To-day in Great Britain, in America, in the self-governing colonies, and in many European countries, we can sec the principles of democracy in working order.
The whole system of local government in Great Britain and Ireland is essentially democratic. The municipal councils of all the large cities are elected on household suffrage, and have enormous powers. There is now no sex disability to prevent the election of women to these bodies, and, except in the case of the clergy of the Established Church, who are disqualified from sitting on town councils (but not on county or district councils), all ratepayers are eligible for nomination. The result is that on nearly every city council, and on a great number of county councils, London borough councils, urban and rural district councils, boards of guardians, and parish councils, there are working-class representatives, while women members have been elected to the great councils of Liverpool and Manchester, and sit on many boards of guardians and parish councils.
All these councils are of recent creation. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 placed the election of town councils for the first time in the hands of the ratepayers, but the real reform of local government dates from 1888. In that year the Conservative Government established county and district councils and Lord Rosebery became the first chairman of the London County Council. Six years later the Liberals set up parish councils in the rural districts, with parish meetings where the population did not exceed three hundred. In 1899 the Conservatives displaced the old London vestries by borough councils, and in 1902-3 abolished in England the school boards created in 1870, and made the county council the local authority for public elementary education. Scotland was allowed to retain its school boards, and strong but unsuccessful opposition was made in London and the chief cities to the suppression of the specially elected education authority.
The Right Hon. John Burns, M.P.THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.Photo: Moyse, Putney.
As far as rural England is concerned, county councils, district councils, and parish councils are, generally speaking, very reluctant to put into operation the wide powers they possess. The average county council, though popularly elected, is composed in agricultural England of landowners and the bigger farmers, who, as a common rule, do not favour a land programme for labourers, and are anxious to keep down the rates. The rural district council and board of guardians are equally averse from any display of public enterprise, and the parish council, which often consists mainly of labourers, rarely accomplishes anything except at the prompting, or with the sanction, of the parochial landowner. The result is that allotments, rural housing, village baths and washhouses, an adequate water supply, public halls and libraries, are not regarded as the concern of rural elected authorities, but are left to the private enterprise of landowners. Civic pride, which glories in the public proprietorship of lands and libraries, tramways and lodging-houses, waterworks and workmen's dwellings, art galleries and swimming baths, and is a living influence in the municipalities of, let us say, London, Glasgow, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham, West Ham, and many a smaller borough, does not exist in rural councils. To the farmer and the peasant public ownership is a new and alien thing. The common lands and all the old village communal life have gone out of the memory of rural England; but the feudal tradition that the landowner is the real centre of authority has survived, and it is the benevolent landowner who is expected to build cottages, grant allotments, and see to the water supply, as fifty years ago he built and managed the village school. Political organisation could break through this tradition, but farmers and agricultural labourers are without this organisation; and so the authority of the landowner remains, in spite of the democratic constitution of local government. The people can allow their power to remain in the hands of others, just as a king can be content to reign without ruling, and the local government of rural England is an oligarchy elected by a popular franchise.
In the factory towns and the mining districts it is a very different matter. Here the people are organised, and take their share in local government. In the county of Durham, for instance, the working class predominates on local councils, and the influence of trade unions prevails in these assemblies wherever a strong Labour party exists. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain began his public career on the Birmingham Town Council, and his municipal services earned for him the enthusiastic support of Birmingham for all his later political ventures. It would be difficult to mention the name of a great statesman who laid the foundations of his fame in rural local government.
As in local government, so in the Imperial Parliament. Rural England sends no Labour member to the House of Commons. Only in very exceptional cases has a tenant farmer been elected. It is the social labour of the mine and the mill that has produced the Labour member of Parliament.
Mr. Joseph Arch made a valiant attempt to organise the agricultural labourers of England, and from 1880 to 1890 a rural labourers' union, with some thousands of members, was in existence. For a time this secured a rise in wages, and when Mr. Arch was in Parliament, as a Liberal M.P. (1885-1895), the rural labourer hoped for lasting improvement in the conditions of life. But the Union fell to pieces, and Mr. Arch was not strong enough single-handed to force the claims of his constituents on the House of Commons.
To-day there are more than forty workmen in the House of Commons, and the great majority of these have served an apprenticeship in municipal and trade union offices. Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Stafford, South Wales, Glasgow, Dundee, Leicester, Norwich and London, all have their elected Labour members in Parliament, and a marked preference is shown for the man who has proved his honesty and capacity in the municipality, or as the leader of his trade union. All the miners' representatives are tried and experienced men. Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P., was for ten years the general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Mr. Clynes, M.P., was elected to the office of district secretary of the Gas Workers' and General Labourers' Union twenty years ago; Mr. Will Thorne, M.P., has been general secretary of the same union since 1889, and has sat on the West Ham Corporation for more than sixteen years. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P., and Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., are well known for their work on the London County Council and on their local borough council and board of guardians. Similarly with other Labour members of Parliament. Their lives are marked by a sense of public responsibility, with the result that in the House of Commons they are grave, business-like, and undemonstrative. The Labour members do not make "scenes"; they respect the rules of the House and the dignity of the National Assembly, partly because they are all in sober middle age, but more because they have learnt that public business can only be carried on by due observance of order; and they are in Parliament to get business done for their constituents, to promote legislation that will make life easier for the working class. When Mr. Victor Grayson, in the exuberance of youth, and with a passion that blazed out against the misery of the poor, made a "scene" in the House of Commons, and was expelled, the Labour members were quite sincere in their disapproval. They understood, with a wider knowledge than Mr. Grayson possessed, that "scenes" alienated sympathy in the House, were not helpful in debate, and were not popular with the electors.
