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7 4 OS
THE TEXT-BOOK OF DEMOCRACY.
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
BY
H. M. HYNDMAN.
DEDICATED TO THE DEMOCRATIC AND WORKING MENS
CLUBS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
Mention:
E. W. ALLEN,
4,
AVE
MARIA
LANE,
1881.
\_All rights reserved.^
E.C.
�8
g' nr
�PREFACE TO CHEAP EDITION.
DURING the past three months I have been fre
quently asked by working men and working women
to publish a cheap edition of this little work. This I
have now done at a price which will bring it within
reach of all. The cordial reception accorded to the
first edition by the producing classes, whose interests
it was written to serve, leads me to hope that the
plain statement of the wrongs under which they
suffer may induce them to combine for their own
cause.
H. M. H.
September 12th, 1881.
io, Devonshire Street, Portland Place,
London, W.
�PREFACE.
In this changeful period, when the minds of men are
much troubled about the future, and many seem
doubtful whither we are bound, I have attempted
to suggest for the Democratic party in this country
a clear and definite policy. The views expressed in
this little work do not, I am aware, accord with the
commonly received politics and economy of the day.
Holding, as I do, strong opinions as to the capacity
of the great English-speaking democracies to take
the lead in the social reorganization of the future,
I think it right to state them, and to show at the
same time how seriously the working people suffer
under our present landlord and capitalist system.
From the luxurious classes, as a whole, I expect
little support. They have plenty of writers ready to
champion their cause. To the people alone I appeal,
and their approval will be my reward.
It was for the Democratic Federation that I
originally wrote this book, and I present to its
members the first copies to-day.
For the ideas and much of the matter contained in
Chapters II. and III., I am indebted to the work of
a great thinker and original writer, which will, I trust,
shortly be made accessible to the majority of my
countrymen.
H. M. H.
June Zth, 1881.
io, Devonshire Street, Portland Place,
London, W.
�CONTENTS.
PAGE
Introduction .
. ’.................................................................................................................... i
CHAPTER I.
.7
..............................................................
The Land
CHAPTER II.
........... 32
Labour
CHAPTER III.
Capital
.
65
.................................................................
CHAPTER IV.
Organization...................................................................................
CHAPTER V.
Ireland............................................................................................ ....
CHAPTER VI.
Indta....................................................................... e
.
. 131
CHAPTER VII.
The Colonies.................................................................................. 132
CHAPTER VIII.
Foreign Affairs......................................................................... 169
Conclusion
• 193
�■» ”>J '•
�ENGLAND FOR ALL.
INTRODUCTION.
It is impossible to survey our modern society without
at once seeing that there is something seriously amiss
in the conditions of our every-day life. All may
indeed lament the inequalities around them, the
wasted wealth and excessive luxury of the rich, the
infinite misery and degradation of the poor. So clear
is the mischief which results from causes apparently
beyond control, that now and then a paroxysm of
self-reproach seizes upon the comfortable classes, and
they try some new-fangled scheme of charity to
remedy the ills which, for the moment, they think
must be due to them. But this temporary feeling is
very short-lived. The conditions of human existence
are said to be unchangeable by collective, far less by
individual, action, and religion is often called in to
justify the let-alone policy which is so far the most
convenient to the well-to-do.
Possibly, however, a change is at hand. In Eng
land as elsewhere, ideas in these days move fast. That
disgust with both the political parties in the State
which has long been felt by the more intelligent of
B
�2
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
the working-class—that rooted impression that men in
broadcloth, no matter how they label themselves,
are banded together, in spite of their pledges at the
polls, to keep the men in fustian from their fair share
of the enjoyments of life, is spreading now from the
abler men to the less far-sighted. More and more
clear is it becoming to our people that their interest
in politics is something which, if fully understood, lies
far deeper than that of their daily or weekly wage.
“ We working men,” said one, “ shall never know our
real interest in politics till the mother teaches the
truth about them to her childand this phrase by
itself happily shows that a very different view of the
duty of the community to all is growing up from that
indifference and sluggishness which have hitherto
checked progress. How could it be otherwise ? Is
it conceivable that the men who make the wealth of
the country will permanently be satisfied with a sys
tem which shuts them out for ever from all interest
in their own land ? that they will be content to live
from hand to mouth on the strength of mere phrases,
and that they will always consent to be deprived of
their due share of representation ? They are indeed
shortsighted who so suppose. Now therefore it be
comes necessary that people of all classes who desire
that our existing society should be peacefully modified
should be content to examine, a little more deeply
than heretofore, into the present state of things.
This, so far as the wealthy are concerned, from the
most selfish point of view ; for there is nothing here
in the eternal fitness of things. The evolution of
mankind will not stand still, in order that landowners
�INTRODUCTION.
3
and capitalists may continue their present leisurely
existence, or that the well-to-do generally may regard
the sufferings of the toilers as of small account. Such
poverty as now exists is not an inseparable accom
paniment of human society ; neither is such excessive
concentration of wealth an incentive to human pro
gress. The gospel of greed and selfishness, of cor
ruption and competition, now proclaimed as the only
means of social salvation, is seen to be false in its
principles, and baneful in its results. This furious
development of wealth, on which we sometimes con
gratulate ourselves, has done little to elevate, and
much to lower, the tone even of the classes which
have benefited by it. What has it done for the
working class ? Never at any period in our history
were the many who work and the few who live upon
their labour so wide apart, socially and politically, as
they are to-day ; ’’never—and this is becoming in
itself serious—has there been such a general sensation
of uneasiness without any immediate cause.
Yet who can wonder that uneasiness there should
be ? Political reforms have done very little for our
people. Periods of flash prosperity, speedily followed
by depression which pinches and starves even the best
artisan class ; education progressing so slowly that
still another generation will be suffered to grow up
instructed enough only to be ignorant ; overcrowded
insanitary dwellings permitted to continue, and paid
for at an exorbitant price because this is to the benefit
of the classes who trade upon the necessities of their
fellows ; vast monopolies encouraged and overwork
scarcely checked,—here we have the boasted freedom
B 2
�4
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The very
champions of free trade as the universal panacea are
themselves driven to confess that, true though their
theory is, it has not produced the social effect they
predicted.1 The rich have grown richer ; but the poor
—their condition is but little bettered, and relatively
has gone back. Our civilization is in many respects
but an organized hypocrisy, filming over as ulcerous
places below as ever disgraced the worst periods of
past history. But there is something more than
hypocrisy or indifference to account for the crying
evils of our great cities, and the miserable poverty and
bad lodgment which degrade our agricultural popu
lation. More general causes than any which individuals
can right, are at work. Private enterprise has been
tried and found wanting : laissez-faire has had its day.
Slowly the nation is learning that the old hack argu
ments of “ supply and demand,” “ freedom of con
tract,” “ infringement of individual liberty/’ are but
so many bulwarks of vested interests, which inflict
misery on the present, and deterioration on the next,
generation, in the name of a pseudo-science of govern1 Two professors of the straitest sect of economic orthodoxy,
Mr. Henry Fawcett and Mr. Thorold Rogers, are of the same
opinion on this point. Free trade is undeniably true in theory,
but they agree that it has benefited the poor very little in
comparison with the enormous wealth it has given to the rich.
Free Trade lowers the price of the necessaries of life ; but it also
keeps wages lower than they otherwise would be. It would be easy
to show that the working'classes owe all the improvement that has
been made in their condition, not to free trade, but to combination
among themselves, and to legislation carried directly in the
teeth of the most violent opposition from the leaders of the
free trade party.
�introduction.
5
merit. Bad as is the education of the majority of
Englishmen compared with what it ought to be, they
have learnt enough to be dissatisfied with arrange
ments which, when more ignorant, they might have
accepted as inevitable. Of the sufferings which the
real producers of this great industrial community
undergo, the comfortable classes hear but little. They
barely talk of their troubles to their most intimate
friends. The natural inclination of Englishmen is to
bear in silence. Hitherto many have found consola
tion in religion, which held out to them the prospect
of happiness hereafter in return for sorrow and misery
here. That resource is now failing, and the bolder
spirits—it is useless to blink plain truths—openly
deride those “ drafts on eternity ” which they say are
issued solely in the interest of employers and rich
men. Their own ills nevertheless they may bear:
that they will consent to hand on the same lot to their
children is very unlikely. The day for private charity
and galling patronage is at an end ; the time for com
bination and political action in redress of social wrongs
is at hand.
Such changes as are needed may be gradual, but
they must be rapid. In England, fortunately, we have
a long political history to lead up to our natural
development, the growth of a great nation such as
ours has its effect on all portions of the people.
Patriotism is part of our heritage ; self-restraint neces
sarily comes from the exercise of political power.
Even the poorest are ready to accept the assurance of
real reform, rather than listen to those who would
urge them to resort in desperation to violent change.
�6
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
Yet these reforms must in the end be far more
thorough than the enthusiasts of compromise, and the
fanatics of moderation are ready to admit. Hitherto
there has been patience, because all have hoped for
the best. But longer delay is not only harmful but
dangerous. We are ready enough to talk about
justice to others. Greeks, Slavs, Bulgars, Boers,
Negroes, are ever appealing to our sense of what is
due to the oppressed. Let the people of these islands,
without despising others, now be just to themselves.
If the theories now gaining ground all over the
Continent, as well as here with us, are to be met peace
fully, and turned to the advantage of all, the necessary
change of front can no longer be delayed. The State,
as the organized common-sense of public opinion,
must step in, regardless of greed or prejudice, to regu
late that nominal individual freedom which simply
strengthens the domination of the few. Thus only
shall the England of whose past we all are proud, and
of whose future all are confident, clear herself from
that shortsighted system which now stunts the physi
cal and intellectual growth of the great majority, knit
together the great democracies near and far under our
flag, and deal out to our dependencies a full measure
of that justice which alone can secure for us and for
ours the leadership in the social reorganization
which will be our greatest claim to respect and
remembrance from countless generations of the human
race.
�THE LAND.
7
CHAPTER I.
THE LAND.
POSSESSION of the land is a matter of such supreme
importance to the liberty and well-being of Englishmen,
that the only marvel is not that there should be a
growing agitation on the subject to-day, but that the
nation should ever have been content to bear patiently
the monopoly which has been created during the
past 300 years. It affords indeed a strange commen
tary upon the history of human progress, that we
have to look back more than 400 years to the period
when the mass of the people of these islands were
in their most prosperous and wholesome condition.
In those middle ages which our school-books still
speak of as days of darkness and ignorance, the
great body of Englishmen were far better off in every
way than they are now. The men who fought in the
French wars, and held their own against every Conti
nental army, were sober, hardworking yeomen and
life-holders, who were ready to pay for their victories
out of their own pockets, instead of saddling their
descendants with a perpetual mortgage in the shape
of a huge national debt. They owned the soil and
lived out of it, and having secured for themselves
�8
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
power at home and freedom by their own firesides,
they kept them.
The fifteenth century was the golden age of agri
cultural England. Villenage had disappeared ; the
country—far more populous at that time than is
commonly supposed—was occupied and cultivated by
free men, who tilled their own lands, subject only to
light dues payable to feudal superiors. Such daylabourers as there were, lived in perfect freedom,
owned plots of land themselves, and shared in the
enormous common land which then lay free and open
to all. Landless, houseless families were almost
unknown, permanent pauperism was undreamt of.
The feudal lords who maintained around them crowds
of retainers were at this time merely the heads of a
free, prosperous society, which recognized them as their
natural leaders alike in war and peace. Notwith
standing, or rather by reason of the great subdivision
of land, the wealth of the bulk of the people was
extraordinary. They were their own masters, and
could speak their own minds freely to all ; the
degrading servility of the agricultural labourer of to
day had not appeared to take the place of the
thraldom of the old serfs. No description ever given
of any people shows a more prosperous set of men
than the Englishmen of that time. Their sturdy
freedom was based upon property and good living.
“ The King of England cannot alter the laws or
make new ones without the express consent of the
whole kingdom in Parliament assembled. Every
inhabitant is at his liberty fully to use and enjoy
whatever his farm produceth, the fruits of the earth,
�THE LAND.
9
the increase of his flock, and the like ; all the improve
ment he makes, whether by his own proper industry
or of those he retains in his service, are his own to
use and to enjoy without the let, interruption, or denial
of any. If he be in any wise injured or oppressed,
he shall have amends and satisfactions against the
party offending. Hence it is that the inhabitants
are rich in gold, silver, and in all the necessaries and
conveniences of life. They drink no water, unless at
certain times, and by the way of doing penance.
They are fed in great abundance with all sorts of
flesh and fish, of which they have plenty everywhere;
they are clothed throughout in good woollens ; their
bedding and other furniture in their houses are of
wool, and that in great store. They are also pro
vided with all other sorts of household goods, and
necessary implements for husbandry.
Every one
according to his rank hath all things which conduce to
make life easy and happy.” This was merrie England,
in short—merrie, that is, for Englishmen as a whole,
not merely for the landlords and capitalists at the
top, who live in ease on the fruits of their labour.
For a day-labourer, a plain, unskilled hand—with his
geese, and sheep, and cow on the common—could then
get something for his day’s work. That of course is
the real test of the comfort and well-being of the
mass of the people, at all periods and under all
governments —what food and what clothing a man
can get for so many days’ work.
A common day-labourer, then, in the fifteenth century
could earn a fat sheep by four days’ work, a fat ox
by twenty days’ work, and a fat hog two years old by
�IO
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
twelve days’ work. Clothing he could obtain on at
least equally good terms. His own labour for others
and on his own plot supplied him and his family well
with all “ the necessaries and conveniences of life?’
Those even of the poorer sort lived upon beef, pork,
veal, and mutton every day. There is no dispute
about this. There are the recorded lists of prices for
food, drink, and raiment, the rates paid in parish after
parish for unskilled labour. Men so different as
Cobbett and Fawcett, Thornton and Rogers, are all
agreed on these points. They are of one mind, that
the working agriculturist of the fifteenth century was
a well-to-do free man.
How do our present agricultural labourers figure in
comparison ? How much of such fare as that given
above are hired labourers on ten and twelve shillings
a week likely to get, and what sort of houses do they
too often inhabit ? We all can judge of that, even if
the reports of Agricultural Commissions were not at
hand to tell us. The agricultural labourer of to-day is
a mere pauper beside his ancestor of 400 years ago, who
probably owned the land out of which the landowner
and the farmer now permit his descendant to work
a scanty subsistence which barely enables him to taste
meat once a month. His wages are shameful and his
cottage a disgrace. What is the reason then of all
this increasing penury, accompanied in rural districts
by an astounding decrease of population ? Unques
tionably the entire removal of the people from the land
is the chief cause of the mischief. Those yeomen and
free farmers, and fat well-fed labourers, who secured
for us those liberties which of late years have been
�THE LAND.
11
made such surprisingly little use ofwere turned out, and
the history of how it was done, and how our present
hand-to-mouth population was formed, is not a plea
sant tale. The mass of men have now no real freedom
either in country or town, because the land has been
taken by the great landholders and never yet restored
to the nation at large. Thus the sense of property,
of ownership, individual or collective, is done away.
From our own land still comes the bulk of the
wealth of the country, the food, the ores, the coal, which
enable us to hold our own, and get a return from other
parts of the world. But the workers who do this for
England have no part nor lot in their country of to
day. They own nothing but their bare right to compete
with their fellows in the labour-market. Who can
fail in such circumstances to recall these stirring
words ? “ Freedom is not an empty sound ; it is not
an abstract idea ; it is not a thing that nobody can
feel. It means, and it means nothing else, the full
and quiet enjoyment of your own property. If you
have not this—if this be not well secured to you, you
may call yourself what you will, but you are a slave.
Now our forefathers took special care upon this car
dinal point.
They suffered neither- kings nor
parliaments to touch their property without cause
clearly shown. They did not read newspapers, they
did not talk about debates, they had no taste for
‘ mental enjoyments but they thought hunger and
thirst great evils, and they never suffered anybody to
put them on cold potatoes and water. They looked
upon bare bones and rags as indubitable marks of
slavery; and they never failed to resist any attempt
�12
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
to affix these marks upon them.” And we too hold
much the same opinions, we too regard pauperism
and destitution as disgraces to a free country. But
unfortunately this generation, and others before it,
have grown up to think such “ indubitable marks of
slavery ” unavoidable, and hold that land should
rightfully belong in perpetuity to the handful of men
who drove the mass of the population from the soil,
or who bought from the descendants of those who
did. But the life of a nation like ours outlasts all
such temporary troubles ; its rights, though long in
abeyance, are never done away. The truth that the
land of England belongs to the people of England is
coming home to men of all classes ; and the best proof
that our existing system will no longer be borne
with contentment is that the historical wrong which
has been done is daily more and more considered.
That revolution which supplied England with a
bountiful succession of paupers, and laid the founda
tion of landlordism in the country, and of capitalism
in the towns commenced in the last quarter of the
fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth.
After the wars of the Roses had impoverished the
nobility, the dismissalof numerous baronial households
launched upon the country a whole horde of landless
people, without house or home. These unfortunates
had no place whatever in society as it then existed,
and became at once mere vagrants and competitors for
all sorts of chance employments. But for the
monasteries and other religious establishments their
condition would have been far worse than it was.
Even these outcasts, however, might have been
�THE LAND.
13
gradually absorbed; but about the same time the great
nobles, who were at variance with the crown and the
parliament, set to work to restore their fortunes by
turning out the peasant owners, who under the feudal
law had at least as good a title as their own to their
holdings. Such raids were followed up by encroach
ments on the common lands, which the labourers
depended upon for depasturing their animals. Ac
companying these robberies also was a steady conver
sion of arable land into pasture, on the ground that
more was to be gained by feeding sheep than men
—a contention which has of late been put forward
also in Scotland, Ireland, and in newly-settled coun
tries. To compete profitably in the wool-markets of
Flanders was more important than to maintain a race
of independent peasant farmers.
These changes worked a deplorable deterioration in
the condition of the mass of the people. The number
of the agricultural population who could find employ
ment in the old way rapidly lessened. Even now,
with our improved methods of cultivation, and laboursaving machinery, arable land will employ more than
twice as many men as pasture—and raise more beasts,
for that matter, as well. But in those days the pro
portion was probably far larger. At any rate, numbers
were thrown out of employment in that way. So
serious did all this become that Henry VII. and his
Parliament made constant efforts to check the
rapacious and harmful action of the barons ; but un
fortunately to little purpose. The people were more
and more interfered with, and depopulating enclosures
were going on regularly. Laws were even framed of
�14
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
the most stringent character to prevent ejection of
the peasants and the destruction of their houses. All
without effect. The landless class still increased, and
more and more people became dependent on others
for support. Henry VII., a great though penurious
monarch, saw clearly that the welfare of the mass of
his subjects, not the inordinate wealth and aggran
dizement of the few, constituted the real strength
of his kingdom, however much he might attempt to
fleece them by monopolies out of part of their sub
stance. He was anxious therefore to keep the land
in the hands of the small owners, who were really the
bone and sinew of the country. Even the daylabourer received consideration, and was secured by
the laws four acres of land to his cottage. But the
process of expropriation went relentlessly on not
withstanding, and had already produced a serious
effect.
But the confiscation of the lands of the monasteries,
and priories, and nunneries, at the time of the
Reformation, was a far graver blow to the welfare of
the people. Carried out with a shameless disregard
for the rights and privileges of the people, by the most
violent and despotic monarch who ever sat on the
English throne, this was the greatest injury inflicted
on the poor which our history records. The property
of the Catholic Church, though not always well
administered, was in reality at the service of the poor
and needy. Whatever might be urged against abbots
and friars, pauperism was then unknown. The celibate
parish priests had small expenses, and the land they
held was held, it may almost be said, in trust for the
�THE LAND.
15
people. The yeomen and labourers on their estates,
never disturbed or interfered with from generation to
generation, were a prosperous, vigorous folk. Besides,
the service of the Church was almost the only career,
except successful murder, by which a poor lad might
in those days rise to the highest dignities of the State.
Prelates and monks were founders of our noblest
schools of learning. They were, however, swept away,
their goods seized, and the lands taken from the people,
to be held by the king or given to his favourites. Parlia
ment then, as later, was bribed to sanction illegal and
improper action, by which many of its members largely
profited. King and barons were once more knit together
in that happy participation in plunder which has been
the surest bond of union between monarchs and
aristocrats all over the world. Thus the poor who
had ever obtained ready relief from the Church, the
wayfarers who could always find food and shelter in
the religious houses, the children of the people who
repaired to the convent for guidance and teaching,
were deprived at one fell swoop of alms, shelter, and
schools.
When, however, the monasteries were thus
destroyed, and their lands confiscated for the benefit
of the King and the aristocracy, not only was almost
the last hold of the English people on their own soil
torn off, but the monks and nuns, priests and friars,
were turned loose upon the world to swell the ranks
of the have-nots. The shiftless hand-to-mouth class
thus grew with fearful rapidity. The whole country was
overrun with loafers and vagrants, deprived of the
means of living by no fault of their own. Not even
�ENGLAND FOR ALL.
the most atrocious laws could keep them within limits,
though they drove them into the towns, and into the
power of the shopkeeping class, now gaining strength.
Paupers being thus numerous, in the 43rd year of
Elizabeth—who had resumed all the confiscated lands
—a Poor Law was passed ; and from that time to this
pauperism has formed as integral a portion of our
social constitution as the aristocracy who created the
necessity for the law. How could it be otherwise?
The landed rights of the many had been sacrificed to
the greed of the few; and confiscation, really put in
force to bolster up luxury and selfishness, was carried
on in the name of religion.
Between the fifteenth and the beginning of the
seventeenth century the whole face of England had
been changed. In place of well-being, contentmenf,
and general prosperity, as described by Fortescue?
depression and misery had become the common lot of
the people who owned no land. The mere wage-earner
took the place of the labouring, petty farmer—a man
at the mercy of his employer. For the fine old
yeoman class fell more and more into decrepitude,
and the downfall of the ecclesiastical property pre
ceded their own final ruin by but a short interval.
Yet even so late as the end of the seventeenth cen
tury eighty per cent, of the population of England
was still purely agricultural. By the middle of the
eighteenth century there was scarcely a yeoman of the
old type left in a county.
The Stuarts were bad enough, but William III. was
worse than any of his immediate predecessors. This
great Whig hero treated England as if he had con?
�The
land.
17
quered it in respect to all he could lay hands upon,
and gave away lands he had no right whatever to
dispose of to his thick-headed and greedy Dutch
followers. Their descendants prey upon us to this
hour, though, with the exception of Lord William
Bentinck, not a single one of them has been of the
slightest genuine service to the State whose land they
have seized, or has illustrated our history even by a
crime. All this long series of robberies from the
people, helped on by economical causes, ended in an
aggregation of property and influence in a few hands
to an extent never before equalled.
It was followed by an enclosure of the common
lands of a character even more nefarious. Parliament,
made up almost exclusively of landowners, and in no
sense whatever representative of the mass of the
people, framed bill after bill for the enclosure of the
commons, which alone were left to show that the soil
of England had formerly been looked upon as the
property of the great majority. No man, not a land
lord, can read through the records of this disgraceful
pillage even now without a feeling of furious bitter
ness. Nothing more shameful is told in the long tale
of class greed than this of the seizure of the common
lands by the upper and middle classes of Great
Britain. To deprive the people of their last vestige of
independent holding, and thus to force all to become
mere hand-to-mouth wage-earners at the mercy of the
growing capitalist class, such was the practical effect
of these private enactments, conceived in iniquity, and
executed in injustice. For up to so recent a date as
1845 these enclosures were done by private bill, and
c
�ENGLAND FOR ALL.
of course exclusively in private interest. There was
no public discussion whatever ; rich men who coveted
a few thousand acres of common which belonged
to their poorer neighbours, simply laid hands upon
them and added them to their estate. Fierce pro
tests were often made in the neighbourhood, but they
were invariably unavailing. In the course of 150
years, between 1700 and 1845, no fewer than 7,000,000
acres of public land, and probably a great deal more,
were enclosed by the landowners of England in
Parliament assembled, without one halfpenny of real
compensation ever having been made to the public
whose rights were thus ridden over. At that time, be
it remarked, the people of England—but shabbily
represented now—had practically no voice in public
affairs at all, and such a man as Sir Robert Walpole
just “ ran the machine ” in the sole interest of his class,
for all the world like a Pennsylvanian log-roller or
wire-puller of our own day. Not even scraps of those
great and valuable common lands remain in some
districts to remind the English people of the robberies
that have been committed upon them.
Even since the introduction of public bills to regu
late these enclosures matters were, until quite lately,
very little better. A wealthy landgrabber would
purchase land all round a common, and then stealthily
get it enclosed on some shallow pretext. This
occurred over and over again. The hard fight which
such a body as the Corporation of the City of London
had to wage in order to keep for the people of
London what remnant there is of Epping Forest,
shows the pertinacity with which individual selfishness
�THE LAND.
19
works on. Conservatives and Liberals who stand up
for the ancient and indefeasible rights of property at
the expense of others should look into these things.
The very people who ate up the whole country away
from their countrymen and make land a monopoly,
cry out fiercely that they are being ill-used and
robbed when an attempt is made to reassert some
small portion of the rights of the nation over that
which is, and always has been, the property of the
nation—the land of England. What sort of title have
many of them to their lands ? Let them answer who
made the laws which gave the eternal right to harm
the people. Why, they themselves and their fathers
before them. None other. The owners of the land
had no voice ; violence, wrong, and fraud weigh still
upon the country. But there need be no fear for
those who profited by these encroachments. The
people are never unjust, even in their own interest:
they pay to get back their simplest rights.
The effect of this seizure of the commons upon the
rural population has been most sad. Their condition,
never very flourishing since they were deprived of
individual ownership, became yet worse. But I will
quote a calm writer, who is fully convinced of the
beneficial effects of supply and demand, and freedom
of contract:—“ Many of the descendants of those who
once possessed valuable rights of common are agricul
tural labourers, to whose miserable condition allusion
has already been made. Our rural population has
been deprived of that which once gave a most impor
tant addition to their income. The common often
enabled them to keep some poultry, a pig, and a cow.
C 2
�20
ENGLAND FOR ALE
Many villages may now be traversed, and not a single
labourer can be found possessing a head of poultry;
few even keep a pig, and not one in 10,000 has a cow.
What is the result of this ? The labourer does not
live as he did 100 years since; he and his family
seldom taste meat, and his children suffer cruelly from
the difficulty he has in obtaining milk for them.”
This, indeed, is a matter of common consent. The
agricultural labourer is far worse off than his fore
fathers. But if the people have, been deprived of
their commons, so also have their plots of ground to
their ill-drained, overcrowded cottages disappeared.
They make them too “independent.” No property,
low diet, a pretence of education, and enforced servility
to their “ betters ”—that was the way to bring down
the “ proud peasantry ” from their high looks of the
fifteenth century to the abasement of a ten-shilling-aweek agricultural labourer, ever begging for some
dole out of the fruits of his own labour to be given
back to him, from the Hall, the Rectory, or the poor
house. This kept him “ in that state of life ” which
the Church Catechism enjoins upon the lowly. No
agricultural labourer, it needs hardly be said, has ever
yet sat in the House of Commons to represent the
wrongs of his class.
These unfortunate families, deprived of their own
land and ousted from their common lands, became, as
we have seen, fair game for the most abominable
legislation. The laws against vagrants and men out
of work were ferocious and brutal, to a degree scarcely
to be credited until they were actually revived in
America the othei' day. By these means they came
�THE LAND.
21
into the towns, where, refused the right to combine,
and wholly destitute of means, they were delivered
over to a form of tyranny the more trying from its
being carried on under the name of freedom. The
very idea that the unfortunate had a definite interest
in the country was done away. The poor were only
not criminal. And this feeling grew among the
dominant class with the growth of that shopkeeper
spirit which has been paramount with English parties,
to the almost entire exclusion of any sense of justice
to the bulk of the community. The few landowners
of genuine old family who still remain, and who, one
would have thought, would look back with pride to
the times when their ancestors were the leaders of
well-to-do free men, have been as bad as the rest.
They have thought that their duties, such as they
were, began and ended with their tenantry. If the
labourers received a small pittance in charity after
having worked their lives through on starvation
wages, that was as much as they could expect. The
eternal law of supply and demand justified meat once
a fortnight, and short commons all the year round.
There stood the workhouse: what more could the
people want ?
But now what has been the outcome to us of to-day
of all these uncompensated expropriations in Eng
land—of the ducal razzias like those of the Dukes
of Sutherland and Argyll in Scotland (the latter
worthy peer naturally standing out with his fellow
Liberal of Lansdowne in favour of the perpetuation
of serfdom in Ireland)—what do we of the present
generation derive from all this long succession of
�22
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
past iniquities ? Nothing is easier than to sum it all
up. We have then a great body of landowners, 2000
of whom alone hold actually 38,000,000 acres of our
land in estates of over 5000 acres each, the total
agricultural rental of this vast domain being not less
than 25,000,000/. annually. The whole of the agricul
tural land in the kingdom is practically owned by
less than 30,000 persons ; and not all the systematic
fudging resorted to in the Landlord’s Return, known
as the <l New Doomsday Book,” has been able to
shake that fact out of the minds of the people of
England. In that book Lord Overstone—formerly
Mr. Jones, a banker of enormous wealth, who turned
landgrabber after the manner of his kind—the Duke
of Buccleuch, and the Duke of Devonshire are put
forward as thirty-three different owners. This is only
a specimen of how the truth is blinked and covered
up by those who are interested in hiding it away from
their countrymen. And this monstrous monopoly the
landowners, and the big capitalists who hope to be
landowners, and their friends and relations the lawyers,
who live upon the complications of the laws they
themselves have formulated, are now striving to per
petuate.
Not to speak of the injurious consequences politi
cally of such a concentration of excessive wealth and
power in a few hands, the economical drawbacks stare
us in the face. Men who own half-a-dozen large pro
perties in several different counties must be permanent
absentees from some of them. They take the rents
and spend them elsewhere, being themselves the
heaviest of all the burdens on the land. The majority
�THE LAND.
23
of landowners cannot do justice to the land they have
taken even in their own narrowest sense. Cumbered
up with mortgages, settlements, rent-charges, heaven
knows what, they are in no case to face a great fall
in rents, to encounter competition from without, or to
bring to bear that skill, labour and personal attention
now essential to success in agriculture. The sacred
trinity of landlord, capitalist-farmer, and agricultural
labourer has broken up. The labourer can be screwed
no lower, the farmer has had enough of giving his
capital to the landlord as rent. American “ wheat
centres” have proved clearly that landlords are not an
essential element in English agricultural production.
A great change is therefore at hand. Agricultural ex
perts aver with confidence that if the land of England
were properly handled, if sufficient labour and manure
were applied, we could profitably produce twice the
quantity of food we do from the existing cultivated
acreage. What stops us ? Unquestionably that de
termination of landowners to bold on to their false
idea of greatness, and to those miserable customs of
settlement and entail which will necessarily be put an
end to as a wider and more useful method of dealing
with our soil opens up before us. Happily the land
lords are themselves beginning to feel the pinch, and
may lead the way in the reforms which have now
become essential. If they don’t it is no great matter ;
for sooner or later the people of England mean to
have back the land, and the sooner the better for the
interest of the landlords themselves.
For let it be remembered that the dominant classes
have done more than take the land ; by their Parlia
�24
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
ments they have actually shuffled on to the shoulders
of the mass of the people nearly all the taxes and
obligations which formerly came out of their rents as
a portion for the State and the poor. Laws enacted
by men for their own benefit in direct contravention
of the tenure on which the lands were originally taken
have no binding force whatsoever on posterity. Yet
the landowners of Great Britain were formerly subject
to a land-tax of four shillings in the pound on their
assessment. This they have whittled away almost to
nothing, and now the land-tax under their skilful
manipulation, produces but 1,074,919/., instead of
18,802,337/. as it ought. That is to say, the landowners
of Great Britain put into their pockets a sum of little
less than 18,000,000/., which, but for their own self
gratifying ordinances would, according to the old laws
of this kingdom, have gone into the treasury of the
country at large. No wonder that our privileged
classes and their hangers-on howl “confiscation/
“ communism,” “ socialism,” and words more English
and less nice, when any fearless man begins to rake
up the history of their “ sacrifices ” to patriotism.
True patriots they ; for be it understood
They robb’d their country for their country’s good 1
But this is not all either. Agricultural property is
well enough in its way, but the mines, all that under
lies the soil has fallen also into the grip of the small
minority, and it is impossible to get a bill through
Parliament which will even compel the owners to
protect the lives of the men who work in them. The
miners should know their place, and have power to
�THE LAND.
“ contract out of the Act.” What matters the risk of
loss of life ? Then the urban properties, again, with
their vast unearned increment of rent, and the power
given to individuals to obstruct improvements whilst
they benefit by the expenditure of the public money
or railroads carried through by the decision of Parlia
ment. What, in the name of all that is reasonable,
have Grosvenors or Bentincks done for England
that they and theirs should interfere for ever with
the management of London, and pocket increasing
rents which, if exacted at all, should go to the munici
pality which must shortly be created for this great
metropolis, and benefit the whole community ? Is it
well that millions should be spent on the Thames
embankment, for instance, and that landowners should
pocket thousands a year by the improvement of their
property ? These are points which come home to all,
and must, ere long, force on a change. Such enormous
revenues as those which were squandered in digging
catacombs in Welbeck Park, or laid out in providing
Westminster with a dukedom, ought not to be at the
unrestrained disposal of any single family. For no
idea whatever of duty is attached to these great pos
sessions ; and artisans’ dwellings, or a market, in a
fashionable locality might “damage the property,”
and so are warned off.
How is it that the landowners themselves, or such
at least as come fairly by their property, do not see
that their political future depends upon recognizing
the vast changes going on beneath them, and
endeavour to associate themselves with the future of
their country ? Their object, one would think, would
�26
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
necessarily be to meet and guide that flow of demo
cratic opinion which manifestly precedes a new social
evolution. To stand on the brink and wring their
hands in dismay is both cowardly and foolish. For
in a small, densely-peopled country like ours the
whole hangs together—land in country and land in
towns, mines, communications, all go to make up the
complicated system under which we live.
But agricultural land of necessity stands first. Mr.
Clare Read, the farmer, says that all will come right,
and that twenty-five years or so hence the territorial
grandee will rise again to the enjoyment of his unearned
increment, the farmer shall be a man of wealth and
substance, and the agricultural labourer—well, what
tenant-farmer ever thinks about him ? Landlord-made
laws must undergo revision in the interests of the
landlords themselves, but far more for the sake of the
mass of their countrymen now dissociated altogether
from the land. It is humiliating to look back fifty
years, and note how little has been done since the
able band of democratic writers, headed by Cobbett,
first forcibly pointed out the historical injuries from
which Englishmen are still suffering. As it was
yesterday, so it is to-day; but so shall it not be
to-morrow. The importance of the Land Question
in England is now fully understood by the inhabitants
of the counties as well as of the towns, and up to a
certain point a vast majority will combine to over
throw the existing system, which lies like a dead
weight upon it.
When we come to the direction in which changes
should be made, however, the widest differences arise.
�THE LAND.
Some seem to imagine that mere free trade in land,
even without the plan of compulsory subdivision,
would bring about the planting of the people on the
land ; others look upon the removal of settlement and
entail as only preliminary to nationalisation, in the
sense that by limitation of the right of inheritance
and compulsory purchase at a valuation, the State,
the county, or the municipality should come into the
possession of all land within a calculable period. All
depends upon what we desire to bring about. Many
ardent reformers look forward to the day when English
farmers shall hold their ten, twenty, fifty-acre farms,
interspersed with larger holdings, as in former times.
Is this to be done? Can we thus put back the
clock 400 years ? It would scarcely seem so ; yet on
the whole it should appear that small farmers who
depend chiefly on their own labour for their return
have suffered less in all parts of the country, and have
been readier to pay rent, than the large. In America
also, the unincumbered farmer holding no large extent
of land fared on the whole better than his wealthier
neighbour, who was growing not for produce so much
as for profit.
The main object necessarily is to get as much out
of the land as possible, and at the same time to
secure the agricultural labourer, and those of the
townspeople who take to the land, a fair return for
their labour, and a prospect of obtaining possession
of land if they desire to do so. Evidently the labourer
and the townsman will gain nothing by giving the
farmers in England fixity of tenure, nor by freetrade in land. All evidence goes to show, however,
�28
ENGLAND FOL ALL.
that even under present conditions the more secure the
tenure, in an increasing ratio up to freehold, the
better on the whole the farming, until the limit of
acreage is reached where the owner thinks he can afford
to lie by and make an income by letting to others.
