W. Lyon Blease

“ His defence of democratic institutions shows how Fox got into the heart of Liberalism. "We are compelled to own that it gives a power of which no other form of government is capable. Why? Because it incorporates every man with the State, because it arouses everything that belongs to the soul as well as to the body of man; because it makes every individual feel that he is fighting for himself, and not for another; that it is his own cause, his own safety, his own concern, his own dignity on the face of the earth, and his own interest on the identical soil which he has to maintain." ”

“ Political doctrines, which hardly stirred the mind of a cottager, dividing his time between manufacturing and tilling a small plot of ground in open country, sounded loudly in the ears of an artisan, quickened by contact with machinery and constant intercourse with his fellows in the factory or in the street, cramped by living in a sunless court in a crowded town, earning a bare subsistence by exhausting labour, or thrown out of work by the introduction of a new machine or the bankruptcy of his employer. ”

“ I cannot deal seriously with the argument that the vote is merely an expression of physical force, that a minority only yields to a majority because it would be beaten in a civil war, that substantially all women might vote on one side at an election and substantially all men on the other, that the women outnumber the men and would therefore be able to procure the legislation which they wanted, that the men would refuse to obey the law, that civil war would follow, that the women would be beaten, and that society would be dissolved. ”

“ There are very few men who can occupy themselves even with the honest and disinterested management of the affairs of a subject people without suffering some deterioration of their love of liberty. However benevolent despotism may be, it is always despotism. The essence of such government as that of India is to dispose of the fortunes of a people according to our own opinion of what is best for them, and not according to theirs. When it is bad, it is tyranny. When it is good, as it nearly always is, it is indulgence. It is never responsibility. ”

“ Who are the community? How is the State to know what conduces to the welfare of the community? Both these Tory thinkers reason as if the State were some concrete thing, some piece of machinery, existing out of and independent of the society of human beings, managing their affairs, allotting them their rights, and associating with itself in their government such of them as it was pleased to select. Their argument is based upon this fundamental absurdity. The State has in fact no existence apart from human beings ”

“ It was no small thing that a State should have come into being whose founders proclaimed in their Declaration of Independence that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." ”

“ It is not uncommon for men and women, in the excitement of war and in defence of their homes and children, to sacrifice themselves and all they have. But the act of the Lancashire workfolk was done in cold blood, and in defiance of every natural impulse. There is nothing more majestic in human records than the spectacle of these starving men and women, gathered in the very shadow of their dark and silent mills to encourage those whose success meant the continuing of their own miseries. ”

“ The conception of a rich and powerful race extending the blessings of order, good government, and industrial enterprise into the backward parts of the earth for the universal benefit of all mankind is a magnificent conception. But if it ever was Imperialism it is not the Imperialism of to-day. ”

“ It is not his business to lecture the Russian Government for its vile domestic policy or the Spanish Government for the atrocious murder of Ferrer. But it is no more his business to strengthen these Governments, either by his alliance or otherwise, in thus acting towards their subjects. It is no doubt the duty of Liberals who are private persons to protest against cruelty and oppression, wherever it may be found. Public opinion counts for something, even in a foreign country, and if we cannot prevent evil abroad, we can at least keep alive the hatred of it in our own country. ”

“ No man ever saw more clearly the miseries of poverty, or felt more acutely the degradation of worth by external circumstances. "Through every living soul the glory of a present God still beams." But he was convinced that misery could not be entrusted with the instruments of its own relief. The two habits of mind, the sympathetic and the disposing, were in him united. His contempt for political democracy was bound up with his zeal for social democracy, his recognition of the equal worth of all with his determination not to give them equal power. ”

“ In any case, we had no right to enforce a general mode of life upon all women, irrespective of their individual variations. We no longer branded men with class marks, and reserved special occupations and dignities for special groups. Why should we persist in maintaining the same system for women? If there was only one woman in England who was capable of practising as a doctor, it was her right as an individual to be allowed to practise, and the incapacity of every other of her sex was no reason for depriving her of her opportunity of working out her own life. ”

“ To the Liberal, the right of a man to control his own government is only one of the many rights which go to make up his right to control his own life. His freedom of life cannot be complete if, without his consent, his earnings may be diminished by taxation, his business ruined by a commercial treaty, the education of his children prescribed by legislation, and his whole fortune impaired by a declaration of war. There can be no real freedom of growth without control of government. ”

“ The Radicals were "ballot-boxing on the graves of heroic ancestors." The mass of the people were "the rotten multitudinous canaille," and manhood suffrage was as reasonable as "horsehood and doghood suffrage." The world could only be saved by the hero, and the best thing mankind could do was to entrust itself to the unfettered genius of its great men. All this, and much more wild abuse sprang from Carlyle's violent indignation against individualism. He had no respect either for the aristocratic neglect of the Whigs or for the philosophical basis of the school of laissez faire. ”

“ Of what use was it to tell a workman that his uncontrolled competition with his fellows was a spur to his ingenuity and industry, when it meant that a crowd of men, under pressure of starvation, undersold each other for a bare subsistence? Of what use was it to put capitalists and workmen into a comparison as traders, when for the one holding out of the market meant merely a temporary loss of income, and for the other it meant destitution? ”

