, after their sort, for the
liberties of England; resolute to the very death."--CARLYLE.
[60] "Then ensued a scene, the like of which had in all probability never
been witnessed in an English court of justice, and was never again to be
witnessed till the seven bishops were freed by the verdict of a jury from
the rage of James II."--S.R. GARDINER, _History of the Commonwealth_.
[61] Professor C.H. Firth, Lilburne in _Dict. Nat. Biography_.
[62] Winstanley's _New Law of Righteousness_, 1649.
[63] Palgrave. Introduction to Erskine May, _Parliamentary Practice_.
[64] Sir John Eliot, 1629.
[65] Edward II., in 1327, and Richard II., in 1399, had not been deposed
without the consent of Parliament.
[66] "The monarchical regime which was revived under Charles II. broke down
under James II. It was left for the 'glorious Revolution' of 1688, and for
the Hanoverian dynasty, to develop the ingenious system of adjustments and
compromises which is now known, sometimes as cabinet government, sometimes
as parliamentary government."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
[67] G.P. Gooch, _Annals of Politics and Culture_.
[68] Palmerston's influence in the House of Commons was about as bad in the
nineteenth century.--_See_ BAGEHOT, _The English Constitution_.
[69] "Here and there we find an eminent man, whose public services were so
notorious that it was impossible to avoid rewarding them; but putting aside
those who were in a manner forced upon the Sovereign, it would be idle to
deny that the remainder and, of course, the overwhelming majority, were
marked by a narrowness and illiberality of sentiment, which, more than
anything else, brought the whole order into contempt. No great thinkers, no
great writers, no great orators, no great statesman, none of the true
nobility of the land, were to be found among those spurious nobles created
by George III. Nor were the material interests of the country better
represented. Among the most important men in England those engaged in
banking and commerce held a high place; since the end of the seventeenth
century their influence had rapidly increased.... But in the reign of
George III. claims of this sort were little heeded."--BUCKLE, _History of
Civilisation_.
[70] "They, the friars, and especially the Franciscans, largely influenced
politics. The conception of individual freedom, upon which the life of St.
Francis was built, went far to instil the idea of civic freedom into men's
minds.... It was the ideas of the friars that found expression in the
Baron's War." The Song of the Battle of Lewes "set forth unmistakably the
conception of the official position of the King, and affirmed the right of
his subjects to remove evil counsellors from his neighbourhood, and to
remind him of his duty--ideas due to the political influence of the
Franciscans."--CREIGHTON, _Historical Lectures and Addresses_.
[71] The late Lord Acton pointed out that St. Thomas Aquinas was really the
first Whig.
[72] See Introduction to Rousseau's _Social Contract_, by H. J. Tozer.
[73] "That which distinguishes the French Revolution from other political
movements is that it was directed by men who had adopted certain
speculative a priori conceptions with the fanaticism and proselytising
fervour of a religious belief, and the Bible of their Creed was the
_Contrat Social_ of Rousseau."--LECKY, _England in Eighteenth Century_,
Vol. V.
"The original contract seized on as a watchword by Rousseau's enthusiasm
grew from an arid fiction into a great and dangerous deceit of
nations."--Sir F. POLLOCK, _History of the Science of Politics_.
[74] Mr. H.J. Tozer. Introduction to Rousseau's _Social Contract_.
[75] See Conway's _Life of Paine_, Vol. I.
[76] Professor T.F. Tout, _England from 1689_.
[77] Tout, _ibid._
[78] Tout, _ibid._
[79] R.G. Gammage, _History of the Chartist Movement_.
[80] "The condition of the labouring classes was the least satisfactory
feature of English life in 1846. Politically they were dumb, for they had
no parliamentary votes. Socially they were depressed, though their lot had
been considerably improved by an increased demand for labour and by the
removal of taxes in Peel's great Budget of 1842. That was the year in which
the misery of the English proletariat reached its lowest depth."--HERBERT
PAUL, _History of Modern England_.
[81] Justin McCarthy, _Short History of Our Own Times_.
[82] McCarthy, _Ibid_.
[83] Tout, _England since 1689_.
[84] "For a general extension of the franchise, an extension from the
occupation franchise to the adult franchise, there does not appear to be
any demand, except in connection with the burning question of the franchise
for women."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
[85] "On the mere numerical basis Ireland is much over-represented, but
Ireland claims to be treated as a separate entity, and her claims cannot be
disregarded."--ILBERT, _Parliament_.
[86] Rt. Hon. A.J. Balfour, M.P., House of Commons, 1910.
[87] "With great tact, and without very much friction, he brought the
monarchy into touch with the state of things brought about by the Reform
Bill. He did for the Crown what Wellington did for the House of Lords. Just
as the Duke saw that the Lords must give up setting themselves against the
national will strongly expressed, so did the Prince see that the Crown
could no longer exercise those _legal_ rights for which George III. had
fought so manfully. Like the Lords, the Crown now became a checking and
regulating, rather than a moving, force. It remained as the pledge and
symbol of the unity and continuity of the national life, and could do good
work in tempering the evils of absolute party government. Such of the royal
_prerogatives_ as were not dead must be carried out by ministers. The royal
_influence_ continued to run through every branch of the State."--Professor
T.F. TOUT, _England from 1689._
[88] Mr. J.M. Robertson, M.P., _Charles Bradlaugh--A Record of His Life and
Work_.
[89] F. York Powell, _Thoughts on Democracy_.
[90] Unfortunately the present House of Commons has just decided, August,
1911, to pay its members a salary of £400 a year from the national revenue.
It is to be regretted that the cost has not been laid directly on the
electors, and that the time is not more appropriate. With the country torn
with strikes of workmen seeking a few extra shillings a week, it was hardly
the opportune moment for a House of Commons to vote itself some £250,000 a
year. The proposal would have been more palatable to the nation if the
Commons had decided that payment should begin with the _next_ Parliament.
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