But the present tenants would be no better employers
as owners, or tenants on a permanent settlement, than
they are now; the agricultural labourer who really does
the work would still get his ten and twelve shillings
a week, his cottage would be equally destitute
of garden. On the other hand, if the capitalists
came in, does their behaviour in the large cities make
us very hopeful of what would take place under their
management in the country ? These are difficulties
which-at once arise in any scheme of individual im
provement. Even the virtual limitation of the amount
of land which may be held by any individual by means
of cumulative taxation—the only fair taxation by the
way—might not give the labourer on the land that
independence which would enable him to hold his
own. What the better, in short, would the mass of
the population be for any of the reforms proposed ?
Granting that twofold would be produced, would the
labourers or the urban population get a greater share
of it ? No doubt the diminution of the absurd social
influence attaching to the ownership of land would have
a great effect in lowering its value to a mere idler, espe
cially if the game laws are speedily repealed. But all
this does not help the man who does the work for ten
and twelve shillings a week to get some fair portion
of the fruits of his labour—to secure a decent home, a
plot of ground, least of all a small farm. What is
�tltE LAND.
being done for Ireland, then, ought on a larger scale
to be done here; though unfortunately want of educa
tion and knowledge cripples the present generation,
and they have been more completely uprooted from
the soil than even the Irish.
We are manifestly here, as elsewhere, in a transi
tion period. The stage of dominant landlordism is
passing away rapidly—that of State management, or
co-operation in the interest of all, has apparently
not been reached. Granting therefore that the com
pletes! reforms of the land laws, in the shape of abo
lition of settlement and entail, complete subdivision,
simplified registration, mortgage made illegal, and so
forth, have been carried, much will remain to be done.
Private enterprise cannot satisfactorily deal with the
many important changes to be made. Benevolent
investments at five per cent, are, in American parlance,
“ a fraud.” What a miserable hand-to-mouth creature
the agricultural labourer is to-day we know. Let, then,
that point be borne in mind in all reforms, that until
the labourer is placed in a position where he is really
able to contract freely, either by combination, or by
State assistance in the shape of permanent leases of
land, subject to disturbance only for bad culture
or non-payment of fair rent, no great change
will ever be made in his condition for the better.
For this too is for the interest of all. The titles
of English landlords are none so good that they can
afford any longer to run the risk of the cry, “ The
Land for the People/’ Hitherto powers of expropria
tion and interference have been used solely in the in
terest of the upper and middle classes, who hold the
�3°
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
control. Ere long a similar process will be demanded
by the great majority in their favour, though not with
equal injustice.
As stepping-stones to further development, the
following reforms may be demanded at once :—
Reform of the law of settlement and entail, putting
an end to the existing system altogether.
Compulsory registration of title, so as to make
transfer of land as easy as it is in America.
Extension of the powers of local bodies to acquire
land for all purposes and to lease it in small portions.
Compensated expropriation of property-owners in
large cities.1
No confiscation or revenge for the forced removal
of the people from the land is asked for. But the
unborn have no rights, and the nation has always
both the power and the right to take any land at a
fair valuation. By immediate limitation of the right
of inheritance, and an application of the power of
purchase, the State or the local authority would
speedily come into possession of land, which could be
used for the common interest, and some comfort and
security obtained for those who at present have neither.
No longer then should the agriculturist be per
manently kept away from possession of the soil; no
1 “ Nationalisation” of the land is, of course, the only logical
outcome of any thorough suggestions for reform; but this,
unless accompanied by nationalisation of railways and of
capital, would be of little use to the mass of the workers of the
country. Meanwhile, however, the only safe course is to work
in the direction of steadily restricting the rights of private
property in land.
�THE LAND.
3i
longer should the dweller in the city feel that, happen
what might, he could never leave the street or alley.
Hitherto the State has been regarded as an enemy :
the time is coming when all will be ready to recognize
that its friendly influence is needed to prevent serious
trouble, and to lead the way to a happier period.
That the landowners of England should join in a re
solute endeavour to remedy the mischiefs which affect
them in common with the rest of the population is
apparently too much to expect. True, their interest
lies in this direction. To stir up class hatred is easy
enough, when, in spite of all sentimental talk and
useless charity, the men who work see that nothing is
really done which will permanently benefit them. A
higher ideal than mere selfishness may indeed be held
up, but if reforms are to be peaceful those who are
rich and powerful must lead the way. Of this truer
patriotism there is at present no sign among those
who claim to be the “natural leaders” of the people.
�32
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
CHAPTER II.
LABOUR.
In every civilized society the main point to be con
sidered is the manner in which labour is applied to
production, and the share of his own labour which in
one shape or another the labourer gets in return. The
ancient historical civilizations were chiefly built upon
slavery. Here the labourer, his force of labour, and the
material on which he expended it, all belonged to the
master ; and the wealth of the latter might almost be
gauged by the number of slaves he possessed, though
only a portion of them would be actually employed in
the work of production. This employment of slave
labour renders any comparison between the state of
society then and now almost futile; but the condition of
the poor freemen in Rome and Athens, constantly ex
posed to the competition of slave-labour if they desired
to work themselves, resembled that of the mean whites
in the Southern States before the Civil War. The
peasant proprietor, or the member of a village com
munity, holds again a totally different position from
that of the slave or the labourer of modern times.
The peasant proprietor, or the craftsman owning his
own tools and able to obtain his own materials, is
master of himself, of his means of production, and of
�LABOUR.
33
his produce, even though he may have to pay a por
tion of the latter to a feudal chief or rajah. In both
cases, that of individual proprietorship and that of
ownership in common of the produce'of a community,
there may be and generally is perfect freedom, save
the restrictions which arise from the necessity of pro
ducing sufficient for the social necessaries of life.
It is quite possible that a man and his family may
live on the produce of their own farm, carry on the
simple operations of manufacture necessary to clothe
them, and rarely have the need to exchange anything
which they possess for the work of others. A good
harvest, or a favourable season with cattle, will repre
sent so much extra wealth, which will provide against
bad times, or enable the little household to devote more
labour to increase of comfort. With a village com
munity the necessity for exchange may arise less
often ; for these units of civilization comprise within
themselves the means of providing all the ordinary
needs, and some even of the luxuries of life. It is to
the interest of the whole family or village community
that all should be well nourished and strong for the
daily duty ; it is also advisable that a certain provision
should be made against the prospect of bad seasons.
Civilization, therefore, presupposes great forethought
in its earlier stages, or it would soon fall back again
to the condition of the Paraguayans, who ate the seed
given them by the missionaries. But all the wealth
thus produced by the work of individuals or com
munities is clearly due to labour; and that is not
wealth which is not recognized as an object of utility
in the social conditions of the time.
D
�34
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
The great majority of economists before and since
Adam Smith have agreed that labour is the source of
value. “The real price of everything,” says Adam
Smith himself, “what everything really costs to the
man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of
acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the
man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of
it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and
trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can
impose on other people. Labour was the first price
—the original purchase-money that was paid for all
things. In that early and rude state of society which
precedes both the accumulation of stock and the
appropriation of land, the proportion between the
quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different
objects seems to be the only circumstance which can
afford any rule for exchanging them for one another.
If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually
costs twice the labour to kill a beaver which it does
to kill a deer, one beaver would naturally be worth,
or exchange for, two deer. It is natural that what is
usually the produce of two days’ or two hours’
labour should be worth double of what is usually
the produce of one day’s or one hour’s labour.”
“ That this,” adds Ricardo, “ is really the foundation
of the exchangeable value of all things, excepting those
which cannot be increased by human industry, is a
doctrine of the utmost importance in political
economy. If the quantity of labour realized in com
modities regulate their exchangeable value, every
increase of the quantity of labour must augment the
value of that commodity on which it is exercised, as
�LABOUR.
35
every diminution must lower it.” This labour, of
course, includes the work necessary to replace the
wear and tear of.tools and machinery, as well as the
labour which is actually expended on and realized in
the commodities. Every useful article produced by
labour has two values, its value in use alone, and its
value in exchange. Its value in use is developed only
by being used and consumed : its value in exchange
consists in obtaining other useful articles in its
place.
Water, air, virgin soil, &c., are useful, but by them
selves they constitute no value. A man may also
expend his labour on useful articles which never
become commodities or goods for exchange. These
may be destined simply for his own use, and never
for exchange. In all countries, however, where the
capitalist system of production prevails, wealth
appears in the shape of an accumulation of com
modities or merchandise. Those products of human
labour devoted to natural objects are exchanged
according to the average quantity of human labour
expended in producing them. If wheat and axes are
exchanged in definite proportions, they are thus
bartered with reference to the common element in
each, by virtue of which an equality between them is
established. This is the quantity of human labour
expended in bringing them forward for exchange. So
many days of average labour embodied in one article
of utility, are equal to so many days of average
labour embodied in another article of utility. Thus
then the general rule is, that labour is the basis of
value, and quantity of labour the measure of value of
D 2
�36
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
commodities, or social values for the use of others, all
the world over.1
Say that a coat is worth twice as much as ten yards
of cloth. The coat is useful and satisfies a particular
want. Two kinds or qualities of labour are embodied
in it—that of the tailor who made the coat, and that
of the weaver who wove the cloth. So far as its use
fulness is concerned also, it makes no difference
whether the tailor wears it or his customer. Now as
to its value. The coat is assumed to be worth twice
as much as the ten yards of cloth—worth that is,
twenty yards of cloth. In point of value coat and
cloth are but expressions of labour itself. Thus
the coat is worth twice as much as the cloth, because
the cloth contains only half as much human
labour; and it needs twice the quantity of labour to
produce the coat complete, cloth and all, as to pro
duce the cloth alone. Reduce the quantity of labour
needed to make a coat by one half, and two coats are
only worth what one was before. Double the quantity
of labour needed to make a coat, and one coat is
worth what two were before. In the same way, “ if a
piece of cloth be now of the value of two pieces of
linen, and if, in ten years hence, the ordinary value of
a piece of cloth should be four pieces of linen, we may
1 Professor Stanley Jevons has convinced himself that labour
has no influence on value. Utility is the sole source of value.
Labour, supply, utility—such is the progression. This is not
the place to discuss this theory, which is of course turned to ac
count at once by capitalists. The cloud of differentiations and
metaphysics which Mr. Jevons throws up as he goes along does
not, however, obscure the fact that without labour there would be
no value at all.
�LABOUR.
37
safely conclude that either more labour is required to
make the cloth, or less to make the linen, or that
both causes have operated.” Thus then, no matter
whether the productive power of average human
labour in producing any article of utility—and utility
is, of course, an essential element of exchangeable
value—is increased or diminished, the same length of
labour, or the same quantity of labour, always repre
sents the same value. But of course, if the labour is
more productive, more values in use are obtained in
a given time, and if less productive, less: only the
value for exchange remains unaltered.
But the above illustrations are easily extended.
When a coat is said to be worth twice as much as
ten yards of cloth, or worth, that is, twenty yards of
cloth, this means, as has been said, that the quantity
of human labour contained in the one is equal to, or
expressed in, the quantity of human labour contained
in the other. So with other articles of utility. A coat
may likewise be equal in value to ten pounds of tea,
or to half a ton of iron, or to a quarter of wheat, or to
two ounces of gold ; all these products of human
labour being also equal in value to twenty yards of
cloth, and varying in exchangeable value in propor
tion to the amount of labour embodied in them ;
the simple meaning of the equality being that the
tea, the iron, the wheat, the gold, and the cloth, repre
sent, each and all, the same quantity of labour in the
several amounts of commodities.
But it so happens that it has been found convenient
for ages to express this general form of value in one
particular commodity. This in nowise changes the
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fundamental proposition that labour is the basis of
value, and quantity of labour its measure. The only
further result is, that the coat, the ten pounds of tea,
the half a ton of iron, the quarter of wheat, the
twenty yards of cloth, are all equal in value, not only
to one another, but to the two ounces of gold, which
henceforward are taken as a meaure of value for
them all and become money. When commodities
now are valued, they are valued with reference to the
gold, which forms not only a real but an ideal valua
tion. It is not the money which enables the com
modities to be valued. Far otherwise. It is because
all commodities represent realized human labour
already expended on natural objects, thus producing
articles of utility, that their relative value is conse
quently measureable by one another, and that they
can all be valued together in one special commodity.
This last becomes money, and is a measure for them
all, though, like the rest, its value consists in the fact
that it represents the expenditure of human labour.
But money is not only a convenient measure of
value, but also a means of putting commodities in
circulation. A commodity is exchanged for its
equivalent in money, and then again the money is ex
changed for another commodity. In order to promote
a circulation of commodities there must be a sufficiency
of money, or the representative of money in some form
of currency, to avoid congestion. To bring about the
regular interchange of articles of utility in civilized life,
such a change of commodities for money, and again
into commodities, being the rule. This fact formed
the basis of the theory of the celebrated Law, who
�LABOUR.
39
desired to substitute for gold and silver, which cost
labour to produce, and yet are in themselves of little
utility, paper certificates of labour expended, which
would cost nothing, and yet serve the purposes of cur
rency. Without however, entering upon the pheno
mena connected with money, it is now clear that in
all exchangeable value the human labour expended is
the basis of the value of commodities, and the quantity
of human labour the measure.
There is, of course, nothing new in all this. That
natural objects are of no value unless human labour is
expended on them is a truth as old as the world.
That labour is the real basis, not only of value but of
all civilized society, needs no elaborate demonstration
at this time of day. Yet it is precisely from this
generally admitted but little regarded truth that
consequences follow of the highest importance to our
modern society. Here come in those “ differences
of value,” those strange manipulations of the worth of
commodities, which go to the root of all business.
A merchant has a sum of money, say a hundred
pounds sterling. Therewith he buys on the market
say a hundred pounds’ worth of cotton. So far
the exchange may be perfectly fair and exact. The
merchant has given his labour as expressed in a
hundred pounds sterling for another man’s labour as
embodied in a mass of cotton. But, having bought,
hs goes away and sells his purchased cotton to an
other person for 110Z., making, as it is said, 10Z. by the
transaction. . His 100Z. was turned into its equivalent
in merchandise, and then appeared again as 110Z.
Not only is the original sum replaced, but more is
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added, and the merchant’s money becomes capital.
The merchant buys not for himself, or to work up for
the use of others, but merely to sell the cotton again
at an enhanced price. This is something very
different from the use of money as the measure of
the value of commodities, or as the means of facili
tating exchange. It is commercial capital, which its
owner takes upon the market for the purpose of
increasing it. Money to start with; then, after a
longer or a shorter interval, more money—that, leaving
out the intermediate process of buying the cotton, is
the process. But the amount of value in circulation
at any given moment—that is, the quantity of human
labour on the average embodied in commodities—
cannot increase of itself. If a merchant has in his
possession a commodity whose value is expressed
in money by 10Z., this value can only be increased
absolutely, and made say nZ., by the addition of
more labour to the labour-value represented in the
first instance—as by making a coat of cloth. The
coat is worth more than the cloth, but the value of
the cloth remains the same. Thus then all conditions
remaining the same, the owner of the money to start
with must buy a piece of merchandise at its exact value,
and sell it again for what it is worth, and yet have at
the end more value than he had at the beginning.
Now the problem begins to take shape.
The increase of value by which money becomes
more money and is turned into capital, obviously
cannot arise from the money itself. It follows then
that the conversion of money into merchandise, and
then of that same merchandise into more money, is
�LABO UR.
4i
due to the merchandise. But how ? Commodities
can no more increase their own exchangeable value
than money. In order to obtain an additional ex
changeable value from a commodity a sort of mer
chandise must be found which possesses the remark
able quality of being itself the source of exchangeable
value, so that to consume it would be to obtain that
labour-force embodied in value, and consequently to
create value.
Now it so happens that the capitalist in embryo
does find on the market a purchaseable commodity
endowed with this specific virtue. This is called
labour, or force of labour. Under that name is com
prised the entire capacities, physical and intellectual,
which exist in the body of a man, and which he
must set in motion in order to produce articles of
utility. Evidently the force of labour cannot present
itself on the market for sale, unless it is offered by
its owner; he must be able to dispose of it—that is,
be the free owner of his labour, of the force of his
own body. The moneyed man and he meet on the
market; one buys, and the other sells, and both are
quits. But the owner of this labour-force must only
sell it for a definite time ; if he sells it for an indefi
nite time, from being a merchant, he himself, his force
of labour and all, becomes a mere commodity. He
is a slave or serf at the command of his master as a
chattel. The essential condition for the capitalist
to be able to buy the force of labour is, that the
owner of the labour instead of being able to keep
himself by work on his own land, or to sell goods on
which he has himself expended his labour, should be
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obliged to sell the labour-force in his body pure and
simple. A man in order to sell goods of his own
making, must of course command the means of pro
duction—tools, raw material, &c. Then he is master
of his own labour, an independent man; he has the
means of exchanging his own labour as embodied in
useful articles for other men’s labour also embodied
in useful articles upon equal terms. But in order
that money should be converted into capital the
workman himself must be free in a very different
sense ; not only must he be ready to sell his labour as
a commodity, but further, he must be free—so very
free that he has nothing else in the world but his
power of labour to sell—that he should be completely
destitute of the means of realizing his own force of
labour in commodities by himself, having neither tools,
nor land, nor raw materials wherewith to do so.
How does this free labourer thus find himself on
the market, ready to enter into free contract ? That
does not concern the owner of the money, who looks
upon the labour-market as a mere branch of the rest
of the market for commodities, and governed by the
same laws. The appearance of this destitute labourer
there is nevertheless, as has been seen, the outcome
of a long series of economical evolutions and revolu
tions extending over centuries. Driven from the
land, deprived of the possibility of earning a living,
the mass of the people find themselves concentrated
in the towns. Nature most assuredly does not turn
out possessors of money or goods on the one side,
and ownersof their pure labour-force, and nothing else,
on the other; nor is such a social state common to
�LABOUR.
43
most periods of history. So long, for example, as the
produce of labour is used to supply the needs of the
labourer, it does not, as has been seen, become mer
chandise ; in the same way, the production and cir
culation of commodities may take place under many
forms of society. It is not so with capital; that only
makes its appearance when that part of the wealth
of a country which is employed in production, con
sisting of food, clothing, tools, raw materials, ma
chinery, &c., necessary to give effect to labour, is
found in the hands of an owner, who meets on the
market the destitute free labourer come thither to
sell his labour.
Capital then forms an epoch in social production.
What, however, is this force of labour, which the
free owner of it comes on to the market to sell ?
Clearly it is a human force,physical, moral, intellectual,
which requires certain material, food, and clothing and
lodging—all at the command of the moneyed man,
and not of the labourer—to keep it in order and
supplied, so that the waste of one day may be made
good, and it may return with equal vigour the next.
These necessaries vary, of course, with different
climates, and with different degrees of civilization ;
but in any given country and period the average
needs of the labourers are known. Nor is this fact
altered by the other fact that, as pointed out by Mill,
a series of circumstances may reduce the standard of
supposed necessaries. The amount of average neces
saries thus ascertained is called by Ricardo, the
“ natural price of labour,” and is “ that price which is
necessary to enable the labourers one with another to
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subsist, and to perpetuate their race without either
increase or diminution.” In this way we have that
amount of average daily necessaries which will
maintain the present race of destitute bargainers, and
provide them with equally destitute successors.
Assume then that the cost of this amount of daily
foods, the natural price of human labour comprised
in the necessaries for existence for the twenty-four
hours—representing by rights only the quantity of
human labour expended in their production—is six
hours’ work. Half a day’s average work is needed
then to reproduce the average amount of labour-force
expended. Take this at three shillings as expressed
in money. Then the owner of the labour who sells
its work for six hours at three shillings, sells it for its
exact value. “ It is when the market price of labour
exceeds its natural price that the condition of the
labourer is flourishing and happy—that he has it in
his power to command a greater proportion of the
necessaries and enjoyments of life. When the market
price of labour is below its natural price, the condition
of the labourers is most wretched; then poverty
deprives them of comforts which custom renders
absolute necessaries.” So far Ricardo again. But the
natural price of labour reaches its minimum when it
is reduced to the value of the means of subsistence
physiologically indispensable. When it falls to this
minimum, the price has reached a level below the
value of the labour-force, which then only just
maintains itself without immediate deterioration.
For example, a man who sells his labour for just
enough to keep himself and his family without
�LABOUR.
45
making any provision for old age, or future ill-health
from which he may suffer, is clearly going down hill.
The natural price of his labour has not in this case
taken a sufficiently wide range,
When also the capitalist buys the labour, it is the
owner of that labour who sells on credit. He advances
his labour to the capitalist; the capitalist advances
nothing to him without having been previously
paid for it. In every country where the capitalist
system prevails, the labourer is only paid after he
has worked for a certain period—a week, a fortnight,
a month—on credit. This enables the capitalist to
“turn round.” If the employer fails, the labourers
suffer: they are not paid; for the labour has been
sold beforehand, and duly delivered by the expenditure
of force from the labourer’s body. An illustration of
this occurred not long since in the great strike of
colliers in the north against the masters, who wished
to make their men break the law by contracting out
of the Employers’ Liability Act. Once out on strike
they insisted most strongly upon the reduction of the
length of the advance of their labour to the capitalist,
from the fortnight to the week. This point they
carried. Fortnightly or monthly wages are a hardship
to the labourer, which, like many others, can only be
removed by resolute combination ; for that value in
use which the owner of the labour advances to the
buyer, only shows itself in employment. And this
consumption of force of labour produces, not only
commodities, but surplus value besides. Everything
else needed for the purposes of production—raw
materials, machinery, &c.—have been bought by the
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capitalist at their actual value, and paid for at their
actual price. It is labour only, the labour-force of
human beings, from which he derives his surplus value.
Out of this, his last purchase, bought on credit, the
capitalist makes his capital breed. This labour, bought
in the open market, and realized in the commodity—
this it is which gives the capitalist the additional
value he hungers for.
Now we begin to see how it comes about that 10Z.
turns into i iZ., that 100Z. swells into 110Z., without
additional value. Now, too, the admirable working
of “ freedom of contract ” and “ supply and demand ”
in our modern society appears. Hear, too, William
Cobbettfora moment: “ To those who labour, we who
labour not with our hands owe all that we eat and
drink and wear, all that shades us by day and that
shelters us by night, all the means of enjoying
health and pleasure ; and therefore if we possess talent
for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or both, if
we omit any effort within our power to prevent them
from being slaves. What is a slave ? For let us not
be amused by a name. A slave is in the first place
a man who has no property; and property means
something that he has, and that nobody can take
from him without his leave or consent. A slave has
no property in his labour ; and any man who is com
pelled to give up the fruit of his labour to another at
the arbitrary will of that other, has no property in his
labour, and is therefore a slave, whether the fruit of
his labour be taken from him directly or indirectly.
If it be said that he gives up the fruit of his labour
by his own will, and that it is not forced from
�LABOUR.
47
him, I answer, To be sure he may avoid eating and
drinking, and may go naked ; but then he must die ;
and on this condition, and this condition only, can he
refuse to give up the fruit of his labour. ‘ Die,
wretch, or surrender as much of your income or the
fruit of your labour as your masters choose to take.’ ”
To return. The working man who has sold his
labour works, of course, under the control of the capi
talist to whom his labour thus belongs, and whose
object it is that he should work hard and continuously.
Besides, the product in which his force of labour is
embodied is the property of the capitalist, and in no
sense that of the labourer. The capitalist merely pays
him his wages, just as he would pay for the hire of a
horse or a mule. Then the employer applies the
human merchandise he has thus bought to his raw
materials and machinery. The result is a value in
use to be passed on to others ; and not only such
value, but a surplus value for the capitalist himself,
derived from this purchased labour.
Take, for example, cotton yarns. The capitalist
buys, say, ten pounds of raw cotton for I ox In that
price there is already expressed the average labour
needed for the production, transport, and marketing
of the raw cotton. Now put the wear and tear of the
spindles, machinery, &c., in working up the raw
material into yarn at 2s. If a piece of gold of the
value of 12s. is the output of twenty-four hours’work,
it follows that there are, apart from the labour in the
factory, two full days of work (at the assumed natural
rate of 3x for six hours’ work) embodied in the yarn.
This accounts for the original labour needed to raise
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and transport the raw cotton, as well as the labour
needed to replace the wear and tear.
It has already been assumed that the workman
must give six hours’ labour in order to earn 3^., the
natural price of his labour required to supply him
socially with his absolute necessaries. Now assume
further that it takes six hours’ labour to turn ten
pounds of cotton into ten pounds of yarn ; then the
workman has added to the raw cotton a value of 3s1.,
a half-a-day’s work. So at the end the ten pounds
of yarn contain altogether two days and a half of
labour; raw cotton and wear and tear of spindles
stand for two days ; and half-a-day has been absorbed
by the cotton in the process of spinning. This quan
tity of labour is therefore reckoned in a piece of gold
of the value of 15^.; that is to say, the price of the
yarn worked up from the cotton is ix. 6d. a pound.
Here obviously is no gain to the capitalist. His raw
material, his wear and tear of machinery, his wages
paid for the labour which he has purchased, eat up
the whole of the capital advanced, and yet the ten
pounds of yarn only fetch ij-. 6d. a pound, which is
the value of the average quantity of labour contained
in it. This shows no profit whatever, much to the
horror of the capitalist if he stopped there.
But the employer has bought the labourer’s whole
day’s work upon the market. He can make him work
therefore not merely the six hours required to produce
the return of the 3^. paid, but twelve hours—a day’s
work. Now if six hours’ work produces ten pounds
of yarn from ten pounds of cotton, twelve hours’ work
will give twenty pounds of yarn from twenty pounds
�LABOUR.
49
of cotton. These twenty pounds of yarn will thus con
tain five days’ labour, of which four are contained in the
raw cotton and the wear and tear of machinery and
spindles, and one day is absorbed by the yarn during
the process of spinning. The expression in money
then of these five days’ work is 30^. That, therefore,
is the price of the twenty pounds of yarn, Thus the
yarn is sold now as it was before at ij1. 6d. a pound.
But the sum of the values of the merchandise (includ
ing labour in the factory) embodied in the yarn does
not exceed 27 s.; that is to say, 2OJ. for the raw cotton,
4j. for the wear and tear, and 3s. for the labour in
the factory. The value of the product has therefore
increased. The 27s. have become 30J. Those 27s.
advanced by the capitalist have begotten a surplus
value of 3^., and the trick is done. The capitalist
has used a certain amount of another man’s labour
for his own behoof without paying for it, and the trick
is done at that man’s expense. That free labour
which is sold in the open market enables the capital
ist to sell the twenty pounds of yarn he has made
at the regular price of Ij. 6d. a pound, and, neverthe
less, to increase his capital by 3^. on the output of
twenty pounds. Labour thus used is the origin of
surplus value, and all’s well.
Once more it is permissible to look back to the ioZ.
made into 11Z., to the 100Z. swollen into 110Z. The iZ.
like the 10Z. is obtained from that free labour which is
bound to be sold for less than its worth, in order that its
possessor may continue to keep body and soul together.
And the surplus value so produced the capitalist, the
merchant, the shopkeeper, divide among themselves.
E
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In existing conditions of agricultural production,
the agricultural labourer in the same way provides
on his part the surplus value which the landowner,
the rent-charger, the farmer, the mortgagee, divide, in
the shape of rent, settlement, profit on capital, and
interest on money lent. The labourer himself, earning
his low to I2w a week, is the man upon whom all
these worthy people live, though they do so in a more
indirect manner than the capitalists of the large
towns, and have perhaps a trifle more conscience left
to appeal to.
Capital itself, however, is divided into two parts,
that w’hich is used to buy machinery and means of
production, and that which is expended on labour.
The former portion is constant, and is simply repro
duced without increase, the latter is variable, and is
that which produces surplus value. Ordinarily the
rate of surplus value is calculated on the total amount
of capital employed, constant and variable, and is
dubbed profit on capital. But this is wholly
incorrect. The rate of surplus value produced, the
proportion of labour turned to account by the
capitalist, should be reckoned only on the amount of
capital advanced to pay the owner of that labour
the natural price of his labour. What now is the pro
portion which the necessary labour for this purpose
bears to the extra labour which is used for the benefit
of the capitalist alone ?
Nothing will illustrate this so clearly as actual
figures taken from the regular operations of a factory.
A mill with 10,000 spindles spins yarn No. 32 with
American cotton, and produces every week a pound
�LABOUR.
5i
of yarn to the spindle. The waste of the cotton
amounts to six per cent. Therefore 10,600 pounds of
cotton are each week converted into 10,000 pounds of
yarn, and 600 pounds of waste. In April, 1871, this
cotton cost 7|</. a pound, and consequently 342Z. were
paid for the 10,600 pounds, in round figures. The
10,000 spindles, including the spinning machines and
the engine, cost io,oooZ.; their wear and tear amounts
to ten per cent., or 1000Z. a year, or 20Z. a week. The
ground-rent is 300Z. a year, or 6Z. a week. Coal, gas,
oil, &c., cost 4Z. ioj. every week; the total weekly
expenses in constant value amounting to 378Z.
The wages of the hands are 52Z. a week ; the price
of the yarn at I2|</. a pound for 10,000 pounds is
510Z. The additional value produced each week is
consequently 510Z. —378Z., or 132Z. Now deduct the
variable capital, the wages of the hands, or 52Z., and
there remains a surplus value of 80Z. Here the rate of
surplus value is therefore as 80Z. to 52Z., or upwards of
153 per cent. That is to say, for an average day’s
work of ten hours the necessary labour is but four
hours, and the extra labour six hours ; or, the labourer
works four hours for himself, and six for other
people, who divide his extra work among them.
And yet how unreasonable that the “hand,” silly
fellow, should object to this division of his extra and
unpaid for labour, and fancy that somehow somebody
has got the better of him. Fool that he is, let him
listen to the voice of the preacher and the political
economist:—“ What you need, my weary, povertystricken, Christian brother, is not to get back your
own extra labour, which you have expended, in the
E 2
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form of money or goods for your own use. That is—
believe us, who are your true friends—robbery of the
capitalists. You, my good man, should be thrifty,
abstinent, saving, economical, and still go on steadily
providing extra labour for others, until you in turn
cease to be a labourer, turn capitalist, and extort extra
labour yourself.”
What, however is this day’s work, necessary labour
and extra labour together, which the capitalist buys
on the market ? Obviously there must be some
limit to it. A man can’t work twenty-four hours
on end every day in the week, that is clear. But the
limits of the day’s work are very elastic. We find
ten hours, twelve hours, fourteen, sixteen, even
eighteen hours, given as the amount of a day’s work.
And this limit, however loose already, capitalists, from
the shirt-sweaters up to the railway companies, are
always striving to extend. They invoke the sacred
laws of supply and demand and freedom of contract,
to sanction an amount of daily toil which leaves a
man or a woman utterly exhausted at its close, which
weakens health, reduces vitality, and hands on a
broken constitution to the progeny. And all for what?
In order to swell that surplus value which “ society ”
depends upon for its excessive luxury and continuous
laziness. “But,” say the labourers when adjured not
to endanger society, “ that is all very well; but society
is shamefully wronging us. It is society which, having
entire command of the police and military forces of
the country, enables the capitalist class thus to violate
every law of exchange with impunity. These are
they who pay us only one-half or one-third or one-
�LABOUR.
53
quarter of the real value of our day’s work. They
then are the people who are endangering' society, of
which we form by far the most important part—not
the working men, who ask only that their labour
should not be taken for nothing.”
There is a comparison at hand which philanthro
pizing capitalists—and there are many of them—will
understand, if they do not appreciate. Under the old
system of corvee a man was obliged to give say one
day’s work in the week, or at most two, to his feudal
lord without any payment. Such a man, though he
had the remaining five or six days wholly to himself,
was thought little better than a slave. Nor was he.
English capitalists would, of all men, subscribe largely
to relieve human beings from continuing in such a
shameful and degraded position. But here at home,
we have men, women, and children, who are obliged
to give four, five, six hours a day to the capitalist for
nothing, and yet are thought free. A factory hand
who, as in the instance given above, provides six
hours a day of extra labour, makes the capitalist a
present of three days’ work in the week for nothing.
He gives, in fact, three times as much labour for no
thing in the week to his employer, as the serf who
works one day in the week under corvee is obliged to
offer in unpaid labour to his lord. . But in the one case,
under the system of daily or weekly wages, the neces
sary labour and the extra labour are lumped to
gether as so much paid-for labour ; in the other, they
are divided. Thus the forced, extra, unpaid labour
for the capitalist—the industrial corvee—escapes
notice, though it is three times greater than the other,
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and the capitalist is thrice as heavy a master as the
feudal lord.
Moreover, the capitalist class has ever been on the
look-out to increase the hours of labour beyond
measure, in order that they may obtain more extra
labour, and thus secure more surplus value. We in
England have had sad experience of the baneful
effects upon the working population of the neverceasing endeavours to increase the number of working
hours. The reports of the Factory Inspectors up to
a comparatively recent date, are positively filled to
overflowing with instances of the efforts made by the
capitalists to crowd extra labour on men, on women,
and, above all, on children. A little is filched from
the meal times ; the mill is opened a trifle earlier, closed
something later, than the prescribed hour. Always
this persistent scheming for extra labour.2 Not only
up to the passing of the Factory Acts, but ever since,
the same tendency has been relentlessly displayed.
Free Trade, by reducing the natural price of labour,
increased the profit of capitalists and the number of
hours on which they could depend for the production
of surplus value. Women and children have, of course,
suffered fearfully. They were used up as so much
2 Mr. Watherston, a jeweller, who has grown rich on other
men’s labour, wrote not long ago to the Economist to complain
of the miserably short hours of work Englishmen now have.
They must work more, or trade—his profits, he meant—would
suffer. Of course this was the very man for the capitalist party.
They got him at once as chairman of the Westminster caucus.
How long will working men be gulled by landlords and capitalists
into providing them with more unpaid labour, under the pretence
of improving trade ?
�LABOUR.
55
food for surplus value, without the slightest regard to
humanity, or to the interest of the country at large.
The average age of the working classes was fearfully
shortened by the excessive toil. The cotton industry
of Lancashire alone in ninety years, or three genera
tions of ordinary men, devoured nine generations of
work-people. What mattered that to the manu
facturers ? There were more where they came from.
The poor bargainers reproduce themselves, and sup
ply and demand goes merrily on as before. The
Factory Acts themselves, still by no means so stringent
nor so rigidly administered as they ought to be, were
carried against the bitterest opposition of the capi
talist class, because the nation had gradually roused
itself to the truth that the whole population was
rapidly deteriorating, owing to the systematic
overwork of women and children. There are even
still economists of liberal views, who hold that women
in particular ought to be allowed to work in factories
as long as they choose, and that the State has no right
to interfere to protect the coming generation. Argu
ment after argument is put forward also that longer
hours than those to which the Trade Unions have
happily reduced the working day are essential, because
otherwise capitalists cannot compete with foreign
nations.3
3 To show how impossible it is for the capitalist class to shake
themselves clear of the prejudices in which they have been
brought up, it is almost enough to say that Mr. Bright—a man
surely distinguished foi- his humanity in general concerns—
opposed the Factory Acts, which may fairly be regarded as the
most beneficent measures of this century, with all his might ;
that when President of the Board of Trade he declared that
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There is, unfortunately, no need to go back to the
horrible details contained in the Health Reports of
a few years ago, as to the condition of the working
classes, whilst wealth is being piled up by their labour
all round them. In spite of a little permissive legis
lation—well-intended, but by no means effectual—
things are almost as bad to-day. Some there are of
course who, rejoicing in the fact that our population has
consumed on the average ‘ooi lb. per head more of
bacon in the last ten years, or '002 lb. per head more
adulteration was a legitimate form of competition ; and that to
this hour he cannot see that interference with freedom of con
tract as between the capitalist and the labourer may be abso
lutely essential in the interests of the community at large. Sir
Thomas Brassey, as Professor Cairnes has pointed out, could
not understand that a reduction of profits might be quite as
desirable as a reduction of wages. It is amusing, too, to see
Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, a capitalist who has taken 700,000/.
out of the working classes by extra labour, and owns a rigid
monopoly, posing as a leader of the democracy. Doubtless
they all think themselves thoroughly in earnest; but how can
hunters after surplus value, men who are every day engaged in
putting wages at a lower level than they ought to be in order
to enhance their own profits from unpaid labour, really lead or
benefit them by pretending to lead, the working class ? The
Liberal benches in the House of Commons at this very time
are closely packed with plutocrats, who have made all their
wealth, and mean to make more, out of the unpaid labour of
their own countrymen. The Conservative benches seat a grow
ing proportion of men of the like kidney. What wonder that
working men who really understand what is going on around
them, almost despair of success in carrying measures which are
absolutely essential to the welfare of their class, when the power
of capitalism is increasing in every direction, when there is not
a single daily newspaper in existence which represents their
interests or advocates their claims, and when only three of their
class sit in Parliament ?