The member who would succeed in the House of Commons must respect the usages of the House, and show himself loyal to its laws of debate. As long as this respect and loyalty are shown the Labour member is accepted by his fellow-members as one who has been elected to the greatest club in the world, and is justly entitled to all the privileges of membership. For the British House of Commons is a democratic assembly, and in its collective pride it cares nothing for the opinions or social rank of its members. All it asks is that the newly-elected member should be alive to the honour of membership, should be modest in his bearing, and should as soon as possible "catch the tone of the House." He may be a labourer, or the son of a belted earl; the House is indifferent so long as his parliamentary manners are good.
The House of Commons is a far more orderly assembly than it was a hundred years ago; it is more sober and less noisy, and the arrival of Labour members has increased rather than diminished its good behaviour. It is also a far more industrious assembly, and the influence of the Labour party compels an amount of legislation that honourable members would have thought impossible fifty years ago.
Three representative working-class leaders in the House of Commons stand out pre-eminently in contemporary politics—the Right Hon. John Burns, Mr. J. Keir Hardie, and Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald. The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George is conspicuous rather as the representative of the industrious Nonconformist middle class, but the success of his career is no less significant of the advance of democracy. The very Cabinet is now no longer an aristocratic committee, and the highest offices of executive government are held by men who are neither wealthy nor of distinguished family.
Two working-class leaders of an earlier generation—the Right Hon. T. Burt, M.P., and Mr. H. Broadhurst—held office as Under-Secretaries in the Liberal Government of 1892-5; but Mr. John Burns is the first trade unionist to sit in the Cabinet. He, too, might have been an Under-Secretary in the days of that short-lived Ministry, but decided, with characteristic vigour, that if he was fit to be an Under-Secretary he was fit for the Cabinet. At the close of 1905 the opportunity came, and the offer of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman to preside over the Local Government Board was promptly accepted. The workman first took his place in the Cabinet when Mr. John Burns, at the age of forty-seven, went to the Local Government Board—to the complete satisfaction of Mr. Burns. For the robust egoism of Mr. Burns is largely a class pride. His invincible belief in himself is part of an equally invincible belief in the working class. His ambitions thrive on the conviction that whatever Mr. John Burns does, that the working class does in the person of their representative. Always does he identify himself with the mechanics and labourers with whom his earlier years were spent, and by whose support he has risen to office. The more honours for Mr. John Burns, the more does it seem to this stalwart optimist that the working class is honoured. He arrays himself in court dress at the palaces of kings, receives honorary degrees at Universities, and is kept before the public by the newspaper paragraphist, without wincing or pretending to dislike it. Why should the workman not be esteemed by kings and universities? Mr. Burns asks. So great is his self-respect that the respect of others is taken as a matter of course. Much of the criticism that has been directed against Mr. John Burns misses the mark, because it does not recognise that the motive power at work all the time in his career is the triumph of his class. It is the triumph of a member of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, of a London workman, that Mr. John Burns beholds with unconcealed pleasure in his own success.
There are drawbacks, of course, to this complete self-satisfaction. Since the workman has triumphed in the person of Mr. John Burns, the working class would do well to follow his example, and heed his advice on all matters affecting its welfare, Mr. Burns argues. The failures of working-class life and the misery of the poor are due to the lack of those virtues that he possesses, he is apt to maintain. Hence Mr. Burns is hated as a Pharisee in certain quarters when he extols self-reliance and total abstinence as essential to working-class prosperity, and points to gambling and strong drink as the root of all evil in the State. It is sometimes urged that Mr. Burns over-praises his own merits; but the fault is really in the opposite direction; he does not appreciate sufficiently that the gifts he possesses—the gifts he has used so fully and so freely—are exceptional. These gifts are a powerful physique, a great voice, a tremendous energy, and a love of literature; and they are not the common equipment of the skilled mechanic and the labourer. True, they are often wasted and destroyed when they do exist; and in the case of Mr. Burns a strongly disciplined will has made them abundantly fruitful. But from the first the physique, the voice, and the untiring energy were far above those that fall to the lot of the average workman; and the love of books stored the mind with rich supplies of language to be drawn upon when speeches were to be made. Not as an administrator at the Local Government Board has Mr. Burns become famous. His fame as a champion of the working class was established by popular ovations in Hyde Park and at dock gates. Battersea has been won and held by the speeches of its member. It is not the mighty voice alone, silencing interruption often enough by sheer volume of sound, but the plainly pointed epigram, the ready jest and the quick repartee that endear Mr. John Burns' speeches to the multitude. His sayings and phrases are quoted. His wit is the wit of the Londoner—the wit that Dickens knew and studied, the wit of the older cabmen and 'bus drivers, the wit of the street boy. It is racy, it is understood, and the illustrations are always concrete and massive, never vague or unsubstantial. Apt Shakespearian quotations, familiar and unfamiliar, embellish the speeches. Personality, vital personality, counts for so much in the orator of the market place. The speaker must be alive to his audience, he must convince by his presence no less than by his arguments. And Mr. Burns is so obviously alive. He warms the shrunken, anæmic vitality of followers, and overpowers the protests of enemies by sheer force of character.
