Walter Lyon Blease

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nationalism has stood for liberty, not only in the sense that it has resisted tyrannous encroachment, but also in the sense that it has maintained the right of a community to work out its own salvation in its own way. A nation has an individuality, and the doctrine that individuality is an element in well-being is rightly applied to it. The world advances by the free, vigorous growth of divergent types, and is stunted when all the fresh bursting shoots are planed off close to the heavy, solid stem. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Tory finds the good of the individual in the strength of the State. The Liberal finds the strength of the State in the good of the individual. Where the one seeks to maintain and use, the other seeks to ease, to alter, and to readjust, binding himself to no particular scheme of political or economic construction, but ready to apply to each case of individual hardship, as it arises, such devices as he can invent.
Practical Toryism, the theory as it has been expressed in actual politics, has been until recent years the Toryism of a governing class. But no class has a monopoly of it. ”

“ The Englishman who is indifferent to the sufferings of Finland is in danger of becoming insensitive to his own. But whatever may be the duty of private persons, official representations to a foreign State are always useless, and often exaggerate the evils to which they refer. In the face of foreign dictation, domestic tyranny becomes a patriotic duty. Whatever a Liberal Foreign Secretary may think, he must not dictate to any established Government. But his duty on the other side is equally clear, and he must do nothing to strengthen such a Government against its subjects. ”

“ By Liberalism I mean, not a policy, but a habit of mind. It is the disposition of the man who looks upon each of his fellows as of equal worth with himself. He does not assume that all men and women are of equal capacity, or equally entitled to offices and privileges. But he is always inclined to leave and to give them equal opportunity with himself for self-expression and for self-development. He assumes, as the basis of his activity, that he has no right to interfere with any other person's attempts to employ his natural powers in what he conceives to be the best way. ”

“ Morality is nothing but the subjection of individual wills to the common will, as expressed in defined rules. Immorality is only the arrogance of the individual will, refusing to submit itself to general rules, while it endeavours to enforce general rules upon others. The Liberal State is that which recognizes the universal application of its own principles of conduct, declines to thrust its own ideas upon unwilling associates, and works in harmony with other races instead of in opposition to them. ”

“ Our own Government may have its hands full; or it may have no military means of intervening to good purpose; or its intervention might in the long run do more harm than good to the object of its solicitude. But there can be no general prohibitory rule. When a military despot interferes to crush the men of another country while struggling for their national rights, no principle can make it wrong for a free nation to interfere by force against him. It can only be a question of expediency and prudence. ”

“ The same habit of mind exists everywhere. There is nothing so universal as the aristocratic temper, which disposes of the fortunes of others according to its own sense of what is fitting. The Tory statesman of a hundred and fifty years ago was a landowner, a Churchman, and a man of wealth. But his view of life would have been much the same if he had been a tinker, an atheist, and in daily expectation of the workhouse. He might, in pursuit of his own class interest, have rebelled against the Toryism of the governing class, without abating any of his own. ”

“ Now this policy of Imperial union cannot be achieved by sentiment alone. Sentiment is an excellent thing; but as part of the Empire is Dutch and part French, and as even British colonists tend to forget the Mother Country and look upon their own new country as the centre and the boundary of their patriotism, we need the perpetual unifier of material interest. Where a man's treasure is, there shall his heart be also. ”

“ To confer a privilege upon one Church or nation or sex is simply to confer a privilege upon the individuals who compose it, and whether the privilege is the monopoly of political power or the sole right to take part in a public ceremony, it does in greater or less degree affect the relative social values of the members of the two groups, and places the members of the inferior at the disposition of those of the superior. ”

“ To the Tory, the Empire seems to be something in itself; he is impressed with its size, its wealth, its population; the mere existence of such a huge fabric, efficiently maintained, under the national flag, satisfies him. The Liberal is more concerned with what the Empire represents, with its maintenance of individual liberty, with its development of the subject peoples which it contains, with its encouragement to exploitation, with its implied antagonism to foreign peoples, with its increase of the cost of armaments, and with its effect upon the temper of domestic government. ”

“ There can be no real freedom of growth without control of government. But the argument for enfranchisement is based on more than the direct consequences of it. That the man who is taxed against his will enjoys only an imperfect freedom is obvious. What is not so readily perceived is that he is indirectly affected in a much more serious way. It is axiomatic that a governing class will, sooner or later, abuse its absolute power. ”