�LABOUR.
57
cheese, decline to look to that portion of the people
who bring down the average.
Such a speech as that delivered by the Bishop of
Manchester in June, 1880, ought to awaken the nation
to the mischief which is still being done. He, worthy
man, wrings his hands in despair at the state of affairs
in his own diocese. People living in the most mise
rable poverty, from which there seems no escape.
Misery, filth, starvation, overcrowding, followed by
inevitable deterioration. Sadness and hopelessness
brood over the streets, and alleys, and cellars, he has
explored. What can education do with children
living in such conditions as those which he has so
graphically described ? The men and the women
work hard enough when they can get the chance—
work endless hours too—do enough in short to feed,
and lodge, and clothe themselves in comfort. Yet in
Manchester and Salford, in Stockport and Altrincham,
in Oldham and Macclesfield, throughout the whole of
these great- industrial districts, thousands on thou
sands of labourers exist in good times in squalor, whilst
bad times drive them at once to the wall. Dr.
Fraser himself had shown a few years before what the
condition of the agricultural labourer was in this
respect, how hard he too works, how little he gets,
how foully he is lodged in many cases. Even orthodox
economists show further how farmers and manufac
turers alike combine to keep down the rate of wages to
the bare natural price, or below it, whilst exacting the
longest possible hours of toil.
Admitting that in some respects matters have
improved, owing to the determination of the working
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classes no longer to submit to such neglect and
oppression as of old, the very last report of the
Factory Inspectors shows how much remains to be
done, and how little machinery there is to do it. The
long weary struggle which has been carried on by the
working class, without even proper representation,
against laissez-faire, political economy, and selfish
ideas of freedom, seems still far from being successful.
A mere list of the provisions of the Factory Acts to
restrict tyranny by the masters and injury resulting
to the hands, proves conclusively that, but for State
intervention a condition of slavery of the worst kind
would exist now, as it did forty years ago. Meals for
instance are not allowed nowto be taken in rooms where
the atmosphere is poisonous, and some restrictions are
even imposed upon keeping men, women, and children
employed in the poisonous atmosphere. In Bradford, a
city which has long lived in the full and rather greasy
odour of Liberal sanctity, the wool-sorting has for years
been carried on in such a manner as directly to involve
the loss of the lives of many of the hands. Not a single
improvement did the capitalists—Mr. Coercion-Act
Forster is a Bradford man—introduce, till forced to do so
bylaw, and by public opinion following upon the verdict
of coroners’ juries as to the infamous state of things
which brought about the death of the wool-sorters.
Children still go to work full time in the collieries when
they are twelve years old, though in factories they,
fortunately, may not do so until they are thirteen or
fourteen. The parents, eager to get their children’s
wages, take advantage of this, and the capitalist
colliery owner of course is always ready to employ
�LABOUR.
59
cheap child-labour for his engines or other pur
poses.
In the dangerous trades great improvements have
been made by the Factory Acts, but still it is evident
far more stringent inspection and regulation is
required. In the brickworks we read of a girl carry
ing to and fro eleven tons of clay in the day for 2s.
a day. Brickmaking, to which women are wholly
unsuited, fell into their hands, we are told, “ because
masters at one time got wages down very low”—•
wanted to work women on the cheap in fact. In the
great cotton and iron industries years must still
elapse before the people recover from the deteriorating
effects of unrestricted competition. The best factories
and ironworks are not yet controlled sufficiently in
the interest of the men, women, and children who
work in them. But those who wish to understand
what capitalism is capable of, and what is its natural
bent, should read the reports of the factory inspectors,
Messrs. Lakeman and Gould, on the sweating system
at the East End of London, and the dens in which
the unfortunate milliners and dressmakers work at
the West End. “Workshops,” says Inspector Lake
man, “are generally small, over-crowded, very dirty,
overheated, badly ventilated ; and when half a dozen
gas burners are alight for five or six hours in a
twelve-feet square room, one can imagine that the
term ‘ sweater ’ is not inappropriate. ... So gigantic
has the sweating system become, so rapid the produc
tion (for the division of labour is strictly carried out),
so varied are the wants of each occupier, that one
despairs of making any impresssion upon these people
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except by compulsion.
They are bound to a system
which excludes freedom, and from long habit it seems
impossible to move them out of it. Now when we
see a cloth coat made, lined, braided by hand, the
silk and thread found by sweater, all for 2s. ^d., and
if the total number be not returned to the clothier
completed by the time specified, then a fine of six
pence (I have seen one shilling) levied for each gar
ment, one cannot wonder at the desire of the sweater
to keep his team late at night to complete his task.”
Coats are sometimes “(finished in this style,” however,
as low as 2s. id. “NTcien one thinks that there are
about 18,000 to 20,000 people toiling at this one trade
of making ready-made clothing, can we wonder at
beholding the palace-like premises of merchant
tailors who can advertise garments at a very low
price, which to them is the cost of material, and say
2s. id. for the making of a coat? It does not require
much depth of reasoning to judge where the profit
comes from.”4 No, worthy Mr. Inspector, it does not.
The profit of the merchant tailor, like the profit of
his noble allies the cotton lords and the wool factors,
comes out of the unpaid labour of others, whom he
throws upon the streets when they have served his turn
of providing surplus value according to the universal
law of supply and demand and freedom of contract.
But again ; hear Mr. Inspector Gould :—“ There is,
however, one branch of work, giving employment to
4 Lord Salisbury spoke at the Merchant Tailors’ Hall not long
since, of the absurdity of “ plate-hunger.” It seemed more ridicu
lous to his aristocratic mind than even the earth-hunger of the
Irish. Had he by chance a Conservative sweat er at his elbow ?
�LABOUR.
61
thousands of girls and women, which, although
entirely harmless in itself, is yet, unfortunately, solely
by reason of the conditions under which it is carried
on, a typically unhealthy business, I need hardly
say that I refer to the making of all articles of ladies’
clothing, and principally to the dressmaking section
of the trade. Of the thousands of young and delicate
girls who are engaged in trying to earn a bare sub
sistence in a deleterious atmosphere, no one can tell
how many go down in the struggle. No statistics
can be formed of the percentage of deaths, of enfeebled
constitutions, of the amount of disease engendered in
the first instance by the deadly atmosphere of the
workrooms in second and third class establishments
devoted to the dressmaking and ladies’ clothing trade
in the West End of London. I know of no class of
female workers whose vital interests are so entirely
neglected, and who labour under such disadvantageous
conditions, as the unlucky victims of the dressmaking
industry. Nothing is more surprising than to hear
the advocates of ‘ women’s rights ’ of both sexes, in
full knowledge apparently of the hardships undergone
by the very class whose battle they profess to fight,
cry out for absolute liberty of action to all females
employed in labour ! ” Evidently Mr. Gould is quite
ignorant of the real bigotry of the advocates of free
dom, and had better look to himself. In the shops
themselves things are little better. Men and women
are kept at work from thirteen to fourteen hours a
day for five days in the week, and for sixteen hours
on the sixth day.
As to the accommodation of the labouring class,
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out of whose unpaid toil the capitalist makes his
profit and society waxes fat, the Reports on Artisans’
Dwellings, give deplorable facts. Two and three
families pigged together into one or two small rooms ;
streets of houses torn down for improvements, and
their occupiers forced to crowd in upon the already
overcrowded streets adjoining. This is the rule through
out all our great cities. London is no worse than Glas
gow, nor Glasgow worse than Birmingham, Bradford,
Leeds, Manchester, or Newcastle. The latter city,
indeed, is perhaps the worst of all in this respect in
comparison to its population.
Hitherto the mere
Permissive Acts to remedy this state of things have
been almost useless. Yet the homes of the poor are
not cheap; they are dear. Cubic space for cubic
space, the dens of the East and West End cost
more than the mansions of the rich, who have good
air, good light, plentiful supply of water, and all that’s
needed for healthy existence. Those who provide
them with all these benefits are left to take care of
themselves. No compulsion: that would be too
serious. What ? force the municipalities to tear down
foul, unhealthy dwellings, at the expense of the rich,
and build up proper accommodation for the poor ?
“ Never,” say the ratepayers ; “that would touch us :
it is communism, confiscation, the overturn of society.”
We are now in a brief cycle of rising prosperity for
the moneyed and manufacturing class. Now is their
opportunity to endeavour to remedy in their turn
some of the mischiefs below and around them. They
justly denounce the selfishness of landlords ; let them,
too, look at home. But the working class should rely
�LABOUR.
63
on their own power and peaceful strength—they must
trust to themselves alone.
To them, then, I say
All wealth is produced
by labour, and goods exchange in proportion to
the quantity of human labour which is embodied in
them. Between the workers of all civilized coun
tries there is no real difference: they create the
wealth and produce the food, and, under proper
conditions, all would live in moderation all would
have enough.
But landowners, capitalists, mer
chants, money-lenders, have possessed themselves
of the land, of the machinery, of the currency, of the
credit.
They therefore compel the workers to
labour long and live hardly for their benefit; they
take of the time, and the life, and the labour of their
fellows for nothing. Those who own the soil, and
those who manufacture—those who live on interest, and
those who trade on differences of value, live alike in
luxury and in idleness out of the sweat and the misery
of others. They, therefore, are the enemies of the great
mass of the people, to be overcome by voluntary
combination and peaceful endeavour. You, then,
who produce the wealth in every country, consider
where you stand ; you, men who have seen your homes
broken up, your health destroyed, have beheld your
wives and children fade away under the tyranny
of capitalism, stop and think. Let all who are made
poor and miserable for the advantage of others, take
heed to themselves. And having thus considered,
thus thought, and thus looked at home, stretch out
your hands, now powerless, to the workers of the
world as your friends, and begin a new and better
�64
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social epoch for humanity. Working men and
working women of Great Britain and Ireland, who now
toil and suffer that others may be lazy and rich—
Unite I Working men and working women of Europe
and America, who now rejoice in the gleam of a
transient prosperity, only to be cast into deeper
despair on the next stagnation—Unite ! Unite ! In
union alone is safety and happiness for the future, as
in difference and selfishness have been danger and
misery in the past. Therefore, once more, working
men and working women, ye who live hardly to day,
to pass on sadness and poverty to your children to
morrow, Unite! Unite! Unite!
�CAPITAL.
CHAPTER HI.
CAPITAL.
Capital is the produce ofpast labour devoted to present
production. “ The wealth which has been accumu
lated with the object of assisting production, is termed
capital; and therefore the capital of the country is
the wealth which is not immediately consumed unproductively, and which may consequently be devoted
to assist the further production?’ Capital is in fact
the saving of past labour, for the special purpose of
increasing the future store. Undoubtedly capital
originally may have been acquired by saving or by
inheritance, though that is only pushing the accumu
lation a step further back; and the grain pits of Northern
India, the yam barrows and tabu cocoa-nut groves
of Polynesia, the stores of the Mexican aborigines,
represent early and useful forms of capital. “ No
thing,” says Mr. Fawcett, “ more distinctly marks the
superiority of man over the brute creation than the
prudent foresight wrhich causes an adequate provision
to be made for the future. The more civilized men
are, the more is this foresight shown. Civilized men
anticipate with keen perception the wants of the
future. To provide against the contingencies of the
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future, engrosses perhaps the too anxious care of the
nation.”
In these sentences Mr. Fawcett expresses far too
favourable a view of the foresight of the present gene
ration of civilized men. Never perhaps since civiliza
tion was first seen on the planet, have so many human
beings been passing through life at the same time
on insufficient food, as at the present moment. Nothing,
indeed, is more striking than, the want of foresight
displayed under our present capitalist system of
production. Whichever quarter of the globe we look
to, we see the future entirely disregarded. We in
England, for example, a vast industrial community,
are content to base our supplies more and more upon
countries thousands of miles from our shores. America,
which affords us our chief quantity of food, is using up
wheat centre after wheat centre in a fashion similar
to that not long since in vogue in South Australia ;
forests, which can perhaps never be replaced, are
swept away, in every direction, to the permanent injury
of the climate. In England, manure to the value
of at least 25,000,000/. a year, is sent down into the
sea, though our soil is deteriorating for want of it.
Foresight, therefore, in any extended sense, cannot cer
tainly be claimed for our existing civilization, unless the
Romans showed foresight when they worked out the
Campagna to ruin, and destroyed the future of Sicily
by their exactions. What capital has done for India
I shall show later on ; what it would do, if left unre
strained, for our own people has been seen, in part, in
the last chapter. But granting that the capital which
begins work is the result of past frugality on the part
�CAPITAL.
of some hard-working man with a keen eye to the
good of his species, as well as to his own immediate
interest, what is the next capital, and the next, and
the next, which rolls up so rapidly in this island of
ours ? Let us go back to the great cotton industry
once more, and look about us there.
A man has a capital of say io,oooZ., inherited from his
thrifty parent, who bequeathed if to him after a long
life of usefulness, with many prayers that he would
make it fructify. He does. Four-fifths he devotes
to buying machinery, raw cotton, &c., and one-fifth he
expends in wages. Every year he produces 240,000
pounds of cotton yarn of the value of I2,oooZ. His
io,oooZ. has been reproduced, and his surplus value
is in the 40,000 pounds of yarn, which are sold for
the sum of 20O0Z. This 2000Z. of surplus value forms
a new capital, which, when set to work in like manner,
will produce in its turn a surplus value of 400Z.—and
so on, and so on, as may seem convenient to the
capitalist. The original IO,OOOZ. came from the pious
parent, but the history of the new capital of the
2000Z., of the 400Z. &c., stares us in the face. It is
simply surplus value, other people’s unpaid extra
labour, capitalized. The means of production in
which this additional extra labour is embodied, as
well as the means which support it, are only portions
of the tribute levied every year from the working
class by the capitalist class. It is, of course, per
fectly in accordance with the economical laws which
govern the production of commodities, and with the
ever sacred rights of property which follow thereupon.
Nevertheless there are the following results
F 2
�68
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
1. That the product belongs to the capitalist, and
not to the producer.
2. That the value of this product includes both the
value of the capital and the surplus value, which costs
the workmen labour, but the capitalist whose lawful
property it becomes, nothing.
3. That the labourer has kept up his force of labour
• and can sell it again on the market, if he is lucky
enough to find a buyer.
Thus capital rolls up by crystallizing unpaid labour
in the hands of the capitalist.
That the general position of the modern labourer
in dealing with his master the capitalist is bad
enough, has been shown only too clearly. Whenever
the Government slackens its intervention for a
moment, even with existing Factory Acts in full
force, the employers, as a class, strive their utmost to
extend the hours of labour, and thus to get more
unpaid work out of their hands. Not the slightest
regard is paid to the health or well-being of the men,
women, and children whose lives are used up thus
lelentlessly ; the truck system, which filches wages, is
resorted to wherever possible; and adulteration has
become the rule rather than the exception in trade.
To increase the rate of surplus value produced per
head employed is of course a great gain ; the average
amount of profit on the variable capital used is at once
increased likewise. Who can wonder then that having
the control of the powers of the country, and the recog
nized political economists as their submissive fuglemen,
the capitalist class should so long have ridden rough
shod over the working class in the name of freedom ?
�CAPITAL.
69
In considering, however, the origin of the capitalist
system, it becomes clear that without a minimum
amount of variable capital wherewith to pay wages,
that mode of production cannot begin. A man
who works for himself alone, need work only the
eight hours which we may assume to be required, on
the average, to provide him with the necessaries of
subsistence. He would need then only the means of
production for his eight hours’ work; whilst the
capitalist, who makes him work an extra four hours,
needs an additional sum of money to provide the
means of production for those four hours. Moreover,
the capitalist, even if he lived no better than the
workmen he employed, would have to keep two of
them at work for twelve hours a day, in order that he
himself might have the necessaries of life in idleness.
Even so there would be no surplus wealth. So that,
according to this calculation, the lazy capitalist, in
order to be able to live without work even twice as
well as his workmen, and turn into capital half the
surplus value produced, must advance eight times the
amount of capital required for a single independent
■workman, though only four hands will be employed
in producing surplus value. This done, capital at
once becomes master of the situation. The workman
no longer turns the means of production to account,
but they turn him to account, and work up his force
of labour into surplus value to an extent which has
never been brought about under any system of forced
labour known to history.
The history of the development of capitalist pro
duction, from simple cooperation and manufacture up
�?o
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
to the present preponderance of the great machine
industries, shows an enormous growth of wealth for
the capitalist class, combined with steady pressure
upon the labourer to produce more surplus value by
low wages and overwork. At first the true capitalist
method scarcely makes head; but when once labourers
are collected together in one building, to do separate
tasks at the bidding of an employer, they cease to be
separate individuals, and become an organism, bound
to exercise their collective capacity in accordance
with the rules of capital. Here comes in that minute
division of manual labour, so advantageous to pro
duction, which has been described with so much
enthusiasm by many economists. The object of the
collection of the labourers together was, of course, to
cheapen the production of merchandise. The extra
ability which the workman derives from devoting his
attention to one operation instead of to several, the
time saved by the juxta-position of the labourers, &c.,
all tell in favour of the capitalist, whose interest is
henceforth exclusively consulted. For the labourer
has already become a mere tool. He no longer pro
duces commodities himself, as he did before, but
embodies his work in bits of commodities, or in help
ing to make a complete commodity, only valuable
when put together. To carry on perpetually one petty
operation in a complicated whole, working day in and
day out to produce surplus value for the capitalist by a
series of purely mechanical operations, such is the la
bourer’s portion in this system of manufacture. He still
seems to be an independent agent working with his own
tools, but this is precisely what in reality he is not.
�CAPITAL.
71
Glass-making, watch-making, pin-making, and other
trades, are still to a great extent conducted on this
transition method, and afford illustrations of what was
not long since general. Whilst then the social division
of labour, with or without the exchange of commodi
ties, belongs to the economical forms of most various
societies, the manufacturing division of labour is the
special creation of the capitalist system of production.
The workshop is in fact a machine, of which the parts
are human beings. Dissociate the individuals from
the machine as a whole, and they become almost as
useless as a crank, a pin, or an eccentric, detached
from a steam-engine. The labourer, to start with,
sells his force of labour to capital because he is desti
tute of the means of production himself; now his
labour has become absolutely useless unless it is sold.
He can work henceforth to advantage only in the
workshop of the capitalist. It is also the tendency of
manufacture thus conducted to employ more and more
hands as capital accumulates and the minimum of
capital needed to commence, increases.
This sort of co-operation was a historical necessity,
in order to convert isolated labour into social work.
It begins about the middle of the sixteenth century,
and lasts to the latter half of the eighteenth century,
as the chief method of production in capitalist coun
tries. During the whole of this period, and far on into
the nineteenth century, the most atrocious laws were
enacted by the small minority of the population who
owned the Houses of Parliament against the increase
of wages, or any combination on the part of the
working classes to secure for themselves justice and
�72
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
consideration. Capitalists might combine at their
pleasure; employers might break their contract at
will; but, woe betide those unlucky workmen who
thought that freedom meant the right to strike to get
better wages, or to step out of a contract which im
perilled their health. For them the prison, flogging,
branding, forced labour at the filthiest tasks. But
for the capitalist ?—he went on his way rejoicing, with
more and yet more of other men’s labour at his mercy,
and in due course of time he “ founded a family/’
figured as an Abolitionist, and died in the odour of
sanctity.
Steam machinery gave a new turn to the screw
which pressed down the working class, and began
those periods of inflation and stagnation, of over-pro
duction and depression, which many have come to
regard as inevitable accompaniments of all produc
tion. The machine sprang naturally out of manu
facture, but the use of steam as a motive power gave
it a development in many directions which could
never have been obtained in any other way. At first
sight it would appear that machines must of necessity
improve the lot of the bulk of mankind—that as they
so vastly enhance the productive power of human
labour, men would be relieved from excessive drudgery,
and yet wealth would abound more than at any pre
vious period.
This was the view of the ancients. Aristotle fore
saw that slavery could be done away if machines were
invented ; and others have dreamed of a state of society
where, by their help, the history of the people should
cease to be one of perpetual poverty and degradation.
�CAPITAL,
73
As machines save labour alike in agriculture and in
working up the raw material, there is nothing neces
sarily chimerical in such ideas. But capital has
stepped in and taken order with these vain imaginings.
The riches due to machinery have gone to the
few: the many have become mere slaves to the
machine. For that is the result : human beings no
longer make use of their implements ; they themselves
are made to serve the machine.
The machine of course, though it increases the pro
ductive power of the human labour employed, adds
no more value to the commodity produced than the
wear and tear during the process of work. But
the first effect of its introdi tion is to bring into com
petition with adult male 1 our that of women and
children, who could, and do, serve machines as well as
the superior force of the men, and serve also to reduce
their wages—the main object of the capitalist. But
another advantage is afforded by the machine to the
employer. We have seen that the profit of the
capitalist depends upon the amount of unpaid labour
he can exact from the free workman. In ordinary
circumstances this can only be increased by the
lengthening of the hours of labour. But by the aid of
machines the labour can be intensified as well as pro
longed. Thus a man may produce the necessary
amount of labour-value in a shorter period, and leave
a larger portion of the working day as surplus value
to his employer, by an improvement in machinery
which renders the labour rapid and severe. Ever
since the law stepped in to shorten the hours of labour
for women and children, and men combined to shorten
�74
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
their own hours, the endeavour to intensify labour by
increasing the rapidity of machines has been unceas
ing. This has produced in the cotton and silk factories
a state of nervous excitement among the workers
which has greatly augmented the proportion of chest
complaints. Twelve hours’ work are now compressed
into ten hours. This work, too, is of the most monoto
nous, uninteresting character. In return for that ex
hausting labour the working classes as a body suffer as
the Bishop of Manchester has described.
But the effect of the introduction of new machines
of greatly improved capacity, used not for the benefit
of the whole community, but primarily for that of the
dominant class, has a far more serious influence upon
the working class than even the competition of women
and children which it admits of, or the intensity of
labour which results therefrom. A new labour-saving
machine means so much labour thrown upon the
market without the means of earning subsistence. This
effect of improved machinery is admitted by Ricardo,
who, after having previously held the contrary opinion,
satisfied himself “ that the substitution of machinery
for human labour is often very injurious to the class
of labourers.” This view is taken less clearly by
Macculloch, and Mill, and Fawcett; but they con
tend that the compensations are rapid, and in the end
beneficial. The labouring classes, according to them,
are therefore benefited, not injured, by the introduction
of improved machinery in every case. The labourers
whom the machine displaces are nevertheless thrown
upon the market, where they certainly increase the
amount of labour available for the capitalist. This is
�CAPITAL.
75
-in itself a terrible matter for them all. But the amount
of capital invested in the machine ceases also to be
available for wages ; and if the machine works up an
increased amount of raw material with far fewer hands,
the constant capital is clearly greatly augmented at
the expense of the variable, or that which is imme
diately available for the payment of wages. The
men thus thrown out of work are good for very little
in other employments, and consequently fall to a lower
grade. If they get fresh work in the same trade, that is
owing to the introduction of some new capital, not cer
tainly to that which is already locked up in the machine,
and employed in obtaining food for it in the shape of
raw materials. The machine itself has nothing to do
with the sad effect produced. The result of its em
ployment is that the product is cheaper and more
abundant than ever before ; yet the workman is thrown
aside into penury, and the capitalist pursues his
triumphant career. For this temporary inconvenience
is now of perpetual recurrence ; and the fate of the
miserable hand-loom weavers of India, starved in the
interests of Manchester manufacturers, is reproduced
in a milder form among the English labourers whose
interests these very cotton-lords were pretending to
serve. The necessary influence of the machine under
present conditions is to place the labourers at an
increasing disadvantage—a disadvantage which they
can never overcome, save by political and social com
binations and rearrangements, carried out with stead
fastness and zeal for at least a generation.
For this brings the question home to that miserable
see-saw of inflation and depression to that sad con
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dition of the mass of the labouring poor in the evergrowing population of our great cities, to which
reference has so often been made. “ Oh yes,” say the
followers of Malthus, by no means confined to Mr.
Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, " but this over-population
is ‘at the root of the whole mischief. If only the
working class would keep itself under restraint, and
not breed at such a terrible pace, they would at once
raise their wages by the .eternal law of supply and
demand. They have to thank their own early mar
riages and excessive birth-rate for much of their
present misery.”
Is this so ? The evidence is really all the other
way. There is nothing whatever to show that these
islands are overpeopled [in proportion to the wealth
that is being accumulated. Very much the contrary.
The population of Great Britain and Ireland has
doubled in the last seventy years. It is now increas
ing at the rate of about one-and-a-half per cent, in
every ten years. But the riches, the income, the accu
mulations of the country, are they increasing at a less
rate so that abstention from marriage and Malthusian
devices are so essential ? Why, it is notorious to all
that our wealth .has increased out of all calculable
proportion to our population during the present cen
tury. The whole world is laid under contribution, to
furnish additional wealth for the exported savings of
unpaid labour made by the comfortable classes here
at home. English capital brings back its return from
all quarters of the globe ; whilst in these islands, the
comparison between what was and what is, can
scarcely be expressed in sober language. Nay, even
�CAPITAL.
77
during this late period of prolonged depression, when
the hard, rough men of the iron districts, as well as
the distressed cotton-spinners and miners, were
declaring that they would not go into the workhouse,
and yet could not “ clem ” for another winter—even
in those hardest of hard times, it was calculated by
an expert that in addition to ordinary investments,
which were going on all the time, no less than
250,000,000/. were watching the opportunity to belaid
out to a profit when, to use the cant phrase, business
once more recovered. Whilst population is now
increasing at the rate of one-and-a-half per cent, in
every ten years, capital, and wealth squandered in
luxury, are rolling up at the rate of ten, twenty, thirty
per cent, per annum.
A few figures will make this quite clear. Taking
the years 1848 and 1878, the period of one generation
since last there was an agitation in favour of justice
to the multitude, we find that the total gross annual
value of property and profits assessed to Income
Tax in Great Britain and Ireland—about half the
actual gross annual value, or less—was in round
figures 275,000,000/. in 1848, against 578,000,000/., in
1878, or an increase on assessmentfor income alone of up
wards of 110 per cent, in the thirty years. A truly enor
mous increase. Yet the total population in 1848 was
28,000,000, as against nearly 34,000,000 in 1878.
Here, then in the United Kingdom, an increase of
the annual assessed income of no per cent, or of
303,000,000/., since 1848, was accompanied by an
increase in the population of only 6,000,000, or at the
rate of less than twenty per cent, in the thirty years.
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What fatal nonsense then is it to talk of over
population in such a case as this. If the increased
capital had been used for the benefit of all, then
these extra 6,000,000, as well as the 28,000,000, would
have been living in comfort, health, and well-being
—well-housed, well-clothed, well-fed, well-educated.
The over-population which the Malthusians think to
check by their wrong and mistaken methods, is due
to the special system of production under which we
groan, and will continue so long as, and no longer
than, it is brought under restraint for the advantage
of all. It is the deprivation of the means of selling
their labour on fair terms that does the mischief to
the mass of the population. Let the people remem
ber, that if no one were overworked in this free land
of ours, there would not at this moment be hands
enough in the country to carry on its business—that
if only one-half of the livers in luxury and idleness
on the excessive labour of others turned to some
higher ideal of patriotism, there would be plenty for
all. It is not the population that crowds on the
means of subsistence, but the concentration of the
produce of their toil in so few hands, that is obnoxious ;
though the way out to a better and fairer distribution
is not so simple as some of the easy handlers of the
complicated machinery of our modern society would
imagine.
This over-population then, which occasions such
sad scenes in times of depression, and is ever close at
hand in the flushest days of trade, is not actual but
relative, and is directly due to the employment of
machines and the growing proportion of constant to
�CAPITAL.
79
variable capital. Natural causes—great famines in the
East, serious wars in Europe, short harvests at home,
may aggravate the depression, as sloth and unthrifti
ness add to the misfortunes of the working class. But
such decennial crises as those now observable date
from the present century, and owe their development
to the circumstances stated.
The reproduction of capital necessarily carries with
it the simultaneous reproduction of the source of sur
plus value—force of labour. Accumulation of capital
involves at the same time increase of the mere wage
earning class. The payment of wages presupposes
that a certain amount of labour is given for nothing.
Wages, therefore, can only rise because there is an
increase of capital in excess of the labour offered. The
rise of wages and consequent diminution of unpaid
labour do not mean that the domain of capitalism
is restricted : small profits only necessitate bigger
capitals, and the workman sees in the wealth of his
master his only hope of safety. The ordinary expla
nation is either that the rise in the rate of wages
retards the accumulation of capital in comparison
to the labour on offer, and then wages fall to the
level which suits the views of capital; or on the
other hand, wages are low, and then the amount of
capital seeking employment in comparison to the
labour on offer is excessive, causing wages to rise.
Thus the see-saw goes on. Now an excess of
capital arising from accelerated accumulation, which
renders the labour on offer insufficient and raises its
price; again a slackened accumulation makes the
labour on offer relatively excessive and reduces its
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price. AU this has nothing to do with the increase
or decrease of population, but may occur, and does
occur, when the population is stationary.
The real law however of capitalist production is this :
—The relation between the accumulation of capital and
the rate of wages is only a relation between unpaid
labour converted into capital and the overplus of
paid labour that this additional capital needs in order
to set to work. This then is not a relation between
two matters quite independent of one another—that
is to say,"on the one side the magnitude of the capital,
on the other the number of the working population ;
but a relation only betzveen the paid and the unpaid
labour of the same working population. If the quantity
of unpaid labour which the working class supplies
and the capitalist class accumulates increases with
sufficient rapidity for its conversion into additional
capital to necessitate an extraordinary addition to
the quantity of paid labour, wages rise.
Other
things remaining the same, unpaid labour diminishes
in proportion. So soon, however, as this diminu
tion reaches the point when the extra labour which
furnishes the additional capital is no longer forth
coming in the usual quantity, a reaction ensues.
A less part of the return is converted into capital,
and the rise of wages is checked. Thus—and this is
the point of most serious import to the working
classes of this country—the price of labour can never
rise except between limits which leave quite untouched
the groundwork of the capitalist system and ensure the
reproduction of capital on a progressive scale. Never
then until the working class shake thertfcelves clear
�CAPITAL.
81
of the notion that a mere rise of wages is all they
have to strive for, will they be able to control the
capitalist class. The labourer is really the slave of his
own production in existing economical conditions.
For, as has been stated more than once, the demand
for labour is occasioned, not by the actual amount of
capital but by that of its variable portion, which alone
employs labour. But the magnitude of this portion
relatively to the whole is constantly decreasing. At
times, however, the conversion of variable into con
stant capital is less felt, machines are introduced
less frequently. Then there arises that greater demand
for labour which under ordinary conditions follows
upon the accumulation of capital. Yet at the very
moment when the number of the workmen employed
by the capital reaches its maximum, there is such a
glut of produce that at the slightest check in disposing
of the goods the whole social machinery seems to
come to a dead stop, the discharge of workmen comes
suddenly on a vast scale and in
violent manner,
and the very upset forces capitalists to excessive
efforts to economize labour. Improved machinery is
introduced again, and the wheel works round.
Thus the tendency of our system of production and
the increasing accumulation of capital, is to increase
at the same time the amount of the over-population
relatively to the means of employment. An indus
trial army of reserve is maintained of increasing
dimensions, ever at the disposal of capital, ready
to be absorbed during times of expansion, only to
be thrown back in periods of collapse. Only under
the control of the great industrial movement of our
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time, does the production of a superfluous population
become a definite means for the development of
wealth. During periods of stagnation -this industrial
army of reserve presses on the army in active employ
ment to reStrain its demands, when at length comes
the period of [over-production and great apparent
prosperity. Thus, then, the law according to which
an ever-increasing mass of riches can be produced
with a less and still lessening expenditure of human
force—this law which enables man as a social being
to produce more and more with less labour, is turned
by our capitalist system—where the means of pro
duction are not at the service of the labourer, but the
labourer at the mercy of his means of production—
directly to his disadvantage. As a direct consequence,
the more power and resources placed at the command
of labour, and the greater the competition of labourers
for means of employment, the more precarious be
comes the condition of the wage-earner, and his op
portunities of selling his labour. The productive
population is always increasing in a more rapid ratio
than the capital has need of it,
All recent events do but serve to exhibit the general
truth of this in more striking shape. Look at the
movement of population ; take note of the operation
of strikes ; observe the world-wide effect of crises at
the present time : how the numbers of those who live
from hand to mouth, or minister as domestic servants
to the luxuries of the comfortable classes, grow in
proportion to the rest of the population ; how the
strikes invariably fail on a falling market, and often
leave the workmen in a worse condition than they
�CAPITAL.
S3
were before they began; how, when a crisis begins
in Vienna it is felt at once through the world, to the
United States, and we see, even in that great territory
3,000,000 of tramps, without house or home, wander
ing through the country, exposed to the most furious
laws enacted by the well-to-do, and waiting till capi
tal shall be good enough to employ them again, and
again turn them adrift; how we ourselves discovered
that the capitalized unpaid labour taken from our peo
ple to lend to rotten States, like San Domingo, Hon
duras, Paraguay, and Peru, had merely brought about
here at home a fictitious industrial prosperity, to be
followed by the longest, and for the mass of the
working people the most trying, crisis known in re
cent times ; how—but it is needless to go further ; the
facts, the bare hard facts, condemn unceasingly our
unregulated system of capitalist production, which,
based solely on selfishness and gratifying greed, takes
no account of the morrow, nor any note whatever of
the mischief inflicted on the human race. Where the
State has interfered to control and change the bale
ful conditions of life for the mass of our countrymen,
there, and there alone, has some little good been done.
What then, say the let-alone school, would you
stop the operation of machinery, throw back the evo
lution of the race, and return to the natural savage
for a reorganization of modern society ? They who
ask such questions are as silly as those who think
all attempts to change our social organization must
be necessarily traced to the French Revolution, and
that those who, like myself, are determined to modify
existing political and social conditions, must wish and
G 2
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
strive for a general overturn. It is not so. But the
working of capital is essentially immoral. It moves on
irrespective of all human considerations, save the
accumulation of wealth and the provision for ease
and luxury. For fifty years England has been under
the domination of the classes who live and trade upon
unpaid labour. Surely it is high time that those
people who provide it should be heard in their turn
as to the system which weighs them down. To
expect that the nation will at once abandon its idea
of fancied individual freedom in favour of a real col
lective freedom which shall consult and care for the
interests of all, is a chimera. But seeing, as we
cannot but see, the plain economical basis of so much
of the misery all deplore, is it not reasonable that
more rapid steps should be made in the direction of
general improvement ? So far all the sacrifices have
been made by the working class. What they in
their turn may rightfully demand at once as reason
able and practicable remedies for some portion of their
ills, are i1—
1. A curtailment of the hours of labour, eight hours
being the working day.
2. Free and compulsory education in its widest sense.
3. A compulsory construction by the municipalities
and county assemblies of fitting dwellings for the
working classes, including a good and free supply of
light, air, and water, and garden-ground where possible.
1 I need scarcely say that personally I should welcome far
more stringent reforms, but the very people who suffer most
under present economical conditions are not prepared to change
them completely.
�CAPITAL.
85
4. Really cheap transport, so that artisans may
live at a distance from their work without incurring
heavy expenditure.
Such social reforms would produce an effect more
speedily than might be supposed ; and the expenditure
would be far more than repaid to the community at
large by the increased physical strength, the superior
intelligence and morality, and the greatly enhanced
patriotism, in its best sense, of the mass of the com
munity. That these changes would check the fearful
crises consequent upon the capitalist system of pro
duction is nowise probable; but they would lead the
way gradually to a better system, when all might enter
more fully upon their duties to the whole country.