Mr. John Burns is at his real vocation when addressing a great multitude. His energy finds an outlet in speech on those occasions, an outlet it can never find in the necessary routine of office administration. He was made for a life of action, and when once, in youth, he had thrown himself into the active study of political and industrial questions, every opportunity was seized for stating the results of that study. As a Social Democratic candidate for Parliament, Mr. Burns polled 598 votes at West Nottingham in 1885. In 1886 he was charged (with Messrs. Hyndman, Champion, and Williams) with seditious conspiracy—after an unemployed riot in the West End—and acquitted. In 1887 he suffered six weeks imprisonment (with Mr. R.B. Cunninghame Graham) for contesting the right of free speech in Trafalgar Square. In 1889 came the great London dock strike, and, with Messrs. Mann and Tillett, Mr. Burns was a chief leader of the dockers. Battersea returned him to the London County Council in 1889 and to the House of Commons in 1892. The Liberal Party promised a wider sphere of work than the Socialists could offer; political isolation was a barren business; and Mr. Burns gradually passed from the councils of the trade union movement to the Treasury Bench of a Liberal Ministry. But the Socialist convictions of early manhood had a lasting influence on their owner. These convictions have been mellowed by work; responsibility has checked and placed under subjection the old revolutionary ardour; experience finds the road to a co-operative commonwealth by no means a quick or easy route, and admits the necessity of compromise. But there is still a consciousness of the working class as a class in the speeches of Mr. Burns; and there is still the belief expressed that the working class must work out their own salvation, and that it is better the people should have the power to manage their own national and municipal affairs, and the wisdom to use that power aright, rather than that a benevolent bureaucracy should manage things for them. Mr. John Burns is an older man by twenty-five years than he was in the stormy days of the Trafalgar Square riots, and he is now a Privy Councillor and Cabinet Minister, but his character is little changed. His speeches on the settlement of the great Dock Strike of August, 1911, are the speeches of the man of 1889. Parliamentary life made sharper changes in the minds of Gladstone and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain than it has made in the mind of the Right Hon. John Burns. But Mr. Burns never admits that he possesses health and vigour beyond the average.
A working class leader of vastly different qualities is Mr. J. Keir Hardie, M.P. He, too, no less significant of democracy, stands as the representative of his class, claims always to be identified with it, to be accepted as its spokesman. A Lanarkshire miner and active trade unionist, Mr. Hardie has striven to create a working-class party in politics independent of Liberals and Conservatives; to him, more than to any other man, the existence of the Independent Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party—the latter consisting of the Independent Labour Party and the trade unions—may justly be said to be due. The political independence of an organised working class has been the one great idea of Mr. Hardie's public life. Not by any means his only idea, for Mr. Hardie has been the ever-ready supporter of all democratic causes and the faithful advocate of social reforms; but thegreatidea, the political pearl of great price, for which, if necessary, all else must be sacrificed. Only by this independence can democracy be achieved, and a more equal state of society be accomplished—so Mr. Hardie has preached to the working people for the last twenty-five years at public meetings and trade union congresses, travelling the length and breadth of Great Britain in his mission.
There is something of the poet in Mr. Keir Hardie but much more of the prophet, and withal a good deal of shrewd political common sense. Where Mr. John Burns wants, humanly, the approval and goodwill of his friends and neighbours for his work, Mr. Keir Hardie is content with the assurance of his own conscience; and in times of difficulty he chooses rather to walk alone, communing with his own heart, than to seek the consolations of social intercourse.
Mr. Burns is a citizen of London, a lover of its streets, at home in all its noise, a reveller in its festivities. Mr. Hardie belongs to his native land; he is happier on the hills of Lanarkshire than in the Parliament of Westminster; solitude has no terrors for him. Both men entered the House in 1892. Personal integrity, blameless private life, and a doggedness that will not acknowledge defeat, have had much to do with the success that both have won. For if Mr. Hardie remains a private member of the House of Commons while Mr. Burns is a Cabinet Minister, Mr. Hardie has lived to see an independent Labour Party of forty members in Parliament, and has himself been its accredited leader.
Again, exceptional gifts may be noted. An eloquence of speech, a rugged sincerity that carries conviction, a love of nature and of literature—all these things, controlled and tempered by will and refined by use, have won for Mr. Hardie a high regard and an affection for the cause he champions. For years Mr. Hardie was misrepresented in the Press, abused by political opponents and misunderstood by many of the working class. From 1895 to 1900 he was out of Parliament, rejected by the working-class electorate of South West Ham. But nothing turned Mr. Hardie from his policy of independence, or shook his faith in the belief that only by forming a political party of their own could the working people establish a social democracy. Merthyr Tydvil re-elected him to the House of Commons in 1900 at the very time when he was braving a strong public opinion by denouncing the South African War; and for Merthyr Mr. Hardie will sit as long as he is in Parliament.
It may safely be said that Mr. Hardie will never take office in a Liberal Ministry. The sturdy republicanism that keeps him from court functions and from the dinner parties of the rich and the great, and the strong conviction that Labour members do well to retain simple habits of life, are not qualities that impel men to join Governments.
Visionary as he is—and no less a visionary because he has seen some fulfilment of his hopes—so indifferent to public opinion that many have exclaimed at his indiscretions, with a religious temperament that makes him treat his political work as a solemn calling of God and gives prophetic fire to his public utterances, Mr. Keir Hardie may remain a private member of Parliament; but he also remains an outstanding figure in democratic politics, conspicuous in an age that has seen the working class rising cautiously to power. Mr. Hardie's influence with the politically minded of the working class has contributed in no small degree to the changes that are now at work. The ideal of a working class, educated and organised, taking up the reins of government and using its power in sober righteousness, has been preached by Mr. Hardie with a fervour that commands respect. He has made an appeal that has moved the hearts of men and women by its religious note, and hence it is very considerably from the ranks of Nonconformists with Puritan traditions that the Independent Labour Party has been recruited. Mr. Hardie is now fifty-five years of age. He has never been afraid of making mistakes, and he has never sought the applause of men. He has succeeded in arousing large numbers of people from a passive allegiance to the party governments of Liberals and Conservatives, and constrained them to march under a Labour banner at political contests. Whether the Labour Party in Parliament will remain a separate organisation or will steadily become merged in the Liberal Party, forming perhaps a definite left wing of that party: whether a sufficiently large number of voters will ever be found to make the Labour Party anything more than a group in Parliament: and whether the Independent Labour movement is not passing as Robert Owen's socialist movement and as the Chartist movement passed away in the middle of the nineteenth century, are questions that are yet to be answered. Democracy will go its own way in spite of the prophets. In any case, the work of Mr. Keir Hardie has been fruitful and valuable. For it has made for a quickened intelligence, and a more exalted view of human life amongst the working people; and it has increased the sense of personal and civic responsibility. It has made for civilisation, in fact, and it has insisted on the importance of things that democracy can only forget to its own destruction.
