Cecil Chesterton

“ Doubtless the Tories are stupid and ineffectual enough, doubtless they are too much controlled by landed interests and capitalist rings, to deal with social evils very courageously. But at least they have this great advantage over their enemies, that they are not obliged to reconcile everything they do with the exploded economic dogmas of Benthamism, so that the insight and progressive instincts of their abler leaders have been able to force them farther along the path of progress than the sheer pressure of political necessity has been able to force the equally reluctant Liberals. ”

“ If it is to be of benefit to anybody this revenue must be used by the State as industrial capital. That is to say the socialisation of industry must go hand in hand with the reform of taxation.
Now what the Labour party really wants just now is two or three genuine installments of Socialism on which to concentrate its energies. A party without a programme is always an absurdity; a labour party without a programme is an absurdity passing the just limits of farce. ”

“ It is therefore particularly disheartening to find that “Liberal principles” are apparently as sacrosanct in the eyes of many Socialists as in those of the Liberals themselves. That Socialists [Pg 36] also denounce the idea of a State Church, that Socialists also rail at Imperialism and condemn “bloated armaments,” that Socialists also proclaim the universal holiness and perfection of Free Trade—this is the really extraordinary and disturbing fact.
This, though none seems to see it, is the real root of the difficulties which beset every attempt to form an independent Socialist or Labour Party. ”

“ An old party can live for a long while on catchwords and prejudices, but you cannot build a new party up without some definite political ideas. But these doctrines and ideas must not be a mere re-hash of exploded Liberal doctrines and ideas plus a theoretic belief in “the socialization of all the means, etc.” The new party need not call itself Socialist,—perhaps had better not do so,—but its attitude towards practical matters must be effectively socialistic. It must stand for the rights of the community as emphatically as the older Liberalism stood for the rights of the individual. ”

“ It is equally absurd and unworthy. If we want an Empire, if we want a strong foreign policy, if we want vigour and efficiency—we must be prepared to pay for it. If we think the price too high, then, in heaven’s name, let us be honest and admit that the Little Englanders were in the right all along. Do not let us court an easy but most contemptible popularity by swaggering as Imperialists, when what we really [Pg 164] want is all the sweets of Empire but none of the burdens. That is what “Liberal Imperialism” seems to mean. Indeed Liberal Imperialism has proved nothing better than a fizzle. ”

“ The fact is that our present Poor Law was the first product of middle class Liberalism, flushed with its stupendous victory of 1832. It is founded unmistakeably on the principles of that creed, which, believing in the eternal justice of “economic harmonies,” regarded the fact of a poor man being out of work as convincing proof of his worthlessness and criminality. It is as impossible for us, as the old Poor Law was for them. ”

“ Nothing, I conceive, is so likely to put a little of the fear of God into the hearts of our Liberal and Conservative rulers as the knowledge that they have to deal with a democratic army and a democracy trained in arms. This, I know, will sound shockingly heterodox to idealistic persons who are fond of repeating (in defiance of universal human experience) the foolish maxim of John Bright, the Quaker apologist for plutocratic Anarchism, that “force is no remedy,” and the equally unhistorical statement that “violence always injures the cause of those who use it.” ”

“ With the appalling evidences of physical degeneration confronting us, we cannot, whether we are Socialists or Labourites or only decently humane and patriotic Englishmen, do without a social policy. In the last resort, all progress, all empire, all efficiency depends upon the kind of race we breed. If we are breeding the people badly neither the most perfect constitution nor the most skilful diplomacy will save us from shipwreck. ”

“ To exclude the foreigner as a foreigner is clearly protection of the most bare-faced kind; and the proposal had to be recommended to a body which had just declared in favour of unmitigated Free Trade. Then some genius had an almost miraculous inspiration. It was suggested that the foreigner ought to be excluded, not because he was a foreigner, not even because his labour was cheap, but because he could not read the Home Office regulations which are hung up in the mines. ”

“ But, if there is anything which the whole history of human institutions proves, it is this, that the people that does not know how to defend its liberties will lose them, and that it is not the strong and aggressive nation but the weak and defenceless nation that has cause to dread aggression from its neighbours.
In a word the doctrine of non-resistance and its consequence, the abolition [Pg 74] of armaments, is good Anarchism and may therefore in a sense be called good Liberalism. But Socialism it is not and cannot be. ”

“ The ordinary man conceives of a Socialist as a kind of very extreme Liberal or Radical, a man who pushes Radical doctrines further than most Radicals dare push them. Indeed many Socialists conceive so of themselves. Yet it is obvious that, if there is any truth at all in what I have just written, this must be regarded as a complete misconception.
Socialism and Collectivism are names which we give to the extreme development of that tendency in political thought which has proved so fatal to Liberalism, which is indeed a reaction against Liberalism. ”

“ But after all most social problems come back in the end to the wages problem. If the workers received better wages many of the questions which now perplex us would solve themselves. And here we are brought directly to what Mr. Sidney Webb has called “the policy of the National Minimum.” The principle of the national minimum has been long ago embodied in legislation, and is in reality the root idea of factory acts, public health acts, restrictions on over-crowding and most other social reforms of the last century. ”

“ Ireland should get such autonomy as we might give to the north of England and no more. Ireland is no more a Nation than Yorkshire, but there is every reason why both Ireland and Yorkshire should be taught to manage their purely internal affairs to the best of their ability.
But, if exclusive Nationalism is essentially unsocialistic, what are we to say of Imperialism? The answer is that there is nothing wrong with Imperialism except the name which suggests Louis Bonaparte and the dragooning of subject peoples. With the thing, in its British sense, Socialists have no kind of quarrel. ”