Men who are now deprived of the fruits of their
labour, who live under bad social conditions, who are
forced to resort to scamped work and adulterated
manufacture in order that their employers may make
a profit, would feel very differently if for their honest
labour embodied in sound goods they could obtain a
rightful return themselves. The magic of property
would then be felt in the general as well as the
individual improvement. That industry will always
have the better of laziness, that thrift must be more
beneficial than extravagance, are truths which no
political or social changes can shake. But as we
stand, our laws and customs are directly calculated to
foster excessive wealth on the one side and miserable
poverty on the other. What wonder that the people
should begin to ask themselves the why and the
wherefore of all this disparity between the men who
work and those who use them ? None are more
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
ready to pay for mental toil than those who work
with their hands, none more ready to give up a por
tion of their labour for the benefit of their fellows.
Nov/, however, the perpetual conflict of wages, the
strife with capital, where the possibility of final
success is pushed farther and farther into the distance,
necessarily blunts that feeling of national greatness in
the best sense which does so much to sweep away,
even as it is, the meanness engendered by mere nar
rowness and greed. Those who are never certain of
continuous employment, and have little time left for
education, might well be pardoned if they thought
only of their own selfish interests. That in the mass
they do not do so, is the best hope for the future.
But in coming changes it behoves us to be careful,
lest, in getting rid of the excessive influence of one
dominant class, we do but strengthen the power of a
meaner and a worse one in its place. If possession
of land—as all reformers agree—should be regulated
in the interests of the country in time to come, so also
must capital, machinery, and the national highways.
Conservatism has come to mean the dominance of
landowners : Liberalism has been degraded to the
service of capitalists. There is little perhaps to choose ;
but for the people it is to the full as important in the
future that capital should be controlled as the land.
Mere destruction for its own sake is not in accordance
with the views of Englishmen. To pull down a system,
however bad, they must see that something is ready to
take its place. The infinite mischiefs of capitalism must
be removed as a better method of production grows up
from below. We have sad experience that our so-
�CAPITAL.
87
called individual liberty means too often only the
development of monopoly and the tyranny of wealth.
But that faculty of organization, that ingenuity in
turning science and invention to account, may as well
be used in the service of the many as to the selfish
gratification of personal desires. There is room enough
for the use of the highest powers, without the perpetual
money-getting now in the ascendant. No man can
live out of the current of his age ; but it is time that a
higher ideal were placed before the nation, and that the
common sense of the community at large should save
the next generation from the power of oppression
now accorded to a system which developes in those
who handle it neither foresight, patriotism, nor honesty.
The very tendency of capital itself renders this essen
tial. Each year sees it rolling up into larger and
larger masses. The great joint-stock enterprises, where
enormous capital is obtained from many contributors,
gradually crush out smaller houses ; large emporiums
undersell small; large factories dwarf smaller. With
this increase too, the personal relation between em
ployers and employed ceases, and powerful corpora
tions begin to assert themselves as a political influence
solely for selfish ends, and with the cold persistence
and disregard for human interests which such asso
ciations invariably display. England, the greatest
capitalist country, may well show the world how to
take order with this dangerous growth which threatens
to overshadow human progress, and regulate without
injustice those purely selfish motives which hitherto
have been looked to as the sole hope of advance in
civilization.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
CHAPTER IV.
ORGANIZATION.
Now does any one imagine that with our present
restricted suffrage we are likely to carry in town or
country the social changes absolutely essential for the
well-being of the majority, or to reorganize our
political machinery in a workable shape within a
reasonable time ? Those who think thus must be of
a very sanguine disposition. When in history did
classes who hold property and power give up any
portion of their valuable and lucrative monopolies until
they saw clearly that surrender would be less harmful
than defeat ? The natural inclination of so-called
Conservatism is to make a dead stand against all
reform ; only now and then does a man arise in any
country who can persuade the people in possession
that, if they wish to avoid an overturn, they must have
a distinct constructive policy of their own.
Yet it is true that mere extension of the suffrage by
itself does not suffice to bring about much beneficial
change. In France manhood suffrage imposed upon
the people the rule of Napoleon III., with his gang of
gamblers and political thimble-riggers for twenty years.
The master may have meant well enough in his way,
but his men and their mistresses looked upon France
�ORGANIZATION.
89
as their fair prey. In Germany, as we see, universal
suffrage has not prevented Prince Bismarck from
maintaining the dominance of military Junkerdom
over a well-educated and, in the main, peaceful people.
In America the injurious influence of great capitalists
is severely felt, though there the people have the
power to put an end to their tyranny at once by com
bination at the polls. Even here in England we may
observe the same slow action on the part of voters
to bring forward social grievances. Wonders, for
instance, were looked for from the Reform Bill of
1832. It would be quite amusing, if it were not a
little sad, to read in the writers of the first quarter of
this century what changes for the better would be made
so soon as rotten boroughs were swept away, and the
power of aristocrats shaken. Yet, all this enthusiasm
notwithstanding, fourteen years elapsed before even
the Corn Laws were repealed—and that was a capi
talist not a working-class measure, inasmuch as cheap
food kept wages lower ; and the Factory Acts were
not passed, in a shape to be of any service, for sixteen
years. Then, too, the man who did more than any
other to force them on the legislature, in the face of
the interested opposition of the capitalists, was a non
political aristocrat, the present Lord Shaftesbury.
So with the Reform Bill of 1867, which in the eyes
of such a man as Mr. Lowe involved nothing short
of revolution. What great measures for the advantage
of the community at large have yet resulted from that ?
Ireland, no doubt, has secured some attention; and
the School Boards have commenced the work of educa
tion ; but on the whole it is surprising how little has
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
been achieved in fourteen years. Still, it is impossible
to doubt that pressure from without would assume a
very different shape if every man in the British Islands
not a felon were entitled to"a vote. It is fair to assume
that no further change is pressed on now with vigour,
because the mass of the present voters have got all
they want.
For though it is the fashion to say that the Reform
Bill of 1867 gave power to the democracy, there is little
evidence of that as yet. To this day the working
class is outvoted by the shopkeeping class ; and the
preposterous absurdity of three-cornered constitu
encies has been foisted on us by political theorists,
to make matters worse. The extension of the borough
franchise to the counties will, no doubt, make a
difference to theagricultural labourer, and facilitate the
dealing with the land ; but that only puts the increas
ing working class in the towns at a greater relative
disadvantage. Manhood or adult suffrage is really
the only logical outcome of any arguments in favour
of the extension of the suffrage at all. Those who
make the wealth of the country have the right, if any
body has, to vote as to how it should be governed.
Drawbacks to such an extension there are, of course;
and elsewhere, as has been already remarked, mere
universal suffrage has not secured the social advance
ment which might have been hoped for. But unless
those who suffer most under present arrangements
have at least the means of putting forward repre
sentatives definitely pledged beforehand to redress
their grievances, the very motive power for reform is
lacking alike in Parliament and in local assemblies.
�ORGANIZA TION.
9i
We are now in a vicious circle. Shut men out from
voting, and a minority unjustly controls the country:
give the vote to all, and there is the risk of whole
sale corruption, as well as that ignorance should
become the ultimate court of appeal.
What probability is there, however, that, under any
circumstances,Tree compulsory education to remedy
this ignorance—or the enactment that bribery shall be
felony, to put a stop to corruption—will be carried in
our existing Parliament with the present suffrage ?
The idea is by no means confined to the Conserva
tives that universal education must involve a very
inconvenient growth of independence, which will ren
der men and women disinclined to supply menial
positions in the old-fashioned way. Possibly, too, the
workers of the community would begin to inquire into
the reasons of the present excessive disparity of wealth,
which would be more inconvenient still. School
Boards are already too expensive for some. The con
tention that really complete free education is the duty
of the State for the protection of the common interest,
is looked upon as little short of socialism by the
w’ell-to-do, who of course wish their children to start
lightly handicapped with a good education in the race
of life. The old hierarchical notions indeed still go
on, and people who have to fill the lower stations ought
in the opinion of many of the well-to-do to be mere
animals, without too much knowledge to make them
anxious for higher things. In this matter England
is still far behind countries which in respect of
political intelligence and political training are greatly
our inferiors. We who have hitherto led the way
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
in so many European improvements, need not surely
look any longer across the sea to find that Frenchmen
and Germans have more share in the government of
their country than ourselves. More than ever important
is it then, as the first step towards the organization of
democracy, that all who add to the wealth of the coun
try shall have a voice in ordering how taxation should
be levied and spent. Manhood or adult suffrage could
alone supply the power to carry out genuine reform.
But other mere mechanical changes are needed at
the same time. That a Parliament should last six
years without a dissolution, has been found to be a
matter of serious inconvenience to the State at large.
Men who know that they are irremovable for so long
a period trust to national forgetfulness to cover up
their blunders. Many instances could be given of
this calculation, and its effects upon the course of
public business. Triennial Parliaments, or, better still,
a retirement of one-third of the members each year,
would keep the House of Commons thoroughly in har
mony with the constituencies, and quicken the general
interest in political affairs. Equal electoral districts
necessarily follow upon manhood or adult suffrage.
Any other arrangement would inevitably bring about
in a new form that injustice which we wish to get rid
of. The right of all to a vote once conceded, no man
can claim a greater share in representation than
another.
In the same way payment of all election expenses,
whether parliamentary or municipal, out of the public
funds, is essential. Wealth has already far too much
influence, without making political life almost im
�ORGANIZATION. •
93
possible to the poor man, and especially to the work
ing class. Why should a man be called upon to pay
a large fine in order to fill a public office for which his
countrymen think him qualified ? The working class
can never hope to be fairly represented till this has
been carried at the least. In the same way, pay
ment of members is but justice. Unpaid work as a
whole is bad work, done as a rule for social aggran
dizement, personal advancement, or the like. A re
presentative ought to feel that he is the servant of
the State, quite open to form his own judgment, but
still as much a part of the general executive as any
Minister. Moreover, this mere money business must
act as a drawback, or almost as exclusive, to poor
men. Few can afford to throw their whole time into the
House of Commons work on Committees, &c., with
out remuneration. Those who do, have generally
contrived as a body—landlords, capitalists, railway
directors, &c.—to reimburse themselves handsomely at
the expense of the country at large.
These four points therefore are imperatively needed
as the means towards a better organization :—
Manhood or Adult Suffrage.
Triennial or Annual Parliaments.
Equal Electoral Districts.
Payment of Members and especially of all Election
Expenses, out of public funds.
They are but means to an end; yet it is humi
liating to remember that they were demanded in
1848 by a powerful organization, and now here we
are in 1881 still without them. Englishmen have
lost pluck under middle-class rule. The influence
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
of the perpetual money-getting seems to have exer
cised a weakening effect’ on every portion of the
body politic. Nowadays, any sturdy demand for
plain rights is styled revolutionary ; and a sort of cant
patter-song of moderation is chanted by both parties,
who on all these matters are practically at one. It
does one good at such times to breathe the free bluff
air of downright agitation, when men call a spade a
spade, and a trimmer a useless flabby creature, to be
thrown into the political gutter as soon as may be.
For the definite issue we are now debating has been
led up to for at least three generations. The shock
of the Revolution in France enabled the upper and
middle classes here to set back reforms till our day
which were recognized as essential in a far different
state of things by such a man as Lord Chatham. Now
we see on every side nations beginning to govern
themselves wholly for the sake of the people. That
government of the people by the people of which
noble Abraham Lincoln spoke on the battle-field of
Gettysburg as the cause for which men fell there, is
the cause which we have yet to fight out peacefully
here.
For at this present moment, whilst we are discussing
the expediency of this or that step, a process of cen
tralization and decentralization is going forward,
which, unless we take means to understand and take
advantage of it, will land us all in administrative
anarchy. Universal suffrage, giving vent to direct
personal interest, but harmonized and consolidated
into a general effort for the public good, must be the
basis of that new social and political period on which we
�ORGANIZA TION.
95
are now entering. By itself it can do nothing ; but it
is surely possible, at our stage of political development,
to combine the full satisfaction of the wishes of the
people, and the improvement of their social position,
with the ideal of a great country leading European
development by virtue of true sagacity and healthy
vigour. It is such an ideal of public advantage that
can alone stimulate men to sacrifice their individual
crotchets to attain a great end.
To stand still is out of the question. Parliament,
as every one can see, no longer holds the position in
public esteem, or is able to carry on its work, as it did.
How far the House of Lords and the House of Com
mons may require remodelling is a point on which
men differ. That great changes are needed, alb are
agreed. The House of Lords stands only by reason
of its past. Many hesitate to attack it, as the City
hesitated to remove Temple Bar. It is antiquated
and cumbrous, and unquestionably blocks the way 5
but there are still historical associations which induce
men to shrink from a definite agitation for its over
throw. Besides, it is at the present time the best
debating club of its kind in Europe. There, on great
occasions, the traditions of oratory, which are begin
ning to fade from the House of Commons, may still
be found as a living force. But it is sad to see so
much ability fired into the air. Their lordships only
exchange their ordinary attitude of wrell-bred indif
ference and drowsiness for a more active interest when
some reactionary motion has to be affirmed to no
purpose.
Young men who grow up in that dull
atmosphere early acquire an apparent consciousness
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
of their own uselessness. Why should they longer
suffer, poor fellows, from this hereditary boredom ? It
would be charitable to relieve them from so false a
position as that which they now hold. A closer con
tact with the moving forces of English political life
might perhaps develope in some of them a worthy
ambition to lead, instead of languidly attempting to
dam back, the current of their time. This at any
rate is certain, that the time is rapidly passing away
when a caucus of territorial magnates can play at
being superior creatures to their fellow-countrymen,
and amuse themselves by retarding legislation which
the mass of Englishmen have decided upon.
To sweep away any institution altogether is, how
ever, scarcely our English way. So long as it can be
advantageously modified we cling to the old form.
That the hereditary principle must be done away with
as an anachronism and an absurdity would be ad
mitted by thousands, who would still wish to have a
second chamber—not to interfere with or hamper the
direct representatives of democracy, but to maintain a
continuity in general policy which such a body as a
reformed House of Commons could scarcely command.
Here, of course, is the great difficulty of our party
system of Government, and it can never be lessened
save by the formation of some great consultative
assembly, in which representatives of all portions of
our great commonwealth and dependencies find a seat*
It may be that the American Senate, devised by men
who had thoroughly studied the dangers of waves of
popular excitement, is too powerful a body for us to
wish to constitute a similar check upon the Lower
�ORGANIZATION.
97
House ; for the Senate in the United States, owing to
its method of election, the personal reputation of its
members, and the authority accorded, is the powerful
House ; whilst with us, if parliamentary government is
maintained in its present shape, the House of Commons
can scarcely fail to be supreme. The danger of dead
locks here, however, would not be nearly so great as
in our colonies, where the power of the purse is divided.
What we need in place of the House of Lords is a
Great Council for the public discussion and revision of
treaties, the maintenance of a constant survey of our
foreign relations—which will be greatly facilitated
when the present system of secret diplomacy is put an
end to—and a regulation of the policy towards our
great colonies and dependencies, in conjunction with
direct representatives from them. These duties are
now not performed at all; during the last twenty
years we have had but too many occasions to lament
that lack of continuity in our policy which at times
makes us the laughing-stock of the world. Such a great
consultative and deliberative council might worthily
take the place which the House of Lords held when it
was really a power in the State. Now it is merely a
nuisance ; and the sooner a change is made which shall
bring the second chamber once more into a useful
sphere of existence, the better for the stability of the
Constitution in its best sense. Such a modification,
indeed, though radical to start with, would be highly
conservative in the best sense in the long-run. The
abler men would probably welcome a change which
whilst, as we see in France, it makes no great difference
in their social distinction—for certain classes cling to
H
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ancient lineage as something to worship—freed their
hands and enabled them to enter into the real poli
tical strife of the day without restraint.
The future of the House of Commons is a very
different matter. At the present time, partly by its
own fault, and partly by the force of circumstances,
that noble historical assembly has also lost influence
with the people, because it has grasped at more power
than it can conveniently handle, and is far too slow
to suggest any reform of itself. Did any body of men,
by the way, ever reform themselves ? That is really
the difficulty we are at present in. There is no power
outside the House of Commons to reform the House of
Commons ; to hear some members talk, one might
suppose it was still the collective wisdom of the nation.
Such scenes, however, as those which occurred with
regard to the Irish members, the voting on the Brad
laugh oath, and the hopeless block of legislation—
occasioned not so much by obstruction, though there
has been a great deal of that without the justification
which the Irish members could claim on the
Coercion Bill, as by the endless flood of conversational
small talk which men of no special knowledge or
ability seem to think they owe to their constituencies—•
have gradually convinced the country that a complete
change in the functions of Parliament can alone right
the existing state of things.
Neither manhood suffrage nor the reform of methods
of election will put an end to obstruction, check
silly garrulity, or remove the excessive business with
which the House of Commons is cumbered. And here
we come to a point at which much difference of opinion
�ORGANIZA TION.
99
must necessarily arise. That greater powers should be
given to local assemblies to deal with many matters
which now come before the House of Commons, may
be admitted without dispute ; but howfar the authority
of these local assemblies should extend is a matter of
difference. Irishmen demand home rule, or even
separation ; Scotchmen and Welshmen have as yet no
such anxiety to obtain parliaments to themselves. But
with manhood suffrage in full force, it is clear that the
rights of the people will be far more completely pro
tected than they are at present, and that power could
be more safely handed over to local authorities.
National and Federal parliaments, desirable as they
are, can scarcely be organized till there is a more
active demand for them. The Irish do make the
demand, and the possibility of fairly meeting it
without actual disruption of the Empire is a pressing
question at this moment.
In England, Scotland, and Wales, however, the
county, the municipality, the township, are old wellunderstood divisions, and to them, under one or other
of the numerous schemes which have been before
the public, might be handed over jurisdiction in
respect of many matters on which the House of
Commons has at present to be consulted. Local
representative assemblies, properly elected to transact
the rapidly growing business of the whole population,
would take an amount of petty work off Parliament,
with which it ought never to have been saddled. All
this, of course, will shortly be attempted ; and with
the power of the democracy brought to bear for the
collective adyantage, the old local bodies will be
H 2
�TOO
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
invigorated with fresh life. County assemblies and
municipal boards will then perhaps cease to be, as
they so often are now, mere inefficient and corrupt
vestries. It is unreasonable that the House of
Commons should undertake to settle what these
local bodies could equally well arrange for themselves.
A wide scheme of decentralization, carried out with a
view to interesting the whole population in their local
business, would but serve to strengthen the House of
Commons for dealing with affairs now pushed aside by
less important matters to the injury of the whole com
munity, and raise again the character of its debates.
It is remarkable, indeed, that as wealth, power, and
political influence have been concentrated in the
hands of the upper and middle classes local vigour has
to a certain extent died down. In the future the
municipalities, as we can already see, will have far wider
duties to undertake than those which they perform at
present. Lighting, water, artisans’ dwellings—these,
instead of being left to individual companies will be
undertaken by the local bodies, as also the providing
of public parks and recreation-grounds. When full
power is vested in such corporations and county
boards to take what land is needed at a valuation for
the purpose either of building or of granting per
manent leases for agricultural purposes, a far greater
amount of interest will attach to the improvement of
the management, and men of a superior character will
be anxious to take part in the business. All such
decentralization, in the sense that these bodies are
given great powers without applying to Parliament, will
also act in the direction of peaceful development, and
�ORGANIZA T10N.
IOI
give the working classes that impetus towards social
improvement by their own energy which is so mani
festly necessary.
At the same time, though municipal and local
business may form a good training for local adminis
tration, it by no means follows that a good vestryman
or aiderman makes a good member of Parliament
when obligations beyond the range of a three months’
bill are under discussion. It is remarkable indeed
that in such matters working men, who literally do
not know whether their present week’s wage will be
continued the next, have a far wider idea of their
duties, and take a much higher view of the position
which a great country like ours ought to assume
in its dealings with its dependencies and foreign
powers, than mere mercantile men. The latter are
far too apt to consider everything from the pounds,
shillings, and pence point of view. Will such a
policy increase immediately the national turn over ?
then it is excellent. Will it involve doubtful expen
diture for a great moral principle, or serious political
agitation for a great future national benefit? such a
proposal must of necessity be unsound. This sort of
reasoning is well enough up to a certain point, and the
kind of intelligence which developes it—Lord Derby
probably has that sort of capacity to the highest
degree of any man living—is most careful to secure
economy in local affairs; but where business of
national or imperial importance is involved, such
counsellors are feeble and dangerous.
Now as in the management of general municipal
improvements and county affairs of all kinds, local
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energy, and even, in the wide sense, personal objects
ought to be allowed free play, so in these more general
concerns, where the necessity for a greater centraliza
tion is manifestly increasing, a reformed House of
Commons should exercise far more direct control,
delegating its authority, as at the present time, to a
great officer of State and his department.
All can see quite plainly that in certain matters
management by the State is essential to efficiency. It
is perhaps a question whether the post and telegraphs
ought to be worked at a profit; but no one doubts
nowadays that the business is on the whole better and
more cheaply done than if it were in private hands.
Blunders are made, no doubt; but mistakes are
easily complained of and remedied. Obviously the
railways must sooner or later follow the same course.
This is one of the reasons why local business should
be removed from Parliament. It destroys the sense
of perspective for members to have constantly to
adjudicate on petty private bills, when matters of
really great national concern ought to be continually
before them. Nothing more shortsighted was ever
done by an English Parliament—middle-class busi
ness men, too, let us remember—than the turning
over of the great new highways of the country to
monopolists for ever. This is what has been—nay,
what is being, done to the permanent and growing
disadvantage of the whole community. No idea
seems to have entered the minds of our worthy rulers
that this handing over in perpetuity was as mischievous
a piece of folly as ever was perpetrated.
We Englishmen often jeer at Frenchmen for their
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fondness for paternal rule ; and we certainly should
not submit for a week to many of the restrictions on
individual liberty which Republican France bears
without a murmur. Their tariff also we regard as
injurious, and many of their arrangements as mistaken.
Yet they were shrewd enough to see that to saddle
coming generations with payments to private investors
was a grave injury to the nation and a sacrifice of
public property. As a result, within fifty or sixty
years France will be relieved entirely of her national
debt by the falling in of the railways, or transport at
cost will be secured to the community. Now that is
business; that is foresight for a people. Such an
advantage we cannot secure, save by some great
change in the right of inheritance or by purchase.
The present system cannot be allowed to go on for
ever. That the labour of succeeding generations should
be eternally handicapped by payments to the labour
of the dead, is too preposterous. If turnpikes have
been found to be an intolerable nuisance, and fees for
bridges have been done away, it is scarcely probable
that we shall much longer put up with a system of
railway management so entirely opposed to the
interests of the mass of the people, as well as of the
trading class, as that which now we suffer from. We
are a long-suffering people, but we shall never stand
that.
This question of monopolies is rapidly coming to
the front. The old notion that competition would
always come in to serve the community, has proved
wholly fallacious. Combination has in many instances
perhaps in most, defeated the calculations of the legis
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
lature ; and the power of the great companies to fight
off those whom they consider intruders, has been
exercised without any scruple whatever. All the
recent evidence tends in the same direction. The
railway companies treat their customers as if the
public had been specially created by some beneficent
providence for these monopolists to prey upon and
get interest for shareholders. This view is natural
enough ; and we see in America that the system is
carried yet further. Monopolies granted by the State
are made the means of fleecing the community.
Thus once more we have the illusory freedom of con
tract. The House of Commons, as representative of the
people, allows a monopoly to be created, and then this
monopoly is used to the public detriment. Unfortu
nately, the remedy is not so easy as might appear.
The total price of the railways at present quo
tations would exceed i ,000,000,oooZ., and he would
be a bold financier who should propose to increase the
national debt by that sum at the present time. But pri
vate interests cannot be allowed to stand permanently
in the way of the community at large. The right
of interference has never been disputed. If the House
of Commons had not been full of representatives of
the Railway interest, steps would long since have been
taken by the Government to secure for Englishmen at
large far greater advantage in return for the monopoly
granted. It is plain, for example, that the State
could construct a railroad from London say to Liver
pool or Manchester, at a very much less cost than
the capitalized value of either of the existing lines.
If the stockholders have not taken this fact into account,
�ORGANIZATION.
io5
that is their own look-out. No Parliament nor any
succession of Parliaments, could guarantee a mono
poly against another company that showed good cause
for the construction of a line ; still less could it be
assured against the State. Consequently when it
becomes necessary, as it shortly must, to acquire the
railways, no such absurd estimate of value need be
made as in the case of the London water com
panies. Our tendency has been as the nation to show
ourselves too considerate of so-called vested interests,
simply because the classes which hold those vested
interests have had the entire control in every way—
to assume, indeed, when the State has to deal with
them that some exceptional price must be paid. This
is quite incorrect. When the decision is come to that
for the national interest the railways should be ac
quired, it would be perfectly fair to purchase at a
valuation, without any reference whatever to a future
monopoly-value, which does not and could not exist
against the country at large. A special issue of ter
minable annuities might be made to cover the whole
matter. But without entering on details, it is clear
that the recent arbitrary action of Railway Companies,
especially towards the working classes, will, ere long,
bring this whole question to a climax.1
That State management would pay, there is very
little doubt. Improved organization would produce
1 The infamous overwork of their servants by the Railway
Companies as recently exposed, is alone enough to call for im
mediate State interference. The brutal greed of corporations
was never exhibited in a more shameless form at the expense of
both the men and the public.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
a profit by the reduction of working expenses. But
far more important than any idea of profit, is the
prospect, under proper direction,”of cheapening trans
port, and securing for the working-classes really cheap
travel in the neighbourhood of large cities. It is
scarcely too much to say that sixpenny weekly
tickets, available for any distance within ten miles,
coupled with a well-regulated system of artisans’
dwellings, erected by the muncipality and let at
rents to cover cost of construction, would completely
change the whole life of our great cities, reducing rents
for unwholesome tenements, and gradually leading to
a better condition in every respect. It is also by no
means certain that the suggestion made by a Civil En
gineer that a one shilling fare should apply to the whole
United Kingdom, would not, in some modified form,
prove as great a success as the penny post. In any
case it is manifest that the Railways are the national
highways, that in regard to the transfer of both goods
and passengers they work for the shareholders and
not for the community, and that consequently the busiof the country is carried on at a growing disadvantage.
Besides, the land and the railways are inseparably
bound up together, and those who talk about
“nationalising” the one without touching the other,
overlook a most important feature in thewholebusiness.
The chief objection to the acquirement of the railways
even on terms which might seem highly advantageous
from a financial point of view, would doubtless be
the danger of increasing the power of the Government
by the formation of so vast a bureaucracy. But this
ought to involve no political danger, with full pub-
�ORGANIZA TION.
107
licity and a distinct removal of the railways from the
sphere of State patronage. Certainly the fear of what
might happen in this way ought not to keep back the
country from laying hands upon a set of corporations
whose directors work their influence with the most
perfect selfishness, using their railroads to help their
politics, and their politics to help their railroads.
That sort of see-saw is quite as objectionable as any
bureaucratic taint. With the advance of democracy,
and the reference of all questions to the people, it has
become more and more clear that the Civil Service,
as a profession, should be kept clear of politics
and party. Where this is not done all sorts of mis
chief creep in ; where it is, and full publicity is main
tained—an essential point too—there the organization
is a great gain to all. The right of representation
of grievances by State officials must of course be fully
secured.
Railways, then, like the control of mines, factories,
and workshops, must be placed under the State—the
former for management, the latter for supervision.
These are matters which affect the entire national
welfare, and can only be adequately dealt with by
national ordinance. Manifestly rivers, canals, and
drainage, fall under the same head. The neglect of
these as a matter of national importance is really
most astonishing. At present our rivers—dhe water
shed and drinking source of the whole country—are
treated as municipalities, or even as individuals, think
fit. This too, though the urban population, as the
late census clearly shows, is increasing in density
almost to the danger-point. Decentralization in this
�io8
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
matter is really ruinous to the public interest. Drain
age works are carried out, sewage and refuse of the
most unpleasant nature are disposed of, without much
reference to the effect which the action of one town
or one owner may produce in other directions. No
doubt there are bye-laws and statutes, but they have
never been properly put in force. The injury already
done by this separatist system is enormous. For the
future, therefore, all arrangements affecting rivers or
canals should be under the management of a public
department, specially constituted to take in the bear
ings of the whole subject, whilst leaving to the county
assemblies, local boards, municipalities, and even
township vestries, the fullest powers of carrying out
their own projects within the limits that concern only
themselves.
As the powers of these local bodies to acquire land
and other property can scarcely fail to be largely in
creased in the near future and their rights to make
improvements extended, it is the more essential that
to start with the due position of the central authority
should be clearly defined, secured, and strengthened.
Of the existing departments, or the proposal to create
a Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, it is need
less to speak here; that is a mere matter of conveni
ence in separating functions now combined. But in
all such matters the tendency towards the simul
taneous operation of causes which tend to centraliza
tion, as well as those which invite the strengthening of
local forces, ought not to be neglected. To create
social or political machinery is beyond the power of
assemblies or autocrats ; to take care that the natural
growth of a nation should be fostered instead of
�ORGANIZATION.
109
hindered is the true function of a statesman. Surely
it is reasonable to foresee that the existing fierce
competition will in many directions besides that of
railroads develope into combination, and thus gradually
be turned to the advantage of all.
There is no need to fear the crushing of individuality
in all this. Rather will there gradually rise up a higher
individuality, when each can look to his own develop
ment as contributing to the advancement of all.
But the success of any movement depends upon the
mass of the people, and the readiness of those who
ought already to have voting power to press forward
earnestly the interests of themselves and their chil
dren. Nothing can be done unless the people are
prepared to organize their forces. Here, however, are
what seem the natural reforms demanded for the
organization of the great democracy on which the
future of England depends :—Manhood or adult suffrage, with the other electoral
reforms already specified.
The reform of the House of Lords into a Great
Council, in which our colonies and dependencies
should be fully represented.
The restriction of the House of Commons as a
whole to dealing with national questions ; the arrange
ment of great committees, &c., being adjusted to the
changed conditions.
A great increase of power to be given to county
boards and municipal councils, to purchase land for
public use, &c.,so that even without federal parliaments
all matters affecting separate districts could be dealt
with locally, subject to the general law.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
The entire system of national railways to be pur
chased ■ at a valuation, by annuities secured on the
railways, and managed by a State department in the
interest of the mass of the community.
A department to be formed dealing more directly
with the main watercourses, canals, and forestry than
any now in existence.
An extension of the Factory and Mines Acts, and
inspection of shipping, so as to constitute the State
more completely the protector of men and women
who under freedom of contract are, bound unfairly
to risk their lives and their health to get a bare
subsistence.
To these may be added the social reforms previously
advocated:—
Free compulsory education for all.
Eight hours to be the working day.
Compulsory erection of artisans’ dwellings by muni
cipalities and county assemblies in place of unhealthy
houses or dwellings removed for improvements.
Cheap trains, at the rate of sixpence for a weekly
ticket, on all lines within ten or fifteen miles of a
great city.
By these means centralization and decentralization
would have free play to work themselves out ; a great
pressure would be removed from our historical assem
blies—both of which would be strengthened by a
reduction of numbers and a more direct representa
tion of the mass of the people and the interests of the
whole empire.
Those who suppose that democracy tends to dis
organization and anarchy quite misread the signs of
�ORGANIZATION.
hi
the times. Wherever educated democracy has the
freest play, precisely there will be found the most
complete organization, both in public and in private
affairs. The danger arises, if at all, from the opposite
quarter. But Englishmen have clearly begun to see
that in this direction only can their further develop
ment go on. The aristocracy had their day; in
1832 their power was shaken, to be gradually sapped
up to the present time. They have chosen to throw in
their lot with the bourgeoisie, and to trade on the
necessities of the labourer with them. For fifty years
we have experienced middle-class rule: that is
tottering to its fall, with no record but selfishness in
home affairs. Now comes the turn of England at large
as represented by the men who are really the England
of to-day. It is for them to see that their future is
worthy of the greatness of their country, ensuring the
physical and moral welfare of all by organization and
self-sacrifice.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
CHAPTER V.
IRELAND.
It is perhaps the most telling commentary upon our
government of Ireland, that in dealing with the affairs
of that island English statesmen are still obliged to
proceed in every respect upon the separate system.
Ireland has been an integral portion of the United
Kingdom for eighty years, and yet we have at this
time more than 30,000 troops and 12,000 constabulary
occupied in keeping down a serious rebellion. This, at
any rate, is the contention of the people immediately
responsible for that law and order to secure which
a Liberal Ministry has been content to override the
first guarantee of all liberty, and to proclaim the
capital of the country in a state of siege. There is,
perhaps, no need for the mass of Englishmen to take
special blame to themselves for the harm which has
been done. They are scarcely responsible for a
policy over which [as a mass they have exercised
no real control. Yet it is impossible to compare
what has happened with Ireland to that which has
taken place in regard to Alsace and Lorraine, or
Savoy and Nice, without being compelled to acknow
ledge that in all that relates to a subject people they
manage these matters better in France. Reforms in
�IRELAND.
ii3
Ireland—political, religious, economical, social—have
in every case been delayed, until they have ceased
to be boons to the people ; pressure from without has
been waited for in every instance, until it took an
explosive shape; and men who to start with were
ready to welcome moderate measures, have been
driven to combine on an almost revolutionary pro
gramme, from sheer hopelessness of obtaining justice
in any other way.
There is no need to go back to the history of cen
turies of misgovernment to account for what we see
to-day. Doubtless the wrongs of the past have done
much to embitter the relations between two coun
tries which ought to be at one; but enough has
occurred within the lifetime of the present genera
tion to account for that sad state of affairs which
politicians of all parties deplore and all ought to
strive to remedy. In Ireland, as in England and
Scotland, the people have been deprived of the pos
session of their own land in favour of a small minority.
Such manufactures as existed having been destroyed
long since by English legislation, and Ireland not
producing iron and coal to a profitable extent, the
men have been unable to seek in the cities the work
which their brothers in destitution across the chan
nel were enabled to obtain. Hence arose that earth
hunger which enabled landowners to exact rackrents, and left the people to multiply on poor food,
nearer and ever nearer to the limit of starvation.
Foreign conquest and absenteeism have aggravated
the mischief politically and economically. Difference
of race and religion rendered grave social ills more
I
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
difficult to deal with. But the great catastrophe
of 1847 ought to have opened our eyes to some por
tion of the truth—ought to have shown the people of
England that here we nad an exceptional problem to
deal with, and that such dominance as had been esta
blished was discreditable to the rulers and ruinous to
the ruled.
That fearful famine formed the starting-point of
the modern history of Ireland. It had been predicted
by men of very different views and capacities. It
came, as such cataclysms sometimes do come, in its
worst possible shape, and was followed up by revolu
tionary legislation which all can now see was most,
unfortunate. Instead of accepting the wise recom
mendations of the Devon Commission-—made, be it
remembered, three years before the famine—or the
still wiser advice of Lord Beaconsfield, given about
the same time, but latei* so unfortunately withdrawn
—full rights were given to landlords, new and old,. to
uproot the population, tear down their miserable
dwellings, and hurry them across the Atlantic, famine
fever wearing out their bodies, and fury at such in
justice and tyranny rankling in their minds. Who
that has read through the details of that miserable
time, when men, women, and children were turned
out of their holdings,—as they are now being turned
out, though happily in far fewer numbers—to wander
in starvation and misery along the highways, can
wonder that a generation has grown up in Ireland and
in the United States which regards with inextinguish
able hatred England and all that belongs to her ?
The very Encumbered Estates Act, a most valu-
�IRELAND.
ii5
able measure in itself if carefully carried out,
forced the lands of ancient proprietors who under
stood the people, not into the control of the State,
which would have acted with some consideration, but
into the hands of foreign speculators, who bought at
a low price with the express purpose of raising the
rents upon the tenants. An absenteeism was thus
created worse than that which had existed before. In
the end, doubtless, good came out of evil for those
who were left; but twenty-four years elapsed before
any effort was made on the part of the Imperial
Parliament to secure to the mass of the people of
Ireland some portion of the benefits which even the
Devon Commission had urged.
All this while, over the greater part of Ireland a
purely agricultural community had no security of
tenure of any sort or kind, and the church of the
small minority was kept up at the expense of those
who were of a different creed. Irishmen, who in the
United States did an amount of hard work which
almost reconciled the not very sympathetic Americans
to their gregarious habits in the cities, and their
religious belief, so hostile to the Puritanism which
even sceptics in that great country still consider it
prudent to affect—Irishmen, who in our colonies,
notwithstanding many defects, have brought them
selves to the front by their industry, were accused in
their own country of idleness and indifference, because,
after centuries of misrule, they could see no object
in giving their masters their labour for nothing.
