Alfred Farthing Robbins

“ The doctrine is fatal to liberty, disguise it by what pretence of love for the democracy its upholders may. And is the danger which lurks beneath it imaginary? Read the promises upon which the present majority in the House of Commons obtained its power; study the fashion in which these have been broken; and then consider whether a denial of the divine right of Parliaments is, as the Tories contend, treason to the democracy.
Liberalism, at all events, will have neither act nor part in any denial of popular rights; rather it will be ever on the move towards a fuller extension of them. ”

“ No private business could possibly pay if it adopted such a system; and what must be done is to treat the Government service upon the same lines as a flourishing private concern. The old notion that a State should provide a maximum of pay for a minimum of work, and that a Government office should be a paradise for the idle and incompetent, must be swept away. It is nothing less than a scandal that taxes should be wrung in an ever-increasing amount from the toilers of the country to pay for work which, under efficient management, could be better done at a less price. ”

“ And in the future as in the past, with perfect liberty as its fixed ideal, and with peace, retrenchment, and reform as the methods by which it wishes that ideal to be obtained, it will press onward and upward, and ever onward and upward, until England, now regarded as the mother of free nations, shall be but one of a gigantic brotherhood of freedom, embracing every civilized people that may then inhabit the globe. ”

“ But, out of dislike for any cut-and-dried programme of several measures to be accepted wholesale and without question, the party must not be allowed to drift into aimlessness. As long as it exists it must exist for work, and its fruit must not be phrases but facts. Liberalism can never return to the days when it munched the dry remainder biscuit of worn-out Whiggery. A hide-bound programme may be a bad thing, but nothing worse can be imagined than the string of airy nothings which used to do duty for a policy among the latter-day Whigs. ”

“ We have got rid of the greater inequalities: purchase in the army, nomination in the civil service, have gone the way of the separate form at school, the distinctive tuft at the University, for the sons of peers. We have got rid of the old Tory idea that the people have nothing to do with the laws except to obey them; we now possess household, we may soon possess adult, suffrage. But are we, therefore, to do no more? Because we travel faster than our fathers, do we frown upon all improvements in locomotion? ”

“ It cannot be too strongly repeated that in these days we have so much of liberty, compared with our forefathers, that some of us are tempted to fold our hands, to rest, and to be thankful, and to lose by sloth that which has been gained by struggle. The tendency to think that we possess all the freedom that the heart of man can desire is one that may act upon us as the wish for repose does upon those toiling through the snowdrifts, and, in the guise of slumber, may bring death. The heights of liberty are not yet scaled; much remains to be done before perfect freedom is attained. ”

“ It is to that party that modern England owes its liberties, and it is to that party alone that it can look for their preservation and extension. Clouds may overshadow its immediate future, old friends may drop away, the enemy may be pressing at the gate, but Liberalism will live, will thrive, and will make the hearts of our descendants glad that there are those who remain faithful to it to-day in the midst of dangers and discouragements, which cause sinking of heart only to the faint of spirit, and doubt only to the weak of soul. ”

“ For the People’s Chamber is not merely the most powerful [Pg 72] portion of the High Court of Parliament; it is not alone the central force of the British Constitution, to which kings and nobles have had, and may again have, to bow; it is the directly elected body before whose gaze every wrong can be displayed, and to whose power even the humblest can look for redress. It deals forth justice to the myriad millions of India as to a solitary injured Englishman; it is a sounding board which echoes the claims of a single peasant or an entire people ”

“ They are, it is true, in a minority at this moment, but they do not forget that all great causes have three stages—first to be laughed at, next to be looked at, and last to be loved. Home Rule has certainly reached the second stage; it will soon reach the third. The Liberals have been beaten before, but they have always won in the end. And it is well to be beaten sometimes. If life were all sunshine we should find it oppressive; an occasional cloud serves to temper the heat. To the Liberals, as to nature itself, a misty morning is often the prelude to the brightest day. ”

“ This is another mistake, for political questions are so intimately bound up with the comfort, the fortune, and even the fate of every citizen of a free country, that, although he may shut his eyes to them, they press upon him at every turn. It would be a very good world if each could do as he liked and none be the worse; but the world is not so constituted, and it is politics that lessen the consequent friction. For the whole system of government is covered by the term; and there is not an hour of the day in which one is free from the influence of government. ”

“ They continue to imagine that the clique of some club-house controls public events, and that the whisper of the party whip is all-powerful with the constituencies. They do not recognize that voters are not now an appanage of the Reform or the Carlton, because the groove they have hollowed out for themselves is too deep to allow them to look over the edge. But in nothing more than in politics is it true that the proper study of mankind is man.
And, if one moves among the masses of his fellows, he will find a growing desire to put to practical use the tools the State has given them. ”

“ I say that we have no right whatever to insist upon a union between Ireland and Great Britain upon our terms only.... I am one of those who admit—as every sensible man must admit—that an Act which the Parliament of the United Kingdom has passed, the Parliament of the United Kingdom can repeal. And further, I am willing to admit what everybody in England allows with regard to every foreign country, [Pg 24] that any nation, believing it to be its interest, has a right both to ask for and to strive for national independence. ”

“ Go into Canterbury Cathedral to-day, and there see the chapel set apart for the French refugees, driven from their country for conscience’ sake; remember how, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the unhappy Huguenots fled to England to do good service to their adopted country by establishing here the manufacture of silk. Never forget how advantageous it has been for Englishmen to have the whole world open to their endeavours; and hesitate long before attempting to deny to others that right of free movement in labour which has been and is of such immense advantage to ourselves. ”

“ But to approach public affairs from that point, and to judge them solely on that principle, is as reasonable as to use green spectacles and complain of the colour of the sky. Politics should be looked at without prejudice, but with the recollection that in them are concerned many of our best and wisest men. If that be done, and the mind kept open for the reception of facts, there is little doubt of the admission that there is a deep reality in politics, and a reality in which every one is concerned. ”

“ That is a matter for the people to accomplish; let us remove every legalized hindrance to their doing it by their own capacities, but when we have done that they must do the stomach-filling for themselves. The State may and does feed the unfortunate, but, if it is to feed the idle, it will have to make the idle work for their food. There is no necessity either in law or in morals to tax those who work for the advantage of those who do not; and the most perfect State will be that in which the lazy and worthless will be made to labour, and the toilers be protected from being by them despoiled. ”