“ No one who thinks seriously of the consequences of such a policy can doubt that, if it could be carried out, it would effect a greater transference of real power to the democracy than any Reform Bill. The objection which most reformers instinctively feel to any proposal to increase military establishments rests, I fancy, at bottom on their sense that such establishments are organized by a class to protect its narrow class interests. So it is that British troops are found useful to British governments not only in Egypt and South Africa but also at Featherstone and Bethesda. ”

“ For myself, I detest Chinese Labour, and am prepared to go, I fancy, a good deal further than the Liberal front bench [Pg 106] in fighting it. But then I am a Protectionist; and I believe that a plentiful supply of cheap labour is the worst curse with which a nation can be visited. The Liberals and their Labour henchmen, precluded by reason of their Free Trade orthodoxies from taking up this sane and tenable position, have to devote their energies to denouncing the “slavery” involved in the conditions of the Ordinance. Now no Socialist can be expected to get very excited on this point. ”

“ There are no natural rights of man; there is no abstractly perfect economic or political system; we are painfully struggling by means of many experiments and many failures towards something like a decently workable one.
But, though Georgism is a horse so dead that to flog it would be profitless malignity, the taxation of land values, conceived not as the only means of raising revenue, but as an additional means of doing so, is very much in favour both with some of the leaders and with the whole rank and file of the Opposition. ”

“ Consequently whenever a question divides the Liberals and the Tories, the I.L.P. always dashes into the Liberal camp at the firing of the first shot without apparently waiting to consider for one moment whether perhaps Socialism may not have an answer of its own to give which will in the nature of things be neither the Liberal nor the Tory answer. And then the I.L.P. and their allies of the Labour Representation Committee boast proudly of their “independence” because they are not allowed to speak on Liberal platforms. ”

“ But to abuse the man who merely sells what the public demands and the community instructs him to supply is fanaticism and not statesmanship.
[Pg 153]
Now if, leaving this foolish cult, whose voting power is by no means in proportion to the noise it makes, we ask ourselves what kind of temperance reform sensible reformers really want, we shall not find it difficult to answer.
First and foremost then we want good liquour and especially good beer. Everyone who frequents public houses knows how hard this often is to obtain. Yet beer is our national drink, of which we ought to be proud. ”

“ I dedicate this essay in political criticism to you, it is because I know that, though you parade it less, your interest in the science of politics is fully as keen as my own. In point of fact there is no-one whose judgment in these matters I would trust more readily than yours. You are a philosopher; and the philosopher’s outlook in politics is always clear, practical and realistic as contrasted with the thoroughly romantic illusions of the typical party man. ”

“ The objection to foreign unskilled labour is a purely protectionist objection, as inconsistent with Free Trade as anything proposed by Mr. Chamberlain. I may add that it has my entire sympathy.
Very soon, much sooner I think than they suppose, the leaders of organised labour will be forced by the sheer pressure of events to throw “free trade principles” over-board and find another foundation for their economic faith. For buying in the cheapest market clearly implies buying labour in the cheapest market ”

“ Observe that the writer does not ask for a single item of socialist or semi-socialist legislation. He is silent about Old Age Pensions, about an Eight Hours Day or a Minimum Wage, about a Graduated Income Tax, about Housing or Factory legislation—in a word about everything that could by any possibility be called Socialistic. For what does he ask? Firstly for anti-Imperialism? Now is anti-Imperialism the same as Socialism? Is there any reason for supposing that the anti-Imperialist wing of the Liberal party will do more for labour than the Imperialist wing? ”

“ To teach unfed or underfed children is a sheer piece of profitless brutality. Compulsory and free feeding is as necessary to us as compulsory and free teaching—more necessary in fact for more could [Pg 197] in the long run be made of an ignorant people that was fit and healthy physically than of a race of white-faced cripples, whom society had crammed with book-learning to satisfy its theories as barbarously as it crams geese with food to satisfy its palate. We are entitled therefore to demand the free feeding of all children attending Public Elementary Schools. ”

“ When for example they touch on war and foreign politics they give him, under a veil of specious rhetoric which does not convince him, the general impression that they want to see England “licked.” He does not like this, and he expresses his dislike vehemently and not always very peaceably. Doubtless he often vents his anger on people whose patriotism is as real as his own, and who merely differ from him as to the merits of some particular war or expedition. But on the whole the astonishingly shrewd instincts of the workers do not mislead them. ”

“ Socialism is an attempt to adapt the old Tory conceptions of national unity, solidarity and order to new conditions. Our case against Toryism is that its economic and political synthesis is no longer possible for us. ”

“ The more we can get hold of and use for public purposes the better. And the more we pile on taxation (always supposing we pile it on in the right place) the nearer we approach to the Socialist ideal. Retrenchment of public expenditure and the reduction of taxation to a minimum is essentially an individualist policy. The socialist policy is to pool the rents [Pg 167] and profits of industry and devote the revenue so obtained to useful public work.
But, if retrenchment is an inadmissible policy for Socialists, what about reform? ”

“ It matters little who is its representative in the Cabinet. It is the Board itself and not its President for the time being that obstructs progress. Yet an efficient Local Government Board, encouraging progressive local bodies and harrying up backward ones, is an essential part of the “national minimum” policy. From every point of view therefore it is essential that our departments of state should be put on a new and better footing. A businesslike Home Office and a businesslike Local Government Board would do more for social reform than many acts of Parliament. ”