That was really the fact. All accounts agree that
wherever in Ireland a man has a permanent tenure of
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
a fair piece of land, in the great majority of cases he
works as hard as an Indian ryot or French peasant
proprietor. It is absurd, of course, to deny the in
fluence of race and climate; none would contend
that a Saxon and an Irishman have the same quali
ties. But the remarkable feature in the whole matter
is, that the descendants of Saxons have been just as
much opposed, and more violent in showing their
opposition to the landlord-made legislation, as the
Irish themselves. Nor have they been one whit
more industrious than their Celtic neighbours. The
descendants of Cromwell’s soldiery, though more
turbulent under injustice, have not been any more
inclined to give the fruits of their labour to
their landlords than the Catholics around them.
But wherever tenant-right has been introduced-and
fairly held to, there, notwithstanding the fact that
economical disturbances — American competition,
slackened demand for store beasts in England and
Scotland, no requirement for casual Irish labour
in the summer—have affected the whole island,
there peace and quiet have in the main pre
vailed.
As a mere matter of national business it would have
been cheap to have given the tenants a permanent
hold upon the soil, even if the landlords had been
compensated beyond the value of what they parted
with. The cost of the maintenance of a large army
and a great constabulary in Ireland cannot well be
estimated in actual money. Many considerations are
involved. But in any case, have we the right to pre
vent 5,500,000 people from settling their own local
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117
business in their own way ? Surely there is not
an Englishman of either party who does not feel
that our present attitude is somewhat hypocritical.
It may be that Irishmen if left to themselves would
not make the best possible settlement of their own
affairs ; but are English landlords qualified to judge
of the matter for them any better ? They have
hitherto constituted the ultimate court of appeal.
When we speak of the unfairness of Irish juries in
agrarian cases, let us at least remember the persistent
unfairness of the great English jury of legislators on
this question of life or death to the people of Ireland.
Even when the House of Commons has been willing
to give in, the House of Lords has stood by their own
class; and here, in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, we have as honest and patriotic a man as
ever lived, hotheaded and furious though he be, taken
and put in gaol, though also a member of Parliament,
for having denounced, and urged his countrymen to
resist, a most tyrannous system of evictions. And let
us bear this in mind, that unfortunately the immense
majority of the Liberal party were highly delighted
at the arrest of Mr. Dillon, and cheered like madmen
at the arrest of Mr. Davitt.
The history of the last few months of panic and
misgovernment in Ireland is worth consideration by
all who hold that justice and freedom are worth some
thing in themselves, aside from the question whether
a party chooses to throw them over or not. What
has occurred since July of last year is alone enough
to prove conclusively that no country could be peace
able under such a rule as we have inflicted upon the
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people of Ireland. Steady despotism would be far
preferable to such miserable incapacity and vacillation
as have been exhibited.
For here is what has taken place. Last year, after
Ireland had suffered from a period of severe privation,
which fell upon the small tenant-farmers and the
labourers with redoubled severity owing to their
being unable to obtain work in England, the landlords
—or rather a few of the baser sort—began to evict their
tenantry. Hunger and sense of injustice combined
made men desperate. The Land Bill of 1870, though
by no means a satisfactory measure, had given a
tenant a certain claim to compensation for disturb
ance in all cases save non-payment of rent. If evicted
for not paying his rent, however, this right to com
pensation was gone, and he went out upon the high
roads a pauper, with the workhouse as his only
refuge. This eviction, therefore, was felt to be a
greater hardship than any previous eviction, because
it was not only harsh, but in the view of the tenant
unjust. Good landlords, of course, were considerate
in Ireland as elsewhere : people like Lord Lansdowne,
whose idea of landed property necessarily involved
serfdom and servility (as he was good enough to
inform the Americans, of all people in the world,
through the Chicago TriJmne), were naturally eager
not to lose the advantage of any misfortune among
their tenantry. That few should have acted in this
contemptible fashion gives no conception of the alarm
produced. Not a very large proportion of tenants
in the year are rack-rented ; but that proportion acts
as a damper upon thousands of others in improving
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119
their farms, and prevents them from making the
best of their labour.
These evictions, then, having begun, and going on
in an increasing ratio, the Government boldly and
rightly introduced a Bill of the most carefully-guarded
character, to prevent downright oppression and
tyranny from being brought to bear. That Bill, after
some of the most bitter discussions in the House of
Commons and in the press ever known, wras passed
by a considerable majority, the Prime Minister
making himself prominent of course in its champion
ship, and saying, what recent events have proved only
too clearly to be the truth, that if it were not passed
we should be within a measureable distance of civil
war. This, be it remembered also, took place after
the Government had declined to renew the Peace
Preservation Act, on the express ground that it was
.contrary to the principles of liberty and Liberalism.
Very well. What followed was not only probable but
certain. The House of Lords, seeing the whole right
of eviction when contrary to common interest jeopar
dized by the measure, threw out the Bill. The
Government—that is the opinion of all parties in
Ireland—winked at the agitation which followed.
That agitation was, in view of what had passed,
justifiable and righteous, and was carried on, when
once the Land League had obiained a hold upon the
people, with surprisingly little bloodshed or bad action.
A vast agrarian strike was organized—not against all
rent, but against rent above a certain valuation.
There were also rattenings and boycottings, where
men took land from which tenants had been evicted.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
Many things, no doubt, were done, and are being done
now, most obnoxious to Englishmen : the injuries to
cattle in particular are dastardly in the extreme.
Gradually, as evictions went on, and help was received
from sympathizers in America, temper rose, and the
feeling—mingled with that race and religious hatred
which is the worst feature of all, because the least
capable of yielding to reason—became very bitter.
But what has it been after all ? A trifle beside the
agitations of 1848 and 1833, and to be met—that was
the just contention of the Government and the Liberal
party—not by repression, but by reform. “ Force is
no remedy,” said Mr. Bright, strong as he always has
been on this Irish question ; and there was not a
genuine liberal Englishman in the country who would
not have stood behind those words. And force has
been no remedy—has only aggravated the whole
mischief. But what comes now ? The Cabinet
having been summoned in hot haste in December,
decided that in these days we must deal with popular
grievances, even when exaggerated, by reason and
argument, and not by bullets and buckshot—and
separated without calling Parliament together. A
little while and Mr. Forster again comes over, with
woe-begone visage, and Parliament is summoned. A
Coercion Act and Arms Act become law, at what a
strain to our whole system of parliamentary govern
ment we perhaps yet scarcely know. Members of
the House of Commons, acting no doubt very provokingly, but still entirely within their rights, are
silenced and ejected; and Ireland is put under a
suspensive state of siege.
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121
Thus the very Government which had declared that
evictions of a certain kind were most unjust, and must
be restrained, put in the hands of the landlords as
complete a machinery of eviction as they had ever
possessed, and backed it up by pouring troops into the
country. And evictions soon multiplied. Men,
women, and children were turned out under circum
stances which reproduced here in England would
have brought about an insurrection.
What ? Let us for once use plain language about
these things. Has a Government, have any number
of landlords, sitting in Parliament to represent a
dominant caste, the right to turn a man, his wife, and
children, out into the bitter air of January, because,
poor devil, there had been a famine, and he could not
pay his rent ? I say No. Last year the vast majority
of the House of Commons said No ; and if the ques
tion were fairly put to them I believe the vast
majority of Englishmen to-day would say No. Ire
land, it is true, cannot hope to resist successfully such
shameful oppression, but why should English work
ing men sanction and support action which, if applied
to themselves, they would rise against ? The truth
is, and this will shortly become apparent to all, the
tenant-farmers and labourers of Ireland are fighting
the battle of the working-classes of England in
relation to the land, and get far less support than
they ought to get on grounds where they are both
agreed. This, at least, is certain, that unless the
Land League had been formed, and the Irish had
stood together in a great economical movement, no
such Land Bill as that of 1881 would have been
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brought before the English House of Commons at
■all. The Land League, whether it be called com
munistic, nationalistic, or what not, brought the first
genuine attempt yet made at reform within the range
of practical politics, and must be maintained to give
it effect.
The facts in relation to Irish land have been made
known to all by means of the propaganda which they
carried on. There are but 12,000 landowners in all
Ireland, and 1000 of them own two-thirds of the island.
One fourth of these landowners are permanent absen
tees, who take their rents to the amount of millions
sterling out of the country, and spend them elsewhere.
And yet six-sevenths of the population have to derive
their subsistence from the land, and naturally enough
compete against one another to such an extent as to
raise rents to a high figure. Say the theorists, Irishmen
are too fond of land, are too much given to agricul
ture. .This is quite absurd. In the. United/States
the Americans make precisely the opposite complaint.
They say that the Irish are too much addicted to
crowding into the cities; and ‘so they undoubtedly
are,. But iruJreland they stick to the land, for the
best of all possible reasons, that there is nothing else
for them to get a living out of; and as arable land is
being continually turned into pasture by the large
landowners and large farmers, there is less and less
employment for them as labourers, and less and less
land which they can take up to feed themselves and
their, families upon. Noone disputes the sad condi
tion of a vast proportion of the tenant farmers who
hold under fifteen acres, which amount to more than
�IRELAND.
123
half the whole 500,000. Those who drag out a
miserable existence in Mayo and Connemara, would
be no better off if they held their patches in fee.
Migration and emigration are the only possible
remedies for these people.
But here, as in England, the first step is to get the
land out of the hands of the large proprietors, and
enable the people of Ireland to work out their own
social difficulties. The great main drainage works
which some reformers clamour for, cannot possibly
be carried out for the benefit of the landowners, whose
properties would be improved; neither can reclama
tion go on without some regard to economical and
physical conditions. The tendency of bog to revert
to bog is as well-known in Scotland as in Ireland.
That Ireland is in itself a poor country has lately
been disputed, and with good reason. It is not a
poor country, but a poor people, that we have to deal
with. In Ireland, to take the same comparison as
was made in the case of England, the population has
decreased nearly 3,000,000 in thirty years, and the
assessment to income-tax has grown by 15,000,000/.
annually. Moreover, the deposits in the banks point
in the same direction. Ireland itself, therefore, has
become far richer in the last generation, but the dis
tribution of that wealth is so faulty that a year of bad
crops means little short of famine to a large population.
Happily, the Act of 1881 accepts principles which
have hitherto been scouted as communistic. The
distinct object which underlies the economical
clauses is to secure to a portion at least of the
population that right to the fruits of their labour,
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
of which they have hitherto been deprived by land
lords under the name of freedom of contract. Why
is it that peasant proprietorship has, on the whole,
been beneficial where people have been settled on the
soil ? Surely because in this way alone could a man
and his family, in our existing system of society, be
secure of the fruits of his own labour. In every other
case, where the poor man wishes to obtain employment
he is deprived of a portion of his produce for the benefit
of others. Unquestionably the Liberal Government
has made a great step forward when it recognizes in
a definite measure that freedom of contract, where the
force is all on one side, may, and in many cases must
mean, injustice and tyranny.
But to suppose that any Land Act, however care
fully drawn—that any courts, however impartial—will
settle the Irish question, is to assume far more than
the facts warrant. Nothing was more noteworthy than
the disposition of the tenant-farmers all over the
country to sink their differences in view of the agita
tion for a mitigated form of the three F’s, which will
probably break down—or a peasant proprietorship,
which will involve the pressure of the gombeen man.
This latter point is worth a moment’s consideration.
India is, it is true, different in many ways from
Ireland ; but there the right of eviction by the money
lender has been found more dangerous and objec
tionable than eviction by any other method. Should
not restriction be placed on mortgage and bill of sale
here, too, if we desire to prevent similar expropria
tions from taking place, and giving rise to a dis
tinctly socialist agitation, whicly could not be dealt
�IRELAND.
125
with under present conditions ? But the Land Act
as it has passed constitutes such an enormous advance
upon what seemed possible even a few months ago,
that Irishmen would be foolish indeed not to make
as much of it as they can. To secure the tenants in
their holdings, to obtain assistance in settling a
peasant proprietory on the land, and help for emigra
tion and migration, are steps towards that pacification
which full patience alone can bring about. But for
the shameful and silly Coercion Act a hope might
have arisen, not of a settlement of all Irish difficulties
—such impatience to get rid of the natural troubles
of administration argues weakness and incapacity—
but of a better understanding between the English
and the Irish peoples.
That, little as it may seem to be so at this moment,
has really been the outcome of the agitation. For
the first time in recent Irish history, a vast number
of Englishmen of all classes have felt that wrong was
being done in their name when the common rights of
the United Kingdom were suspended in deference to
the clamour of an interested and panic-stricken
minority. Even the race hatred and the jealousy of
keen competitors in the labour-market have been to a
certain extent laid aside in view of the fact that
injustice was being done. Had the Irish managed
their own case better, and kept religious differences
altogether out of sight when a political end was in
view, this understanding between the democracy of
the two countries might have already progressed even
farther than it has. There need be no real differ
ence. There is room enough and to spare for the
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
workers of both races under a better system than that
which has hitherto found favour. We are, let us
hope, approaching the time when we shall endeavour
to rule in all cases with the consent of the majority—
when the highest aim of every statesman will be to
reconcile all to a beneficial union, in which every
member is contented and free.
That many grievances still remain unredressed
even now that the Land Act has been passed,
is unfortunately but too certain. That absurd
playing at Viceroyalty in Dublin, with an English
Chief Secretary, and a worn-out bureaucracy at
the Castle, would aggravate a less touchy people
than the Irish. What do they want with a Viceroy
and underlings, any more than the Scotch ? Why
should Irishmen more than Scotchmen be shut out
from the management of their own affairs ? “ They
hate you, it is said, and long to drive you out.” Has
any reason for love been given ? At least let us
wait to see whether a definite alliance between the
English and Irish democracies be not possible, before
continuing to support such methods as have hitherto
been favoured. Local administration there must be.
The management of local business in Ireland as a
whole must henceforth be carried on by Irishmen, if
there is to be any success at all. That process of
decentralization which must go on in Scotland, Wales,
and England, is applicable to Ireland too. There,
more than here even, the railway, and drainage, and
road systems need to be under one great administra
tion. Let them in Heaven's name try their hand
with manhood suffrage, at the improvement of their
�IRELAND.
127
own country ; leave them the task of carrying out the
detail of the reforms they have rightly forced us to
adopt.
This at least we must all admit; that we cannot
continue parliamentary government if we are per
sistently to run counter to the opinions of the
majority of 5,000,000 of people represented in our
own House of Commons. It is because separation
would be injurious to both countries, as mutual under
standing would be beneficial, that Irishmen should at
length be granted fair play and self-government. Take
the absentees, for instance. They are not dealt with ;
and yet no man can hold that absenteeism is not a<
serious drawback to Irish prosperity. Such a question
concerns the whole country most seriously ; but their
compulsory expropriation or a heavy exceptional tax
ation—which commended itself even to Lord George.
Bentinck—has not been suggested by the Govern
ment. The labourers also have to be considered. It
is true that the fullest justice to .the. farmers does not
directly benefit them, though the well-being of one
class might slowly re-act upon the other. Here again
is encountered, in a less complicated shape, the same
problem that is met with in England—how to benefit
the real workers on the soil at the same time that
the most is made of the land. The 500,000 tenant
farmers of Ireland form, however, a very different pro
portion of the entire population, as well as of the agri
cultural population, from that which a similar class
does here with us. To improve their condition with
out injustice to others, if this can be done, is already
much gained.
................
...\ 1 .
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
There is no reason however, why we should stop
there. Men who know that they are secure of posses
sion are always ready to reclaim land, and might well
be given the option of taking part in such reclamation,
or in being assisted to obtain farms in English colonies.
Let us not, however, lose sight of the principles in
volved in all such proposals. We recognize thereby
that the State is responsible for the removal of the
causes which can be proved to lead to the wretched
poverty of the mass of the people. We are entering
plainly upon the path of restriction of selfish compe
tition, because, under certain conditions it has failed
in agriculture as it has in other directions. Hitherto in
Ireland brute force—the brute force of the people of
England—has stood behind the dominant class, ready
to maintain their views of a political economy which
mighthave been invented in the interest of monopolists.
A peaceful revolution has to be brought about, and the
first step has been taken.- Those, however, who con
tend that the modification of the land laws of Ireland
must extend to England have right on their side.
It is impossible any longer to use two sets of argu
ments on the two sides of the Irish Channel. Now,
therefore, that fixity of tenure, purchase of property,
reclamation of land, assisted emigration, and main
drainage, have been accepted for Ireland, we are not
far__we could not be far—from the consideration of
similar proposals for England and Scotland.
But even supposing the land question in a fair way of
settlement, an Irish Parliament with local administra
tion set on foot, there remain the race and religious
hatreds to consider. These of course are difficulties
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IRELAND.
of a very different character from any which Acts of
Parliament can touch. How can Celts and Saxons,
Catholics and Protestants, live together in unity ? Yet
such things have been ; at this moment the leader of
the irreconcileable Irish party is neither an Irishman
nor a Catholic. Leave the Irish liberty to arrange their
own business, and they will find out some way
of getting on with one another, when the injustice
complained of for centuries has been remedied.
Ireland has been conquered by arms from generation
to generation ; it remains for us to conquer finally
by justice, magnanimity and consideration.
Many of the noblest names in English history and
literature are those of Irishmen ; the Irish party in the
House of Commons to-day contains men of ability
out of all proportion to its numbers ; the two most
distinguished of our younger generals are Irishmen
by birth. Would it not be well, then, for all to con
sider whether, everr. at the cost of some sacrifice of
consistency, and some forgetfulness of past domina
tion, the loyalty of such a people could be secured,
by a freedom which is yet reconcilable with common
action ? The national feeling now running so high in
Ireland could find as full an outlet in the British
Empire as that of Scotland, when once it is under
stood that supremacy is no longer claimed in the
interests of a small minority, but to give satisfaction
to the high ideals of empire and greatness which a
petty island like Ireland, overshadowed perpetually
by English power, could never attain. A complete
agreement between England and Ireland will be
possible only when the people of both countries can
K
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ENGLAND FOE ALL.
control their own policy, and secure at home and
abroad that the benefit of the many, not the gain
of the few, should be the end.
The refusal of the Government to release the
“ suspects ” imprisoned without evidence of guilt or
trial for assumed offences, and the maintenance of
the infamous Coercion Act and Arms Act, have
shown that Liberals cannot govern Ireland without
resort to despotic methods. When men like Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Forster, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Cham
berlain compel Radicals to support such a disgraceful
rule of informers and sub-inspectors of police as that
now in force in Ireland, the end cannot be far off.
I for one have no feeling but contempt for those
sham Liberals and pseudo-Radicals who prate of
freedom and practise despotism. Legislative inde
pendence for Ireland is a necessity if we Englishmen
are to continue Parliamentary Government.
�INDIA.
CHAPTER VI.
INDIA.
If Ireland, a little island close to our own shores, its
people speaking our language, sharing our civilization
and religion, with all its problems lying, as it were, in
the hollow of our hand and open to inspection with
the naked eye—if, after centuries of absolute rule over
the inhabitants, we are beginning to confess that the
matter is well-nigh too hard for us, and look to enlist
ing Irishmen in the government of their own country
as our only hope of success in the future—if, I say, this
little business has plagued us so sore, what are we to
think of the task of ruling 200,000,000 of people, of
totally different race, language, civilization, and creeds,
thousands of miles away from England, by means of
900 young gentlemen who do not set foot in
the country till they are over twenty years of age,
and work without the slightest help from the natives
in the higher branches of administration ? Yet this is
what we, the English people, are now trying to do in
India; and with such unfortunate results to the inhabi
tants, that it is absolutely essential that the great mass
of the community, on whose shoulders now. rests the
weight of this vast empire, should take the matter into
their own hands. This, indeed, is now the only hope__
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
that the English people will see the mischief that is
being done, and insist that neither vested interests nor
regard for individual reputations shall longer stand in
the way of absolutely essential reforms.
No man can read the history of our early conquests
in India without a strange admixture of feeling.
Deeds of the noblest heroism and determination are
found side by side with the records of such meanness,
cruelty, and greed, that at times we doubt whether it
is possible that qualities so different should have
belonged to the same race. A mere merchant com
pany, humbly suing for permission to trade, grew into
power and influence in spite of themselves, till they
became of necessity the heirs of the Great Mogul, and
the conquerors of the rising Mahratta confederation ;
their clerks and supercargoes, their shopmen and
peddlers, figured forth before the world as warriors,
statesmen, and administrators. Whilst the king and
the aristocracy were losing, by sheer ignorance and
incompetence, the noblest inheritance across the
Atlantic that ever fell to the lot of any nation, ordi
nary Englishmen were conquering an empire just in
the way of everyday business, which, had it been
properly managed, would in some degree have com
pensated for that monstrous blunder. A great and
ancient civilization had fallen under their control, and
it needed but a right comprehension of its tendencies
to lead the people on, with little of change, to a wider
and a higher development, which should have been to
the advantage of all. This was the idea of some of
the nobler spirits, who saw clearly that a growth of
thousands of years equid not suddenly be twisted in
�INDIA.
133
accordance with foreign notions without grave danger
of injury to rulers and ruled. To raise the tone of the
native Governments to the best native standard, slowly
introducing the leaven of Western ideas into the
administration without altering the form of society or
pursuing the fatal policy of complete annexation —this was the view of men who had, unfortunately,
too little weight as against more vehement coun
sellors.
The East India Company itself, however, protested
constantly against the violent methods of its own
servants; but the inexorable necessity of paying
interest had, very early in its history, a most
baneful influence upon the system pursued by us
in India. Annexation became the rule; and even
forty or fifty years ago the natives of India had begun
to discuss the effect of the drain of produce to England
consequent upon the multitudes of fortunes made by
Englishmen and withdrawn on their leaving. The
nabobs who returned after shaking the pagoda-tree,
represented so much wealth taken out of India, which
was never returned. Nevertheless, the rule of the
East India Company was on the whole economical.
It was soon found out that countries governed by
foreigners, in which the old native system had been
broken down, seemed somehow not to have the
elasticity and power of recovery for which India had
been celebrated for centuries. India, the administra
tors in Leadenhall Street discovered was a poor
country, not to be treated as if untold wealth could
be taken for the asking without harming the people.
To enter upon the beneficial changes made in native
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
usages, the noble work of Sleeman in uprooting the
Thugs, of Outram in settling the Bheels, of Edwardes
on the Indus border, or, on a wider field, the reforms
adopted by Lord William Bentinck, would be to extend
this chapter far beyond the limits of this little work.
Natives of India know well that had Englishmen
confined their efforts to such objects as these nothing
but good would have come of their rule. To this
day the government of the old East India Company,
in those countries where good native customs were
respected and the people not worried, is looked back
to with regard and even affection. Men who went
out to India as mere boys got to know the people, and
loved them ; they made their homes in the country,
and returning but rarely to England, held a very
different position from that of their successors of
to-day.
Asia is the land of long memories, and those who
treat its people with justice, firmness, and consideration
pass on their legacy of good feeling to the next gene
ration. All who read the writings of Metcalfe, Shore,
Malcolm, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Henry Lawrence,
Meadows Taylor, or Sleeman, will find that below
the surface there is a constant undercurrent of regret
at the needless Europeanization which they see going
on. And the natives of India have ever been most
easily led by men who, whilst combatting their faults,
were not above appreciating their good qualities,
even when they have shown themselves rigorous and
exacting. Thus it happened that, notwithstanding
many great errors, and a gradual impoverishment,
which was then scarcely perceived, the agricultural
�INDIA.
135
population of British India—fully three-fourths of
that vast population—was loyal to the rule of the
great Company when Lord Dalhousie was appointed
Governor-General. It was the mission of this arbi
trary bigot to overthrow all the best traditions of
our rule in India, to shock every native idea of jus
tice or good faith, to commence that course of un
scrupulous annexation and wholesale Europeanization
from which our Empire is now suffering, and to lead
up by his policy to one of the most serious rebel
lions that ever shook the power of any Government.
The great Mutiny of 1857 was the direct outcome of
Lord Dalhousie’s headlong career of violence and
chicanery. How the rebellion was put down, and
what marvellous vigour and tenacity our countrymen
showed in resisting the attack of their own trained
soldiery, assisted in the more recently annexed terri
tory by the people themselves, are matters of history.
It was again a story of marvellous capacity chequered
by grave mistakes.
Peace was at length restored ; the rule of the East
India Company came to an end ; and with the as
sumption of the government by the Crown the
English people became directly responsible for the
beneficent management of their own great dependency.
Throughout the fierce conflict which was waged the
sympathy of the mass of the people was with us
rather than with the mutineers. If it had not been,
we could not possibly have overcome the rebellion.
Here, then, if ever in history, was an opportunity for
the governing race. It lay with Englishmen to ac•cept the better portion of the system which had been
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superseded, and to retain the goodwill of the people
by light taxation and consideration of their ancient
customs.
Unfortunately a different course was adopted. At
first all went well. Lord Canning, to his eternal
honour, kept his head in panic-stricken Calcutta, and
refused to allow millions to be treated with cruelty
and injustice because a few infamous ruffians had
been guilty of horrible, never-to-be-forgotten outrages.
The Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 was an admir
able document, rightly called the Great Charter of
India. Princes and people looked forward to a
period when all the advantages which had been
secured to them by the Company—peace, order,
freedom from exaction—should be combined with
a gradual preparation for self-government and a
careful reorganization of native rule under English
guidance. But it was not to be. The word went
forth from high quarters that India had been neg
lected, that what she stood in need of was English
capital, at five per cent, guaranteed interest paid
half-yearly—and English energy, at very high sala
ries paid quarterly. India, in fact, became the out
let for the savings of the upper and middle classes
■and an opening for their sons. Now began the
reign of capital in good earnest and with it a pres
sure of taxation, an increase of famines, a deteriora
tion of the soil, and an impoverishment of the mass
of the people unprecedented in the long history of
India.
But the administration comes first. In this, one
fatal principle has been followed out for the last three-
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137
and-twenty years. Wherever room could be found
for a European, he has been chosen in place of a
native. Even in the judicial department, where the
natives have greatly distinguished themselves, none
of the highly-paid posts are open to them—although
at a lower salary, and with less important positions,
they try cases involving quite as grave issues as those
tried by the Europeans. The extent to which this
employment of Europeans has been carried in every
department, surpasses belief. Young natives are
educated in the colleges for the highest class of ad
ministrative work, but no prizes are ever open to
them. They receive the compliments of the Chan
cellor of the University, who is perhaps also the
Governor of the Presidency, on their ability—and
then they find themselves ousted by a number of
Englishmen from posts in which they might fairly
hope to serve their country.
Now this has been very far worse under the Crown
than it ever was in the Company’s time. In the
Public Works Department alone, the European esta
blishment actually cost 2,300,000/., a year or two ago ;
this too, though the natives of India are specially apt
at engineering, and all the great irrigation works in the
country of any real value have been built by natives,
or constructed by Europeans on native principles.
Where these have been abandoned the grossest
blunders have been made, and millions of acres of land
ruined. Time after time requests have been put forward
by the people of India, through the only channel open to
them, that the total amount paid in salaries to Euro
peans in India should be published, but this has never
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been done. The effect of this excessive employment
of Englishmen is most serious in everyway. Millions
sterling every year which might go to the people of
the country are taken by foreigners, who, though
honest enough, and in some respects more capable
than natives, yet really devour the substance of the
people whose country they no doubt wish to benefit.
More than this, in addition to the salaries they re
ceive in the country, and spend on luxuries which a
native would rarely dream of, or the savings which
they bear away to England when they depart, every
European who leaves Government employment re
ceives a pension, which likewise is so much paid by
India to Englishmen out of the country. But there,
is a further objection still. By this enormous mass of
snperincumbent Europeans, who fill every office of
importance in a country inhabited by 200,000,000
people, those who might be in training for self-govern
ment, and who in time might be able to carry on our
best methods without their drawbacks, are turned
into a disaffected class. These men see their country,
as they think, ruined in the interest of foreigners who
have less and less sympathy with the people they
rule.
Europeanization is stunting all natural growth in
India, and this with less and less excuse every day ;
for civilians and others no longer live in India as they
used to do, rarely make real friends of the people,
and are perpetually moved about from post to post or
come home on furlough. But they equally prevent
any change of system ; and on their return to England
they form, with some few noble exceptions, a com
�INDIA.
139
pact body, opposed both by interest and tradition
to any real justice to India.
Now if this administration were on the whole succesful, it would not even then outweigh the enormous
economical drawbacks involved. As, however, it is
a failure in almost every branch, and we are now
obliged to go back in sheer desperation to some modi
fied form of the old native laws, surely no longer ought
we to hesitate to make a definite change. For take
even our civil courts ; these we were confident could not
fail to be successful. What has occurred ? They are
a complete curse to the people, bringing about endless
litigation, and involving gross injustice to the poor,
owing to their expense. Our land laws : these are
found to be utterly ruinous, not in one part of India
alone but in many, driving the cultivators first into
the hands of the money-lenders and then into gaol.
Our educational system : of that it is needless to
speak. So far, it is practically non-existent, save for
the well-to-do. Our public works—but these come
under another head more conveniently. Now all these
objections to our existing methods are made, not by
outsiders, but by tried and trained official Englishmen,
who having been appointed to account for the mis
chiefs which have arisen, speak plainly of the baneful
effects of our blunders, and themselves suggest a re
version to native plans, which we had discarded before
as unsuited to the people. It is painful to read their
confession that somehow our system does not work,
and yet to find that the very men who honestly admit
this are averse from the only possible remedy.
For now comes the most serious part of the matter.
�140
England fol all.
India is a poor country. We have been trying to
enrich her, and this is how we have done it. In 1856,
a year before the mutiny, the sum of 23,000,000/. was
taken from the people of India for the purposes of
government; in 1880, twenty-four years after, no less
a sum than 68,000,000/. was taken from them for the
same purpose. Has India, then, become so much
richer in the quarter of a century ? There is no evi
dence to that effect; much the other way. We know
from official reports and official protests that, light as
the taxation may seem to us, it is heavier than the
people of India can bear. Any increase would be—I
know no authority to the contrary of that—politically
dangerous. The salt tax—levied, bear in mind, to
the tune of 700 per cent, ad valorem—interferes with
the consumption of that necessary of life most
seriously; whilst no less a man than the late Lord
Lawrence thought the murrains among the cattle
which have been so frequent of late years were, in
part at least, due to the want of salt owing to its ex
cessive price.
But there is graver evidence than the death of cattle,
the ever-increasing spread of famines, and consequent
death of men. Famines are far more frequent than
they were. In the last twenty-three years there have
been not fewer than six serious famines, which have
swept away millions of the people, and millions of
cattle too. The last great famines—those of Bombay
and Madras, and the North-West Provinces—were
something terrible ; not fewer certainly than 7,000,000
of people died of starvation and famine-fever between
1876 and 1879 in those provinces. This is the worst
�INDIA.
141
famine of which there is any record whatever ; and it
occurred, not in the India of old time, with difficult
communications, tottering Governments, indifferent
and careless administrations, but in the India of to
day, with a powerful Central Government, with rail
roads and highways, canals and irrigation works—to
say nothing of money freely poured forth to save
these people from their dreadful fate. But this was
an exceptional affair, it may be said ; there was some
phenomenal drought all over the country ; the rains
ceased, the whole land was barren. Drought no doubt
there was, but by no means of inordinate severity, and
this alone would not have accounted for the fearful
mortality. Nowadays, sad to say, our people—the
greater part of the 200,000,000 we are responsible for
—are living nearer, and ever nearer, to the limit of
starvation ; thus what in happier periods would
have been a scarcity, now deepens into a serious
famine. The main causes for this miserable state
of things are not far to seek.
The total net revenue of the Government of India
raised from the many and various races under our rule
does not exceed 38,000,000/. a year, after making de
ductions for the cost of collection. This revenue so
raised cannot safely be increased : the mass of the
people are, as has been said, taxed up to the hilt.
But year after year we take out of the country agricul
tural produce to the amount of 20,000,000/ at the very
lowest estimate, to bring to us here in England, in
order to pay interest, pensions, and home charges, for
which there is no commercial return.
Now just think for a moment what this means. It
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
means that this very year we Englishmen are taking
from the people of India, for European rule and the
use of European capital, more than we have ever taken:
it means that this amounts to more than the total
land revenue of all British India—to more than half
the net income from all sources as calculated above.
Yet India is a poor country—a very poor country, as
Indian officials tell us. And this is how we “ develope ”
it. We drain away from the country that produce
which might be so beneficially employed by our fel
low-subjects ; and then we beat our breasts when famine
comes, and call out to Providence to wipe off those
spots on the sun which somehow or other do all the
mischief.
What cowardly pretence is this. The truth lies open
to all. We are ruining India because our upper and
middle classes will persist in exacting from its people
agricultural produce to pay interest, home charges,
and pensions. No country in the world, not blessed
with virgin soil of exceptional fertility, could possibly
stand such a drain without exhaustion. The real
effect of this drain once fully grasped, all talk even
about the uncertain opium revenue, about the grinding
salt tax, about the mischievous licence and stamp tax,
becomes idle; for by this constant demand we are
draining away the very life-blood of our people.
What would Englishmen say if the whole agricultural
rent of the country went over to France every year,
because we had French prefects in every county, and
French money had built our railroads and excavated
our canals? Yet the agricultural rent of England is
a mere fleabite in comparison with the drain from
�INDIA.
143
India, the relative wealth of the two countries being
taken into account.
“ But then,” say investors, “ the railroads, the canals,
have increased the wealth of India; we must have
interest from our money, no matter how many are
starved every now and then to pay us. To argue
otherwise would be communism, confiscation again. It
is absurd to forego interest to keep people alive.”
Well, have the railroads increased the wealth of India ?
are the numberless foreigners employed a burden or
the reverse? The matter really requires little con
sideration. Railroads do but transport wealth from
one point to another more conveniently than common
roads. They themselves, make no wealth, neither do
they add to that already in existence. Those who
find the capital deduct a certain proportion of the
produce transferred for the payment of working
expenses and interest. Now if this proportion of
produce remains in the country, and is paid to
natives, it is still at hand to feed the people; but if it
is loaded on board ships, as jute, cotton, or indigo,
and sent to a foreign country to pay interest on capital
[which as we have seen, means the wages of past
(unpaid) labour, now owned by those who neither toil
nor spin], then so much wealth is taken clean out of
that country, never to reappear Jor to return to fer
tilize the soil. There are new colonies, no doubt,
which can afford to pay this toll to foreigners, because
the application of labour to virgin soil is exceedingly
profitable, though even in that case the drain is often
more injurious than it seems at the time. But in the
case of India the result is disastrous from the first.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
Interest is taken away, and Europeans are paid high
salaries, alike in famine and in plenty, in drought
and in flood. - Moreover, much more than 20,000,000/.
have been thus paid away under the guarantee which
have never been earned at all. Losing railways
have consequently been made profitable investments
to home capitalists by the truly beneficent interven
tion of their own Government. Railways therefore in
India, worked by Europeans at a high salary, and
paying interest on the money borrowed by sending
agricultural produce out of the country, are very
different from railways here with us in England.
This has now been acknowledged. Borrowing out of
India is seen to be most injurious ; and yet the country
is getting deeper and ever deeper into debt for public
works, and the exhausting drain is being increased
by the employment of more Europeans.
The truth is that, built with the best possible in
tentions, the public works of India are a burden on
the people. Eager to enrich the country and yet to
derive advantage from it, our proceedings for the last
three-and-twenty years have been harmful and ruin
ous in the highest degree. This is no secret. The
most important officials at the India Office know it
well. The fearful effect of the drain from India has
been the subject of more than one grave confidential
memorandum, as well as of protests from Indian
Finance Ministers, who, however, could not see them
selves that the construction of unremunerative public
works out of borrowed money was ruinous. But such
is capitalism—selfishness so ingrained that five per
cent, per annum cannot possibly be wrong, though
�INDIA.
U5
millions may starve because it must be punctually
paid. We have lent nearly 25.0,000,000/. to India,
and must have our return, though the people had no
voice whatever in the borrowing, and now begin to feel
only too sadly that their substance is being taken
from them, they scarcely know how.
But this drain must be stanched; the taxation must
be lowered ; more natives must be employed. Eng
land, in short, must rise to the level of her great respon
sibilities, and take order with the ex-officials who
pour forth optimist harangues in praise of their own
administrative capacity.
For hear what all agricultual experts say. With one accord Mr. Buck, Mr.
Harman, and Mr. Robertson declare that the soil of
India is undergoing steady and permanent deteriora
tion—that it will support fewer men and fewer bullocks
as years pass by. Mr. Robertson puts the deteriora
tion at not less than thirty per cent, in thirty years.