The third distinguished working-class leader in Parliament is Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, the elected leader of the Labour Party, and its secretary since its formation. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is for the working class, but, though born of labouring people, and educated in a Scotch board school, has long ceased to be of them. Never a workman, and never associated with the workman's trade union, Mr. MacDonald went from school teaching to journalism and to a political private secretaryship, and so settled down quickly into the habits and customs of the ruling middle class. Marriage united him still more closely with the middle class, and strengthened his position by removing all fear of poverty, and providing opportunities for travel.
From the first Mr. MacDonald's political life has been directed clearly to one end—the assumption of power to be used for the social improvement of the people. And this ambition has carried him far, and may carry him farther. With the industry and persistence that are common to his race, Mr. MacDonald has taken every means available to educate himself on all political questions; with the result that he is accepted to-day as one of the best informed members of the House of Commons. He taught himself to speak, and his speeches are appreciated. He taught himself to write, and his articles on political questions have long been welcome in the monthly reviews, and his books on Socialism are widely read. Twenty years ago the Liberal Party promised no political career to earnest men like Mr. MacDonald, men anxious for social reform. The future seemed to be with the Socialists, and with the Independent Labour Party. When the Liberal downfall came in 1895, it was thought that the fortunes of Liberalism were ended. Native prudence has restrained Mr. Ramsay MacDonald from pioneering, but once the Independent Labour Party, of Mr. Keir Hardie's desire, was set going, and promised an effectual means for political work, Mr. MacDonald joined it, and did well to do so. As an ordinary Liberal or Radical Member of Parliament, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald would never have had the opportunities the Labour Party has given him. He only entered the House of Commons in 1906—at the age of forty—and already as leader of the Labour Party he is a distinguished Parliamentary figure, of whose future great things are foretold.
Mr. MacDonald has studied politics as other people study art or science. He has trained himself to become a statesman as men and women train themselves to become painters and musicians. He has learnt the rules of the game, marked the way of failure and the road to success, and his career may be pondered as an example to the young. No generous outburst of wrath disfigures Mr. MacDonald's speeches, no rash utterance is ever to be apologised for, no hasty impulse to be regretted. In the Labour movement Mr. MacDonald won success over older men by an indefatigable industry, a marked aptitude for politics, and by an obvious prosperity. Other things being equal, it is inevitable that in politics, as in commerce, the needy, impecunious man will be rejected in favour of the man with an assured balance at the bank, and the man of regular habits preferred before a gifted but uncertain genius. The Socialist and Labour movements of our time have claimed the services of many gifted men and women, and the annals of these movements are full of heroic self-sacrifice. But an aptitude for politics was not a distinguishing mark of Socialists, and therefore Mr. MacDonald's experience and abilities gave him at once a prominent place in the council of the Independent Labour Party, and soon made him the controlling power in that organisation. With the formation of the National Labour Party a very much wider realm was to be conquered, and Mr. MacDonald has been as successful here as in the earlier Independent Labour Party. But now the Labour Party having made Mr. MacDonald its chairman, it can do no more for him. He is but forty-five years old, his health is good, his talents are recognised; by his aversion from everything eccentric or explosive, the public have understood that he is trustworthy. We may expect to see Mr. Ramsay MacDonald a Cabinet Minister in a Liberal-Labour Government. It may even happen that he will become Prime Minister in such a Government. He is a "safe" man, without taint of fanaticism. His sincerity for the improvement of the lot of the poor does not compel him to extravagant speech on the subject, and his imagination is sufficient to exclude dullness of view. He has proved that the application of Socialist principles does not require any violent disturbance of the existing order, and is compatible with social respectability and political authority. A public opinion that would revolt against the notion of an ex-workman becoming Prime Minister would not be outraged in any way by Mr. MacDonald holding that office. Mr. Burns and Mr. Hardie have remained in their own and in the public eye representatives of the working class, all education notwithstanding. Mr. MacDonald has long cut himself off from the labouring class of his boyhood. He has adapted himself easily and naturally to the life and manners of the wealthier professional classes, and he moves without constraint in the social world of high politics, as one born to the business. No recognition of the workman is possible in Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's case, and this fact is greatly in his favour with the multitudes who still hold that England should be ruled by "gentlemen."
The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George is a striking figure in our new democracy, and his character and position are to be noted. It was not as a labour representative but as the chosen mouthpiece of the working middle class, enthusiastic for Welsh nationalism, that Mr. Lloyd George entered Parliament in 1890, at the age of twenty-seven. With his entry into the Cabinet, in company with Mr. John Burns, at the Liberal revival in 1905, government by aristocracy was ended; and when Mr. Lloyd George went from the Board of Trade to the Chancellorship of the Exchequer, startling changes were predicted in national finance. These predictions were held to have been fulfilled in the Budget of 1909. The House of Lords considered the financial proposals of the Budget so revolutionary that it took the unprecedented course of rejecting the Bill, and thus precipitated the dispute between the two Houses of Parliament, which was brought to a satisfactory end by the Parliament Act of 1911. Romantic and idealist from the first, and with unconcealed ambition and considerable courage, Mr. Lloyd George, with the strong backing of his Welsh compatriots, fought his way into the front rank of the Liberal Party during the ten years (1895-1905) of opposition. More than once Mr. George pitted himself against Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in the days of the Conservative ascendancy and the South African War, and his powers as a Parliamentary debater won general acknowledgment. In youth Mr. Lloyd George, full of the fervour of Mazzini's democratic teaching, dreamed of Wales as a nation, a republic, with himself, perhaps, as its first president. Welsh nationalism could not breed a Home Rule Party as Irish nationalism has done, and Mr. Lloyd George has found greater scope for his talents in the Liberal Party. The Welsh "question" has dwindled into a campaign for the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales, a warfare of Dissenters and Churchmen, and to Mr. Lloyd George there were bigger issues at stake than the position of the Welsh Church.
The Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P.THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.Photo: Reginald Haines, Southampton Row, W.C.
Already Mr. Lloyd George's Budget and his speeches in support of the Budget have made the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer familiar to the people of Great Britain; and now, in the eager discussion on his Bill for National Insurance, that name is still more loudly spoken. Hated by opponents and praised by admirers, denounced and extolled, Mr. Lloyd George enjoys the tumult he arouses. His passionate speeches for the poor provoke the sympathy of the working class; his denunciations of the rich stir the anger of all who fear social revolution. Hostile critics deny any constructive statesmanship in Mr. Lloyd George's plans and orations, and prophesy a short-lived tenure of office. Radical supporters hail him as a saviour of society, and are confident that under his leadership democracy will enter the promised land of peace and prosperity for all. Neutral minds doubt whether Mr. Lloyd George is sufficiently well-balanced for the responsibilities of high office, and express misgivings lest the era of social reform be inaugurated too rapidly. The obvious danger of a fall always confronts ambition in politics, but the danger is only obvious to the onlooker. Pressing forward the legislative measures he has set his heart upon, and impatient to carry out the policy that seems to him of first importance to the State, Mr. Lloyd George pays little heed to the criticism of friends or foes. A supreme self-confidence carries him along, and the spur of ambition is constantly pricking. Political co-operation is difficult for such a man, and an indifference to reforms that are not of his initiation, and a willingness to wreck legislation that cannot bear his name, are a weakness in Mr. Lloyd George that may easily produce a fall. Only a very strong man can afford to say that a reform shall be carried in his way, or not at all, in cheerful disregard of the wishes of colleagues and followers. Mr. Lloyd George's attitude on the question of Women's Suffrage is characteristic. Professing a strong belief in the justice of women's enfranchisement, he assumes that he can safely oppose all Women's Suffrage Bills that are not of his framing, even when these Bills are the work of ardent Liberals. He would have the measure postponed until he himself can bring in a Reform Bill, to the end that the enfranchisement of women may be associated with his name for all time.
It is dangerous to the statesman, the ambition that finds satisfaction less in the success of a party or the triumph of a cause, than in the personal victory. Dangerous, because it brings with it an isolation from friends and colleagues. These come to stand coldly aloof, and then, if a slip occurs or a mistake is made, and there comes a fall, no hands are stretched out to repair the damage or restore the fallen. The statesman who is suspected of "playing for his own hand" may laugh at the murmurs of discontent amongst his followers while all goes well for him, but when he falls he falls beyond recovery. No one can foretell the end of Mr. Lloyd George's career, but his popularity with the multitude will not make up to him for the want of support in Parliament should an error of judgment undo him. The pages of political history are strewn with the stories of high careers wrecked in a feverish haste for fame, that overlooked dangers close at hand; of eminent politicians broken in the full course of active life by the mere forgetfulness of the existence of other persons. A simple miscalculation of forces, and from lofty station a minister tumbles into the void.
The stability of the working-class leaders makes their future a matter of fairly safe conjecture. Mr. Lloyd George, romantic in temperament, covetous of honour, confident of popularity, but heedless of good-will alienated and of positive ill-will created, has reached the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. Will he climb still higher in office, or will he pass to the limbo peopled by those who were and are not? Time alone can tell. But in this year of grace 1911 Mr. Lloyd George, incarnation of the hard-working middle class, is a very distinct personality in the government of the country, and his presence in the Cabinet a fact in the history of democracy.
More than once since 1831 the House of Lords has come into conflict with the House of Commons when a Liberal Government has been in power. A compromise was effected between the two Houses over the Disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869, the Lords, on the whole, giving way. When the Lords proposed to "amend" the Army Reform Bill (for abolishing the purchase of commissions) in 1871, Gladstone overpowered their opposition by advising the Crown to cancel the Royal Warrant which made purchase legal, and to issue a new warrant ending the sale of commissions. This device completely worsted the House of Lords, for a refusal to pass the Bill under the circumstances merely deprived the holders of commissions of the compensation awarded in the Bill. The Army Reform Bill became law, but strong objection was taken by many Liberals to the sudden exercise of the Royal Prerogative. In 1884 the Lords refused to pass the Bill for the enfranchisement of the rural labourer unless a Bill was brought in at the same time for a redistribution of seats. After some discussion Gladstone yielded, the Redistribution Bill was drawn up, and passed the Commons simultaneously with the Franchise Bill in the Lords.
Several Bills have been rejected or "amended" by the Lords since the Liberals came into power in 1906, and the crisis came when the Budget was rejected in 1909. In June, 1907, the following resolution was passed by the House of Commons by 432 to 147 votes: "That in order to give effect to the will of the people, as expressed by their elected representatives, it is necessary that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons shall prevail." This resolution was embodied in the Parliament Bill of 1911. Between 1907 and 1911 came (1) the rejection of the Budget, November, 1909; (2) the General Election of January, 1910, and the return of a majority of 124 (Liberal, Labour, and Irish Nationalist) in support of the Government; (3) the passing of resolutions (majority, 105) for limiting the Veto of the Lords; (4) the failure of a joint Conference between leading Liberals and Conservatives on the Veto question, followed by (5) the General Election of December, 1910, and the return of the Liberals with a united majority of 126.