“ One of the oldest and most powerful monarchies had been humiliated by a people who proclaimed, as the foundation of their new State, the equality of all individuals within it. The presence of the United States was a perpetual reminder to the discontented and the suffering among the older peoples that successful revolt was possible, and that constitutions might stand fast which did not confer privileges upon any class in the community. It would be absurd to pretend that the American people have not often fallen short of their own ideals. ”

“ A Tory journalist puts the matter more precisely: "If Unionism is to recover the confidence of the masses it must recognize their claim to a fuller and a happier life. Only in this way can it serve the great causes which it has at heart. We stand for the Empire. An Imperial people cannot be built up in squalor and poverty, when every thought is absorbed by the provision of the daily bread. We cannot get a hearing for Imperial causes until we have brought happiness into the homes of the people." ”

“ Nor is it the business of a British Government to refuse to make agreements with any foreign Government for the management of matters in which they are jointly concerned. But it is the duty of a British Government not to corrupt its own people by involving itself intimately with a Government whose methods are not only different but are utterly alien from its own. An alliance with France is bad only in so far as it is turned into a combination against Germany. An alliance with Russia is in itself unnatural and horrible. ”

“ But no people in a state of bodily misery was ever yet persuaded by the most logical argument that the one is not connected indissolubly with the other. They are wretched. They cannot control their circumstances. Does it not follow that if they could control their own circumstances they would cease to be wretched? Economic discontent invariably produces political discontent, and that whether the sufferer has a voice in his government or not. It is always to the advantage of society that he should have such a voice. If he has a vote he may overturn a Government. ”

“ Nationality is not a thing of sharp outline, any more than any other political conception, and community of interest, the management of common concerns over a long period of time, has triumphed over differences so potent as those of race and creed. Such has been the fortune of Switzerland, of Canada, and of white South Africa, and it is the hope of Liberalism that such will also be the fortune of Ireland. ”

“ The moral right of an individual is simply a condition of the full development of his personality as a moral being. Equally, the moral right of any community is the condition of the maintenance of its common life, and since that society is best, happiest, and most progressive which enables its members to make the utmost of themselves, there is no necessary conflict between them. The maintenance of rights is the condition of human progress.... To reconcile the rule of right with the principle of the public welfare is the supreme end of social theory. ”

“ The life of the individual parts is everything to the Liberal, and their organization is only tolerable in so far as it protects and encourages that life. It is not to him, as it is to the Tory, a thing in itself, a permanent segregation of his race from the rest of humanity, a monopoly and a preserve, to be maintained as a weight in the balance of international power. Nor has he any doubt that the loosely knit federation, which he prefers, will prove in the end stronger against Foreign enemies than the drilled and disciplined union which the Tories want. ”

“ The Tory reverses the dogma, and even when he pursues the good of individuals, he pursues it rather in order to make them better soldiers or workers, that is to say, better servants of the State, than to make them better in themselves. Democratic government to the Liberal is an essential condition of the free growth of the individual soul. To the Tory, if he believes in it at all, it is a piece of efficient political machinery. ”

“ There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order; the firmest foundations for the development of individual character, and the best provision for the happiness of the nation at large.... ”

“ So Burke, in his speech on a Bill for Shortening the Duration of Parliaments, said: "Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights and privileges of the people. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as we ought, is to give them information, and not to receive it from them; we are not to go to school to them to learn the principles of law and government. In doing so we should not dutifully serve, but we should basely and scandalously betray the people, who are not capable of this service by nature, nor in any instance called to it by the constitution.... ”

“ We want to draw a line below which we will not allow persons to live and labour, yet above which they may compete with all the strength of their manhood. We want to have free competition upwards; we decline to allow free competition to run downwards. We do not want to pull down the structures of science and civilization, but to spread a net over the abyss." [355] "It is clear that the unlimited and uncontrolled struggle of wages spells anarchy almost as painful in its effects as the unlimited and uncontrolled competition of physical force in our streets and highways. ”

“ States which "survive" by the exercise of force and fraud can only be those whose subjects have ceased to dislike force and fraud. In other words, the evolution of the individual and the evolution of the State cannot proceed upon different lines. Man has now reached a point of development where mere brute strength has ceased to be a desirable quality. The test of a man is always a moral test. We have evolved morality. If we formally reject morality in our use of the State, for the express purpose, as it were, of "breeding it out," we deliberately turn back the course of human evolution. ”

“ England's policy is no longer decided by herself, but by herself in consultation with allies, whose character and objects may be purely selfish. If one of her associates is guilty of immoral aggression against one of the opposing group, or asserts some right which ought only to be conferred upon her by international agreement, she is dragged into a quarrel in defence of wrong against right, and not only violates moral rules in the particular case, but weakens her own ability to observe them in every other. Her honour and her interest alike are placed in the hands of others. ”

“ Tariff Reform, if it can destroy poverty at all, can only destroy it indirectly by giving higher profits to the employer, who may or may not share his increased gains with his workpeople. Its operation is also entirely capricious, it can only apply to industries which suffer from foreign competition, and cannot touch those many underpaid forms of employment in which such competition cannot or does not in fact exist. Finally, as it can only operate by raising prices, it can only give benefits to one class of labour by imposing burdens upon another. ”