Thirty per cent, less produce per acre in thirty years !
Who can wonder? The produce of the earth is
taken away to be brought over here, to an increasing
extent, and there is now less manure than ever to put
into the soil. At the same time the destruction of
the forests for railway sleepers and fuel has, as in the
United States and Australia, most seriously affected
the climate for the worse. Drought and floods alter
nate in districts where formerly the rainfall was
beneficial and equable. Such is the foresight of
capital in India—the care of our civilization of to-day
for the civilization of the human beings of to-morrow.
From all provinces comes the same sad cry. From
the North-West and from Oude, from Bombay as well
L
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
as from Madras, from large tracts of Bengal, and
even from the Punjab, one mournful story is heard ;
the land does not, as of old bring forth of its abun
dance ; there is no blessing on the crops in our day.
A deteriorated race of men, an inferior description of
bullocks, bear witness to the truth of what they say.
So serious did all this seem, so fearful was the
famine period of 1876-79, that Mr. James Caird was
sent out to India as a Special Famine Commissioner,
with the ready consent of both parties in the State, to
examine, as the ablest English agricultural expert, into
the condition of our noble dependency. He returned
to tell us that unless we change our system a great
catastrophe is inevitable.
Catastrophe is easily
written, but Mr. Caird evidently used the word in no
light sense. After an elaborate investigation of the
state of things, he too came to the conclusion that
the soil of India is deteriorating, whilst the popula
tion is increasing in certain districts, so that the
people live in perpetual semi-starvation. The very
next famine period may therefore bring with it an
economical cataclysm beside which even the great
Irish destruction will sink into insignificance. Mr.
Irwin prepares us in Oude for similar fearful
trouble ; Mr. Connell from the North-West Provinces
takes up the tale. But Mr. Caird’s earnest protest
has, so far, produced no effect; so what should they
avail ? Even Mr. W. W. Hunter, the DirectorGeneral of Indian Statistics, and a year ago advo
cate of the interests of the Indian bureaucracy
and capitalists at home, even he, alarmed at last
by his own very inaccurate figures, tells us that at
�INDIA.
J47
least 40,000,000 of the people for whose welfare we
are responsible—100,000,000 would be nearer the
mark—are going through life on insufficient food.
Nay, more ; he shows that the Mogul Emperors raised
far more than twice the revenue we now get out of
India, for six generations, without exhausting the
country, whilst we who drain away the produce can
not take our present revenue without a great risk of
collapse. By the side of this drain, and the conse
quent deterioration of the soil, helped on by denuda
tion, all the rest of our blunders, great as they are, are
mere child’s-play. Another famine period is even now
approaching, no preparations have been made to meet
it, and how far the inordinate cost of the Afghan wars
has crippled our Indian exchequer is not even yet
fully known.
Thus on every side the prospect is gloomy and
overcast, and in' the opinion of the ablest observers
we are drawing nearer and nearer to an almost
overwhelming disaster. Year after year we take
from India agricultural produce which she cannot
spare, because we are masters of the country, and,
paying ourselves handsomely all round, leave those
who depend upon us for safety to perish from want;
Whilst we are disputing about the defence of the
empire we ourselves are preparing its ruin, only to
learn the truth too late: the knocking will come
through the darkness from without—the murder
within will be done. Let then the sun of English
justice arise and shine—outshine all the glories of the
East; let a message of mercy, whose wings are as
silver wings and her feathers as gold, go forth from
L 2
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ENGLAND FOR ALL
the people of England to the many races and nations
under their rule, saying to all that, though they have
ills of their own to suffer from and endless sorrows to
bear, they would not that others should be made
poorer or more miserable for them. So"] as death
shall close our eyelids in never-ending slumber, we
may feel that countless millions have some share of
happiness which but for us they would have lacked,
some joy and contentment which but for us they
never would have known.
For the alternative course lies open before us once
more. There are in India, as in Ireland and at home,
two policies, the one of mock freedom and real op
pression, the other of beneficent government and steady
progress. Strange that having tried both methods in
India, we should as a nation stick to the failure and
discard the success. Wherever native administration
has had free play under gentle European guidance,
there we have seen prosperity and contentment
spring up and endure. In Travancore and Baroda,
in Mysore and Hyderabad, wherever English influence
has been confined to supporting upright native rule,
the change has been marvellous for the better, though
the tendency even then is to interfere too much by
the introduction of Western ideas. Still it is not Euro
pean administration that is necessarily ruinous : that
we have seen in numerous instances. It is not that
public works are not highly beneficial. But when
European agency and public works are alike over
done ; when foreign soldiers and foreign systems are
imposed upon the population to an extent which
savours of the very fanaticism of so-called improve
�INDIA.
14
ment, then, as we see, the result is starvation, ruin,
and death, a famine-stricken people, and an exhausted
soil.
The recent return of Mysore to native administra
tion after fifty years of European rule is, we may
hope, of good omen for the future. Our task now is
to cut down the European establishments in every
possible way—to curtail the home charges, even if we
have to reduce the rate of interest arbitrarily by one
half and take some portion of the pensions on to our
own shoulders. This money that is now taken is not
ours, and no native has ever voted a single rupee of it
to us. The enormous expense of the European army
must likewise be curtailed, and a very different policy
from that of suspicion and hauteur adopted towards
the native princes. We have, in fact, to prepare the
many peoples of India for self-government, by a pro
cess of decentralization, by building up the old States
again wherever possible, and by removing the crowd
of Europeans who now eat out the prosperity of the
country. Let any man consider. No such system as
that which we now foster could by any possibility
succeed. The old Mogul rulers were wrong-headed
enough in many ways, but they were not such fools
as to think they could govern India from Samarcand
and in accordance with Mussulman prejudice, or that
they could dispense with the assistance of the able
Hindoo administrators in the management of their
provinces. Akber was perhaps the greatest monarch
that the East ever produced, yet he relied—and as the
event showed, wisely relied—upon the noble rajah
Toder Mull to reorganise his finances, With us
�ENGLAND FOR ALL.
Toder Mull, the most masterly financier beyond all
comparison that has ever had control of the Indian
exchequer, would have been “ a damned, nigger
accountant, who would keep writing to the papers.”
Such incapacity to appreciate the abilities of our own
subjects, let us remember—such eagerness to crush
down rather than to raise up—such sad indifference to
the ruin being wrought in our own territory, when
close at hand countries equally under our control, but
managed by natives, are flourishing and prosperous—
such strange determination not to understand, I say,
will gain us but a doubtful reputation for foresight
with those who come after, even if it do not involve
ourselves in ruin.
But if, on the other hand, we resolve to make the
necessary changes at once, and to restore to the
natives, in some degree at least, the control of their
own Governments and their own property, then India
may more than repay us for our sympathy and good
will. There, directly or indirectly under our rule, are
250,000,000 of the human race, who, weary as they are
of waiting for fair treatment, would recognize with
joyous loyalty a determined effort to relieve them
from the excessive pressure of foreign government,
and the ruinous drain for foreign payments, which
now impoverish them more and more. This assuredly
is no party question ; but those who profit by India’s
ruin will scarcely of their own motion make the sacri
fices needful to restore her prosperity. It is to
the mass of Englishmen, then, to the great democracy
of this country, that the peoples of India must now
appeal for justice. Represented fairly here at home,
�INDIA.
151
they might hope to secure their long-delayed heading,
and with that hearing consideration for their wrongs.
Here too, I say once more, the right course is that
which is best also for our own people. Let the people
of India but grow in wealth, as they would under any
fair conditions of existence,'with but slight supervision
from us, and the exchange of their products for ours
would be far more advantageous than the continuous
impoverishment which disenables them from making
purchases. On every ground, therefore, of humanity,
morality, self-interest, future credit, and ordinary
common sense, we ought not longer to postpone the
necessary reorganization. But our present parlia
mentary system has proved quite inadequate to cope
with this great crisis. If India is to be retained at all,
she must have a direct voice in her own administra
tion, as well in England as in India.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
CHAPTER VII.
THE COLONIES.
There is happily one portion of our empire which is
almost entirely free from the political difficulties we
encounter elsewhere. The drawbacks to our great self
governed colonies are common to our age and civiliza
tion ; their advantages are peculiar to themselves.
Notwithstanding the mistakes of both political parties
in dealing with South Africa—mistakes which have,
to a great extent, overclouded the prospect in that par
ticular region—the colonies are, and will remain, the
chief mainstay of Anglo-Saxon dominion outside these
islands, when India has returned to native rule, and
our other dependencies are held rather as a duty than
as contributing to our power. With them, indeed,
and the United States, lies 'the future expansion of
our race. For although the Americans were driven
into hostility more than a century ago, we may still
hope that in time to come the great English-speaking
democracies of England, Australia, and North
America, may find ground for a common under
standing, which will enable them to secure peace
and justice throughout the civilized world, by the
overwhelming force they could array against any
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153
aggressor- This, however, is for the moment no
more than a pleasant vision.
The possibility of a closer connexion with our
colonies is an immediate practical business. On this
point too, fortunately, men who differ most widely on
other questions are often agreed. Taught by the
disastrous result of the attempt to tyrannize over the
North American colonists, we have carried the doc
trine of self-government almost further than the
colonists themselves wished.
Not content with
granting them the most complete home rule, we have
at times repulsed their advances towards a closer
union, and, on the other hand, wronged our poorer
classes by handing over the entire administration of
an almost limitless unoccupied territory to the handful
of people who first settled there. But even so the
result is surely in marked contrast to our relations with
Ireland. No portion of our dominions are so loyal to
the British connexion at this very time, none so
anxious that England should rightfully maintain her
position in the world, as the colonists. Left to solve
their own social and political problems, they turn
naturally to the mother country to keep alive the
1 “ Blood is thicker than water,’’ said Admiral Farragut when
he stood by our sailors in the China seas. Years later, after
the grand old man had been the soul of the Northern navy
during the Civil War, he was in port in the Mediterranean with
his wooden flagship. A fleet of British ironclads was there at
the same time. As he weighed anchor and sailed out to sea,
the English ships also left their moorings and made two lines
for him to pass through. The compliment was wholly unlookedfor, but it thoroughly expressed the feelings of the nation to
wards that noble seanian.
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ideal of a greater political action than any which can
be hoped for from mere separation and local ambition.
And this feeling grows even at the time when absen
tees are being denounced, and the power of demo
cracy gains ground each day. There, as at home,
centralization and decentralization are working them
selves out; though, by the mistake of not maintaining
a federal union, great difficulties are now encountered
in bringing together colonies which ought never to
have lost the common tie, even on matters which
could manifestly be handled best by all collectively.
There can be no greater contrast between the
relation which Canada now bears to the United
Kingdom than that of the North American colonies,
when they fought for independence. In that case we
insisted upon the right to tax without permitting the
colonists the right of representation. Now we have
given Canada not only self-government, but the right
to impose almost prohibitive duties on our own goods.
That this need not have occurred had a better under
standing been kept up with the colonists, and freetrade, when commenced, enacted as the law for all
self-governed portions of the empire, we can scarcely
doubt. The history of Canada, however, since the
separation of the American colonies, is creditable to
her and to the home country. At first sight it would
have seemed impossible that the French colonies of
Lower Canada, conquered by a people with whom
their nation was at perpetual war, should ever have
come to be loyal to the English Crown. But the
consideration shown for their language, creed, and
customs, the steady determination not to interfere
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155
with their local rule, gradually won over the French
settlers, until at the present time they are as devoted
to the British connexion as any portion of the popu
lation of English descent. Troubles at times there
have been with the English colonists, and rather more
than forty years ago a rebellion was threatened.
Yet all settled down ; and now it seems that the
Dominion of Canada has before her as fine a career
in the future as the more energetic democracy on the
other side of the border. That the withdrawal of
our troops was brought about in a most unmannerly
fashion, and in such wise as to offend the best in
stincts of the Canadians—that also Lord Carnarvon’s
plan of federation was premature, and carried by
doubtful means, have not changed the sentiments of
the colonists towards the mother country.
Incorporation with the United States would leave
less of freedom for natural expansion than there is at
present under England’s light rule. A race of sturdy
sober-going men and women have grown up in that
rude Canadian climate, who will carry on the best
traditions of English Government side by side with
the great Republic. There, in the great expanse of
the Far West, lies an opening for those who, in the
coming changes here at home, may think they see
their way to a wider field, still under the name and
in connexion with the old country. In Canada, even
more than in the United States, the natural inclina
tion of our race for the sea manifests itself. The
4,000,000 who make up the Dominion of Canada own
the fourth largest mercantile marine in the world.
As, also, the new continental railroad is pushed forward
�ENGLAND FOR ALL.
to the Pacific slope, the splendid region of British
Columbia will be opened up to colonization, and yet
another connexion made with the English colonies in
the South Pacific.
Nor, when the distance by sea is spoken of, and
the impossibility of a permanent connexion insisted
upon, should we forget that Canada and the other
colonies of the Atlantic slope are nearer to us to-day
than Aberdeen or Cork were a century ago. Canada
is now wholly self-supporting, costs the people of
England not one farthing of expenditure, whilst the
increasing power of democracy would find a help and
offer valuable assistance to a similar growth with us
at home. The Dominion will, we may hope, as
time passes on, bind together closer the various set
tlements. Already the Parliament at Ottawa—sitting
in the finest block of buildings on the American con
tinent—worthily represents the Federal Union of a
magnificent group of peoples. Let them also find
representation here in England, and thus'bring to bear
upon all international arrangements the ever-increas
ing force of a united democracy of English-speaking
peoples. At the crisis of the Eastern question when
it seemed as if England might be involved in conti
nental warfare, the Canadians were not slow to offer
their assistance in a cause where their own interests
were in no way involved. Surely it is for the great
mass of the people of England to hold out their hands
in fellowship to those who wish nothing better than
to work together on the same lines for the strengthen
ing and improvement of all. There is something in
great ideas which vivifies and enlarges the national
�THE COLONIES.
*57
imagination. We here at home have indeed much to
carry out ere we can achieve our own full government
of ourselves, or place ourselves on the same level
which the Canadians have already happily attained
to in many respects. Reason the more that we should
endeavour to make common cause in the direction of
further progress.
But if this applies to Canada, still more true is it of
the Australian colonies and New Zealand. These
colonies are the growth of the present generation.
In the last thirty years they have sprung up from
mere settlements to be great and prosperous commu
nities. In Australia—Victoria and New South Wales,
South Australia, Queensland, and West Australia,
form a group of states unsurpassed in any part of
the world for energy, enterprise, and growing con
sideration for the education and well-being of the
rising generation. That the distribution of wealth is
here also sadly faulty is indeed too certain. In Mel
bourne and Sydney, cities large out of all proportion
to the population engaged in agriculture or mining,
the contrast between the wealth of the few and the
poverty of the many, is at times very serious. Here,
too, is felt the alternation of inflation and stagnation
consequent upon our capitalist system, and the large
capitalists, either English or native, are gradually
acquiring excessive preponderance. But the possi
bility of a man taking himself out of the wage-earning
class is, of course, as in Canada and the United States,
far greater than in England. The abundance of
virgin soil, the rapid increase of wealth in proportion
to the population, keep wages at a higher level than
�I58
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
in old countries. Both politically and socially, how
ever, the Australian colonies are passing through a
phase in their history which is of the highest impor
tance, and corresponds to similar changes here at home.
In purely political matters the democracy is increas
ing in strength day by day ; but unfortunately these
colonies have not, until of late years, had anything
to compare to the admirable school system of America
which should bring the whole population within
reach of education. This, however, is being remedied ;
and in Victoria, the most democratic colony of all, the
people are beginning to learn that a sober combina
tion to deal with existing difficulties—which may well
perplex the ablest statesman—is in the long-run better
for the interests of all than a hasty agitation which
overthrows confidence in present arrangements with
out substituting anything in their place. Those who
fasten their attention on Victoria, and declaim against
the folly of a democracy because it favours protection,
conveniently forgot that New South Wales, where
the people are equally masters, is in favour of free
trade, and South Australia shows a growing tendency
in the same direction. Nothing, indeed, is more
absurd than to gauge the political intelligence of a
country by such a test. If protection can keep up
the relative wages of the mass of the working people
above the level which they will obtain under free
trade, then beyond all question protection is, on the
whole, the policy best suited to the welfare of the
mass of that community. Theorists who reason as if
the only object of all human society were to make the
�THE COLONIES.
159
rich richer and the poor poorer would, of course, not
admit even that.
But it may be reasonably allowed as absurd that
colonies founded by men of the same nation, and
living under the same government, in the same terri
tory, should deliberately set up tariffs against one
another, and against the mother country. This is
what we see in Australia, and it shows clearly how
important a better understanding is between the
various colonies on matters which concern the in
terests of all. The difficulty of bringing about a
federation in Australia, even on this simple matter of
customs, seems insuperable. Time after time have re
presentatives met, but on each occasion have separated
without coming to any definite arrangement. Local
interests and local ambitions shut out the view of the
general advantage which would be gained by a closer
understanding. But the completion of a railroad
between Sydney and Melbourne, and the rapid ex
tension of the other Australian railways, must bring
this question again to the front. It may be that the
solution will be found in that wider federation which,
without in any way sacrificing the local administration,
may bring about the full representation of Australia
in a general council where the interests of all will be
fully considered. There are, in these days, many
matters which can be better settled when dealt with
as a whole than when regarded piecemeal, and few
can doubt that such enterprises as the railways and
public works of Australia could be better and more
cheaply handled together than separately.
�i6d
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
In these Australian colonies also, and particularly
in New Zealand, may be seen the system of State
management carried out under the most democratic
form of government.
Railways, posts, telegraphs,
public works, schools, public lands, are all entirely
under the control of the bureaux appointed by the
State, and managed by a responsible Minister.
Where the appointments also are kept clear of poli
tical influence, the system works well. There are
temptations to grave jobbery, doubtless, but they are
kept under restraint by universal publicity; and the
mass of the population have abundant opportunities
of making themselves felt. A graver danger than
any arising from over-officialism is that of over
borrowing from the mother country. In New Zealand
especially this danger is very great. Not only is the
Government largely pledged to pay the produce of
the 400,000. colonists to home lenders, but the settlers
themselves have pledged their resources to an enor
mous extent to English capitalists. These vast pay
ments out of the country for money borrowed can
scarcely go on for ever. Labour expended on virgin
soil will no doubt produce enormously; but slack times
come even there, and the difficulties which we have
seen in India will be reproduced on a smaller scale. This
vast tribute, in the shape of interest on money lent,
which the English colonists have to transmit out of
their labour to the mother country, is one of the
least pleasant features of the colonial connexion.
It may be that under a better arrangement the
colonists in all our great free-governed dependencies
will be able to combine with the mother country for
�THE COLONIES.
the more adequate development of their magnificent
territories, in the interest of the whole of the federated
portions of our empire. In their temperate climate,
and with their unrivalled soil—in Canada, Australia,
Tasmania, and New Zealand—millions on millions
of our race might find happiness and comfort, which
would re-act upon the welfare of our people at home.
As our home arrangements undergo modification, we
ought to carry with us the people of the colonies in
aiding to bring about, without disturbance or blood
shed, a more equitable distribution of wealth than
that which now we see. Those who desire to leave
our shores to try a fresh life in another country,
might then feel sure, not of the coddling of a maternal
government, but of assistance, encouragement, and
capital, where now all these are lacking. The great
disparity between the sexes in England in one direc
tion, and in the colonies in the other, alone shows
how faultily the present arrangements have worked.
It is with a view to bringing about a more com
plete understanding on all such questions, a regulation
of the mere laissez-faire system which up till now has
found favour, that a nearer connexion is so essen
tial. Friendly democracies can always help each
other. They have no real ground of mutual distrust.
But when we see in the United States such misery as
that produced by the late stagnation ; when we know
that in New South Wales, Victoria, and New Zealand,
men were thrown out of work and clamouring for
employment, though millions of unoccupied fertile
land lay at their disposal all round them, then it
becomes more clearly apparent than ever how misM
�162
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
chievous is the system which refuses to make the
most of such enormous advantages, and supposes that
stagnation and depression are really inevitable
because those who hold the capital choose to make
it so.
It tis because social matters are kept so carefully
in the background, and the real producers of wealth,
whether in England, Ireland, or abroad, are shut out
from comparing notes on matters which so nearly
concern them, that these serious errors are made.
Even as it is the colonies, with their marvellous power
of recovery, have been our best customers, and have
enabled the English working class at home to pass
through the long period of crisis with less of pressure
than would otherwise have been felt. Here, even in
business, where sentiment is said to have no play,
we find the trade follows the flag—that men prefer to
deal with their own people. Surely those who are
in favour of a unity of all peoples, who hold that in
the near future the men who have hitherto worked
for others will see that in common action lies the hope
for humanity, cannot fail ere long to understand that
the first step towards this great end must be a closer
and yet closer union of peoples of the same race, lan
guage, and political traditions, working together for
the good of all portions of that noble federation.
Leaving freedom to all, and enforcing none—holding
up before us a high ideal in which all may share and
all may find full development—thus, and thus only,
shall we gather them in.
But it is not merely in relation to their own indi
vidual interests that it would be of the highest impor
�THE COLONIES.
163
tance that our great democratic communities beyond
the sea should be represented. Difficulties affecting
all "portions of the empire have to be considered,
which can never obtain proper attention save by the
personal discussion of those who have a direct interest
in their wise settlement. The questions of tariff and
trade have already been spoken of. No complete
arrangements on these heads can possibly be arrived
at so long as the hide-bound bureaucrats of the
Colonial Office, with their encrusted traditions of
meddling and muddling, have full swing. Only when
men see for themselves that local selfishness can
fitly be merged in a greater and more enlightened
common interest, will they abandon ideas which they
have adopted almost as an evidence of free judgment.
A Customs Union of the British Empire will be the
outcome of the representation of our colonies in the
Great Council which will take the place of our present
worn-out second chamber. Or it may be even that
we shall follow the French system, and invite colonies
to send representatives to the popular House, when
local business has been properly handed over to local
authorities. Whichever course may be adopted,
there is a growing opinion, both in the colonies and
in England, that in such representation lies the true
solution of many problems which now seem most
thorny. A complete Union thus brought about could
scarcely fail to have a peaceful influence on the whole
civilized world. Such an overwhelming combination
of naval strength as could then be relied upon,
could be made by no conceivable alliance of despotic
powers.
M 2
�164
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
This, however, brings us at once to the question of
general defence, which is now being discussed by a
Royal Commission. On that Commission the colonies
are inadequately represented, yet it is of the last
importance that they should enter completely into
any plans that may be suggested. For on the due
ordering of our Imperial defences, and the security of
our lines of communication, can we alone depend for
maintaining in time of trouble that connexion with
our countrymen across the sea, and for the certainty
of obtaining our food supplies, which are essential not
only to our influence but to our safety. These
matters have been sadly neglected under the happygo-lucky regime of the past twenty or thirty years.
Men who are always looking to throw off what they
call the “ burden of empire,” regardless of the help
and encouragement we can obtain in coming political
changes from the democracies of our own race, natu
rally looked askance at any measures which should
tend to unite and not to separate, to bring together
and not to drive away. It is well that at this par
ticular time another view should be taken. By a
careful organization of our resources, and a judicious
strengthening of the many ports we possess, it would
be made quite impossible for any enemy or enemies
to interfere seriously with our affairs even in time of
war, whilst the denunciation of the Declaration of
Paris would make us more powerful than we ever
were before. In these days coal and coaling-stations,
the opportunity to go into port and refit at all times,
are essential. And these advantages we possess to
such an extent, that it may almost be said that all
�THE COLONIES.
165
the rest of the world together could not rival us. In
the Atlantic and Pacific, in European waters and
the China seas, from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape
Horn, and from the British islands to Australia and
India, we hold a chain of posts which will enable us
to exercise at the fitting moment an almost over
whelming pressure, if in time of peace we take
the means to prepare for any difficulty.
Halifax
and Vancouver’s Island, Bermuda and the Falkland
Islands, Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, Sydney, Mel
bourne, King George’s Sound, and Auckland, to say
nothing of the Indian ports, and scarcely less valu
able possessions elsewhere, such as Hong-Kong, Fiji,
and the Mauritius, constitute an array of maritime
citadels which, maintained in proper defence by our
ourselves and our colonies, must, in conjunction with
a fleet proportioned to our maritime interests, render
future naval war against us almost impossible. Nor
should we hold or exercise this truly enormous power
for our own selfish advantage. English ports are
open to the ships of all nations without let or hind
rance ; we throw open to the world the advantages we
possess, asking nothing in return. Here, then, when
fully represented, our colonists may fairly take their
share in arranging with us the defence of the common
interest, and organizing the national defence.
Still more necessary, however, is colonial help in
considering the bearing of treaties which we may
negotiate with foreign powers, or the action which
the colonists themselves may take in their own interest.
At present there is no special consideration given to
the effect which may be produced on our existing
�166
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
artificial system by any fresh arrangement so far as
it affects colonies or colonists, and our greatest de
pendency counts for still less in such matters ; whilst
as to the colonists themselves, it is sufficient to note
their action with regard to the Chinese to recognize
at once that questions may arise which can only be
dealt with from the point of view of general interest.
This Chinese question is indeed one which by itself
needs the gravest consideration, as a political, social,
and international problem of the greatest difficulty.
Here we are in fact threatened with a conflict of races
and civilization, the like of which has never yet been
seen on the face of the planet. China has awakened
from her long sleep of centuries, and is fast breaking
from her isolation, and entering into the full stream
of the political and social life of our times. What the
results of this may be no man can foretell. A people
who have been civilized for ages, who yet retain vigour,
capacity, and physical qualities whose bearing on the
future we do not yet fully understand, are now absorb
ing the newest truths of Western investigators. The
effect upon us so far has been to bring the industrious
Chinese, with their ideas of individualism only modi
fied by their secret societies, into direct competition
with our own colonists. There are thousands on
thousands of Chinamen under our rule in the East
alone, and as workmen and merchants they are most
formidable rivals. But with the emigration to the freegoverned colonies and America a new feature begins.
Our colonists positively will not put up with them, any
more than the Americans will. At this very time the
people of British Columbia, as well as the colonies of
�THE COLONIES.
167
Australia, have decided to keep out the Chinese.
They are to our modern industrial colonies what
shells are at sea—missiles to be kept out, at any cost
to theory or beauty of design. But the result is at
once seen to be serious. It is the recognition of a per
turbing element in all calculations—of an incapacity
on the part of our race to face a nation of protec
tionists who regard themselves as mere passers-by in
every country they enter. That our colonists should
have the right to tax every Chinaman who lands,
surely carries with it the right of Chinese to tax every
Englishman who lands in China. As our relations
with China grow, and these points come more promi
nently forward, the absolute necessity for some general
understanding will become apparent. Perhaps ere
another generation has passed away the question of
our relation to China will completely dwarf all others
in importance. Meantime the commercial connexion
between Australia and Asia is rapidly growing ; and
in view of the unfitness of the northern portion of that
great island-continent for colonization by men of our
race, it is even possible that immigrants from India
or China may find place in that vast unpeopled
region.
These, however, are the possibilities of the future.
What most concerns us now is, to lay the foundation
of a cordial understanding between all portions of our
great colonial empire—to bring together on the wider
field of a wide-reaching policy of the commonwealth
those who in their own several spheres, are striving to
bring about a better social and political system than
that which now presses upon all portions of the empire,
�168
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
though less in the colonies than elsewhere. The
natural and wholesome pride of a Canadian, an
Australian, or a New Zealander in the growing great
ness of his country, need in no way be irreconcilable
with a deep love for the old home, and a yet higher
pride in sharing in a general improvement which shall
embrace and welcome all. The Anglo-Saxon race,
which has shown the world how to reconcile freedom
and order with steady progress, can by combination
and determined effort secure for themselves and their
children the leadership in the social changes and re
forms which are close at hand. Those great demo
cracies of English-speaking peoples, who now have
complete control over their own affairs, will find that
in permanent union with the more ancient democracy
of England lies the best hope of securing the fullest
development in the future.
�FOREIGN AFFAIR'S.
CHAPTER VIII.
FOREIGN
AFFAIRS.
The relation which England should bear to the
nations of the Continent of Europe, and the action
which ought to be taken in reference to foreign policy
generally, would be very summarily settled by one
party among us. Non-intervention is their sole idea
of the management of such affairs. Let others do
what they like to or with one another, we will severely
mind our own business, look after our trade, and,
secure behind the silver streak, amass money—for the
comfortable classes of course—to our hearts’ content.
Thus the individual selfishness, upon which they are
content to rely absolutely for all management at
home, is fitly supplemented by a still more thorough
collective selfishness applied to affairs abroad.
Capital is timid, it is said, peace is our greatest interest,
intervention means, sooner or later, war or threat of war.
A soldier or a sailor therefore, in the opinion of these
gentlemen, ought to be scouted as a pariah, though,
as all save fanatics can see, our army and navy are
as natural portions of our industrial organism in the
present state of international morality and economi
cal development, as our custom-house or excise.
Only stand aside, such is the argument, and no one
�170
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
will harm you. A purely trading power will arouse
no jealousies ; and Europe will see in England a
country which, in the plenitude of its strength, steps
aside from all save commercial transactions, and is
content to figure simply as a pattern to others. Now,
few would doubt that if all were like-minded in this
matter—if the lion of greed could indeed lie down with
the lamb of wealth outside him, that here is the true in
dustrial future for the human race. But we are, alas !
far from such a happy state of things. No nation
in existing conditions can thus safely boycott itself,
without grave risk of being boycotted, or perhaps
preyed upon, by others. And we, of all countries in
the world, are the least capable of secluding ourselves,
and enriching ourselves whilst others look on. Our
flag floats on every sea ; our trade competes with every
nation ; our absolutely necessary supplies, without
which we should starve, come to us from far and near.1
A commercial country owning such extended terri
tory is more open to attack than any other; and even on
the ground of simple selfishness, some alliances should
be made, and some preparations maintained against
danger. But there are higher reasons even than
those of expediency for taking part in the politics
of the world. A great country has moral duties, as a
man has moral duties ; and these are not confined to
simple business relations and trading for gain. We
are, or might be, the leaders and protectors of free
1 We have ordinarily less than three weeks’ supply of food at
hand. A naval combination which could blockade our ports
for a fortnight, could starve us out. Two powers, acting to
gether, could even now have a stronger fleet in the Channel than
we could command.
�FOREIGN AFFA IRS.
171
dom, independence, and true liberty in Europe, as
we were in the time of the Great Protector Our
power, properly organized, and wielded with the con
sent of a united people, may suffice at no distant
date to turn the scale in that great struggle between
militarism and industrialism, between tyranny and
freedom, perhaps between barbarism and civilization,
now threatening on the continent. To stand aloof
finally when such issues as these are being debated
is not, as I venture to think, the nature of my coun
trymen. They have often fought in times gone by to
save others from foreign domination ; it maybe that
in the near future a still greater task will be theirs.
The history of the modern connexion of England
with continental affairs, may be said to begin with the
accession of William III. That long policy of secret
negotiations carried on by Elizabeth with the Pro
testant populations of Europe, had involved us in
war with Spain ; the policy of the Stuarts had, after
Cromwell’s short and glorious period of supremacy,
made England subservient to France. But these
wars and alliances had really as little to do with the
events which followed, as the old wars in France
under the Plantagenets. With William III., however,
began that bitter rivalry with France which thencefor
ward became the mainspring of English foreign policy
for at least five generations. Rivalry no doubt ex
isted between Englishmen and Frenchmen when the
Prince of Orange came to the throne, but thencefor
ward it spread from the people to the Governments,
and the fierce struggle which followed spread to all
quarters of the globe. William III., in fact, began a
settled policy of interference in European State poli
�172
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
tics in the interest of Holland and Germany, as
distinct from any cause which called us to take the
field on our own account. As a consequence we were
driven to fight foreign battles by means of subsidies
and mercenary troops, instead of trusting to our
power at sea, where lies our real strength.
For, strange to say, it never occurred to either the
Plantagenets, the Tudors, or the Stuarts that it would
redound to our credit and influence to carry on cam
paigns on land with German soldiers at England’s
expense. William III., however, commenced the
system, because it aided the policy of his own country
laid down by himself—that of persistent opposition
to Louis XIV. and the French. The result has been a
crushing load of debt, permanently imposed for
foreign objects on the English people.
For the
House of Brunswick, confirmed and greatly extended
the mischievous policy introduced by the Dutch king,
and henceforth England became the citadel of German
resistance to French attacks upon Germany. We no
longer had a continental policy of our own ; every
step taken had reference to the relations and intrigues
of other Powers, who came to look upon England and
English Ministers as necessary supports of a system
of international war and jealousy, with which, as a
matter of fact, the English people had nothing what
ever to do. The unquestioned facts that we fought
bravely, won battle after battle, and acquired some
magnificent colonies, are mere incidents of this State
system which blind us to the true bearing of the
policy itself.
Had not the Dutch and German elements become
paramount in the guidance of our foreign relations,
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
173
there was no such necessary antagonism to France
as has been pretended. Lord Chatham himself, whose
management of our external affairs was the wonder of
Europe, wras vehemently opposed to the “ German
War,” which, having once commenced, not even his
genius could clear us from. Thus England was
dragged along at the heels of Frederick II. the most
unscrupulous adventurer who ever made a kingdom out
of a province, and we of to-day have the privilege of
paying, in the shape of interest on the national debt,
for the position which Prussia holds in Europe. This
went on, notwithstanding protests from patriotic men
against this ruinous squandering of the resources of
the country, until the time of the French Revolution,
when our antagonism to France, already pronounced
enough, was still further aggravated by the calculated
panic of the governing and well-to-do classes. With
the internal affairs of France we had no concern; and
the mass of the people of England sympathized with
the men who had overturned the meanest, and at the
same time most galling tyranny that could oppress
an agricultural people. The loss of the American
Colonies, when Germans and Indians were used to
shoot down and scalp men who were fighting for their
rights, had opened the eyes of the poorer classes to
the real bearing of the vicious mercenary system. A
magnificent heritage had been lost, because the men
at the head of affairs set aside the advice of English
men like Chatham and Burke, to pander to the pre
judices of a German king and the aristocrats around
him. France had now learnt something from America ;
and there was more admiration than ill-feeling to
begin with on our side of the Channel.
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ENGLAND FOR ALL.
But in all this the rulers of that day saw—and
rightly saw—a grave danger to themselves. The
rupture with France was made unavoidable by the
counsel and support extended to her invaders. Once
involved in the anti-revolutionary fever, nothing was
easier than to inflame still further the national rivalry,
until for nearly a generation the very name of French
man became obnoxious to English ears, and children
grew up to be men believing that only by the de
struction of France could England be made secure.
The astounding career of Napoleon I., and the state
craft of his reactionary empire, gave our policy a
further push forward in the same direction. England
became the rallying-point of resistance to a military
usurper, who evidently aimed at the dominance of
Europe.
His answers to our persistent hostilities took the
shape of a threat of invasion, and a continental
blockade against English goods. The first of these
two measures became hopeless after Nelson’s crowning
victory at Trafalgar. The second was rendered futile
—though the fact is not generally known—by the
friendly policy of the Ottoman Empire. The remark
able geographical configuration of that State gave us
an advantage which Napoleon was unable to over
come. The Turks opened their numerous ports, and
Europe was flooded with smuggled English goods.
Thereupon the blockade became useless ; Power after
Power withdrew from the league, and we were relieved
from further anxiety in regard to the most dangerous
plan of campaign ever formulated against us. As a
natural sequence of our long opposition to France,
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
175
we were driven more and more into alliance with the
despotic powers of Europe. Those armies which
overthrew Napoleon, were as much intended for re
pression at home as to repel the foreign invader ; and
Europe was prepared by the Treaty of Vienna for the
supremacy of the Holy Alliance. The great name
associated with all this policy is that of Castlereagh,
who bound us hand and foot to Russia, and made us
little better than a hanger-on to the Holy Alliance
itself. Thus for thirty years England was linked on the
continent of Europe with powers whose very existence
depended upon the denial of freedom to the peoples.
Upon this phase followed a modification rather than
a change of policy. The extravagant pretensions of
the Holy Alliance with reference to Spain, and the
absurd claim of its members to regulate the internal
affairs of every kingdom of Europe, brought about
the policy of which Canning became the chief ex
ponent. This was the support of constitutionalism in
Europe, as equally opposed to autocracy and to
revolution. It was an attempt to trim between two
irreconcilable opposites. Canning himself called into
existence that remarkable New World to redress the
• balance of the Old which, since it first came above the
political horizon in the House of Commons, has been
wholly incapable of balancing even itself. The rest
of the policy had as little solid foundation as this
famous outburst. Constitutionalism did not thrive, in
spite of English protection; and we gradually drifted
into a defence of what appeared our most tangible,
interest—that of the overland route to India.