The Parliament Bill declared that every Money Bill sent up by the Commons, if not passed unamended by the Lords within a month, should receive the Royal assent and become an Act of Parliament notwithstanding, and that every Bill sent up for three successive sessions shall in the third session become an Act of Parliament without the assent of the Lords.
The Lords passed this Bill with amendments which the Commons refused to accept, and the Parliament Bill was returned to the Lords in August. But, as in 1832, the Prime Minister announced that he had received guarantees from the Crown that peers should be created to secure the passage of the Bill if it was again rejected; and to avoid the making of some three or four hundred Liberal peers, Lord Lansdowne—following the example of the Duke of Wellington—advised the Conservatives in the House of Lords to refrain from opposition. The result of this abstention was that the Lords' amendments were not persisted in, and the Bill passed the Lords on August 10th, 1911, by 131 to 114 votes.
By this Parliament Act the Lords' veto is now strictly limited. The Lords may reject a Bill for two sessions, but if the Commons persist, then the Bill passes into law, whether the Lords approve or disapprove.
The real grievance against the House of Lords, from the democratic standpoint, has been that its veto was only used when a Liberal government was in power. There is not even a pretence by the Upper House of revising the measures sent from the Commons by a Conservative ministry; yet over and over again, and especially in the last five years, Liberal measures have been rejected, or "amended" against the will of the Commons, by the Lords after the electors have returned the Liberals to power. The permanent and overwhelming Conservative majority in the Lords acts on the assumption that a Liberal ministry does not represent the will of the people, an assumption at variance with the present theory of democratic government, and in contradiction to the constitutional practice of the Crown. The great size of the House of Lords makes the difficulty of dealing with this majority so acute. In 1831 the creation of forty peerages would have been sufficient to meet the Tory opposition to the Reform Bill; to-day it is said that about four hundred are required to give the Liberals a working majority in the Lords. The rapid making of peers began under George III., but from 1830 to the present day Prime Minister after Prime Minister has added to the membership of the House of Lords with generous hand. Satire, savage and contemptuous, has been directed against the new peers by critics of various opinions, but still the work of adding to the House of hereditary legislators goes gaily on, and Liberal Prime Ministers have been as active as their Tory opponents in adding to the permanent Conservative majority in the Lords; for only a small minority of Liberal peers retain their allegiance to the Liberal Party.
Thackeray gave us his view of the making of peers in the years when Lord Melbourne and his Whig successors were steadily adding to the Upper House. (Between 1835 and 1841 Melbourne made forty-four new peers, and twenty-eight more were added by 1856.)
"A man becomes enormously rich, or he jobs successfully in the aid of a Minister, or he wins a great battle, or executes a treaty, or is a clever lawyer who makes a multitude of fees and ascends the bench; and the country rewards him for ever with a gold coronet (with more or less balls or leaves) and a title, and a rank as legislator. 'Your merits are so great,' says the nation, 'that your children shall be allowed to reign over us, in a manner. It does not in the least matter that your eldest son is a fool; we think your services so remarkable that he shall have the reversion of your honours when death vacates your noble shoes.'"
J.H. Bernard, in his "Theory of the Constitution" (1835), was no less emphatic:—
"As the affair is managed now, the peerage, though sometimes bestowed as the reward of merit, on men who have adorned particular professions, is yet much more frequently—nine times out of ten—employed by the minister of the day as his instrument to serve particular views of public policy; and is often given to actual demerit—to men who hire themselves out to do his commands through thick and thin. The peerage is now full of persons who have obtained possession of it by disreputable means."
But in spite of satire and hostile criticism members of the House of Lords have always enjoyed a considerable social popularity. They are widely esteemed for their titles, even by those who denounce hereditary legislators and desire to abolish the Second Chamber.
Disraeli created six new peers in 1867-8, and seventeen more from 1875 to 1880, in addition to conferring the earldom of Beaconsfield on himself. Yet Disraeli had written in "Coningsby" (1844):—
"We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church, the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts, and the borough-mongering of our own times. Those are the three main sources of the existing peerage of England, and, in my opinion, disgraceful ones."
Gladstone made fifty peers in his four premierships, and Mr. Herbert Paul, the Liberal historian of "Modern England," makes the following comments:—
"No minister since Pitt had done so much as Mr. Gladstone to enlarge and thereby to strengthen the House of Lords.
"Mr. Gladstone was lavish in his distribution of peerages, and rich men who were politically active, either in the House of Commons or behind the scenes, might hope to be rewarded with safe seats elsewhere."
The Passing of the Parliament Bill in the House of LordsTHE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDSFrom the Drawing by S. Begg.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman exceeded all previous records of the last century by making twenty new peers in less than two years—1905 to 1907—and Mr. Asquith maintained this vigorous policy by thirteen new creations in the first year of his premiership. Already many of these peers, whose titles are not more than six years old, vote with the Conservatives. Great Britain is now the only country in the world that combines a democratic form of government with a second chamber of hereditary legislators, and many proposals are on foot for the reform of the House of Lords. While the Conservatives are more anxious to change the constitution of the Upper House, and to make it a stronger and more representative assembly, the Liberals prefer that its power of veto should be abolished. No Act of Parliament was required to abolish the veto of the Crown on Acts of Parliament, but the growth of a democratic public opinion did not prove strong enough to end the veto of the Lords on the Bills passed by a Liberal majority in the Commons, and therefore the Parliament Act was passed.