“ This Toryism is the habit of mind which refuses to concede to others that right of free expression which it requires for itself. It is the egoistic mind which regards all others as at its disposition. Its opinions are of superior worth, and others must give way. As the Liberal temper is extended, so is the Tory. The ego includes the Church, the occupation, the nation, and the sex of the individual. It thinks of human beings in classes, as distinguished from itself. ”

“ We must be united not only as a United Kingdom but as a British Empire. Old England by herself may not have the strength to face the enormous forces now being arrayed against her. In the same way the Dominions by themselves have not the strength to maintain their freedom against possible attacks. ”

“ So far as he can, the Liberal aims at securing this balance of social and individual good, remembering that the good of society can only be measured by the good of all its members, and not by the good only of some dominant rank, creed, or class. "Rights are relative to the well-being of society, but the converse proposition is equally true, that the well-being of society may be measured by the degree in which their moral rights are secured to its component members.... The moral right of an individual is simply a condition of the full development of his personality as a moral being. ”

“ It never seriously contemplates the time when the subject shall control his own affairs, or shall even be associated on equal terms with the foreign conqueror. Those who grow accustomed to this absolute power can never work comfortably with free institutions, and the whole of the governing race tends to become infected with the disposing habit. The business of government becomes more than the spirit of it, the mechanical successes of administration are applauded, while the stultification of the general mind is overlooked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Liberalism has endeavoured to go deeper into the man, to get beneath the outward complexion, to find out his intrinsic worth, and to give him that place in the social estimate which his natural powers deserve. Arbitrary distinctions are abhorrent to it. It is incapable of thinking in terms of class. ”

“ The same characteristic difference between the desire to adapt an institution to the encouragement of individual growth and the desire to compel individual growth to the efficient working of an institution peeps out, even where the practical proposals of the two parties appear to be identical. A Liberal supports State education because it puts the poor man into fuller possession of himself. A Tory supports it because an ignorant poor man is likely to be turbulent and to make attacks upon the institution of property. ”

“ If they are not to attain these offices, it cannot be by the avowal of sex, but by an admission of incapacity." [12] This is absolute Toryism. Disfranchisement is a convenient means of depreciating women in private life, and the main bulwark of the male ego. It disables every woman in advance, and deprives her of private rights without the trouble of testing her capacity. Her political disability marks her with a brand wherever she goes, and the person who disposes of her politics, disposes also, in proportion to his own selfishness, of her occupation, of her marital rights, and of her honour. ”

“ The justification for this individual freedom is not that the man is left to his own selfish motives, to develop himself for his own advantage. It is that it is only in this way that he can realize that his own best advantage is only secured by consulting that of his fellows. "The foundation of liberty is the idea of growth ... it is of course possible to reduce a man to order and prevent him from being a nuisance to his neighbours by arbitrary control and harsh punishment.... ”

“ But he looks with suspicion upon any attempt to increase it, he encourages every transfer of control to local authorities, he insists that where races of an inferior civilization are incorporated their affairs shall be managed in their interest and not in that of the conquering race, and he views with constant apprehension the inclusion of such races because he knows that their despotic government must threaten the existence of his own free institutions. If the Empire is justified at all, it is justified by the ideals which it expresses, and by nothing else. ”

“ 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." [19] The Tory makes its inhabitants happy for the sake of the Empire. The Liberal has no use for the Empire unless it makes its inhabitants happy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The less civilized or less powerful races which inhabit them are as individual to him as are the Canadians or the Germans, and are no more to be used by him for his own interest. "A superior race is bound to observe the highest current morality of the time in all its dealings with the subject race." [23] Order, justice, capital, the development of natural resources, and education, with an honest spirit in the Government, may help rather than retard the growth of the local life. But with the benefits of civilization is too often introduced the temper of exploitation. ”

“ 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. In less than ten years the speaker denied himself. The trustees of civilization became national egoists, subordinating all others to their own ascendancy. ”

“ But in some directions it is obvious that the Liberal statesman can pursue his course without fear. Where no powerful opponent or associate is concerned, he is as free as within his own country, and he is bound to act on purely Liberal principles. He must act always according to moral rules, even in dealing with weak peoples. He is bound to do nothing which would help to maintain a vicious system or government. He is bound not to interfere in the domestic affairs of another nation, save where the fundamental liberties of his own countrymen are in danger. ”

“ Without attempting to draw hard lines between communities, the Liberal sees in them distinctions of worth and capacity such as he sees in individuals, and he would give the same freedom of self-development to a nation as to a human being. ”