Canning was followed by Palmerston and Russell.
�176
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
The episode of Navarino, which weakened Turkey
without constituting a strong Greece, was merely a
prelude to a definite championship of the integrity
and independence of the Ottoman Empire, involving
Lord Palmerston’s Syrian policy, and eventually leading
up to the Crimean War. Jealousy of France, and
desire to maintain the balance of power, still had a
great influence. But capitalism was now beginning
to assert its sway, and plain Whig principles meant
compromise at home and selfishness abroad. There
was not even the violent old Toryism of Pitt and
Castlereagh to rouse opposition or stir enthusiasm.
The shake of 1848 brought the weakness of this
whole system into clear relief. Unpleasant people,
who thought a dungeon smelt quite as dank under
“moderate constitutionalism, ” as when kept exclu
sively at the service of autocrats, gave the constitu
tionalists many awkward misgivings. London at this
time naturally became the headquarters of the consti
tutional monarchs, and the metropolitan bankers the
custodians of their savings. We, however, in the
struggle which followed, neither gained nor deserved
the gratitude of either party. Opposed to auto
cracy, we showed a friendship for Hungary, which
the horror of our middle classes for real revolution
quickly induced us to betray. Matters were worse
with Venice, Sardinia, and Sicily, when England
deliberately abandoned people who had been in
duced by surreptitious assurances to rely upon her
for assistance. “ England wishes only for peace,”
Pasini wrote, bitterly, to Manin ; and that summed up,
not perhaps Lord Palmerston’s own policy, but the
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
177
policy of the capitalist class, now gaining power
rapidly, and to which all Foreign Ministers have since
been forced in some way to bow down.
But here, nevertheless, lay the true line for Eng
land. In 1848 she could have placed herself at the
head of the enfranchised peoples of Europe, and lent
her unrivalled naval power to support those who, with
her assistance, could not have been subdued. The time
however, was not ripe for so bold a policy; the
dreaded principles of revolution were once more
abroad. Chartism at home was affiliated to the
accursed thing. So, without absolutely allying our
selves with the oppressors, Great Britain saw without
regret the re-establishment of autocracy, which to
her self-seeking merchants was so far preferable to the
rule of the people. Thus the general result of our
moral support of constitutionalism and Liberal prin
ciples was the firm re-establishment of despotism in
Europe. At this period too was shown fully that
absolute agreement between Russia and Prussia
which has been the key to continental policy since
1821. Russia came forward in 1848 as the protector
of despotism in every country.
Germany and
Austria were completely under her thumb. Every
petty princeling whose throne had been pulled from
under him, stretched out his hands in prayer to the
deity of St. Petersburg to set him up straight again ;
and Nicholas, to do him justice, did his king-making
in fine old barbaric style. So long as these small fry,
from the King of Prussia downward, obeyed his
Imperial behests, and abstained from all tampering
with liberalism or revolution he was content to support
N
�178
.ENGLAND FOR ALL.
them for the mere gratification of the thing. The
Power which held Poland could not afford that either
freedom or the rights of nationalities should be dis
cussed in her neighbourhood. It was a revival of the
policy of the early portion of the century, in a more
pronounced shape. An armed barbarism lent its aid
to all the reactionary influences in Europe, and
Liberal England was content to stand aloof and wish
well to the oppressed nationalities, without raising a
hand to help them. Plad a more far-seeing plan
been adopted, the Crimean War, with its unfortunate
alliance with the Second Empire in France might
have been unnecessary.
Turkey was saved from Russia by that war, at the
expense of thousands of lives and a hundred millions
of money to this country. But for twenty years,
though the Liberal party was almost continuously in
office, no steps whatever were taken to reorganize the
Ottoman Empire, or to help the better elements to
organize themselves, whilst we lent the corrupt clique
of Pashas at Constantinople tens of millions, which
were squandered in corruption and debauchery. The
close of the Crimean War, however, was signalized by
a treaty, which could only have been reasonably
accepted by us if we had been defeated instead of vic
torious. Hampered by our alliance with the Govern
ment, and not with the people of France, we were con
strained to make peace practically on the terms which
suited our ally. A step also was taken, without any
reference to the people of England, by the two English
Plenipotentiaries, which sacrificed the only important
weapon that an essentially naval power like ourselves
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
179
has in a continental war. The history of the deplor
able surrender is even yet not fully know ; its effect
we shall only feel when we are again opposed—as we
may be at any moment opposed—by a European
coalition directed against us.
During the long wars with France under the
Republic and Napoleon we held one great advantage,
but for which we could scarcely have faced the com
bination which that great genius contrived to work up
against us. This went by the name of Maritime
Rights. Supreme on the ocean, and able to cover the
seas with a swarm of privateers, the carrying trade of
the world was at our mercy. The Right of Search was
the point on which this power hinged. This meant
that if neutral vessels were carrying our enemies’
goods, we had the right, whether contraband of war
or not, to stop those vessels and confiscate those
goods. Thus we could rely upon our real arm, that
which is given us by our geographical position and the
hereditary capacity of our men—the knowledge and
mastery of the sea. Time after time when the for
tunes of the country had seemed at the lowest ebb,
this power sufficed to turn the tide in our favour.
Its possession made us a valuable ally to the most
powerful continental state ; whilst, as we have seen,
with the friendly connivance of Turkey it enabled us
to break up the famous continental blockade against
our goods. Naturally this unequalled weapon, for a
country of such wealth as ours, had been envied us by
the continent ever since we began to use it, and con
stant efforts had been made by our rivals and enemies
to deprive us of it. Up to the date of the Congress
N 2
�i go
ENGLAND DOR all.
of Paris, however, all such pretensions had been
scouted by English statesmen as absolutely inadmis
sible, and ruinous to our country. Nothing to the
contrary of this had or has ever been shown. The
cry of “ free ships, free goods,” had been raised by
those who wished the downfall of England’s influence ;
for once admitted, it reduced our fighting power to
nothing.
All these facts notwithstanding, Lord Clarendon and
Lord Cowley, acting in that spirit of the pure trading
interest which had then become really paramount in
English foreign politics, gave up by the Declaration
of Paris, without argument, debate, or proper authority,
those maritime rights which could alone enable the
growing democracy of these islands to exercise due
weight and influence in Europe. No such sacrifice has
ever been made by any country. That we should
permanently adhere to it is incredible. The United
States was guilty of no such folly. Her statesmen
declined to give up privateering, except under pro
visions which they knew would not be accepted.
No long period can elapse before this whole question
is again brought forward. When it is, the people of
England should never cease to recall the fact that their
position in the world awakens the jealousies of other
nations, that these are the days of violent aggression
and secret combinations, and that the weapon, the
only weapon which nature has placed in our hands
wherewith with perfect freedom to face and overcome
the military despotisms of Europe, is that of being able
Jo dominate the commerce of the globe.
Soon after the Treaty of Paris, the Indian Mutiny
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS,
181
broke out. It ended in the handing over of India to
the Government of the Crown. The effect of the com
quest of India upon our foreign policy has been two
fold. First, the direct necessity of taking certain
strong places on the route to our great dependency,
and our alliance with the Porte. From England to
the East we hold a chain of posts which are essential
to the safety of our communications, but which render
us liable as time goes by to the maintenance con
stantly in the Mediterranean of a fleet at least equal to
that of France and Italy combined. Secondly, our
hold upon India has greatly increased our timidity in
championing any great cause, and has turned our
attention from the sea, where our real strength lies, to
the land, on which our national aversion from conscrip
tion must always make us fight at a disadvantage.
In India England is perforce a great military power;
and this, which is wholly at variance with our tradi
tions—for, as has been well said, we are a warlike, but
not a military people—tinges the whole current of our
foreign policy. Indian policy on more than one occa
sion has taken precedence of English ; Asiatic ideas
have had too great influence ; we have, in short, what
with fear of invasion, and dread of a rising in India
itself consequent upon misfortune in Europe, lost all
sense of proportion in considering the external rela
tion of such a country as ours. Asiatic politics must
inevitably enter largely into our calculations merely on
the ground of our commercial interests ; but India,
with its 60,000 European troops, is, as at present
governed, a source of increasing weakness to the
people of these islands, who may find themselves
�182
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
seriously hampered at a great national crisis by the
necessity for protecting their countrymen in Hindostan. This will become more clear now that
our frontier all but marches with that of a great and
troublous military power. India, consequently, will
prove a more disturbing element in our foreign policy
of the future than it has been in the past.
With the Treaty of Paris, however, England may be
said to have entered practically on the stage of per
manent non-intervention in continental affairs. Our
efforts to preserve peace when it was once understood
that under no circumstances whatever would we go
to war, became futile and even ludicrous. This was
apparent with regard to the French campaign against
Austria. Had we proclaimed our intention of siding
with either party, war would not have been declared.
But the establishment of the independence of Italy,
by French arms first, and by Garibaldi’s expedition
afterwards, met with the cordial sympathy of the
great mass of Englishman. Though the upper classes
still clung to the Austrian alliance, the people were
more clear-sighted, whilst Cavour’s happy moderation
reassured the middle class. Thus, all rejoiced at the
rise of Italy into a great power, and the extra
ordinary reception accorded to Garibaldi by the
democracy of London, gave evidence that the real
feeling of Englishmen is with the peoples of the
continent, and needs but a proper occasion to mani
fest itself in full force. The contest between the
North and the South in America, brought this truth
into stronger relief. Once more the upper and middle
classes, as in 1848 and 1859, linked themselves with
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
183
the side of reaction, and that side, unfortunately for
their credit and influence, was this time the weaker.
Nothing finer is recorded than the behaviour of the
Lancashire operatives during that awful period of con
tinuous want. The capitalists who employed them
showed no such real perception of the truth, and their
selfishness appeared in protesting against any scheme
which might remove the hands, and thus perhaps
raise wages on the return of trade. That by the way.
The fact that the working class saw that the issue lay
between freedom and despotism, and clung to their
opinion under every discouragement, is evidence of
a capacity which needs but education and organiza
tion to have a deep effect in other fields of foreign
policy.
The hare-brained French expedition to Mexico
was the outcome of the American Civil War, and this
eventually brought the French Empire to destruction.
For no sooner was the shameless attack upon Denmark
by Prussia and Austria at an end—when German in
fluence again appeared in our counsels—than the two
great Powers who took part in that act of brigandage
fell out themselves. The cooler-headed brigand fell
upon his neighbour, and by the victory of Sadowa the
supremacy of Germany was gained by Prussia. Here,
of course, was an end of all international law. Thence
forward we have been living in an epoch of wrong and
robbery. France, crippled by the Mexican campaign,
could not afford to help Austria against Prussia and
Italy—merely, in fact, displaying her weakness to
a watchful enemy. England counted for nothing
in all this, and the only benefit which accrued to the
�184
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
peoples from the bloodshed and treachery was the
annexation of Venice by Italy. The extension of
the power of military Junker-ridden Prussia over the
pacific old Bund could only be viewed with satisfaction
by those who, whilst pretending to be Liberals, secretly
sympathize with brute force so long as it is organized
against the mass of mankind. In any case Prussia,
still closely allied with Russia, became the first Power
in Europe, and the next move was merely a matter
of time and opportunity.
By the year 1870 England had not only ceased
to have a continental policy, but she positively
had not the least idea of what was going on. It is
really alarming, especially at a time like the present,
to note the depth of ignorance in the English Foreign
Office eleven years ago. At the very moment when
the Frederick the Great of modern diplomatic Ger
many had made up his mind to strike France once
for all, and had contrived to “ localize ” the war after
his favourite fashion by arrangements with Russia
and Italy, our Foreign Office had come to the con
clusion that no elements of war so much as remained
in Western Europe at all. France was easily over
thrown ; and England, unfortunately for our credit
and our interests, refused to help the Republic which
rose upon the ruins of the Empire. Then, if the
phrase ever meant anything, was the time to show
the meaning of a real balance of power. France had
been beaten ; the Empire, with its wretched array of
stock-jobbers and intriguers, had been swept away.
So far we had no right to interfere; but the people
of France were in nowise responsible for the errors of
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
185
Napoleon ; and a bold policy would have rallied Italy
and Austria at once to our side, to prevent a brave
nation from being crushed. That course was not
adopted, and any remonstrance met with insolence from
the German Government. Our position became indeed
that for which our non-interventionists had striven.
Of course further plots could be carried on inde
pendently of any consideration for the only Power
in Europe which has no real interest except in fair
play to the peoples.
It is needless to pass through the long and troubled
period which began with the Austrian imperial intrigues
in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, the Servian War, and
can scarcely be said to have ended with the Treaty
of Berlin. That a whole scheme was laid down for
the partition of the Ottoman Empire by the renewed
Holy Alliance, is clear. Russia, Germany, and
Austria had each their portions assigned, whilst the
advantages to be received by France and England
were doubtless considered ; perhaps the latter might
be content with nothing at all. The Bulgarian
atrocities helped Russia to carry out her part of the
programme, though the weakness engendered by the
war has certainly not been repaid by the advantages
she has as yet secured. England’s part in the business
has again been most unsatisfactory. A war in Europe
was avoided ; but a war in Asia was begun, which
has saddled our impoverished dependency with a
fearful expenditure. By showing, however, even a
moderately bold front in Europe, the Conservative
Government proved conclusively the influence which
England could exert, if only casting aside all lust for
�186
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
territory, and all underhand intrigue, she stood once
more with clean hands before the world as the reso
lute champion of justice and freedom, honesty and pub
lic faith. Then she could rally to her side the alliances
of the future, beside which the possession of Cyprus,
or even the control of Constantinople and Asia Minor
would seem mean and contemptible. But the result of
the game of brag which the last Government played
was not creditable. Instead of holding forth a plain,
intelligible policy to Englishmen, and appealing to
them to stand by even a downright Tory self-assertion,
there was a mixture of trimming and secrecy, of com
promise and timidity, which spoke of divided counsels
and irresolute minds. The people of England there
fore refused to go “ blind ” into a business which com
bined secret agreements abroad with the threat of
reaction in Ireland and at home. These, happily, are
the days of democracy, publicity, and open speech.
The statesman who is ambitious to lead England in
such times must take the people into his confidence,
and convince them that he is using their influence and
their power not ‘merely for selfish national interests,
but for the best interests of Europe and the world.
That the result of our secret diplomacy and party
foreign policy has not yet been fully seen is plain
enough. Non-intervention to start with, and secret
bargaining to end with, have landed us in a very un
enviable position. The nation refused to countersign
the policy of the Conservative Government, and the
Liberals came in with the promise of a special under
standing with France and perfect openness to the
country. France has so far dissembled her love for
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
187
the Liberal administration that she has kicked our
Foreign Secretary downstairs at three bounds. Greece,
the Commercial Treaty, and Tunis, are evidences of
the perfect entente cordiale which exists. The last
coup was the worst of all, for it came after assurances
of the most solemn nature that nothing whatever was
meant. Can we be surprised ? A policy of pure
selfishness has ended in our complete isolation. The
behaviour of France is shameful, and contrary to her
best interest. Granted. The treatment which we
have received in the matter would in different times
have led to a rupture of friendly relations between
the two countries. But at this moment we cannot
rely upon a single ally on the continent; and for all
we know, arrangements may be contemplated which
would occasion us very grave uneasiness.
For those who talk of non-intervention forget that
we have entered into definite guarantees, which the
least bellicose among us could not wish to shirk.
The overthrow of international law, which is pretty
complete now, would be fully accomplished indeed,
if England were to withdraw from her defence of
liberal little Belgium. We have had of late very
valuable experience as to what the concert of Europe
amounts to when booty is in the wind. It is more
than probable that the redistribution of territory
and power, which began in 1866, will not be con
fined to Eastern Europe. Should we desire, then, to
see the same sort of morality, which is good enough
for Turks, applied to Dutch, Belgians, and Swiss ?
The idea that justice influences either republics or
empires in these days had better be laid aside for the
�188
ENGLAND FOR ALL,
present as the figment that it is. A power which
could act as France has acted about Tunis, would
have small scruple in using similar tactics nearer
home.
But even more important to us than any bargaining
which may be going on, is the general aspect of
European affairs. We see four, not to say five, great
Powers absolutely bowed down with the weight of
their military expenditure ; whilst the great country
which in 1848 acted as the guardian of autocracy
in Europe, hovers between bankruptcy and revo
lution. Whatever else may be doubtful, this is past
all question, neither Germany nor Austria can per
manently bear the strain of the tremendous armaments
now kept up. For these armaments not only exhaust
the resources of the several countries, but prepare the
ground for internal revolution of the most serious
character. It is not Russia alone which is honey
combed with secret societies and festering disaffection.
There, indeed, the situation is graver than elsewhere.
Over-taxation, the drain of produce to Western
Europe, the influence of capitalism, and the break up
of the Mir coming at a time of serious famine, have
produced a state of affairs throughout the Empire
which would probably lead to revolution in one shape
or another, if the Nihilists had never been heard of.
That extraordinary conspiracy is but the natural out
come of a still more remarkable condition below.
Western civilization, with all its paraphernalia of
stockjobbing, corruption, and extravagance, has been
imposed on a country but just emerging from
barbarism, Almost anything may occur in such cif’
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
cumstances. The murder of the late Czar shocked
Europe : but the cruelties which led up to that crime
were really even more shocking than'the revenge. More
people were swept off to Siberia without trial by the
benevolent Alexander II. than ever found their way
thither within an equal period during the worst days
of the reign of Nicholas. Now there is another Czar,
who lives in constant fear for his life; and the recent
changes seem to betoken a continuance of autocratic
rule at home, combined possibly with a renewal of
aggression abroad. Men live as in expectation of an
earthquake; and the attacks upon the Jews and other
money-lenders in Southern Russia look like the pre
monitory shocks.
If the disturbances do begin in earnest in Russia,
they are almost certain to lap over into other
countries. Already the grave social issues involved
in the existing capitalist system as applied to agri
culture and business are being debated with increasing
earnestness all over Europe. In Germany the party
of the Social Democrats has gained strength of late
years to a surprising extent, notwithstanding the
pressure of similar laws to those which we are now
applying with such great success in Ireland. Con
scription does but give the disaffected more confidence;
and as they see that peaceful agitation is considered
a crime, the propaganda might easily assume a more
dangerous shape. A military system like that of
Germany carries with it the certainty of its own
destruction at no distant date. All Prince Bismarck’s
unscrupulous energy will not suffice to stop the
current of ideas which show men how and why they
�190
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
are robbed and oppressed.' In Austria the agrarian
difficulty is assuming daily a graver aspect. Nor is it
the less serious because the people have not as yet
dissociated the agitation from religion or loyalty.
They scarcely understand themselves how it is that
capitalism and difference of value impoverish them.
In France a party holding similar views to that of the
Labour party in Germany, has been formed, and they
alone have had the courage to protest against the
attack on Tunis, as contrary to the interest and the
true sense of morality of the French people.
How far these various socialist bodies in Russia,
Germany, Austria, France, and Italy, would act
together in any general programme may be doubtful.
But these organizations—consisting almost exclu
sively of working men—alone seem to have grasped
the truth that the people of the various countries have
nothing to expect from war but loss and suffering ;
consequently they alone are prepared to consider
existing difficulties with a view to their peaceful
settlement. Men who hold that their class is under
going suffering and misery because the workers of
all nations are not sufficiently at one, will not be
likely to foment those national hatreds which are in
variably turned to the aggrandisement of individuals.
But this rising feeling of democracy, this growing dis
inclination of the men who work to be handled any
longer for the advantage of emperors, aristocrats or
even bond-buyers, is viewed with very uneasy eyes by
the military powers of Europe. It is not the
assassination of the- late Czar, or threats against the
present, which are drawing together “ saviours of
�FOREIGN AFFAIRS.
191
society on the continent. They see that, let affairs
in Russia take what turn they may, another and more
serious ’48 movement is going on below the surface,
which they wish beforehand to encounter and defeat.
Hence the attempts to bring about some understand
ing with reference to the surrender of political re
fugees, and the demands which have been made, or
will be made, upon us.
Now arises an important question for us English
men—and especially for those of the working classes
—to decide. Will they in the coming struggle
between militarism and democracy lend their aid in
any way to the former, or even stand aloof and see
the peoples of Europe repressed as they were a gene
ration since ? I judge not. Jealousy of this or that
nation there may be for a time, and French vanity
and unfortunate spread-eagleism may render all
combinations in Western Europe impossible. But
with the rising feeling of democracy here at home,
any understanding with reaction as in old days would
be ruinous to the party which attempted it, as any
effort to convert us into a military power may be
fatal to our existing system of government. As time
has passed on, it has become more and more clear
that in the direction of the national inclination of the
great majority of Englishmen lies at the same time
the most advantageous policy for England. Lying
apart from the continent of Europe, and practically
free from the risk of invasion, we can not only
shelter men who are driven from their country for
mere political offences, but we can rightfully stand
forth at the critical moment on behalf of those who at
�ENGLAND FOR ALL.
present think that England must necessarily range
herself on the side of a conservatism which has come
to be revolutionary. Each nation, doubtless, must
work out its own social troubles ; but a combination
of despotisms can only be met and overcome by a
combination of peoples. The true alliances for
England in the future are the democracies of Europe,
and her real strength is on the sea.
�CONCLUSION.
193
CONCLUSION.
THUS in every direction the policy of the demo
cracy is clear and well-defined. Freedom, social
reorganization, thorough unity at home, justice, selfgovernment, and consideration for our colonies and
dependencies, and a warm friendship and ready assis
tance for the oppressed peoples abroad,—such is the
work we are called upon to begin and carry out.
Democracy, which the so-called “ governing classes ”
jeer at as anarchy, incapacity, and self-seeking, means
a close federation, first, of our own people and next
of the workers of the civilized world. This is a policy
not of to-day or of to-morrow, now to be taken up
and again to be laid aside ; it is an undertaking in
which each can continuously bear his share, and
hand on the certainty of success to his fellow.
The current of events will help on the cause of the
people. Within the past generation greater changes
have been wrought than in centuries of human exis
tence before. For the first time in the history of
mankind the whole earth is at our feet. Railways,
telegraphs, steam communications, have but just
begun to exercise an influence. Education and in
tercourse are breaking down the barriers of ages.
The men who do the work of the world are learning
from one another how it is that the poor and the
o
�194
ENGLAND FOR ALL.
miserable, the unfortunate and the weak, suffer and
fall by the wayside. In our own country, which has
led the way to the new stage of social development,
all can see that the lot of the many is sad, whilst the
few are rich and luxurious far beyond what is bene
ficial even to them. Our action in redress of these
inequalities and better ordering of our affairs will
guide and encourage the world. We, perhaps, alone
among the peoples can carry out with peace, order,
and contentment those changes which continental
revolutionists have sought through anarchy and
bloodshed. Religion, which should have helped in
this striving for a happier period, has suffered the
rich and powerful to twist its teachings to their own
account. Now, therefore, is the time, in the face of
difficulties and dangers which threaten from many
quarters, for Englishmen of all classes,’ creeds, and
conditions to push aside the petty bickerings of
faction or the degrading influence of mere selfish
interests, to the end that by sympathy and fellowfeeling for their own and for others they may hold
up a nobler ideal to mankind. Such an ideal is not
unreal or impracticable. Not as yet of course can we
hope to realize more than a portion of that for which
we strive. But if only we are true to one another, and
stand together in the fight, the brightness of the future
is ours—the day before us and the night behind. So,
when those who come after look back to these islands
as we now look back to Athens or Palestine, they shall
say,—“ This was glory—this true domination ; these
men builded on eternal foundations their might,
majesty, dominion, and power.”
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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England for all
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Hyndman, Henry Mayers [1842-1921]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: [4], 194 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Text-book of Democracy
Notes: Dedicated to the Democratic and Working Men's Clubs of Great Britain and Ireland.
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E. W. Allen
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1881
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T405
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Democracy
Socialism
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English
Democracy
Marxian Economics
Social change
Socialism
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PRICE ONE PENNY.
BY
KARL
MARX.
Translated by J. L. JOYNES,
Author of “ADVENTURES OF A TOURIST IN IRELAND,”
“ THE
SOCIALIST CATECHISM,” “ SOCIALIST RHYMES.”
NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION.
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THE MODERN PRESS, 13,
Paternoster Row, London,
E.CE
Agent for U.S.A., W. L. Rosenberg, 261, East Tenth St., New York City.
1886.
�THE
SOCIAL-DEMOCRATILFEDERATION.
OBJECT.
The Establishment of a Free Condition of Society based on the prin
ciple of Political Equality, with Equal Social Rights for all and the
complete Emancipation of Labour.
PROGRAMME.
1. All Officers or Administrators to be elected by Equal Direct Adult
Suffrage, and to be paid by the Community.
2. Legislation by the People, in such wise that no project of Law
shall become legally binding till accepted by the Majority of the People.
3. The Abolition of a Standing Army, and the Establishment of a
National Citizen Force; the People to decide on Peace or War.
4. All Education, higher no less than elementary, to be Free, Com
pulsory, Secular, and Industrial for all alike.
5. The Administration of Justice to be Free and Gratuitous for all
Members of Society.
6. The Land with all the Mines, Railways and other Means of Tran
sit, to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property.
7. Ireland and all other parts of the Empire to have Legislative
Independence.
8. The Production of Wealth to be regulated by Society in the com
mon interest of all its Members.
9. The Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange to be
declared and treated as Collective or Common Property.
As measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society the
Social-Democratic Federation urges for immediate adoption :—
The Compulsory Construction of healthy artizan’s and agricultural
labourers’ dwellings in proportion to the population, such dwellings to
be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone.
Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision
of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school.
Eight Hours or less to be the normal working day in all trades.
Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not
exceeding ^300 a year.
State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation.
The establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private
institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit.
Rapid Extinction of the National Debt.
Nationalisation of the Land, and organisation of agricultural and
industrial armies under State control on Co-operative principles.
As means for the peaceable attainment of these objects the SocialDemocratic Federation advocates :
Adult Suffrage. Annual Parliaments. Proportional Represen
Payment of Members ; and Official Expenses of Election
out of the Rates.
Abolition of the House of Lords and all
Hereditary Authorities.
Disestablishment and Disendowment
of all State Churches.
tation.
Membership of Branches of the Federation is open to all who agree
with its objects, and subscribe One Penny per week.
Those ready to form Branches should communicate with the
Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation, Bridge House, Blackfriars, E.C.
�WAGE-LABOUR AND CAPITAL.
What are wages, and, how are they determined. ?
±* we were to ask the labourers, “ How much wages do you get ? ” one
would reply, “ I get a couple of shillings a day from my employer ; ”
another, “I get half-a-crown,” and so on. According to the differen
trades to which they belong, they would name different sums of
money which they receive from their particular employers, either for
working for a certain length of time, or for performing a certain
piece of work ; for example, either for weaving an ell of cloth, or for setting up a
certain amount of type, But in spite of this difference in their statements there
is one point in which they would all agree : their wages are the amount of money
which their employer pays them either for working a certain length of time, or
for a certain amount of work done.
Thus their employer buys their work formoney. For money they sell their
■ work to him. With the same sum for which the employer has bought their
work, as for instance, with a couple of shillings, he might have bought four
pounds of sugar, or a proportionate amount of any other wares, The two shil
lings with which he buys the four pounds of sugar, is the price of four pounds of
sugar. The two shillings with which he buys labour for twelve hours, is the
price of twelve hours’ work. Work is therefore as much a commodity as sugar,
neither more nor less, only they measure the former by the clock, the latter by
the scales.
The labourersexchange their own commodity with their employers’—work for
money ; and this exchange takes place according to a fixed proportion. So much
money for so much work. For twelve hours’ weaving, two shillings. And do not
these two shillings represent two shillings’ worth of all other commodities ? Thus
the labourer has, in fact, exchanged his own commodity—work, with all kinds of
orher commodities, and that in a fixed proportion. His employer in giving him
two shillings, has given him so much meat, so much clothing, so much fuel, light,
and so on, in exchange for his day’s work. The two shillings, therefore, express
the proportion in which his work is exchanged with other commodities—the
exchange-value of his work; and the exchange-value of any commodity expressed
in money is called its price. Wage is, therefore, only another name for the
price of work—for the price of this peculiar piece of property which can have no
local habitation at all except in human flesh and blood.
Take the case of any workman, a weaver for instance. The employer supplies
him with thread and loom. The weaver sets to work, and the thread is turned
into cloth. The employer takes possession of the cloth and sells it, say for twenty
shillings. Does the weaver receive as wages a share in the cloth—in the twenty
shillings—in the product of his labour ? By no means. The weaver receives his
wages long before the product is sold. The employer does not, therefore, pay his
wages with the money he will get for the cloth, but with money previously pro
vided. Loom and thread are not the weaver’s produce, since they are supplied
by the employer, and no more are the commodities which he receives in exchange
fer his own commodity, or in other words, for his work, It is possible that the
employer finds no purchaser for his cloth. It may be that by its sale he does not
recover even the wages he has paid. It may be that in comparison with the
weaver’s wages he made a great bargain by its sale. But all this has nothing
whatever to do with the weaver. The employer purchases the weaver's labour
with a part of his available property—of his capital—in exactly the same way as
he has with another part of his property bought the raw material—the thread—
and the instrument of labour—the loom. As soon as he has made these pur
chases—and he reckons among them the purchase of the labour necessary to the
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production of the cloth—he proceeds to produce it by means of the raw material
and the instruments which belong to him. Among these last is, of course,
reckoned our worthy weaver, who has as little share in the product, or in the
price of the product, as the loom itself.
Wages, therefore, are not the worker’s share of the commodities which he has
produced. Wages are the share of commodities previously produced, with
which the employer purchases a certain amount of productive labour.
Labour is, therefore, a commodity which its owner the wage worker sells to
capital. Why does he sell it ? In order to live.
But labour is the peculiar expression of the energy of the labourer’s life.
And this energy he sells to another party, in order to secure for himself the
means of living. For him, therefore, his energy is nothing but a means of ensur
ing his own existence. He works to live. He does not count the work itself as a
part of his life, rather is it a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity which he has
made over to another party. Neither is its product the aim of his activity. What
he produces for himself is not the silk he weaves, nor the place that he builds, nor
the gold that ne digs from out the mine. What he produces for himself is his
wage ; and silk, gold, and palaces are transformed for him into a certain quantity
of means of existence—a cotton shirt, some copper coins, and a lodging in a
cellar. And what of the labourer, who for twelve hours weaves, spins, bores,
turns, builds, shovels, breaks stones, carries loads, and so on ? Does his twelve
hours’ weaving, spinning, boring, turning, building, shovelling, and stone-breaking
represent the active expression of his life? On the contrary. Life begins for
him exactly where this activity of his ceases—at his meals, on the public-house
bench, in his bed. His twelve hours’ work has no meaning for him as weaving,
spinning, boring, etc., but only as earnings whereby he may obtain his meals, his
seat in the public-house, his bed. If the silkworm’s object in spinning were to
prolong its existence as a caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage
worker.
Labour was not always a commodity. Labour was not always wage-work, that
is, a marketable commodity. The slave does not sell his labour to the slave
owner. The slave along with his labour is sold once for all to his owner. He
is a commodity which can pass from the hand of one owner to that of another.
He himself is a commodity, but his labour is not his commodity. The serf sells
only a portion of his labour. He does not receive his wages from the owner of
the soil; rather the owner of the soil receives a tribute from him. The serf be
longs to the soil, and to the lord of the soil he brings its fruits. The free labourer,
on the other hand, sells himself, and that by fractions. From day to day he sells
by auction eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his life to the highest bidder—to
the owner of the raw material, the instruments of work, and the means of life;
that is, to the employer. The labourer himself belongs neither to an owner nor
to the soil : but eight, ten, twelve, fifteen hours of his daily life belong to the man
who buys them. The labourer leaves the employer to whom he has hired him
self whenever he pleases; and the employer discharges him whenever he thinks
fit; either as soon as he ceases to make a profit out of him, or fails to get so
high a profit as he requires. But the labourer, whose only source of earning is
the sale of his labour, cannot leave the whole class of his purchasers, that is, the
capitalist class, without renouncing his own existence. He does not belong to
this or that particular employer, but he does belong to the employing class;
and more than that, it is his business to find an employer ; that is, among this
employing class it is his business to discover his own particular purchaser.
Before going more closely into the relations between capital and wage-work, it
will be well to give a brief survey of those general relations which are taken into
consideration in determining the amount of wages.
As we have seen, wages are the price of a certain commodity—labour. Wages
are thus determined by the same law which regulates the'price of any other
commodity.
Thereupon the question arises, how is the price of a commodity determined ?
By what means is the price of a commodity determined ?
By means of competition between buyers and sellers, and the relation between
supply and demand—offer and desire. And this competition by which the price
of an article is fixed, is three-fold.
The same commodity is offered in the market by various sellers. Whoever
offers the greatest advantage to purchasers is certain to drive the other sellers off
the field, and secure for himself the greatest sale. The sellers, therefore, fight for
the sale and the market among themselves. Everyone of them wants to sell,
and does his best to sell much, and if possible to become the only seller. There
�$
5
fore each outbids the other in cheapness, and a competition takes place among
the sellers which lowers the price of the goods they offer.
But a competition also goes on among the purchasers, which on their side
raises the price of the goods offered.
Finally there arises a competition between buyers and sellers; the one set
want to buy as cheap as possible, the other to sell as dear as possible. The result
of this competition between buyers and sellers will depend upon the relations of
the two previous aspects of the competition ; that is, upon whether the compe
tition in the ranks of the buyers or that in those of the sellers is the keener.
Business thus leads two opposing armies into the field, and each of them again
presents the aspect of a battle in its own ranks between its own soldiers. That
army whose troops are least mauled by one another carries off the victory over
the opposing host.
.
Let us suppose that there are a hundred bales of cotton in the market, and at
the same time buyers in -want of a thousand bales. In this case the demand is
greater than the supply. The competition between the buyers will therefore be
intense • each of them will do his best to get hold of all the hundred bales of
cotton ’ This example is no arbitrary supposition. In the history of the trade
we have experienced periods of failure of the cotton plant, when particular com
panies of capitalists have endeavoured to purchase, not only a hundred bales of
cotton but the whole stock of cotton in the world. Therefore, in the case sup
posed ’ each buyer will try to beat the others out of the field by offering a pro
portionately higher price for the cotton. The cotton-sellers, perceiving the troops
of the hostile host in violent combat with one another, and being perfectly secure
as to the sale of all their hundred bales, will take very good care not to begin
squabbling among themselves in order to depress the price at the very moment
when their adversaries are emulating each other ;in the process of screwing it
higher up. Peace is therefore suddenly proclaimed in the army of the sellers.
They present a united front to the purchaser, and fold their arms in philosophic
content ■ and their claims would be absolutely boundless if it were not that the
offers of even the most pressing and eager of the buyers must always have some
definite limit.
Thus if the supply of a commodity is not so great as the demand tor it, the
competition between the buyers waxes.
Result; A more or less important rise
in the price of goods.
.
As a rule the converse case is of commoner occurrence, producing an opposite
result. Large excess of supply over demand ; desperate competition among the
sellers; dearth of purchasers ; forced sale of goods dirt cheap.
But what is the meaning of the rise and fall in price ? What is the meaning
of higher price or lower price ? A grain of sand is high when examined through
a microscope, and a tower is low when compared with a mountain. And if price
is determined by the relation between supply and demand, how is the relation
between supply and demand itself determined ?
.
.
Let us turn to the first worthy citizen we meet. . He will not take an instant
to consider but like a second Alexander the Great will cut the metaphysical knot
by the help of his multiplication table. “ If the production of the goods which
I sell” he will tell us, “has cost me /ioo, and I get pro by their sale—within
the year you understand—that’s what I call a sound, honest, reasonable profit.
But if I make £120 or £130 by the sale, that is a higher profit; and if I were to
get a good Z200, that would be an exceptional, an enormous profit.” What is it
then that serves our citizen as to the measure of his profit ? The cost of pro
duction of his goods. If he receives in exchange for them an amount of other
goods whose production has cost less, he has lost by his bargain. If he receives
an amount whose production has cost more, he has gained. And he reckons the
rise and fall of his profit by the number of degrees at which it stands with refer
ence to his zero—the cost of production.