The popularity of the Crown has become increasingly wider and more general in the years that have seen the British people steadily taking up the work of self-government. The fear of a hostile demonstration by the inhabitants of London kept William IV. from visiting the Mansion House in 1830, and the death of that monarch in 1837 evoked no national mourning. Queen Victoria, unknown to the people on her accession, had the very great advantage of Lord Melbourne's political advice in the early years of her reign. Her marriage, in 1840, with the Prince Consort—who himself learnt much from Melbourne—brought a wise counsellor to the assistance of the throne. "I study the politics of the day with great industry," wrote the Prince Consort. "I speak quite openly to the Ministers on all subjects, and endeavour quietly to be of as much use to Victoria as I can." The Prince Consort saw quickly that "if monarchy was to rise in popularity, it could only be by the sovereign leading a good life, and keeping quite aloof from party." The days of a profligate court and of "the King's friends" in politics were past and gone; the royalinfluencewas to succeed the royalprerogative.[87]
The aloofness from political partisanship has been faithfully maintained by the successors of Queen Victoria, and great as the royal influence may be in the social life of the wealthier classes, it is certain that no such influence operates in the casting of votes by the people at Parliamentary elections. No one suspects the King of desiring the return of Liberals over Tories, or of favouring the Tory programme rather than the Liberal; and this neutrality is the surest guarantee of the continued popularity of the Crown.
For some years in the late 'seventies and early 'eighties of the nineteenth century Republicanism was the creed of many ardent working-class Radicals in England. Charles Bradlaugh was its chief exponent, and both Mr. Joseph Chamberlain and the late Sir Charles Dilke were regarded as Republicans before they entered Gladstone's Ministry in 1880. The Republican movement waned before Bradlaugh's death. He himself was "led to feel that agitation for an ideal form of government was less directly fruitful than agitation against the abuses of class privilege; and in the last dozen years of his life, his political work went mainly to reforms within the lines of the Constitution."[88]
With the rise of the Socialist movement in England in 1884-5, and the celebration of the Queen's Jubilee in 1887, Republicanism became utterly moribund, and nothing save an attempt on the part of the sovereign to take a definite side in party politics, or a notorious lapse from the morals required of persons in office of State, could revive it.
The interest in Socialism was fatal to the Republican movement, because it turned the enthusiasm of the active spirits in democratic politics from the desire for radical changes in theformof government, to the crusade for economic changes, and the belief in a coming social revolution. The existence of monarchy seemed a small and comparatively unimportant affair to men and women who were hoping to get poverty abolished, and the landlords and capitalists expropriated either by direct revolution, or by the act of a House of Commons, dominated by working men with Socialist convictions.
The national celebrations at the Queen's Jubilee in 1887 marked the beginning of the popular revival in pageantry and official ceremonial. In the Church of England this revival began some forty years earlier, and it has, in our day, changed the whole conduct of public worship. The revival of Roman Catholicism in England with its processions and solemn ritual has been equally significant. By gratifying the common human instinct for spectacle and drama the monarchy has gained the popular affections.
The Whigs scoffed at pageants and symbols; the earlier Puritans had proscribed ceremonial as savouring of idolatry, and feared any manifestation of beauty as a snare of the devil. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, England began to throw off the shackles of Puritanism, and to lose all interest in Whiggery. The new democracy was neither coldly Deist, nor austerely Republican. It has shown no inclination to inaugurate a reign of "pure reason" in religion or politics, but has boldly and cheerfully adopted symbolism and pageantry. Friendly societies and trade unions have their badges, banners, and buttons. The Roman Catholic Church grows in popularity with the working class, and in many towns and cities the Church of England and the Salvation Army are distinctly popular. On the other hand, the Nonconformist churches confess annually to a decreasing membership, and Secularist and Ethical societies have but the smallest following.
The royal processions and the pageantry of monarchy have provided a spectacular display that average human nature enjoys. The symbols and trappings of monarchy must be shown if the sovereign is to be popular; they add to the gaiety of life, and people are grateful for the warmth of colour they impart to our grey streets. The sovereign in encouraging the renewed and growing love for pageants and ceremonial has discerned the signs of the times. Modern democracy does not desire that kings or priests shall rule; but it does require that they shall on State occasions and in the performance of their office, be clad in kingly and priestly robes, and by their proceedings enrich the dignity of public life, and the beauty of public worship.
The rise of Socialism in the 'eighties not only diverted the attention of working-class leaders from political reform, but it substituted for the destruction of monarchy and the House of Lords a reconstruction of society as the goal of democracy; and the Socialist teaching has been of enduring and penetrating influence.
Fifty years earlier in the nineteenth century, Robert Owen had preached a Socialist crusade with strenuous persuasion—but, ignoring politics, he outlived the temporary success of his cause. The utopian Socialism of Owen flourished and died, as Chartism, under different treatment, flourished and died.
The "scientific" Socialism of Karl Marx was planned on stronger foundations. It brought a message of hope; it revealed how the change was to be wrought that would "emancipate the workers of the world from the slavery of wage service"; and it insisted that this change was inevitable. On the Continent, and more particularly in Germany, the Social Democratic Party has gained an enormous working-class support, and every election adds to its strength.
In England the Social Democratic Federation—now the Social Democratic Party—was founded in 1884 by Mr. H.M. Hyndman; but in spite of its untiring efforts, it has never won the sympathy of the trade unions, nor the confidence of the working-class electorate. Its Parliamentary candidatures rarely attract attention, and it is not a force in Labour politics. Nevertheless, indirectly, the influence of the Social Democratic Party has been very considerable. Mr. John Burns, and many another Labour leader, have passed through its ranks, and a social conscience has been made sensitive to the miseries of the poor, largely by the voices—that will not be silenced—of this comparatively small company.
The Fabian Society also began its work of educating public opinion to Socialism in 1884, but, unlike the Social Democratic Federation, it made no proposals for the creation of a Socialist Party or the organisation of the working class into a separate political party. Mainly, its influence can be seen in the increase of statistical knowledge and of State interference in the conditions of life and labour in the working class.
The Independent Labour Party was not formed till 1892, and while professing Socialism, it has aimed rather at securing the return of labour members to Parliament, and to local governing councils than at the conversion of the working class to a dogmatic social democracy. Often frankly opportunist and experimental, the Independent Labour Party and its offspring, the Labour Party in the House of Commons, have followed the national custom in politics of attacking and redressing evident evils, and have done this with considerable success.
