Walter Lyon Blease

“ It has now crowned its career of domestic misgovernment by beginning to destroy the liberties of the Finnish people, whose social policy has been at once the admiration of the civilized world, and a standing rebuke to the comparative brutality of Russia. It is not the business of Great Britain to dictate to established Governments, or to go to war with them for the better regulation of their internal affairs. 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. ”

“ It is the argument which is more justly directed against Socialism, that by helping individuals the State deprives them, in whole or in part, of the disposition to help themselves, that they tend to rely more and more upon the social organization and less upon their own strength. Everything in the way of public assistance is thus regarded with suspicion. To feed school-children is to weaken parental responsibility. To raise wages by legislation is as demoralizing as to distribute doles. To offer a pension of five shillings a week in old age is to discourage thrift in youth. ”

“ 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." [9] "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. ”

“ If there is one principle of administration more distinctively Liberal than any other, it is that wrongful action from right motives requires delicate handling, and that even if it must be punished, the motives which produce it must be destroyed, not by brutality, but by removal of the abuse which has created them. What the Government did with the militant Suffrage movement was to violate this essentially Liberal principle, and while they refused to remove the cause of discontent, they repressed its early and trifling symptoms with a severity which only dangerous crime could have deserved. ”

“ But the argument for Social Reform is not based only on the possibility of altering environment so that individuals who are unfit for it may maintain themselves so long as they live. Spencer was reasoning away from the facts. It is not only the incapable who are poor. It is not only the imprudent who are overcome by distresses. It is not only the idle who starve. Bad conditions of life destroy not only the inefficient, but the efficient, and many of those whom they do not kill they maim. ”

“ Imperialism has not been a monopoly of Great Britain. Russia in China and Persia, Japan in China, Austria in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy in Tripoli, and France in Morocco, have in turn shown their willingness to upset the established rules of international morality in the pursuit of their own interests. In the almost universal demoralization of foreign policy which has followed The Hague Peace Conference of 1899, it has perhaps been impossible for a single statesman to tread a straight path. ”

“ The reality of common interests and common aims has broken the fiction of the Balance of Power into pieces, and Sir Edward Grey, whose career had been watched with dismay by the most Liberal of his followers, now finds himself in universal favour as he expresses once more the pure theory of Liberalism. The Concert of Europe has been revived, with Great Britain at the head of it, and if the Foreign Secretary can make out of our temporary association with Germany something in the nature of a permanent friendship he will render a greater service to his country than any of his predecessors. ”

“ The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many in shallows and in miseries, are the decree of a large, far-seeing benevolence." [12] The conception, which makes of foreign politics an immoral conflict between nations, is to make of domestic politics an equally immoral conflict between individuals, in which justice and humanity are to be set aside as inconsistent with the progress of the race. ”

“ So the Wage Boards Act and the Miners' Minimum Wage Act established machinery for fixing a wage in certain employments which, having regard to the circumstances of each trade, would insure that the wage-earner should enjoy a reasonable standard of health and comfort. All these measures are based upon the same principle, that absolute liberty of the individual meant the degradation, if not the destruction, of many individuals who were poor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once we admit the need of a social organization, which involves a very considerable check on mechanical evolution by the survival of the fittest, the only controversy is about the extent and character of the limits on competition, and not about their existence. The beasts, birds, and fishes which are unfit for their environment, and have not those qualities which make for survival, perish by disease or are destroyed by their enemies. The man generally remains a drag on the community. ”

“ So long as Parliament abstains from fixing wages, and confines itself to the erection of machinery for fixing them in accordance with the conditions of the trade, Minimum Wage Acts merely create by law what Trade Unionism creates by voluntary effort. The higher wages established under the Acts will do what higher wages established under Trade Unionism have done. They will mean increased efficiency, increased production of wealth, and increased purchasing power. ”

“ It is obvious that this new economic Liberalism has borrowed largely from Socialism, and it has one character in common with Protection. Once we admit that it is right for the State to interfere with economic freedom, we have advanced one step on the road which leads towards the nationalization of industry and towards the regulation of production by tariffs. The difference between Social Reform and Tariff Reform is nevertheless clear. Social Reform operates directly, only where it is needed, and without substantially interfering with any individual's enjoyment of life. ”

“ If there is one thing which most distinguishes modern from ancient society, and society of any kind from the disorganized existence of primitive man, it is the prevalence of the idea that we are, in some measure, responsible for the condition of our neighbours. The emotions and the reasoning faculties which have produced moral inhibitions on our own desires, laws for the protection of the weak against the strong, the machinery of private charity, and the public relief of the poor, all these have been evolved with the other characteristics of humanity as we know it. ”

“ What is too generally ignored by the critics of this new policy is that, in one way or another, all the service which is now being rendered by the State has already been rendered by society. Since the reign of Elizabeth we have admitted our duty to provide for the destitute, and the burden which has not fallen upon the poor rates has been borne by private charity, by public hospitals, and by the police. In public or private poor relief, in the curing of disease, and in the punishment of crime we have long been accustomed to pay for the consequences of poverty. ”