_
We have now seen how the changing proportion between supply and demaud
Ji
produces the rise and fall of prices, making them at one time high at another
low. If through failure in the supply, or exceptional increase in the demand,
an important rise in the price of a commodity takes place, then the price of
another commodity must have fallen ; for,, of course, the price of a commodity
only expresses in money the proportion in which other commodities can be
exchanged with it. For instance, if the price of a yard of silk rises from five |to
six shillings, the price of silver has fallen in comparison with silk ; and in the
same way the price of all other commodities which remain at their old prices has
fallen if compared with silk. We have to give a larger quantity of them m
exchange in order to obtain the same quantity of silk. Aud what is the result ot
H
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a rise in the price of a commodity ? A mass of capital is thrown into that flourish
ing branch of business, and the immigration of capital into the province of the
privileged business will last until the ordinary level of profits is attained; or
rather, until the price of the products sinks through overproduction.
Conversely, if the price of a commodity falls below the cost of its production,
capital will be withdrawn from the production of this commodity. Except in
the case of a branch of industry which has become obsolete and is therefore
doomed to disappear, the result of this flight of capital will be that the production
cf this commodity, and therefore its supply, will continually dwindle until it
corresponds to the demand; and thus its price rises again to the level of the cost
of its production ; or rather, until the supply has fallen below the demand ; that
is, until its price has again risen above its cost of production ; for the price of
any commodity is always either above or below its cost of production.
We see then how it is that capital is always immigrating and emigrating, from
the province of one industry into that of another. It is high prices that bring
about an excessive immigration, and low prices an excess of emigration.
We might show from another point of view how not only the supply, but
also the demand is determined by the cost of production ; _but this would lead us
too far from our present subject.
We have just seen how the fluctuations of supply and demand always reduce
the price of a commodity to its cost of production. It is true that the precise
price of a commodity is always either above or below its cost of production;
but the rise and fall reciprocally balance each other, so within a certain period,
if the ebb and flow of the business are reckoned up together, commodities are
exchanged with one another in accordance with their cost of production ; and
thus their cost of production determines their price.
The determination of price by cost of production is not to be understood
in the sense of the economists. The economists declare that the average price
of commodities is equal to the cost of production ; this, according to them, is a
law. The anarchical movements in which the rise is compensated by the fall,
and the fall by the rise, they ascribe to chance. With just as good a right as
this, which the other economists assume, we might consider the fluctuations as
the law, and ascribe the fixing of price by cost of production to chance. But if
we look closely, we see that it is precisely these fluctuations, although they bring
the most terrible desolation in their train and shake the fabric of bourgeois
society like earthquakes, it is precisely these fluctuations which in their course
determine price by cost of production. In the totality of this disorderly move
ment is to be found its order. Throughout these alternating movements, in the
course of this industrial anarchy, competition, as it were, cancels one excess by
means of another.
We gather, therefore, that the price of a commodity is determined by its
cost of production, in such manner that the periods in which the price of this
commodity rises above its cost of production are compensated by the periods in
which it sinks below this cost, and conversely. Of course this does not hold
good for one single particular product of an industry, but only for that entire
branch of industry. So also it does not hold good for a particular manufacturer,
but only for the entire industrial class.
The determination of price by cost of production is the same thing as its
determination by the duration of the labour which is required for the manu
facture of a commodity; for cost of production may be divided into (i) raw
material and implements, that is, products of industry whose manufacture has
cost a certain number of days’ work, and which therefore represents a certain
duration of labour, and (2) actual labour, which is measured by its duration.
Now the same general laws, which universally regulate the price of com
modities, regulate, of course, wages, the price of labour.
Wages will rise and fall in accordance with the proportion between demand
and supply, that is, in accordance with the conditions of the competition between
capitalists as buyers, and labourers as sellers of labour. The fluctuations of
wages correspond in general with the fluctuations in the price of commodities.
Within these fluctuations the price of labour is regulated by its cost of production,
that is, by the duration of labour which is required in order to produce this
commodity, labour.
Now what is the cost of production of labour itself?
It is the cost required for the production of a labourer and for,his maintenance
as a labourer.
The shorter the time requisite for instruction in any labour, the less is the
labourer's cost of production, and the lower are his wages, the price of his work
�7
In those branches of industry which scarcely require any oeriod of apprenticeship,
and where the mere bodily existence of the labourer is sufficient, the requisite
cost of his production and maintenance are almost limited to the cost of the
commodities which are requisite to keep him alive, The price of his labour is
therefore determined by the price of the bare necessaries of his existence.
Here, however, another consideration comes in. The manufacturer, who
reckons up his expenses of production and determines accordingly the price of
the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the machinery. If a
machine costs him /ioo and wears itself out in ten years, he adds £10 a-year to
the price of his goods, in order to replace the worn-out machine by a new one
when the ten years are up. In the same way we must reckon in the cost of pro
duction of simple labour the cost of its propagation ; so that the race of labourers
may be put in a position to multiply and to replace the worn-out workers by new
ones. Thus the wear and tear of the labourer must be taken into account just
as much as the wear and tear of the machine.
Thus the cost of the production of simple labour amounts to
cost of the
labourer’s subsistence and propagation, and the price of this cost determines his
wages. When we speak of wages we mean the minimum of wages. This mini
mum of wages holds good, just as does the determination by the cost of pro
duction of the price of commodities in general, not for the particular individual,
but for the species.
Individual labourers, indeed millions of them, do not
receive enough to enable them to subsist and propagate; but the wages of the
whole working class with all their fluctuations are nicely adjusted to this minimum.
Now that we are grounded on these general laws which govern wages just as
much as the price of any other commodity, we can examine our subject more
exactly,
“Capital consists of raw material, implements of labour, and all kinds of
means of subsistence, which are used for the production of new implements and
new means of subsistence. All these factors of capital are created by labour,
are products of labour, are stored-up labour. Stored-up labour which serves as
the means of new production is capital.”
So say the economists.
What is a negro slave ? A human creature of the black race. The one
definition is just as valuable as the other.
A negro is a negro. In certain conditions he is transformed into a slave.
A spinning-jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. Only in certain conditions is
it transformed into capital. When torn away from these conditions, it is just as
little capital as gold is money in the abstract, or sugar the price of sugar. In
the work of production men do not stand in relation to nature alone. They
only produce when they work together in a certain way, and mutually exchange
their different kinds of energy. In order to produce, they mutually enter upon
certain relations and conditions, and it is only by means of these relations and
conditions that .their relation to nature is defined, and production becomes
possible.
These social relations upon which the producers mutnally enter, the terms
upon which they exchange their energies and take their share in the collective
act of production, will of course differ according to the character of the means
of production. With the invention of firearms as implements of warfare the
whole organisation of the army was of necessity altered ; and with the alteration
in the relations through which individuals form an army, and are enabled to
work together as an army, there was a simultaneous alteration in the relations of
armies to one another.
Thus with the change in the social relations by means of which individuals,
produce, that is, in the social relations of production, and with the alteration and
development of the material means of production, the powers of production arealso transformed, The relations of production collectively form those social
relations which we call a society, and a society with definite degrees of historical
development, a society with an appropriate and distinctive character. Ancient
society, feudal society, bourgeois society, are instances of this collective result of
the relations of production, each of which marks out an important step in the
historical development of mankind.
Now capital also is a social condition of production. It is a bourgeois condition
of production, a condition of the production of a bourgeois society. Are not the
means of subsistence, the implements of labour, and the raw material, of which
capital consists, the results of definite social relations ; were they not produced
and stored up under certain social conditions ? Will they not be used for further
production under certain social conditions ? And is it not just this definite social
�8
character which transforms into capital that product which serves for further
production ?
Capital does not consist of means of subsistence, implements of labour, and
raw material alone, nor only of material products; it consists just as much of
■exchange-values. All the products of which it consists are commodities. Thus
capital is not merely the sum of material products ; it is a sum of commodities,
of exchange-values, of social quantities.
Capital remains unchanged if we substitute cotton for wool, rice for corn,
and steamers for railways; provided only that the cotton, the rice, the steamers
—the bodily form of capital—have the same exchange value, the same price, as
the wool, the corn, the railways, in which it formerly embodied itself, The
bodily form of capital may change continually, while the capital itself undergoes
not the slightest alteration.
But though all capital is a sum of commodities, that is, of exchange-values,
it is not every sum of commodities, of exchange-values, that is capital.
Every sum of exchange-values is an exchange-value. For instance, a house
worth a thousand pounds is an exchange-value of a thousand pounds. A penny
worth of paper is the sum of the exchange-values of a hundred-hundreths of a
penny. Products which may be mutually exchanged are commodities. The
definite proportion in which they are exchangeable forms their exchange-value,
or, expressed in money, their price. The amount of these products can do
nothing to alter their definition as being commodities, or as representing an
■exchange-value, or as having a certain price. Whether a tree is large or small, it
remains a tree. Whether we exchange iron for other wares in ounces or in
hundredweights, that makes no difference in its character as a commodity
possessing exchange-value. According to its amount it is a commodity of more
■or less worth, with a higher or lower price.
How then can a sum of commodities, of exchange-values, become capital ?
By maintaining and multiplying itself as an independent social power, that
is, as the power of a portion of society, by means of its exchange for direct, living
labour. Capital necessarily pre-supposes the existence of a class which possesses
nothing but labour-force.
It is the lordship of past, stored-up, realised labour over actual, living labour
that transforms the stored-up labour into capital.
Capital does not consist in the fact that stored-up labour is used by living labour
as a means to further production. It consists in the fact that living labours serves
as the means whereby stored-up labour may maintain and multiply its own
■exchange-value.
What is it that takes place in the exchange between capital and wage-work ?
The labourer receives in exchange for his labour the means of subsistence ;
but the capitalist receives in exchange for the means of subsistence labour, the
productive energy of the labourer, the creative force whereby the labourer not
only replaces what he consumes, but also gives to the stored-up labour a greater
value than it had before. The labourer receives from the capitalist a share of
the previously provided means of subsistence. To what use does he put
these means of subsistence ?
He uses them for immediate consump
tion. But as soon as I consume my means of subsistence, they disappear
and are irrecoverably lost to me; it therefore becomes necessary that I should
employ the time during which these means keep me alive in order to produce
new means of subsistence ; so that during their consumption I may provide by
my labour new value in the place of that which thus disappears. But it is just
this grand reproductive power which the labourer has to bargain away to capital
in exchange for the means of subsistence which he receives. To him therefore it
is entirely lost.
Let us take an example. A farmer gives his day-labourer two shillings a
day. For this two shillings he works throughout the day on the farmer’s field,
and so secures him a return of four shillings. The farmer does not merely get
the value which he had advanced to the day-labourer replaced ; he doubles it.
He has thus spent or consumed the two shillings which he gave to the daylabourer in a fruitful and productive fashion. He has bought for his two shil
lings just that labour and force of the day-labourer which produces fruits of the
earth of twice the value, and turns two shillings into four. The day-labourer on
the other hand receives in place of his productive force, which he has just bar
gained away to the farmer, two shillings: and these he exchanges for means of
subsistence ; which means of subsistence he proceeds with more or less speed to
consume. The two shillings have thus been consumed in double fashion ; pro
ductively for capital, since they have been exchanged for the labour-force which
�produced the four shillings; unproductively for the labourer, since they have
been exchanged for means of subsistence which have disappeared for ever,
and whose value he can only recover by repeating the same bargain with tha
farmer. Thus capital presupposes wage-labour, and wage-labour presupposes
capital. They condition one another ; and each brings the other into play.
Does a labourer in a cotton factory produce merely cotton ? No, he produces
capital. He produces value which serves afresh to command his own labour,
and to create new value by its means.
Capital can only increase when it is exchanged for labour, when it calls
wage-labour into existence. Wage-labour can only be exchanged for capital
by augmenting capital and strengthening the power whose slave it is. An
increase of capital is therefore an increase of the proletariat, that is, of the
labouring class.
The interests of the capitalist and the labourer are therefore identical, assert
the bourgeoisie and their economists, And, in fact, so they are ! The labourer
perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if it does not exploit
labour ; and in order to exploit it, it must buy it. The faster the capital devoted
to production—the productive capital—increases, and the more successfully the
industry is carried on, the richer do the bourgeoisie become, the better does
business go, the more labourers does the capitalist require, and the dearer does
the labourer sell himself.
Thus the indispensable condition of the labourer’s securing a tolerable posi
tion is the speediest possible growth of productive capital.
But what is the meaning of the increase of productive capital ? The increase
of the power of stored-up labour over living labour. The increase of the dominion
of the bourgeoisie over the labouring class. As fast as wage-labour creates its
own antagonist and its own master in the dominating power of capital, the
means of employment, that is, of subsistence, flow back to it from its antagonist;
but only on the condition that it is itself transformed afresh into a portion of
capital, and becomes the lever whereby the increase of capital may be again
hugely accelerated.
Thus the statement that the interests of capital and labour are identical comes
to mean merely this : capital and wage-labour are the two terms of one and the
same proportion. The one conditions the other, just in the same way that the
usurer and the borrower condition each other mutually.
So long as the wage-labourer remains a wage-labourer, his lot in life is
dependent upon capital. That is the exact meaning of the famous community of
interests between capital and labour.
The increase of capital is attended by an increase in the amount of wage
labour and in the number of wage-labourers; or, in other words, the dominion of
capital is spread over a larger number of individuals. And, to give the most
fortunate event possible, with the increase of productive capital there is an
increase in the demand for labour. And thus wages, the price of labour, will rise.
A house may be large or small: but as long as the surrounding houses are
equally small, it satisfies all social expectations as a dwelling place. But let a
palace arise by the side of this small house, and it shrinks from a house into a
hut. The smallness of the house now gives it to be understood that its occupant
has either very small pretentions or none at all; and however high it may shoot
up with the progress of civilisation, if the neighbouring palace shoots up also in
the same or in greater proportion, the occupant of the comparatively small house
will always find himself more uncomfortable, more discontented, more confined
within his four walls.
A notable advance in the amount paid as wages brings about a rapid increase
of productive capital. The rapid increase of productive capital calls forth just as
rapid an increase in wealth, luxury, social wants, and social comforts. Therefore,
although the comforts of the labourer have risen, the social satisfaction which
they give has fallen in comparison'jwith^these'augmented comforts of the capitalist
which are unattainable for the labourer, and in comparison with the general
development of comforts. Our wants and their satisfaction have their origin
in society; we therefore measure them in their relation to society, and not in
relation to the objects which satisfy them. Since their nature is social, it is
therefore relative.
As a rule then, wages are not determined merely by the amount of commo
dities for which they may be exchanged. They depend upon various relations.
What the labourer immediately receives for his labour is a certain sum
of money. Are wages determined merely by this money price ?
In the sixteenth century the gold and silver in circulation in Europe was
�IO
augmented in consequence of the discovery of America. The value of gold and
silver fell, therefore, in proportion to other commodities. The labourers received
for their labour the same amount of silver coin as before. The money price of
their labour remained the same, and yet their wages had fallen, for in exchange
for the same sum of silver they obtained a smaller quantity of other commo
dities. This was one of the circumstances which furthered the increase of
capital and the rise of the bourgeoisie in the sixteenth century.
Let us take another case. In the winter of 1847, in consequence of a failure
in the crops, there was an important increase in the price of the indispensable
means of subsistence, corn, meat, butter, cheese, and so on, We will suppose
that the labourers still received the same sum of money for their labour as
before. Had not their wages fallen then ? Of course they had. For the same
amount of money they received in exchange less bread, meat, etc. ; and their
wages had fallen, not because the value of silver had diminished, but because the
value of the means of subsistence had increased.
Let us finally suppose that the money price of labour remains the same,
while in consequence of the employment of new machinery, or on account of a
good season, or for some similar reason, there is a fall in the price of all agri
cultural and manufactured goods. For the same amount of money the labourers
can now buy more commodities of all kinds. Their wages have therefore risen,
just because their money price has not changed.
The money price of labour, the nominal amount of wages, does not there
fore fall together with the real wages, that is, with the amount of commodities
that may practically be obtained in exchange for the wages. Therefore if we
speak of the rise and fall of wages, the money price of labour, or the nominal
wage, is not the only thing which we must keep in view.
But neither the nominal wages, that is, the amount of money for which the
labourer sells himself to the employer, nor yet the real wages, that is, the amount
of commodities which he can buy for this money, exhaust the relations which are
comprehended in the term wages.
For the meaning of the word is chiefly determined by its relation to the gain
or profit of the employer—it is a proportionate and relative expression.
The real wage expresses the price of labour in relation to the price of other
commodities; the relative wage, on the contrary, expresses the price of direct
labour in relation to that of stored-up labour, the relative value of wage-labour
and capital, the proportionate value of capitalist and labourer.
Real wages may remain the same, or they may even rise, and yet the relative
wages may none the less have fallen. Let us assume, for example, that the price
of all the means of subsistence has fallen by two-thirds, while a day’s wages have
only fallen one-third, as for instance, from three shillings to two. Although the
labourer has a larger amount of commodities at his disposal for two shillings
than he had before for three, yet his wages are nevertheless diminished in pro
portion to the capitalist’s gain. The capitalist’s profit—the manufacturer's, for
instance—has been augmented by a shilling, since for the smaller sum of exchange
value which he pays to the labourer, the labourer has to produce a larger sum of
exchange-value than he did before. The value of capital is raised in proportion
to the value of labour. The division of social wealth between capital and labour
has become more disproportionate. The capitalist commands a larger amount
of labour with the same amount of capital. The power of the capitalist class
over the labouring class is increased; the social position of the labourer has
deteriorated, and is depressed another degree below that of the capitalist.
What then is the general law which determines the rise and fall of wages and
profit in their reciprocal relation ?
They stand in inverse proportion to one another. Capital's exchange-value,
profit, rises in the same proportion in which the exchange-value of labour, wages,
sinks; and conversely. The rise in profit is exactly measured by the fall in
wages, and the fall in profit by the rise in wages.
The objection may perhaps be made that the capitalist may have gained a
profit by advantageous exchange of his products with other capitalists, or by a
rise in the demand for his goods, whether in consequence of the opening of new
markets, or of a greater demand in the old markets; that the profit of the capi
talist may thus increase by means of over-reaching another capitalist, indepen
dently of the rise and fall of wages and the exchange-value of labour ; or that rhe
profit of the capitalist may also rise through an improvement in the implements
of labour, a new application of natural forces, and so on.
But it must nevertheless be admitted that the result remains the same,
although it is brought about in a different way. The capitalist has acquired a
�11
larger amount of exchange-value with the same amount of labour, without having
had to pay a higher price for the labour on that account; that is to say, a lower
price has been paid for the labour in proportion to the nett profit which it yields
to the capitalist.
Besides we must remember that in spite of the fluctuations in the price of com
modities, the average price of each commodity—the proportion in. which it
exchanges for other commodities—is determined by its cost of production. The
over-reaching and tricks that go on within the capitalist class therefore neces
sarily cancel one another. Improvements in machinery, and new applications of
natural forces to the service of production, enable them to turn out in a given
time with the same amount of labour and capital a larger quantity of products,
but by no means a larger quantity of exchange-value. If by the application of
the spinning-jenny I han turn out twice as much thread in an hour as I could
before its invention, for instance, a hundred pounds instead of fifty, that is
because the cost of production has been halved, or because at the same cost I
can turn out double the amount of products.
Finally in whatsoever proportion the capitalist classes—the bourgeoisie—
whether of one country or of the market of the whole world—-share among them
selves the nett profits of production, the total amount of these nett profits always
consists merely of the amount by which, taking all in all, direct labour has been
increased by means of stored-up labour. This sum total increases, therefore, in
the proportion in which labour augments capital; that is, in the proportion in
which profit rises as compared with wages.
Thus we see that even if we confine ourselves to the relation between capital
and wage-labour, the interests of capital are in direct antagonism to the interests
of wage-labour.
A rapid increase of capital is equal to a rapid increase of profits. Profits
can only make a rapid increase, if the exchange-value of labour—the relative
wage—makes an equally rapid decline. The relative wage may decline, although
the actual wage rises along with the nominal wage, or money price of labour; if
only it does not rise in the same proportion as profit. For instance, if when trade
is good, wages rise five per cent., and profits on the other hand thirty per cent.,
then the proportional or relative wage has not increased but declined.
Thus if the receipts of the labourer increase with the rapid advance of
capital, yet at the same time there is a widening of the social gulf which separates
the labourer from the capitalist, and also an increase in the power of capital
over labour and in the dependence of labour upon capital.
The meaning of the statement that the labourer has an interest in the rapid
increase of capital is merely this; the faster the labourer increases his master s
dominion, the richer will be the crumbs that he will get from his table; and the
greater the number of labourers that can be employed and called into existence,
the greater will be the number of slaves of which capital will be the owner.
We have thus seen that even the most fortunate event for the working class,
the speediest possible increase of capital, however much it may improve the
material condition of the labourer, cannot abolish the opposition between his
interests and those of the bourgeois or capitalist class. Profit and wages remain
just as much as ever in inverse proportion.
When capital is increasing fast, wages may rise, but the profits of capita
will rise much faster. The actual position of the labourer has improved, but. it
is at the expense of his social position. The social gulf which separates him
from the capitalist has widened.
Finally, the meaning of fortunate conditions for wage-labour, and of the
quickest possible increase of productive capital, is merely this; the faster the
working classes enlarge and extend the hostile power that dominates over them,
the better will be the conditions under which they will be allowed to labour for
the further increase of bourgeois dominion and for the wider extension of the
power of capital, and thus contentedly to forge for themselves the golden chains
by which the bourgeois drags them in its train.
But are the increase of productive capital and the rise of wages so indis
solubly connected as the bourgeois economists assert? We can hardly believe
that the fatter capital becomes, the more will its slave be pampered. The
bourgeoisie is too much enlightened, and keeps its accounts much too carefully,
to care for that privilege of the feudal nobility, the ostentation of splendour in
its retinue. The very conditions of bourgeois existence compel it to keep careful
accounts.
We must therefore enquire more closely into the effect which the increase
of productive capital has upon wages.
�12
With the general increase of the productive capital of a bourgeois society a
manifold accumulation of labour-force takes place. The capitalists increase in
number and in power. The increase in the number of capitalists increases the
competition between capitalists. Their increased power gives them the means
of leading into the industrial battle-field mightier armies of labourers furnished
with gigantic implements of war.
The one capitalist can only succeed in driving the other off the field and
taking possession of his capital by selling his wares at a cheaper rate. In order
to sell more cheaply without ruining himself, he must produce more cheaply, that
is, he must heighten as much as possible the productiveness of labour, But the
most effective way of making labour more productive is by means of a more
complete division of labour, or by the more extended use and continual improve
ment of machinery. The more numerous the departments into which labour is
divided, and the more gigantic the scale in which machinery is introduced, in so
much the greater proportion does the cost of production decline, and so much
the more fruitful is the labour. Thus arises a manifold rivalry among capitalists
with the object of increasing the subdivision of labour and machinery, and
keeping up the utmost possible progressive rate of exploitation.
Now if by means of a greater subdivision of labour, by the employment and
improvement of new machines, or by the more skilful and profitable use of the
forces of nature, a capitalist has discovered the means of producing a larger
amount of commodities than his competitors with the same amount of labour ;
whether it be stored-up labour or direct—if he can, for instance, spin a com
plete yard of cotton in the same time that his competitors take to spin half-ayard—how will this capitalist proceed to act ?
He might go on selling half-a-yard at its former market price.; but that
would not have the effect of driving his opponents out.of the field and increasing
his own sale. But the need of increasing his sale has increased in the same pro
portion as his production. The more effective and more expensive means of pro
duction which he has called into existence enable him, of course, to sell his wares
cheaper, but they also compel him to sell more wares and to secure a much
larger market for them. Our capitalist will therefore proceed to sell his half-ayard of cotton cheaper than his competitors.
The capitalist will not, however, sell his complete yard so cheaply as his
competitors sell the half, although its entire production does not cost him more
than the production of half costs the others. For in that case he would gain
nothing, but would only get back the cost of its productioa. The contingent
increase in his receipts would result from his having set in motion a larger
capital, but not from having made his capital more profitable than that of the
others. Besides he gains the end he is aiming at, if he prices his goods a slight
percentage lower than his competitors. He drives them off the field, and wrests
from them at any rate a portion of their sale, if only he undersells them. And
finally we must remember that the price current always stands either above or
below the cost of production, according as the sale of a commodity is transacted
at a favourable or unfavourable period of business. According as the.market
price of a yard of cloth is above or below its former cost of production, the
percentage will alter in which the capitalist who has employed the new and
profitable means of production exceeds in its sale the actual cost of its production
to him.
.
. .
But our capitalist does not find his privilege very lasting. Other rival
capitalists introduce with more or less rapidity the same machines and the same
subdivision of labour; and this introduction becomes general, until the price of
the yard of cloth is reduced not only below its old, but below its new cost of
production.
. .
.
,
Thus the capitalists find themselves relatively m the same position in which
they stood before the introduction, of the new means of production ; and if they
are by these means enabled to offer twice the product for the same price, they
now find themselves compelled to offer the doubled amount for less than the old
price. From the standpoint of these new means of production the old game
begins anew There is greater subdivision of labour, more machinery, and a
more rapid progress in the exploitation of both. Whereupon competition brings
about the same reaction against this result.
.
Thus we see how the manner and means of production are . continually
renewed and revolutionised ; and how the division of labour necessarily brings in
its train a greater division of labour ; the introduction of machinery, a still larger
introduction; and the rapidity of progress in the efficiency of labour, a still
greater rapidity of progress.
�I3
'Khat is the law which continually drives bourgeois paaduction out of its old
track, and compels capital to intensify the productive powers of labour for the
very reason that it has already intensified them—the law that allows it no rest,
but for ever whispers in its ear the words, “ Quick March ! ”
This is no other law than that which, cancelling the priodical fluctuations of
business, necessarily identifies the price of a commodity with its cost of pro
duction.
However powerful are the means of production which a particular capitalist
may bring into the field, competition will make their adoption general; and the
moment it becomes general, the sole result of the greater fruitfulness of his
capital is that he must now for the same price offer ten, twenty, a hundred times
as much as before. But as he must dispose of perhaps a thousand times as
much, in order to outweigh the decrease in the selling price by the larger pro
portion of products sold; since a larger sale has now become necessary, not
only to gain a large profit, but also to replace the cost of production ; and the
implements of production, as we have seen get more expensive ; and since this
larger sale has become a vital question, not only for him, but also for his rivals,
the old strife continues with all the greater violence, in proportion as the pre
viously discovered means of production are more fruitful. Thus the subdivision
of labour and the employment of new machinery, take a fresh start, and proceed
with still greater rapidity.
And thus, whatever be the power of the means or production employed,
competition does its best to rob capital of the golden fruit which it produces, by
reducing the price of commodities to their cost of production ; and as fast as
their production is cheapened, compelling by a despotic law the larger supply of
cheaper products to be offered at the former price. Thus the capitalist will have
won nothing by his exertions beyond the obligation to produce faster than before,
and an enhancement of the difficulty of employing his capital to advantage.
While competition continually persecutes him with its law of the cost of pro
duction, and turns against himself every weapon which he forges against his
rivals, the capitalist continually tries, to cheat competition by incessantly intro
ducing further division of labour, and replacing the old machines by new ones,
which, though more expensive, produce more cheaply ; instead of waiting till
competition has rendered them obsolete.
Let us now look at this feverish agitation as it affects the market of the whole
world, and we shall understand how the increase, accumulation, and concentra
tion of capital bring in their train an uninterrupted and extreme subdivision of
labour, always advancing with gigantic strides of progress, and a continual em
ployment of new machinery together with improvement of the old.
But how do these circumstances, inseparable as they are from the increase
of productive capital, affect the determination of the amount of wages ?
The greater division of labour enables one labourer to do the work of five,
ten, twenty : it therefore multiplies the competition among labourers five, ten or
twenty times. The labourers do not only compete when one sells himself
cheaper than another ; they also compete when one does the work of five, ten, or
twenty ; and the division of labour which capital introduces and continually in
creases, compels the labourers to enter into this kind of competition with one
another.
.
.
. .
Further \ in the same proportion in which the division of labour is increased)
the labour itself is simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless.
It is changed into a monotonous and uniform power production, which can give
play neither to bodily nor to intellectual elasticity. Its labour becomes acccessible
to everybody. Competitors therefore throng into it from all sides; and besides
we must remember that the more simple and easily learnt the labour is, and the
less it costs a man to make himself master of it, so much the lower must its
wages sink ; since they are determined, like the price of every other commodity,
by its cost of production.
Therefore exactly as the labour becomes more unsatisfactory and unpleasant,,
in that verv proportion competition iucreases and wages decline. The labourer
does his best to maintain the rate of his wages by performing more labour,
whether by working for a greater number of hours, or by working harder in the
same-time. Thus, driven by necessity, he himself increases the evil ot the
subdivision of labour. So the result is this : the more he labours, the less reward
he receives for it; and that for this simple reason—that he competes against his.
fellow-workmen, and thus compels them to compete against him, and to offer
their labour on as wretched conditions as he does; and that he thus in the last
result competes against himself as a member of the working class.
�*4
Machinery has th^same effect, but in a much greater degree. It supplants
skilled labourers by unskilled, men by women, adults by children ; where it is
newly introduced, it throws the hand-labourers upon the streets in crowds ; and
where it is perfected or replaced by later improvements and more inventions, dis
cards them by slightly slower degrees. We have sketched above in hasty outlines
the industrial war of capitalists with one another; and this war has this pecu
liarity, that its battles are won less by means of enlisting than of discharging its
industrial recruits, The generals or capitalists vie with one another as to who can dis
pense with the greatest number of his soldiers.
The economists repeatedly assure us that the labourers who are rendered
superfluous by the machines find new branches of employment.
They have not the hardihood directly to assert that the labourers who are
discharged enter upon the new branches of labour. The facts cry out too loud
against such a lie as this. They only declare that for other divisions of the
labouring class, as for instance, for the rising generation of labourers who were
just ready to enter upon the defunct branch of industry, new means of employ
ment will open out. Of course that is a great satisfaction for the dismissed
labourers. The worshipful capitalists will not find their fresh supply of exploit
able flesh and blood run short, and will let the dead bury their dead. This is
indeed a consolation with which the bourgeois comfort themselves rather than the
labourers. If the whole class of wage-labourers were annihilated by the
machines, how shocking that would be for capital, which without wage-labour
ceases to act as capital at all.
But let us suppose that those who are directly driven out of their employment
by machinery, and also all those of the rising generation who were expecting
employment in the same line, find some new employment. Does any one imagine
that this will be as highly paid as that which they have lost ? Such an idea would
be in direct contradiction to all the laws of economy. We have already seen that
the modern form of industry always tends to the displacement of the more complex
and the higher kinds of employment, by those which are more simple and
subordinate.
How then could a crowd of labourers, who are thrown out of one branch of
industry by machinery, find refuge in another, without having to content them
selves with a lower position and worse pay ?
The labourers who are employed in the manufacture of machinery itself have
been instanced as an exception. As soon as a desire arises and a demand begins
in an industry for more machinery, it is said that there must necessarily be an
increase in the number of machines, and therefore in the manufacture of machines,
and therefore in the employment of labourers in this manufacture; and the
labourers who are employed in this branch of industry will be skilled, and indeed
even educated labourers.
Ever since the year 1840 this contention, which even before that time was
only half true, has lost all its specious colour. For the machines which are em
ployed in the manufacture of machinery have been quite as numerous as those
used in the manufacture of cotton ; and the labourers who are employed in pro
ducing machines, instead of being highly educated, have only been able toplay
the part of utterly unskilled machines themselves.
But in the place of the man who has been dismissed by the machine perhaps
three children and one woman are employed to work it, And was it not neces
sary before that the man’s wages should suffice for the support of his wife and
his children ? Was not the minimum of wages necessarily sufficient for the
maintenance and propagation of the race of labourers ? There is no difference,
except that now the lives of four times as many labourers as before are used up in
order to secure the support of one labourer’s family.
To repeat our deductions; the faster productive capital increases, the more
does the division of labour and the employment of machinery extend. The more
the division of labour and the employment of machinery extend, so much the
more does competition increase among the labourers, and so much the more do
their average wages dwindle.
And, besides, the labouring class is recruited from the higher strata of
society ; or else there falls headlong into it a crowd of small manufacturers and
small proprietors, who thenceforth have nothing better to do than to stretch out
their arms by the side of those of the labourers. And thus the forest of arms
outstretched by those who are entreating for work becomes ever denser and the
arms themselves grow ever leaner.
That the small manufacturer cannot survive in a contest, whose first condi
tion is production on a continually increasing scale, that is, that he cannot be at
once both a large and a small manufacturer, is self-evident.
�*
That the interest on capital declines in the same promotion as the amount
of capital increases and extends, and that therefore the small capitalist can no
longer live on bis interest, but must join th# ranks of the workers andjincrease
the number oftfce proletariat,—all this requires no further exemplificatlpn.
Finally, in the projWtion in which the capitalists are compelledby the causes
here sketched out to exploit on an even increasing scale yet more giga^ftic
means of production, and with that object to set in motion all the iMfrisprin^s
of credit, in the same proportion is there an increase of those earthquakes
wherein the business world can only secure its own existence by the sajMyficaof ap
portion of its wealth, its products, and even its powers of production to the gods
of the world below—in a word, crises increase. They become at once more
frequent and more violent; because in the same proportion in which the amount
of production, and therefore the demand for an extension of the market, increases,
the market of the world continually contracts, and ever fewer markets remain to
be exploited; since every previous crisis has added to the commerce of the world
a market which was not known before, or had before been only superficially ex
ploited by commerce. But capital not only lives upon labour. Like a lord, at
once distinguished and barbarous, it drags with it to the grave the corpses of its
slaves and whole hecatombs of labourers who perish in the crisis. Thus we see
that if capital increases fast, competition among the labourers increases still
faster, that is, the means of employment and subsistence decline in proportion at
a Stillmore rapid rate; and yet, none the less the most fortunate conditions for
wage labour lie in the speedy increase of capital
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by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d.
�The Robbery of the Poor.
Demy o^vo., paper c@ver, price 6d.
By w. H. P. Campbell.
The Appeal to the Young.
By Prince Peter
Kropdtkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hyndman and
reprinte^,from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny.
Th# mSSk eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever penned by a
scientific m^n. _ Its author has just suffered five years imprisonment at the hands of the
Fngnch Republic for advocating the cause of the workers
Opening Address to the Trade Union Congress
at Southport, September, 1885. Delivered by T. R. Threlfall. Royal
8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny.
An able address from a representative working man on political and social topics.
By Edward Carpenter.—Social Progress and Indi
vidual Effort ; Desirable Mansions ; and Co-operative Production.
One penny each.
John E. Williams, and the Early History of
THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION.
trait. Price one penny.
With Por
The Man with the Red Flag : Being John Burns’
Speech at the Old Bailey, when tried for Seditious Conspiracy, on
April 9th, 1886. (From the Verbatim Notes of the official short
hand reporter.) With Portrait. Price threepence.
Socialism and Slavery. By H. M. Hyndman.
(In
reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s article on the “ The Coming
Slavery.” New Edition. 16 pp. Royal 8-vo., price one penny.
The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted
with additions from Justice.
Demy 8-vo., price id. 15th thousand.
The Emigration Fraud Exposed.
By H.
What an Eight Hours Bill Means.
By T. Mann
M.
Hyndman. With a Portrait of the Author. Reprinted by per
mission from the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo.,
price one penny.
(Amalgamated Engineers). New edition with portrait.
Thousand. Price one penny.
Sixth
Socialism versus Smithism: An open letter from
H. M. Hyndman to Samuel Smith, M.P. for Liverpool.
8-vo. Cheaper edition, price id.
Socialism and the Worker.
By F.
A.
Crown
Sorge.
Price id.
An explanation in the simplest language of tne main idea of Socialism.
The Chicago Riots and the Class War in the
United States. By H. M. Hyndman. Reprinted
from Times, Jnne, 1886.
Price one penny.
�*
■
11
4
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wage-labour and capital
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: New and cheaper ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: Information on the Social-Democratic Federation on p. [2]. Publisher's list on p. 15 and unnumbered page at the end.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Marx, Karl [1818-1883]
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
The Modern Press
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1886
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
G2454
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Joynes, J.L. (James Leigh) (tr)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Socialism
Labour
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Wage-labour and capital), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Capitalism
Karl Marx
Marxian Economics
Marxism
Wages
Working Classes