But while the Socialists have compelled the attention of all classes to existing social ills, and have made social reform the chief concern of all politicians, the idea of a social democracy steadily recedes from the political vision, and the conscious movement to Socialism falters. Socialist workmen in Parliament or on city councils soon find themselves absorbed in the practical work of legislation or administration, and learn that there is neither leisure nor outlet for revolutionary propaganda. The engrossing character of public work destroys the old inclination to break up the existing order, for the Socialist member of Parliament, or city councillor interested in his work, has become part of the machinery responsible for the existing order, and without losing his sympathy for the labouring people is content that the amelioration of society shall come, as it now seems to him it must come, by slow and orderly stages and without violence. The very return of so many Labour members to Parliament and to local councils has damped down the fires of Socialism, by placing in positions of authority and responsibility, and thereby withdrawing them from the army of disaffection, the ablest leaders of the working-class movement. The Labour member who cannot settle down to legislative or administrative work, but attempts to play the agitator's part in the House of Commons or the council chamber, is generally doomed to banishment from official public life, and is allowed to remain an agitator.
Mr. John Burns may be denounced as a renegade by Socialist critics, but a working-class electorate returns him to Parliament. Mr. Cunninghame Graham and Mr. Victor Grayson may be applauded for their consistency by Socialist audiences, but working-class constituencies are loth to return such representatives to the House of Commons.
As Socialism quietly passes out of the vision of the political world, and from a definite inspiration to democracy becomes a dim and remote possibility of the future, Social Reform takes its place. Not only in Great Britain, but throughout Europe, the social reformers or "revisionists" are gaining the mastery over the scientific Marxian Socialists in democratic politics. In Great Britain where "practical," or experimental, politics have always prevailed over political theory, the passing of positive Socialist dogma is naturally more obvious. Social Reform is now the cry of Liberals and Conservatives alike. The old Liberal doctrines oflaissez faire, unrestricted competition, and the personal liberty of the subject are as dead as the Stuart doctrine of the divine right of kings. The old Liberal hostility to State interference in trade or commerce, and to compulsory social legislation has melted away at the awakened social conscience. It still has its adherents—Lord Cromer and Mr. Harold Cox repeat the ancient watch-words of Victorian Liberalism, and they are regarded with a respect mingled with curiosity, as strange survivals of a far-off age—but no popular echo follows their utterances. Pensions for the aged, better provision for the sick and the infirm, a more careful attention to the well-being of children, national health, some cure for destitution, and some remedy for unemployment—these are the matters that a Liberal Government is concerned about to-day. And the Conservatives are no less sincere in their willingness to help in these matters. Legislative proposals for social reform are treated as non-party questions, and the chief item in the Conservative programme, Tariff Reform, was adopted and is advocated mainly as a social reform, a cure for industrial evils, and the misery of unemployment.
Socialism proposed the abolition of poverty, and the common ownership and control of the land and the means of production, distribution, and exchange as the solution of economic questions.
Social Reform proposes to mitigate the hardships of life for the multitude, and, while leaving land and capital in private hands, to compel by taxation provision for the wants of the people. Its aim is the abolition of destitution by State assistance to voluntary effort, and the gradual raising of the standard of life. It does not propose to remove the cause of poverty.
Socialism would place the democracy in possession of the means of wealth. Social Reform requires the State to tax wealth and provide for the people. It promises a living wage, decent housing accommodation, an insurance against unemployment, and security in old age, and leaves the question of national ownership or private ownership to be settled by posterity.
Apart from the ideals of Socialism, the democratic ideal of a community owning the full value of its land was presented by Henry George, an American economist, in 1879, and his book "Progress and Poverty," was at once received with enthusiasm by certain reformers in England and America. George visited England in 1881, 1884, and 1889, and his visits resulted in a strong movement for the taxation of land values. This movement has been inspired by an ideal of a democratic community as definite as the Socialist ideal, and it has grown steadily in popular favour as the justice of a tax on land values has been recognised. "Progress and Poverty" is the bible of the Land Reformers, as Marx's "Capital" is (or was) the bible of Socialists. It is claimed that a tax on land values is the true remedy of social and economic ills, and that democracy can eradicate the root-cause of poverty by such a tax. In this belief the followers of Henry George have preached the Single Tax, as it is called, with unquenchable fervour, and the Liberal Party has been gradually won over—if not to the Single Tax, at least to a tax on land values. Many Conservatives, too, favour the taxation of land values in cities, and all the principal municipalities have petitioned Parliament in favour of this method of taxation. But it is the democratic ideals of Henry George that have been the life of the movement for the Single Tax, and but for these ideals the movement would never have become a living influence towards democracy, or inspired a social enthusiasm.
The charm about the Single Tax propaganda is that its ideals of democracy do not discourage the practical politician and the average citizen from supporting what seems a necessary and reasonable proposal. Without committing themselves at all to Henry George's full scheme for the total abolition of land monopoly by a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on all land values, and without abandoning the common British suspicion of the doctrinaire and the political idealist, the ordinary shopkeeper and householder are quite of opinion that urban values in land can be taxed legitimately for the benefit of the community, and that democracy would do well to decree some moderate tax on land values for the relief of the overtaxed non-landowner.
So the taxation of land values is presented by its advocates as a social reform more radical and democratic than all other social reforms, as a reform that in fact would make democracy master of its own land, and the people free from the curse of poverty; and it is accepted by the great mass of working people as a just and useful method of raising revenue for local and imperial needs.
Socialism, social reform, the Single Tax—various are the ideals of a democratic people at work at the business of government, and various are the means proposed to establish the democracy in economic freedom.