“ Whatever logical answer there may be to the second, a Liberal State, accepting the equality of all sects as its first principle, must give them precisely the same liberty as the first. If a Churchman is not to count for more than a Dissenter, a Dissenter is not to count for more than a Churchman. ”

“ Individual growth can only take place in competition. But it is not necessary that failure in competition should be mortal. The struggle of competition is to go on. But it is not to go on to the death. Economic society is to be converted into a gigantic Trade Union, [11] based upon the belief that the highest good of the individual can only be secured in co-operation with his fellows, and limiting his freedom only in so far as it is necessary to secure freedom to his associates. ”

“ The dislocation of industry, which always follows a war, had brought insecurity to many and destitution to not a few. Casual labour was more general, and sweating not less than at any previous period. In every direction distress and discontent had increased, and the political machinery was now adapted to the direct and articulate expression of the feelings of the common people. The Parliament of 1906 represented the desire of the masses to fit their conditions of life to their own capacity for growth. ”

“ The last argument, that enfranchisement will only be a step towards other measures of emancipation, is another characteristic expression of Toryism. Private depreciation will cease, as soon as political depreciation is abolished. How can a Liberal man dictate to a woman how she shall exert herself in society? There is no motive, other than that of selfish interest, the desire to retain the most honourable and profitable occupations for the dominant sex, which can impel a man to the use of this argument. ”

“ Whoever admits that the duty of the State is to secure, so far as it is able, the fullest opportunities to lead the best life, cannot refuse to accept the further proposition, that to lessen the causes of poverty and to lighten its effects are essential parts of a right policy of State action." [6] Poverty cripples the individual in many ways. It deprives him of mobility, so that he cannot travel freely in search of employment. ”

“ A bad environment does not merely destroy the inefficient, it manufactures them; and it is as reasonable to oppose social reform, because it prevents the elimination of the unfit, as it would be to defend excessive eating and drinking, or sitting in wet clothes. Unhealthy living would no doubt destroy people with weak stomachs and livers, and a tendency to chalky deposits in the joints. But for every one who perished in this struggle with environment there would be ten who survived. Bad housing and bad wages produce the same results as bad habits. ”

“ Churchill's party followers will no doubt be content to accept his judgment. Posterity cannot act so lightly. It is not to accept accusations against individual policemen to say that charges put forward under such circumstances, and supported by such responsible and independent authorities, must have had some foundation in fact. No impartial observer can acquit either the police of misconduct, or the Home Secretary of a gross and partisan abuse of the powers of his office. ”

“ To raise it by a general taxation of rich and poor would be to lay a new burden upon the poor in order to remove an old burden, to increase by one act the poverty which the other was intended to diminish. Social Reform financed by Protection is an economic contradiction. The money required to improve the condition of the poor must be taken from the rich, if it is to be of any practical use. The heaviest of the new taxes were therefore placed, according to a graduated scale, upon the payers of income tax, the inheritors of large estates, and the recipients of unearned increments from land. ”

“ They pay taxes, their conditions of labour are regulated by the State, their wages may be affected, favourably or adversely, by legislation, questions of peace and war are decided to their benefit or detriment, in almost every action of Government the individual woman is involved to precisely the same extent as the individual man. It is not to them a question of men imposing oppressive taxes upon women, it is a question of a legislature imposing taxes upon individuals. ”

“ The workman is no longer left to scramble about for fresh employment. He goes to a public office, where he learns what posts are vacant, and is put in touch with those who may be willing to employ him. No man can now complain that because he cannot afford to travel in search of work, or to delay for more than a day or two before he finds it, he has suffered a permanent deterioration in health or character. If this Act can eliminate the evils of casual and irregular labour, it will have enormously increased individual liberty for growth. ”

“ Asquith, have displayed a Toryism, in matters of sex, as complete as that of Castlereagh. It has been particularly unfortunate for the credit of the Liberal party that its leader at such a critical moment should be a man of little imagination. It is the large imagination, ever ranging beyond the bounds of the practicable and the expedient, and detecting in the obscurity of apparent chaos the currents of new social forces, which distinguishes the greatest statesmen from those who are merely great. ”

“ The Suffragists since 1906 have been conducting a political agitation of a milder sort, as they suppose, to rescue some of their fellow-creatures from an infinitely more dreadful fate. Those who require an explanation of their earnestness, or an excuse for their extravagance, will find it in their belief that social degradation is the inevitable consequence of political inferiority. The White Slave Traffic Act of 1913, flung by Parliament as a sop to womanhood in revolt, merely touches the surface of the problem. The whole system of sexual ethics is put in issue by the Woman Suffrage movement. ”

“ It is possible that there can be no such thing as a permanently Liberal Foreign Policy, that the systematic application of Liberal principles to foreign affairs can never be undertaken with any chance of success. No Liberal as yet will be content with that desperate assumption, and the recent improvement in the international situation rather confirms than weakens his belief that abroad, as at home, politics will ultimately rest upon a basis of ethics. ”